The Dark Urge

I call it the Dark Urge. It seems like I’ve always called it the Dark Urge, but that cannot be the case. There was a time before those words, there was also a time before the Dark Urge came a-calling.

Now time, a dimension I became so accustomed to, that I mistakenly and vainly believed was of no consequence, has caught up with me. Time will always catch up with a person, even if they have been cursed with something that approximates immortality.

Immortality is a broken joke. In truth, we don’t even possess immortality. Once again, a word has been applied incorrectly or it proves to be deficient in some manner. Language is not all it is cracked up to be. As a form of expression, it carries with it many, many deficiencies. That’s what makes it so beautiful.

I am not immortal, nor will I ever be. Humans have attributed this word to us because living for hundreds or even thousands of years seems like immortality even for those who get their four score and ten in. 

True immortality would transform us so utterly that language really would be irrelevant. We would be gods, our existence would go well beyond human comprehension. And as we were all originally human, this would break our tiny minds. 

As it is, my mind has been bent and stretched and broken so many times I no longer see it as one, coherent machine. What is left of my beleaguered mind are fragments of warring factions. And that is before I consider the ghosts of all those I fed upon and took from this world.

I have murdered countless numbers of people all thanks to the Dark Urge. That is a distortion of the truth. I count them often, but I will never share their number. This is my burden and mine alone. This is part of the curse of being a vampire and a snivelling, slathering servant of the Dark Urge.

For so long, I thought I had the Dark Urge under control. Now I know that that was merely a delusion. A veil I threw over my true nature. For you see, we are all addicts. I am unable to choose my poison though. I never had a choice. I must take blood or face consequences that I am too weak to endure.

We vampires cannot die, or rather, we find it very difficult to die. The Dark Urge will not be cheated by such a thing as death, so it keeps us alive come what may. If we do not sate it, then it tortures us. The pain of that torture is dialled up again and again until we want to tear ourselves into tiny pieces. Something prevents that eventuality though, and that is the fear that we will only make it worse. All we will do is add to the unendurable pain.

For the past fifty years I have managed to feed less and less frequently, and when I feed, it is upon the irredeemably evil. You would be surprised at how many truly evil people there are out there. Of course, you could lazily cite the prisons, but they contain just a drop of evil in the ocean that exists beyond those high, barb wire topped walls and fences. Besides, those criminals were caught. They are not representative of the worst of the evil that doesn’t even bother with lurking. You will have encountered truly evil people. Worse still, you would have returned their smile. Something you won’t accept, because you couldn’t live with it, is that you have been privy to evil deeds and waved them through. You saw something that was truly bad and pointed the way to utter evil, yet you rationalised it as something innocuous and dismissed it as quickly as you could. You knew, but you were too terrified to do anything about it. You pretended that it did not exist. That’s how evil thrives. It can walk in the daylight and smile it’s callous smile and no one does a thing about it. Humankind has constructed a culture that favours evil. Evil does not bother to hide and it feeds upon the innocent in plain sight.

I decided to do something about that. If I was going to feed, I would cull the evil herd. I would reduce the evil in the world via my own evil and cursed hunger. I would make the Dark Urge work the best that I could.

This provided me with a conundrum. I have never wanted to feed upon the life blood of anyone. I once tried subsisting on animals, but that did not work. There was a time when I worried that it was the soul of my kill that satisfied the Dark Urge and my selecting those who had sold their soul would leave me hungry still, but that never happened. And so I was presented with a dilemma. It was clear that the more I killed off those who had sacrificed their humanity and followed the path of darkness, the better the world would become. But I could not bring myself to do that. I could not pay that heavy price. 

Besides which, I feared what it was that I would become. Giving in and giving myself over to the Dark Urge held far too much danger. I was not willing to become a far more powerful and terrible version of those who I preyed upon. Even in human form, that evil was terrifying. Within my vampire form, it would be unstoppable.

And so I have fought the Dark Urge ceaselessly, only ever giving it as much as it took to survive. I fancied that I kept it as weak as was possible and that compromise was something I could live with. But now I am getting hungrier. The Dark Urge is growing stronger and I struggle to keep it at bay. The frequency of my kills is slipping ever higher and I can see a day when all I will do is kill in order to feed a hunger gone wild.

