Undying Souls
"I'm not insane! Seriously man, you don't understand! You all need to leave or something terrible is going to happen! Please, please believe me…" a man sobs.
"Try to calm down Mr. Peterson, there is nothing to worry about. I assure you that we are all perfectly safe." a doctor responds in a soft tone.
"No, you're wrong, you've got to believe me. Somebody has to believe me!" Mr. Peterson desperately pleads. Just then, the door to the padded room opens.
A tall man wearing a grey business suit walks in. "I'll take this from here, Doctor." he insists. The Doctor leaves, and the man sits down in the Doctor's place.
"Mr. Peterson, my name is Harry Grant, I am a Professor of Psychology and History at Cambridge University, specializing in Ancient Occultism."
The room is silent. Professor Grant can tell Mr. Peterson is in contemplation, so in the meantime the Professor looks at his Holographic Laptop, or HL, pulling up the file he was sent days ago of Mr. Peterson's diagnoses: Clinical Vampirism. In the year 2412, such cases have been unheard of for centuries, so any academic would drop any prior commitments to be in Harry's position. After skimming the files, he begins to take notes:
Subject's full name is Stephen Peterson, a 26 year old male, about 5"10. He has black hair, green eyes, and is surprisingly tan, indicating his current psychological state is recent. It's also noteworthy that according to his last medical records from 3 months ago, he was at a healthy weight of 180 pounds. Currently he is at 167. Naturally he hasn't substantially eaten, likely because of his obsession to drink human blood which has formed quite unexpectedly. What circumstances led this once normal man to the brink of madness? Hopefully I will find out.
A few minutes pass, and Stephen finally breaks his silence, "Why are you here, to study me, or tell me I'm insane, and that I need therapy like the Doctors do?" he says with a displeased tone.
"I'm simply here to listen, and I don't think you are insane." Professor Grant responds sincerely.
"So you mean to tell me you might believe me?" Stephen replies in doubt.
"I believe so, if you tell me your story." Professor Grant insists, pressing record on his HL to capture audio in the hopes that Stephen would comply.
"My story… It began two months ago, in Paris, France. It was a chilly autumn day, the sky was overcast and drab, but for me even the sunniest days held no joy or beauty anymore." Stephen recollected.
"You were depressed?" Professor Grant asks.
"Yes, for quite some time." Stephen replied. "Although I had become successful and wealthy, things were always boring. I tried spending my money recklessly, but it would accumulate interest faster than I could spend it. So then I turned to experimentation, first sexual, then I began using drugs. In the end, none of it changed the way I was feeling – and all I wanted was to feel
something. In my attempts to feel anything I delved into the arcane beliefs of the past, seeking out modern practitioners who might be able to thrill me with the supernatural. As you should know, occultism waned very long ago, so I fully expected to find no one; and if I did, leave disappointed by their hoax. I almost gave up, but in the last week that I was still checking for replies on the old websites, I was contacted by a woman who claimed she was a five thousand year old vampire; the last of her kind. She wanted to meet me, and I agreed to do so…"
***
I met her at a hotel along that ancient river Seine, she said her name was Jessica. When I entered her room and examined her, she looked normal. Her hair was blonde, she had green eyes, pale skin, but not abnormally so. She looked like she was 24, her height was about 5"2. Nothing about her made me suspect she might be a vampire, she wore normal clothing, her room had nothing out of the ordinary, and when she smiled at me, her canines were not abnormally sharp. Rather than leaving then, I decided to at least let her speak.
"My appearance surprises you?" she asked.
"Well, no. I didn't really think it'd turn out to be true." I responded
She walked closer to me, and ran her finger sensually down my chest. To be honest, I found her very attractive, although I didn't believe her claim. She stripped me of my clothes, and I did the same to her. She pushed me onto the bed, and we began to make love, but it didn’t last long. In the midst of the pleasure, I felt a sharp pain on the left side of my neck.
“You... bit me?” I said in disbelief, as I pushed her off me.
