…and the birth of a vampire [story part 38]

Regina was pacing back and forth in front of the three remaining and by now I was already pretty near, almost next to her, but keeping a rather safe distance. I didn’t know what she would do next. Nobody ever really knew that, ever.

Then she stopped dead.

Viktoria came out from the inside of one of the buildings, where one of them pointed that Gunnar would be. Regina was looking intensely at her and I kept looking backward and forward between them because I couldn’t really see anything, but Regina’s look was becoming more and more alarming. She saw it, and whatever it was, I didn’t like it.

Viktoria made another few steps and she was in front of us.

I was already really close to a panick attack, and what came next didn’t actually help.

Viktoria was holding a head in her arms, a head that I quickly identified as being Gunnar. She placed it right in Regina’s lap which by now was kneeling, overcome completely by what she was seeing. You would imagine she had more strength than this, but you would be wrong, because as I learned over the years, and was prone to learning even more, the hard way, there was nothing more important for Regina than those that she held close, which weren’t many, a thing that only made it an even stronger emotion.

She took Gunnar’s head with both her hands and just stared at it like you stare at a newly found book in a library. I was frozen. I didn’t know what to do, what to think, I didn’t even have the power to panick or vomit or faint. I was just… there. I don’t think I took another breath for twenty seconds or so.

I was however, expecting the mother of all rage episodes in the history of this planet to rain down on us all, human, vampire or anything else, in that yard. I braced myself.

Viktoria was pretty much in the same situation as I was, you could tell from her face. I specifically remember that I checked for her expression and reaction, in order to adapt it, or to seek confirmation that I’m reacting like I should, in order to copy it, to be them, to seek… acceptance? I was getting awfully close to a bridge that only went one way.

What came instead, was not rage, but one hundred percent pure happiness and sadness in the same time. It’s really hard to describe such a state, I never had one, but I’ll try. It’s like you see the most happy person in the world, laughing and smiling, really smiling with every inch of her body, but in the same time, you see that person crying and just generally reading the saddest expression you’ve ever seen on their face. It’s something that only those really few “special” people who need to be locked away immediately can pull off. You really need pure insanity to combine those too, and a hell lot more of pure rationality and logic to hold them back in everyday life. This was just… another face of what Regina was. Hundreds of years of regrets, emotions, happy moments, sad moments, desperate and euphoric moments in the same time. The human mind isn’t equipped for such a long time of mixing of memories, especially a mind that hardly ever degrades, a mind that usually remembers almost everything, from every point of view, that includes emotion. A memory is nothing but a photograph without the emotion attached to it. Regina had all that inside of her, and they were leaking.

She however, pretty much… refrained herself… if I can say that, from doing anything… well, rash. At least not herself.

As she was standing there, I saw her crying again. Regina cries just like you and me, as often as life requires it. And that was one of the many, many reasons I am fascinated by this being… all of the others are more or less stone cold, or just filled with anger that they hold back through excessive politeness or sarcasm, but Regina is a human being whenever she allows herself to be one, and changes into a stone-cold killing machine in a second if she needs herself to be that. Like I was saying at the very beginning of this story, I was always, always left speechless every time she showed me how much more human she is than most people I know. She enjoys life more than I do, more than anyone really.

But then again, she is the queen of what we call monsters, and we call them that for a good reason.

With a slow movement, she grabbed one of the bloody guns lying around her, stood up and pulled me violently towards her.

She shoved the gun in my hands and still with tears in her eyes said: “This is what life means sometimes. Protecting what you love.”

And she stood aside.

It took me a few moments to realize what she was actually asking me to do, and when I did realize, I instantly panicked. Couldn’t hold it back anymore. I stepped back, terrified, still holding the gun in a tight grip in my hands. I can still feel the warm blood on my hands even as I write this now.

Regina didn’t say anything, but I knew this was “a no getting out of” situation. I looked to my left and to my right, and a large part of… well… everyone, was watching me.

Regina wasn’t Regina no more, not at that moment. This bitch right there, she knew very well how to make me do anything I didn’t want to do. And I realized for the first time, that she was indeed pushing me through a forced training. I had a pretty good idea what was it for, but I refused to believe it.

“DO IT!” She shrieked at me.

I couldn’t believe what she was asking. HOW COULD SHE FUCKING ASK ME THIS?!

Who does she think she is – monster. How can you play with the lives of humans like this. You’re not a god!
Arrogant, petty and evil girl. The world would be a better place without your killings and righteous ideas.

I’d rather kill myself than become her!

In a moment of pure and utter stupidity (or pure rationality, can’t decide) I went close to Regina:

“Don’t force me to do this…” I said in a low, hush voice.

She smiled. Clearly she was not backing down.

I gripped the gun even harder and shoved it violently to Regina’s forehead. Me, barely a kid, never fired a gun. I was panicking, I was scared and I was above all, pissed off like no other time.

