Jerrin Bloodlette, Vampire

[Paragon Vanguard]

Memoirs. What are they truly for? Vanity, nothing more. It is simply the thought that one's life must be documented, because we are, of course, so important. Yet still, a deep desire has taken over me to write. My story may be interesting to some, but this is not why I choose to record it. My thoughts wander often now, and I sometimes find it difficult to even remember who I was. Is that really much different than a mortal? Yes, if I consider it deeply, I can still remember what a mortal life is like. 100 years is a long time when a mortal is young, but shortens quickly enough as they age, until it seems like merely a vapor in the wind at the end.  Through it all, mortals change, and forget who they were, and settle for who they are. Dreams come, dreams go, and they pass away, many times, with their greatest dreams unrealized. 

It was the 18th century, when I was young and in love. My wife, Abrielle, was beautiful, and we were well thought of among the aristocrats. Her orchards and my steady healing hands had created quite a life for us. My only power was my knowledge, you see, I was a doctor. I come from a line of healers. The name, Bloodlette, has nothing to do with what I am now. It was a method, considered archaic and ineffective, but mastered by my ancestors. It was passed on to me, as I took over the family business.

Europe was thriving at the time, with Bach and Handel serenading the wealthy. Slave trade was strong, and the gap between the haves and the have nots was evident. I had very little time for my social duties, as my studies ruled my life. Abrielle was the only one able to distract me from my work to rub elbow with the haves, though many times, during our own parties, we took long walks through the orchards, lit by torch throughout just for such walks. It was, to me, heaven, or what heaven should be. 

It was during one of these heavenly walks that "he" came. 

[Paragon Vanguard]

He strolled in the distance, which was not odd at all. Many people walked the paths during one of Abrielle's parties. Myself and Abrielle were deep in conversation, and today I no longer even remember what it was. The sounds of music drifted down from the house, as sound does in cool air. The wine of evening had us both feeling warm, and feeling for one another like lovers do. We had been married for nearly ten years by this time, and still, we were deep in love. Or perhaps, my memory, as memories do to us at times, simply fools me. I do not think that is the case though. My, condition, seems to lock it's victims into a frozen time. Have you ever wondered why so many with my disease are horrific? Think of the moment they were changed, and what must have been going through their minds at the time. It is not like the movies suggest, not when a real vampire does it. There is nothing romantic of the real disease. 
He seemed so far off as I turned from a glance at him, and looked to see Abrielle staring up at me, her blonde curls dangling down her cheeks, accenting her blue eyes. I don't remember what words passed between us, but it was the words of romance, those words you don't say as much as you feel. Then the kiss. Not a deep passionate one, for we were not alone. It was a kiss of things to come, later, when we would be alone. Then her smile. She lit the path up with her smile, far more than the torches. The world could pass on when I was looking upon her like this, and it would not have mattered to me. 
Yet I should have been far more diligent of the world. Of what it had created. I am unsure of what I could have done anyway. 

It was shocking that when I looked away from Abrielle he had closed the distance and was standing right there, a smile on his face. He wore a top hat, and looked well off, yet he also looked like he was out of time. I do not remember why that, even now, stays with me, but it does. 

I greeted him, and asked if he was enjoying the party. Even now it had not struck me how much was wrong with it all. Of course it was teasing the back of my mind, but truly when you have never encountered such as he was, you do not grasp the danger you are in. He was quite polite, and very charming, as he thanked us for the wonderful evening. He knew much of us, and said how he admired the things we had accomplished in our short lives. This seemed odd, as he did not appear older than us. Still he was very flattering, and caused my wife and I to look at one another, unable to hide our own smiles. He used our own vanity to lull us into pleasantries. 
I can't say what happened at this time. I have no conscious thought of it, even now. One moment we were speaking, and the next I was coming from a daze, feeling as if I had fallen asleep and dreamed the most wonderful, and horrific, dream. The stranger had my Abrielle in his arms, they were swaying as if dancing, his head tilted as if kissing her neck. She did not resist. At first it seemed right to me, and shamefully I remember a smile on my lips. Something though continued to tease at my mind. This was wrong, and because this was my Abrielle, my wife, my love, the spell broke. 
I rushed him in anger. Anger that he dared touch my wife. Anger that she was not resisting. He struck me as one would swat at a mosquito, barely acknowledging me. I flew back from the blow, and struck a tree with such force, everything went black. 

