Notte, Chapter One

♦ 1 ♦

My memories are not what they should be. I am aware that I was a young man once, human, a simple scholar, reading the stars and raising a family barely younger than I. That is, after all, how it was done in those days. Once one could create children, one did.

All that I have are single images, mental snapshots, viewed in sepia as if from a great distance, and these pictures came to me at great price. I do know this much: I was born, and later, I was made.

The ones who made me took me from my young family. They took me from my studies, from the protected city which I knew, and they changed me. They gave me to the stars I loved in a way none had been given before. There are times when I have wondered what difference it makes to be born through pain. My sepia dreams of the changes done to me are accompanied by pain, such pain, but of course, I did not at first remember them, and so my question is likely moot.

My first real memory – real, in color, with all senses engaged – was waking in the woods and finding that I lay under stars I loved but could not name. Waking and finding that the night was not dark. Waking and finding that all I wanted was to feed.

The hunger is beautiful, my friend. Delicious; intoxicating, like the finest aged and herb-touched wine of ancient priests, but far more potent. I woke, and I hungered; the Beast became me. The Beast became all that I was.

I ran through the woods. The trees, the shadows, the darkness – every sound in the air, every little heartbeat and pulse, from the tiniest spider to the largest lizard, I heard and felt and craved. I wanted to drink them all, to feel them pulsing inside me without conflict because I no longer had a pulse. Yet they were not enough. I wanted what I could not name – man-blood – but all I found at first were animals. So, after a time of searching and whining in wordless frustration, I pursued the largest animal I saw.

The deer fled from me. My Beast was not yet stealthy; finesse was a silly concept, considered at the back of my mind and then discarded. I was faster, that was all. She could not flee. Ah, my friend, my friend, the blood! Glory, bliss! Sweet, tangy, powerful, every cell filled with something I could not even identify, and as I drank, for the briefest of moments, I knew myself to be strange. Blood did not taste like this. I had tasted blood in the past. I knew I had, although my past was lost to me – then, I recalled waking and nothing more. But this!

The Beast tasted blood, and it became his one true love. His beloved; to be caressed, and treasured, and embraced and savored until forever became evermore and always! The blood was all!

Then came the cold, strange shock of dead blood as the deer’s heart stopped, and I – the Beast – knew the horror of rejection. Inglorious cold, the harshness of blood that no longer spoke or sang, thickened perceptibly to sludge, tasting of foulness and the grave. I turned away from the corpse with a cry and vomited some of what I had taken. The memory of bliss hurt. I wept.

Why had it left me?

I was aware there was more blood in the woods. I could hear and feel it; all the heartbeats in the world, moving together in a canto of love and promised desire. The deer was quite destroyed, but it was true that there were others, and besides – did not all men experience the loss of love at some time in their lives?

Strange that I knew this, and yet knew no name for myself. However, I did not question. Reason was largely uninteresting to me. The Beast needs no reason, no subtlety; why would he? I was stronger and faster than any creature I desired. I needed nothing except that which would sate my hunger.

I continued on through the woods, but could not bring myself to feed again that night. Blood’s betrayal was still too harsh, too chilling. When the sun rose at last, I felt hot, and sleepy. Responding to my Beast in the simplest way, I dug through the soft, rich loam of my new birthplace, pulled it in after me to bury myself, and hid beneath the ground.

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I dreamed that day. Strange images; men with gleaming eyes and knives, leaning across me, burning my skin and my veins and my genitals as they worked. Doing something in my brain. They were monsters.

But I was the Beast. Fear should only belong to me.

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My friend, I ask now that you please pardon my strange manner of storytelling. It is not my intention to speak with lascivious gore, to repulse you in any way with strange details. You have asked me how I came to be. This is the manner which birthed me – through blood, joy, and tears. 

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I woke and forgot my dreams because the hunger reasserted itself even more strongly than my first day. Of course it did. Now it knew what it wanted.

The first conflict between me and my Beast came that second night. I fed this time on a bear, large and warm and robust. I have always preferred omnivores, did you know?  Their flavor is richer than that of herbivores, or even carnivores. At any rate, I wished to stop feeding before the bear died; my dance with the blood was too blissful, too perfect. I did not want that cold turning-away, that horrific, sudden silence that comes with dead blood. The rejection was too much, and so, when the bear’s heart began to slow, I decided to pull away.

The Beast would not allow it.

