Metal Heart- Redone

“When Christopher told me that living a normal life would be hard, I never dreamed it would be like this,” I said, staring at myself in the large antique mirror. For the longest time, I had been sitting there, staring at nothing in particular except my own reflection.
 
Call it vanity, if you will, but I love to look at myself. Most vampires do. We think of as ourselves particularly beautiful creatures and everything about ourselves is exciting-- the way our hair blows in the wind, and then instantly falls back into place, the energized glowing look in our eyes, the pale, almost translucent appearance of our skin...everything is beautiful to a vampire.
 
Being there, in that place, with nothing by the company of my own thoughts, was a good thing perhaps. I had time to dwell on things. Without the distractions from the outside world, my mind was easier to clear and thoughts came to me more quickly. But I knew there was no sense in searching for a meaning in anything at all, really. It just wouldn’t make sense, and it would maybe drive me a little mad. Deep down I knew that there was no superior meaning for anything that had been happening in my life thus far. No reason for why she left me, no reason for the pain I was feeling, and certainly no reason for me to continue on living.
 
I played the events of that dark and dreary night over and over in my head, again and again, analyzing everything, trying to remember the exact moment that had led up to this point, to me being in this place. I tried to capture in my mind a picture of her; her face, her eyes, her smile, her voice, the smell that she always carried on her that reminded me of a mixture between lavender and roses. I wanted to soak it all up into my soul, my being, and carry that picture with me forever. I wasn’t ready to let go of the love that I held so dear. But somehow I knew, almost instantly when she had walked into the room that everything was about to change forever.
 
It had been raining, and she was sick. The hospital had sent her home from work early because they didn’t want to risk sickness to any of the patients that she would be caring for. It had been my night off from work as well; someone else was working at the morgue for a change. The fact that we both worked the nightshift made it quite easy to carry on a relationship without any suspicions of my lifestyle being brought into conversations. We both slept all day long, and got up to work at night. Nights off were spent together, but never the days. We liked it that way.
 
And so our relationship carried on for two years, without any disturbances until the news came from her that she was leaving me.
 
“No! I don’t understand! How can you leave me like this? You promised me that we would be together forever!” I pleaded, fighting back the tears as if I thought that they were something putrid and horrid, and if they came, I might be dissolved away into nothing.
 
“I know what I promised, Vincent...and at that time, I meant it, but now that I know what you are I can’t think of you the same way,” she put her hand on my knee, trying to be sympathetic. “I’ll always love you, even years from now. Just not as much as before, I’m afraid.”
 
Those words she spoke so softly, so gently, with so much sadness seeping through every syllable stung me like a thousand bees. “Not as much,” she had said. I didn’t know there could ever be an end to true love, I never knew that you could simply stop loving your soulmate. For the first time in my whole life, all 350 years of existence, I felt as if I had no control over anything.
 
The tears that I had tried so hard to hold back came forth. I had lost the fight. In truth, I wanted her to see them. I wanted her to see how much she had hurt me; I wanted her to feel my pain, for I feared that she felt nothing at all.
 
“Because you found out what I truly am? That I’m a vampire?” I said, struggling to regain any bit of my sanity that still remained with me.
 
I had now regretted ever pouring out my heart to her two nights before, when we had been lying in my bed together. In that moment, with her head against my heart, I felt as if I would never be happier, because she was the one for me, the one to make my immortal soul complete and peaceful. Hiding secrets from her was no longer an option; secrets were the enemy. So I told her, thinking that she would understand and still love me for the man that she knew better than anyone else. This moment proved just how big of a mistake I had made.
 
She looked down to the floor, thinking about what to say. I felt a cold gust of wind on my knee, and I realized then that she had removed her hand just moments before, and had begun to fidget with her dress. “Yes...I’m so sorry. I tried to think of you in the same way...but it’s just impossible, Vincent.”
 
My hurt and angst was now turning to rage.
 
