Hunger
by Willow
You don't understand, baby sister, what it is like. The gnawing in the back of your throat, the lingering ache in your teeth, the screaming pit deep inside you growing louder and louder the longer you don't feed it. And then there is that intrusive voice, constantly whispering. Suggesting, negotiating - and if ignored long enough - demanding, screaming, ordering me to let go and do the unspeakable.
You might say that I just need to follow my instinct, my intuition... that I need to stop ignoring who I really am and drop all the masks I wear. You don't know what you're talking about. No offence, but you don't. I don't wish for you to truly understand me, to feel what I feel night after night. I am so grateful that you can live your life without this... hunger.
I imagine only a severe drug addict has an inkling of what it is like to be a creature like me. I've seen them. The slow deterioration, the loss of agency over their mind, the almost feral behaviour when they are not feeding their beast. But the difference between them and monsters like me is that I only grow in power as time passes by. And that, although exhilarating, frightens me the most. What if, someday, I decide that I don't care anymore and just give in to the feral instinct? Embrace the monster I am?
I'm sure you'll hate me and want me to be erased from this beautiful earth.
My radiant, courageous sister. You are enjoying life to the fullest and still dedicate your time to making life better for those in need. Even for people most would say don't deserve compassion or sympathy. You fight for their rights not because you approve of what they did, but because they are human.
Human…
That is precisely the reason why I don't want you to get to know me. I don't want you to get the idea that I am redeemable. Yes, I have committed crimes like your clients. I've blackmailed, stolen, trafficked drugs and weapons, like your clients. I've killed, like your clients. But I'm not like your clients. I'm not human. You don't deserve to waste your time on me. A monster. A vampire.
I know you loved Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The sexy, broody vampire with a soul. (I'm team Spike, by the way.) But it's nothing like that at all. There is no magical ritual to reclaim my soul and suddenly banish the beast inside me. If I even have a soul, I will slowly lose it the older I get. Because it will become harder and harder to cling to humanity, to control the beast inside me.
"You don't know that," I hear you think. But I have seen and dealt with older Kindred. I know.
Lily, you will never know how much I love you. How much I long to share a life with you. How I wish our father had just admitted that you existed, so we had the chance to grow up together. Maybe you wonder how it would have been to have me as a sister. How our children would have grown up side by side. But to you, our father and I died 30 years ago in a terrible fire. Lily, the person I was died that day. I let you dream of what could have been and watch you navigate your beautiful human life.
I hunger for our connection. But my hunger also dictates that I must stay as distant from you as I can be.
One day, you may feel a presence watching over you in the dark.
Know that it was never hatred that kept me away.
Only love.
And the Beast.
