A Long Nap
Of course, this is a difficult thing to understand, isn’t it? Here, allow me to prove it to you.
Do you see? I am not breathing at all, even though I am speaking to you. And here, place your fingers upon my wrist. No, don’t worry, I won’t bite you. Please.
See? I don’t carry a pulse either. And have you noticed that I look quite pale, even by the light of the fire?
Now dear, don’t go pale on me. And please, don’t scream out. One of my butlers is sick, and he needs to sleep. I do not wish for him to wake up only to call the asylum for you.
A threat? No my dear, that is not a threat. If you were to tell anyone this story, that is what they would do to you. You could write everything I am saying into that little notebook, which is still empty I might add, and give it to your editor. He would look at it and ask you how much you had to drink. You would eventually work as hard as you could, using your good looks to your advantage to sleep with anyone you had to in order to move up the line to expose your story. But, by that time, they would either kill you or place you into an asylum. Once you walk out of that door, even I cannot save you.
But, I can save you. Please, take your hand from the door and have a seat. Would you like more wine? Yes, that’s a good girl. Please, relax. I knew that choosing you for this job was the right choice?
Choosing you? Yes, yes, I did choose you myself. I heard of your ability to understand any story that is told to you, and you know the best ways to separate fact from fiction. Yes, I chose you for this job. So please, calm down and listen. It may save you if you were to hear the whole story before leaving with half truths and whole lies.
Now, where was I?
Ah, yes. We were moving on. She and I went to the area of Venice. A very lovely place, actually. She claimed that it was a seat of power in Europe at the time, and I did not believe her until I saw it myself.
I did not know how many of us really existed, or much about our kind except for what she had told me during the journey, but I learned many more things upon our arrival.
Not all of us have this gift without consequence. That is something that I learned the hard way. My love of art in life had become an obsession afterwards, and this is considered minor compared to some of the others of our kind.
In Venice, I saw that with my own eyes. Some of us are truly damned creatures. I have met some that changed physically upon their transition, making them impossible to recognize. Others have had their minds shattered, like broken mirrors. Some have had their passions drive them into fits, and some other poor souls can never see how they look, since they do not have reflections.
This was the society that I was brought into. This was the world that I would have to learn about. Politics, power, and immortality.
Yes, immortality.
This woman had only said ten years, but said nothing of the potential for ten thousand years. As long as I drank, I could live for an eternity. If my own physical and mental abilities could not make it, then my gifts as a member of the blood would suffice.
And they did. Venice was truly a new home for me. It was a place where I could practice my ability to survive in this new world of the night, and a place to make friends and enemies alike.
But, once I became comfortable, the world fell apart like a house of cards. It seems to happen often in my life, as you can see.
There was an uprising within our society. A small group began to dispatch of our kind, taking joy in devouring their blood.
She was one of those numbers that were killed…she was devoured entirely, even her soul, by that man.
Of course, I was still young. The only thing that saved me that night was the ability to run faster than the others.
I returned to her “home” in Venice before sunrise, and found a place beneath the home that seemed comfortable enough.
I was told that those of our kind can sleep like a force of nature. We can sleep for almost as long as we can live. My loss weighed heavily upon my un-beating heart, and I decided that sleeping away the pain would be the best choice.
