The three little (Mobster) Pigs

It’s a rough world for an animal, especially when there’s so much competition.  You got Tommy the rat, Snoop the dog, Charley the squirrel, Don the stool pigeon, and about a hundred other wise guys gunning for one thing, their own damn hides.  The unspoken rule though, is nobody talks to the cops.  Those wolves would rather eat you than give you your due process.  I can’t blame ‘em on account of our revolving door prison system but hey! That’s just LA.

To begin my “tale of woe,” I’ll just tell you right off the bat I’m telling it posthumously.  In other words, I’m dead kids; nails in the coffin, six feet under dead.  I hate it when wise guys tell a story where they make you guess whether they got knocked off and you know the truth of the matter; they did.  You found the fucking bloody manuscript at their desk, you know they’re dead but they add this unnecessary drama to make their story more exciting and leave it on their desk when you come to shoot them between the fucking eyeballs.  Meh, what do I know about writing, I’m a fucking pig.

Freddy the Pig.  I run a butcher shop and a couple other businesses around town with my two brothers, Eddy and Teddy.  I know what you’re thinking about the rhyming names and this being a story book tale but forget it.  Fredrick, Edward and Theodore were our god given names and the rest is for street credit and appearance of a united front.  Our last names?  Prosciutto.  Together they call us the three little pigs because of account we make our money in pounds of flesh.

I remember the night I died clear as crystal.  Eddy was working down town at the butcher’s shop; Teddy was around the corner at the packaging plant and me?  Well I was across town at the slaughterhouse.  The wolves had our scent and they were out for blood on account of Teddy being a dumb mother fucker and killing a cop.  I had the body at the plant and along with some pig and cow intestines was ready to turn it into beef bologna.

Inspector Mike Wolfe was on duty that night and he had rounded up a posy of LA’s finest to take all of us three in for racketeering, armed robbery, various organized crimes and multiple accounts of murder.  Wolfe was the kind of guy who mirrored guys like Wyatt Earp and Rooster Cogburn.  You either gave up or got shot up and Eddy knew it when he heard the knock.

They hit Eddy first.  Pure little Eddy was no problem at all.  He didn’t even have a leg to stand on, on account of the doors at 1^st and Main being made of glass.  It was 11 o’ clock; closing time and Eddy had just locked up. He was cleaning behind the door when he heard the knock.

“Eddy the pig!”

No response from Eddy as he cowered behind the meat case in fear.

“EDDY THE PIG!” said Officer Wolfe louder this time and with agitation in his voice and his finger on his trigger.

“Look, Eddy, we can do this the easy way.  You open the door and I arrest you or we can do it the hard way where I have to blow the door down.”

Still no response from Eddy.

Wolfe stood back from the door and fired two shots into it, shattering the glass and giving him about three steps between him and the meat case.  Eddy got off a round directly into Wolfe’s vest but it was too late because Wolfe always shot for the head.  After the shots had been fired by those two men and Eddy was on the floor, all hell broke loose. Those cops ate him up as they sprayed the meat case till there was probably nothing left of Eddy when they heard Wolfe’s yelling, “Hold your fire, ya mooks!”

They took a lot into evidence and then a small contingent of them moved on down the road to Teddy.

They came up to the establishment with sirens blazing and lights on.  They wanted Teddy to know they had come for him.  This was not meant to be a blood bath but it had to be.  Teddy wasn’t one of us three little pigs to just lie down and take it.  That’s why I had the dead body of a cop ready to be turned into lunch meat.

Knocking on the wooden door to the processing plant, Teddy was sure he was safe.  Wood is stronger than glass and he had about 6 pad locks on it between him and that Wolfe.

“Teddy the pig!”

“Suck my big, fat dick you scuzzle butt, hairy faced whore, Wolfe!”

“Teddy, that hurts my feelings but you will open the door… even if I have to blow this place up!” said Wolfe.

Readying a Browning M2 that he mounted on the railing, Teddy was ready to obliterate anything that came through that door.

“Teddy, I know the kind of toys you like to play with and this place you’re holed up in is made of sticks compared to what I got for it,” said Wolfe

Teddy drew back on the lock to load the machine gun and said, “You hear that?  That’s a fucking browning M2, Wolfe.  You come near the inside of this place and I’m going to roll you like barrel full of nothing!”

