Path of the Vampire forum

Robert had grown up in a relatively quiet suburb in a small Northern American town with his Mother, Father and younger sister. He’d been popular at school, quite the socialite with parties and friends popping round most nights of the week. They were your typical, clean cut, American family with the white picket fence, the two children – one male and one female – the dog and the cat. However, no-one’s life is perfect forever and one holiday when Robert was home from college – he was to find out exactly how imperfect his life could get.

He’d come home for Christmas, having driven across the country from Florida State University College of Criminology and Criminal Justice back to Pittsburgh and was looking forward to chilling with friends and family after a hard semester where he’d not been able to come home for Thanksgiving. It had taken him a while to do, but he was determined to get home to see the surprised looks on his family’s faces as he came through the door laden with gifts. He pulled into the driveway and emptied the car of gifts and luggage. With his superb, highly practised Jenga skills, he piled everything up in his arms and made his way into the house.

As usual the door wasn’t locked and he was able to let himself in, only losing one small carrier bag along the way that he planned to go back and pick up once he’d seen everyone. The dog heard him first and came bounding through the swing door from the kitchen to leap at him happily – and he was quickly followed by the humans of the family. Happy, smiling faces surrounded him while arms reached out to hold him, lips came forward to kiss him and he responded in kind. A very pleasant evening later found him in his childhood bed, yawning and wrapping himself in his duvet before falling asleep. All was good in his life.

A couple of days passed by without incident and then there came the night of the annual Christmas party for his old high school class. They’d been getting together every year to celebrate Christmas since they’d first started at the High School and this year was no different to the rest. Alcohol flowed, lips met lips, hands roamed bodies and dances were danced. He lost track of time and soon the dawn was creeping over the horizon and someone was holding his hand and pulling him from the couch he was lying on under the passed out bodies of a couple of his old classmates. He looked up and smiled drunkenly at his younger sister, who was glaring good naturedly at him as she tried to pull him out.

He managed to expertly extract himself from the women and wrapped his arms around his sister; kissing her head fondly, for at 6’2” he was easily a foot taller than her. He managed to act a lot less drunk than he truly was as they wandered out from the house and to the car she’d come to pick him up in. As they got closer, he picked her pocket and stole the keys, running off towards the car. He unlocked it and jumped into the driver’s side – opening the passenger door for her and beckoning her to join him. She stood protesting, insisting that she should drive as he was in no fit state to do so but he simply snorted, got out, shoved her playfully into the passenger seat and then got back into the driver’s seat and headed off towards home.

The way he’d pushed her into the car was awkward and she wasn’t sitting in her seat properly and nor did she have her seatbelt on. So when he slid on a patch of ice, hit a lorry, spun off the road and smashed into a couple of trees before rolling to a stop – there was nothing to protect her from being smashed to pieces like a piñata…..

His eyes fluttered open and slowly he became aware of the world around him. It smelt sterile, there were beeping, gasping machines surrounding him and he was gagging on a tube. Suddenly faces filled his vision, concerned faces that spoke and tried to calm and quieten him as the offending tube was removed from his mouth, throat and lungs. He coughed harshly a few times before lying there, overwhelmed by what was going on. It was too much for him and he once more passed out into darkness, a darkness that was to become his friend.

Days and nights passed him by as he switched from consciousness to unconsciousness – even discovering a plain in between where he straddled both states at once. Faces drifted in his mind, voices swirled through his ears but one face was most prominent in everything. The face of his sister – Diane. At some point, he’d been told she’d died in the crash. He couldn’t remember who’d told him, or what it was exactly that had killed her and how fast. All he knew was she was dead. He’d killed her. He’d killed his sister and she no longer existed for anyone. Anyone, except for him that was. In his ‘mid’ conscious states he saw her. She came to him, smiled to him and comforted him. He tried to spend most of his time in these ‘mid’ conscious states so as to spend time with her. As such, when his body had healed and he was tried for drink driving, reckless endangerment, manslaughter, and whatever else they chose to throw on top – he was oblivious to it all.

He was sent to the local mental institution to serve out his sentence of 10 years. He was very well behaved while he was there by taking his meds, coming out of his near comatose states more and more frequently and responding to the group and individual therapy sessions. However, what the various psychiatrists and psychologists didn’t realise was that the reason he was coming out of his ‘mid’ conscious states was because his sister was too. She was there now, in his vision all the time, hiding in the shadows at the corner of his eyes. Sometimes she would be there, bold as brass in the shadows cast by the lights of the room, or the sun on the ground. She was there, he spoke to her, she spoke back and he was comforted.

He was let out of the institution when he was 31 – a changed man from the popular, full of life boy and young adult he had been. He was now reserved, closed in upon himself, a loner. He was happy to be by himself, his only company his sister Diane who was his constant companion. He moved north to Canada to escape the people he knew and who’d known him from before. Becoming a recluse was easy enough – easier than he’d first thought in fact.

With the money he’d got from his family – mostly to get him away from them – he hired an apartment and began to write. It was short stories at first but then it grew into full blown novels that he sent to publishers who sent back cheques each month. He moved house once more – this time into a home of his own that he bought without a mortgage. He hired a few people to do the day-to-day things but he barely spoke to them. Instead he stared at them with dead, glassy eyes until they simply went away. He bought himself a cat and named it Diane to stop people from looking at him and commenting on the fact he spoke to – seemingly – himself.

He was a shadow of his former self, living his life in a darkened house that was full of shadows so that his sister could roam freely and be with him wherever he went. He hated the light – for she vanished from his side and the memory of what he’d done returned and he lost himself in his grief and pain once more until she returned to him. It was what he wanted, and he thought he was happy – it was all he knew anymore.