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Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Fiction: "The Vampire Journals" by Nigel Zachary Courtwright - Chapter 1 (excerpt)

The Vampire Journals
By Nigel Zachary Courtwright
(Damien L. Thorr aka Nigel Zachary Courtwright)
Copyright © 1997 unauthorized reproduction prohibited

Chapter 1
The Kiss
Another night, another kill to make. I slowly cracked open the upper lid of my coffin in the sunlight-resistant chamber of my luxurious penthouse apartment that overlooked the city. I loved my penthouse apartment. Its twelve foot glass walls on the south exposed the loveliest view of lower Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty and the harbor, which I enjoyed on those rare dawns when a light darkness prevailed for a brief instant. It is one of the curses of the kiss, being deprived of the daytime, confined to the darkness of the night for eternity.
Still a bit groggy from the death-like sleep, I rose from my coffin and one at a time, I lit the tapers that adorned the room's walls and corners. It didn't take me long to be entirely coherent and realize it was a very nice evening with warm temperature and a clear sky. It only meant there would be a great number of potential victims out for feeding in the night.
The thirst for blood has no mercy. Luckily, or I should say, appropriately, being a vampire, it is very easy to overcome any mortal human due to my superior strength, speed and senses. As a chameleon, I camouflage and blend with the mortal population undetected. When they find death at my grasp, they never realize what I am. Even when I first approach, I do not have an abnormal or monster-like appearance like the vampires of fiction, as those as Hollywood idiots have created for years. I look human; like a handsome, young man in his mid-twenties, although I am 160 years of age. We never grow old. We never die.
With every awakening, I am hungry. Hungry for blood. Nothing else satiates. Only blood. I was arising each night emotionally enraged due to my immortal condition. I felt like a prisoner of life. I grew tired as the decades went by as one may go mad numbering each grain of sand. My wish was to be mortal. All I wanted in my life, before I was infected by the kiss, was to study law, get married, raise a family and eventually die in the end. Instead, I am cursed by the kiss and imprisoned in this hopeless world as an immortal blood-drinker never to see or feel the rays of the sun for eternity.
I am not entirely immortal. I can die if I am over-exposed to sunlight, fire or total dismemberment, although severing my head would suffice. Sunlight may not always kill me. When my skin comes in contact with sunlight, it burns painfully and violently. When I escape sunlight, I'm left with revolting scars that can last for weeks. However, I heal at a very accelerated rate. I can take a bullet or a blade and suffer no more than a temporary scar but I will die if I do not feed. I must have blood. I have often thought of self-demolition to end this eternal suffering of darkness that I call my life but, it isn't that simple. I am always overcome by the need to take blood. All there is for me is blood, to tear away at someone's skin and watch them die before me as I drink every last drop of their life force, to feel them quiver with fear at my death-bringing grasp and slowly surrender to death itself. That is all there is for me. Blood, nothing more. I have adapted to living in New York City in 1997. Things have really changed since the days when I was mortal, when this nation was young and technological breakthroughs still virgin, undreamed of. Science never ceases to impress me. If only my family were here to see it all. . . Especially my brother, he would've loved to see all these airplanes fly at incredible altitudes and speeds. He once told me about how it would be possible for man to fly someday, and I clearly remember laughing at him. Now, I feel as if he can mock me from his grave.
Most changes to civilization are favorable. The government has developed systems to alleviate some social problems, although not all can be taken care of entirely. There will always be homeless people on the streets. There will always be hunger and poverty. There will always be disease and there will always be crime. The streets run red with crime these days. Immigrants still flock from all over as they have since the turn of the century. Except now, the government takes care of them. The lazy, the criminals, the vermin, the ill, and the good as well now blend with the American population whereas in the past, they were left to starve in the streets.
I have seen many changes come and go. Everything from fashions to ordinary figures of speech. I have modified my English to sound current. English hasn't evolved very much in 160 years but there is a distinct accent that has evolved due to the blend of foreigners and their ways of speaking. Even my own accent has evolved and blends with today's trend. There are some acquired slang expressions that have been around for many decades and most people don't know they have been around longer than they realize. There is a small community of vampires in the city that I'm acquainted with. Every now and then, we talk about the phenomenon of social evolution, how the new replaces the old, fashions, music and whatever becomes trendy.