“Teddy, I think we got you out gunned out here.  I got some heavy duty stuff.  You sure you want to do this dance again?”

Teddy knew Wolfe on a personal account of five years prior when Wolfe had gotten shot in the leg and Teddy still had a bullet lodged in his shoulder somewhere near the tendon.  In this moment, Teddy thought about that night and made the conscious decision to shoot first.  It was glorious!  If it had been a movie, you would have heard, “Ode to Joy” while chunks of brick and mortar spat out at the wall of police officers like hundreds of arrows flying over the battlefield of some ancient china man’s war. 

You could see that even though the smoke grenades went into the building and the grenade grenades blew away the cat walk that vicious Teddy the pig stood on, he kept shooting all the way to the ground. The cops bodies were riddled with bullets and pieces of them littered the meat packing plant’s floor till the animal parts and these wolves parts were indistinguishable.

The alpha Wolfe, however was unscathed.  He had let his men go in and gotten not a scratch on him.  As he looked about at the men lying on the floor in pieces, he came over to Teddy’s body, which at this point was laughing and choking on the blood that gurgled out of his shot up body.  The Wolfe in his rage, drew his knife from his utility belt, cut the broken bullet proof vest from Teddy’s front and stuck the knife into Teddy’s gut like a stuck pig.  Teddy, all that time, continued to laugh in Mike’s face and spit his blood all over Mike Wolfe’s snout until Mike twisted the knife and Teddy the pig was no more.

It was my turn at last.  The last little pig and the boss little pig.  I was the smart one; the most animal of them all because I could maximize my death toll without the destruction.  My door was made from solid steel on account of this being a slaughterhouse and the meat needed to be immediately chilled.

Wolfe wouldn’t knock on this door.  Even if he did, he knew I wouldn’t hear the response and his words wouldn’t get through the raw metal.  So he called the plant’s phone, hoping he could reason with me and avoid as many casualties as Teddy cost him.

“Hello?” I said

“Freddy, it’s Mike Wolfe.  Your brothers are dead and we have your place surrounded.  Your brother cost me a lot of men and as you’re the boss, I’m sure you can cost me just as much.  So let’s both be smart, I know you didn’t kill that cop and the one who did is already dead.  You can beat the charges so why don’t we just talk after you let me in.”

I heard his words and part of me was scared but the dominant part wanted revenge for my flesh and blood that the Wolfe and his Wolves had killed.  It was that part that uttered in rage, “not by the hairs on my mother fucking chin, you dick!”

From the other end of the line, I heard, “Ok, take it out, before the door blew open with the force of C4.  Cops in riot gear came flooding in as I hid in an office on the first floor.

Mike Wolfe, also dressed in armor, yelled out on the factory floor, “little pig, little pig where are you?”

They taunted us, I suppose, on account of all the “good cops” we’d taken from them.  I didn’t give a Tommy the rat’s ass.

“Come and get me you shit cop!”

“Fan out!”

25 cops accompanied Mike Wolfe that night and 10 of them I wounded and 15 of them I killed using Gurkha tactics I’d learned while I was stationed in Burma during the war.  You see, Eddy had no idea what he was doing so he used this little snub nose P.O.S. to protect himself; Teddy knew what he was doing but with Teddy is was always a light show.  The boy liked big toys because he thought he was invincible.  Me?  Well I knew the trick to mass slaughter was deception, sneaking and a knife with a sharp edge.  It was ironic that my life should be ended by another knife just like Teddy’s was.

                When the backup arrived, Mike Wolfe was cleaning off his blade and intensely staring at my Kukri. Officer Roger Cub from the 5^th precinct stood with him and, disgusted caught a glimpse of my blade.

“I’ve never seen such an un-American piece of garbage as this knife, have you?” said officer Cub

“Got the job done,” said Wolfe tossing it at my corpse.

“What are you going to tell the papers about how you lost 22 cops tonight?” said officer Cub.

“The story of the Prosciutto brothers… The story of the three little pigs,” said Officer Wolfe.

Pain Case

                                             Part III:


My soul is quiet
my body retaliates
yet, I feel nothing.