“You tried? That’s ridiculous! You are afraid to try! You don’t understand!” I got up to my feet and walked to the window. I was so envious of the birds that flew outside, free from everything. Oh, how I wanted to soar away from this place, just like those birds, away from this situation, and this pain. But that was impossible, and I knew it. I was stuck, a prisoner in my own desolate hell.
 
“What? What Vincent? What don’t I understand?!” She sprang to her feet and jerked me around to face her. She didn’t let go. She kept a hold on the collar of my jacket and was shaking me violently as tears streamed down her beautiful face. Cecil was so beautiful in her fury; her silky wisps of jet black hair flung wildly around her shoulders, enshrouding her snow white face. I longed to touch that face, to wipe away the tears and feel the softness beneath my fingers, to see if I could ignite the fire in her ice blue eyes one last time. “Answer me! What don’t I understand! You don’t know how it feels! How much it hurts me to say this to you!”
 
A laugh escaped me, and I smiled at her. But within seconds, my smiling face turned to a scowl, and I growled fiercely at her. “You hurt? You don’t know what hurt is, until you’ve bared your soul to someone, trusted them after you’ve spent centuries not trusting even yourself, to love someone so much that you would give up your immortal soul for them, and then to find out...” I jerked myself away from her grasp, and stormed across the room. A chair that was sitting in front of me quickly became the target of my anger and shattered into a million pieces instantly, “...to find out that person you loved so much doesn’t want you because you are a vampire! Because you’re ‘different’! That is pain, Cecil! That is suffering! You can’t even begin to feel it, or get a grasp on what the concept of ‘pain’ is!”
 
“I know how it must sound, and I really truly am sorry. I just need time.”
 
“Time...all you need is time. What do you expect me to say, when you are treating me like this?” Looking into her deep, ice blue eyes for what I thought to be the last time, I finally realized that she hadn’t loved me for quite a while. At first, maybe she had, but now when I looked into those eyes, I no longer saw the love that I thought she felt for me. Only the deep dark wastelands of the abyss remained.
 
“Why, Cecil? Just tell me...why it has to be this way? Why are you leaving me like this...?” If I had any tears left to show her, I would have shown them, but my river of tears had run dry.
 
“Vincent...I told you. I can’t think of you the same way. It’s different now. Before I thought you were fascinating, your mysteriousness, and then you told me what you really are. I tried to lie to myself, but the truth is-- you are a monster. You kill innocent people so that you can live. Who’s next? Me? This is something that I cannot bear. Trust me, this isn’t a decision I’ve suddenly made. I’ve been thinking about this since the night you told me...” She had focused on something that was lying on the floor, a letter. She had planned to leave me in the letter, perhaps. Was looking at me, knowing what I was that hard to do? Maybe.
 
For the first time, I felt sympathy for her. It must have been horrible living with me, trying to love me still, or convince herself that she did, when in truth, the mere thought of loving me was enough to make her cry. Was I really the monster she had created in her head? She thought so.
 
“So this is how it has to be…I guess. Where do I go from here? I just don’t know. 2 years, Cecil. Count them. Two. That’s how long we’ve been together. How long I’ve been completely devoted to you, longing for your touch when we are apart, dreaming of you in what used to be my dreamless slumber. And now…where do I go from here?”
 
Before she had time to respond to my question, I was already out the door, determined to get as far away from her as possible. I didn’t want to hear her answer. I needed to get away from this feeling, the feeling that won’t leave me alone. Deep down, I wanted her to know who I was, nothing more. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, make her a vampire like myself, so that we could be together forever, but I guess that it was too much to ask of her, like she said she would. Humans are such putrid beings, even the open-minded ones. They truly don’t know what the concept of love is…and they never will. Only a vampire, with an enhanced heart, who knows what it’s like to love and to lose, can know what ‘love’ is.
 