“You are the first man in thousands of years who has sought me. Your entire life you have felt alone, devoid of emotion, but here tonight you felt your soul stir for me. You may not believe me now, but trust in what you felt, and you shall see the truth. When you have lived as long as I, you begin to understand that life is but a cycle. When a person dies, they are reincarnated, sometimes hundreds, even thousands of years later – it is inevitable. Just as life is reincarnated, another truth is that there are people who are meant to love each other for all eternity; but cruelly, they are deprived from ever meeting again to find true happiness. The odds of them being reincarnated at the same time is so low, it is a near impossibility." She told me. "We were meant to be together, Stephen. Your name was once Aldwin, and mine Eva. Two years after our marriage, you were fatally wounded in battle, but you did not die. You were once a member of the Scholomance, and used your knowledge of the dark arts to gain immortality, but at a cost: to sustain your immortal life, you had to take life by consuming blood. For a time all was well, but I aged and you did not. You tried to find a way to give me immortality without the consequences, but the answer eluded you. Meanwhile, your bloodlust increased, at first you were able to feast on the blood of animals, but the blood of humans proved too much of a temptation. The villagers attacked our home, suspecting the strange deaths were your doing. They killed me, and even your powers could not revive me. Five thousand years later, you discovered my reincarnation, you turned me, and then reawakened my memories of my past life with you. Tragedy struck again, however. You accumulated enemies, and they killed you. But I survived, and now we are reunited again!" Jessica recollected, sincerely holding me. Despite her story, which she seemed to truly believe, I didn't believe it. I put on my clothes and left the hotel, retiring to one of my estates in the 16th arrondissement. I tended to the area on my neck that she bit me, and then rested.
I went back to America shortly after. I tried to forget the events of that day, I was not bitten by a vampire, Jessica was merely a crazed woman obsessed with the past, I thought. But as hard as I tried to push away any doubts, I began to feel an unsettling feeling looming over me with each passing day. I began to notice that I would eat but still feel hungry. I could go out during the day, but my schedule began to shift to a more nocturnal pattern, and this felt more comforting somehow. I reasoned these were coincidences; I would not accept the notion that I was really turning into a vampire. However, I began to feel an intense craving for blood that could not be remedied. I knew if I succumbed to the bloodlust, the transformation would be complete, and that is why I sought help.
***
"And that led you here?" Professor Grant replied.
"Well at first, I tried finding any information I could suggesting that the transformation could be reversed. All I found was there is a way to prolong the transformation by not drinking blood." Stephen said depressingly.
"So overall: you are a pseudo-vampire who opted to restrain yourself in a physciatric ward to prevent the inevitable?" Professor Grant asks.
"I'd hoped there would be someone who would believe me and search for a way to help me, whatever that answer might be!" Stephen lashed out in anger.
"You never considered the consequences of the danger of your morbid curiosity? What made you go to France if it wasn't simply for the very thrill that you claim occurred? And why not just accept your fate?" Professor Grant pried further.
"Why did I run?" Stephen responds in a deep tone, his muscles tensing and his face becoming red. "I was afraid, scared of what I would become, because there is some part of me that desperately wants it" He maniacally answers.
"And you want everyone to leave because you believe it's only a matter of time before you escape this room?" The Professor inquires.
"Yes." Stephen replies while in a fit.
"My professional advice: give in. You obviously don't believe that these restraints will hold you forever. And nobody here will believe your tale. The sooner you accept your fate, the easier things will be." Professor Grant instigates while turning off his HL. He calmly gets up from the seat, and leaves the room where Stephen is struggling, as if he is having an internal battle – his humanity fighting the call for undead immortality.
Outside the room Harry finds a few of the doctors. "That guy sure is crazy, huh?" one of them jokingly says, and the other doctors laugh.
"You have no idea." Harry says with a smile, walking to the elevator at the end of the hall. He rides it down to ground level, and walks out of the ward out into the brisky street. There he walks by a woman with a lab coat who touches his shoulder, he falters a bit in his steps, but swiftly regains his balance. He looks around in a confused daze.
"Where… am I?" Henry mutters. He looks at the building behind him and realizes his location. "Strange, I don't recall coming to Gracie Square Hospital.” He thinks to himself. As he makes his way to his nearby hovercraft, the woman on the street looks at the hospital with a smile.
