When I was bathed, my wives ushered me into our thickest, softest sleeping furs. Brulde hung hides to give us some privacy, and then Nyala and Eyya shed their clothes and snuggled up against my body.
Merje didn't just dull the mind, it also enhanced physical sensations. My flesh sang with the lightest brush of their naked skin. The smell of their perfumed bodies made me dizzy with lust. In very little time, my manhood was throbbing so hard I feared it would erupt.
“Make room for Papa Brulde!” my tent mate cried. He wriggled in between them, his sun bronzed flesh naked and gleaming, his erection wagging at me like a scolding finger.
“Always room for Papa Brulde,” I laughed, pulling him down beside me.
We melted together in the flickering light, Brulde to my side, the women atop us. The universe contracted until it seemed as though it were entirely composed of breasts and lips and hot, blood-engorged flesh. The flames in the hearth transformed into glowing honey that dripped upwards in defiance of gravity, a drug-induced hallucination. The wetus began to spin around me in a drunken delirium until it was impossible to tell when the flesh of one lover ended and the next began. I gave myself to them as unto an altar of worship and when exhaustion and sexual satiety finally overtook my consciousness, my dreams were as warm and welcoming as the bodies of my lovers.
As I dozed peacefully, my mates slumbering around me, all our limbs entwined, evil stalked the clan of the Fat Hands.
In less than a moon (a month, roughly, to you modern day humans), our Neanderthal neighbors would all be gone, fled or devoured by the one who made me what I am.
A Brief Aside
1
Please forgive me as I interrupt this narrative to speak directly to you, my precious readers. I know it is not the proper thing to do, according to your modern rules of literary etiquette. My only excuse is that I am a product of bygone days-- so many of those bygone days, in fact, that writing had not even been invented when I walked the earth a living man. I can only beg your indulgence of my lack of sophistication. Setting words to print is not a natural thing for me. Keep that in mind if you ever find my endeavors amateurish or trite. The closest I ever came to writing as a mortal man was drawing crude pictures in the dirt with a stick. And then I always erased my simple pictograms immediately afterward, out of some irrational fear that what I drew might be made real. It was one of my tribe’s few superstitions. My people were not cave painters.
Apologies dispensed with, I think it is important, before I continue, for you to understand my nature... and the nature of creatures such as myself.
As I have said, I am the oldest living vampire... so far as I know. As this is a tell all book (yes, you may chuckle; it was meant to be humorous), I am eager to “spill the beans” about vampires.
The first thing you need to understand is this: there is nothing supernatural about my condition. No ravening spirit animates my undead flesh. I was not cursed by god or the devil, not that I am aware of, nor was I condemned to wander the benighted earth as a blood-craving revenant to atone for some moral transgression I might have committed while I was a living man. I was merely infected, I have come to believe, by some bizarre species of bacterial or viral organism.
Oh, I can feel your displeasure! You wanted gods and demons! You wanted magic and monsters!
Sorry to disappoint you.
Perhaps I can temper your frustration by explaining that, over the course of 30,000 years, I have come to the realization that nothing supernatural really exists at all. Is that, perhaps, the sort of revelation you were hoping to find within these pages? That all of these things, which you consider fantastic, are simply natural phenomenon we do not and may never understand.
Gods and demons and ghosts, and even immortal beings like myself... at their core, they are just weird natural phenomenon.
Once, I thought the stars were the spirits of my ancestors. Now I know that they are simply suns, just like our own warm and life-giving Sol. Countless suns, unimaginably far away, blazing amid vast wastelands of space, circled by their own attendant systems of planets and moons and comets and meteors.
Spirits?
The residual thought patterns of living intelligences that persist after physical death. Energy, according to your modern physics, cannot be destroyed.
If you would permit me to venture a conjecture, I believe the thought patterns of sentient beings do not willingly nor easily dissolve once self-awareness has been achieved, that the sentient mind, by virtue of its ability to govern itself, becomes a recursive system, a self-sustaining organism. I believe this because I have seen ghosts, and they have frightened me just as they have the power to frighten any mortal man or woman... but only because they are not completely understood. We all fear the unknown.
And gods?
I know nothing of gods. I have seen men-- and even vampires like myself-- who dared to advertise themselves as gods, to exalt themselves above their fellow man for selfish gain or out of some malady of the ego. I will even tell you, in future volumes of this saga, of one such cabal who did just that, but I have met no being of such all-encompassing power as to cause me to consider them truly godlike. I do, however, concede the possibility of gods. Or at least “intelligences”, vast inhuman intellects of such scale and complexity we cannot hope to grasp their full form and nature with our limited senses.
Call them gods, angels, little green men... Call them anything you like. Do you actually believe that the infinitesimal grain of sand we call our home is the only world in the universe that has hosted self-awareness? Perhaps the galaxies are simply synapses in the mind of some unimaginable supreme being.
Even now, science peeks into the starry distances and discovers an abundance of alien worlds. Our count grows day by day. We spy upon natural wonders in the furthest depths of space of inestimable intricacy, collapsed stars of such density that not even light can escape them, stars so vast they could swallow a thousand of our suns, galactic clusters that stretch for billions upon billions of light years. Some learned men believe our universe is part of some greater omniverse, and that this overarching super-reality is a froth of multifarious universes, and each fragile bubble in this vast and viscid foam is its own self-contained cosmos.
