Dawning of Empathy

I'd died before in my dreams. I did not know how it would be; but I woke up before falling asleep.

Such is the way of things for me now. Sometimes I hardly know if I am living in dream or reality. To some, I am pure legend – a magnificent myth, or maybe a silly, laughable farce. To others I may be an unspoken fear, a lingering nightmare. To a select few, I am death itself. 
 
I had never much enjoyed violence when I was younger. As a girl so many decades ago, I was raised to be gentle, obedient and sympathetic. Small slivers of memories will occasionally accost me: a church, the choir’s voices omnipresent, donned in white robes; gentle arms caring for me; a small congregation sitting in the drawing room; myself, seated, listening to the delicate traces of piano.  This thread still exists within me, however faint now, because nothing can banish it completely; but my new nature is the antithesis, entirely against all of my former teachings.

Blood – it is what I now seek. I find no greater exhilaration than in preying on those around me. That is now a part of me as it is a part of every true predator. There is no moral qualm as the tiger takes the life of the man walking home at dusk. The wolf feels no shame in devouring the livestock that it has captured. And so, I feel very little in the way guilt as I prey on the people of the world. I am only one of many predators – each victim suffers little, and few of them even suffer death. In a way, I act more as a parasite than as a predator. Oh, to be reduced to this…

I remember little of my first days after death. I have been witness to the change in others, watched as their body dies, and the ravenous, uncontrolled hunger pulses through their veins. They drink mercilessly from whatever they can…I sometimes wonder how many I killed in those early days.

I suppose I could one day go to my maker, and ask him, though I’ve avoided him for these two centuries. I don’t doubt how that will change any time in the near future.  I was in that room, locked away, enslaved longer than I could know. I have no desire to encounter my captor, who disposed of me once I’d changed. I suppose I’m stronger for the brutality imposed on me, though I can hardly embrace it.

There is an expression, “that which cannot kill us makes us stronger”. I’ve learned that which does kill you makes you into something else entirely.

I sat quietly in my remote alley. Cities disgusted me in life, and still do; however, they provide a wonderful hunting ground.  Thousands, sometimes millions of humans living in close quarters – some are bound to slip between the cracks of society. I often prey on these. They will not be missed, and my existence will not be threatened.

Above all, my new self has taught me to be practical.

…expect on rare occasions.

In the first instance, of what was to become many, I found a man assaulting a girl. She was even younger than I had been when I’d died.  She screamed in the dead of night, and the man didn’t even try to silence her. No one cares in cities.

…except on rare occasions – me.   

I am quite silent, and so it took little effort to surprise him, and drain him of life. He tasted absolutely repulsive, but I gained the satisfaction of having so much power! I had stopped him from hurting others, and that girl could now escape. She had run as soon as he’d begun to choke. I doubt she’d even seen her savior. …ironic that I could be considered so, isn’t it? Death itself – preserving life.

My life is ironic – no, this existence cannot be considered ‘life. I will say then, that my death, this existence, is ironic. I often find it difficult to define my state of existence, perhaps it is one of the many reasons I can exist at all. It is this that has created me to exist as a deadly, beautiful, and cynical creature.

The people like the man I’d killed sickened me. It was easy to find things to dislike about the human race. My sheltered life of light and gentle songs would never have prepared me for the present world. I was quite disgusted with humanity, which consequently made it much easier to isolate myself from my victims.

Truly amazing, how even after all this time things can change.

One night, I decided to leave the city. I surprised myself, in even having that whim. I suppose that even a cold, suspended creature can only take the ceaseless, senseless, mindless energy of the city for so long.  The screaming sirens, bustling crowds, honking, endless sounds of people – all white noise to me.

Beyond the suburbs, near a small town, I could hear an individual, poignant sound. Interested by its uniqueness, I focused in on it.  It was music, that much I could already discern, but I couldn’t understand quite what it was. The tune was eerily familiar, maybe something I’d heard a few lifetimes ago.

Why should I like music? I don’t know. So many things had changed since my mortality. Why would a creature such as I be attracted to that?

Beauty, perhaps, I thought to myself, making my way through the shadows to reach the slowly growing volume of the music.

I lightly tread across the layer of snow, leaving faint prints glittering in my wake.  Yellow light spilled garishly from the windows of these quiet homes I passed, making the violet-gray moonlit shadows seem colder than they really were. I avoided that yellow light particularly.

I finally stopped, where the houses had thinned considerably, and listened to the sounds pouring out, lonely and forlorn in the night. I crept to the house, and sat at the door listening, pressed against the wood.  The music sparked me, and pulled something free that had not been there before. Or maybe it had – it had just been locked away for so long. My emotions were rusty, but I began to recognize them, as if I was relearning the actions of playing an instrument.

Head pressed against the wood, listening at the door like a child, I held myself tightly, reacting to the tumultuous feelings, emotions that engulfed me then. Fear, sadness, joy, nostalgia – all at once they assaulted me. I felt ridiculously helpless and vulnerable.

For the first time in almost two hundred years, I wept.