I realize now the bar I set for myself was too low. I hadn’t performed an ancient evil blood ritual on anyone else, and so I was not so different from the mortals? I was a danger to them. Perhaps Rodrik is right, maybe it is so in my nature to manipulate that I didn’t even realize what I had been doing. I was so tempted by Mettii and Pevlok’s offer, it’s been lingering in the back of my head, whirling hungrily since the moment the offer left their lips. I fantasized against my will what they might taste like based on their scents. Words other immortals use to describe blood, co-opted from wine tasters, sprung to mind. I imagine Mettii’s to be earthy and round. Pevlok, rich, spicy and tangy. Their blood is narcotic, and I feel something resembling withdrawals setting in. It was as though something shifted in my head. Now that I understood myself to be a monster, denying myself blood was excruciating. 

Then the evil thought came to the forefront, unignorable now. It could all be over if I just embrace reality. I could kill them all right now, leave no one left to hate me, and join the Altari, people who understand my power better than I do…

Panic shot through to my legs, I leapt up from my corner and threw the heavy bookcase in front of my door. The destruction felt amazing, and so I focused on that instead of the dark thought that had crept up on me. I threw everything in the room against that door, smashing the pompous velvet chair into the mess of books, the cushions falling off impotently, their intact state oddly infuriating to me. I tore it to shreds, relishing in the chaotic bloom of cotton. Every end table, lamp, painting, ash tray, candle, dresser, no innocent objects escaped my tirade. Then the room was bare except for the heap of garbage and cotton settling on the floor. For a moment I just huffed. Then I turned to the walls, and clawed through the dainty floral wallpaper, which came off in unsatisfying wispy strips. Then my eyes locked on to the ugly musty orange and purple rug. I ripped the coarse ropey material in half with a guttural yell, dust and scratchy particles exploding from it. All that remained unabused was the curtains and glass windows. I weighed the consequences with the satisfaction of breaking it as I fisted the curtain in my hand, but with logic reintroduced to my thoughts I became aware of how ridiculous it all was. I released the curtain, and went back to my corner to sit on the floor like a kid in time out. A ray of suns’ light from the gently parted curtain laid bare the mess, illuminating the particles which danced about serenely… The air tasted horrible. Did our captors take 1890s Earth authenticity so seriously that they put asbestos and lead into the walls? It’s the little things that show they really care. I thought sarcastically.

The Altari are the reason Earth is a wasteland, though they have always blamed their adversaries for it. I had ignored the politics of the Earth in my time, too caught up in my own misery to notice how fast the world was changing. Even as forests burned and oceans closed in around its people, everyone kept waiting for someone to come in and save us from ourselves. Billions died, a handful of the most selfish amongst us survived by fleeing into space. We rode into the stars on the backs of the achievements of better souls who died on the planet we charred and drowned as thank you. A rebellion managed to steal a fleet of ships, a righteous slaughter if there ever was one. A man, Evan Jex, carried much of the blame for Earth’s demise, having the resources to save the planet but instead he selfishly plotted his escape and died a coward's death, his ill begot luxury escape ship is rumored to be docked and used as the headquarters for the resistance against the Altari to this day. 

Jex became a martyr to the Altari, he claimed he would restore the Earth, that the quickly deteriorating floating refugee cities were “a very temporary solution”, but I was there. He lied and meant to sneak off to orbit his colony on Mars as Earth breathed its last breath. If you’ve ever tried to sneak away with a massive team of co-operative ground control who’s job includes setting off explosions for your departure, hopefully you know your enemies were made aware. He underestimated them. Hubris, the death of our planet, and fittingly his own.

I was a stow-away on an even larger luxury vessel. It carried about 4,000 people, born of privilege or with useful abilities they could be enslaved for. The cruiser was so massive that each piece was hoisted up by the space elevator to a station where it was built outside the atmosphere. By then I had run from Kinsleon, but I didn’t know if he had made it off planet. I had hoped he would be stranded there, but it was an optimistic fantasy as I would later discover.

Tension built quickly in a confined space, as big as the ship was, it was no replacement for a planet. Disease spread fast and the privileged were not accustomed to cooperating to survive. The poison of the Altari’s propaganda backfired. “Disposal of the queer, the colored and the crippled is tantamount to our survival. With so few of us left, we must ensure the genes which remain of humanity are strong, smart, and pure. We can't afford weakness, and we certainly can’t afford to feed unworthy mouths.” As fascists often do, they turned on each other. One idiot killed the ship’s pilot who had attempted to de-escalate an argument between some narcissist leader of a now dead country and the person who was distributing rations. The bastard threw the pilot in the garbage disposal, which sent his body adrift in space, along with his keycard, which meant that when the resistance attacked, the co-pilot was scrambling trying to figure out how to change course without the encrypted captain’s controls unlocked.

