Illusions of Soul

People are dying. Not deserving people. Not terrible people. Decent people. Relatively innocent people. They are dying, because I am always one step behind.

These are still my sins. These are still my crimes… carried out precisely, in the order in which I carried them out. But I remember what comes next only after it has already occurred.

My memory isn’t exactly lacking in aptitude, but it was so long ago, how can I be expected to remember?

But that’s what it is, isn’t it? This is why I’ve been assigned this mission. I’m meant to remember. I’m meant to relive. I’m meant to experience, once more, every single horrific thing I have done.

Am I being punished or saved? It’s hard to tell. I suspect that it is one by means of the other.

Florence.

There was a time when I looked upon it as the best period of my being. It was all still new. The strength. The craving. The eternal life. I was carnal. And I was free. I could take what I wanted, but everyone was so willing to give that I never had to. The power then… back when I allowed it… There are moments when I wish I still could. I try not to dwell on them long.

But, in Florence, I found my superiority over what I once was. I learned how to dominate without brute force. I learned to be new. I learned to be commanding. I learned that I could have anything, do anything, to anyone, without punishment or remorse.

…lessons that it took me hundreds of years to forget…

There’s not a city that’s safe now. When they serve as your sustenance, you go where the people are. And there are numerous choices here, cities with large populations and people who don’t pay adequate attention.

But they won’t move. Not yet. There is plenty of blood walking these streets night after night. There is so much for them to accomplish here.

I get the notion that the people here are starting to become aware that something isn’t right. But in a place like this, where it is easy to discount disappearances as part of the scene, it might take them some time to really start to show concern.

After all, the clues haven’t even begun to stack up.

It was a time of great richness of being. The wrong kind of richness and the wrong kind of being, but still it was wealth, and I cannot discount it as a time without personal success. Or at least what felt like triumph at the time. Because I was creating, generating immortals by the dozens, and then the hundreds. Within a few weeks, I had numbers at my disposal that would give the greatest dictators in history pause.

And they were attached to me, dependent upon me. They would never leave me, unless I told them to. I would be the one doing the abandoning. But why would I ever? I had an army to do my bidding.

I remember that feeling, creating eternal servants, one right after the other.

And I understood then how God feels.

And then there are those things for which punishment isn’t necessary. Things that, by no means, make amends, but do make me experience some form of delight in myself again.

I have arrived here, where they are, in Las Vegas. I should have known.

I arrived still hungry. After my fast, it seems I cannot quite get full.

So, I went out.

My, how the bounty is plentiful here. So many people so deserving of the demise I can bring them. And I found one that made me glad in my ability to kill.

She was gorgeous in a way that said that she knew it. And used it.

But it was all that she knew.

And she used it everywhere.

Including at the school where she worked as a junior high teacher, which she told me, but didn’t have to, because I already knew. It’s sort of a psychic ability that isn’t. It’s really more intuition, and it comes from this. There aren’t many things that you can do that I haven’t already done. You cannot hide them from me, because I know what your sins look like.

I knew exactly how to seduce her. With this type of person, the key is to make it all about her; her pleasure, her beauty, her effect on you. She did not crave union. She craved adoration. A fan. I could be that. And I could also be her assassin. It was, after all, what I was there for, why I’d honed in on her in a crowd of beautiful people just like her.

And she’d pleaded, as they all do, told me that she wasn’t guilty of those things of which I accused her. None of them. Not one of the thirty kids she’d made into early adults in ways that were irrevocable. She’d done them no favors, though I’m sure she had convinced herself that she had. And she fought the accusations, did it until the end, until my daggers sunk in and she felt so euphoric that she couldn’t argue with me anymore.

I wish, wish, that I knew a way to make my drinking hurt. For so many of these people death isn’t good enough. I wish I could inflict pain, but it disturbs me now to do so, even if these people are so deserving of it. So, while it doesn’t actually constitute punishment, it still offers protection to those who would be future victims.

Of course, when they discover the body, it will be the woman herself who is considered a victim. And they can think that. But I know. And so did she.

A word to the wise -

If I find you - I know. Don’t try to fight the inevitable. Admit your sins, at least to yourself. Cleanse your heart. Free your soul.

I’m going to kill you anyway.

As humans, we never really know what tortures we have the ability to exact. We barely even scratch the surface of what lies inside our minds. It takes only a slight warping of our selves to gain the ability to do things that seem horrendous to us when we have souls.

If you have ever wondered, they are good for something.

The things that I did to Paul Jr.’s mother are things that I now protect women from, but then it seemed good sport - to do to Paul’s wife what he’d wanted to do to me.

It makes me shudder to think about. It makes me truly ill. It makes me want to be gone from here, from myself.