I pushed that gun to her forehead so hard that I saw her cringing and I squeezed that trigger so hard that even the slightest shiver would make me fire the gun, voluntarily or not. This was by all means, the best time in which nobody should even breathe.

I could see feel the whole yard tensing up, Viktoria being not even 5 meters away, all tensed up and ready to do… nothing. Because there was nothing she could do.

Regina held out her hands in a way of telling everybody “stand back” while still watching me in the eyes, not taking her eyes off mine, not even for a second.

She didn’t say anything. She just stared at me. I knew she knew that if I didn’t shoot her right away, I wasn’t really going to, but what she didn’t knew is that I really, really wanted to push that trigger one or two times, but I couldn’t. No matter how much I hated her, I loved her ten times more.

She also knew, that if a person wants to do something horrible, for example commit suicide, and you want to prevent him, you could do two things:

1. Keep that person locked-up, in a room without any tools or ways of hurting himself, forever, or

2. Leave the person alone in a bathroom that is equipped with everything, from scissors to razor-blades.

The outcome would be either 1 or, in case you decide going 2, and the person ends-up not doing anything, then you have the problem solved. You don’t need no guarding anymore, no explaining and no restraining. You need to push the person so far that he or she will make a decision, after which you can be pretty much sure that the decision has been, in fact, made.

To put it in other words: If you’re afraid someone you can’t lock-up, kill, or harm in any way, someone who will be with you every day, wants to cut your throat, give him a knife and go to sleep.

And sure enough, I caved. I lowered the gun and Regina lowered her hands.

But she didn’t cave.

She went behind me, and physically forced me to turn towards the three men who by now were pretty much lifeless, even though their heart was still beating, they were more or less aware of what was going to happen.

With her behind me, holding my hand tight and pushing it upwards, she made me take aim. She didn’t force me to shoot however. She stood back, and I remained like that, like a molded statue, frozen, barely breathing.

In my head, WW3 was being fought.

Do it. Don’t do it. Kill them. Are you crazy? NO! They killed one of them. So what? You’re not one of them. But Regina? Fuck her. No, how can you say that. Kill them, it’s no big deal. Just push the trigger. No, you won’t be able to live with yourself. Yes you will. No. Kill them already. No, they have families. No they don’t. Yes, they do. So what? They are humans. No they aren’t, they are more of a monster that any vampire. That’s not true. Yes, it is, because they are humans and still murder others. And what does that make me if I kill them? Shut up. Don’t think. Do it. Close your eyes. Do it. No. Don’t do it! Put the gun down! You have a choice. No you don’t. You either kill them or someone else will. Then let someone else do it. No, you need to do it. Do IT NOW. NO! DON’T!

Deep breath. Hold it.

Time frozen. Nothing was moving. No sound. The air wasn’t moving around me anymore. The wind, the stars, the lights, everyone there, my body included, everything, was gone.

Nothing existed anymore. I wasn’t breathing anymore, I couldn’t hear or see anything anymore.

Nothingness…

*BANG*

I shot. My whole body shook and I was taken back a foot.

One of them just fell to the floor, limp, lifeless…

I. Had. Killed. Someone.

I was expecting myself to either vomit, faint or just lose any grip on reality, lose the power to stand….

But instead, what happened to me that night, is one of the reasons I’m even writing this blog.

Human nature happened. Instead of feeling sick, I felt empowered.

I didn’t want to admit it, I didn’t want to believe it. But I liked it. I liked having the power of life and death. I liked taking the lives of those who deserved, and the feeling that courses through your veins when you see that blood that you just spilled rushing on the floor is just unexplainable. It is dread, pure fear. Fear of what you became, fear of what you are… Fear that you’ve always been like this. In the same time, it’s euphoric, it’s better than sex, smoking, and riding a roller-coaster in the same time. You feel every hair on your body rise up, you feel every part of your skin buzzing with energy. You feel alert, you feel more alive than you’ve ever felt before.

I smiled and without wanting even to stop and think, I raised the gun again.

*BANG*

aim

*BANG*

The remaining two also felt to the floor, and their blood was now merging into a steady stream towards my feet. I stood aside, disgusted but fascinated by it.

Is this what human nature is? Is this why we’ve built societies and are enforcing education and rules on our children? Are we – at our very core – predators, killers, evil?

Is this what happens to a person when you take away all guilt and all the rules, and allow him to take a life with absolutely no consequences? Is this what happens when you force a person to kill, out of his own will?

You strip away all the rules, all the morality, all the society accords, you strip away everything that person has been taught life should be, and you just leave a bare, open, pure instinct. A primeval instinct that is there, I assure you, in each and every of us. It’s dormant, and it better stay that way, because once you wake it, there’s no going back.

It’s like rasing a wolf-pup on boiled meat all its life. It will be a docile, almost domestic dog, with little to no interest in biting or harming anyone. The moment that wolf has a taste of pure, fresh meat, bloody meat – it will never be the same. The wolf changes completely, something in his brain activates, and he becomes a shark following a trail of blood. That same wolf will bite and murder the very human that raised him, at the very sight of blood. There’s no going back from it.

