Post by frostdragon13 on Feb 8, 2007 20:49:49 GMT -5
This is a story about a young man who turns vampire after a misrable childhood. He struggles to find his own interpretation of life after he realizes that he'll never die. I've already posted most of the story on another website so Den can edit it with me, but I brought it here to prove that I HAVE indeed been writing while I was gone.
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When I was young, I always thought death marked the end. To be sure, I doubted many world tales and religions concerning the afterlife. None of them really spoke to me or made sence. I firmly felt that once you were dead, you were dead. End of the line and no turning back. Unconcious for eternity.
In fact, I felt this so deeply that I don't recall ever submerging into deep thought about death, life and the meaning of it all. I just sort of cast it out of my life and neve gave it a second thought. I figured that if death was going to get us all one day, why worry about it? A waste of mental energy.
I'm totally aware that certain types of people, philosiphers, religious leaders, psychologists, will spend hours, even days on the subject. Asking themselves the same questions over and over.
"What does it alll mean?"
"Why are we here?"
"Where will we all go when it's over?"
Those people, probably hundreds, will search deep into the corners of history, culture, science, and even their own minds in search of the answer. One simple answer. An answer that can't be found, studied or researched. An answer that no one can or ever will tell you. It is an answer that finds itself. The answer can only be found when experianced.
Correct. The only way to come to a full understaning of death, life, and the meaning of it all is to experiance it firsthand.
Of course when this is all well and done for you and you find yourself on the other side, you realize immediatly that you know. That you HAVE the answer! You've seen life and death, and all the answers com rushing to your head. You have the divine knowladge now, and for once, you feel a little divine yourself.
You are satisfied. You have no more pain, no more suffering, no more restless nights of fearing death. No more being tormented night after night because you are unknowing.
And what's more is you want to SHARE the answer! You want to return to earth, to leap back into the arms of your beloved reletives who mourn unkowingly over your grave. You yearn to return to you sons, daughters, neices, nephews, and friends alike and tell them all that you're unharmed! That death isn't so bad after all. The death, life and the twisted realms beyond do indeed have a meaning, and you want to share it with them. You don't want them to be frightened anymore. They no longer have to endure those long, frightful, sleepless nights a-plenty that you yourself have suffered through. You can tell them that life is a grand thing and you should savor every moment of it, or that death isn't so bad. Whatever you experianced on your journey to the other side, you can tell them that too!
And they, your offspring, freinds, and loved ones, will listen to you in awe and wonder at this news. They will rejoice at the fact that they, the children of the confused mortals before them, will no longer have to make guesses about the afterlife. That because you, their wise, all-knowing dearly departed loved one, has shared with them the divine knowladge that has been tantalizing their ancestors for mellenia.
At the thought of this, you are quick to turn around. You are just about to begin your journey back to the mortal world when you are hit with the sickening realization...
...that you CAN'T go back. That once you pass over, you are forever in the other world, preventing you from ever returning. Preventing you from explaining to the world that they don't have to worry anymore. Preventing you from ending the countless wars, in which people die EVERY DAY, over what life really is!
And now, despite the previous joy that you felt before, you are restless once more. You don't WANT them to suffer. You have no desire for your beloved mortals to live in fear of death any longer. Just the very thought of your beloveds back on earth living in fear tears at your very concious.
But alas no, this is impossible. Your loved ones will never be given the answer. Mortals will never be told by another being. Ever. Not by you, not by another. That's just the way things are. They have to experiance death themselves as you did. That, my dear readers, is the only way that EVERYONE is going to know...
...well, almost everyone.
There are some, such as myself, that will NEVER know the answer. That will never see death as mortals see it. I, and others like me, shall remain on earth untill the end of time because of one event that changed our lives for etenity. Because of one event that happened to me back in 1823, I can never die. I can no longer breath the morning air. I cannot bear to live among mortals anymore. I can nevermore bask in the sunlight feilds of England with my friends.
...well... not without becoming seriously disfigured anyway.
