Tears from Persephone

i
It had only been eleven months and already I could see her getting older; things that ordinary people would not notice; an extra line on her forehead, the skin over her hands becoming more stretched and like parchment every time I held them, and the bags under her eyes had grown heavier and slightly darker. Her eyes were where I noticed the most change, deep inside of them; they had become evermore drawn to the shadows. She looked at life with a growing distance and impatience. I knew she would ask me to turn her at some point, it was an inescapable inevitability. It was my presence that enticed her, so to a great degree, I am responsible.

Her name was Angela, and we met by accident. When I first saw her, she was just a meal, my next victim. She smelled clean, and I longed for a change from my usual pray. She had taken a wrong turn, and ended up in the Tenderloin, the spot I usually found people to feed from. Most of the time the people just assumed I was a pimp, and the girls I picked off were ones that tried to scam me on my money. My prey was not chosen out of a moral conscious, but rather a convenience. Girls in that part turned up dead all the time, either beaten to death, drug overdose, shot; and the few I added were just categorized with the rest. All of the women on this street have a stench to them, a stench from shooting junk into their veins, but Angela was different; she smelled clean. I was interested, at first, in the idea of having a meal that wasn’t mixed with heroine or crack. Typically I don’t talk to my prey, prostitutes make for lousy conversation. I felt excited about getting to hunt Angela. And that’s what started my trouble.

The first romanticized myth about us is that we are morally conflicted creatures. The changes that occur after our hearts stop beating go far beyond physical. The veil that each day is porcelain is immediately lifted and you can see the road of your existence stretching forever into the dark future. The bond that ties all mortal humans together, the bond that life is fragile and that you could die at any moment, is severed as quickly as you take your last breath. I feel no more remorse for any of my victims than a man who slaughters lamb. But Angela changed that.

It was a cool evening, and I remember smelling her sweat. It was clear from her demeanor that she didn’t belong to this street; and she looked much too frightened and lost to be here for a score. I started following her at Polk and Hyde Street, and I did not make my presence known until she was two blocks from Market, a particularly wretched part of the T.L. The stench of sour milk and urine had increased, the sidewalk became evermore grimy, everything darkened, and I could see her start to tremble. I eased myself beside her, my ghastly appearance veiled by the yellow streetlights, and said, “Pardon me, but might I ask what a woman such as you is doing in this neighborhood?”

She was thin, and her skin was fair and smooth like baby flesh. “Excuse me,” she snapped, with a mixture of fright and surprise.

“Please, I hope I didn’t offend you,” I said. “You look like you are lost.

“Well, you see…” She thought for a moment, trying to decide if she could trust me. Standing outside of a liquor store stood a large, shirtless black man who was eyeing her in between large gulps of cheep vodka. She decided I was her safest chance. “I don’t want to sound naïve, but I just moved to the city.”

“This isn’t the place you want to be lost in,” I explained. Somewhere close by, a woman’s voice cried out.

“I think you’re right.”

“Where do you need to go?”

“I live at the corner of Divisidaro and Sutter,” she said. “I don’t know the bus system here.”

“You want the 38 Geary. It’s just a few blocks from here; would you like me to escort you? I think it would be safer if I went with you.”

Her face eased as she let out a heavy sigh. “Really, I don’t mean to burden you.”

“It’s no problem. I only live two blocks from there myself. I would enjoy the company.”

“If you’re sure it wouldn’t be a problem that would be great.”

“My name is Creve, by the way.”

“I’m Angela,” she replied.

I offered her my arm, and she took it wither her thin, pale freckled arm. She was surrounded by a faint, understated scent of jasmine; a soothing relief from the normal stench of the people that crowd the T.L. Already, makeshift beds of cardboard boxes started to appear along the sidewalk, and under awnings.

“So what brings you to the city?”

“I just graduated from UC San Marcos. I’m working for an envoi mentalist lobby group. My parents thought think I was foolish to move to the city. They said I would never be able to survive here, and I’m starting to think they may have been right.”

“The city can be a frightening place, especially when you’re alone. But don’t get discouraged. You are doing noble work here, don’t forget that.”

“I just feel so insignificant here. San Francisco’s such a big place, I’m afraid I’ll just be another face in the crowd.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that.” She smiled, and her skin was so light that when she blushed, she blushed with her entire body.

We had reached Geary Street just as the bus was stopping. Inside, it was mostly empty. There was a man in ragged cloths stretched out across the back seat of the bus traveling to no particular destination. She wasn’t alarmed by my pastel appearance; there were enough people in San Francisco masquerading as our kind that it drew little attention to me. As the bus drove further away from the T.L., one could see the city transform little by little with each passing block. There were fewer people sleeping in the streets, graffiti were whitewashed from the walls, the sidewalks were less grimy; the entire street seemed to lighten as we left my world and entered into hers.

I pulled the stop cord, and we got off of the bus at Divisidaro Street. Her entire body loosened as she recognized where she was. I walked with her the two blocks up to Sutter Street. She stopped in front of a Victorian style apartment building.

“Well, this is where I live. I can’t thank you enough,” she said as she pawed through her purse.

