The Dark Sire Issue 3 (Spring 2020) | Page 25

good is conscience to a being like me? It serves only to add a dimension of torment. How sly this curse. How cruel in its craft. How accomplished the mantle of the undead in perpetuating perdition. If only I could end this non-life by my own hand and slip into the hell I deserve– instead, I remain in this hell on earth, indeed, the deepest wound this curse inflicts. I remain doomed to hate myself, hate what I must do each night as the wolves howl and the moon commands the hour. Abhorrent eternity, enemy of the half-dead, I have no power over you. I walk the night chained to the curse of who I am, what I am, and shackled to the horror that I am a slave to dark needs. Not wanting to continue, I continue. Neither wanting to be found nor to remain a secret, I slither like mist in an unwarmed world. I belong nowhere to no one. My only calling is my next victim, my sustenance. The desire rises, and I obey. My world, like my heart, was warm once. I will never know soothing again. I will never again know the comfort of a caring companion. But I remember it. I will never touch her again, but her skin, her scent, her soft and sensitive ways are vivid, so vivid still, and the deprivation drives me to madness. The gifts I once had I cannot forget even in this depraved state. If only memory, like my past, would die. The pain that I was once the man she loved but would now fear is Satan’s most clever handiwork. When I watch her from the shadows, I cannot reach for her. When 23