4 - Paul
Sometimes cat, sometimes mouse
Being in the dirtis supposed to be restful. It’s supposed to be like going home. It’s supposed to be like being in the only place you’ve ever known, and once you’re here, inside its soothing embrace, it should feel like you never left.
To be in the ground is to belong. To know oneself. To understand your place in the universe.
This has been true for all of my existence.
Right up until about… well… now.
Even though I know the transformation isn’t finished—hell, it’s so early in the process one might say it hasn’t even started—I have the urge to breathe air.
Air.
This is it.
The end.
I have a few moments of mourning after this realization. A true sense of loss. Like one might feel if they had lost a father.
Which is a good analogy because the dirt is the place of Darkness and the Darkness is our father.
I want to move on. It feels right. Like the time has come. But even I have doubts.
I can hear Josep under the ground. He’s breathing, though it’s very slow. And every once in a while, he moans. But mostly he’s quiet.
The scions, on the other hand, are very loud. They are screaming under the ground as the Darkness eats them alive. Not literally, of course, but that’s what it feels like the first time it takes over all your cells. When it squirms its way inside each and every one of them like parasitic worms. Because, after all, it is the Darkness that makes us vampires, not the blood.
I try my best to go to back to sleep. I know I need to let the process continue. But every time I try, I get paranoid that I’ll suffocate. The dirt feels like a heavy and great weight on my chest.
Which, when thinking logically, is how itshouldfeel. It just never has before now.
Something has changed.
I push up out of the dirt and come out into the open air, thinking about this change. It’s good. Change is good. Change is what I’ve been after all these centuries. I thought I had figured out what would happen to me once Ryet and Syrsee were fed and put in the ground and I became a ‘father.’
I had grand visions of this new me. I might have imagined myself on a throne, in a throne room so opulent it bordered on disgusting. Which doesn’t look anything like the rustic Montana lodge made of wood cut from the forest just a few dozen feet away. My vision had more of aGame of Thronesfeel to it. The whole Jon Snow storyline, actually.
It’s absurd. But that’s what I was imagining.
Me, on a throne, wearing fur, with minions, in a massive room.
I look down at myself.
Nope. I’m just a demon.
I could still pull it off, though. I look over my shoulder at the lodge. I’m like a hundred percent sure that inside one of those rooms there’s a bearskin rug. I could make this work.
The problem is, I’m not cold. I don’t need a bearskin rug coat.
Oh, my God, Paul. What the fuck?
You’re insane. These are stupid, stupid thoughts that have no bearing on anything. Think. Concentrate.Focus.
I take a deep breath, hold it for five seconds, and slowly let it out.
There. Better. Mind is clear and… nope. I’m still thinking about fur coats.