To the point, I am a vampire. I have been for nearly 200 years. I must hide myself in the shadows of darkness, frozen in the form that I was transformed in. I will remain looking like a 21 year old Englishman forever. I will never see death, so I guess there's no use wondering about it anymore.
Still,I do from time to time ponder these subjects. And I often wonder too about my victims, who's blood I do deeply depend on, if they do too?
So I guess no matter what exists, be it the pearl gates of Heaven of the firey pit of hell, I'll never know.
My name is Jerome Stilwall. I am a vampire. I ask for your attention. This is my tale...
Chapter 1
I was born, as you could say, "a peice of meat". I was doomed for a painful life from the start. You see, my mother, Celeste De Journe, back in 1793, immigrated from France to England to escape the horrors of the French revolution. She tried depratley to hide the fact that she had a French heritage, (and encouraged me to do so as well) because the english were still... shall we say, not very keen on the French since their helping the American's with their own revolution. After succeeding in blending in with Bittish culture for 7 years, she married an English buisness-owner (my father) named William Stillwall in 1801.
William had a very small fortune, and what was left of it was blown away by a crash in the stock market. This event flung my family into povery for the rest of my childhood. You see, this is in part what caused my skeptical influence on religion itself. You see, my parents (Roman Catholics) were very religious people. they always used to tell me "Jerome, if you keep your faith in the lord and avoid sin, you will live a long, happy life and God will provide for you in heaven after your time here is over."
Now my parents treated this saying as thought it were a law. They went to church every Sunday, ans only took what they needed. In short, they were kind, unselfish, overall religious people. You'd assume that if their beleif about keeping faith was true, they'd live to be 100.
Here's that hard reality: they didn't.
My mother soom became sick with a fever of undescribable effects. She dies in the winter of 1809 when I was only 7. My father tried to support me, my grandmother, and my little brother, Phoebus, by getting a job working in a factory. Hours of hard labor and injuries for peanuts. My father worked himself to a skeleton, and his minimum wage was not enough to support us and my brother died at 6 months old because of it.
I don't recall seeing my father as sad as the day we buried Phoebus. He was silent for the rest of the day. He didn't smile nor speak all day. He never really did completely recover.
In the autumn of 1818, just 3 days after my 16th birthday, I lost my father as well...
He was returning to our slum of a home with what little money he had when he was robbed and beaten. When He didn't return for several hours, I went out into the streets of London searching for him. For God knows how long, I ran up and down the alleyways, streets and corridors untill I saw him, cold, stiff, bleeding and lying in a mangled heap in the corner of an alley.
He wasn't dead yet, but he was too weak to walk anywhere. Quickly, I knelt down and held him close to me. Our bodies became one as our heat was shared. Beads of sweat ran down my forehead as I thought in terror of losing him. My father... the only example of what manhood was I had ever known, my friend, my teacher... my life.
When he begain to breathe normally, I did something that I hadn't done since my mother had passed away. I prayed.
I prayed that my father would come to. That he would live, grow strong and be able to help me and my grandmother again. I prayed so hard that I could feel the tears welding in my eyes. My throat was tight, my chest was heavy, and my heart was breaking. I cried.
Two hours later, exactly at sundown, my father passed away in my arms...
When I returned to my slum of a home where my family had spent the past 16 years, my aging and ill grandmother was waiting for me. She could tell by the set of my shoulders what had happened. My eyes were red from weeping, and my hair had started to turn from a warm, thick, brown color to a stringy, droopy and thin pale-chestnut. My hands were pale from the cold, and were almost skeletal. I hadn't eaten in days.
She beckoned me to sit next to her, and she would try to comfort me, as she always did, with the love you can only feel from a grandmother. My grandmother's love... how I miss it. More than I miss my father...
She put her arm around me and I cried into her shoulder. She stroked my head and for a moment, there was a shared greif between us. An understanding. A common emotion that flowed through our bodies like blood. I was temporarally soothed.
She then spoke to me with her soft French accent, "Jerome... "
I looked up at her aged face. Her eyes seemed to glisten with the looks of a wisened being. A look of compassion and understanding. A look that I would never have... ever.