Who can say then what other forms of intelligence have evolved in the infinite reaches of time and space, beings we comprehend no better than the microscopic bacteria that thrive in your gut can comprehend you in your totality? To the biota of your digestive tract, you are God.
The thought boggles the mind.
Or at least it boggles mine.
But I digress.
Suffice it to say, even though I am a natural creature, just like you and yours, I may still prove myself worthy of your interest. Isn't it enough to be so very long lived? What other being has withstood the grinding teeth of the ages so well as I? 30,000 years is not that impressive when measured against the lifespan of stars or galaxies or universes, but in this world, in comparison to the men and women who walk this planet Earth, I am a Methuselah among mayflies. All that is left of even the most well preserved of my contemporaries are grimy bones and broken crockery and a few frost burned corpses preserved in tundral wastes.
None such as I.
None that still think. None that still remember.
2
What do I look like?
I look much as I did in my mortal lifespan. If I should push myself back from this antique French desk, turn away from my electronic writing machine-- Ha-ha! Yes, I know it is called a computer; a Macbook Pro, to be specific!-- and if I should stroll past my 17th century Baroque settee, my weighty collection of phonograph records, my Renoir and Manet and my glorious Pissarro landscape, if I should enter the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror, I would have no difficulty recognizing the face that gazes back at me.
Yes, my kind can see themselves in mirrors! We are subject to the same physical laws as any other corporeal being.
I was almost thirty when I was made
this thing that I am, and I look thirty still. The shape of my lips, the aquiline nose, the thoughtful brow and high, angular cheekbones... I recognize them all. Looking in the mirror, I can say, “These are my features, as they have ever been.” I enjoy the same impressive height of six feet and three inches. When I was a mortal man, my stature made me something of a freak. It is still considered tall in this modern era, though not quite as unusual. I have the same sturdy build, broad chested, with powerful biceps and rather thick, muscular thighs. My hair is long and flowing, a little too dark to be called auburn but with coppery highlights, falling in length to the middle of my shoulder blades. My beard, which is unfashionably long and curly, is no different from the day I was transformed. If I had lived out my natural span, I probably would have looked much like my father, with jowly cheeks and a protuberant belly and a great, frizzy mane of gray hair, but I was snatched from life not long past my physical prime, for which I, in my vanity, have always been secretly grateful. I won’t lie about that. I am a little vain.
There are some differences, of course.
Take my skin, for an example. In life, it was ruddy and soft, tanned from the sun and slightly weathered by the elements. It is chalk white now, and I must hide its inhuman gleam beneath a layer of makeup—L’Oreal True Match Super-Blendable, usually—before visiting any brightly lighted venues. If I did not take the time to paint my face before I ventured out in public, I would quickly become an object of overt curiosity, if not send a few of you scurrying away in fear. It is not too much of an inconvenience, the application of my camouflage, and the necessary cosmetics are inexpensive and easy to procure in this era of material plenty.
I do not fully understand the nature of the transformation that was wrought upon me, but the cells of my dermis have… crystallized. That is the only way that I know to describe it. To the touch, my body is hard and cold and somewhat glossy. Some have described the texture of my skin as silken, but more often than not, I’ve been told it feels like stone. In modern fluorescent lighting, my flesh appears slightly translucent so that you can see the webbing of my circulatory system, all the little capillaries and veins and arteries running just beneath the surface. It’s really quite repulsive. In direct sunlight, my skin glimmers very subtly. In low light, my flesh takes on the coloration of its surroundings, similar to the way some people’s eyes change color depending upon the clothes that they wear. In candlelight, I am a Caravaggio portrait. In darkness, I become all but invisible. I believe this to be a predacious adaptation. To quote a popular children’s story, “All the better to eat you, my dear!”
My eyes were similarly transformed, crystallized in much the same manner as my skin. They are like two round jewels ensconced in white satin. They are the same hazel color they were when I was living but now they glimmer in the light. They are the eyes of a nocturnal predator, able to dilate so completely that only the pupils are visible. When spied from the right angle and in the right kind of light, they glow like two amber lanterns. The living find their predatory qualities instinctively dreadful. Even mortals who claim to find them beautiful are chilled by my stare even as they speak in admiration.
What else?
My penis (he types with a mischievous grin)?
Functional and of satisfactory dimensions, I assure you. I am not circumcised, of course. My clan did not practice genital mutilation, neither upon our females nor our males. We would have found the very thought of it outrageous. I can become erect and I can have sexual intercourse, although my mortal sexual partners have told me that the coldness of my flesh and the strange texture of my skin can sometimes be less than pleasing. I can even orgasm, although my issue can no longer spark life in the wombs of my female partners.
Alas, the wellspring of my manhood is as cold and sterile as the man itself!
And fangs?
Oh, yes, I have fangs! Two wickedly sharp eyeteeth, which I flawlessly conceal from the view of those around me by the movements of my lips and tongue... unless I want to be dramatic and frighten someone with a monstrous show of needled jaws. They are finely serrated on the interior edges, my fangs, perfectly designed to slice through flesh and arteries with the lightest caress.
