Don't it always seem to go...

The evanescing beauty of dusk is never quite as enamoring as when you know it will be your last. As I sat on a tree stump at the edge of a newly culled field; in the void of the Pennsylvania back woods, I thought of the sterility I had accepted and called to my being.

For weeks, my apathy had been growing and, as some young men do, I had begun to think that nothing in life was worth having. Death seemed to be the plausible response but I had the tenacity to fight the dying of the light because that was what was expected of me in my frame of mind.

I had ploded through the woods countless nights with the apathetic scorn of existence and, as my feet were pricked by the roughness of nature and my eyes met the scampering of mindless little cogs of nature's device, I swooned in thoughts of being bested by some nefarious hooligan bent on the destruction of all in his path or the preservation of his own existence. I felt the warmth in my spine and all around me. I saw visions of my monster swinging a knife at me as I laughed and lunged at him, doing as much damage as I could while narrowly avoiding death. I wanted death to be thrust upon me and I wanted danger in it. I wanted death to meet me face to face like an old nemesis come to tell me we could finally be friends.

In the endless darkness of the clearing beyond a fallen oak and severeal large shrubbery; not to mention half a dozen hydrangia and bushes with various names that began with, "poison," I invoked the angel of death as I shreiked, "come and find me you wretched bitch!"

The forest was silent but it had an answer and just as I sat down on a tree stump, she appeared before me from the limbs above.

"I am by no means death, son, but I believe I can help you."

In my head, my mind went over my recent exploits with accelerated furvor: women who could not excite my phalice, drugs that seemed to induce more boredom than they created beauty, silence immeasurable in tasks innumerable! In that moment my mind felt the anxiety and seemed to throb as if a din shook all thoughts to death.

"I hear your pain, Joshua, and I am here to answer your prayer."

I was speechless and seemed to be unable to speak even if I wanted to as if some preternatural power had grabbed my larynx and refused to let it vibrate.

"I am Anthiel and some might call me a sprite, others call me the accursed but my favorite title is merciful death."

Her features were soft and her skin as pail as a new bride's gown. Her eyes, however; those demonic eyes were the only life in this creature that stood naked before me. Those eyes glowed green as the trees and occasionally flashed red as satin. The strangest quality about her was one that could only be felt in the pit of ones stomach, not really a stomach pain as fear is; that mortification was plastered in the near frozen beads of sweat on my neck, but my stomach felt butterflies. The anticipation one feels right before they jump from a clif into the waves below or the quarry that welcomed them with the rush of existence. She was fecund with the thrill of life while being somehow infrangibly tied to the finality of death.

"You are at a crossroads, child and you have found the den of a god. I can give you the death you seek. I could even let you remain a child until the real death takes you from this earth enfeabled and broken and old.  The third option is you can grow. You can become as strong as I am or even more so, if you can successfully battle the horror of time. The choice is yours..."

As I felt the grip on my speech weaken, I interrupted her, saying, "Yes! Yes. I want your immortality! I want your merciful death! Give me your hatred, VAMPYR!"

"I see you've heard of me and think you know what I am but you have no clue what you will endure in the existence of endless nights and endless dungeons of immortality.  You may even be hunted, you will be tried and tested, you will not feel the exhiliration of a heartbeat anymore and you will not experience excitement the same way. Do you know what you ask?"

"Yes, I..."

"Silence! sub-primal creature. You will have a day after the bite until the poison spreads and you will be the form you are now, permenantly. After that, you will hide from the light of day for that which cleanses will kill you: fire, sunlight and god will be your enemy until you meet them with open arms and open heart. I will tell you what he told me before he cut the wings from my back and cursed me to feed off the blood of mortals forever, he said, 'Anthiel! You deny my divine plan?'
'Father! I beg you not to give free will to likes of man while your angels suffer slavery to him!'
'Your will is my will!'
'My will is to serve a merciful god and man deserves the mercy of servitude over severance.'
'Then you shall see what it means to be man! And you shall be forced to make decisions over life and death and will as I do.'
From there, a heavenly host destroyed my wings and cast me down to earth with a hunger, I had not before felt. When first I drank of man's blood, my species propagated and has grown or killed from 8,000 BCE on."

"I understand the burden."

With my comment she became enraged. She floated into the air and her hair blew back as she shook the earth and moved the wind with divine fury.

"Oh do you now? Is your tie to god gone? Does he not hear your mortal prayer? Be as I am and suffer! Suffer the pain of immortality without light!"

With that she bit down into my neck like a poisonous serpent, coiling her evil around me like some dark shroud. The pain was so immeasurable I passed out and when I awoke, I sat on the same tree stump, at the edge of a culled field in Pennsylvania. The evanescing beauty of dusk is never quite as enamoring as when you know it will be your last.