I dropped the gun and realized what I had just done, and sure, regret was there, and will always be there. I was more scared by the fact that I accepted it more easily than I would have wanted, and if I only had known what that night meant for me, I would have never have done it in the first place. Never. That was just the initiation, the start of what would become a very long trail of blood.

I had no interest in finding out what happens with all the bodies, although now I have a pretty good idea on what happened with them. There was no cleaning service like I liked to call it in Turkey, they needed to deal with them locally, and so they did. But that’s another story.

The main story is that Regina and I drove all the way from there to Sighisoara.

I didn’t say a word all the way back, she didn’t say anything either. Almost 24 hours of non-stop driving, without saying anything, without eating, without sleeping.

[audio http://k006.kiwi6.com/hotlink/0jt5whtmn3/maddi_jane_jar_of_hearts_christina_perri_.mp3]

We just went straight home, still covered in blood, each with his own regrets, each with his own reasons to cry inside.
I didn’t even care anymore who was behind everything and what the hell was going on, which was totally opposite to what Regina cared, because there was nothing more important for her than finding out who did this…

The whole way back I only had one thing in mind.

The feeling that I got from doing what I did, which didn’t disappear. It got stronger and stronger. Eating me from the inside out, making me crave for more.

I realized, for the first time, that I might actually want to be one of them, and live my life like that. For the first time, I understood what Regina truly was, and what she needed to do in order to keep everyone safe.

I understood all that, because I lived through it. I felt it. It’s one thing to hear it explained, see it, or read about it – and to actually take matters into your own hands, literally.

I felt empowered, I felt alive, and I realized that I never, ever wanted this feeling to go away.

I was ready to become one of them. I remember I was dead set on telling Regina right that very night, to finish with the games, to turn me in my own bed, in the comfort of my home, and to just be there when I wake up. I wanted to get it over with – the waiting, the games, and more than anything, I wanted “in” on everything she was, because I loved the smell of power, and metaphorically speaking, the taste of blood.

But that very thing that was screaming at me not to do it, not to murder those people, that very thing was now screaming even harder at me. I felt overwhelmed, and my free will was literally taken away from me.

I couldn’t open my mouth or do anything to tell Regina what I want. We ended up back home and I had no free will. Some higher, or lower, force, someone outside of my control, my sub-conscious, my each and every fiber of thought, was opposing my decision and my free will, and they all had one message for me:

Don’t do it.

But I wanted it so, so bad. I stopped writing in my diary, I stopped speaking to anyone.

I was literally going through withdrawal.

I mustered the power to speak a few words, and those words were not anything related to my true desire.

As we stood there, the second day after we arrived, outside my house, in the backyard, I grabbed Regina’s hands and I told her to basically leave me alone.

I can’t explain it to myself not even to this day, of what actually happened, and how it’s possible for your mouth to say something when your whole body craves and screams for something else, but I’m sure you all know the feeling.

I asked her to leave, and never come back. I asked her to leave me and the town alone, I asked her to give me my life back and just… go and lose herself in the sea of people. I ripped down the necklace and shoved it in her hands, I forced her to leave, I asked her to leave the house and leave the town and never come back, not for me, not for anyone I know.

“Please Regina, I want my life back… eternity is too much for me. I’m not who you’re looking for. Take this and just leave. Please.”

And she looked at me for a few seconds, then looked at her hands for another few seconds, then back at me… studying my eyes, my face…

She was looking for anything that would betray my decision, any sign of me not actually wanting this, but she didn’t find anything except a totally blank face. She convinced herself that I’m speaking my mind, and she left.

She didn’t take anything, she didn’t say anything, she just hopped inside the car and left.
I saw the car turning right, and that was it, she was… gone.

And you know what? I was 100% sure that she – or anyone sent by her – will never come for me again. I felt alone for the first time, and for a second there, I panicked at what I had just done, but then I shortly remembered of what I was actually capable (and WISHFUL!) of doing when I was with her, I didn’t even want to think what I would become if I was to be one of them, with such a thirst for blood in me from a young age, as a kid, a human… I couldn’t allow myself to go there. We had to part ways, forever. And we did.

But nevertheless, the lingering feeling and tought, the desire of blood and power remained… and it grew and it grew, and just like your deepest regrets that no matter what you do, you can’t push back, I couldn’t push back my desires also.

That line between: “I will never want to become one of you.” and “Maybe.” was crossed. I inclined towards maybe, starting from that night forward, and that’s all that it takes.

An idea.

Because a vampire is born out of acceptance of what he is, and the life he will have. It’s the thought and the idea first, then the actual birth of a vampire. And that night, for me, was the start of a totally different way of being, of thinking… and the start of a different road, towards a different goal. A goal that I didn’t set for myself, but that pushed itself into my head and heart.

A vampire was being born inside me, very slowly, but surely…