The Vampire's Unforgotten Story Page #7

This is a snippet to my story that I am writing, but I have been working on this for so long, and I'm really proud of it. It is about a vampire who is recounting the stories of his life, to a reporter but she gets a different story than her father did.

• Horror
• Fiction

								

            “Now, I suggest if you need to think about something, you write it down and come back to it later, or you ask me. Don’t let it eat away at you, but I suggest you close your mind, to train it. I have trained all my workers to do the same, as I don’t want to intrude on their thoughts and now I have taught you to do the same.” I listened intently to his words, realising the importance of what he was saying. 
      “So it’s not just about keeping you about reading my thoughts,” I said slowly. “It’s also about training my mind to focus and clear out distractions.” 
            “Exactly.” I nodded slowly, understanding dawning on me. “It’s a mental exercise as much as it is a…. privacy measure,” I mused, mostly to myself. 
                 “Yes, but it also keeps me out of your mind.” I nodded again, a small shiver running down my spine at the thought of him in my head. “I get that,” I said quickly. “To be honest, it’s a little disconcerting to know that you can… just hear my thoughts whenever you want.” 
Emily then walked in, bowing to Damien and then said, “Dominus, we have some business for you to attend to,” Damien stood up, giving a nod to Emily, who had appeared in the doorway. “Thank you Emily,”he said to her, his voice all business. Then he turned to me, a small smile on his lips. “I’ll be back,” he said, his tone a little apologetic. “Duty calls.” 
          “Of course, I need to check in with my father anyways,” I replied to him and Damien nodded, understanding. “Be safe,” he said, his words a quiet but earnest command. He gave me one last look before following Emily out of the room, leaving me alone in my thoughts. 
      I walked across the room to the spot where the wooden box was sitting on a small box. The box was old but sturdy, its oak worn and smooth from years of use. I took a deep breath, feeling a mix of anticipation and trepidation as I lifted the lid and started to go through the recordings it held. The tapes were organised, each labelled meticulously in my father’s neat handwriting. I pulled out one that caught my eye, I remembered back to when I first listened to the first one, and saw that I left it still in the cassette player. I pressed play, and it said, “Oh right just a bat.” The recording played back, the casual tone in my father’s voice almost making me smile. I closed my eyes, listening intently. This was one of the early recordings, made when my father was alive and well, when things were so different. The sound of his voice, so casual and easy, filled the air around me, making me feel a pang of longing in my chest. I heard a faint sound of shuffling in the background, and then my father spoke again. “Found something again,” he said, a note of excitement in his words. 
                    There was a brief pause, and then the sound of something being dropped heavily onto a surface. I leaned forward, picturing the scene in my mind. I knew that sound, the sound of my father coming home with something he had discovered on his journey, something he wanted to study and analyse. The excitement in his voice was palpable even through the recording. I heard another sound, this time the rustle of paper. I knew that noise too, I knew it was my father pulling out a notebook, jotting down things, writing down observations and thoughts as he studied whatever it was he had brought home. 
               “Damien, are you okay?” my father’s voice asked, concerned  lacing the words. There was a slight pause before the vampire responded, his voice measured but carrying a hint of an ancient weight. “Yes, fine.” Damien replied, “Just recounting the days of my existence, before I replay them again for you.” 
              “Let me start at the beginning,” Damien’s voice echoed, in the dimly lit room, his tone was calm but there was a sense of ancient wisdom in his words.  “I was born in the early 1700’s,” Damien’s voice continued, his voice not sounding as respectful and patient as he had been with me, but this was still him I knew it. “In a small village in what is now Russia. My mother was a simple villager who did everything for her children, and my father was well… that’s a different story. But despite my origins, I was born and raised in New Orleans, that was where the true story began, my true beginnings and my transformation.” I tensed slightly at his words, New Orleans, the city of secrets and magic and I was just beginning to know about his life, but the story he was telling my father didn’t sound nearly as similar to the one he was telling me, but I was going to find out more, the parts he didn’t tell me, the parts he hid from me. 
           “My mother raised three kids, originally there was me, my sister and my brother, I was the oldest of the three. I was the last son they would ever have after my brother, which would mean that I had an example to set. So I made sure that all their efforts were not in vain.” I rewinded back to the part when he said, ‘my sister and my brother’, Damien had a brother? This stirred up questions within me. Damien had a sibling he never mentioned, this was like a missing piece of a puzzle. Was there a reason he told this to my father and not me, even though this was years ago, you don’t forget a family member like that do you? Or was there more to this than I thought. I tried to think back to all the times me and Damien had talked, trying to think if he so much as hinted at having a brother or another sibling apart from his sister, but there was nothing, he never hinted at a brother only a sister he loved deeply.  
        “Aiden.” Damien started, and sighed deeply his voice betrayed the weight of his connection to him, the one word name was enough for me to understand his feelings towards him. Feelings he had never spoken of before. 
            “He was a sweet, naive, caring boy, he was the youngest child, my parents last hope yet he did not do them any justice.” As Damien spoke, I could imagine his little brother, smiling and being caring towards others, even though I could hear the affection in his tone it also weighed with clear disappointment and pain. “He was a fragile boy, with a very sensitive mind and it was prone to corruption. And my father saw it as his flaw, a flaw that was irreversible so he looked to me, and I had to take on the responsibilities.” Damien’s voice wavered slightly as he continued, “I hated him,” he confessed, “you know, I know it is bad and I regret it but I did. I hated my brother for being so weak, so fragile, so sensitive I tried desperately to understand him, to help him but nothing worked. He was fragile, and I hated the fact that my father made me his right hand man, because all the responsibilities that I had to carry at such a young age, deemed me strong.” He paused, and sighed deeply as I imagined he had tears in his eyes, “But I was weak too, I didn’t admit it back then, but I was weak. But I knew how to hide it, to camouflage it into something else.” 

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