In the year 2020, Vampires took control of society and ordered all humans placed in vampire custody. The people who were not captured formed a Resistance movement, headed by the Human Council, who began to plan the Insurgence.
I am, of course, indebted to Stephenie Meyer for this world we all play in, and these characters we all adore. Additionally, I am indebted to hitntr01, who has graciously allowed me to use certain concepts from her wonderful story "In Need of Rescue", which constitute much of the background of my own story. These include: the language Vampiri, the Rules, the machines used to draw blood from humans, Manners Training, and the plot theme of Edward working as a guard at a facility holding humans. Thank you, hitntr01.
Chapter 18 – Game Night, and Memory Games
Charlotte and Peter had left, and summer had begun to yield to fall. It was another rainy, cold day in Forks. Jasper and Emmett were playing a videogame, and I was tired of video games. So I opened the door under the main staircase that lead to the basement and went on down.
Jasper was behind me in an instant, provoking a good-natures grumble from Emmett about his game being disrupted.
Once I got down the stairs, I looked around. The first room of the basement had wall to ceiling shelving, and the shelves were covered with boxes. I walked over to examine the boxes.
"What are in these?" I asked Jasper.
"Oh, just old stuff, like camping equipment, board games, puzzles and junk," he replied. "Things we had around from when we were pretending to be human."
The camping equipment interested me, as I had spent a lot of time in the wild between cities. They had all the kinds of things I would have loved to have had out there, including tents, camp stoves, and expensive backpacks.
They also had a lot of jigsaw puzzles, carefully arranged so that the photos of the puzzle picture on the side of the box were displayed. Obviously Esme had organized these. I pulled a few down and looked at them.
"Do you think all the pieces are in the box?" I asked Jasper.
"I'm sure they are," he answered with a smile. "We don't miss much when it comes to putting the pieces back in the box, and a lot of these were probably never opened. Would you like to take one upstairs?"
"I wouldn't want to make a mess in Esme's spotless living room," I sighed.
"That is easily avoided, darlin'," answered Jasper. "We have puzzle mats to hold the pieces", and he pulled out some long rolled-up felt pieces.
"Ok, but what about these games? Which ones did you play?"
"I'm a chess man, myself. But Emmett always liked Battleship and some of the others. He only liked playing Twister with Rosalie," he chuckled. "But there's also Scrabble and Monopoly."
He pulled Scrabble and Monopoly out, and I pulled out Twister. We took those, along with a few puzzles, upstairs.
"Hey Emmett, look what I found!" I sang out as we re-enter the living room.
"What's that little one," Emmett boomed at me across the room.
"Twister," I replied. "Want to play with me?" I asked, earning a growl from Rosalie which I ignored.
"Ummm…I'm not so sure that would work. I'm a bit bigger than you are, and…" he started.
"Chicken?" was my one word answer.
"Not in my nature", he answered. "Just get someone to spin that wheel."
Twister with Emmett was fun. He may be over twice my size in mass but was very limber. We twisted mightily, trying to get the foot or arm down on the correct circle. At one point, Edward was calling out to Emmett that he should remove his hand to let me get my leg get to the assigned circle. After all, he could reassemble himself later. Emmett just shook his head and decided he needed to move his arm in order to scratch behind his ear, while I quickly put my left foot down on the red circle which that arm had been blocking.
Rosalie tried to claim that maneuver was a game ending foul, but we kept making up rule changes that allowed us to play, although the game seemed to always end with both of us lying in a giggling mess on the game mat.
On another night, Carlisle and I were laying against the cushion by the fire. He had curled me against his chest, and while he was reading a book, I was running through one of the Shakespeare plays I kept memorized in my head.
Carlisle interrupted my recitation. "What are you thinking, sweetheart?" he asked.
I decided to talk a little about life in the wild. "Since humans aren't supposed to be able to read, we have reverted to oral traditions. We memorize various writings, and then when we meet up, we check to see who is carrying what."
"Fascinating," Carlisle remarked softly. Jasper put down his book and leaned forward.
