Newborn

Part Four

Edward's Personal Journal

It’s been a year already, today is my birthday—or rather it’s my dead-day, if you prefer. It’s all in how you look at it, I suppose. One year ago I was human, my parents were alive, I’d been accepted to Harvard pre-law, I was waiting to turn eighteen so I could legally join the army, though I knew my mother had privately cried at night at the idea of my being in danger.

Now while I may go to Harvard—if fact Carlisle is pushing it hard, my parents are dead, the army isn’t going to happen for me and the Great War is over. And I’ll never turn eighteen. I may live a thousand years, but I’ll never be eighteen, never have gray hair, never develop a gut, never get old.

This is it; what I see in the mirror now is what I’m going to see forever. I know I am beautiful but even that is a curse as it’s merely a device to draw my prey to me more easily. When I walk about at night I see women look at me with lust or instant attraction, I endure that they want to speak with me, impress me, wish me to be as drawn to them. The reactions from the men amuse me; the most common is jealousy and then the acceptance that I will, if I choose, leave with the most desirable woman in the room. I listen to their thoughts, all of them, and I want to speak to their minds, let them see what I really am but, of course, I don’t dare. I cultivate the image of enigma.

They have no idea.

I think some people would think that’s a good thing if they knew; I see it as a life sentence with no possibility of parole.

I’ve watched my parents die and, while that’s usually a painful though normal part of life for most, I’ll also see my friends become decrepit and die while I continue on as I am now. Of course they won’t see me, though—part of the deal is that no one can know the reality of our lives or even of the fact of our existence. This life—such as it is—that I’ve been condemned to is that of a vagabond, an eternal wanderer, doomed to never set down in one place for long enough to raise suspicion, never make lasting friendships with normal people or ‘humans’ as I have learned to refer to them.

I am no longer human. I am a monster, a murderer. I am a Vampire, one of the undead, an unholy, cursed…how morbidly melodramatic.

Carlisle tells me to embrace what I am as there’s no help for it but he’s had over three hundred years to accept his lot and I am, as he phrases it, still chafing against my new reality.

I’m calmer now; I have to grant him that. He told me over the past months that would happen, that as I grew into myself I would learn to control the urges that controlled me far more than I controlled them. I no longer kill five or six people a night but only two or three every week or so. I no longer run endless miles alone just to see how fast and far I can push what my body has become. I no longer sneer at the older, more mature vampires Carlisle introduces me to. I’ve learned tact, at least to a degree and this seems to please Carlisle so I’ve learned to also do the small things that make his life easier and so makes life less complicated for us both.

I stay at home when he wishes me to; I go out when he asks me. I follow him, learn from him and will, when he deems me ready, likely fill the spot being held for me in Cambridge in the Harvard class of 1924. I’ve even decided that I will pursue pre-med as a sop to him as, in a very real way, he has become my adoptive father. He looks after my wellbeing, cares for me, advises me, cautions me and, I believe, has a genuine affection for me which, I confess, I’m starting to reciprocate as a father’s due. I am learning just how genuinely good a man he truly is; kind, compassionate. His mind is both disciplined and brilliant, he devotes himself to the art and the craft and the science of medicine with a single mindedness that astonishes me.

I knew my own father, Edward senior, was as exceptional in his own vocation of the law as Carlisle is in medicine but I also knew that he would play fast and loose now and then if he thought it would win him a case. I don’t believe that he ever consciously broke the law, but I know he would often bend it to his will when he though it justified; ‘the means to the ends’ as he would phrase it. Father was, in his way, as good a man as Carlisle but I know that I disappointed him too often with my choices. We were too different, me with my musical dreaminess, romantic visions of heroics on the field of battle and occasional outbursts of temper and him, always calm and too rational.