At night, I dream of blood. I bathe in it. I glory in the opening of my victims veins. I walk into a crowded room and I run amok, biting and slashing until the place is transformed into an abattoir. I am a fox and all around me are unguarded hens. There is nothing stopping the slaughter other than my being discovered. I am becoming more and more like them, and I cannot stand it.

In the end, I could see only one course of action. This was the only thing I could do. But still, I resisted and I did my best not to voice the reason why I was delaying making the pilgrimage. When I resolved to go, the words of my petulance came unbidden into my mind…

I did not want to turn out like my parent

I could have laughed at this. I was no teenager denying my own nature. I was over two hundred years old! Then it dawned on me that I was exactly like that teenager, and I was ungratefully denying what I was and what I was always destined to become.

We vampires do not die, but we do alter over the centuries. I did not want to become another of The Elders. This, despite my maker being one of them. The fact of my making was unusual, it embarrassed me that I was a legend in the vampire community. Thankfully, I did not often get a fan come knocking on my door. Vampires know better than to do that. We are many things, but we do avoid rudeness. Better to be polite and get along. We live too long for any unnecessary nonsense.

My visit to The Elders was a return home, but at the same time, it was entirely different to that. The Elders reside in a place reminiscent of a museum. It is a temple of sorts, but their state is very nearly statue-like. Their skin resembles pale, veined marble and is nearly as hard. I fear them and I fear becoming like them. Rightly or wrongly, their altered state makes me see them as so very cold. This is not helped by the subservience they demand without ever requesting it. The atmosphere of the temple in which they resides speaks of nothing other than reverence. Underlying that is the threat of death and those things far worse than death.

Few know of the existence of the temple, let alone its location. Unsurprisingly, it is situated under a mountain. The gods had their Mount Olympus, The Elders have a fitting place deep in the ground. I would not say that they are evil though. Is any predator evil? They do what they must in order to survive. I have seen true evil. The worst of monsters reside within man. Mostly men, but there are plenty of women who turn from the light and drown everything that they are, and everything that they should have been, in the abyss. Worse still, their evil spreads. Many are intent on making others like themselves. They delight in the breaking of a human soul. They feed on all the goodness that resides within a person and leave them with worse than nothing.

They are the real vampires.

Nature may abhor a vacuum, but darkness seeps wherever there is an absence of light. There is an eternal war between good and evil. From the unique position I occupy, I would say that humankind is tipping the balance in the wrong direction, and despite my efforts the world is growing darker.

Now I am entering the darkness for answers. Answers to questions that I thought I had answered so long ago. Life has a habit of turning on a sixpence and challenging everything you know. My hope is that The Elders have the answers that I seek, and that they will give them to me.

As I walk into the maze which must be traversed in order to visit with The Elders, I find myself wondering whether I am worthy of those answers. I know that The Elders will see into me, that they will read me like the simplest of books. The source of my reverence is that I am laid bare by them. I may hide much from myself, but nothing is hidden from them. I am rendered one dimensional. I leave my complexities outside the tunnels, and I come here as humble as can be.

A luminescence dimly lights my way. It is said that The Elders guide those they will allow an audience to through the maze by the shortest route. To be lost in this maze is death. I don’t know about that. I know my way all too well through this maze. It is as familiar to me as the road outside my home.

Though I know my way, it takes me four hours to enter the first hall of the Temple of The Elders. The maze is large. I am in no hurry. I must confess to a certain amount of tarrying even after having decided that I must come here and visit with my maker.

“You,” the voice is cold and dry, felt more than heard.

I turn towards its source, taking to a knee and bowing my head slightly whilst all the while looking at the source of that voice, “father,” I say.

“It has been too long,” he says in that ancient and foreign voice, “you have been avoiding me.”

I sigh. I am indeed that impetuous teenager. I have made myself busy and avoided coming back to this place. I am disrespectful, dishonourable even. I have nothing I can say to address this. I am guilty as charged and to attempt to deny this would be an act of crass stupidity.

“Apologies, father. I…” what was I? What was I other than a rude know-it-all?

“You were too busy finding your way in the world,” my father drifts out of the shadows and smiles down at me, “you forget much, I was young once too.”

