Seriously, what are we doing here? We should let this go, not linger over it.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 1st Generation
Characters: Vincent Romero
Race: Vampire
Age: 528, physically about 24
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 782 words
 

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More dreams from which I can’t separate truth from fiction. Anything that has to do with my childhood is a lost cause and I don’t know why my brain is attached to bringing these strange dreams to the surface, especially around the summer months. It has been happening for close to a decade now, usually in the hotter months of July and August. Three or four times during those months, my mind will do whatever it desires, and I will dream of things that seem as though they might have been from my childhood—before I was turned.

Even when, my memories of the turning are non-existent, I really have lost about the first two or so hundred years of my life’s memories and I am actually fine with that, as odd as it might sound. It just is one of those things that I have had a lot of time to get accustomed to and that’s all it is.

This time, however, it felt even more personal, that dream. I wasn’t so much a child as I might have been closer to sixteen, maybe even seventeen. Back then, you were long since considered old enough to do your part though you still weren’t quite an adult, as far as I can find.

It doesn’t change much, though, does it?

Lost part of my life and all.

Though I might have been a little older, I remember the scene rather vividly as I tend to with scenes where blood is involved. Mind you, that’s not so much because I crave blood anymore more than because blood just remains with me as a general marker in my life. Not out of choice but I wouldn’t be here without it, and I wouldn’t have my beautiful mate and the not-so-little ones we’ve called our own.

It was dark, the alleyway was barely lit but there was a clear moon in the sky. It was mainly hidden behind thick clouds that looked as though they were getting ready to release their anger out on the world. A storm unlike any others. There just was something in the air. Even in the dream, I could feel that the storm that would come was going to be a big one.

Not very far from me, there was this woman. She’s a stranger to me but if the dream is in any way based on those forgotten memories, maybe she was someone I once knew. We both were looking deeper into the alleyway and I’m the one to tell her that we shouldn’t be where we were. That we had to let it go and not linger over it.

There was the scent of blood around the whole scene, not quite washed out by the scent of the incoming storm. It feels as though it had permeated the whole area. It possibly was a general drinking ground for the likes of us nightwalkers, I just don’t know.

She gave me this look as though I had told her that she had to rip her heart right out. I still don’t know what was going on in that alleyway other than it was highly possible there was—or had been—a dead body somewhere along its depths. Maybe it was someone she had loved. Maybe it was someone we’d both known. Hell, maybe it was another one of us that had met their demise, I just don’t know, and I couldn’t get much more out of that dream other than we had to get out of that alleyway, we couldn’t just stay there.

I didn’t even get to see much more than that. I woke up as the storm started. There was a lightning strike just moments before I was drawn back to the world of the awake but even that didn’t light up enough of the alleyway for me to see deeper within. She took off inside the alleyway, I remember reaching out as though to stop her and well, I woke up.

It wasn’t even with a start, it wasn’t with a jerk, I just woke up naturally as though I hadn’t been mid-dream. These aren’t all that uncommon ways for me to wake up. Most of the time I seem to find myself waking up in the middle of dreams but maybe it just feels that way and the dreams end abruptly. I don’t know how the brain works and while I could ask, it’s not really all that the kind of stuff I’m interested in knowing more about.

I just wonder as to why there seems to be a timer on the general memory-like dreams but it’s fine, they don’t cause any harm.

Unfortunate? Understatement. I don’t know what I can do about this. You’ve made things so complicated; I’m actually kind of impressed.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 1st Generation
Characters: Vincent Romero
Race: Vampire
Age: 527, physically about 24
Final Word Count: 695 words
 

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On some nights—or whenever it is I end up sleeping as I admit my sleeping schedule depends completely on my beautiful mate—I dream about things I know I should have forgotten. Things from my past, things from so long ago that I know I’ve forgotten them but I guess that, in the end, I haven’t. They are things that my mind has released but, at the same time, locked off in some vault at the back of my mind, only to be drawn to the surface in the depths of sleep.

I must have been twelve or thirteen in that dream. Back then, I was considered more than old enough to do my part to help the family. It’s not that I remember this but I’ve skimmed history books. My memories of the first two hundred years of my life truly are just about gone except for when they crop up like this, I don’t even recall what it was like when I was young.

That dream, however, it was clear as day. What I’m uncertain of, is whether or not the dream is made up, based around what my life was, or if it truly is a memory. I have no way of checking; at least, I have no way of checking in any way that I feel is necessary. I have no desire to go through a memory walk. I’m quite certain that Luce would manage this without even the hint of an issue but I don’t want to. It would be pointless.

I remember that, in the dream, I was standing in front of a tall man, a man I assume must have been my father. I remember that he was angry but… not at me? There were others around us and he was glaring murder at everyone near but his eyes refused to land on me. He was going on about how whatever was wrong with the situation wasn’t simply unfortunate, that, in itself, was an understatement. He went on to say that he didn’t know what to do about it all. That things had been made so complicated that, in a way, he was actually kind of impressed.

It still is the fact that he seemed to refuse to even look my way that keeps on bothering me about the whole scene. As though I didn’t even exist; as though I was invisible. There were others around me, most a little older than I was but not by much. I don’t know what the situation was like. Not really. The edges of my ‘reality’ in the dream were blurred as though I might have needed glasses. The dream truly centred on the man I’m not certain was my father, it centred on his anger—either at me or the others around me—and it was about whatever mess had been done that he didn’t know how to fix.

How vague is that, for a dream? I woke up confused more than not. I woke up wondering what it had all been about. Even now, hours later, I still remember the finer details of the dreams while the outer edges remain an absolute blur. I wonder at my brain’s ability to cook up something like this in the middle of nowhere when nothing could have triggered this sort of thing.

