Illusions of Soul

If I could sleep, I would never have seen it. But I’m sure the fates knew that, knew that I would be leaning against the headboard, running my fingers through her hair, with the news muted on the television.

I didn’t need the sound. The images were more than enough.

Footage of a grisly crime scene.

A fireplace with scattered ashes where someone had been burned.

A hole in the wall, surrounded in blood, where someone had been staked.

I remember those marks well.

And outside of the house, a little girl being carried to a police cruiser, wrapped in a blanket, too in shock to cry.

She abandoned me. I was furious. I was willing to serve her, to learn from her, but she left me to find my own way, with no guidance at all.

Was there no loyalty amongst vampires?

The answer is no. There isn’t. So, she expected none from me. I understand that now.

And she may have been right, because, while I wanted to follow her anywhere, my most base instincts would have led me to defy her somewhere down the line. She knew that then, even if I didn’t.

But she didn’t think me a lost cause either. Something must have given her hope. Something held her back. She may have abandoned me there to fend for myself, but it was completely within her power to just kill me.

She loves to sleep. She should go pro. She can sleep the whole night away, and sometimes part of the day.

But only if I’m here. She’ll wrap around me and be out in an instant.

I sneak out some nights. I have to. I have to eat. But I don’t keep it a secret. The mornings, when she wakes up to a full breakfast waiting for her on the table, she knows I’ve been gone, but she never asks me where.

I used to sleep well, back when I was human. And then again when I was so far from it that nothing I did affected my ability to rest easy. But it’s been a long time since sleep has come so effortlessly. The thoughts that sneak into my mind when I don’t have the conscious control to hold them at bay are enough to keep my eyes wide open.

I look back on the rocky course with such regret.

And nostalgia.

It did hurt less to be utterly unsympathetic.

I left Helen in the room with her dead parents. She was no longer of use to me. The only one I was concerned with was Haydn. Her abrupt departure had shaken me. Her disapproval had done far more damage.

I was hers. She made me. How could she not want me?

I followed her scent, so enticing, and caught her at the edge of the road. She shook me off like she would an insect. And, to her, I was.

She regretted it. I could see it clearly in the full moon’s light. But she didn’t try to hide it either.

“I should have killed you,” she said.

Then she hit me. She hit me so hard I flew back and slammed into the front of the cottage. It didn’t knock me out, but it stunned me enough to give her time. When I finally made it to my feet, Haydn was gone.

They long for the alchemy. People. They do. What is already here, amongst them, just outside their comprehension, they long to discover.

Eternal pleasure. They want to find it, but most of them never will. Those who do, I shudder for them, and hope they find a quick death at the hands of a hunter. Because they want to be like us, but most won’t be. They will be like them.

Soulless.

Heartless.

They will have their eternal pleasure, at the expense of the world.