In the Past or the Future

"Well, I swear to God we've been down this road before,
The guilt's no good, and it only shames us more,
And the truths that we all try to hide,
Are so much clearer when its not our lives,
When we don't face the blame."

-"Hear Me Now" by Framing Hanley

I held Maria's hand as she listed off the names of the vampires to be killed. She would give my fingers a little squeeze every time she said the name of another doomed vampire.

I watched it all distractedly. Nothing really seemed to faze me anymore.

Something in me had died, slowly and painfully. A small part of me knew what that something was. It was Jasper Whitlock, the young Texan whose mama and papa would've been proud that he was fighting the war. Jasper Whitlock was as dead as his brethren who had been killed by the Northerners by cannons and bullets. Jasper Whitlock had been killed by a vampire, a monster.

And that monster was me.

I sighed as Maria kept going down her list, briefing the other offices and I. We were today's executioners. Before the sun set there would be smoking piles of remains, of our comrades, our friends.

I decided against paying attention to the names. Instead I retreated into the memories I had stored away.

The pictures were hazy and it made me sad. But I had to remember my family. I couldn't let Jasper Whitlock die for good.

So I remembered my mama. The way her hair smelled, or the way she'd smile affectionately at my father and me. I remembered the way her fried chicken or pecan pie tasted. My stomach craved for those but I knew it would taste foul to me now.

I made myself drudge up the sad memories, too. Like when I got in a fight with the town drunk and Mama wouldn't talk to me for a week, she was so disappointed. Papa, however, had been proud that I'd proved myself a man.

Suddenly, without warning, I felt an overwhelming wave of despair, hatred, hopelessness and overall sorrow pound into me with alarming strength. I had a bit of a head-rush from it all—blinding heat rose up to my eyes and I felt feverish. Never had I felt such an onslaught of emotions.

I glanced around my comrade's faces, desperately trying to locate the epicenter of emotions.

Peter.

Why was he so upset? So tormented?

Our eyes met and I could feel the rush of oxygen cut off to my lungs as I stopped breathing.

It must have been Charlotte. Maria must have called her name. Peter's mate was doomed to die.

His dark crimson eyes met mine pleadingly and I could see he was formulating a plan. And truth be told, I was too.

I held his gaze for a moment or two before turning my attention back to Maria. She continued her litany of names before we were to commit our holocaust.

Maria adjourned our meeting and Peter and I were free to confer.

"Charlotte," he sobbed brokenly.

I hesitated and then put my hands on his shoulders, "You'll need to run, Peter. Get far away from here."

He blinked at me several times before whispering, "You mean for us to run away?"

I nodded reluctantly, I would miss the boy.

"Come with us, Jazz," he said, using the nickname he'd coined for me. Jazz was his favourite kind of music, good Louisiana boy that he was. I half smiled at him.

"I can't go with you, Pete," I said, forcing my smile. "Maria would go crazy without me."

"Man, she's crazy with you! Please, I can't leave here without you knowing you're safe. It's only a matter of time before she tires of her favourite toy and it'll be you ripped to shreds and turned into a smokestack!"

I grimaced, knowing that what he was saying was true.

"Just think about it, Jasper," he said quietly.

I nodded, hoping that I would make the right decision.

I revaluated my life over the last few decades. It felt as if the years I had been with Maria had been as long as a millennia and as shot as an hour. The concept of time was completely lost on me and I realized that I didn't even know the date. It scared me to think that if I were still human I would probably have been dead and rotting six-feet under.

I sighed. There was no use thinking about things like that.

Peter and I were paired together as the killers of the evening. The other officers were set to tend the piles of smoking remains or to usher the doomed into the small clearing. We were a good distance away from anyone, prime time for Peter and his mate to run.

We continued out task of mindlessly tearing our friends to pieces, not stopping to hear the begging and pleading. Nor the screams.

Suddenly Charlotte was ushered to us.

She wore a plain white shift, her bird-like frame trembling. She looked like a pale, little ghost standing against the backdrop of the dark, twilight sky.

Her eyes were black in thirst and looked as if she would cry if she could.

Peter ran forward and gathered her into his arms.

Their hair tangled together in the wind, two pale shades of hay-like blonde.

He murmured to her softly as her fear quivered in demure tremors, radiating from her small body. Peter cooed to her, crushing her body to his.

I darted forward and stood several paces away from them. Their love mingled with fear and expectance was driving me mad.

"You must be quick," I said tersely.

Peter clasped my arm, "If we're going to run, you have to come with us."

"Yes, Jasper, please come," Charlotte murmured, taking me by surprise. Usually, she regarded me with a wary fear that made her timid. But her love had made her empowered. I tried to smile for her.

"You two go first," I said breathlessly, "I'll finish the task and follow you."

Peter shook his head, "How do I know you're not lying to us? I need to know you'll follow?"

"I will meet you in El Paso; from there we will travel north. Stay in the shadows," I instructed, "don't look for me. I'll find you."

The finality of my tone convinced Peter. He nodded and then gave me a stern look—sealing our promise.

He took Charlotte by the hand and together they ran away, never to look back.

I continued to do my work, pretending not to be preoccupied with my overwhelming thoughts of freedom.

I made a list of all the things I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to travel the world. Go to Europe. Perhaps I would climb mountains somewhere in the world. For some reason all of those elaborate plans I'd made never once consisted of me finding a mate.

Perhaps it was because I couldn't see myself sharing my life with another person, vampire or human. There was no way that I was going to put myself into a relationship with another person when I could physically feel if they were disappointed in me. I didn't want that kind of connection.

I figured that I would spend the rest of eternity wandering the globe, perhaps with Peter and his mate or on my own.

