Enter Vampyr

Chapter 2: A house of Chaos

For over a thousand years, I have watched empires rise and fall. I have watched strong men and women who had a great thing ruin it with emotions over pure logic. I have watched some try to use pure logic and end up making emotional decisions anyway.

Whatever the cause, one person defects, several others follow suit and it all ends in either ice or fire! There was once a Walachian prince who was made Vampyr by one of my progeny and they believed him to be the beginning of our story. It's just as well. He grew his power and went mad with blood lust: nothing of which makes a proper blood drinker survive for very long. More than likely he is a pile of ash somewhere.

Dalem liked him though. His wanton destruction was quite a feat and I believe it was Dalem's love that drove him mad with a desire for approval and a drive towards more and more of mankind's destruction. Bravo Tepes! You still can't scratch the surface of a monster in a laboratory breeding viruses and disease. It's easy to do when you can't die.

It always amuses me when humans dream up apocalyptic scenarios because several have already come about. To name a few in history, the bubonic plague in the 14th century and the more recent outbreak of Spanish influenza in the early 20th century. In any case, it has never hurt humanity to wipe the slate clean every once in a while. It seems to only help them to evolve.

Dalem is obsessed with apocalyptic scenarios, sitting in a dark room late at night over books and testimonies with those glowing blue eyes absorbing everything they can. He would bring about his own brand if he could but it is as he told me once, "humanity will destroy itself, we have but only wait and have fun with it till it's gone."

It was an odd statement for him because in the beginning of our partnership he was intent on destroying it all. He brought about a great flood, plagues and all sorts of murderous sycophants intent on destroying their own people only to find out that humanity was great fun to torture. God, as he decided was better left to suffer a long and torturous demise rather than the quick end of an Apocalypse.

It delighted him that people blamed God for all the suffering they went through: that He had been so arrogant to think he'd be worshiped for the sublime gift of life and creation without the scorn that it was imperfect. Still god insisted that it was all how it was meant to be and that his faithful were only more so because of the suffering. This only intensified our efforts to make him suffer.

Every time I drained a nun in front of a priest and then drained the priest in front of the cross, I felt the delight of the preternatural life force inside me: of Dalem's spirit.

In any case there was always a new force of good to fight evil and I began to realize that this battle was never about defeating the other side, it was about throwing off the balance and causing suffering because of the abnormality. How sweet it is when chaos becomes the world. How like the home that Dalem knew that God took from him when he made order.

"You understand," he said to me as I sat at a table across from him reading his book. He never looked up from it or went into detail about it but he expressed to me through emotion that I was to be recreating the world he left behind. Our true mission was not destruction but the re-creation of chaos that was before the universe and all things. It was here that Dalem found comfort. In Chaos, he was home.

Enter Vampyr

Chapter 1: Let there be light

In the beginning, there was only darkness and chaos, as well as the beings that existed with in it. For as long as it were since there was no time but only the present, the benefactor lived with the many along with the creator, mankind has deemed Hashem, God, Allah, Krsna, whatever you want to call him/her/it.

It is only apropos that beings such as you and as I was would want to lable things and be created in his image because that was exactly "His" argument.

"Brother, I beseech you. Darkness and existence is not enough," he said.

"Are you not happy, brother?" He replied.

"I am content as much as an existing being could be but what if things could change?"

"Why would any of us want that?"

"We would want it because it would be something new and different. It would be what I will feel life."

"Are we not sentient?"

With this came the great betrayal because none that existed in the black agreed to what He was about to do. A release of energy that was stored for no known amount of time since it did not exist forced time itself along with light into the universe. All of a sudden things were measurable and the last thing the benefactor said before your god installed himself a palace in the cosmos, appearing as a "nebula" himself was, "you fool. What have you done."

Often, I have found human beings like to see the binary because good and evil; light and dark; up and down make sense in the universe "He" created but you must remember that the beings called god, the devil, angels, spirits and everything else celestial were from a period before any of that existed. In nothingness, there is no concept of the binary. So the better of the descriptors is a differing of opinions.

The opinion of the Benefactor before history of mankind unfolded and at times during his frustration, is still his opinion, is that mankind and existence altogether was a mistake. He seeks to undo it and as this is not of a beneficial outcome to mankind, we see it as evil. The end of all things and nothingness is an unfavorable outcome because we want to think there is purpose to continued existence when in reality, there may or may not be a greater plan.

