Memory One It’s a cool, rainy evening in early winter. The house is of a traditional Japanese style, with tatami mat floors and sliding paper screen doors. You are sat with a young boy and a dark haired woman in her late twenties under a kotatsu futon.
You are in the process of looking over the woman’s shoulder at the handheld video game she’s playing. Your hands are very pale when you catch glimpses of them but you are happy and relaxed. Perhaps the blankness of mind that contains no memories further than a few months ago has something to do with that.
“Go right!” you command the woman in a very bossy voice as Romeo looks on. She signs something back to you and you scowls. “Your other right,” you say defensively, refusing to admit you were wrong. You turn to Romeo: “How was I supposed to know there is a secret boss battle in that corridor?” You look sullen, but brighten up immensely when a beautiful young Japanese woman in a kimono comes in with a tray full of snacks. “Mum!” You crawl out of the kotatsu and run over to her to help her with the tray. “Come on, let me do that. Hullo, Toyo.” There’s a tiny girl about four or five years old, poking her head out from behind the woman you call “Mum.”
You sit with the two women and two children around the kotatsu and chat, first about the video game, then about other things. The names of various gods are thrown about casually. This is Heaven, after all—or a version of it, at the very least. You are a shinki—a dead spirit who serves a goddess. The young woman you so adore is your entire world, and you are happy to be in the company of those you cares for the most: your goddess, your adopted little sister, your best friend, and Ginia, the woman with the video game, who has taken you on as sort of a surrogate nephew.
Your eyes begin to grow heavy as you sip warm tea and eat the delicious snacks your goddess prepared for you all. The last thing you remember is the feeling that you've never been happier in your incredibly long life.
Memory Two The year is 1782. You are dressed as a young gentleman of considerable means, all silks and fine wool. You grin over your full wine glass at the person seated opposite you The red liquid in the goblet isn't wine. The corpse of a middle aged woman--a beggar your servants had lured inside with the promise of a hot meal--is slumped against a wall.
“Come now, old friend” you say heartily. “We’ve known each other for how many centuries? I am happy to provide the funds you seek, if you believe that this coaching inn in Bath will truly be as lucrative as you claim.”
For once, you seem almost happy. It’s rare to see you smile, much less laugh like this. The man comments on this and you wave it off. “I have good wine and tolerable company.” You smirk. “More than tolerable, if the return on my investment will be as significant as you promise.”
You feel relaxed, in control. You have means, and you're building your power. The vampires of London have come to respect and fear you over the last four centuries, and now you feel comfortable making your move. This weakling in front of you is a middling vampire of very little vision but highly placed friends. In exchange for a paltry sum of a few hundred pounds, you now have access to that network. You can finally use it to wrest control of London--or the East End, at the very least--from your hated rival.
“Now, if you will excuse me for but a moment…”
You leave the room.
The Children are waiting for you upstairs. You've been building your army for quite some time now, giving other forgotten, neglected, and abused children the same “gift” you were given so long ago. There are eight of them now, ranging in physical age from four to fifteen. They look just as excited as you feel. It’s time for The Children to wrest power from the adults.
“We’ve got him.” You grins at your vampire progeny. “Now it's time to take control.”
Memory Three It’s hot. Very hot. There’s a small boy turning fitfully on a narrow bed, his face covered in sweat and a massive, angry looking bubo on the side of his neck. The boy’s nose and fingertips are turning black as the Plague slowly kills the cells in his body. A tall woman, very tall for the fourteenth century, sits next to him, wiping the sweat off his forehead. She’s dressed sensibly but fashionably, her dark auburn hair modestly covered as befitting a married woman. One might even mistake her for genuinely being here to help, if not for the pale skin and luminous eyes that mark her for what she truly is: a vampire.
It is clear that Joscelin is going to die. Even he can feel it coming in his rare moments of lucidity. He stops fussing for a moment and opens his eyes. “Water,” he begs the woman through parched lips. But she doesn’t give him any. Instead, her fangs descend and she bites her wrist, feeding the boy droplets of blood. He licks his lips, smiles, and slides back into blessed unconsciousness, unaware that his fate is sealed.