The resistance, who called themselves Earth’s Last Children (or ELC) boarded and killed any who wouldn’t surrender. By contrast, they wanted to start a new world where people cared for each other no matter what, where people gave what they could and took what they needed. “We are an endangered species now, all life is worth protecting. Nobody can decide one is more important than another. All we have is each other.” They allowed me to join their colony for a time. I was indebted to them, for letting a monster in their midst. Their numbers were 8,027 strong, mostly regular people uninterested in fighting, merely trying to keep themselves and their families alive. I was allocated to the job of euthanasia for those who came down with disease or egregious injuries that we didn’t have the resources to heal. Most of my “patients” would request that their necks be snapped, some preferred a bullet, whatever their final request I obliged their deaths to be as painless as possible. I drank their sickly blood, often full of pain killers, and numbly waited for the world to change again. 

I have always floated along, feeling guilty but unmotivated to be one of the heroes who took a stand like the leaders of ELC have. A self pitying monster who leeched off the world until the world died, only to flee in search of a new host.

I don’t want to be this anymore, I want to be good. Where did that strong willed little girl go?

Bitterly I mourned the loss I was sick of mourning. The loss of myself, a person who barely ever was. I’m sick of myself, if I have no choice but to be a monster, I should at least be one on my own terms. Stop drifting through space and make my own choice of what’s right. 

I won’t be somebody else’s doll again. I can live with myself as a monster, but I refuse to submit again.

So no more self pitying, no scurrying away. The only time I was motivated to take action in my life was for selfish reasons, to kill Kinsleon when I discovered he too had escaped Earth with Sven and a few other of his cult followers. It stirred me from my numbness at the ELC colony when even hearing of the existence of the community of aliens amongst us didn’t phase me. I left abruptly and hitch hiked across the stars, lied, cheated and stole my way to get to him. Sven ran when he saw me, he knew there was only one reason I would come back. Kinsleon thought I returned to him, his ego unable to see a reason I might be there to make him suffer as he made me suffer. I was shaking when I saw him, hearing his voice I was afraid I would get trapped again under him, as if I had been under some spell that would be reignited when he said some unknown magic phrase. Like I would be brought right back into the trance state, but I discovered his voice was like chewing glass.  “Caroline, is that really you? Sweet little doll, where have you been all these centuries? Come here, I need to hold you again,” He embraced me, his arms felt like a snake curling around me, his breath on my head stinging like wasps as he whispered, “I knew I’d hold you again. You belong to me.” From my sleeve, I removed my blade and stabbed him in the back with the very ritual blade he used on me centuries ago. I’d imbued it with a salve from an alien herb which caused paralysis. It was called “Etocnos” which translated means “Many Hands”, referring to the sensation that you are being held in place across your body. I had already tested it on myself to make sure vampires weren’t immune. No numbing, no absence of mind, sheer immobility. He nearly toppled onto me, but I pushed him aside in disgust, and he toppled face first to the tile floor. It echoed through his garishly oversized, empty white palace. He always liked the clean and pure. The liminal eeriness embodied his spirit.

“It’s hollow and ugly here. Just like you.” I crouched beside him and twisted my knife in his back. A strenuous moan pushed out of his lungs. I jerked the blade out again.

“Good, you can feel. It’s funny, I used to think you were untouchable. Not just immortal but invulnerable. After tonight, though, everyone will know you’ve always been vulnerable and weak, hiding behind a veneer of grandiosity.” I dragged my knife through his lavish clothing, cutting through his skin all the while. 

“I used to wonder if you ever loved me. If you did, how could you treat me the way you had? Your father abused you horrendously, and you hated him for it. But you’re just a watered down version of him, aren’t you?” His eyes seared with rage when I mentioned his father. I continued to cut until he was stripped naked, wearing only the gashes I left behind. He loathed to be naked, vulnerable in any way. 

“You’re no better than him, you just prioritized wounding my mind more than your dad would have.” My voice lowered to a whisper, “You were probably right though, when you told me I wouldn’t have survived what you survived. I barely survived you.” I pulled his arms above his head and stabbed the knife through his hands, pinning them together. A strange noise gurgled in his throat, the closest to a scream Etocnos would allow. 