[Paragon Vanguard]

Blood was dripping from me as I awoke, and the stranger was hunched down in front of me, looking me over. He had only a drop of blood on his lips, but I knew I was drained of almost all of my own. His face was flushed, and it was now I could see his features clearly. He was French, of this I little doubt, but his accent seemed far more ancient than any French I had spoken to. He smiled at me, and while I believe he was genuinely being friendly, as friendly as a hunter can be to the game just downed, his fangs were quite imposing. He spoke to me, of strange things, at times speaking in an ancient dialect that I hardly understood, though I am quite well learned in most languages. As a doctor practicing all over Europe, it was necessary. 
It was then I caught the eyes of Abrielle, glassed over, and lifeless. Sobs began to escape my lips, weak as they were, as I felt the warm tears flowing down my face. The creature followed my gaze, and the smile left his lips, replaced by what could possibly be shame. He told me I should not worry, that I will not feel anything soon enough. He wished he could assure me of an afterlife, but he knew nothing of it, and had no such reassurances. It was then that he sensed something, turning his head up a moment as if really listening, then he was suddenly gone. To this day, I know not why. 
One of my students that was well versed in my procedure of blood letting and replacing gave me an IV, though nothing like you know of now. Still, it kept me from brain damage or a heart attack. Those things, viewed through hindsight, would have been preferred, though I do believe in the end, I still would not have died, not a natural death anyway. 

The worst was yet to come. 

[Paragon Vanguard]

Vampires are made, usually, by their first kill. The drinking of blood locks the human within the disease, until the humanity is completely destroyed. This of course is my own educated opinion of the disease, as it seems to function in so many different ways, among different people. Bart Harting, the student who "saved my life", had no way of knowing that by giving me blood through an IV, he actually fed the sickness. 
I had slept the next day, but not a good sleep. My mind was tortured with what had happened, and with the knowledge that my beautiful Abrielle was dead. How could I know that I was turning into the same creature that killed her? There are so many ironies surrounding me now, but I shan't get into that presently. 
I awoke that evening, and at first I felt well. I felt better than I did before any of this occurred, and I started pondering whether it was all some kind of fevered dream. I removed myself from the bed, something drawing me to the window.
It was the night. It was fascinating to me, though I cannot describe well enough why. It seemed lit up, but not in the natural sense. It was while I was curiously looking at this that I became violently ill. The well being that I was feeling left me, and I became once again weak. I fell to the floor, knocking over a lamp as I did so. I will not get into the detail, but suffice to say my body decided to violently evacuate my stomach's contents. It was a horrid mess, as my nurse entered to check on me, having heard the lamp break. She ran to get help, but it would not come soon enough. It would not have been enough anyway. 

It was then that I died. 

Edited December 28, 2019 by Luke

[Paragon Vanguard]

I died, but not in the sense that a mortal would consider, of course. Were it a complete death, I would not be writing this now. It was an undeath, as people have come to call it now. Of course my heart had stopped beating, I had no breath in my lungs, and I was lying in my own filth, when they found me. To them, I had died. Of a disease, of terror, or maybe just of heartache. Back then we could come up with all kinds of reasons to fit something we had no understanding of. Science was not prominent, and no more real to people than their own superstitions. 
They had my funeral. My friends and family came to mourn over me, speak words over me, and dedicate me to our God. All meaningless. I cannot tell you what happens to one that dies, a real death, but I can tell you that I was locked in a body that could neither see, hear, speak, nor move, in any way. It was horror, it was a nightmare, and yet, in the end it is what saved me, if this can be called saved. Had they not been prompt in burying me next to Abrielle, the sun would have burned me like any vampire. I believe that the body had to go through rigor first, as the rest of my humanity was disposed of. When I came to, and able to function again, it was days later. I was in a coffin, but it did not concern me. I had no need for breath, I could see well enough, and my limbs felt quite strong. I did not feel a need to test whether I could ascend to the surface, as much as I knew I could. It was like any new creature, coming from it's cocoon or womb. It was natural to me. I knew immediately that I was something else, I knew immediately that I had become the creature that killed my wife. 
I knew I was vampire. 
I had heard many tales of vampires and the like, and considering the days past, I had no doubt that there were some truth to the things told. I felt as much as knew that I could not stand in the sun light. I knew I must find a place to hide, and gather my wits. I knew I would have to feed. 

