The ancient and tragic journey of the vampire Vittoria de Luca Bonenfant as she so vividly recalls. The struggles of an immortality she deems to be forsaken by God. A Christian who is loath to see her faith wain. A vampire with the profound inabilit...
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Journal Entry 1817
I punish myself and scarcely feed. Through my hunger alone do I feel atoned. I refuse to take mortal life, though, I suffer inexplicably, as Phedré promised I would. I am this crestfallen creature that feeds from the ground. A creature that is starved of all things. I take no pleasure in anything at all, the arts some distant thing from me.
I feed from flea infested rodents, and I can think of no one whom might live as I have; there is too little to gain. Nothing of what can be obtained from brilliant life.
But these were lives I was taking, were they not?
How many little lives had I taken? It hadn't occurred to me to count. They were simply ghastly, beastly creatures to me, not true breathing life. But how had I fooled myself in this? I suppose I view them as beneath me, that they hold no true meaning to anything, hold no true value.
What a monstrous thing.
Was this how Phedré regarded mortals? As simple creatures walking the ground? I cannot conceive the thought. Perhaps there is some graduation to this. Perhaps I will learn in time the necessity of it all. That I will, alas, find myself a little devil with little meaning, with little regard as to the why, starting with these rats.
Perhaps.
I puzzled over it this as I snatched a rat by its long tail. And as I held this tiny life, I squeezed it within my palm until it bulged between my fingers. It made some horrid, feeble sound, yet had no power against my grasp; a grip that never falters.
I watched as its mouth was agape and straining for precious breath. There was no little soul I could see in its eyes, no divine knowledge to obtain from crushing life within my hand. I learned nothing from this, and worse, felt nothing. I simply drank that vial blood from its rank little neck and felt nothing at all.
And so there is this question of what it meant to be wholly good. A being that yearns not for earthly things, that has no vain thought or anger or selfishness. A being who knew nothing of evil deeds, even as evil was being done to them. A being that lives at the church, that helps the weak, feeds the poor, all that.
It seems to me now this unreasonable and unattainable thing. That in our strive for it, we will always fail.
God said as much.
And what would God have to say to me now, if He watched me at all? Would He tell me that I was doing good or that I was already lost as I felt nothing for this life I took?
But then do I refuse it altogether? Do I allow myself finally to dry out and turn to dust? To die?
But was that not a sin, as well!
So then if I continue to live, I'm damned. And if I ended it all, I'm damned just the same.
Miserable.
And what would happen if I did? Would I die at all or become a husk of a thing to lie in the ground without sound or movement, only thought as I was powerless to shout out, waiting only for the release of death? That at my final breaking point where I could no longer bear the madness that had become my consciousness, I was only unable to turn over the earth to the fresh, free air and scream, I wish to live!
Too frightening that.
I've decided now at this moment to never attempt this, because how little I know of these things.
How little I know of anything—
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How little indeed.
This was the way of it for centuries—this incessant questioning, this incessant brooding. It was such that no one could stand my presence, solemn and disturbed as I was. I can hardly stand myself as I look back on these words. Too long I had suffered like this.
No longer do I question such things. But the brooding, yes, there is always that.
But perhaps I have simply grown tired of worrying and questioning. Or mayhap my mind evolved, like Phedré had long hoped. Or mayhap I simply hate everything, thus, no longer care.
Yes.
But I will tell you what I discovered, finally, over the centuries.
That with all the fright of it, in his damnable way of thinking, Phedré was right in one singular and hopeless thing.
That we are all of us angels and devils in life; at times a devil walking upon a scorched earth, and others an angel bearing all its flaws, and there is nothing but that.