Where was a going? I didn’t know. There was no sense of direction, no thoughts about it, either. There wasn’t even a street sign to give me an idea as to where I was heading. I was so tired of being me, of being a monster. There was just too much that couldn’t be erased, no matter how much I tried to be someone else. Loneliness was no longer my foe, but perhaps my only friend.
 
So I decided to go home, and that’s how I ended up here. Exactly where I wanted to be, but maybe not at the right moment. I was waiting for something to happen, something big. I wanted to end my life, but I had no idea as to how I could do that without regenerating.
 
“Don’t be so blind,” A voice erupted from the shadows.
 
I spun around to face the voice, but there was no one there. First I drive away my true love, and now I’m hearing voices. I’m crazy, I thought, and quickly exited my old home before the voice called to me again.
(s}
“Why are you running away from me? You and I both know that if you run, I’ll find you eventually. I don’t give up.” The voice sounded like it was coming from right behind me, and I even thought for a moment that I could feel the cold breath on my neck.
 
“I’m not going to talk to myself, so you should just show yourself, and stop reading my mind!” I tire of mind games quickly, and being chased by some mysterious voice was not on my top list of priorities today.
 
“I will show myself in due time…make a left, I’m going to get some food for you, since you are too distraught and wrapped up in your emotions to do anything for yourself.”
 
I felt an unseen force push me to the left, into an alleyway. There was a foul stench coming from the homeless who were standing beside a garbage can with fire coming out of it. None of them had bathed in weeks, maybe even months, and the clothes that they wore looked like nothing but rags. It was hard to imagine them ever having a home or a family, but I’m sure that some of them had. But no one wants to think about that, no one wants to remember that just years before the foul smelling man urinating on himself in the middle of the street had been the CEO of a company that rented the lot next to their workplace. I’m sure that humans more fortunate than the homeless would like to think that they never had lives, that they had just appeared; maybe that the theory of ‘Spontaneous Generation’ could be applied to those people that no one likes to look in the eye, those people that spend their time outside of restaurants begging for food, or holding up the small signs that say, “will work for food or money;” the homeless.
 
“Here…take this. Get yourselves some good clothes, food, and hotel rooms. Meet me back here tomorrow, and I’ll give you all keys to rooms in an apartment building that I own. After that, it’s up to you to pay rent, bills, and get jobs. I don’t care what you do with the money, I’m just giving you a fighting chance.” I gave them each a wad of cash, all that I had in my wallet, which had to have been a few thousand dollars. There were only three of them, and maybe it was too much to give, but at the moment, I didn’t want to see anyone suffer like I had, even if it was over different circumstances.
 
“Thank you, kind sir. We will never forget this!” the tallest one said as they each ran out of the alley and into the nearest stores.
 
My attention was free to go back to the ‘voice’. “Now…what is it that you want? Or do you want anything at all? Are you here to make a mockery of me, to torture me? If that’s what you want, well then I won’t stand in your way.”
 
“I know of those troubles you speak of. I’ve been watching you for quite some time. I know all of your wishes, your deepest desires. But all I want from you is your companionship.”
 
The echoes of his voice in my head were enough to drive me mad.
 
“You said that you would find me food. Now where is it?”
 
“There…down further in the alley. There’s a man passed out against the dumpster, he’s drunk, but he’s alive.”
 
I did what I was told to do. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I was curious to see if the voice that had been leading me along all this time would truly lie to me, and if he was lying, why? Sure enough, food was where he said it would be.
 
He was a pathetic example of the human race, lying there in his own stinking, putrid filth. He moaned and groaned, and as I came closer to him, he made a sad attempt to move away from me, perhaps to escape. He knew what was going to happen in a few minutes, I suppose, and that was truly wonderful, to breathe in his fears and anxieties, knowing that I was the cause of it all. I fed off of this kind of thing, and nothing could make me happier than to see the horror in the eyes of my victim, open my mouth and confirm their fears, and let them know that yes, they were mine forever. So very wonderful.
 