I will stop here and impart some wisdom upon you, the reader. A vampire's mind, though very similar to the mortal, works somewhat differently. Knowledge and cunning are as much our defense as strength, and other unnatural powers that form within us. Not all of us are the same as far as our abilities are concerned, but we are all the same in one thing. Survival. It changes how we feel, if feel is even the correct word anymore. Maybe it is best to say, we no longer feel the same as humans. Kinship is different. Our thoughts and our responses are different. Survival is different. Love, is different. Raw emotions are real. Anger, lust, hunger. Deeper emotions are no longer needed, therefor, discarded. A vampire may call you friend, and believe you to be a friend, but his nature will always surface. Lust will always rule him, even as he tries to deny it. I say this as a vampire, never fully put your trust in a vampire. Whatever moral compass humanity possesses is lost in the new creature. Survival is an emotion, and is our strongest most dominant. 
I remember love, I remember what it must feel like, but I do not feel love. The false love, we call it lust and desire, has taken it's place. I realize this can be very confusing, especially to a mortal, but as I tell my tale, you will come to understand the difference,. How alike the two are, lust and love, but in the end, how different. 

[Paragon Vanguard]

I watched the servant girl pass, her dark skin blending in the night. She was singing a song in her own language, but not a kids song like she should have been singing. I could not tell you what the words were, but the song was definitely dark and morose. I liked it, I listened for a while. I, loved this child, that I did not know. Her song moved me, and I felt a tear fall. Living a life of poverty, and servitude, would bring anyone to sadness as hers. My hunger was very strong in those days. It was new. It was an unknown to me. Also, and do not judge me on this, seeing the life that mortals lived made me feel pity for them. The release I would give her through death would surely be better than the life she lived. 
Maybe it is a way to stifle my shame. Shame is absolutely what I felt, afterwards. I stood over her, her dead brown eyes permanently staring into something I never saw. Her death was real. Her death was freeing. I still tasted her blood even as the shame came. With the hunger gone, shame was all that was left. No freedom for me. 

 

This went on for some time. Night after night.  At first people spoke of disease, the plague having invaded our house. Something new maybe. However, superstition took over, and they soon became to suspect that there was something more than a plague. I was tired of hiding in the woods near the home. Tired of stalking prey as an animal. I was the master of my home, and it was time to return. 

[Paragon Vanguard]

It easy to look back at a different time, and criticize things that they have done and believed. Superstitions have now been judged by science, and yet, with my appearance, science is being judged by superstition. Who is to say what is real and what is fantasy? In the end, it is a matter of the mind, of thought. What is fantasy is real to the one that believes. The same is true for science. What one believes, is real.
I say this because Bart Harting believed fully that they buried me alive. Of course I was not alive then, nor was I alive as he was apologizing to me, even in tears at the horror I must have went through, awakening in a coffin buried deep beneath the earth. He was ashamed for not having examined me better. Of course "these things were journaled as having happened in the past". "Any educated man would have known of such". I merely listened to him go on about it. The irony of it was that I had no idea how to explain my return, and in fact, considered simply removing every living soul from my home if it came to that. Yet, here was a student of mine, giving me the reason I needed. I had been through a tragedy. I had been attacked. My wife had been killed. I contracted some disease that left me with a slow heart rate and hardly no breath, and they buried me. This he chose to believe. 
For the next few weeks I surrounded myself with the elect of the colleges, the thinkers of our time. They were more than willing to come to my call. I was quite wealthy, and they always desired my charity, which in the past was given freely. Now it had to come with a price though. If Abrielle would see me now, bartering charity for the precious peace of not being hounded by the suspicious, she would be shamed. 
They vouched for me though. They quickly challenged any archaic thought that I was something other than a sick man. They ridiculed the religious, the very priests and men of God that use to call me friend, and called them out as fear mongers. I let them do this. I dare say, it even amused me. Or maybe the disease, the curse, was amused. Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference between who I was, and what I am now. Sometimes who I was hauntingly returns to chastise what I am. 
Weeks turned into months. Months into a year. Bart Harting left to finish his schooling at the university, but not without finding someone who could properly handle my affairs. Of course it had to be someone with no notions of vampires and undead and werewolves. Someone that did not believe in a God, therefor did not believe in a devil. He found her easy enough. His sister, Natalie Harting. Ms. Harting, to those that did not know her well enough. One of the most well educated women I had ever met, especially for those times. 
She perfectly satisfied my need. 