“But recently I realized something. I never loved you. I was a child who didn’t know what love was, who wanted what every child longs for. A place to belong, a place to feel special. All you had to do was create that illusion for me, isolate me, and then you could do anything. I had no power to go against you, nor anyone else to turn to who wouldn’t redirect me into your possession. But you underestimated how insufferable you truly are, how repulsive and grotesque a creature you are once your charade was overplayed. HOW I CAN’T STAND A SECOND MORE OF YOUR UGLY FACE” I dug my nails into his cheeks and tore as hard as I could. The flesh came off alarmingly easy. Though I relished in that moment, the memory of the sounds and sensations still haunts me. The veins on his head bulged, and I pierced them with my nails, ripping at his face until I could no longer recognise him, like raw beef. Dark blood in his bulging eyes, I was repulsed that he was looking at me still, recalling with a flash the many years of condescending, sneering looks of disapproval, the cold and calculating beams which once had the power to subjugate me at a glance. I held both my fists high above my head, and brought them smashing down into his eyes. His body convulsed, his lungs attempting to scream, he barely managed to part his teeth and gargle a sound. The convulsions signaled my time was running short, but my attention had been drawn to the canines which he used to drain me when I was still mortal. I ripped them from his skull, my fingernail breaking off from the exertion. More convulsing.

“Don’t worry, my love, it’ll be over soon. Just one more thing I want you to experience before you die.” I pulled my knife out of his hands, and made sure to trace it hard against his flesh all the way down to his penis so he knew what was coming. I traced circles around the base with the blade, pressing harder each rotation, the convulsions building, I spun faster, no gushing of blood, just shreds of his flesh being flung off until finally I cut through, it fell limply to the floor. Kinsleon choked out a choppy muffled scream which would not end. 

“Shut up, cunt!” I said with quivering rage in my hateful tone as I ripped his head from his body. Finally he was silent, but his body and head continued to convulse. I waited for it to stop, horrorstuck because I had never seen a vampire in this state before, fearful that my own end would be as drawn out. If anyone was worthy, it was Kinsleon, but it didn’t look like him anymore. Now it was just a creature dying a horrific death at my hands. I felt dazed, as though this were all an unsettlingly vindictive dream. I wanted it to be over, but it wasn’t. I ran through his palace and after locating the kitchen I was (for the first and only time) glad that he was still anal retentive enough to leave matches and lighter fluid precisely where I had guessed he’d put them. I doused him in the stuff and set him alight, throwing whatever flammable object of his I could find to fuel the fire, until finally the building itself was in flames. I stood outside and watched, half expecting him to burst through the smoke holding his head aloft. But then I saw my reflection in the pond. I looked older. Before Kinsleon was dead, I couldn’t hardly pass for the age I had been when I was changed at 16. But I looked different, with shadows and bags around my eyes, and an adult’s body. A scrawny, angular, malnourished adult body that didn’t look particularly feminine, but it was better than a perpetual child. I laughed in shock and something resembling relief.

Killing the one who gave me immortality, or was it simply killing an immortal, has aged me? 

I wasn’t about to complain, it was sickening how often some older man would attempt to prey on me throughout the centuries, assuming I was some isolated teen. Before this moment of triumph over Kinsleon, I used the bloodshed of those predators to cope. It was the only time drinking blood felt righteous, fated even. It was the only reason being trapped in the unaging body of the doll Kinsleon used was tolerable. 

It was over. But it wasn’t, because life goes on even when you wish it wouldn’t. I drifted off again, numbing myself, avoiding feeling anything and everything. At some point, The Altari saw this pathetic drifter as an opportunity. To join them, or perhaps turn them. The latter seemed more likely. Another goddamn cult isolating and using me. The controlled, empowered rage which I had buried since killing Kinsleon had returned. 

A new purpose, finally.

A light knock on the door. Shit. No doubt they heard my embarrassing tantrum. What do I even say about it? ‘Oh don’t mind the mess, I was just blowing off steam so I didn’t rip the throats out of all you walking snacks. No no, I’m perfectly safe and stable now’

“Caro…?” Pevlok calls out gently.

“Uh, yeah, what’s up?” I say, instantly cringing at the forced casualness of it.

“Are you…well?” for once he seems at a loss for what to say.

“Yep.” it hangs unconvincingly in the air. He shifts his weight uncomfortably outside the door.

“Right then. I’ll leave you be, let me know if you need… assistance.” He stays there for a moment, waiting for my response. I try to think of one. He turns to leave as I say 

“Thanks.” quietly. I don’t know if he heard it. I feel like an unstable teenager whose parent doesn’t know how to help them. I begin shoving the heap of destruction away from the door awkwardly. There’s plenty of other rooms in the manor, no point in trying to clean it. I cleared enough room to slip out the door. I hear a collapse of debris behind me and the door closes itself.