In my training, I have acquired certain skills that make me trained to kill with precision and indecision for the betterment of the empire of the sun.  I will deny my existence to those who catch me and would rather die with honor than sell out my country.  Therefore, in the eyes of the world, I work alone and with only myself to blame for the destruction I cause.

To kill someone in a tortuous way, one simply needs to cut the cerebellum from the nervous system at the bottom of the skull in the back.  This can be accomplished with a swiss army knife but I would hardly debase my skills by using something so primitive.  This is why my government has honored me with a physical upgrade, they call an ocular implant.  All of a sudden I was able to move quicker and know the heartbeat of time and space myself...

In one beat of my own heart, my movements could match and overcome that of an inferior foe and everyone became inferior.

To initialize my story, I will tell you of my very first mission.  As I said before, a small knife, inserted at the bottom of the neck and twisted will sever all nerves and cause instant paralysis as one begins to watch as their lungs and heart stop working.  Depending on the point of insertion...  But death is not the best choice for getting information.  To do that, you want a similar instrument but less of an instrument of laceration and more for puncture.  You want a nerve toxin.

The night was quiet as I remember and the sweet stink of cherry blossoms filled the air in Shinjuku park. He sat on the bench waiting nervously for a friend that he would never meet with.  I waited in the shadow of a Himalayan Cedar for the best cover I could muster.  As time ploded on like a Brahmin walking on coals, I realized the target would never show and with my enhancement, I calculated a trajectory that put my needle into his spine in a shorter time than it would have taken him to stand up.

As I dropped the plunger he did not have the time or sufficient power to scream before I pulled him back into the tree leaving an undisturbed vignette. The nerve toxin incapacitated him in a fraction of a second as it coursed directly into the CNS and PNS control center.  He was not only paralysed but, as I had injected it close to the man's reticular formation, I imagine he instantly fell asleep.

We meander the quiet corridors of the blackened abyss and come to a light in the base of a dismal abode.  I strap him to a chair and calculate pressure and amounts of pain a body can endure, determined in synaptic impulses, before he dies or loses consciousness.  The equations are complex but I have been given the brain of a computer to complete the necessary details.  It's so easy as I throw him in a rusted out shell and fill it with salt water.

"Eventually, you will die here Mr. Hisagi, but first you will tell me a few things.  First, Why you wish to alert the Americans of our remilitarization? And second, why you are such a dishonored scum to betray your own people?"

"PLEASE! I..."

"黙れ 豚！."

He remains quiet as the ballet begins.  In my mind, I hear the beauty of war; the sound of cannons, both musical and explosive, and the screams of people shouting "no," as my ancestors have bayonets rammed into their guts by white men who know nothing of honor.

"檜佐木さん," I continue, "You do not deserve the luxury of a true Japanese name, therefore, I will call you Mr. Smith."

He begins weeping like a little girl as I cut the first shallow slice into his skin with speed so swift and shadows so dark, it seems no more than a blur from the darkness to him.  I see the room as clearly as day with my upgrade and ask him with condescension, "Mr Smith, who is your contact to the United states?"

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

"We know who you are and we know what you've taken."

"I took nothing! I am only a low level government employee.  I serve papers but I never would observe anything!"

"A small concession.  We're making progress!"

Swiftly I cut two more lacerations in his skin as the salt water begins to seep in and burn him with malevolence.  The upgrade has given me the ability to be so far detached from the moral compass I used to have that I find it splendid for things like a quick torture case.  For a second, my lesser faculties take hold and I ponder what the other superpowers would do with such technology, the Americans?  Their old cold war rival, the Russians?  This is surely the greatest technology to be achieved in an arms war since nuclear weapons were discovered and Japan is the victor, not those two arrogant fatheads.

As I circled him like a cloud circles earth waiting to send forth its lightening retribution.

"名前..."

"ごめんなさい！私は知らない！"

"You will tell me Hisagi san.  You see? I can be kind if you let me.  I give you your name back in exchange for hers."

"How did you know?"

"So it's a she?"

"NO! I misspoke! I know nothing."

Two strikes of lightning and the cloudy salt water in the tub tints red.  I observe his facial fluctuations.  I sense his pulse, I smell his fear and I begin to determine the answers I seek myself.

"So the girl, I assume she's close to you."

His pulse goes up and I hold my hand and dagger as I circle and determine his lies.