I grabbed him by the throat and pulled it closer to me. I could feel his blood fighting the pressure of my fingers, trying to get farther down the veins. At the last minute, he awoke completely from oblivion and pulled himself backwards.
 
“Please, don’t,” he pleaded. His breath reeked of alcohol, and it absolutely repulsed me.
 
He made a second attempt to gain his balance. Every second that passed by seemed to make him more and more sober. He obviously knew what I was.
 
“I can help you. I can show you things. Help you get through life,” he staggered and fell to the ground. “Just let me live.”
 
“Oh, you think that you could? You could do no such thing, you cretin. You couldn’t handle a vampire’s emotions. Don’t even think you could.”
 
Once again, he made an attempt to get up, but not to escape, to come closer and stand beside of me. Maybe I should have given this human a little more credit, because he was truly brave.
 
“Yes…I could…I share your same pains, your weaknesses,” he struggled to get up high enough to grab onto the dumpster at the left, but lost his footing, and fell to the ground in a weeping bundle.
 
“My pain? My weaknesses? You fool.” This angered me, how freely he spoke about me. He didn’t know anything about my pain, anything at all!
 
“Yes…your pain,” he turned to oblivion from his drunkenness.
 
“Let me tell you something about pain, this emotion you speak of so freely.” My eyes turned to a fierce red, and I transformed into something short of the devil himself. “Pain has a face, you cretin, although you cannot see it. I am that face! That sarcastic voice in the darkness, the one that you lie in bed at night thinking about, praying that it won’t come for you. I am that something and I have come. Welcome to your nightmare.”
 
I reached over and took him by the neck, but ever so gently, so that I would not break his neck. I wanted him to remain alive until the very last moment, when I would snatch up his life, and drink up the very last drop of his essence. Sinking my teeth in his neck, I tasted the sweet nectar of his life and lost myself in the trance that overcame me.
 
He moaned and fell against my chest. He was dying now; I could feel it in the weakening pulsing of his blood. Oh, it was glorious! To be in complete control of this fading life! My mind was filled with the images of his life, his memories. I soaked up all of the knowledge that he had to offer. Almost at the very end, I became excited about the moment in which his heart would cease to beat, and I pulled him a little too close to me, and crushed his poor body.
 
In respect for my victim and his way of life, I sat him up against the dumpster that I had found him at just minutes before, and I folded his arms across his chest. A blanket that lie at his feet felt like it deserved a purpose in this killing, since it had been witness to it, so I wrapped it around his body to protect him from the cold. As if he could feel it now.
 
“So now are you done with your rituals?”
 
“Yes, if you must know. You should appreciate your dead.” I suddenly felt stupid. “So what is it that you want, truly?” I growled.
 
A phantom-like creature came out of the shadows, and stood before me. This hooded figure, covered in darkness and reeking of the graveyards stretched his arm out towards me, “I am Lunarte…Come…I have much to show you. I will earn your companionship.” He embraced me and we arose into the sky and glided away into the clouds. I didn’t know where our destination was, and it felt as if we would never land.
 
“Who are you?” I said suddenly. This was a complete stranger to me, but something in the bottom of my gut was telling me to trust him.
 
“Let’s just say that I’m an old friend of your maker, Christopher. When he jumped into the flame, he told me to watch you. He said that you would one day need me. You made quite an impression on him, unlike any child I’ve ever known of him making.” He pulled me tighter as I started to slip from his grasp.
 
“So you’re real? You’re not just some illusion?” I was uncertain if anything was real at all, let alone a complete stranger who magically appeared out of the shadows. And I certainly had my doubts about a person who claimed to be a friend of Christopher. I had never known of him having any friends, only enemies.
 
“I am very real. And very much alive. Put your doubts aside, Vincent, I am your friend. I can use my gifts in different ways that you can, but I am a vampire, just like you.”
 
And with that, everything was settled. He was real, and I wasn’t crazy. Well, not completely crazy anyway. Once the talking ceased, my fear of flying came rushing over me once more.
 
