Sit down and shut up. I'm here to prove a point, and that only. So don't get used to this.
Good. Now listen up.
"But we're dead. We don't have health. Bitch, cry, moan."
I was tired of hearing his whiney little voice. Despite his pretty face, the boy's attitude was not sexy at all. Not like the image I had in my head of blood coating his perfectly-rounded bottom lip, spilling down his chin and throat in red rivers … a pink tongue darting out to catch a rouge drop—
I swallowed nothingness. I took up his glass and tried to make him take it, wanting to see that image in real life. "Drink," I commanded.
He paused; I could see him looking at the glass like it was the one with fangs who could bite him any moment.
"Err … No thanks. I'm not hungry."
He refused it. With a stubborn, arrogant air, the little bitch turned his face away and lied to me. A familiar thread snapped, and once again my temper reared it's ugly head. I slammed the glass down on the table, breaking it, and snarled, "You're not hungry, Malik? You expect to pass that lie to me, your Sire, and expect to get away with it?"
How dare he look me in the face and lie! His mind was an open book, ready for me to read whenever I felt the inclination to bend down and turn the page. At this moment, I could plainly read thoughts of fear and anxiety, with small subscripts of disgust.
Disgust.
The thought was fuel to my rage. I leapt over the table and seized his scrawny neck, gripping it and squeezing threateningly. The decanter and glasses were knocked aside, spilling over the carpet and ruining it. I didn't care.
"SHUT UP!" I screamed, as he looked about to protest at his treatment. "Do you know how I know you're lying, Malachi?" The name, usually sweet in my mouth, now had an ironic tang. "Because I know that no matter how much blood a vampire consumes; whether it is the blood of a beast or a man, a bastard or a king, it will never be enough—you, Malik Ishtar, will never not be hungry!
He looked so pathetic, frightened and shaking. But I saw it—he couldn't hide it from me, the glint of self-righteous anger in his eyes. I knew that look. I knew it by heart. That look was there, shining in another's eyes, every time I closed my own …
"I know your type! You think you are too good to drink it! You think that drinking blood is disgusting, don't you?" I looked Malik straight in the eyes, but it wasn't he who I really saw.He was there instead, looking up at me with hatred and disgust. I couldn't bear the sight of him. I tried to focus back on Malik. "You're so pure, so righteous—bullshit! You are a vampire now, Malik; a murderer! A bloodthirsty … blood th-irst …ty b-beast …"
And then it happened.
A familiar pressure filled my head, and I held onto Malik in trepidation as colors began to swirl, seemingly dissolving right off the objects in the room and pooling into a giant mess of hues and tones.
Oh Gods, no! Not now … not here, in front of—!
But it was too late. The earth spun beneath my feet as the entire world morphed, rearranging itself into a familiar nightmare—a dreadful vision of the past I was cursed to relive repeatedly.
"Bakura …?" I hear Malik speak, but his voice was so far away now … like a distant echo of another dream …
I closed my eyes, gripping the boy with white knuckles as I grit my teeth. I felt the ground still, and heard the sudden silence. I knew what awaited me when I again opened my eyes, but I didn't want it—I didn't want to see him!
However, I knew very well by now that these visions never went away unless viewed in entirety; so, anxiously, I raised my eyelids.
The night was a cold one; the wind whipped through the trees, moaning with the volume of a thousand lost spirits, wandering through the mists.
A slender, pale figure stepped out into the foul weather, a basket carried dutifully on his hip and a small bag of farming utensils slung over his shoulder. Now that the sun had set and he was free from its burning, murderous rays of light, it was time to get to work.
White hair swung in the breeze, and the boy spared a glance at the moon. 'Where is he …?' Ever since his brother's disappearance three days ago, the boy had been worried sick, almost to the point of risking his life to venture out of their desolate woods and to the local town, to search for clues. Though it was common for his wily kin to vanish from time to time, the white-haired boy had a bad feeling about this one. As he headed to the fields, the wind seemed to whisper of bad omens, and he felt his restlessness and worry strengthen.
Suddenly, above the cries of the wind, the sound of a horse's whinny cut through the night, startling the young man. 'Diabound?' Recognizing the sound of his family's white kiso horse, the boy abruptly turned around and headed instead towards the stables, and the origin of the cry. 'It almost sounded like … Diabound was in pain …'
Believing perhaps that his brother had returned at last, the pale young man set aside his farming tools and reached for the latch on the stable door.
After a moment's hesitation, he lifted the latch and gently pushed the doors open, peering into the darkness for the source of Diabound's cry. Trying to adjust his sensitive eyes, the pale one took a few shaking steps forward, tentatively calling for his missing brother.
"B-Bakura …?"