"...Very close?"

He gasps in a small, inaudible shock.

So, is she family? A girlfriend? a spouse?

All of a sudden, he goes calm and I can not read him.  I sense that he is beginning to use the pain as a crutch.

[So you are surely Japanese] I think to myself.

I have figured it out, Mr. Hisagi, you are no longer needed.  It is your wife, Mrs. Hisagi.

His pulse lifts and he begins to stir.

"...But how?  How did you know?  What kind of demon are you whose eye glows read and who moved with such speed and agility that even a ninja could only hope to imitate?"

"I knew because you just told me and beyond that?  I knew it was someone close and even with your level of concentration and training, you are not impervious to lie detectors such as me.  I see inside your head through your eyes and her image is imprinted in your brain to make you calm as well as the pain you use to enjoy your misery.  The yin and the yang defense cannot be broken by human beings but I am Japan.  I am her military now but I will give you one last courtesy for being strong as she has taught you to be."

Within an instant, my knife thrusts into his stomach and carves his chest open as my sword removes his head in one simple gesture.  One series of movements that eliminates unnecessary steps to become one movement calculated to precision.

As I leave the dilapidated apartment building, I wipe my instruments clean as a chef cleans his knives of gristle.  He died with honor.  I gave him that.  Now time to end his lineage with his Eve.

Pain Case

                                    Part II:

The raindrops fell like tears on the sad little town.

Really, it was pathetic.  How would you treat a town thats soul purpose was to be a ghost?

June 12th, 1965,

It's been 13 days on base and I haven't seen bravo company faces or doctors anywhere.  It's like they gave me a new toy and ran away to let me try it...

I'm not locked up so I guess it's nothing dangerous...

I walk the halls every day for a face, some sort of connection to this place that has 2 ice cream shops, a diner, a movie theater, a small hanger and bed and breakfasts but it's like everyone left for the season and forgot to leave me a way out.

The mountains loom over me like my teachers and parents in elementary school during PTA night... I can't believe I got left behind.  They got to be here somewhere, just something's supposed to happen soon... right?

June 17th, 1965,

The ocean slithers in like a snake and all of a sudden, my eye is looking at the back of my eye lid... I seem to have gained a pillow in my sleep somehow and the technology to utilize infrared without opening my eyes, night vision when I do, and the ability to calculate precise equations without... well, for lack of better words, batting an eyelash.

Am I still Sergeant Moore or am I something more?

All of a sudden, it occurs to me, somebody's messed with my eyes.  I run to the mirror and there isn't one.  I run to the movie theater and there's people watching a movie.  Where did they come from?  I run to the stores and no mirror was present but people were shopping.  I woke up and found myself in my bed with my wife.  Did I imagine it all?

I go to the mirror in the bathroom and look at my face.  It looks normal but something's a little off.  My right eye looks a little droopy.  The same eye looks too emplaced to be real.  I touch it.  It isn't real.  In fact, nothing in this side of my face feels anything.  They've replaced it all...

You took my face, you dirty mother fuckers. Sergeant Ronald Moore from Nome Alaska.

Pain Case

                    Part I:  Introductions all around

When I was growing up, I wasn't much of anything.  My mother provided us with rusted toys and coated them with fresh paint to make them look brand new.  The paint did not cover up the toy when it crumbled.

We lived on a farm outside of Bryansk and for the most part, nobody came, nobody went, we strayed from any kind of attention we might attract.  We had a suitable pond and a large field that I enjoyed playing in as a young child.  If I got near to the house from my adventures crawling through the field shooting American rapists, I was in my command center which was a dumpy, old, green shed behind our house.  It was in these moments, my mother so often said to me, "Сделайте что-нибудь с себя!"  or "Do something with yourself!"  When we could get our hands on them, my friends and I would smoke cigarettes and yell at little girls in the city; big girls too.

I often found myself calling names to a шлюха named Jesika. She would smile and tease me back every time, even when her eyes were black and blue like the turning of a Caribbean wave as it fades from blue to black in its deepest drops of the ocean floor.  I had seen such wonders at the newspaper, for which my father worked.  I dreamed of going there one day but we barely made enough money to keep our farm when all was said and done.  Ironically, I had never seen my father at the newspaper but the people there seemed to know who I was.