Soon enough, we did land, and when we did, my world felt as though it were crumbling down on top of me once more. I was standing in front of Cecil’s apartment building, and Lunarte, that devilish bastard was pressing the intercom button on the outside of the door.
 
I ran up the steps with lightning speed, and threw him onto the ground. “What do you think you are doing?! I thought you said that you were going to take away my pain, when it seems as though all you wish to do is cause me more!”
 
He got up with such feline grace, and he took me in his arms. Such gentleness, for someone who seemed as ruthless as a serial killer. Maybe I was being too judgmental. For a few moments when we were out on the street I thought I saw his soul in his eyes, crying out to me, needing me to be his companion. In that moment, we made a silent promise. A promise between two men that they would never part. Did such a bond really exist? I would soon find out.
 
“Why? Why do this to me? Why bring me to the doors of the very woman that torments my soul?” I cried, beating his chest like a small child.
 
“Because, my dear friend. There is something that I think you should see,” he moved to the side of me, but kept his arm wrapped around my waist, as if he would guide me to her. It wasn’t that he was holding me up to be polite, but because every inch of my body begged him to.
 
We walked up the steps once more, but never straying away from each other. It felt as if we simply glided up those steps, instead of walking, step by step. Somehow it was easier this time, going to her apartment, because I already knew what was waiting for me. There was no reason to prepare myself for the conversation to come. I had him there to be my consort.
 
“Going back up so soon, Mr. Aleixandre?” The doorman asked me, slightly surprised. “Oh, and you’ve got a friend too! What is his name so that I may announce you both to Miss Cecil?”
 
Suddenly I realized that I had forgotten his name. With the shock of returning to Cecil’s apartment still stinging in my veins, I could have forgotten my own name. But now…I felt like a fool.
 
“This is…” I began.
 
“I am Lunarte Amador…Now, if there are no further questions; we would very much like to go up to see Miss Cecil. And we’d prefer if you didn’t announce us.” He pushed the doorman to the side and entered the apartment building.
 
He looked as if he were a man seeking revenge. But on what?
 
When we arrived to her front door he turned to me and looked at me in a way that I could never forget.
 
“I’m so sorry,” he said, and then opened Cecil’s door, and shoved me inside. He then proceeded back down the hallway and out of the apartment building.
 
What I saw, nothing could have prepared me for. Cecil was in the arms of another man. She didn’t see me, because her back was to me. But the man did. He saw the look of horror on my face and pushed Cecil out of his embrace. She turned to see who had made such an intrusion, and when she saw me, I could tell that she was stunned.
 
“Who are you?” He looked angry. “And what are you doing just bursting into a person’s apartment like this? Who do you think you are?”
 
“No one.”
 
I was halfway out of the apartment building when I heard her call my name. “Vincent! Wait!” she had said, but it didn’t make a difference. I wanted nothing more to do with this situation. My soul had been shredded enough for one day.
 
Lunarte was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, his face looking as mournful as mine did.
 
“I don’t want to talk about what I’ve seen,” I told him, not stopping to look him in the eyes. I kept walking.
 
He didn’t follow me. But he already knew where I was going. Back to my mortal home, the place where I had grown up as a child.
 
As I walked among the overgrown stones of the home that I once loved, the walls broken and overrun by ivy vines and fragrant smothering forests of white cedar and chestnut trees, I felt something changing inside of me, in the very depths of my soul. I was sick of that place. No, not just my home, but the world in its entirety. No longer did I spend my tranquil nights there, fascinated by the rhythmic rippling of my own reflection in the water of the majestic fountain that lies in the center of my mother’s old garden. Our house, which still rises boldly against the heavens above, decorated sweetly by the blanket of stars, is crumbling now, for no one lives here anymore. In fact, no one has lived here for over 100 years.
 