He reaches a hand down to me. I take it with only the briefest of hesitations. I have yet to acclimatise to this place and to the being that my father is. There is however, none of the chill that I expected in his hand. As our hands join, I see that there is little difference in the hue of our skin. I am more alike my father than I ever knew.

“Stand,” he says, and as I do, he lets go of my hand and we embrace, “it has been far, far too long. It is so good to see you, William!”

“And you too, father.” I smile despite myself and the anxiety I have built up prior to our reunion.

“Marcus,” he says, “you must call me Marcus.”

“Marcus,” I say, smiling again. We have tried this before. I always revert to calling him father, for that is what he is to me and I can never get used to calling him by his name. It seems too familiar. We are not equals.

My father is beautiful, as are all The Elders. It was remiss of me not to mention this at the very start, but sometimes the obvious is left out and only added in when it presents itself. Something about the ageing process in vampires agrees with us, or at least it has with The Elders. I have never thought about the possibility that there are other, ancient vampires, those who did not enter the ranks of The Elders. 

This beauty has a pull all of its own and I fight the temptation to touch him. This is one reason The Elders hide themselves away. They are too powerful and they could not go unnoticed out in the world. People would throw themselves at an Elder and give themselves freely. I am not immune to this magnetism, but then I have always had an affection for Marcus which is largely familial. An affection and deep respect despite his having turned me without warning and without my consent. But that is a story for another time. 

“Come,” he says, “let us sit awhile.”

I nod and follow him. I have my audience and I expect I will have my answers. This should be a relief, but I fear the nature of those answers.

We take a seat on a stone bench overlooking a water fountain. The water emanates from an androgynous figure. That figure is The Source and the water is the Water of Life. In reality, our water of life resides in the human body and we open that body up so we can drink the liquid that is our sustenance. There is an artistic licence here, barring the expression on the face of the statue. I have seen that serene look a thousand times and more.

“Marcus, I have questions,” I say to the man who made me.

“I expect you have,” he smiles benevolently at me.

I furrow my brow, “a frivolous one first, if I may?”

He nods, “you may.”

“Are you smaller?” I ask almost indignantly.

He laughs heartily, “no! You’re bigger, you foolish boy!”

I grin sheepishly at him. No one has called me a boy in an age and I love him for that, “I’m changing aren’t I?”

The laughter has stopped and the mood is suddenly sombre.

“Yes, yes you are,” he nods.

“I thought I had more time,” I say to him.

“For what?” he asks, his expression a question.

“Before I become one of The Elders,” I tell him.

He stands and gazes down at me. He is shaking his head, “oh no, dear boy. That is not what is happening here.”

“Then what…?” I ask.

“Your appetite is growing?” he asks.

He asks, but he knows the answer. Strictly speaking, we do not need to go through the process of this conversation, but he affords me this courtesy and I recall him telling me that he misses the pleasure of simple discourse, so it works for the both of us.

“Alarmingly so,” I tell him.

He almost smirks, “you haven’t changed you know.”

“Well… it seems that I have,” I counter.

“But you are the same old William. You kept a hold of what it is that made you, you.” He touches my cheek fondly, “that was my hope when I made you. You were made for greatness and not only did you need to live on to fulfil that greatness, the world needed you.”

“Like this?” I ask automatically.

“It seems it was always your destiny,” he tells me.

“It is no one’s destiny to be a vampire,” I retort sharply.

“And yet here you are,” he says.

“What is that supposed to mean?” I feel my anger rising. I must do something about it. It would not do to lose control in this place. It never does to lose control and I seldom have. An out of control vampire would be a very bad thing indeed.

This gives me pause for thought. I have come here for answers and here I am supplying my own. I am making noise instead of listening. My fear is getting the better of me.

“I am sorry, father,” I say, “the changes. They frighten me. I think I must know, deep down, what this all means.”

He is nodding again, “we all fear our destiny at times.”

“What is happening to me?” I ask earnestly, “where am I headed? You know don’t you?”

“Yes,” he says gravely, “and I have known for some time.”

“The growing hunger?” I ask.

“You will need your strength,” he says.

“For what?” I ask, not wanting the answer, but knowing it is coming all the same.

The most unexpected of answers.

An audience with the devil himself.