Illusions of Soul

I am consistently amazed by the human ability to deceive oneself.

Is it really so bad to know what’s actually out there in the world with you? It must be. Why else would such knowledge be so desperately avoided?

Of course, the acceptance of certain types of being does lower the standing of the human race. If we exist, you fall from the top of the food chain. If we exist, all the weapons training you possess cannot protect you. If we exist, the best in any human discipline that relies upon physical prowess is far from unrivaled.

You cannot surive if we exist. We are superior to you in every way.

Except the ways that matter most.

You have the urgency. And the death.

Of all the creatures in this universe, none rival the human ability to die.

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.

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.

Did I really believe that there was a possibility that the fates would forget about me? That they brought me here to be alone in this room with this girl, and for no other reason?

Maybe that’s what I hoped. Secretly.

But fate forgets no one. When there are plans for you, fate is very aware of where you are.

You can’t outrun it.

You can’t hide from it.

You can only deny it if you choose, and deal with those consequences, or you can yield to its wishes and hope you survive what it has called you to do.

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.

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.

There are some promises that are unspoken. We call them expectations.

Parents are expected to care for their children. And when you have created something, you are expected to take pride in it, take care of it, value it.

It expects those things from you.

But when you have created something, you are also responsible for it, and anything that it might do. For all of your hard work, for all of your dedication, it may make itself impossible to appreciate.

Skin really isn’t much of a shield if you think about it. All of those important organs, muscles, blood, all of the things that the brain needs for survival, they are there, just under the skin. The elements that make a human a human, protected only by a think layer and a few bones easily breakable.

Humanity is a very fragile condition.

Where I used to fear nothing, now I have even less to fear. I possess power now. I don’t just have it. Every moment, I feel it, as if there is no weakness left inside me.

Save for one.

If I have a superstition, it is of Jekyll and Hyde, the belief that one drop of the wrong serum can bring the evil bubbling back to the surface.

And if I have a personal bogeyman, it is me.

I should have been, but I wasn’t frightened out on my own at night. Back then, I had no idea about the dangers after dusk. I was raised to believe in righteousness and godliness, and my brothers hadn’t yet taken their turn to the dark side. I had been sheltered, protected from the perils of the world, and it resulted in ignorance.

There was nothing I could pinpoint as something to fear. I had no personal bogeyman, no superstition. My dread was completely unfounded. It just always lingered.