Free Excerpt from "Midnight Rhapsody" From "Cedric the Damned" Part One

Prelude of Meditations

Time is of no importance to me. I have all the time in the world. I have no control over this. In the year of my re-birth, the facts surrounding my newfound immortality all became clear to me in an instant. Immortality as one of the Damned is a bittersweet blessing. You never grow old; you never grow sick, or fall to disease. You are immune to death in almost every form imaginable; but the price you pay is the Hunger. The Hunger for mortal blood is what controls you and maintains the bittersweet blessing and horrible curse.

Without blood, a vampire merely starves into a state of sleep or torpor. It is a restless sleep though, full of nightmares and insane visions and hallucinations. The Hunger inside you grows and feeds on every shred of remaining humanity and conscience. Your will gets etched away by bloodlust and desires unspeakable. Your sense of morality is challenged. Your knowledge of what is right and wrong gets questioned and second guessed. Nothing seems to matter to you except to quiet the Hunger inside you, forever trying to get you to kill, or drink the life of mortals.

Feeding the Hunger allows you to live forever as an immortal of almost god-like proportion. You quickly find yourself doing things you only dreamed or feared of as a mortal child reading horror comics or watching old movies. You realize quite quickly that you have powers beyond belief. The power corrupts you though. It eats away at you and makes you feel invincible. You think you are untouchable until you do something stupid like challenging the sunlight or dancing over open flames. You learn quickly vampires, as powerful as they are or can be, have weaknesses as well. Very little can kill or destroy us, but that which can renders us as fragile as the thinnest glass.

You may say immortality is a fine gift. To live forever and have such power over all that is around you. To see the world around you evolve and change before your eyes. To have the power to make change and to right wrongs. It is a fine gift to be immortal, but every gift you receive requires a sacrifice that must be given.
I have learned this in a relatively short time since my re-birth. For all I can do for this world, I live forever as a witness to the wrongs I alone cannot right. Even as a vampire, I am but one soul. The world is full of too many that suffer. Some suffer because of what I do, and others suffer for what I cannot or couldn’t do. I witness wars I could not end; I watch deaths I cannot prevent. I see children become orphans. I see entire nations that are starving for food I alone cannot provide.
I have the power to manipulate minds and sway crowds, but I cannot reveal myself to the eyes of mortals. They would not understand me and mine. They fear us. They hunt us, and perhaps in many cases, rightfully so. I could change the weather and shift the tides. But nature is a chaotic thing to “play” with. I can bring pleasure or pain to anyone I choose, but the more powers and abilities I use, the more of myself I must sacrifice.

In order to use my abilities, I must draw upon the powers and strengths of the blood inside me. It is the supernatural properties of my vampiric lineage that allows me to work miracles and wonders. It is also this vampiric lineage coursing through my veins that holds me in bondage to a life of eternal remembrance.
Having the ability to remember the past doesn’t seem like a curse to some, but consider; life has its downs as well as its ups. Sometimes there are those rare individuals that have lived in total darkness. There are those who have lived all their mortal lives alone and in shame for all the many mistakes they have made. Most people get only one chance to live as best they can, and some of them never seem to get anything right. I was one such person.

I stand before a mirror in a one bedroom apartment in a city that needs no description or name. This city is as dark and dreary as any other city on a cold stormy night in late October. The city doesn’t matter to me and I matter nothing to this city for at least tonight. I stand before this wall mirror and see the remnants of a mortal man who made too many mistakes in life and lived out half his lifespan alone.

Everything about me seems sunken or faded. My brown eyes do not shine. The eyes tell the story of a man who saw all that he could ever want crumble or flutter by either by his own doing, or from the fear of ever wanting. I see the pale, small and narrow face of a young man who thought he knew enough to get by only to find that fate and destiny had outsmarted him. I see the face of a man who finally realizes that all along life was just a cruel joke on him. People like me can never find love, or be respected. People like me will never have the chance to keep what little they get. People like me are never given a break.

I see the face and reflection of a young man who appears vulnerable and weak. I see the face of a young man who has been taken to the cleaners and been beaten and broken. I see a hopeless man who had his hopes shattered before his eyes every day of his mortal life. I see a man who has been backstabbed by the love of his life. I see a man who thought right, but acted wrongly. I see a man who tried to repent, but continues to pay his dues. I see a sullen reflection of a wrongly accused soul condemned to die an eternal death.

This is who I was, and the memories that cling inside me for all eternity. I am cursed to recall missed chances, past mistakes, the many rejections of a man in love, the harsh lessons of a man just trying to live on a day-to-day basis.
Very little comforts me. My memory is my prison and the day’s sleep is only a brief reprieve. All vampires must awaken by the light of the moon or the passing of sunset, or they risk the wrath of the Hungers inside us and go mad. I must resort to becoming like a monster if only to prevent becoming an even greater monster. I feed if only to keep from feeding too much. The more I feed to satisfy my growing Hungers, the harder it is to keep from feeding too much. A vampire’s existence is a circular puzzle swinging on the end of a pendulum of insanity and paradox. We are damned if we do, and damned if we do not. We are damned as we do, and damned as we refrain from doing.

We may not intend to cause evil or harm, yet by our acting out of survival and necessity, we become evil in action. Some of our kind were born devout and full of faith, only to become agents of twisted evil who have suffered decades of moral torment. Their needs to fend off their final death have made them angry or insane. They became changed. The years of immortal existence offered them realities that their beliefs had no answers for. They witnessed too much pain, suffering, and death to fully rely upon their faith in their religions. They felt forsaken by God who offered them no mercy. Their God could not provide them with answers. Many of them felt that it was they who betrayed God and their faith and that their status as vampires was their punishment for some wrong against God.

It is common for many of my kind to blame themselves for what they have become. It is common for us to believe that we have been chosen for this curse as some sort of punishment for some crime committed against the Divine.