Sins

Prologue

Life takes on a surreal quality after so long. Especially things from before the change, they're the most veiled now, the most like a dream. I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense that my life would feel like a dream, even to me, because how could it be real?

Two thousand years ago, I was a man. It was an amazing time. Life had no real meaning for me, and then came Jesus. I saw miracles that were beyond my wildest imaginings, and I was changed. I saw Him killed by the Romans, and I saw Him spit in the face of reason by rising again. I wrote about Him and worshiped Him and served His church until the day I... changed.

I was an old man. Most of my contemporaries had been martyred, and I had had to run, be exiled. It was late at night, and I was lying in my bed. There was no light except that given off from the half-moon. A faint shadow fell across my bedroom floor, and a second later I was overwhelmed.

A hand choked me, held me down against the bed with a force greater than I had felt from the strongest man. Cool breath hit my face, and I could hardly breath. I tried to struggle but being choked made it hard. I tried to speak but nothing could escape my constricted wind pipe. But he spoke.

He told me that he was going to feed off my blood. I tried to tell him that murder was a sin and that he would go to hell... but I couldn't, and he wouldn't have listened anyway. He leaned over and bit into my neck. I was surprised because I felt the warmth of my blood trickling down the back of my neck, but not the bite. He fed for about a minute, and then I felt him release me and withdraw. I felt him, but couldn't see him. My head swam and my vision was blurry. In the blackness, I could barely hear him making his way through my bedroom, satiated and moving slowly. I heard it as though I were underwater. I felt my consciousness slipping away, dribbling out the gash on my neck, and I tried to call out.

I heard him turn slowly. Or maybe it was just my imagination. But he came back to my side and looked down at me. Gathering what was left of my strength, I begged him to give me my life back. I begged him to undo what he had done. And then I slipped away. My blurry vision slipped away into blackness and all sound drifted away.

But I woke up again, some time later. The next time I woke up the sun was setting and the moon was rising, which meant that I had been unconscious for least a day. My arms and legs burned from the inside, in a way I did not understand. I vomited in a most unusual fashion that I shan't describe here, but later I came to realize that it was my new body purging itself of its unnecessary fluids.

I stayed in my house for as long as I could. I didn't want to go out where I might be seen. But after several hours in isolation every vein in my body was a river of lava and in a mad rage I stumbled outside in search of food. I still did not know, or could not accept, what I was, but instinct drove me to feed.

"Feed." It's such a pretty euphemism.