I snarled into the throat of the animal, no doubt terrifying it more than it already was, and tried again to desist. The Beast refused, and instead, bit deeper.

Pulled.

Pulled.

Tore. I tore the poor bear’s throat right out.

New joy! Blood washing over my body instead of simply filling it, the smell of blood and the feel of blood and the sticky-thickened taint on every inch of my naked flesh! Reactionary physical pleasure reached a new and astounding peak. It is a sensation with which I’m sure you are intimatelyfamiliar.

I lay within the bear’s dying embrace then, warm against his fur, already growing sticky, and did not care to move for some time. When I rose again, the sun was coming. Sleep again became necessity.

#

I woke and found dirt clinging all along my body.

I once told you that one’s soul remains, regardless of transformation into one of my children. To my mind, my experience at this time was proof: personal inclinations before my rebirth remain afterward, even if those inclinations were silly. When I woke on that third day, I discovered that I had an intense desire to be clean.

But I was not clean. I was unclothed, covered in bodily fluids and smeared with mud. Worse, I could not recall how to undo it.

My name and my former methods of living were gone, and yet I must point out that I was fortunate. When I only imbibe blood, my body has no need to rid itself of unused toxins. Had I eaten something else, the resulting filth may have driven me to suicide. As it was, I became aware, and suddenly loathed my own skin.

Logic was not my forte at this time. The Beast was too strong. So, I whined. I snarled at the filth, as if it would fear me and flee. When this did not work, I began to scrape myself against a tree.

This felt good at once. I suppose the act of scratching away flaking, itching mud would feel good no matter what, but my current mental state was unfortunately unable to discern when I had scraped enough. All my senses had become hyper, leading to overload and the inability to distinguish between pleasure and pain. I scraped harder; and harder. Soon, I was taking off my own skin.

This felt… would you believe me if I told you it felt good? It didn’t feel pleasant, certainly. It hurt. Of course it hurt. Yet, at the same time, it felt like cleansing, and it was so much sensation that my overwrought nerves celebrated.

I suppose this was a result of the changes executed in my body. I have watched my children carefully for signs of something similar, but happily, none have ever behaved in this way. I suppose I was truly mad; I scraped against that tree until its bark gave way to shocking splinters, until my skin gave way to scraping bone. I screamed as I “cleaned” my body, unable to stop because my very actions shed more blood and made me filthier and drove me into hysterics. And then, a single splinter of living tree punctured my silent heart.

Were I to experience this today, I would relate it to a shock from a faulty electrical outlet. As there was no such thing then – and given the state of my memory, it wouldn’t have mattered if there were – I had nothing to relate it to at all. It was pain and nerve-torture in a way I could barely comprehend. I fell to the ground thrashing, and tried to scream.

This condition lasted for hours. Night crept by. Hunger grew, unsated for the first time since I woke. I could not move, other than involuntary twitching. Such pain! Such torment! I had done nothing to deserve this. Why was I suffering? Even then, you see, I understood that certain levels of pain were meant for punishment.

Finally, my body’s new healing abilities took effect and forced the splinter to exit the wound. It tumbled down my exposed ribs with a strange clicking sound that I will never forget, and lodged itself with poking insistence in my stomach. Abruptly, I could move.

I sat up, wondering why I had done this to myself and what this fearful thing was that so easily incapacitated me. I had no name for it; however, the Beast did not care enough to identify it. The hunger was too much. I ran away from the offending tree, body gaping like filleted fish, and hunted with all my might.

Four deer were the extent of my feast that night. I ripped each one to pieces, loving the gush of blood which coated me and entered my wounds, somehow soothing all pain, and I never even noticed when the last of the splinters and bark finally fell away. Finishing my feast left me incredibly tired –

What? It seems strange to you that I could pursue my prey while torn open? Well, on much later reflection, it seemed strange to me, too. I do not entirely understand the changes wrought to my body, but I do know that my musculature no longer relies on its own wholeness to function. I can lift my arms when my back is completely torn out. I can move my legs when they are reduced to bone; I can drink – and retain what I drink – when my esophagus has been repeatedly punctured. Adept science was involved in my creation, which humans would even now call magic. I find it entertaining that advanced science is always considered magic until it has been made bourgeois.

Perhaps I have lingered too long on this topic. Allow me to summarize. I slept; I healed; I woke. And here, on this fourth day, I finally encountered a human being. The course of my life once again changed.

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