When the Benefactor came to me, I knew him as Dalem. A man whose eyes glowed with blue flame in the night and who would appear as thousands of beating wings when he wanted to really make an entrance. He had told me, however that it was all a parlor trick as reality was an illusion and that the blackness of the time before time existed and would always exist.

I remember a warm night on the sands of Egypt when Pharoah was not able to watch or comprehend the movements of the celestials on Earth. When I became an immortal.

"Dalem. Why do you walk among mankind if you want them destroyed so badly?" I asked.

"Walk among them?" He laughed. "I cannot interact with them dear Prótos. I am one that only you can see. This is not my world and therefore it is only one I can influence and not physically effect."

"I had but a number before you came and I am grateful for your naming me but why do you call me Prótos? What does it mean?" I asked

"One day, you will understand." He said.

"What do you mean?"

He seemed to burn as if he were sitting in a fire and he smiled through the heat mirage that was his face.

"I want to preform an experiment with you, my dear friend. How long have you been alive?" I moved to answer but he interupted. "You are still young and beautiful. I would like to say that you are probably around 28 years of age. What if you were to never age physically and existed for all time like me?" He asked.

"I'd ask you what's the catch?" I said.

He looked at me and made the rules up effortlessly as he relayed to me, "you must understand the darkness so you will never again see the sun or I will make sure that it surely burns you to death. Also, because you are part human even after I give you a part of me to make all of it so, you will have to feed off his creation. You will have to aid me in the destruction of the light and feed off the life of the creatures who hold it. You will feed from their blood as this is what he considers life. Do this and you will be given great power in the universe. Especially as you begin to accept that it is all a lie and "reality" itself is the illusion."

A Mobster Vignette

There was a dim blue light that flickered on and off at one end of the dock and a couple of yellow ones at the corner of two warehouses in front of me. One of the warehouses had a hose and had containers of fish all around it. Shipping containers and smaller goods were scattered about towards the ocean side of the dock; As if the workers had finished up their hours and just clocked out leaving most things unattended.

I stood next to a large shipping container and felt the tiny droplets of after hour sea mist kissing the stubble on my face. I had a nice, wide brim jazz fedora on but it would seem that mist permeates everything, perhaps even my soul. I wore a long beige overcoat and had on black, skin tight leather gloves.

There was a long wooden staircase leading down to the docks from the road above and looking up at it, I noticed the shuffling steps of my contact. He was a jumpy little shit, mid 30's and already thought he owned the world. Hell, he made it longer than most I guess.

He got to the bottom step and tripped a little.

"God damn! Shit! Fucking stairs..."

There was no need for him to swear like that but it did make me feel a little better. He walked out toward the middle of the dock and stood there rubbing his hands together from under a long black overcoat.

His eyes were blue; his hair brown and slightly Auburn in places. It had been greased up but was starting to fall apart in the damp sea mist air. He would pull it back and then continue rubbing his hands together.

I watched him through the cloak of darkness for a bit as I prepared. Walking up, I focused on the sound of my jet black wingtips hitting the boards of the dock.

"Hey! Don't get any closer" He said drawing his gun, a snub nose .38.

"Relax Tim. You're a bit jumpy tonight, ya?" I said.

Putting away his revolver, he said, "Oh. It's only you, D."

"Yeah, pal. It's only me."

Shuffling with something in his coat, he pulled out a curled up manilla envelope and handed it to me.

"D, it's fucking cold out here, you got the money?"

"Just let me take a look at the file."

I began reading through the file and looking at the documents.

"Do you remember when we were 12 and we smoked cigarettes in the little rock cave behind your house?"

"Yeah. What the hell is wrong with you? This ain't no time to be nostalgic," he said, looking both ways up and down the dock. "Say where's your car, D?"

"I got dropped off. Jimmy and the boys are coming to pick me up in a bit."

"How is old Jimmy? I always liked him. That's why I'm helping him now, you know?"

"Has anyone else seen this file, Tim?"

He paused and looked at me with his hands in front of him. "No. Why would you ask that? You know I pinched it, right after the Detective gave it to me."

"Good boy, Tim."

I put my arm around him and told him, "hey, let's take a walk, there's too much light over here by the warehouses."

"I agree. You know I can't get caught. I'm one step away from suspension for what I done for you guys. I think they may suspect something. You know, Amanda and the baby would..."

I pulled my .45 from my side, put it to his head and pulled the trigger in one swift motion.