"Jerome, your father was always proud of you. You've become a stronger man because of this."
I nodded.
"Your father loved you, Jerome. You were a good son to him."
I responded, "It's not fair. He did nothing to deserve this. NOTHING!" I grew angry. "Why was he taken from me? No one, not even God, had the right to just snatch him out of my life like that! I needed him! He needed me! We were one!"
Despite this flash of rage, my grandmother understood. She tried to be patient with my youthful rebel-like attitude.
"Jerome, your father is in a better place now. No more suffering, no more starving, no more hardships. He is free. Now we must..."
I knew what she was going to say.
"We must pray for him, Jerome"
This made me sick? Did she not know what those words meant to me? We must pray for him? No! Not this time!
"Grandmother!" I cried. "You don't get it do you? Don't you see the truth? All my life, my family has prayed. You prayed when my mother was pregnant with me for a good home and a good life for the new child, and what happened? The stock market crashed and sent us flying to this living hell! We prayed when my mother was sick with that horrifying fever. What were we answered with but her lifeless corpse the very next night?! We prayed when my father got that abusive, painful and overworking job that he would be able to support us, and my only brother, whom I never even got to know, passed away in your arms!"
"Jerome, please..." She begged for me to stop, but she knew I was right. I was just getting started.
"And my father... the one man I had in my life. The one role model and teacher I had to look up to, was beaten and robbed in the alley last night. What little money he had was torn from him and they left his mangled body in a corner in the darkest alley in London. When I found him, I got down on my knees in that wet, cold, cursed alley and held him to my breast and prayed out loud. I prayed in a way I'd never prayed before. I was crying, and begging, and pleading to the heavens not to take him from me..."
"Oh Jerome.." She tried to hold me again, but I pushed her away. I was too overcome with greif to accept comfort.
"He died in my arms, grandmother... I felt his body grow cold."
I choked. My eyes were swollen with tears, and I couldn't go on.
"Jerome... no. Please. I'm so sorry. I love you, Jerome."
I breifley accepted her embrace, but it didn't help. I pulled away from her and ran, at full speed, out into the darkened streets of London. I ran, and nothing could stop me. Not even my grandmother's cries and pleads for me to return. They were just echos in the back of my mind, as I ran away into the night.
We since then grew apart, my grandmother and I. We still loved each other dearly, of course, but there was just this undescribable aura putting a veil between us. A sort of feeling of distrust. I ran away like that many night after that day, but I always came back for two reasons. One, my grandmother needed me. She would die without my support and companionship. Two, because I needed her as much as she needed me. If I was to see another of my family die in my arms, it would be suicidal to my life. I needed her...
So I got a job at the London fish market. I spent my underpaid hours decapitating fish and gutting eels. The stench was almost unbearable, but in truth, it wasn't any worse than my slum house. I would return after sunset, when night blanketed the streets of London, to my grandmother. We would keep eachother company with stories and conversation untill the human need for sleep overcame both of us, and we slumbered under the moonlight.
This was my life. For 5 more years this was my life. Every day, I did more or less the same thing. It was my false sence of security. I felt, for once in a long time, safe. I felt comfortable and loved. I felt... at peace.
But as they say... nothing lasts forever.
The night was September 13th, 1823. I was returning home from my long day's work at the market. I had a feeling in my stomach that I'd never had before. I assumed I was just coming down with a virus bevause of all the fish I'd been around.
That's another thing about humans that most people don't know. They do, like animals, have the ability to sense danger and threats, but they are so blinded by their lives and so comforted by "reality's laws" they have forgotten how to recognize the signs.
Anyway, I was about halfway home, when I took a rest to gaze at the moon. I've always been facinated by the moon and all it represents. That lone celestial body, giving us light during the darkest of nights, yet it still can see the sun when we can't... I envy the moon.
I sat on the front steps of an old abandoned house built somewhere in the 1780's. No one had lived in that house for years despite it's dazzling beauty and authenticness. An empty shell it is now, once filled with so much life...