There was a frenzied shuffling coming from a corner of the stable, causing the young man to freeze in place until the atmosphere was once again silent. He reached out blindly to the wall and grabbed a lantern with sweaty palms, kneeling and setting it on the ground. He fumbled around in his tattered yukata for the flint stone. There was more shuffling, this time accompanied by a heavy 'thud.' Gasping loudly in fright, he struggled to strike the flint, only succeeding to light the whale oil on the fourth try.
The lantern was set ablaze, and a flickering orange sphere surrounded the boy, driving the shadows away. He lifted the lantern into the air, gulping audibly, and slowly crept towards the corner of the stable, pursuing the noise.
"B-Bakura …? W-Who's there? Diabound?" One step at a time, the pale man shimmied along the wall's edge, lantern held out like a protective religious symbol. Red tongues of flame licked at the blackness around him, but the young man felt no warmth from the light—he had nearly passed out from fear by this point. Sheer determination and concern for his brother alone made him reach the back of the stable and lift the light over the corner, revealing the disturbance in its entirety.
He screamed. The lantern was dropped but did not break, obstinately continuing to reveal what the pale man wished he could unsee.
Lying on the floor in a heap was his family's horse, sporting vicious tears and puncture wounds in his beautiful, stained white hide and surrounded by pools of dark red blood. So terrible were the wounds, mostly scattered around the horse's neck, that the young man could only picture a terrible wild beast as the committer of the crime.
That line of thought made him blanche. The blood was fresh, and the dead horse still warm—which meant that the likelihood of the murderous beast being near was high. The pale farmer plucked up the lantern and began backing away.
How right he was to do so.
"R … Ryo …"
The voice was so soft; Ryo thought perhaps he hadn't heard it at all. But he focused a frightened gaze just beyond the circle of light, near the bales of hay, where he could make out the figure of a man crouching beside them.
"W-Who's there?" He cried, torn between keeping his eyes on the figure and turning to look for a weapon. "Show yourself!"
The man seemed to be in immense pain. He crawled forward on his belly like a snake, slowly making his way into the circle of illumination. When his face was revealed, Ryo again screamed. But this time, he screamed a name.
"BAKURA!"
There was his missing brother, or so he had to assume—looking up at him from his position on the floor, the man was simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar to the pale farmer. The first thing Ryo noticed was the blood: this man's mouth and chin were smeared with red, and a quick once-over revealed blood smeared down his arms, covering his hands, and staining his clothes. Surely shaken by the sight, Ryo nevertheless forced himself to ignore it for the time being and gazed into the man's eyes.
In this man's unfamiliar, unfeeling red eyes, Ryo saw a spark of his brother within, and it became an indisputable fact that the man was indeed his missing brother when he called again, "Ryo … h-help me …"
Ryo was at his brother's side in an instant. "Bakura! What … what on earth happened? Y … your eyes are red!" And your hair … what's happened to your hair?" Ryo blurted this out as the third anomaly came to his attention—Bakura's black, luscious hair was now as white as his own, glinting like spun silver in the places it was not tinged pink with blood. Ryo stared at it in awe, not being able to fathom what caused such a gruesome transformation in his previously-handsome brother.
Bakura reached out a stained hand and grasped his brother's clothes, trying to use him as an anchor to sit up. "R-Ryo …" he sobbed, clutching the robe. "Ryo, something … something terrible has happened. Please … help me …" He broke down into more sobs.
"I don't understand. What's going on? What's happened! What killed our horse?"
Bakura sobbed harder. "He's … he's ruined my life. He took my life and ruined it! I've become … I've become a monster … oh, Gods, help me …"
He looked up at his beloved brother, and the glow of the lantern made the bloody mess around his mouth stand out starkly against his ghostly-white skin … and it was looking at his brother's lips to check for the source of the blood that Ryo saw them; two gleaming white protrusions resting over the swollen tissue.
And he understood. Giving a choked cry, he wrenched himself from his brother, letting him fall back down to the floor as he backed away. He stared down at his brother in shock, and then his eyes moved towards the cooling corpse of his horse. He eyed the wounds at the neck again, and this time it was obvious what they were caused by.
Teeth.
"It was you! Y-you … you killed Diabound!" He swallowed, unbelieving of the words coming out of his own mouth, yet unable to refute them. "Y-you ate my horse …!"
Bakura's heart wrenched. "N-no … no, Ryo, please … h-help me, help …" He tried to crawl towards his brother, but Ryo only sprang away again. "N-no! Ryo!"
Ryo backed away until he hit the workbench in the opposite corner of the stables, and then began groping blindly behind himself for something. "What have you done? What have you become?" His voice was high-pitched and shrill in fright, but also sharp and focused.