Instantly, my face was covered in blood and brain matter but I felt tiny droplets of after hour sea mist kissing the stubble on my face. Using my cloth handkerchief which was also partially wet from the sea air, I wiped off the gun handle and tossed it in the ocean. Then I wiped off my face.

Using my foot, I pushed Tim's body into the deep water beneath the dock and watched him sink. I washed what was left of Tim into the ocean with the hose and started toward the road.

Noticing a flicker from somewhere down the dock towards the city, I decided to investigate. By a burn barrel, there was a bum warming his hands. No one else was there but he looked up and saw my face. He didn't even try to run as I used his own shirt to choke him to death; only a slight defiant wriggle to consummate his denoument. Jimmy was waiting by the road in the truck and I hoped in.

"Is it done?" Jimmy asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"Any witnesses?" He asked.

"No," I said.

"Good. WELL... poor Timmy. He was a good guy," Jimmy said.

"Yeah..." I said, looking out at the ocean and the moon just starting to peek out from the clouds.

Breaking the mold

Chapter 9: The difference between father and son.

The voice asked again.  [PLEASE ASSESS HUMANITY AND DETERMINE ITS VALUE TO THE TAYLORN.]

Inside my head the voice was so cold and logical.  Had I really been this way as a being of light and energy? Was it really who I may have to be again?

[DJINN, YOU WERE ALLOWED THIS EXPERIMENT TO EXPLAIN TO US WHAT IT IS TO BE A CORPOREAL HUMAN BEING.  WE EXPECTED RESULTS TO EXPLAIN THEIR CURIOUS BEHAVIORS.  PLEASE EXPLAIN NOW.]

The voice in my head boomed these demands.  No one could hear it but me. As they continued to yell, my Taylorn brain began to grow and try to come up with an explanation.  There had to be a quantifiable way to explain love, hate, fear, anger, FRUSTRATION!

[TAYLORN COLLECTIVE: THERE ARE THINGS WE HAVE FORGOTTEN...]

[WE KNOW ALL THERE IS IN THE UNIVERSE. THERE IS NOTHING WE HAVE FORGOTTEN.]

[YOU FORGET EMOTION. YOU FORGET FEAR.  WHAT IS THERE YOU HAVE TO FEAR WHEN YOU KNOW ALL THINGS?]

[WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND]

[YOU WOULDN'T.  THERE IS NO WHERE TO GO FOR YOU. EVEN DEATH ITSELF HAS NO MEANING TO YOU.  WHAT DO WE VALUE AS TAYLORN]

[WE ARE THE KEEPERS OF THE UNIVERSE.  WE HAVE NO VALUE SAVE EXPLORATION AND THE STUDY OF ALL THAT LIVES WITHIN THIS UNIVERSE]

[THERE IS A BEAUTIFUL SIMPLICITY TO LIFE THAT WE HAVE FORGOTTEN. A FEAR OF OUR OWN EPHEMERAL NATURE CRADLES OUR CREATIVITY AND VISION]

[EXPLAIN VISION, DJINN. THERE IS LAWS AND RULES OF NATURE BUT WHAT IS VISION?]

[VISION IS WHAT HUMANS USE TO FORGE A PATH. TO  TRY THINGS DESPITE THEIR PROBABILITY TO FAIL.]

I would not know it but later would be able to see it through the collective consciousness of my bretheren; My eyes, nose, ears and mouth had begun to bleed. My "spirit" or rather the Taylorn consciousness in me had begun to expand and the body I inhabited was unable to contain it. It would be like a sippy cup trying to contain a nuclear reaction.

[YOU DO NOT HAVE MUCH TIME, DJINN. YOU WILL SOON BE ONE OF US AND YOU WILL BE UNABLE TO RELATE TO THE HUMAN FORM.]

[DADDY!]

[WHA... WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME?]