It once belonged to a lord. I belive it was a Lord Anton that owned the house. I remember my father telling me storied of the grand parties he held there. Every Christmas, music, laughter and joy filled those walls. He told me about the rich men and women of the city filing into the house with wide grins on their faces. Even the most prim and proper Englishfolk couldn't help but smile when they saw Lord Anton, greeting his guests at the door with a wide, cheerful smile himself.
I spent a long time looking up at that moon, and imagining the grand parties of Lord Anton.
No one had lived there for most of my life. It had always been this big empty shell. The body of a once lively place who's joy seems almost fariytale to me. No one had lived there since... well... 1804, two years after I was born.
In that year, there was a flu epidemic in London. When I was two, I remember my family talking about it. They were always fearful of disease, for obvious reasons. When I was a boy, I assumed that only the poor caught sickness. The rich always seemed so happy and flamboyant. They always had elegant clothing when I caught glimpses of them. Heh... in fact when I was no older than 6, I saw a wealthy woman walking down the street, arm in arm with her husband. She was a plump lady and waddled like a goose. She had golden locks of hair tied back in a rather complex assortment of braids and curls, a style popular for the time. (And fitting for her status.)
What caught me the most about her was probably her dress skirt. As you know, women back then wore rather large hoop-skirts that flowed down to the ground. This puzzled me. I didn't understand. "How in the world did she do that? What was under that dress?" I was curious, and such a devil of a child.
I snuck up to the woman. I was impressed and proud of my sneaky behavior. I pretened that I was invisible. I snuck up right behind her and dove under her skirt.
She screamed. I swear it was loud enough to wake the dead! She started running around and she took me with her. I clung on to her her skirt for dear life, but she kept right on wailing and running. After a minute or so of that, I lost my grip and tumbled out. I lay on the ground dazed for a while, trying to collect myself. I tried to get up, when a force knocked me down. It was her husband.
He dragged me across the street and scolded me like I'd committed homiside. He struck me too. I collapsed to the ground. Halfway in tears and halfway laughing to death.
But enough about that... the flu epidemic.
Lord Anton was a victim. I can scarsely remember this, but I remember there being commotion outside the house. I saw Lord Anton's motionless body being hauled out on a stretcher. Women crying and men praying with bowed heads. In the morning... Lord Anton had died. The house had been silenced ever since...
That's why my heart almost lept into my throat when I heard... voices... coming from inside the house. They seemed to be coming from the second story... and there was something about them... that seemed sinister.
For some reason, when I heard the voices... it made me angry. Who were these people to trespass in this home? I felt for some reason that by them going into the house, they had gone into my life as well. I felt somewhat intruded.
I opened the door, and I had to wait a second for my eyes to ajust to the dim light inside the house. When they did, I found myself staring down a long hallway. At the end was a wooden staircase leading up to the second floor. I could still hear the distinct ressionance of voices coming from up there. I slowly made my way to the stairwell and looked up, and was temporarally shocked. It was darker up there than it was down here. Pitch black, I mean.
I was frightened. The voices had stopped.
The whole house seemed to echo, creek and shake when my foot touched the first step. I froze, for fear of being heard by whoever or whatever was up there. I briefly glanced upward towards the top of the stairs. I squinted and tried to make out what I saw in the dim light.
Nothing.
I then thought to myself "Why am I even doing this? This house doesn't belong to me any more than it does to what's up there. I'm being a fool."
I turned to leave, and made my way across the large front hall. I looked around at the grand house once more. A massive chandelier hung above my head, decorated with what looked like a string of diamonds, gold and cobwebs. No one had used it in years, I'll bet. I got to thining about who lived here years ago, and of all the grand parties they must have had. I wondered about the people who had passed through this room. Who stood in the same place as I stood this precise moment. Who were they? Lords? Ladies? Governors? Simple human beings much like myself? It became interesting...
"Time is both cruel and inspiring at the same thing, don't you agree?"
Then, I remembered my grandmother who was waiting for me. My God! How long had I been gone?! Surely she'd have worried herself into a coma by now!
