Believe in Me

9

Have you ever walked into a room and forgotten why you went in there? Have you ever just been somewhere and the time seems to go by so quickly, that you wonder where it went? Do you have friends or family that mention a conversation you've had with them, but you don't remember that conversation happening? That's what I do. I feel off of those memories, and then I make you forget.

I'm not the only one with this ability. You may have friends who do this, or people who are your "family." How would you know? You don't. If we have the ability to feed off of those memories, we also have the ability to make you forget what we did.

Why do I call it "feeding"? Because it gives us sustenance. Just like humans eat food and drink water and other sugary beverages, the demons--or, for lack of a better term, vampires--with my abilities feed on your memories and survive that way. Although, there are vampires with so many different abilities, you would never know how to tell one of us apart.

Most TV shows or movies, or even the books you read, explain vampires as "cold skin, undead, never aging, feeding on blood," etc. Which, sometimes, is true. The only reason some of us are "cold-skinned" is because we are unable to enter the sunlight. They are the lower-class vampires. The ones who are "basic" in every sense of the word. They are the ones your movies and shows are based on. Yes, they are pale, because of the lack of ultraviolet rays from the sun to add melanin to their skin. Their eyes are red with hunger for blood, as that is the only way they can retrieve the nutrients to survive. We all have some of those abilities your shows mention; the ability to heal quickly, our superhuman strength, our incredible speed.

Others of us are allowed to walk freely in the sunlight. How? That still remains a mystery to us, to be honest. We believe it has something to do with genetics. However, those of us that can walk in the sunlight and pass as humans get to be part of the upper class of vampires. Depending on the abilities you have determines how high up you are in the hierarchy.

I can pass as a human because of my abilities. When I make direct skin contact, I can channel the warmth of a human body, enough to withstand the sunlight. In doing so, I also gain the ability to feed on memories when the warmth in my body diminishes. I don't have to do much, really. I just have to make eye contact after touching a human, and I can read into their memories and determine which ones are important enough to feed off of. The more recent a memory, the more sustenance I receive.

Other vampires have abilities to make people forget, which is almost the same as my ability, except these vampires can force people to do other things and not know they're being coerced. I've only seen one human series get this fact right, and I believe that's because one of the producers was also one of these vampires. Some vampires have the ability to "compel" people to do their bidding. Nothing can stop you from doing what the vampire tells you to do. Not even this "vervain" from the series. When a vampire with the compulsion ability makes direct eye contact with you, they can almost "get in your head" to do their bidding, and there is no refraining or breaking the eye contact. I don't know how it works, as I don't have the ability myself, but it is a very handy tool, especially since they can make you forget ever seeing a vampire.

In Mother's case, she is the monarch of our society. Mother's ability is to create new vampires. The drawback to her ability is that when she creates a new vampire, she loses some of her health. In order to keep herself healthy, those that she created have to stay close to her. She doesn't exactly "feed" on us, but she does gain some semblance of "nutrients" by having her offspring close by. Very few others have her ability, but as she is the oldest of all, she is the established monarch, until she eventually passes. When that happens, the next "creator" will take her place.

Most of us don't understand how our abilities work, nor why we have them, but we learn how to live amongst humans to protect ourselves. We have been around long enough to know that, if we were discovered, they would want to tear us apart and figure us out. Dissect us like insects, amphibians and whatnot. That's why, if we're ever figured out, we use our Guardians to take care of them. The Guardians are those with the compulsion ability. They are allowed to live their lives as normal humans, but they're also on standby for incidents like those.