Eternal Child
Part I: Bite
"It was then that Hook bit him.
Not the pain of this but its unfairness was what dazed Peter. It made him quite helpless. He could only stare, horrified. Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly. All he thinks he has a right to when he comes to you to be yours is fairness. After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness; no one except Peter. He often met it, but he always forgot it. I suppose that was the real difference between him and all the rest."
~Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie
Everyone always says that they want to be a child forever. They're lying. They don't understand, what it means. They don't understand what they say, these humans. They look at me, whenever I allow them, and they see this thin little blonde boy. Thirteen, maybe twelve. They smile, at my wispy hair, at my eyelashes, which are thick. Only I can feel my fangs, my abominations, hidden behind my grin, pressing against the insides of my lips.
They smile at the child kindly, their fingertips itch to weave themselves through my hair. They have no trouble looking me in the eye. I speak to them in my honey voice and they walk toward me, they sit, or they kneel, and poise their necks, and they let me drink. The easiest are the women, in their thirties or later, the ones that have children or want them. Their pulses quicken when they see me. They want to clothe me and feed me, to take me from the shadows and make me their pet.
They repulse me.
They are the ones that say they want to be a child forever. That's what they say.
I haven't been one in many years, in centuries. My shell is misleading. The divine irony is that the moment that froze my body in childhood, my draining, my making, was the first true injustice, the first unfairness of it all. The moment I woke, hunger, pulsing through my body like nothing I had imagined, buried in the earth, alone amongst the thick night of the most terrible forest, that was the moment I left childhood behind forever. And the moment in which, I was trapped in it for eternity.
A man and a woman found me, on the road. I could see it in their eyes, the pity. I bled them dry before I knew what I was doing, and the ache for blood in my body dulled. I ran, I ran away, from the blood. It was sticky, all over me. I must have looked a nightmare. I felt my fangs with my fingers, they were so sharp they went through my thumb before I realized I could feel the sting. I pulled it out of my mouth to see it heal. I felt the flesh knitting back together, the little blood vessels reattaching. I ran harder, I ran as far as I could, until I felt the sleep creeping, drowning me, and my instinct said dig, so I did.
I sleep in the ground. In the earth, with the rotting leaves and the tree roots. My dirtiness, it's the thing that arouses their pity, the worst. They imagine all sorts of situations, all sorts of injustices I must have endured to get to the state. They imagine all the possibilities except one. The truth.
Only the children see me, and they know no pity. I only see jealousy, envy, curiosity. They can sense it, that I am not like them. I am different. But they know not how. They imagine that I am orphaned perhaps, alone, free to play in all the mud and dirt I wish, to climb trees without being called for supper. Little do they know that they are my supper.
I choose them well. The scream-y ones, they are annoyance in the purest form. Afraid of monsters, those sorts, I don't go near. The ones I like, the ones that like me, they are the runts. They are the quiet ones, the ones that hang in the back of groups. They are the ones who sense the madness of children, their cruelty, and they hang back and wait for it all to be over. They know the unfairness of it all.
I don't need to use my honey voice for them. Not the ones I choose. They understand. I tell them I am hungry. Girls are the best. They have not turned yet into miserably emotional, pitying women, and they understand my predicament. I tell them that I need them, I tell them of my hunger, and my buried sleep, and they tilt their necks, smooth and unblemished, to the side. Before I bite I like to touch their arteries, I like to feel their heartbeat, feeding blood to their doll-like little faces. My touch is so soft, they are barely afraid. It's cold against their skin, their breath almost hitches in their throats, I can feel it. I touch my lips to them, I feel the beat there, before I even open my mouth. I lick them, anticipating their taste, which is much sweeter that any other. My fangs sink slow. They are so still. They anticipate pain, which doesn't come. I do not hurt them. Adrenaline makes the blood sweeter, yes, but I cannot stand the pulsing of their hearts if they are afraid, beating in their ribs as if it might leap out.
I don't drain them, for the most part. Only when I am famished. I bite the tip of my index finger, I blot it onto the fang-marks before I lick them dry and they begin to heal as I pull away. I thank them, and they ask if I will return. I smile my smile, the scary one, and they take a step back. I shake my head, and I disappear, alone, into the trees that are my home, my universe. I never return. The next morning when the sun rises there is no sign of me, no mark, no scar. If they speak of me, I am a figment of their imaginations.
They tell stories of me to their children, but only when their children are young enough not to remember. They tell them of the boy who touched them first, before all the others, and how much they wished to run with him into the night. For centuries. They are all so utterly similar. I suppose I have quite a distinct taste.
For centuries I have been disappearing into the shadows, running into the trees in the night. Alone, always cradled in the earth between sunrise and sunset, always moving, at night.
I meet my own kind, occasionally. I am an abomination to them, to they who are abominations themselves. They can smell the virgin bloods coursing though my body, the children I've ingested, and they smile, terrible, wicked, knowing smiles. And I go on my way alone. Six hundred years now. Nose in the air, sniffing, looking for the one who made me what I am. Made me and left me, alone for dead in the ground, disgusted by me.
Chasing, ever moving, never seeing, except for trees. Trees and unblemished necks, curving for me. It is all so alike. I cross the ocean to the New World. It is all the same. Hundreds of years, and it matters not when it is or where it is. Always there are trees, forests. Always necks, waiting to feed me, small and smooth.
At some point, I begin to hesitate to sink into the shadows. They begin to tell me of the day, of the sunlight. Of sunrise, something I have not seen in hundreds of years. They grow excited, to tell me about something which they know, and I do not. I tell them of my trap of night, my trap of eternity, alone, in the trees. And they ask if they may come, and I say no.
Until one night, when I do not.
Author's Note: This is from the POV of an original character, Henry, from my other story, Aerial. So this is pretty much an original piece of fiction, since I'm not using any True Blood/Southern Vampire characters, but he is connected. You don't have to have read my other story to understand this, but of course if you do read it, I will love you extra! I originally planned this as a one-shot, but when I started writing I thought it would be better as a two-part, short story. So there's one more chapter coming! Let me know what you think!