Hours later:
Joscelin wakes with a start, feeling suffocated. The pain in his head is gone. The pain everywhere is gone, in fact, but there’s something pressing against him. He can't breathe.
It's dark; weight presses on him from all sides and the stench of decay threatens to overwhelm him. When he gasps, he inhales a mixture of rough linen and earth. His arms are pinned to his chest by still more fabric, dirt, and another weight he doesn't understand.
He wants to scream but he knows he hasn't got much air left. Struggling, he manages to free an arm and somehow claws his way to the surface. It's dark, but he can see as clear as daylight. Clear enough to realize where his is.
He falls to his knees and crosses himself in terror.
A plague pit. He's just crawled out of a plague pit. Bodies in shrouds, covered in earth and quicklime, stacked neatly with enough room to accept new arrivals except where his struggles have collapsed the pile. He looks down and realizes he's wearing his own winding sheet.
A frightened sob catches in his throat. “Papa,” he calls. “Come find me. Papa!”
He doesn’t see how he’s changed. He doesn’t yet know about the fangs in his mouth, or the danger of the sun, or that he is now bound eternally to the woman he had known as Mistress Weaver. All he knows is that he’s suddenly ravenously hungry.
As he staggers out of the churchyard, he comes across an elderly monk. Brother Edwin crosses himself immediately as the boy approaches, still in his burial clothes and covered in dirt…and completely cured of the deadly plague.
Joscelin suddenly realizes that he can smell the old man’s fear. Taste it, even. The hunger feels as if it will overwhelm him.
The rest is a blur of violence and blood. Hot, sweet blood. The most delicious thing he’s ever tasted. He finally comes back to himself bent over Brother Edwin’s body, lapping up the last of the blood that is still weakly pumping from the massive hole he’s created in the old man’s neck.
Once Joscelin realizes what he’s done, he starts to scream.
Joss | Emily
Themes Found family, vampires, transformation
Memory One It’s a cool, rainy evening in early winter. The house is of a traditional Japanese style, with tatami mat floors and sliding paper screen doors. You are sat with a young boy and a dark haired woman in her late twenties under a kotatsu futon.
You are in the process of looking over the woman’s shoulder at the handheld video game she’s playing. Your hands are very pale when you catch glimpses of them but you are happy and relaxed. Perhaps the blankness of mind that contains no memories further than a few months ago has something to do with that.
“Go right!” you command the woman in a very bossy voice as Romeo looks on. She signs something back to you and you scowls. “Your other right,” you say defensively, refusing to admit you were wrong. You turn to Romeo: “How was I supposed to know there is a secret boss battle in that corridor?” You look sullen, but brighten up immensely when a beautiful young Japanese woman in a kimono comes in with a tray full of snacks. “Mum!” You crawl out of the kotatsu and run over to her to help her with the tray. “Come on, let me do that. Hullo, Toyo.” There’s a tiny girl about four or five years old, poking her head out from behind the woman you call “Mum.”
You sit with the two women and two children around the kotatsu and chat, first about the video game, then about other things. The names of various gods are thrown about casually. This is Heaven, after all—or a version of it, at the very least. You are a shinki—a dead spirit who serves a goddess. The young woman you so adore is your entire world, and you are happy to be in the company of those you cares for the most: your goddess, your adopted little sister, your best friend, and Ginia, the woman with the video game, who has taken you on as sort of a surrogate nephew.
Your eyes begin to grow heavy as you sip warm tea and eat the delicious snacks your goddess prepared for you all. The last thing you remember is the feeling that you've never been happier in your incredibly long life.
Memory Two The year is 1782. You are dressed as a young gentleman of considerable means, all silks and fine wool. You grin over your full wine glass at the person seated opposite you The red liquid in the goblet isn't wine. The corpse of a middle aged woman--a beggar your servants had lured inside with the promise of a hot meal--is slumped against a wall.