[DADDY! THIS IS NOT A CONCEPT YOU WILL UNDERSTAND. LOVE IS UNNECESSARY WHEN YOU HAVE NO PHYSICAL BOND TO THAT WHICH YOU LOVE. YOU LOOK AT TIME AS AN ETERNAL CONSTANT AND WHY THEN WOULD YOU RELATE TO A CHILD? DO YOU EVEN REMEMBER THAT I AM YOUR CHILD? DADDY, THERE WAS ONCE A TIME YOU SMILED AND FELT A WARMTH FOR ME. THERE IS NO WARMTH IN THE DARKNESS OF ETERNAL SPACE. THERE IS NO BOUNDARY TO WHAT YOU HAVE TO CONQUER OR EXPLORE. YOU DON'T EVEN SEEK TO CONQUER AS THE CONCEPT WOULD BE FOREIGN AND USELESS TO YOU. MANKIND ARE CHILDREN! THE WORLD IS ALWAYS NEW AND EXCITING TO THEM. THEY BICKER OVER TOYS THAT GET BIGGER AND MORE COMPLEX AS THEY AGE BUT THEY WOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO KEEP THE KNOWLEDGE THAT WE HAVE ACCUMULATED BECAUSE THINGS IN THEIR WORLD ARE BOUND BY THE LIMITS OF THEIR FORM AND SUBSTANCE. IT IS THE SAME WAY THAT WE WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THEIR PALTRY BUT MEANINGFUL LIVES. THEY ARE CHILDREN. BEAUTIFUL AND SIMPLE, VIOLENT AND YET HUNGRY AND CURIOUS. WE ARE SO FAR BEYOND THAT, THAT WE CAN NEVER LOOK BACK AND RELATE. TO DESCRIBE TO YOU, DADDY, THE LOVE FOR A CHILD, I WOULD HAVE TO DESCRIBE TO YOU WHAT LOVE IS IN YOUR COLD IMMORTALITY. PERHAPS I HAVE MUCH TO LEARN THOUGH. I WILL REJOIN YOU SHORTLY AND BEGIN AGAIN.]

[YOU ARE WRONG, SON. EVER HAVE I HOPED FOR YOUR FULFILLMENT. I SEE YOUR LIFE DIFFERENTLY THAN THAT OF A MORTAL BUT FOR THEM I WISH THEIR ENTIRE SPECIES LONG LIFE. WE WATCH HUMANS WITH DISTANT "EMOTION." HOWEVER, WE CAN APPRECIATE THAT THEY HAVE IT. WE ARE ETERNAL, SO WE HOPED TO UNDERSTAND THROUGH YOU. YOU CANNOT EXPLAIN TO US ANY MORE THAN WE CAN SEE IN OBSERVATION. THIS IS A PITY BUT NOT UNEXPECTED. WE WILL PROTECT THEIR RACE AND PERHAPS, THROUGH YOUR FORCE REJOINING US, WE WILL BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND, JUST A LITTLE BIT.]

My body began to seize and I fell over in my wheel chair by the window of the Tall Oaks Nursing home. The official cause of death was massive cerebral hemorrhage. The doctors would tell each other they'd never seen anything like it before and write papers on it. A few of the nurses would even try to create failed religions around it.

Overall I rejoined my people and went back to keeping the universe the night I died, the night sky would glow with color that no one would ever understand or be able to explain.

The human experience is like that of a father and son. One thinks they bear the weight of the world, the other actually does. Neither will understand each other because neither are each other. That's okay. We all have our roles to play. Yours, human, is to make your world a little bit better, every day.

Sincerely,

Djinn, Second of the Taylorn collective.

The wayward Taylorian

Seeing her from across the room, her exquisite beauty moved me.  In forever, there is no beauty.  There is no pleasure or sin or pain.  I am nothing like the vampire of legend though: craven creatures who avoid death by stealing life.  Neither am I like the immortal master of magic who seeks immortality as a means to an ends.  Power, most of the time, being that end.

In any case, it amuses me what humanity thinks up to explain the immortal.  That we have to have some sort of driving force or reason to exist.  Sometimes, however, we do not. I could not describe to you the wisdom of the universe because you would never understand.  I could not describe to you what the feeling of being able to be everywhere at once feels like but as a literal part of what you call god, that is a piece of the knowledge I am imbued with. The burden, however is not the moments that I live as an angel: omni-present and part of a collective will that makes up existence itself; but the moments like now: where I sit on a crooked stool, in a seedy bar, staring across the room at a being they consider divine.

She has no idea, either. She came here as a being of pure light and energy and truncated to be in this form.  She sought a creature of the same strength and ability.  They both forfeit the existence they led, one on the path to experimentation, the other on the path to companionship.  A movie I once watched... or was it a show? Or a book perhaps? It doesn't matter. The media's character stated that sensory inputs can be adapted to what we expect to be true and in time, they are even missed.  That's the feeling an immortal feels for another as an, "angel." every once in a while, however, we get to be flesh and blood; which is the greatest gift and the most heavy burden.  So you can understand why I wanted to make the most of the time I had here.

