Becoming

The pain was exquisite and excruciating. Lying down on the dirt of the lakeshore, the twigs and branches poked the skin of his back and legs. He could feel each and every prick of twigs as the white lightning of heat and pain surged through his body like a tidal wave. He craned his neck, trying to scream, but the sound caught in his throat as a moth caught in the web of a spider in the ruddy yellow light of a porch lamp. His fear erupted like a volcano and began to break through the dense mesh of semierotic pain, his eyes widened and bulged from his skull, and his back arched as solid as a stone bridge over country stream. The instant atrophy in his legs lit their muscles into a white, hot, fiery fury. His toes pointed down so strenuously that he thought his ankles would shatter like clay pots striking the floor, and his arms stiffened as though he was being drawn and quartered. The stars above shown through the pine needles above and the white-rimmed, unfocused sight of his eyes.

Three ages of the earth seemed to pass before the numbness began in his fingers and toes. The unrequited pain and chaotic fear began to subside with the increasing numbness. It flowed up his stone-stiff limbs like an increasing tide, surging and receding with the quickening beat of his heart. His head began to ache with his increased heartrate, and he was able to allow a slow escape of breath through a silent gurgle. Where his vision was on the verge of whiteout just a moment ago, the creeping numbness eclipsed it with darkness and blurriness. The world beyond his catatonic body faded as day to night, as did his mind’s grip on his soul.

The moments continuing to creep by like a glacier cutting through a mountain valley, the numbness began at the top of his skull, already having reached his shoulders and ribs. The hand of his mind held tightly to the hand of his soul, dangling terrifyingly over an abyss of pure black emptiness. The blur of the stars and the trees above him faded to the same black emptiness. With nothing left to pump, his heart slowed to a near stop. All pain had disappeared, the breath in his throat was now gone with none to replace it, and his once stiff body now lay limp as a dying snake. His soul dropped into the abyss, his mind too weak to hang on. Blind, deaf, and nearly lifeless, he hovered in the empty void of Purgatory, no time passed for him, as time itself seemed to no longer exist. He felt himself a shell of what he was in those moments that happened eons ago, this new soulless existence reminding him of a starlit desert whose sands reach to the horizon and beyond in every direction.

All was still and motionless in the desert of Purgatory, the stars weren’t even twinkling in the black dome above. Then came a feeling of vertigo, of motionless motion, and the desert beneath his feet became as water; it, too, motionless, reflecting the light of the stars like a mirror. Is this the extent of death? Is this all there is?

The stars twinkled… The waters shifted beneath him… He felt his tongue, swollen and dry. The feeling seemed as foreign to him as the timeless Purgatory that had become his existence. What was he feeling? Twinges of wetness collided with his tongue like a hammer to a nail, and the stars above now began to flash so bright that his sight registered pain. The water about him began to shimmer and swell making him nauseous. Perhaps death was not so monotonous after all. As his tongue became fully immersed in what had made it wet, the stars above began to swirl in the heavens above, comet-like tails following behind them.

The waters heaved violently, and he could now feel that his body was submerged, the cool of it like a refreshing glass of ice water on an oppressive summer day. Above him, the comet-stars spiraled towards his spirit and smashed into it like a cresting wave upon the beach. Each collision convulsed that physical form he had not felt since the ageless Purgatory trapped him. Reminded, as well, he was of the feeling of his soul being ripped from his grasp over the abyss, but this was as a multitude of souls grabbing his empty hand and rushing into his lifeless body. The souls were incomplete, like nothing more than an oily fingerprint on stained glass, an echo of the human that each soul once inhabited.

Then, suddenly, it was all gone, and he opened his eyes to the real stars above, his limbs thrashing wildly in the waters of the lake. His sight was tinged in red, as though he was seeing the world through a sheen of blood. Once again his body was wracked with exquisite and excruciating pain, and he let out a primal yell of rage and confusion.

As he clenched his hands into fists, his scream into the darkness ended in a wretch as the contents of his stomach, blood, bile, undigested food, flowed into the water. The pain became unbearable, and his bowels released in the agony. His body sank beneath the surface as he closed his eyes. Am I to die again?

Red hot pain coursed through him as he sank down through the soiled water. He felt every nerve in his body being struck by its own bolt of lightning, he felt every blood vessel in his body surge with the power of the “star-comet soul shadows”. Every muscle fiber became like a steel strand, and he became aware of every individual drop of water touching his pallid skin. Each piece of soul found its own space within his quickly sinking corpse, and the blood in his veins flowed without the beat of his heart.

Bare feet touched the bottom of the lake, the ethereal pain now subsiding. The natural instinct to breathe forcing him to inhale and exhale the cool, fresh water of the lake. Yet, he stood there on the lake floor, as naked as the day he was born, seeing every detail of life present before him. He looked down at his pale hands, turning them over to observe his perfect fingernails tinted in black and purple. The strength within his body was a quickening, and he flexed every muscle and joint in wonder, questioning whether he could control such might. And with no more effort than hopping over fallen tree branch in the woods, he took off towards the surface, leaving behind a wake of bubbles.

Landing upon the shore, he stared with amazement at the world around him. Just as on the lake bottom, he could make out every detail, he could hear every sound, and he could feel every movement. The night was alive like he had never known it before, and the fascination was endless. He turned quickly and stopped in his tracks. There before him stood the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Pale skin glowed in the moonlight, flawless brown hair fell to his shoulders, a suit it wore meticulously could hardly hide the power of the creature within, and black-rimmed crystal blue irises spoke highly of the intelligence and age behind them. In its hands were folded clothes, no doubt to cover the nakedness of the man before it.

Without warning, he put his hands to his temples and hunched in agony. The voiced within his head screamed. The emptiness in his belly felt like a vacuous void. He was consumed by a hunger he had never known, driven by the cacophony in his brain. The creature’s hand touched his shoulder to steady him, the strength felt within that simple touch a jolt back to reality. A slight smile from it calmed him, and he returned a smile as he pulled the clothing from its outstretched hand.

Fully dressed, he felt better than ever he had in his previous life, despite the hunger that now consumed him. Confidence restored, he dared to speak aloud.

“What is all this?” his voice raspy and dry.

“You have been given a gift,” came the coarse, low, Eastern European voice. “It is not bestowed frivolously, and it is not to be used unwisely.”

“Tell me what this gift is.”

“What you hear inside is the calling of the souls of the damned that now keep your body animated. A shred of your own soul resides deep within your mind to remind the body of who it was. Therefore, you must ensure that your head does not get separated from your body. That is the only way that you can die, even though you are already dead. So long as that event does not come to pass, you shall endure always.”

“Why do the souls cry out?” the confusion of his new nature plainly evident.

“They cry out for living blood, for it is where the soul of all living beings resides, and it is what they long for.”

The truth dawned on him in that moment. And the creature smiled broad enough for the fangs to be seen. “I am…”

“Yes,” came the immediate answer as the creature nodded. “You are vampyre. You are immortal, and you are damned. But you are mighty, and I am your guide. You may call me, Vlad.”