“Come now, old friend” you say heartily. “We’ve known each other for how many centuries? I am happy to provide the funds you seek, if you believe that this coaching inn in Bath will truly be as lucrative as you claim.”
For once, you seem almost happy. It’s rare to see you smile, much less laugh like this. The man comments on this and you wave it off. “I have good wine and tolerable company.” You smirk. “More than tolerable, if the return on my investment will be as significant as you promise.”
You feel relaxed, in control. You have means, and you're building your power. The vampires of London have come to respect and fear you over the last four centuries, and now you feel comfortable making your move. This weakling in front of you is a middling vampire of very little vision but highly placed friends. In exchange for a paltry sum of a few hundred pounds, you now have access to that network. You can finally use it to wrest control of London--or the East End, at the very least--from your hated rival.
“Now, if you will excuse me for but a moment…”
You leave the room.
The Children are waiting for you upstairs. You've been building your army for quite some time now, giving other forgotten, neglected, and abused children the same “gift” you were given so long ago. There are eight of them now, ranging in physical age from four to fifteen. They look just as excited as you feel. It’s time for The Children to wrest power from the adults.
“We’ve got him.” You grins at your vampire progeny. “Now it's time to take control.”
Memory Three It’s hot. Very hot. There’s a small boy turning fitfully on a narrow bed, his face covered in sweat and a massive, angry looking bubo on the side of his neck. The boy’s nose and fingertips are turning black as the Plague slowly kills the cells in his body. A tall woman, very tall for the fourteenth century, sits next to him, wiping the sweat off his forehead. She’s dressed sensibly but fashionably, her dark auburn hair modestly covered as befitting a married woman. One might even mistake her for genuinely being here to help, if not for the pale skin and luminous eyes that mark her for what she truly is: a vampire.
It is clear that Joscelin is going to die. Even he can feel it coming in his rare moments of lucidity. He stops fussing for a moment and opens his eyes. “Water,” he begs the woman through parched lips. But she doesn’t give him any. Instead, her fangs descend and she bites her wrist, feeding the boy droplets of blood. He licks his lips, smiles, and slides back into blessed unconsciousness, unaware that his fate is sealed.
Hours later:
Joscelin wakes with a start, feeling suffocated. The pain in his head is gone. The pain everywhere is gone, in fact, but there’s something pressing against him. He can't breathe.
It's dark; weight presses on him from all sides and the stench of decay threatens to overwhelm him. When he gasps, he inhales a mixture of rough linen and earth. His arms are pinned to his chest by still more fabric, dirt, and another weight he doesn't understand.
He wants to scream but he knows he hasn't got much air left. Struggling, he manages to free an arm and somehow claws his way to the surface. It's dark, but he can see as clear as daylight. Clear enough to realize where his is.
He falls to his knees and crosses himself in terror.
A plague pit. He's just crawled out of a plague pit. Bodies in shrouds, covered in earth and quicklime, stacked neatly with enough room to accept new arrivals except where his struggles have collapsed the pile. He looks down and realizes he's wearing his own winding sheet.
A frightened sob catches in his throat. “Papa,” he calls. “Come find me. Papa!”
He doesn’t see how he’s changed. He doesn’t yet know about the fangs in his mouth, or the danger of the sun, or that he is now bound eternally to the woman he had known as Mistress Weaver. All he knows is that he’s suddenly ravenously hungry.
As he staggers out of the churchyard, he comes across an elderly monk. Brother Edwin crosses himself immediately as the boy approaches, still in his burial clothes and covered in dirt…and completely cured of the deadly plague.
Joscelin suddenly realizes that he can smell the old man’s fear. Taste it, even. The hunger feels as if it will overwhelm him.
The rest is a blur of violence and blood. Hot, sweet blood. The most delicious thing he’s ever tasted. He finally comes back to himself bent over Brother Edwin’s body, lapping up the last of the blood that is still weakly pumping from the massive hole he’s created in the old man’s neck.
Once Joscelin realizes what he’s done, he starts to scream.