Tuesday April 14, 2015
The city sprawled out before him like a languid, sleeping beast. A dragon, capable of chaotic destruction, and all Jesse wanted to do was poke it with a stick. Wake it up. Scream in its ear until it spewed fire and brimstone. Except, Jesse wasn’t much of a screamer. Although plenty of things had changed over the past couple of years, he hadn’t yet developed into a screamer; his tracks had been halted before that was ever allowed to happen.
The Necromancer perched on the limb of a tree, growing halfway up a small hill just beyond the Eastern outskirts of Harper Rock. A tree that was not the Eyrie. A tree that was far away from everything Jesse had grown familiar with, because he needed the distance. The fire had engulfed him to the point that he had been smothered by the smoke without realising it; a frog slowly boiled. Except, the fire wasn’t on the outside. Its flames and sputtering sparks were not seen by anyone else. They were figments of Jesse’s own decaying psyche, the consequences of which caused a rippling wave perhaps felt only by his beloved. His Dove. His precious love. Grey, the gem that he did not deserve, and who in turn did not deserve to be shredded from the inside out by Jesse’s personal wreckages.
A crisp, moist breeze fluttered in the leaves around Jesse; the green was laced with the glinting tears of the dissipated rain. The sky had cleared, somewhat, but the heat was pushed out of the soil, rising and eddying amidst the clinging Winter cool. The bark was rough beneath Jesse’s hands, but the foliage was smooth, leaning toward him like cloying nymphs desperate for his approval. Subconsciously, Jesse’s fingers touched upon the browning leaves and they unfurled. The vampire’s presence in the tree was contradictory; death wafted from him like a bad feeling, his blue eyes burning with cold blue fire and his skin pallid and nearly grey. But the tree itself was luscious and full of life. Much more full of life than its waning, lacklustre contemporaries.
Later, there would be a storm. For now, the air was clear and sickeningly calm. Jesse would prefer the storm, but for now he forced himself to appreciate the time to think. The distance. Except, thinking wasn’t helping.
Memories of recent conversations swirled in his mind, a Neapolitan ice-cream gone bad, sour, growing mould and causing a bitter taste to continually renew upon his tongue. He had to keep swallowing it down and with each bob of that Adam’s Apple, the colder his blue orbs became, the more tense the coiled muscles in his limbs.
If there was such a thing as PMS for vampires, he did have it. Creating new vampires was an addiction akin to those men who lived to procreate, who had wives all over the state who had no idea of each other’s existence. Travelling salesmen. When he went too long, he snapped. He was ashamed of that sensitivity, of the hollowness that existed within him. He knew, now, that it never really went away. It was always there—the depth of it only increased or decreased depending on his progeny. The when and where and how.
They say that vampirism heightens one’s own natural attributes.
Who had he been before? A **** up. A mental basket-case who had a habit of bottling every and all emotions.
Who was he now? Still a **** up. Still a mental basket-case. But a fucked up basket-case who’d grown far too comfortable with his surroundings, and the people in it. A fucked up basket-case who thought he’d found home; who had wrongly assumed that when at home, one could open up.
I have always been depressed, he told himself.
I just never acknowledged it, he frowned.
Maybe he had acknowledged it. It had always been there in his blunt attitude and his aptitude for death. The one childhood loss had fucked him up for life; the negativity consolidating in this living-death. He’d been called a victim. Weak. Irritating. His depression made him look weak, and irritated those who should care.
And this was always where Jesse’s thinking ground to a halt. This man who loathed weakness in himself, and who had, for so long, pushed everyone and everything away so as to never be weak. To never be attached to anything that could be taken away, or anyone who could turn around and betray him, or walk all over him. Attachment. That was where he had gone wrong. Hadn’t he warned himself before? He knew this would be the outcome.
Every single time he sunk into the despair of thinking that his depression should be taken seriously, he reminded himself that that’s how a victim would think. Right? That was weak. To say it out loud would be an irritant. To voice this failing would be the worst kind of axe settled against the skin of his neck. He wouldn’t do it.
Not even to himself.
It had been there for days, the sick realisation that he had gone too far. He cared too much. The storm came early—at least in Jesse’s mind. The rough gust of barbed and electrified clarity pushed him from his perch so he landed near soundlessly in the grass.
There was only one person, now, who he’d let inside. Only one person who would see him for who he truly was; the entire package. And even then, even now, even with that one person, he would require distance. Just as he required distance, now. And he would never tell her, either, this shameful secret. It would be locked away in a special box, never to broken.
The weapons were holstered beneath his jacket. The destination? Jesse didn’t know. But he craved blood. Blood, fire, and brimstone.