I hurried over to the door but before I could open it... I felt... a hand on my shoulder. A voice, one that sounded like stone scraping against stone, whispered in my ear...
"Welcome home, Jerome..."
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When I was young, I always thought death marked the end. To be sure, I doubted many world tales and religions concerning the afterlife. None of them really spoke to me or made sence. I firmly felt that once you were dead, you were dead. End of the line and no turning back. Unconcious for eternity.
In fact, I felt this so deeply that I don't recall ever submerging into deep thought about death, life and the meaning of it all. I just sort of cast it out of my life and neve gave it a second thought. I figured that if death was going to get us all one day, why worry about it? A waste of mental energy.
I'm totally aware that certain types of people, philosiphers, religious leaders, psychologists, will spend hours, even days on the subject. Asking themselves the same questions over and over.
"What does it alll mean?"
"Why are we here?"
"Where will we all go when it's over?"
Those people, probably hundreds, will search deep into the corners of history, culture, science, and even their own minds in search of the answer. One simple answer. An answer that can't be found, studied or researched. An answer that no one can or ever will tell you. It is an answer that finds itself. The answer can only be found when experianced.
Correct. The only way to come to a full understaning of death, life, and the meaning of it all is to experiance it firsthand.
Of course when this is all well and done for you and you find yourself on the other side, you realize immediatly that you know. That you HAVE the answer! You've seen life and death, and all the answers com rushing to your head. You have the divine knowladge now, and for once, you feel a little divine yourself.
You are satisfied. You have no more pain, no more suffering, no more restless nights of fearing death. No more being tormented night after night because you are unknowing.
And what's more is you want to SHARE the answer! You want to return to earth, to leap back into the arms of your beloved reletives who mourn unkowingly over your grave. You yearn to return to you sons, daughters, neices, nephews, and friends alike and tell them all that you're unharmed! That death isn't so bad after all. The death, life and the twisted realms beyond do indeed have a meaning, and you want to share it with them. You don't want them to be frightened anymore. They no longer have to endure those long, frightful, sleepless nights a-plenty that you yourself have suffered through. You can tell them that life is a grand thing and you should savor every moment of it, or that death isn't so bad. Whatever you experianced on your journey to the other side, you can tell them that too!
And they, your offspring, freinds, and loved ones, will listen to you in awe and wonder at this news. They will rejoice at the fact that they, the children of the confused mortals before them, will no longer have to make guesses about the afterlife. That because you, their wise, all-knowing dearly departed loved one, has shared with them the divine knowladge that has been tantalizing their ancestors for mellenia.
At the thought of this, you are quick to turn around. You are just about to begin your journey back to the mortal world when you are hit with the sickening realization...
...that you CAN'T go back. That once you pass over, you are forever in the other world, preventing you from ever returning. Preventing you from explaining to the world that they don't have to worry anymore. Preventing you from ending the countless wars, in which people die EVERY DAY, over what life really is!
And now, despite the previous joy that you felt before, you are restless once more. You don't WANT them to suffer. You have no desire for your beloved mortals to live in fear of death any longer. Just the very thought of your beloveds back on earth living in fear tears at your very concious.
But alas no, this is impossible. Your loved ones will never be given the answer. Mortals will never be told by another being. Ever. Not by you, not by another. That's just the way things are. They have to experiance death themselves as you did. That, my dear readers, is the only way that EVERYONE is going to know...
...well, almost everyone.
There are some, such as myself, that will NEVER know the answer. That will never see death as mortals see it. I, and others like me, shall remain on earth untill the end of time because of one event that changed our lives for etenity. Because of one event that happened to me back in 1823, I can never die. I can no longer breath the morning air. I cannot bear to live among mortals anymore. I can nevermore bask in the sunlight feilds of England with my friends.
...well... not without becoming seriously disfigured anyway.
To the point, I am a vampire. I have been for nearly 200 years. I must hide myself in the shadows of darkness, frozen in the form that I was transformed in. I will remain looking like a 21 year old Englishman forever. I will never see death, so I guess there's no use wondering about it anymore.
