The Confession

The Confession

“You want to know why I called you all here?” I set down my coffee cup, the ceramic clicking against the saucer with a sound that seemed too loud in the quiet café. My three companions—Sarah, Michael, and Tom—leaned forward expectantly. We'd been meeting for coffee every Tuesday for six months now, ever since I'd moved to this sleepy town, but today felt different.

“I need to tell you something about myself. About where I came from.” I glanced toward the large windows where morning sunlight streamed in, stopping just short of our corner table. “My story… it goes back further than you might expect.”

Sarah laughed, tucking a strand of gray hair behind her ear. “James, you talk like you're ancient. What are you, forty?”

If only she knew how close she was getting.

“I grew up in London,” I began carefully. “Back when the city was… different. Dirtier. The Thames smelled worse, then—industrial waste, you know. And the fog was something else entirely.”

“Ah, the good old days of coal smog,” Michael nodded. “My grandfather used to tell stories about that. Must have been the seventies, eighties?”

I smiled without correcting him. “The air was thick enough to taste. You couldn't see three feet in front of you some nights. Perfect cover for all sorts of… activities.”

“Sounds atmospheric,” Tom said. “Very Dickensian.”

More than you know. “I worked as a clerk then. Long hours, little pay. But I was young—I thought I had all the time in the world.” I paused, remembering. “That's when I met Victoria.”

“A girl, finally,” Sarah grinned. “I was wondering when romance would enter this story.”

“Victoria was… unusual. She had this way of speaking, very formal. 'Pray tell,' she'd say, or 'I should be most grateful.' You don't hear people talk like that anymore.”

“Sounds like she was putting on airs,” Michael said. “Trying to sound upper class.”

I shook my head. “No, it was natural to her. Like she'd been raised in a different time entirely. She never seemed to understand modern conveniences either. Street lamps confused her—she'd stop and stare at them like they were magic. And when I mentioned the Underground, she acted like I was describing some fantasy.”

“The London tube system?” Tom frowned. “How old was this woman?”

“That's what I started wondering. She had these... old-fashioned ideas about everything. Courtship, society, proper behaviour. And she never wanted to meet during the day. Said she preferred the evening air.”

“Night shift worker,” Sarah suggested.

“Perhaps.” I traced the rim of my coffee cup. “But there were other things. She never ate when we went to restaurants—said she'd already dined. Her skin was always cold, even in summer. And photographs...”

“What about photographs?”

“She refused to have any taken. Claimed it was vanity, but when I pressed her...” I remembered that night, how her eyes had flashed with something ancient and dangerous. “She became very upset. Said photographs could trap pieces of your soul.”

Michael laughed. “Sounds like she was from some remote village. Lots of Folk beliefs about cameras in rural areas.”

“I thought so too, at first.” I was treading carefully now, watching their faces. “But then she started telling me about her past. Stories about London that didn't match any recent history I knew. She'd describe streets that didn't exist, buildings that had been torn down before I was born.”

“Maybe she was mixing up stories she'd heard from older relatives,” Sarah offered.

“She spoke about them like she'd seen them herself. The Great Fire, the plague years. She'd get this distant look and describe the smoke, the smell, the way people screamed in the streets.”

Tom shifted uncomfortably. “That's pretty morbid dinner conversation.”

“Victoria had a fascination with death. She'd walk through cemeteries for hours, reading headstones like they were novels. Sometimes she'd stop at a grave and whisper names—not the ones carved in stone, but different names entirely.”

“Probably family members buried there,” Michael suggested, but his voice carried less certainty now.

“I followed her once.” The memory still sent chills through me. “She went to Highgate Cemetery after midnight. I watched her... talking to the darkness between the tombs. Having conversations with people I couldn't see.”

“James,” Sarah said gently, “this is getting rather strange.”

“That's when she noticed me watching. She moved so fast—one moment she was by the far headstones, the next she was right beside me. I didn't even see her cross the distance.”

“It was dark,” Tom said. “Easy to lose track of someone in shadows.”

“She wasn't angry about me following her. She seemed... pleased. Said it was time I knew the truth about what she was. What she could offer me.”

I paused, letting them absorb this. The café hummed with normal conversation, the morning rush of people grabbing coffee before work. Such ordinary concerns. If only they knew what walked among them.

“Victoria told me she was older than she appeared. Much older. She'd seen London burn, had watched kings die, had witnessed the birth of the modern world. She claimed to remember when Blackfriars Bridge was built, when gas lamps first appeared on the streets.”

“James,” Michael said carefully, “that would make her over two hundred years old.”

