Story Title: Seclusion
Disclaimer: I hold no ownership over Carlisle Cullen. That rights belongs to Stephenie Meyers.
Summary: He never wanted the life his father had chosen for him. Fate perhaps had a different plan for Carlisle Cullen. This story relives Carlisle's earlier days, before he met the Volturi or made the first member of his family.
I didn't want anything to do with my father's hunting parties for the supernatural. So I had gone off to school to acquire a higher education. Not even that could gain me the approval I craved from my father. In the end, I conformed to his wishes and took on the role of leader of his hunting parties. However, I had a very different approach on how to go on about it.
It was my belief that one was innocent until proven guilty. My father saw evil in almost everything, I was much more analytical. Ultimately, I suppose it was my naiveté that cost me my life back then.
A suspected nest of vampires in the sewers had become known to me. A few fellow hunters and I headed out one night to destroy their evil. Little could have prepared me for what happened next.
Once we stepped through the entrance of the sewer, one of the torches was snuffed out just as an ear-piercing scream filled the darkness that was surrounding us. An inhuman screech echoed through the dank tunnel. The smell of human feces and urine was soon over powered by the metallic smell of blood. Two of my followers had just been killed by the vampire we were hunting. I pushed onward through the dank darkness, hoping that I could somehow purge this demon from our city.
It, however, was that foolishness that would plunge me into my own eternal hell. The vampire I was hunting was hiding in the shadows that danced around me. At the last second I decided to turn back with the remaining men – I couldn't bear the burden of losing another man and creating another widow.
I nodded good-night to all of my friends in our party, as I was the last one in the tunnel. I had barely uttered a sound at Joshua when I felt a cold body press against mine and his venom filled-teeth torn into the soft flesh of my neck. The coppery smell of my own blood made my head spin. I heard Joshua scream my name.
"Carlisle!"
Everything went black after that.
SSSSSSSSSSSS
I woke up hours later to the musky smell of dampness in the air. I glance around the room I was in and realized I was in an old cellar. My body felt as if someone had lit it aflame. Bringing my fingers up to my neck, I felt the warm stickiness of my own blood.
The demon I had been hunting hadn't killed me, but had made me into one of his kind. My eyes darted to the door of the cellar. The fire within me was burning hotter; it would only take a little longer before I lost myself in the flames.
Even though I dreaded what I would become, the drive for self-preservation was undeniable. Using what strength I had left I made my way over to a pile of old rotten potatoes and hid myself beneath them. I prayed that no one would find my hiding place here. If they did, they would surely kill me.
Hiding for three days wasn't easy; I could ignore the smell of the rotten potatoes that lay above me. There wasn't anywhere else for me to hide from the flames that licked up and down my body. Finally, the inferno seemed to center and build in the center of my chest. My heart beat rapidly within as if it were willing to burst from my body to escape the fire that was raging inside me.
Then, just as quickly as it had begun, it stopped.
My eyes snapped open as I sat up suddenly. I pulled in a breath of air that my body no longer craved on instinct. There was a dull ache in the back of my throat. Removing myself from my hiding place, I stood up and made my way to the cellar door. There was no light shining through the hole in the wooden door, which could only mean that the sun was no longer out.
I knew that remaining in the musky cellar would not be wise, yet I soon realized that neither was stepping out into the night.
Once I was outside, a thrumming sound filled my ear. It took me mere seconds to realize what it was I was hearing as the ache in my throat turned to an all -consuming burning. The thrumming sound got louder as I walked by one of the houses along the cobblestone street, Thump-thump, thump. The rhythmic sound was coming from the hearts of the people who lived there. Somehow, I was able to discern that a man and a woman slept in a room downstairs while two small children lay upstairs sleeping.
Knowing what the sound was and what it called me to do, I quickly made my way out of the town that I had grown-up in, never to return home.
Time and time again, I tried to end my un-natural life, only to find it impossible. Seclusion away from humans was the only way I knew how to keep myself from becoming the blood-craving monster that my father and I had hunted.
Days had turned into weeks when I happened upon a cave deep in the woods. It was there that I decided I would stay secluded away from everything and everyone, until my new body gave up and died. Starvation would be my way to my freedom from this hell.
Weeks turned into months without me feeding on a human. The fire that was burning the back of my throat had only intensified threatening to make me lose my mind. My salvation from my insanity came in the form of a small herd of deer. I could no longer control the monster within that I had kept at bay for so long. Just as the herd ran by the cave entrance, I sprang grabbing a deer by the neck and sinking my teeth into the soft buttery hide, straight into the main artery.
It was in that spontaneous act I found my salvation and an end to my seclusion away from humans.