During the winter of 1964, I watched as Jesika was brutally raped and murdered at the hands of her pimp.   A year later, I watched as my mother, my brother and our cousin were murdered in front of my face after the gang that saw me watching Jesika being raped and murdered caught up to me.  They weren't big time, they weren't really even recognized by any crime syndicate but they had wronged me and as they left me there, bleeding on the floor, I was sure I would die being not much of anything.

My father had different plans.

During the scuffle, my eye had been cut out by brutal gang members, in its place, my father had managed to install a test component called an "ocular implant."  It made me able to see in infrared, night vision and even given me the ability to translate language, and solve complicated math problems; mostly related to probability.

For years, the deal was that I was given life and this enhancement along with others to serve a purpose: Mother Russia.  Everyone knows the KGB but I was something different, something special.  I was a project in not only the future of Mother Russia but the future of mankind.  I suppose since the Cold War never really went so well for us, my comorads decided to evolve out of the necessity for war and become a better race that would render mankind obsolete.  Their plan backfired.  As was usual with my country, we did not think the whole thing through.  Almost as if it were a karmic mirror to our blight of communism, individuality superseded the indoctrination and programing that was supposed to guide me towards a higher purpose.

Once they taught me how to use the hardware and what all my new functions were, I grabbed my military issue side arm and walked out into the streets of Bryansk...

It wasn't hard to find the Ослиный задницу and his gang.  I picked up a hooker and beat her with the blunt end of a Five seveN until she told me "You're in trouble now!"

The петух присоски showed up just as planned: with 9 others and told me that I was going to die.

"Easy killer," I said while laughing down the barrel of his 38'.  "I want to join your gang."

"Who are you to join us?  You'll have to prove yourself first."

"What do I have to do?"

The conversation went on longer than needs to be told in story form suffice to say that it ended here:

"So you want me to rape and murder an innocent woman before I can join your gang?"

"Yes! This will prove you are hardcore gangster like us!"

"I have already incapacitated your сука and she is defenseless.  Would not raping her and killing her be a waste of my time when she is bought and paid for with my money? And if it were an innocent woman, why would she have more courage than a hooker who never knows if her next John is a lunatic like me who will kill her? It seems to me, if this was your initiation  you are all in need of a real test.  Tell you what," I said, swinging my hand onto his side and removing his side arm to point it at his face, "why don't I just kill you instead?"

What fanfare! All nine idiots raised their guns to my head.

As I flipped his weapon back around to give it back to him, I laughed heartily and said, "Just kidding.  If I did that, now where would I find employment?"

"Employment for what?" He said.

"So glad you asked..."

In a split second, I activated my synaptic reflexes and shot out the light.  Ten shots rang out in the darkness before a single one of them had a chance to even grab their guns again from the last scare.

I struck a match and lit up a cigarette mixed with herbs as I held the match to the gang leader's face.  The girl, whimpering and trying to scream in the background was getting on my nerves so I shot her in the face.

"Why would you do that?" said the gang leader.

"Your men are dead.  You need medical treatment and I've just destroyed your product as well as perhaps relieved a shell of a suffering soul.  I can't help this shit, they programmed me this way."

"You didn't kill me," he said.

I took out my cell phone and made a call.

"Да ... Мне нужно забрать ... Для города ... Да."

"What are you..."

"Заткнись, сука! Взрослые говорят."

As I hung up, I leaned in to look him in the eyes with my ocular implant illuminating his horrified gaze that now saw first hand the machine behind the fake face.

"Give it time, boy.  As I have already stated to you, I hunt bigger game than women and children.  Be cautious, however, because the next time we meet, I will give you death in a very slow way..."

I put out the cigarette on his forehead and I imagine the last thing he saw before I vanished was the glowing of my green eye that he had cut out years before...

Kindred: James Toulor: Part 12

December 31st 1999,

The entire world anticipates a new year and here I sit as paranoid as ever.  During the last decade, I have built a compound to keep out the she wolf who, as I experienced in my youth, will be just as vicious as my "mother," and none as caring.

My father killed the wolf of my childhood and now I face the wild again.  Cyrilla looks enraged that she can't go out on the town but I am convinced that the devil will show herself tonight.

