Memory

Part 8

Ris’era dropped into the couch with a heavy sigh, wiping her brow. We’d just come in from cleaning up the yard, and even with vampire strength, moving a fallen tree out of the way was hard work. I was exhausted, and sat down beside her, staring at the counter that divided the living room from the kitchen.

For a moment, I just stopped and smiled to myself, glad that I was a vampire with access to homes like this rather than still human with rudimentary houses. T’was the beauty of being part of the most advanced race.  Of course, that set my mind down a whole different path, one that I’d tried to avoid since my attempt at suicide.

I looked over at Ris’era, remembering that she was several decades older than I, and wondering if she had thought the same things. “Ris?” I asked tentatively.

She looked up with that bright, ever-energetic smile of hers. “Teyla?”

I looked back at the ground, hoping that I wasn’t about to enter a touchy subject. I knew better than to talk about it with Michael; he’d had a bigger crisis of faith than I did. But I asked anyways. “What happens to us when we die?”

The smile fell, and I was heartbroken to see it go. It was rare that she wasn’t smiling, and I hated to be the one to scare it away. “I don’t know. You were Christian, yes?” she asked.

“Catholic,” I confirmed.

She nodded somberly. “Well, if you ask a catholic priest, he’s going to tell you you’re going to Hell.” I cringed. I may have known somewhere in the back of my head, if not consciously, but I was hoping not to hear it said out loud.

“If you ask me, however,” she continued, “there’s something else waiting for us. I think that when we die, vampires have their own special place somewhere. Somewhere where we truly are immortal, and where we don’t feel pain, and where we can just live in peace forevermore.”

I thought about it. A Heaven for vampires. The Pope would have a heart attack. But the thought, the idea, comforted me. I may have been a catholic to begin with, but after becoming one of the undead, and seeing the preternatural side of the world, I was a little skeptical.

The fact that I could still have faith put my mind at ease, and I felt a weight lift off of my shoulders as I relaxed a tension that had been hiding inside of me for years.

I wondered if Michael believed the same thing.