Submitted by flintoxicated t3_10py7je in WritingPrompts
Raging_Flames10 t1_j6n4x5x wrote
Journal entry : 31/01/23
When I first saw it, I was mightily confused. There it was, my latest victim's photo in the newspaper. But that itself wouldn't be confusing, No, it was the headline accompanying it that got me confounded- "The Nocturnal Blood Demon". They have attributed a series of my latest target's deaths to some sort of vigilante and gave him a cool name, too. I am almost jealous, anyone would be, with a boring name like Charlie. The article was speculating that the 'Demon' was riddling the city of crime. This posed a huge conundrum for me. Vampires must walk a fine line between infamy and staying under the radar. Vampires gain more power the more infamous they are. But, get too famous and you will get hunted down. Any old vampire will tell you that the secret to living a long life as a vampire, is staying under the radar. That is true, many would say being less powerful but safer would be better than burning too quickly. My main reason for choosing the victims I chose was that no one would dig too much into them. After all, they were drug dealers and criminals who always avoided prison on technicalities. I even made sure to pick an equal number of people from rival gangs to make it appear like two gangs sabotaging each other. But, this was the best of both worlds. My persona would gain infamy and as long as no one suspects vampire involvement, there was no problem.
But still, the safer path was to change up my M.O., the sensible option. I would have gone with that too if I didn't have the memories. You see, vampires get the memories of humans we drink out of. Vampires just don't drink blood. If that were the case, I would have somehow stolen blood from blood banks instead of going after people. No, when we drink from someone by inserting our fang into someone, we drink their soul, through their blood. And once a vampire starts sucking blood from a human, even if not much blood was drunk, the entire soul of the victim slowly escapes from the human from the wound made by the vampire. So, any human a vampire selects to drink from, surely dies. And with the soul that is drunk, the memories of the human are absorbed too. This is the reason why older vampires are very wise. They have memories of lots and lots of human years and a wide knowledge of a lot of things.
Alas, I digress, I saw something from the memories of my latest victim, He was planning with some of his friends to plant a bomb in a train, the boss of a rival gang was going to travel in. Something in me wanted to prevent that from happening. Not like I care about the innocent people going to be killed in the blast. No, it would have sparked a big gang war, and a lot of criminals would die needlessly, a waste of their souls. But, this way, I could stage a vigilante action on these people and "discover" that they had plans to bomb a nearby school. Yes, it was not a school they actually planned to bomb. But they would not be alive to contest it and I get more fame and avoid a gang war too. Yes, the rival gang could be used later for more souls and infamy.
​
- Charlie, the local evil scheming Vampire
(PS: My first attempt to get into writing prompts. Please provide feedback)
flintoxicated OP t1_j6nc4xz wrote
*Chefs kiss*
Really nice short!
Text is both concise and very flavorful! It has an almost professional tone, feeling like the internal monologue of someone older and giving the idea of a vampire that's been around for a good 200-300 years.
The rationalization of his actions does a great job to show a sliver of humanity through the character trying to rationalize them as cold practicality. Very good job on this!
Raging_Flames10 t1_j6nfefx wrote
Woah, thanks!
>show a sliver of humanity through the character trying to rationalize them as cold practicality
Yeah, I first wanted the vampire to actually try to do good, but deny to himself that he does it for good reasons. But, I could not find a way to write that down and capture those emotions well enough, So I changed it midway to make the vampire more scheming and practical-minded. That's why you can sort of feel the morality of the vampire swing between good and evil from one paragraph to the next.
Anyway, thanks for the appreciation :)
[deleted] t1_j6o18jq wrote
I love that you took the first person here and how you angled it at the close not only touching on the vampire's morality and purpose but also the essentiality of his being- the efficacy of it all!
At least to me.
Awesome!
Raging_Flames10 t1_j6oj02g wrote
Thank you. I felt the first person would help me capture his motivations in a story more easily and skip past describing the scene and environment etc, which I am not good at.
[deleted] t1_j6pcfrv wrote
Scene descriptions... I'm the worst at it. That is why I'm here: perhaps to learn from others.
I don't like solitary writing, and I really enjoy reading the work of others- even on Reddit!
Cheers
telpereon t1_j6oiw1v wrote
Welcome...and very nicely done!
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