"I have watched you over the centuries, darling.  You've been a bad boy and have not waited for my return."  I hear these words in my head and scream out, "NO!" but as no one else can hear them, my staff looks confused and terrified and Cyrilla simply looks obstinate.

"You fear me, little man.  I have been coming for you for years since you broke my heart."

Regaining my composure, I try answering without talking.

"You left me, Arabella.  You sent me away when you told me you would meet me again."

"YOU FOOLISH MORTAL MINDED DOG!  You think in terms of ephemeral existence when you should have known that through the bite, we were connected.  I needed my time to put together myself and you left and found yourself the harlot of ancient Greece.  Look at the bitterness in the whore's eyes."

My heart dropped in my chest.  I sensed her nearby but not so close that she could see my Cyrilla and definitely not so close that she could sense her mood.  I heard her begin to laugh hysterically in my mind.

"Foolish boy.  So powerful, DISCIPLINED and even experienced and yet you still don't know that I see through your eyes."

I immediately shut my eyes.

"Awww sweet darling, do you not wish to see me coming; to watch your aggressor take out her revenge?"

I said nothing, I thought nothing and after an hour or so of listing my centuries of mistakes, she was silent.  The silence scared me more than the volume though.  I felt her presence everywhere like the born again feels god.  I held my breath and did everything I could to stop from screaming.  Terrified by the overwhelming connection I felt to her, that it was almost romantic fear, if there is such a thing.

Confusion abounds as I look around the room and carefully analyze the faces around me for ones I may not recognize.  Just as I think I know every one, the voice speaks but this time out loud and on my neck.

"You should have waited for me, we could have had such a beautiful requiem together.  No matter, you brought me the Kallisti and she is valuable in ways you cannot even begin to understand, child."

I turn around and in her full glory dressed in war gear, there she stands.  The beautiful and haunting Arabella DeGalle.  Without warning, she grabs me and begins to drain my blood.  I fight back and a battle unlike our world has ever known ensues.

Outside, the flood waters begin to roll in as I throw Arabella into a wall that breaks like it's been hit with a sledge hammer.  Test tubes smash and the lightening can be heard hitting our building in sparse bouts of almost godlike fury.

From somewhere in the room, I hear Cyrilla crying and screaming and calling out my name.  For the first time, as a Kindred, I experience more emotion than I'm accustomed to.  I feel incredible fear.  Flash bangs erupt in the room and soldiers of unknown origin come flooding in like the waters begin to do in Yazoo.

Gunfire erupts as Kindred and Kine fight on my side and hers and the clash brings the fury that is as real as sweat and rain water that begins to flood our bodies.  The blood in the room runs thick and I feel bullets pierce my skin as the rage takes over me and I become blinded to a good fight.  Arabella is far older than I and quickly takes the upper hand in our fight.

From the ceiling she reaches down and grabs me as I begin to notice an apprentice at her side.  Just like the prissy princess to have the audience of my child during my last lament.

She picks me up off the ground and holds me by my head as my body goes limp from loss of blood.

"...And now, lover, time to die..."

I feel her fangs rip into my throat and from a TV somewhere nearby, I hear, "10... 9... 8... 7... 6... and then...

Kindred: James Toulor: Part 11

November 9th, 1989,

As I sit in my little cottage outside Yazoo City limits, I watch the television with Cyrilla and we cannot believe our eyes.  What we are watching is the wall that divided democracy and communism being torn down and I know that this marks the end of an era known as the Cold war.  I also know that the stability that this will afford the Europeans will also bring back the demons who wish to destroy me and my companion.  It is only a matter of time before they find me and I know the Spanish Harlot can probably feel me from whatever cesspool she exists in now.

Oh princess, do you come for me?  I have had time to prepare.  I have had time to build an army.  I have had time to get ready to ruin your nights.  In 1990, I feel your presence near to me. 
You're here for me.  Leave her out of this.
You know what she is?
You sense her presence too?
You will never take her from me.  Do your bidding quickly because at the end of this night, you will be dead or I will.

Kindred: James Toulor: Part 10

December 25th, 1962,

It has been a year that I have been awake and the human world here in the states has begun a change that I believe will bring turbulence to every world and awaken a new spirit of humanity on all accounts.  We are kindred but our world has become fraught with escapists and "revolution" just as theirs has.