Still,I do from time to time ponder these subjects. And I often wonder too about my victims, who's blood I do deeply depend on, if they do too?
So I guess no matter what exists, be it the pearl gates of Heaven of the firey pit of hell, I'll never know.
My name is Jerome Stilwall. I am a vampire. I ask for your attention. This is my tale...
Chapter 1
I was born, as you could say, "a peice of meat". I was doomed for a painful life from the start. You see, my mother, Celeste De Journe, back in 1793, immigrated from France to England to escape the horrors of the French revolution. She tried depratley to hide the fact that she had a French heritage, (and encouraged me to do so as well) because the english were still... shall we say, not very keen on the French since their helping the American's with their own revolution. After succeeding in blending in with Bittish culture for 7 years, she married an English buisness-owner (my father) named William Stillwall in 1801.
William had a very small fortune, and what was left of it was blown away by a crash in the stock market. This event flung my family into povery for the rest of my childhood. You see, this is in part what caused my skeptical influence on religion itself. You see, my parents (Roman Catholics) were very religious people. they always used to tell me "Jerome, if you keep your faith in the lord and avoid sin, you will live a long, happy life and God will provide for you in heaven after your time here is over."
Now my parents treated this saying as thought it were a law. They went to church every Sunday, ans only took what they needed. In short, they were kind, unselfish, overall religious people. You'd assume that if their beleif about keeping faith was true, they'd live to be 100.
Here's that hard reality: they didn't.
My mother soom became sick with a fever of undescribable effects. She dies in the winter of 1809 when I was only 7. My father tried to support me, my grandmother, and my little brother, Phoebus, by getting a job working in a factory. Hours of hard labor and injuries for peanuts. My father worked himself to a skeleton, and his minimum wage was not enough to support us and my brother died at 6 months old because of it.
I don't recall seeing my father as sad as the day we buried Phoebus. He was silent for the rest of the day. He didn't smile nor speak all day. He never really did completely recover.
In the autumn of 1818, just 3 days after my 16th birthday, I lost my father as well...
He was returning to our slum of a home with what little money he had when he was robbed and beaten. When He didn't return for several hours, I went out into the streets of London searching for him. For God knows how long, I ran up and down the alleyways, streets and corridors untill I saw him, cold, stiff, bleeding and lying in a mangled heap in the corner of an alley.
He wasn't dead yet, but he was too weak to walk anywhere. Quickly, I knelt down and held him close to me. Our bodies became one as our heat was shared. Beads of sweat ran down my forehead as I thought in terror of losing him. My father... the only example of what manhood was I had ever known, my friend, my teacher... my life.
When he begain to breathe normally, I did something that I hadn't done since my mother had passed away. I prayed.
I prayed that my father would come to. That he would live, grow strong and be able to help me and my grandmother again. I prayed so hard that I could feel the tears welding in my eyes. My throat was tight, my chest was heavy, and my heart was breaking. I cried.
Two hours later, exactly at sundown, my father passed away in my arms...
When I returned to my slum of a home where my family had spent the past 16 years, my aging and ill grandmother was waiting for me. She could tell by the set of my shoulders what had happened. My eyes were red from weeping, and my hair had started to turn from a warm, thick, brown color to a stringy, droopy and thin pale-chestnut. My hands were pale from the cold, and were almost skeletal. I hadn't eaten in days.
She beckoned me to sit next to her, and she would try to comfort me, as she always did, with the love you can only feel from a grandmother. My grandmother's love... how I miss it. More than I miss my father...
She put her arm around me and I cried into her shoulder. She stroked my head and for a moment, there was a shared greif between us. An understanding. A common emotion that flowed through our bodies like blood. I was temporarally soothed.
She then spoke to me with her soft French accent, "Jerome... "
I looked up at her aged face. Her eyes seemed to glisten with the looks of a wisened being. A look of compassion and understanding. A look that I would never have... ever.
"Jerome, your father was always proud of you. You've become a stronger man because of this."
I nodded.
"Your father loved you, Jerome. You were a good son to him."