In sum, I look and feel like a living marble statue. Stripped of all my glamours, I am beautiful and grotesque, seductive and repellent. You might think it a small price to pay to be liberated from death, but I promise you, extreme longevity is no good trade for anything.
3
Before I turn the page on this chapter, I should like to impress you with an accounting of my vampiric abilities. It is, no doubt, something you are very curious about.
I hesitate to call them “powers”, as it brings to mind images of American comic book heroes, and I am the very antithesis of the notion. A super-villain, perhaps, though again, let the record show that I have never purposely harmed an innocent. I have performed great villainy in my time here on Earth, but never deliberately, never by a conscious act of will. When I prey upon the living, it is as the lion preys upon the antelope. I hunt only the evildoer, and try to kill as painlessly as possible. But, yes, we have powers, and I suppose you could say that they are superhuman. They are intrinsic to our nature, designed to make us the ultimate nocturnal predator.
First, I am resistant to all forms of injury, from crude physical trauma to heat, cold, radiation and chemical reactions. The cells of my body are composed of a super-dense, chemically inert material that seems both living and nonliving simultaneous. Not only am I resistant to injury, when my physical body is damaged in some way, the Living Blood that flows in my veins moves immediately to repair the damage, mending even the most grievous wounds in moments. I have been beheaded, burned, hewn to pieces and drowned. I have been flung from great heights. I have been pierced through with every type of weapon you can imagine. Each time I have arisen to visit retribution on my attackers.
I have no problem moving about in the sunlight, though it is harder during the day to camouflage the peculiar nature of my flesh, and the brightness hurts my hypersensitive eyes.
Yes, I feel pain. I feel pain and pleasure, hunger and satiation. I have the same emotions that any mortal man has. I fall in love. I laugh. I cry. I have a terrific temper when stirred to wrath. I tend to be an impulsive creature, and have been know to wallow in self-pity from time to time. I am a passionate lover, and a little bit of a schemer. I am very tactile. I love to touch things, taste them, smell them and see them. I feel all the things you feel, only magnified to a far greater extent.
My five senses are exquisitely refined. I can see in the dark. I can hear the beating of a gnat's wings. I can smell a drop of blood a mile away, even follow a trail that is weeks old, or detect cancer in the body of
a living human being.
My physical strength is prodigious. I can punch through a cinderblock wall. I can lift a man into the air with one hand and fling him dozens of meters away with the slightest effort. I can propel my body at such great speeds that I can move invisibly among mortals or appear to vanish. When I snatch a victim at such speeds, the impact renders them instantly unconscious. It can even kill.
The strange texture of my skin allows me to scale walls like an insect. How's that for an outré talent? It's not foolproof and depends upon the porousness of the surface, but brick, concrete and stone are simple enough to cling to. I can climb the side of a ten story building in seconds. Yes, I am that fast! Smaller buildings, say one or two stories, I might simply leap to the roof.
My thought processes are quicker, my reactions nearly instantaneous. I have learned to manipulate the subconscious thoughts of mortals with sub-vocal intonations, though that is more of a skill I have developed over the centuries rather than a so-called gift of my vampiric nature.
I cannot fly. I cannot change into animals or transform into mist or control the weather.
Crosses and holy water, being recent religious inventions, of course, have no ill effect on me.
I don't intend to make l
ight of anyone's religious convictions, but I was 28,000 years old when Christ roamed the Middle East, performing his miracles. I have no opinion on the veracity of his divinity, or the Christian faith in general, but I have visited a great many cathedrals and have yet to burst into flames.
I have read the Bible cover to cover, as well as the Gnostic texts and the Qur’an and religious scrolls and codices and clay tablets of faiths you have never even heard of, lost to time as they are, their philosophies as dead as the men and women who clung so desperately to them, fearing that great mystery. None have struck me as embracing any transcendent Truth, nor caused me physical discomfort through contact with my flesh. I have never come across a mystic relic or holy book that could, by its proximity to my person, repel me or cause me physical harm.
There are vampires with more esoteric abilities, creatures who can read the thoughts of others or send out an invisible Eye to view events from a distance. There are immortals who can find hidden objects or dream the future or cause items in their environment to move of their own accord, but I have none of these gifts. I did not in life, and I do not in my un-life.
I suppose I should tell you of these other vampires.
I have crossed the paths of many an immortal being in the thirty millennia I have roamed this world and they are as varied in form and faculty as any other natural creature. Some are little more than shambling bones with nasty appetites, others beautiful and eternal. Most are, like myself, imperfect beings living as well as they can in the shadow of humankind, neither good nor evil. The pathetic and vile I dispatch as painlessly as possible. The cruel and destructive I wage war with, if there is any chance I can remove their blight from this world. There are not as many of us as you might imagine. In times past, there were more but in this modern era we are a rare breed, and growing rarer still. If not for the extreme longevity of my species, I wager we would have gone extinct long ego.
The Oldest Living Vampire Tells All: Revised and Expanded (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 1) Page 9
