[Requiem] Who am I?

[paulking101.livejournal.com]

Who am I?

For most of you this is a simple enough question, just a glance in the mirror and you see yourself. Sure some of you may disagree with or dislike the creature who looks back at you, however that reflection is still you, its what you choose to show the world.

For my kind the easy answers disappear like the man I once saw in the mirror. Once there was a man I knew who was sure of himself, a man like you. A man of myriad interesting facets, he lived a short but fulfilling life. Perhaps he lived more than someone should in a time so short. Then he died young as so many exciting and driven individuals are want to do. In a way I killed him, I still see him now and then if I stare hard enough into that mirror, if I will him to appear from the haze of time and lies and death and the Blood.

I lead a thrice-stolen life, First, with some help, I escaped the twilight of death and snatched Him back from the graveside, from then I have taken his friends and loves and turned them into my slaves and tools, I have taken his passions and dreams and drained them of all colour, processed the love and care and wishes into a factory the sort to sate my needs, I took his chance to be remembered as the incredible man and passionate genius that he was. And now I steal life from all those who are careless, weak or stupid enough to allow it. I'm not sorry.

For a while I was fooled by my own brilliance, I thought I was definitely him, him given another chance at some form of life, him offered a shot at the prize, and he embraced it. The longer and deeper I watched him fall the more I realized that I was a fool, the man died that night and I had tricked even myself. The beast is so cunning, so wise and so maddening, it convinced me little by little that I was not simply a vessel for its endless hunger and its putrid lusts.

Who am I? The question is made more complicated than difficult due to a dichotomy of  sorts, I am no longer I. Perhaps I have never been. Perhaps I am a parasite carried by the blood of my maker into the dead shell of a soul departed, thinking his thoughts twisted by the beasts schemes and and my own half memories of him, his sparkling life, his wit, his passion, his hate, his loss, his missed chances. That gives me some comfort in fact, perhaps I am just doing what is natural to my warped species, and thus I am not in fact evil.

The other option far from acceptable, it would be sobering where it not terrifying, I was once a man with dreams and standards and morals and feelings, and one night he was killed, but not all the way. With the soul gone I have died in slices, facets, shards. Each crime and each sin another mote of the man who was so strong, each thin layer peeling away the shape of the human, loosing consistency as he dies. I look hard enough into the mirror now and I see past Zachary Argyle Fleming's face and see the beast smiling behind his eyes. 

You are scared.. you should be. I needed to tell someone, and you're the new guy, you came to the club looking for Zachary, the guy they all talk about, you weren’t to know he doesn’t really live here any more. Soon neither will you.

And I’m not sorry.