I responded, "It's not fair. He did nothing to deserve this. NOTHING!" I grew angry. "Why was he taken from me? No one, not even God, had the right to just snatch him out of my life like that! I needed him! He needed me! We were one!"
Despite this flash of rage, my grandmother understood. She tried to be patient with my youthful rebel-like attitude.
"Jerome, your father is in a better place now. No more suffering, no more starving, no more hardships. He is free. Now we must..."
I knew what she was going to say.
"We must pray for him, Jerome"
This made me sick? Did she not know what those words meant to me? We must pray for him? No! Not this time!
"Grandmother!" I cried. "You don't get it do you? Don't you see the truth? All my life, my family has prayed. You prayed when my mother was pregnant with me for a good home and a good life for the new child, and what happened? The stock market crashed and sent us flying to this living hell! We prayed when my mother was sick with that horrifying fever. What were we answered with but her lifeless corpse the very next night?! We prayed when my father got that abusive, painful and overworking job that he would be able to support us, and my only brother, whom I never even got to know, passed away in your arms!"
"Jerome, please..." She begged for me to stop, but she knew I was right. I was just getting started.
"And my father... the one man I had in my life. The one role model and teacher I had to look up to, was beaten and robbed in the alley last night. What little money he had was torn from him and they left his mangled body in a corner in the darkest alley in London. When I found him, I got down on my knees in that wet, cold, cursed alley and held him to my breast and prayed out loud. I prayed in a way I'd never prayed before. I was crying, and begging, and pleading to the heavens not to take him from me..."
"Oh Jerome.." She tried to hold me again, but I pushed her away. I was too overcome with greif to accept comfort.
"He died in my arms, grandmother... I felt his body grow cold."
I choked. My eyes were swollen with tears, and I couldn't go on.
"Jerome... no. Please. I'm so sorry. I love you, Jerome."
I breifley accepted her embrace, but it didn't help. I pulled away from her and ran, at full speed, out into the darkened streets of London. I ran, and nothing could stop me. Not even my grandmother's cries and pleads for me to return. They were just echos in the back of my mind, as I ran away into the night.
We since then grew apart, my grandmother and I. We still loved each other dearly, of course, but there was just this undescribable aura putting a veil between us. A sort of feeling of distrust. I ran away like that many night after that day, but I always came back for two reasons. One, my grandmother needed me. She would die without my support and companionship. Two, because I needed her as much as she needed me. If I was to see another of my family die in my arms, it would be suicidal to my life. I needed her...
So I got a job at the London fish market. I spent my underpaid hours decapitating fish and gutting eels. The stench was almost unbearable, but in truth, it wasn't any worse than my slum house. I would return after sunset, when night blanketed the streets of London, to my grandmother. We would keep eachother company with stories and conversation untill the human need for sleep overcame both of us, and we slumbered under the moonlight.
This was my life. For 5 more years this was my life. Every day, I did more or less the same thing. It was my false sence of security. I felt, for once in a long time, safe. I felt comfortable and loved. I felt... at peace.
But as they say... nothing lasts forever.
The night was September 13th, 1823. I was returning home from my long day's work at the market. I had a feeling in my stomach that I'd never had before. I assumed I was just coming down with a virus bevause of all the fish I'd been around.
That's another thing about humans that most people don't know. They do, like animals, have the ability to sense danger and threats, but they are so blinded by their lives and so comforted by "reality's laws" they have forgotten how to recognize the signs.
Anyway, I was about halfway home, when I took a rest to gaze at the moon. I've always been facinated by the moon and all it represents. That lone celestial body, giving us light during the darkest of nights, yet it still can see the sun when we can't... I envy the moon.
I sat on the front steps of an old abandoned house built somewhere in the 1780's. No one had lived in that house for years despite it's dazzling beauty and authenticness. An empty shell it is now, once filled with so much life...
