Title: Vampire Philosophies
Author: PNS*
Rating: PG

It's one of the worst things about being a vampire. To be reflectionless. It's not vain to look into a mirror. It's a validation of self. This is me. This is who I am. I exist. A flesh and blood creature. I am in this world. It's so easy to forget that you really exist when the rest of the world accepts the fact that you don't. So how do you cope?

You find a reflection of yourself in the victims you choose. Each one, subtly, reflects yourself in one way. And drinking them of their life, it's a way of gaining your own waning essense back, to fill some of the void.

Some of those people who think they write of vampires, who think they know, they irk me. But mainly those who irk me are the ones who say vampires do have a reflection. What better way to damnation than to be free of the reminder of the monster you have become? You can let it swallow you whole and never let your soul see the light of day, if it exists. But there are always the victims. For brief shining moments it is if you are standing on the edge of a pond in the brightest moonlight and there you are, in the world beyond, mimicked by the shimmering water. You reach for it, only for it to be shattered by the endless stream of blood, blood so dark it swallows the world and could never reflect anything but the swirl of countless other souls being drowned.

I remember what I look like, sometimes, but other times it's unclear, fuzzy, and still others it is like a Picasso painting and I panic. Sometimes I don't want to remember, and others times it is all I can do to try and conjure up an image, to know that I am not a ghost haunting the world, even though I am. A tangible ghost of some human faith, fallen from the good graces of a diety that doesn't exist.

I sound bitter, forgive me. I know not who I am, so pretenses won't be observed. I am the mirror of the night and the world is reflected in me, for I shall never be reflected in it.