[Paragon Vanguard]

A town, even a large one,  is no place for a vampire, not even one with great wealth. I could not bear to sell the house, nor the plantation surrounding, but it was growing increasingly evident that I could not stay. The bodies were, and forgive the saying, piling up. No, of course I did not indulge past more than needed. I tried to restrain myself, even considered starvation as a way out. 
Vampires do not really starve though. My attempt only proved that the disease will feed, with or without my consent. I awakened in my darkened room to Ms. Harting changing me from the blood soaked clothes I wore. I believed that this was the first time she suspected me of being a murderer, though she claimed to believe it was my illness. 
I suppose she was not wrong. 
Now I am sure she knew something was different about me even before then. Being an atheist of sorts, she did not believe me to be a vampire, a devil. However, she may have suspected me of being a murderer, much like the killer stalking Whitechapel in London at this time. She spoke of him quite often, and read the stories of the murders to me. It interested her, but I did not find that odd, as it interested most people at the time. I listened with marginal interest, drifting between the need to sleep and the desire to feed. 
It may have been because of Jack the Knife, or The Apron as they called him at this time, that she suggested we move to London, a place where even a vampire could blend. Especially a vampire. Her reasoning was to seek the best doctors, to see to my illness. She knew I hardly ate, she knew I was weak most days, and she knew bright sunlight was torture to my eyes. Indeed my whole body if truth be told. You see at this time I had not yet learned to sleep in a coffin, which is to say, in a place completely devoid of any light. Though I avoided direct sunlight, and kept my thick black curtains closed, I still tried to function during the day. It seems foolish, perhaps now, but we did not have information at our finger tips, as we do now. I assure you, there are more vampires than one may suspect, even today, but they know more of their own illness than I did. I knew only rumor, and I knew it was hard to separate truth from fiction. 
To understand some things about me, I must write some truths now, no matter how depraved they seem, about my condition. 

[Paragon Vanguard]

Maybe I can control my lust more, and in the beginning, truth be told I certainly tried. The blood calls to me though. Even now, as I am much older, it still calls to me, and I still must answer. It isn't a matter of if I will feed or not, it is a matter of when I will feed. Some victims are fed upon with little care, and I choose not to even consider the horror they experience, because emotion, be it fear or ecstasy, is all the same to a vampire.  Others experience great ecstasy, the host sharing that with the vampire, unto death. You must understand that drinking the blood for sustenance is only part of it. Through the blood, we also drink experiences and emotions. Things we know of, but never feel. We never feel, unless feeding. This is why some vampires gorge and become bloated and often times quite mad from it. They crave the feelings. The feelings that they felt when alive. It calls to us, over time, and it's call becomes louder and louder until it is all we can hear. The taste. The ecstasy. The desire. The fear. The anger. The hate. The love. The warmth. The life. It all matters, the very things that make humans human. We feed on the blood, we feed on their humanity. 
But we are not human. 

