by Jay Smith
Dad sees me and shouts my name! It spooks mom, but she stops pulling the foil off the sweet potatoes to laugh and sheer. Dad smiles big and dopey the way he does only after his second tumbler takes hold. He’s coming to give me a bear hug, I know it. Mom shakes her head in playful exasperation as she takes the dessert from the fridge and I see all the pieces of stepdad we’ve stocked up on for the winter.
We are having roast tonight. And I will sleep in my own bed. When Molly returns from the Hyades, she has a place in my home, too. Maybe we’ll have a neighborhood cookout when she comes here to stay.
Epilogue
Winter is almost here.
Above me and around me, scores of human beings prepare. Fires burn at night up above. The eaters freeze and hibernate. Unlike the living, the dead have no fear of winter. The world, to them, is unrelenting cold. Eternal night. When comes the thaw, the hunt will begin again.
I am not what they are. Through me, our visitors learned the music of this world. Just as they learn within me, my hosts try to learn about what I’ve become.
Outside the dream, my bed is stainless steel. My house is a jail cell. My neighbors are my keepers who peer in on me and feed me blood, calling it mercy. They are unaware that I can smell their fear and lust through the delivery slot. They are unaware that I can touch them in their dreams. They think they keep me weak. I agree to chain myself for their inspections and their probes. I lay prone for their experiments. What am I, they ask. So do I.
I'm not an eater.
I'm not a ghoul.
What am I?
I do not want flesh, but I crave fresh, living blood. It sustains me. Keeps my mind sharp. Fresh blood sustains me and heals my torn and injured joints and muscles. If it seems as though I am strong, that comes from feeling little pain. Having confronted death, I don't see it as you do.
I am not immortal. This body will rot. Eventually. My back where my blood pooled as I lay in death, the skin is bruised the color of the deepest depths of Hali. It will heal in time. My young body does not betray my true age.
My eyes are jaundiced, my iris the color of old paper. On the other hand, the spectrum of light I perceive is broader than in life. The sounds I hear beyond human limits.
I have no romantic notions, no hate or love for humans. I empathize because I retain my memories. But my heart beats differently – slow as in sleep - and I think I will always be cold. I have no carnal desires nor maternal instincts - except in the passage of myself into others as I drink from their arteries.
I...I am a vampire. I am not alive, not dead and therefore something between – a gothic vision of UN-death. I think. I scheme. I hunger.
I do not sparkle, but I also do not die in the light. I do not transform into bats or rats. I do not live in the earth of my burial or count mustard seeds thrown into my path.
My lovely doctor has a pure heart. He sees me as a child. Paul Hansome sees me as a monster and imagines me burning to death. He’s afraid that I might go free and feast not only on the Morlocks of the Down Under, but on the Eloi above in HG World. He does not understand that by night I wander through the darkest parts of his mind. I am rewriting his history. I toy with him as he did me.
Winter falls and I wander the dreamscapes of my keepers. In those dreams, I plant seeds. I share subtle ideas. Far above, all the secrets I ever hoped to uncover are laid plain. The savage and the desperate. The great and the base. I lay seeds in their mind to prepare them for what’s to come. In Jebediah. In Jack. In Hank. In Paul. Sleep through the winter and dream, my dears. When it is time, I will call to you. And the next age of humankind will begin.
END
Editor’s note: “Face this world. Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses at its meaning. In the end you will find clues to it all.” – quotation of author HG Wells found written at the back of Molly’s Bible and in the footnotes of the Diary of Jill Woodbine.
The End.
The story of Jill Woodbine continues in Season 2 of HG World, coming soon from 3015 North Studios.