Her flowing red hair was like fire in colors I'd never seen before. the curvature of her form was equally as impressive and enticing.  When you live among all creation you see patterns in the way of the universe and like fire or the fluctuating plasma of a living star, the human form is capable of such personality; especially in a vibrant woman of about 28 years of age.

The powers that be might punish me if they cared about such an encounter but I wanted to know her before I'd come here to do what I'd come here to do.  I moved across the room without a sound.  To be perfectly honest, I'd forgotten how to walk and so i surreptitiously floated across the floor to where I stood behind her and then sat down next to her.

She turned to me and looked me up and down.  In my human form, I was an echo of my angelic form in the best humanity had to offer.  I stood at around 6'5" and my musculature echoed someone who was bursting with vitality and health.  It is easier for an angel to put itself in a body that embodies perfection because it is what "god" designed angels to be.

She gazed up at me and said, "Well aren't you a tall drink of water?"

"Beg your pardon?" I responded.

"Well, there are 6 other empty stools at this bar and you happened to choose the one next to me. I don't think you are ashamed or looking for anyone or anything else," she said.

I let out a guttural seizure which I would later remember was a laugh, as I spoke, "No ma'am.  I am not looking for anyone else.  You are exactly the mo... person I am here to see."

She must not have noticed my slip because her eyes became hot with desire. "I am no easy ticket, mister.  I hope you know I won't go quietly."

"I wasn't expecting you to, my dear," I said. "Dolph."

"Karen," She responded. "Isn't Dolph one of those German names? Very abrupt and strong but to the ear it's almost offensive."

"I'd hate to offend you, Karen; However the consonance in the beginning of your name, could be construed to be just as perceivably vexing. To violate the human sense of dignity is rather simple in my humble opinion. One could even say that to assume the name that was more salacious, simply because of the advantage one would get from having it, is the work of psychopaths and sycophants."

"Easy tiger," She said, "you got the win.  No need to go in for the kill."

"Ah but the hunt always ends with the kill, doesn't it?"

She looked hard into my eyes and I may have used a bit of angelic power to put her racing mind at ease but as she settled back into her seat, she said, "well you are something special, ain't ya?"

The streets were empty when we left the bar and there was a warm fog rolling through the quarter.  It might have been a perfect hunting time for any preternatural beast of the night but I was no beast and I was not one they'd get anywhere near were they to choose to let themselves be known right now.  No trick in the movies, television shows or anything else matches the power of existence itself so I walked the slender street without fear.

When we got to her apartment I held her in my arms. Her green eyes beamed through the yellow street lamp outside her window and the vacillating colors of the various lights permeated the room like fireworks.  She attacked me like a hungry lion and I would bring the force right back. the sensation of her dress slipping to the floor, the sound it made as it slid off her body like covers tucking one into bed. The silken feel of her skin as my fingers felt pins and needles as they drew across it.  Not to mention there was the slight bit of floating just off the ground as I held her in my arms and kissed her body from every direction.

The great din of her passion was the loudest noise of the whole thing.  Her hot breath on my neck as we moved into each other like bantering Beatrice and Benedict, was more intoxicating than the whiskey I had sampled earlier that night. The undulating passion of the night and its glowing lights matched ours with such reverberation that it felt like a great win of some battle for true freedom. As we reached the climax of her pleasure and mine; as the world seemed fluorescent, I took her from the body she'd inhabited and let her slip away dignified into death.

The coroner would later determine it a heart attack but the spirit that left her would remember who it was as it had lived through many millennia of thoughts and experiences.  The unfair part of this death was that the person who she was as a human being was gone.  Everything that made her exciting and new was dead.  Immortality comes at a cost: immense knowledge and cosmic understanding but the trifles that make life so interesting: feelings and curiosity, fade away.  She was now the immortal that her race had become when they converted themselves to energy.  She would not die a human being but her "spirit" would grow and multiply in the form of energy and become as it was before she stole this human life: pure energy and the consciousness of a Taylorian.  That however, is someone else's story to tell.

Breaking the mold

Chapter 8: humanity

In my slumber, I communicated with my people and was able to expand my mind as wide as it would go; however, during my days, I had no memory of my Taylorn existence. Even now, only bits and pieces come back to me.

It is strange how memory works. We can go our entire lives as angry young men and in the impotence of dementia, we seem to only remember the most poignant of memories.