"So," I continued, "I was reciting a play. Let's play stump the chump. This work is by a British author, I was a little ways into it; let's see how long it takes for you to recognize it. That is, assuming you do recognize it," I teased.
"Begin then," Carlisle urged, chuckling softly.
I was a little ways into one of Shakespeare's Henry the Sixth plays. I find military works interesting in general, and the better known plays, like Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, had lots of carriers in the wilderness. I tried to focus on the less commonly memorized works.
I picked back up during an exchange between the Duke of Gloucester and the Duke of Bedford, as the they were being given news by a messenger: "'Sad tidings I bring to you out of France, of loss, of slaughter and discomfiture: Guienne, Champagne, Rheims, Orleans, Paris, Guysors, Poictiers, are all quite lost. /
What say'st thou, man, before dead Henry's corse? Speak softly, or the loss of those great towns will make him burst his lead and rise from death. / Is Paris lost? Is Rousen yielded up? …'" [I Henry VI Act I: sc I, lines 59-66]
It's clear Carlisle recognized the passage immediately, as he took a quick breath and put his head down by my ear. He has his eyes closed, and appeared rapt.
I continued on, glancing around, looking for signs that others have recognized the play. Emmett was shaking his head in frustration, and Edward's face was the first to light up as he read Carlisle's mind. Jasper was mouthing, "no fair" to Edward, but Edward wass trying to convince Jasper that he recognized the passage at the same time that he picked it out of Carlisle's brain. Alice had her face screwed up in concentration, trying to remember where she heard the lines. She didn't talk to me in human, but apparently doesn't want to miss out on an opportunity to show off her knowledge gained through years of attending high school.
When I pause near the end of an Act I, Carlisle gives a low growl in my ear, so I continued.
When I finished Part I, Carlisle slowly opened his eyes. "It's been a long time since someone bothered with that play," he said softly. "You read, or recited, it well. Thank you for that."
"What else do you have in there, in your head?" asked Emmett.
"Oh, we can't read of course," I added sarcastically, "and even if we could," I continued more seriously, "it would be clumsy to try to carry the seminal works around of our human past when traveling. So we try to carry an assortment of works in our memories, things that would be useful in a variety of situations. Some works of literature, tales to tell in the dark or when it's cold. Some works of politics and some items of history, to remember our past. Also religious works are always needed, passages that can be used in sermons or for rituals, such as weddings and funerals."
Alice's eyes grew wide at the mention of weddings and funerals. Both funerals and weddings have been outlawed, since we are food. The Rules don't allow funerals, since one doesn't mourn the passing of food with ritual ceremony. The Rules also require all humans are to be bred at age sixteen, and breeding does not allow for the concept of love and long term choice of partners. Dating and love between humans, sanctified by marriage, have been outlawed by Aro's Rules. The Rules do not even permit a vampire to keep both male and female pets in the same household in order to prevent love from developing.
Our churches have become subversive, as we used them to honor the rituals that make us human. Funerals have become sites of resistance, as we honor all the dead, including those who died without rites or hope of burials in captivity. The liturgies have been amended to reflect these changes. The church has become the one of the main binding elements of our outlawed colony society, as this is where rituals are held, the rituals that impart meaning to the passages of lives and instill a rhythm to the passing of the seasons and the years.
As for laws, while there are codes put out by the Human Council, they were primarily suggested codes of conduct for Resistance members or the colonies in general. The colony leaders made and enforced rules for each colony, mainly relating to security. Each colony leader carried a side arm, to enforce these rules. Any one compromising the colony's security could be executed on the spot by a colony leader.
I was a long way from the colonies tonight, though, reciting the Shakespeare play for Carlisle and his family in this luxuriously appointed living room. I frequently felt guilty living in such conditions, even though the colonies had recently been moved into permanent housing with electricity and running water.
"Did you ever see this play performed when you lived in London?" I asked Carlisle.
"Several times," Carlisle replied. "Sometimes I would fly back from the states to see it, when it was revived in London in more recent years."
Deciding that I've had enough for one night, I buried myself against Carlisle's chest. Eventually he took me upstairs, and I went to bed.
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