"Brother—"
"You … you're a monster!"
Bakura's red eyes widened in horror. Using the rest of his strength, he pulled himself up on his knees, kneeling before his brother like a sinner kneeling before God, begging for eternal forgiveness. "Ryo! Its not my fault! I was killed, I was killed by—!"
"Murderer!" Ryo's voice was without mercy. His hand found what it was searching for, and he grasped it tightly. "You're crazy! You're an animal!"
"Ryo, PLEASE! I didn't mean to! I couldn't control myself, and I was afraid that if I saw you first … but then I came upon the horse and … I wanted to protect you, do you understand me? I did it to save you! I'm your brother for the Gods' sake!"
Ryo seemed to lose his fear. He stepped towards his brother, kneeling down to stare at his transformed relative with hard brown eyes. In Bakura's eyes he saw sadness, pain, and fury … but below all of that, simmering beneath the burgundy surface, was the unstable glint of an animal.
"Please …" Bakura whispered, and tried to take Ryo's hand.
Ryo leaned closer to his brother's ear. "…You're not my brother. You're disgusting."
Quicker than Bakura would have ever given his weaker brother credit for, a dagger was pushed into his breast, a few breaths from the center of his non-beating heart. Bakura reflexively clutched the hilt of Ryo's knife, but the blade had otherwise no affect on the newly-turned vampire—Ryo had just barely missed his heart. Both brothers froze; Bakura's eyes reflected deep pain at his brother's betrayal, while Ryo seemed to almost sneer.
Bakura tried one last time to appeal to his brother's mercy. "Ryo, please … I need you …"
Ryo leapt away and fled the stable without another word.
Bakura never saw him again.
I braced myself as the color came back in a rush, and all-of-a-sudden it was Malik before me once again. My brother's form had glided away, disappearing into the darkness. I was left drained and empty.
My slackened grip fell away, and I turned my back on Malik. I didn't want to look at his face anymore tonight—I had nothing left inside me to deal with his anger, disappointment, and sadness. "I know you think I'm disgusting," I said blankly, not realizing I had spoken aloud. I no longer cared for his disgust—let him despise me. Let him loathe me. Let him find all our kin revolting. I didn't care... Let him figure out what to do on his own, as I had to when I was first turned. I didn't care.
I moved towards the rotunda, intent on leaving.
Behind me, Malik had finally snapped out of his frozen state, and shouted, "Wait just a minute! What the hell was that? What are you going on about?"
More questions. More anger. More confusion. I couldn't handle them anymore tonight, couldn't he understand that? I wanted him to leave. I wanted to be alone again—I shouldn't have brought him here in the first place.
"Get out," I whispered, trying to hide how desperate I was.
"Wait! Bakura, what about—"
"GET OUT!"
My scream was finally enough; I heard him skitter backwards and open the door. I didn't bother looking back to see that he was gone; I just opened the rotunda doors. Outside, the moon hung heavy in the sky, nearly full—I looked at it for a moment, it's whiteness reminding me of—
I moved out into shadow and darkness, letting the black climb into my mind and swallow the white tendrils within it.
[Murderer …]
Echoed voices, whispering in disdain—
[What have you become]
[You're crazy]
They surrounded him, suffocating him, debilitating—
[like an animal]
[… not my brother]
"AAAAARRGHH!"
Stacks of papers and useless trinkets crashed to the floor as I swept my arm across my desk, knocking everything over in a bad temper. Outside the open balcony doors, there were blurred images racing through the night sky, and disembodied voices echoing between the stars. "ENOUGH, RYO! LEAVE ME BE!"
I pounded my fists on the worn wooden surface, and then slowly leaned down to rest my head on my still-clenched fists. "E-enough …" I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to calm myself, hoping the voices would fade if my temper diminished.
Tch. This was that Egyptian bastard's entire fault! What right does he have to look at me that way, to poison my mind with his ignorant thoughts? How dare he judge me so harshly? He didn't know anything.
[Murderer …]
There was nothing left to knock over on the desk, so I just tossed the whole thing aside. It smashed into splinters against the wall. The voices only seemed louder than ever, buzzing around my ears like a swarm of flies.
[You're not my brother, you're a monster.]
"Stop it, stop it!" I held my head in desperation, roughly twisting and pulling at my white hair, trying as I usually did when I was upset to make myself feel pain. Sensation, the ability to feel pain—to feel anything at all—I longed for it.
Nothing. Disheartened, I turned around to face my chambers. They were pitch-black, as I preferred them; the candles on the wall sconces were flameless and cobwebby, blatant with disuse. I had no real need of candles, for the darkness within me had crowned me lord of the night, and master of all shadows. But that was not the reason why I lit no fire, candlewick or fireplace, in my room.