To give an example, it has been years since the dark times in the human body but I remember a girl. I was 10 or 11 perhaps but she ran around the playground with flowing wavy, blonde hair. She wore a pink windbreaker and smelled of strawberries.
In retrospect, I'm not sure if she actually smelled of strawberries or if it was simply my favorite of the human smells but she was perfect in the light of the dawn. That mid-morning light when children go to play without the luxury of complicated playground equipment and rather a wood chip floor with a metal ceiling to accompany their demure fragility.

There she was and there I was and she was in love with another little boy as I stood on the outside looking in. I was the child who couldn't remember how to ask to go to the bathroom in Spanish so the Spanish teacher let me wet my pants. I was the kid who put periods between words as I had not mastered the intricacies of the English language and yet... Ah, the immortality of that bubble in my shapelessness now.

I remember as a young man, I once stopped at a stop light and in a day dream, I accidentally unlocked a smidgen of my Taylorn consciousness.  For a moment, not only did I feel like I didn't belong in this world but I felt disassociated from my body as well.  Think of a time that you were at a party that some friend had dragged you to and then left you with people you didn't know or recognize.  Now what if one of those people was yourself?

Life was a blur to me. So much violence and recklessness. I remember trying to destroy my mind with drugs as a young man. The strain of philosophy and complex algorithms I did not understand weighed on my mind as they had on my form as an energy creature.

I endured great pain at the hands of mortal villains because of my awkwardness. I simply tried to enjoy the fruit of humanity without focusing on the bitterness of it and was often ostracized for my troubles. Some line in the Sand that humans would always draw between each other and then tell me that I couldn't cross it because it might make someone uncomfortable.

As years passed in my human form I crammed myself full of everything they had to offer and it was never enough. Books seemed dull and they missed their obvious motifs; equations missed a denominator or variable which would inevitably unlock the universe to them. I never shared with any of them my findings. I realized that they were too young and in my 73rd year of life, I began to awaken. My human mind began to die and with it, it released my Taylorn thoughts more and more.

The irony is I would sit by the window looking out into space and would secretly be imbued with such knowledge of the universe, even if I could relay the message to younger humans, they would never understand.

This race was too focused on its selfishness on the things that made them different to ever understand how they could be pure energy that observed the laws of strict relativity.

In my wheel chair, I sat by an open window. A nurse sat by close at hand. I felt the breeze and heard a voice. It was Taylorn and called to me for an assessment of humanity.

The swoon of war

The preternatural fog came rolling in over the hills from the cannon fire still shelling the mainland over the not too distant hills. Fuille stood next to the door in a shed that barely stood next to a half-standing house.

Through the fog of war and poison gas, shock troops came with flame throwers and bayonets burning and stabbing or shooting the survivors of this recently shelled village. Fuille had lost his pistol and his rifle in the struggle of escaping an enemy platoon but he still held strong to an 18 inch survival knife. He considered it lucky as he was Jewish and the number 18 was sacred to him. It was his pride and joy and he expected it to save him today.

The extermination squad drew nearer as Fuille's heart began to beat harder till it felt like it would explode. Sweat ran down his exposed back from where a grenade had burned his shirt off from the collar to his trousers.

The only light in the air was red with flecks of yellow flames and he could see them now as he ceased sharpening his knife to conceal the noise of it. The black gas mask shown through the dim light as the majority of the enemy passed by the shed where Fuille was hiding.

A few troops stood around smoking a cigarette, laughing and breaking glass and rock. They spoke in a foreign tongue that stung his ears with hatred. The soldiers began to move off and he slid down the shed door in relief as he heard their voices moving off.

Fuille looked into the void of the shed and pondered how everyone he knew was likely dead and possibly just missing. He pictured their faces and began going through his memories of them and let out a small whimper and a tear before tightening straight up.

Someone was still there. Fuille could hear his foot falls among the sound of flames coming towards the door. As the door slowly squeaked open, Fuille could see the front of the gas mask which he grabbed and broke the glass in the eye holes, pulling the soldier's back against his chest.

Plunging the 18 inch knife under the soldier's ribs slowly, he began to struggle and the gas mask slipped off. Underneath was a boy of about 20. His innocence caused a swoon as Fuille spoke, "shhh shhh shhh."

The life slipped from him and Fuille held him like a father holds a sleeping babe. Romantic wasn't completely the feeling but there was a romance to death. As Fuille guided him to the floor, he held him and cried in fear, anger and remorse for humanity.

Fuille sat in the mud holding the dead body in his arms and in what he would later find was mental shock, he drifted into the darkness holding his victim.