Without consent of my volition my feet were running, carrying me far away from that clearing. Away from my past, Maria, the bloodlust. The heartless, mindless, blind killing.

Past flat plains of dusty, orange sand and scraggly little trees that stood like corpses against the red night sky.

It felt exhilarating, lonely. No one's emotions but my own. Just the dry expanse of my chest where my heart should have been, the feel of the rush of dusty oxygen funneling through my lungs and the soft burn of the thirst pulsating in my throat.

I stopped once on my way to feed on a small rodent that I found cowering in the underbrush. It wasn't nearly as satisfying as a human would have been, but it stopped the bothersome trickle of venom that constantly coated the back of my throat.

The blood was thin and tasted stale almost, too nurtured with earthen things, not enough meat in the system. I shrugged, blood is blood. Just not as satisfying.

The sun was starting to rise, so I hid myself under barren tree, hoping that my skin in the sunlight wouldn't attract too much attention.

It didn't, thankfully. I entertained myself by once again retreating into the vault of fuzzy memories. Memories of girls and my first kiss. I had to laugh at that one. Only young Jasper Whitlock would try to steal the kiss of the prettiest girl in school. With her ringlets adorned with silk ribbons, and her dress immaculate. How in the world did I get the notion into my head that she'd want to kiss my dirty little mouth?

But she was just too cute with her dark hair and blue eyes and Southern Belle accent. She'd kissed me when I was twelve and she was fourteen. We were behind her house near the rope swing her father had built for her when she was younger.

We'd gotten a scolding from their slave, Bertha, for our antics. She's whipped me with her spatula until I ran away from her property. Mama had wondered what all the red marks along my arms were from, but all I could do was smile like a fool and tell her that I'd fallen into a tree. She didn't believe me, and I got a whipping for lying to her. Still I kept on smiling.

I had to laugh at that particular story.

And then I had to wonder if she was dead. That girl who I'd kissed. I couldn't even remember her name now.

I started trying to do mental calculations of the year. I knew that it was around 1862 that I was changed into a monster. And perhaps it had passed the turn of the century already. I was sure it had. I started to count years in my head. But I wasn't entirely sure my calculations were accurate.

In my desperate craving for knowledge I neared a small town. I didn't dare go too close for fear of exposing myself for what I truly was, but I did manage to glimpse a calendar tacked to the wall just inside of a small medical clinic that smelled of sickly blood.

August 4, 1944.

I could feel my stomach knot. I had to stare at the date for a very long time before I realized that it really was the year 1944. It had been almost a century since I'd been turned. How could that be? I was over a hundred years old.

My legs gave out from under me and I fell onto my backside. The impact didn't hurt, but I was in such excruciating pain inside that I barely took notice of the physical world.

When you had eternity, a hundred years shouldn't be too monumental, but those hundred years so devoid of anything that was loving or beautiful. Just murder after murder, more blood. It drove me crazy.

When did I become such a machine? Such a dark creature of the night, so putrid that even the sun loathed me?

I gathered myself, trying to regain feeling of my limbs. There really was no reason for my reacting that way. It still flabbergasts me that I was so upset about such a small passage of time.

I walked the rest of the way to El Paso. Glad that I arrived there in the middle of the night. It was dark enough for me to wander the street inconspicuously and search for Peter and Charlotte so that we could continue our journey away from Maria and the Mexican coven.

I didn't necessarily know what my future would hold from that moment on. And quite frankly, if I were to have known what my future would hold I probably would have laughed or ran all the way back to Maria pleading for her to take me back. But it was a whirlwind of emotions and heartbreak from there on out.

I was such a child in so many ways when I left Maria. It was ridiculous to think that I was suddenly going to be a different person.

I was still a red-eyed monster. Blood-thirsty, ugly monster. I had to find a way to reconcile myself to who I was. Because, the guilt was eating me away inside.

Peter and Charlotte were easy enough to find. I could catch their scents a mile away. We greeted each other—they were both surprised that I had actually come.

And then we were on our way north. We decided mutually to go to Michigan and then maybe into Canada. I was a little apprehensive about going north, old habits die hard.

But there was no trace of the war left there. I was the only one clinging tenaciously to the past. But I had to let the past go to gain my future.

For some bizarre reason, this chapter was friggin' hard to write!! I don't understand. I think I had at least three or four different starts to it before I finally just slapped myself and sat down to write this. I'm not entirely happy with it, but whatever. Beggars can't be choosers. The end starts to ramble a little and for that I apologize. I was going to stop it and then I said, 'What the heck, let's keep going' and then I just kept going. So it gets a little arid towards the end there.

I fell in love with Peter a little during this chapter. I made him from Louisiana because I'm a dork. Deal with it. I have no idea where Pete is from, so I made it up.

So, question, should I switch POVs in this and go see what's happening in Aliceland while Jasper is going through his mini-identity crisis? Tell me if that's something you'd want to see. Otherwise I'm just going to stick with Jasper and his boring, self-loathing self. I love Jasper, who am I kidding, he's fun to write...but seriously, if you guys want Ali tell me. I'll alternate between her and Jazz.

The song at the beginning of this chapter is "Hear Me Now" by Framing Hanley. LOVE THAT SONG. LOVE IT. Go check it out on YouTube or Project Playlist if you haven't heard it.

OH! For those of you who read Seven Brides for Seven Brothers [or for those of you who haven't, go read it and then you'll like this little tidbit of information, too] I am working on the sequel. Fear not! I'm just being a bum and am having issues figuring out a plot for the sequel. But I have a chapter and a half written of it, so once I get at least five chapters written I'll start posting it. I'm on spring break, so I have a lot of time to write, so hopefully it will be soon.

REVIEW PLEASE, IT MAKES ME WRITE THIS FASTER!!