I met his eyes steadily. “She'd been turned herself sometime in the 1600s. She told me she could give me the same gift she'd been given. The chance to see centuries pass, to never grow old, to never die.”

Sarah laughed nervously. “And what was the catch? There's always a catch in these fairy tales.”

“The hunger.” The word came out heavier than I intended. “She said I'd develop new... appetites. That normal food would lose its appeal. That I'd crave something else entirely.”

“Such as?”

I stared into my coffee, seeing not the dark liquid but memories of darker nights. “Life itself. The essence that flows through living things. The warm, red proof that a heart still beats.”

The table fell silent. A barista called out someone's order across the room, the mundane sound jarring against my words.

“James,” Tom said slowly, “you're talking about blood.”

“Victoria explained that we'd need to feed regularly to maintain our strength. That the thirst would be overwhelming at first, but we'd learn to control it. She made it sound almost... noble. Like we'd be joining some ancient order.”

“This is quite a story,” Sarah said, her voice strained.

“I was so infatuated with her, I agreed. Young men in love do foolish things.” I looked up at them, these friends who'd accepted me so readily. “She bit me that very night, right there among the tombstones. I felt my life drain away, and then... something else flowed back in. Something cold and hungry and eternal.”

“James,” Michael interrupted, “you need to stop this.”

“When I woke three days later, I was different. The world looked sharper, sounds were clearer, scents were overwhelming. And the hunger—God, the hunger was like nothing I'd ever experienced.”

“This isn't funny anymore,” Tom said, standing up. “Whatever game you're playing—”

“The first person I killed was a child.” The confession stopped him mid-sentence. “A street orphan, maybe ten years old. I tried to resist for weeks, but the thirst consumed me. I cornered him in an alley near the docks, and I...”

“Stop.” Sarah's voice was sharp. “Just stop.”

“I've carried that guilt for one hundred and seventy-six years.” I looked at each of them in turn. “I've seen the world change in ways you can't imagine. Horse-drawn carriages gave way to motor cars, then to jets flying overhead. I watched the first electric lights replace gas lamps. I was there when the first moving pictures were shown, when radio broadcasts began, when television arrived.”

“You're having some kind of breakdown,” Michael said, pulling out his phone. “I'm calling someone.”

“I was in Paris when they built the Eiffel Tower. In New York when they constructed the Statue of Liberty. I've outlived every person I've ever cared about, watched friends age and die while I remained unchanged.”

“James, please,” Sarah begged.

I stood slowly, my chair scraping against the floor. The sound made several patrons look our way, but I ignored them. “I've moved from city to city, decade after decade, always careful not to stay too long. Always running from what I am.”

“Sit down,” Tom hissed. “People are staring.”

“I came to this town because I thought I might finally find peace. But the hunger never stops. Just last week, I almost lost control with Mrs. Henderson from the flower shop. Sweet old woman—she reminds me of people I knew when Queen Victoria was still on the throne.”

The reference hung in the air. They were all staring at me now, fear creeping into their eyes.

“You want proof?” I picked up my coffee cup and, without breaking eye contact, crushed it in my bare hand. The ceramic crumbled like sand, coffee and blood—my blood from the sharp edges—pooling blackly and thickly on the table. Thicker than it should have been, then it possibly could be, more closely resembling maplesyrup than living blood cells.

They jerked back, chairs scraping, Sarah gasping.

“Still think I'm making this up?” I walked toward the window where golden sunlight painted rectangles on the floor. “I've made a decision. I'm going to end this today.”

“James, if you're having thoughts of suicide—” Sarah started.

“Not suicide,” I corrected, stopping at the very edge of the light. “Redemption.”

For one hundred and seventy-six years, I'd lived in shadow and darkness. I'd watched the world change from the Victorian era to whatever you wanted to call this modern age, had seen technologies emerge that would have seemed like magic to my mortal self.

“I want you to know,” I said, turning back to face them, “you three have been the first real friends I've had since I was human. Thank you for that.”

“James, don't—” Sarah stood, reaching toward me.

I stepped forward into the sunlight.

The pain was immediate and absolute—like being consumed by fire from the inside out. But beneath the agony was something I hadn't felt in over a century: relief. The constant ache of hunger vanished. The weight of countless deaths lifted from my shoulders.

Behind me, I heard screaming, the crash of overturning chairs, someone shouting for help. But their voices were growing distant. The sunlight was warm on my face as my skin began to crack and smoke.

As consciousness faded, I saw Sarah's horrified face pressed against the window, her hand against the glass, finally understanding that some stories are too impossible to be fiction.

The last thing I felt was the sun on my face—something I hadn't experienced since the reign of Queen Victoria—and for the first time in 176 years, I was at peace.