 

[Paragon Vanguard]

The reality of leaving my home became apparent when the constable came knocking, looking for the shop keepers wife and young son. Of course I told him I had not seen them. What is a lie to a being as cursed as I?  Shall some devil come and claim me in the night? I am the devil that comes in the night, and it was in the night that I fed on the very ones they sought. I was quite secure in the knowledge that they would not believe one as sickly as I could have anything to do with the missing mother and child, but then he said something quite strange. 
She was seen the night before last, but when her name was called she did not respond. She simply vanished into the wooded swamp on the north side of town.
It was strange because I fed on her a week ago, her and her child. I waited in the dark for her, something in her blood calling to the sickness in my blood. I could not say what it was, but understand I could not have fought it, even had I tried. The child could not have survived without it's mother, so I did the merciful thing. It sounds horrid, of course, to one that is not as I. In truth, it is horror. Yet, I said I would be honest in my writings, and convincing my own journal of another truth, of something more romantic or less depraved would mean I truly am mad, and only fool myself. 

That night I sought her, fearing I may have turned her into something as I, hoping I had turned her into something as I. She was beautiful in life, what would she be in death, or undeath? I was torn between my shame and guilt and my hope. My desire for a companion as I. It was in this double mind that I found her. She stood over a quiet pool deep in the forest. She stared into it, even as I approached. Had I a heartbeat it would have been racing. Finally her eyes turned to me, green as the sea. She was beautiful. Her garments were so white, as if the earth refused to settle on her. She was only marred by the red that seeped from her mouth. Her blood red lips a stark contrast to her dress. 
"He thought I was a goddess," she said, her eyes flowing up to me. "Do you think I am a goddess?" 
I looked about, unsure of who she meant, until I saw the constable lying dead only a few yards from her. 

When I looked back to her she was already upon me, only a breath away, a smile showing her fanged teeth. I did not answer her, so she asked again, only this time closer to me. Her cold breath brushing against me. 
"Tell me I am a goddess," she said seductively. I know now that she had no idea I was a vampire as her, and no idea that I was who turned her. She thought I was human, and she thought to feed on me as she did the constable. She brushed my neck with her lips, only to recoil in disgust. It was then she knew that she could not feed on me. She turned away immediately, without a second glance back at me, and returned to the pool of water and stared once more into it. 
I tried to speak to her, but she would never again acknowledge me. She was not as some would call feral, but she was quite mad it seemed. 

In the coming days people began to vanish, some returning pale and strange looking. Others never returning. The town was far removed from cities and other towns, so by the time folks began to understand that something was quite wrong, there were so few left to do anything about it. I sent Ms. Harting away as soon as I discovered what had happened. I remained behind, to try and destroy as many of these ill creatures as I could. None seemed to be anything but the disease, with only the desire to feed. Most were dirty, and animal like, hunting on the few humans still alive. Others were more aware, but locked in their last moment, last "feelings", much as the shop keeper's wife. 
I destroyed the shop keeper's wife, at the very pool she went to every night after feeding. Again, she did not acknowledge me in the least, making it easy to cut her head off with my saber. Her body quickly bloated, and looked as if it had been laying there rotting for weeks. I then knew she was destroyed. 

As I wrote above, I destroyed as many of the creatures as I could, none having the awareness I had. Though if any escaped, I would not know, not even now. The ones I was able to decapitate were lucky. Others I was forced to burn, fire being a horrific end for a vampire. Even the feral ones screamed as they would have in life, the clarity of their condition striking them in the last moments it seemed. They were cursed, you see, and damned, and the burning was only a precursor of what they would suffer eternally. If you believe such, of course. 

This will end my journal of vanity. It may be that some day I shall write again, for there was much that happened in London, where I finally met with Ms. Harting. The trek there was dangerous, especially for a vampire that would burn in the daylight. Years to come I heard rumors of a town that was beset by disease, a blood disease it seemed. Any that may have survived the disease must have burned the bodies, before fleeing from the town themselves. Only a nearby mansion, overlooking a vast plantation and a garden of apple trees remains. The owner having moved away, to London, before the disease could claim him. Unfortunately his staff were not spared, all found dead, completely devoid of blood. 

 

 

Oh what would my dear Abrielle think of me now.

 

Edited January 22, 2020 by Luke