I’ve tried to not spend too much time thinking about it, I’m aware that the more I think about it, the more I’m going to be unable to let it go and then what? I’ll be stuck with a pointless image and memory in my mind and that’ll be that. If it came down to it, I could enter the virtual room and put the scene together but, again, what purpose would it serve? It really wouldn’t serve any, not really.

So I think that in an hour or so, I’m going to slide into a steaming hot bath because, yes, thank you very much, I do like to soak in sinfully hot baths—even in the summer—and I’ll let it all go. Just you watch me.

Well, no, you can’t watch, but that’s beside the point.

I’ve learned that there are just some people you can’t help. You should learn that too.

 
Timeline/World: Atheria – 1st Generation
Characters: Vincent Romero
Race: Vampire
Age: 526, physically about 24
Final Word Count: 579 words
 

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This was one of those life lessons I didn’t want to learn, not really. One of those lessons you’d rather ignore altogether when, deep down inside, you’re on the edge of being ‘too good’ for yourself and everyone else. Too helpful, too willing to put others before yourself. I wasn’t quite like that but I wasn’t far when I was still human.

Before I found this place, before I realized that all was not hell, before I essentially found myself, I met quite a few others like me, some who still were not comfortable with their changes but most who took it to a sort of extreme and made it a game of the hunt. Tracking, frightening, worrying others before they would attack and sink their fangs into that neck. I wasn’t like that.

My memories of the moment I turned are something I don’t think about much. As it stands, my memories of before my turning have begun to fade. I still remember those I had at my side, but that’s somewhat it. I remember the agony of dying and the fear of having to feed but until a couple of hundred years back or so, the rest is on and off fuzzy.

I did meet one particular vampire who was surprisingly helpful. She had been turned just a few years before I had and her story held similarities to mine. She’d lost her family—her husband, her two sons—and it had taken nearly withering away from hunger to decide her to finally find means to hunt in a way that was not worthy of being seen as a serial murderer. She’s the one who told me that sure, some other vampires can be swayed out of their blood lust and can learn that it’s not all about the hunt and killing, at least, not in a violent way, but most others seem to think that turning others—making new vampires—is a sin and that all victims should be drained to the point of death and then preferably decapitated to keep down to a minimum the chances of changing.

I learned that at her side. That some people just can’t be helped. It ended up in some battle scars I’d rather just not think about but they are there and they’re not going anywhere.

I wish I could remember how I lost track of her. She had been a good friend. I recall that we did spend a few years—five, maybe ten?—together, wandering and finding means of ‘dining’ without attracting too much attention. It wasn’t always easy but it always felt worth it.

My habits did slip a little after she left, I remember that much. It was a struggle to get back to a proper mindset because I no longer was used to being on my own. It took some time, I don’t know how much, but I resettled into habits that I think I could be proud of. I still had to feed so I still had to harm others but I was doing it in a way that I thought was as humane as possible.

Now, well now that the herbal does its job, I can even enjoy proper food. I’m sure that younger-made vampires wouldn’t have been able to say the same. The food doesn’t sustain me; I just appreciate the fine taste of it. I would be a fool to not partake in deliciously prepared food, after all.

I don’t make very many exceptions and definitely not often. Consider yourself extremely lucky.

Timeline/World: Atheria 1st Generation
Characters: Vincent Romero
Race: Vampire
Age: 525, physically about 24
Final Word Count: 559 words

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My life now is easy. My life now is beautiful, soulmate, kids, some by adoption, other through good, healthy bedroom exercise, a good roof over my head and the craving for blood mostly out of my system until it’s time for the herbal and then it’s just unpleasant for a week or so and I’m once more set for six months.

I love my life as it is now but it certainly wasn’t always this easy. No, it was actually pretty ugly out there when I first came around. Some say I should remember everything about my life but it’s been so long that a lot of the details are fuzzy about my first few years. I couldn’t even tell you if I were born this way or made, though I’m sure it’s the latter. I have vague memories of a wife and son. A wife and daughter? I guess it doesn’t matter.

I remember trying to survive, I remember meeting so many people, so many different souls, some were kind and giving, others were not. One, in particular, remains on my mind, though perhaps it is more that I should say he has come back to the forefront of my memories recently because I know I had forgotten him, much the way I have forgotten so many other things over the course of all of my years. Not that it bothers me, of course, the forgetting, that is.

This soul though, this man. I remember begging for a roof over my head. The season was cold, the nights were freezing, I just didn’t know how I would survive it, the past few years had been difficult and drinking blood still was something that I know I was uncomfortable with. The way he looked at me, studying me and my clothes, the way I held myself. He reminded me of a grandfather who’d not had an easy lot in life. He grunted after a moment, told me I should have considered myself extremely lucky, he usually turned away beggars but there was just something about me that reminded him of his son.

I took the blessing as it was offered to me. I didn’t argue about how I was sure his son was likely a much better man than what I’d been turned into but that would have done me no good. I accepted his willingness to let me stay and did what I could to keep him happy with his decision.

I even stayed for a few days, accepted some of the food he prepared and didn’t waste any. I didn’t eat much and it made me sick every time but it seemed to make him happy to see this ‘skinny young lad’ eat, so I did. It hardly was that much of a problem, except for the getting sick from it part. I could hardly tell him what I was, my roof would have disappeared from over my head in a heartbeat, I was sure.

I stayed almost a week before I went on my way, thanked him profusely and left. I never saw him again; I think he died during that winter.

After his kindness, despite what I was and what my life was like, I did try to give back to others, it seemed to be the only thing I really could do that was ‘right’.