It once belonged to a lord. I belive it was a Lord Anton that owned the house. I remember my father telling me storied of the grand parties he held there. Every Christmas, music, laughter and joy filled those walls. He told me about the rich men and women of the city filing into the house with wide grins on their faces. Even the most prim and proper Englishfolk couldn't help but smile when they saw Lord Anton, greeting his guests at the door with a wide, cheerful smile himself.
I spent a long time looking up at that moon, and imagining the grand parties of Lord Anton.
No one had lived there for most of my life. It had always been this big empty shell. The body of a once lively place who's joy seems almost fariytale to me. No one had lived there since... well... 1804, two years after I was born.
In that year, there was a flu epidemic in London. When I was two, I remember my family talking about it. They were always fearful of disease, for obvious reasons. When I was a boy, I assumed that only the poor caught sickness. The rich always seemed so happy and flamboyant. They always had elegant clothing when I caught glimpses of them. Heh... in fact when I was no older than 6, I saw a wealthy woman walking down the street, arm in arm with her husband. She was a plump lady and waddled like a goose. She had golden locks of hair tied back in a rather complex assortment of braids and curls, a style popular for the time. (And fitting for her status.)
What caught me the most about her was probably her dress skirt. As you know, women back then wore rather large hoop-skirts that flowed down to the ground. This puzzled me. I didn't understand. "How in the world did she do that? What was under that dress?" I was curious, and such a devil of a child.
I snuck up to the woman. I was impressed and proud of my sneaky behavior. I pretened that I was invisible. I snuck up right behind her and dove under her skirt.
She screamed. I swear it was loud enough to wake the dead! She started running around and she took me with her. I clung on to her her skirt for dear life, but she kept right on wailing and running. After a minute or so of that, I lost my grip and tumbled out. I lay on the ground dazed for a while, trying to collect myself. I tried to get up, when a force knocked me down. It was her husband.
He dragged me across the street and scolded me like I'd committed homiside. He struck me too. I collapsed to the ground. Halfway in tears and halfway laughing to death.
But enough about that... the flu epidemic.
Lord Anton was a victim. I can scarsely remember this, but I remember there being commotion outside the house. I saw Lord Anton's motionless body being hauled out on a stretcher. Women crying and men praying with bowed heads. In the morning... Lord Anton had died. The house had been silenced ever since...
That's why my heart almost lept into my throat when I heard... voices... coming from inside the house. They seemed to be coming from the second story... and there was something about them... that seemed sinister.
For some reason, when I heard the voices... it made me angry. Who were these people to trespass in this home? I felt for some reason that by them going into the house, they had gone into my life as well. I felt somewhat intruded.
I opened the door, and I had to wait a second for my eyes to ajust to the dim light inside the house. When they did, I found myself staring down a long hallway. At the end was a wooden staircase leading up to the second floor. I could still hear the distinct ressionance of voices coming from up there. I slowly made my way to the stairwell and looked up, and was temporarally shocked. It was darker up there than it was down here. Pitch black, I mean.
I was frightened. The voices had stopped.
The whole house seemed to echo, creek and shake when my foot touched the first step. I froze, for fear of being heard by whoever or whatever was up there. I briefly glanced upward towards the top of the stairs. I squinted and tried to make out what I saw in the dim light.
Nothing.
I then thought to myself "Why am I even doing this? This house doesn't belong to me any more than it does to what's up there. I'm being a fool."
I turned to leave, and made my way across the large front hall. I looked around at the grand house once more. A massive chandelier hung above my head, decorated with what looked like a string of diamonds, gold and cobwebs. No one had used it in years, I'll bet. I got to thining about who lived here years ago, and of all the grand parties they must have had. I wondered about the people who had passed through this room. Who stood in the same place as I stood this precise moment. Who were they? Lords? Ladies? Governors? Simple human beings much like myself? It became interesting...
"Time is both cruel and inspiring at the same thing, don't you agree?"
Then, I remembered my grandmother who was waiting for me. My God! How long had I been gone?! Surely she'd have worried herself into a coma by now!
I hurried over to the door but before I could open it... I felt... a hand on my shoulder. A voice, one that sounded like stone scraping against stone, whispered in my ear...
"Welcome home, Jerome..."