Which is why I’m not.

My life, the everlasting nature of it, is my punishment. It was a punishment before I even did anything that deserved to be punished. But now, I allow it to go on, because no one has it coming more than I do.

When I left, the police had no leads. Not all that surprising. And because they had no leads, it is only natural for them to come to the conclusion that the missing son is somehow responsible for the deaths of his mother and his sisters. They hate having to think that. It doesn’t feel natural. It doesn’t feel acceptable.

It’s neither of those things… but they are right. And they are wrong.

The boy did kill his sisters, just as Paul Jr. had done. I am certain of that. By me, that fact is undisputed. But he is not responsible for their deaths. At least not as he was. Not the boy from the picture on the wall. That boy was dead before his body committed the horrendous acts for which they now place blame. The police hold the boy on the wall responsible, because, as much as they hate the idea of it, they want to believe in the alternative even less.

And the one act which they cannot wrap their minds around, the one that seems too stomach-churning to even deliberate on, he didn’t carry out, but they will never know that. And they blamed the pills on him too, the sleeping pills that killed his mother, the prescription bottle beside her that was emptied and poisonous. They assumed she was forced to swallow them. No surprise, considering the condition she must have been found in.

But neither the boy, nor his mentor, committed the act of the woman’s murder, though they had every part in her death. What the police won’t ever know, because they don’t want to ponder all of the merciless possibilities is that the woman was left alive, lying shattered in a room with her dead twins, and she found just enough strength to get to the medicine cabinet, gather her means, and do it herself.

Paul Jr. was so eager to indulge my fantastic whims. So eager to bring me anything and everything that I asked.

So I asked for his sisters.

Like a dutiful puppy, he went to fetch them for me.

And I found his mother. Right where she should have been. In her bed, asleep. She gave a start when I awakened her, but one look into my eyes made her fear dimish instantly, her desire arise. I wasn’t unwanted. Which is why I made sure that it hurt. Pain is still pain, and a touch can become rapidly unwelcome when it causes enough. I caused her more pain than she probably ever thought to fear. She hadn’t only suffered enough by the time Paul came. She had suffered more than enough. She had suffered too much. She had suffered irreparably. Because I was still angry at her husband.

And that’s why I ordered Paul to kill his sisters, to drain them dry right in front of her. She was sobbing, trying to turn away, but my hand on her chin kept her face turned toward the sight, and human curiosity wouldn’t allow her to close her eyes. So she watched.

She was already torn and bleeding and afraid, and now she had to watch as one of her children gleefully took the lives of her other two. She had to watch, because I was still angry at her husband.

And when I was finished, when Paul was finished, when I felt satisfied in my revenge, I did the cruelest thing I could think to do.

I let her live.

This is when the darkness comes forth.

Again.

It is hardly a new trend. If anything, it’s an old one.  Things have a way of being nauseatingly repetitive.

The darkness is where I lived. By choice. For quite some time. Not quite some time by human standards, but for several human lifetimes. Not for years, but for hundreds of years. Then I broke free. The possibility that I would one day return has been here, hanging over me, ever since.

If there is any solace, it is that I have not made the trip of my own volition. It is not my weakness or renewed wantonness. It has been demanded of me.

But not of you.

If you fear the dark, you are free to go.

I have been absent. Not from this place, but from this Earth, from myself. It’s called a soul sojourn. Of course, such a title is misleading, because no matter what traits I may exhibit, no matter what thoughts may flow through my head, I am aware of my constant state of soullessness. No matter what, that never changes, and no matter what, I never forget.

In a soul sojourn, one’s body is present, but his or her essence moves to a different plane. There are ways to do this. Humans always have a problem with such possibilities, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. During a soul sojourn, you are open to the universe, to creation, to life in all its forms, completely receptive, and answers will come to you. But getting there isn’t easy, and it could kill the truly weak. It is, though, the only place where I knew I would find that which I was seeking, my next destination.

I knew after the killings, whoever is responsible for these acts would move on, because, after my binge, I left the place I’d always dreamed of escaping. But just like that continent, here there are so many places to move onto next. I also knew that, on sojourn, I would feel them. It would be only a matter of time. That many vampires rising at once is a difficult sensation to ignore.

And I knew that it would happen. Because it was a long time before I took to killing again after that first night. With Paul Jr. at my side, we made off toward the south, where we didn’t take time to torture. We were far too busy siring an army.

They’ve made to the east though, the person who is doing this and the boy from the picture on the wall of the house. And now I will move as well, only this time I follow.

But first things first, I must find blood. A soul sojourn is not easily entered and is hardly a revolving door. Once you are in, you are in until you are out. It’s like a state of hibernation. And it’s been nearly three weeks, and now… I am famished.