The spirit of the 1950's brought many new kindred into being.  A surge of sexual awakening for the kind has brought a surge of wannabe humans into our midst.  There are those now, who feed on human beings infected with drugs to vicariously live off the toxins in their blood and I find it vile.  To be an immortal means to transcend mortal indulgences and to truly exist on a higher plane within reality.

I observe more going into the light to extinguish their own souls based on "spiritual awakening" as if a spirit were even possible to one that cannot die.  The Bron I met centuries ago would be beside himself with glee.

On the positive, many culture shocks are being experienced within the Portuguese colonists in Africa and Spain is going through changes that grant be peace and tranquility as well.  Who knew that the detriment of the human species would haunt my skeletons as they haunted me.  I have felt little presence from my demons as if they had seceded to their own devices and gotten distracted from the ill will they bore me.

On the other hand, my own country had also struggled the conflict in Vietnam for a decade now with no looks towards a surrender of their foreign interests.  Money had gotten tight and my assets had become invaluable to me to feed my country's war effort.  They called it civil unrest but I knew it was their idea of bleeding the rich to feed the poor.

Socialism was, after all a growing popular idea in Europe and they had no idea how to tame it yet or even that it dawned on them like a full moon on the Mediterranean Ocean. I saw the coming of the late 20th century however and managed with my savvy to stay ahead of the idiots who payed close attention to an ephemeral mortal plane.

Cyrilla wished to engage in the freedom and feral nature of the 1960's but the 1920's still loomed over her like a boogie monster under a child's bed.  She kept careful watch over the human world and told me stories, as one tells a child stories of their grand exploits.  I followed their miserable existence myself and began to occupy myself with their chemistry.

In the winter of 1965, we moved back to Yazoo and sold our homes and luxury vacation spots around the country.  I set up a fairly successful pharmaceutical company and while I amused myself with human testing (the government occupied with protesters and sexual deviants and these "hippies" had no idea) my real doctors and researchers began to study practical methods to curing mundane illnesses or rather treating them (whichever kept me in a nice home living comfortably.)

Cyrilla became fascinated with newspapers and television and watched "movies" that brought her the great joy of assumed existence.  How lax we got in our little world.  We became willing participants in routine and enjoyed the breadth of freedom we were awarded during all the chaos. 

In 1969, we even watched broadcasts of a fairly talented black man playing guitar on a stage in a mud field.  These broadcasts gave me great joy because seeing the kind drenched in mud reminded me of what animals for slaughter mankind truly was.  It brought me peace to remember my darkness and why I so relished its pleasure.  The apathy of unchained destruction on their behalf reminded me of why I so enjoyed being alive; or rather, as alive as a kindred can feel due to the fact that our living circulates around their death.  Bitterness and hatred and overwhelming emotion without logic are human traits; as a kindred, we are dead and need to feel nothing we do not choose to feel.  Cyrilla brought out feelings in me because she was Kallisti and that's what her bloodline was born to do since ancient Greece but I felt nothing from the humans; not even remorse.

The great humor in this existence was that the era was such an era for mindless human passion that it awarded those of us who felt none great advantage over these mindless drones who conformed to our whims by being predictably non-conformist.  I could see a dirty mange on the street and almost guarantee he might say something like, "Peace in 'nam, man..."  To which, I would simply smile and nod and say, "sleep," as I drained him of his life force for sheer sport and pleasure.

The powerful blood in my veins was dependent on kindred blood however, and because of this, I researched ways of keeping myself stocked as I turned many and drained them into bottles like a fine Shiraz.  My ruthlessness got much skepticism from the kindred but for the most part it was kept low key enough to not attract too much attention.  Every once and a while, I had to go Al Capone on fellow kindred to keep my "experimentation" a secret.  It was nice, however, that due to the addictive substances many were drawn to, I could find willing participants from both kindred and kind; even if I did need to clean their blood for drinkability.

Yes, What years the 1960's were and even the 70's to a degree; I'd call them chaos at best but when the world and the politicians are in chaos, the level headed opportunists seem to blossom like dandelions in spring.  Cyrilla told me a quote once during the American Civil war, that, at the time, I believe it was intended as sarcasm but its truth rang out like the clang of our manufacturing line now, "all good things must come to an end."