But would it be such a terrible fate? To just crumble away into nothing? To just finally give up and let the rotting of the soul take place, just like the rotting of the wood that was causing my once beloved house to fall? For the first time in my life, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to exist or not. Truly exist. I felt as if not only did I have nothing, but also I no longer wanted anything. I didn’t want to live, because facing existence alone was going to be more than hard, it would be unbearable.
 
When I walked into the family chapel, things became a whole lot clearer to me. I realized what I needed to do and that if I waited too long, or if I came face to face with either Lunarte or Cecil, that I wouldn’t do it.
 
There had been a man living here not too long ago. The remnants of his firewood were still lingering in the fireplace. I lit it with my mind gift and watched as it rose higher and higher with each piece of furniture that I tossed into the flame. When the flame got to a considerable height, I heard a noise at the back of the room.
 
“Vincent…what are you planning to do?” Cecil spoke softly with fear woven tightly in her voice. Her blue eyes pierced me and stung at my heart like a thousand bees.
 
“I’m going to a place where you can no longer hurt me, Cecil,” I shouted out with a monstrous melody in my voice.
 
I had finally gone mad, and before Cecil had enough time to even process what my answer I had, I leapt into the flame, and for the first time, all was at peace…
 
Lunarte
 
Instead of following Vincent like he suspected that I would, I hung behind to wait for Cecil to show her face outside of her apartment building. I knew that she would come looking for Vincent, and when she finally did, I was going to question her, rather forcefully, about what exactly she had going through her head when she was cheating on Vincent.
 
However, that is not how my plans turned out. I thought better of myself and instead followed Cecil to the location to which she was traveling at such a great pace. She must have known that he was going home, and what he might be capable of doing, because she raced along the sidewalk with such a fury that she knocked some of the people walking beside her off of the sidewalk entirely.
 
After arriving at Vincent’s old home, we found ourselves in front of the old chapel. This would have been a perfect opportunity to question her, but before I had a chance, Vincent spotted her and they were talking. I saw her thin lips move across her trouble as she tried to form words. The words that she was struggling to speak could not have possibly been audible to Vincent, because she looked as if she didn’t have the strength to speak.
 
She screamed suddenly, and fell to the ground in a heap of sobs. I raced to her side, and pulled her face up to look at me.
 
“What is it, Cecil?” I asked, brushing the hair out of her face.
 
“Look…in there…its Vincent.” She cried harder, as she rocked back and forth, trying to stay sane.
 
The image that was waiting for me when I looked in the chapel was horrific. Vincent had leapt into the fire. All the remained of his body was a heap of ash and soot. He had ended his life because of her. Because of her filthy existence. Oh, how I wanted to kill her. To make her feel as he felt.
 
“Now do you see what you’ve done to him?” I grabbed her by the throat.
 
“I didn’t do anything! I found him like this! You were there. You saw what happened. I know you were there because you were standing outside of my apartment building with him. By the time I knew he was in my house, he had left again. He didn’t even give me a chance to explain!” She fell to the ground, and began crying again.
 
“He came into your house, and saw you in the arms of another man. Not only did you break his heart, but also you did it just hours after leaving him! You drove him to this. He gave you everything he had to offer, his life, his deepest secret, and all you gave him in return was the assurance that humans don’t deserve to have a place in the world.” Sighing deeply, I looked into her eyes. “I should kill you for what you’ve done…but I won’t. I think that life for you will be more painful than death. So, if you think that explaining yourself would have made such a big difference, explain now.”
 
Her eyes, which had turned from blue to pale gray, had softened up a bit. “Another man? That man was my brother…I hadn’t seen him in years. That’s who I was hugging. Not another man. I was looking out of my window and I saw Vincent start coming up my stairs. I was happy because I thought he would forgive me for my mistake. I hugged my brother and cried happy tears because I thought I could get Vincent back.” She wrapped her tiny arms around her knees. “Oh God, tell me what I’ve done.”
 
“You’ve ended your own life as well as the man that loved you with every breath in him. Vampire or not. He was still a man.” I said as I was walking off into the oncoming daylight. I would soon join Vincent.