Nor was it that I held lingering concerns for the infamous side affect of this dark gift … light, which could have melted the flesh off my bones as a younger sire, held less sway with me nowadays, developing into only a minor annoyance. It could (in normal doses, that is,) cause no further harm than a pressure migraine, and I found myself in the oft-taken-for-granted position of being so powerful that even my disease bowed to me. The old texts would refer to me as "complete," or a "True Immortal."
No. I kept my private chambers cloaked in a black blanket simply because I wished to mask what was painfully, obviously, missing:
Somebody. Anybody.
The shadows helped to fill some of the excessive space in the room; from the emptiness of the flower vase, to the empty chair by the empty hearth, and the untouched bed …
[You're crazy! You're not my brother. You're a monster.]
No darkness would ever hide that emptiness from me.
I had run out of things that I was willing to throw, so after pacing the floor for an hour, I felt claustrophobic and wanted a change of scenery.
I went outside and sat on the railing of the balcony. In the deep glow of twilight, the pale moon was like a silver bowl in the sky, reminding me of moon-kissed hair and skin as white as winter drifts … my brother, my tormentor, my Ryo.
[You're not my brother.]
It's not fair. How could I still be missing him so badly, even after all the centuries that have passed since that time? How could my heart ache for him, when it should be nothing but dust within me? Why is it that my empty chambers still echoed with the hollow sounds of the past, even now as played host to a young, beautiful creature that I myself sired?
I had cherished him, worshipped him even—and he had thanked me by betraying me, stabbing me in the chest and then spinning away to disappear into the night, leaving me alone in the bitter cold of my inhumanity. While it was true that I hadn't been the best role model for him in life, the important thing was that I had supported him the best way I knew how. I had tolerated his disease—his white hair and his pale skin and his aversion to sunlight—but when it had come to my disease, bearing the same symptoms, my brother had abandoned me. It wasn't fair …
I spoke aloud, looking at the moon but seeing my brother in its place. "It's not fair, Ryo … I stood up for you, bore our ostracization from the other villagers, stole for you … and when I most needed your support, you flew out of my life like a pompous pigeon. It's not fair …" In seeking comfort, all I had received was the agony of abandonment, and the mocking of my lost humanity. The pain from that day will never leave me.
I was shaken out of my thoughts suddenly as a drop of wet something splashed upon my forehead, taking me quite by surprise. "Hm." I held out my hands, palm-up, to see if the weather had taken a turn for the worse, but felt no rain.
The smell, however … I did notice it rather quickly, for it was a smell that I had evolved to seek out—the metallic smell of blood.
I looked up.
It seemed my audience with the moon was not as private as I had believed … for above me, resting against the top of a turret, was Malik Ishtar. Still feeling the bitter sting of rejected anger, however misplaced, I wanted to shout up at him, demand to know why he was lazing about on the roof, maybe even continue our "fight"—but I became distracted as his honeyed hair blew about his faded mocha face, glittering in the weak moonlight. From my vantage point, it was easy to see the stained trails of blood on his cheeks, leading up to polluted crystal eyes.
He was crying. Crying for his lost life, no doubt—one that I had stolen from him. Maybe he cried for his sister, his brother, his friends; all of whom he'd never see again. I suddenly didn't feel so angry with him any longer, just kind of empty.
Malik made me feel empty—emptier even than my bedchambers, my castle, and my heart combined. Which was ironic, since I had intended his presence to fill the very voids he was now accentuating.
I didn't know what I was doing anymore. He was supposed to have brought a spark back into my life … to bring me out of my misery and back to my old self again. I had felt a quiver of it when we'd exchanged banter in the vampire pub he'd unwittingly walked into—the ghost of my old exuberance, attitude, and confidence. That night, I had felt alive again!
But these past few days have been nothing like that time. Now there is only more hatred and anger. More confusion, more sadness, more loss … I couldn't stand it. It would have been better for the both of us if I'd killed him that night.
Hell. It'd been better if Ryo hadn't missed my heart, all those centuries ago. Then I would be at peace and Malik would still have his life.
Another drop of blood fell on the cold stone before me, and I suddenly decided that the night was no longer comforting to me. Silently, one last look at the treacherous moon, I retreated to my living quarters, leaving my young possession to shed his tears in the darkness alone.
There. Happy, are you? Excellent. 'It's not as easy as it sounds,' my ass. What's so hard about telling a simple story? You all must believe I'm a far superior narrator now—feel free to tell the Egyptian that.
Now give me compliments on my superb storytelling skills, and then go away.
Hee hee hee! *slinks away for another year.*