My mother; I will always miss her, I think. I know that both Carlisle and the others of our kind tell me that as I age and mature the past—my past will fade away and become less and less distinct. I can only assume that they’re right but I hope that some part of who I was will remain and I hope it will be the best parts, the parts that were shaped by Mother. She was gentle, devoted to Father and me and lived for us both. I used to secretly hope that she would stand up to him now and then or be firmer with me but she simply was incapable. Whatever it was Father wanted was also her desire, whatever it was I wanted she would move heaven and earth to try to provide. She was the one who noticed that I liked to play with the piano in the conservatory when I was four or five and found me a teacher. She taught me to read when I was about the same age and would endlessly read me books and tell me stories. She would bandage my skinned knees or bruised heart and she is who, more than anything or anyone, shaped me.

I doubt that I will ever completely forgive Carlisle for not changing her when she was dying. It would have been a simple thing for him and he didn’t. His excuse? His explanation was that it didn’t occur to him. He’d treated countless patients over the centuries and had never once thought to make another vampire, despite the fact he confided to me wanting to for at least a decade. He changed me because she asked and I seemed a likely candidate but why he didn’t change her at the same time is something which will haunt me as long as—well, forever.

I think that Carlisle needs a woman. No, not in the base sense, though I’m sure he’d appreciate that side of things as well. He needs a real companion; I’m too much of a student to him, too much of a son, despite him being, biologically only six years older than I am. He needs that closeness, that connection and I suspect he knows this as well. He thinks the same of me, of course and I think that’s why we went to Denali a few months ago so I could meet that coven’s women. Tanya was far from shy in her approach and I can only hope that she wasn’t hurt or insulted by my declining of her offers. I knew I’d simply be another notch on her bedpost, as my old friends would say and I’ve no desire to be that. Well, little desire, at any rate.

I must confess some curiosity to the less cerebral parts of friendship and love between a man and a woman. I regret that I never sampled those pleasures when I was still human. (God, it seems surreal to think of myself as no longer human.) I know I can never experience that now, even if I was to find someone of our kind who I would want in that way, it won’t be the same as it would have been before. I’ll never know what my parents shared and while I suppose that at some point I’ll give myself to a woman, I fear it will be little more than the basest kind of physical release.

I’ve considered asking Carlisle about this as I can’t think he’s denied himself for over three hundred years but I can’t bring myself to broach the subject with him. Part of the reason we’ve stayed together this long year was because of the mutual respect of personal boundaries. I can’t violate that now. Besides, I can't begin to think how I would ever begin to ask him such a thing.

The past year—we’ve traveled, mostly. Started in Chicago, of course and then up to Denali for a few weeks. From there we found our way to Quebec as Carlisle wanted to visit some other old friends of his and, I suspect, continue my introduction to his circle of acquaintances. I found that I seem to have a newly acquired talent for languages, my rather average high school French becoming fluent in mere days. From Quebec we spent time in Montreal then up to Nova Scotia. Canada then back to Montana, next Washington State where he decided to purchase a fairly large tract of undeveloped land on the Olympia peninsula. He said something about the miserable weather being a lucky break for us as the sky is almost constantly overcast but glossed over some possible problem there with, as he put it, ‘the neighbors’, whatever that meant.

I find my ability to read minds growing month by month as well and suspect that in a few years time I might well be able to ‘hear’ someone miles away if I concentrate enough. Carlisle says he believes that I may have been born with some innate ability and being changed has multiplied it somehow. Perhaps. I suppose it’s as good an answer as any.

I’m starting to adjust to this life, such as it is. I’m neither happy nor unhappy with it but take it as it comes, knowing that I’m still new to this and learning.

It seems to me that it’s to my advantage to accept what’s happened to me as I have little choice and railing against my fate would accomplish nothing.

I admit to lingering anger and resentment against Carlisle as this was his doing and the fact he was fulfilling my mother’s last wish holds little water for me as she could have no idea of the reality she was condemning me to. I shall do what I can and attempt to make the best of this. I shall attend Harvard as both of my fathers wanted and use my endless time for purpose.

I look into the future and see an endless blank corridor of time filled with…nothing.

I will make it my mission to find the reason why I have been thrust into this never-ending hell.

TBC

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