I have a good friend, Liam, that I've known since 1890, when Benjamin Harrison was president. Liam, an Irish immigrant, fell into the hands (and heart) of Annette. Annette is one of the older vampires in our community of immortals who, from time to time, crosses over a young mortal male she lusts for, transforming him into a creature of the night with her kiss. It was I who helped Liam adjust to the new vampiric existence and we've been like brothers ever since. It isn't easy for a new vampire to adapt to the new condition soon after the kiss. One must have a companion or coach to learn the new ways both emotionally and physically. He would sometimes say:
"Nigel, this is evil!"
My remark was always the same:
"There is no God, there is no evil. There is only blood."
Truly, I've never seen a sign of God or the Devil. I've never witnessed a miracle nor an angel. I do not believe a single word from the Bible is truth. If anything, religion is simply a false sense of hope for humanity's fear of death. I wasn't always certain about that. At the time religion was a great part of my upbringing, and I hadn't weaned myself from it all entirely even after all those years. However, I live, or exist by those words now. After all, there is only blood.
My heart was blackened with hatred, for eternity, it seemed. Hatred for mortals, for they could walk around in the daytime when I felt as a prisoner of the night. Hatred for man, for most everything he touches, he destroys. Hatred for women because they can be so heartless and play the game. I tried not to kill for blood at one time. I tried to only feed from blood banks in hospitals and experience the comforts of a woman. I found I was so wrong to trust them. I was used and betrayed, and it caused great sorrow. I never knew such suffering. I enjoyed ripping the bitch's heart out with my bare hands, and it gave me even greater pleasure to watch her die as I drank her blood.
All washed up and dressed in contemporary leather attire, I blew out all the candles for the evening. Of course, I had electricity. I enjoyed playing my compact discs at full volume on my stereo equipment. I just simply prefer the appearance of candlelight, and to avoid a major fire, I didn't leave them burning when I wasn't home. I carefully locked my main entrance and swiftly sped past fellow tenants and doormen undetected. I was in no mood for meaningless socializing with them on that evening.
Outside the building, I looked up and gazed at the night sky as no mortal can see it. My building, like most buildings in the city, pierced the sky. I'd let my hair grow long in the past couple of years so, my appearance reflected as a man in his early twenties, which serves well as a woman magnet to make my kill. Honestly, I couldn't fuckin' wait, as they say in this age.
Thirty minutes into my search, at the pace of mortals, I found myself on Ninth Avenue and 41st Street, one of the city's drug and prostitute infested areas. There are far too many low standard pornographic movie houses for the average person to care to count. I was propositioned twice before making my way into the door of a theater by these truly revolting people. Inside the theater, a violent rape scene was the center of attention on the giant silver screen. There were thirty people sitting in the darkened room, scattered at a distance from one another to manage some privacy for their masturbation or sexual acts. I could feel each one of them. I could sense their hearts and even their thoughts when I focused. I wanted each one of them. I wanted to feast upon all their precious blood. Even for a vampire, that is easier said than done. Times have changed. With the growth of the population of mortals, each birth and death is accounted for. The government documents everything these days. Under the new vampire ways, our un-written laws, we must dispose of the bodies of our victims. Trouble is, it doesn't always happen. Even I don't do that. To avoid having to go through so much trouble, I kill in these horrible places where people don't normally care what happens. I kill the vermin, the prostitutes, the pimps, the drug addicts, the drunks, the rapists, drug dealers, the child molesters, the thieves, the killers and all the scum of humanity. I kill the innocent as well. I don't discriminate. I am a monster, and humanity has monsters of its own. That is no secret.

This is from the first chapter of a novel written in 1997 by Predator guitarist Damien Lee Thorr, as Nigel Zachary Courtwright. The paperback novel is out of print but digital copies are available for a $20 wire transfer. Contact Thorr on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/thedamienator for information.

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