“Don’t mention it,” I said. I wrapped my arm around her thin waist. As I leaned closer to her, I could feel her hot breath on my face. Then, as I leaned in to kiss her, she turned her head, exposing her long and smooth neck. I was captivated by this subtle display of modesty; modesty I had not seen since I was a mortal myself. I realized then that she was a creature of another time. Hungry as I was, I could not bite her. A sharp pang seized my whole body. It went against the entire nature of what I was, but I could not bear to tear her from this world; she was an artifact of a time long pat. Before parting, we arranged to meet the next night at a café only two blocks from where she lived. For the first night since I was tuned, I did not feed.
ii

Another myth about our kind is that we can feed from animals. A condition of turning is that we are not able to imbibe anything other than human blood. After one drink, we start to choke violently, and cough up whatever we just swallowed. For us, it is ecstasy to drain the life from a human. Since the night I met Angela however, it filled me with disgust to feed. I killed as little as possible, drinking only enough to maintain my strength. It is possible to feed without taking the others life, however, it is too much of a risk to leave witnesses; our kind prefers to stay in the dark, and anyone who jeopardizes our secrecy becomes an enemy. The punishment for such an act is not death, a vampire cannot kill another of its kind; rather, we are shackled, taken underground, and starved. It does not kill us if we do not feed. We waste away, loosing all of our strength, until we are literally nothing but skin and bones. Even if we were ever to be brought back to health, the madness from starvation erases any trace of elegance; we become savage beasts, hardly recognizable as anything that was once human.

I have never made a habit of keeping company with mortals, and with good reason. They can never understand what our existence entails; they only know of the romanticized fairytales recited by naive writers and poets.

Angela became my link to a world that had been long dead to me. She introduced me to the world of modern music and art and poetry. With each passing night, I felt myself falling deeply into something I thought was distant to me as the rising sun, I was falling in love. After two months, I had to tell her who I was.

We went to see Phantom of the Opera at a theater on Market Street. We took a bus to Treasure Island and watched the lights of the city from a distance.

“Can’t we watch the sunrise here,” she said staring at the reflection of the Transamerica building in the water.

“Angela, there is something I have to tell you about myself.”

“What is it Creve,” Angela said, not breaking her gaze.

I took her by the hand, and stroked the back of her neck. “I’m not sure how you are going to react to what I am going to tell you. If you never wish to see me again, I will understand.”

Angela’s face sank. “Creve, whatever it is that you have to tell me I swear to you it won’t make a difference. There is something I must tell you. Creve…”

“Angela, wait,” my un-beating heart felt heavy as a stone inside my chest. Before I could speak, Angela covered my mouth with her finger.

“Creve, I’m in love with you.” I could see a tear glistening in her eye. “Nothing you say can change that now. I am forever yours.”

I took a step back to gather my courage. I had never reviled my secret to a single living soul. “Angela, I am a vampire.”

Angela was silent for a long while. Then, she began to laugh. “Creve, be serious.”

“Angela, I am serious. I am in love with you, too. That is why I had to tell you.” Her smile faded. “I can show you.” I opened my mouth wide and exposed my fangs to her. Her eyes filled with terror as she watched my face grow even paler, and my eyes turned to black.

“Creve,” she gasped. “It’s true. You are a vampire.” She started to back away from me.

“Angela, I am sorry.” I chased her as she began to run, I couldn’t bear the thought of ending our relationship this way.

“Stay away from me,” she shouted. “You’re a monster!” I stopped following her. I had to let her go; if she was ever going to trust me again, I had to give her time.

I did not see her again for two agonizing weeks, and I only feed twice the entire time. I had given up all hope of ever seeing her again, until one night, I heard a scream. It was at Polk and Hyde, where I had first seen her. The scream was unmistakable, it was Angela. Two men were dragging her into an ally; Angela was too small to fight them off. I rushed to her, and through the men away from her. One of them pulled out a knife, and lunged towards me, stabbing me in the gut. I pulled out the knife, and he watched in horror as my wound healed before his eyes.

“You ain’t right man,” he said, his voice trembling. “Let’s get outa’ here!” The two men quickly scampered off. I didn’t bother chasing after them, I had there scent. I would deal with them later.

“Angela, are you hurt,” I said, rushing to her side.

“I’m fine. Just startled, that’s all.” I helped her to her feet.

“What are you doing here,” I asked.

She didn’t answer for a moment. “I was looking for you. Creve,” tears started to stream down her face as she spoke. “I’m sorry. I’m still very confused, but I love you.”

“Come,” I said, taking her by the shoulder. “Let me take you home.”

We went to her apartment. “Would you like something to drink,” she asked.

“I can only drink…”

Angela was contemplative for a moment, and then her face eased. “Creve, tell me about your kind.”
“Well,” I began.

iii


I told her the story of the first vampire, a legend among our kind. Weather it is true or not, I cannot say. In the legend, the first of our kind was a beautiful woman named Persephone. She was a gift to mankind from the angels. Beauty followed her wherever she went. After man was expelled from the paradise, the earth was mostly baron, and whatever did grow was colorless and ugly. After the angels gave man Persephone, however, mankind saw flowers once more. She created the scented jasmine, oleanders, she gave man the ability to recreate the garden that had long been lost; wherever she stepped green grass grew from the dry and cracked ground.

One day, a demon, jealous of mankind, plotted to take Persephone away from them. He had only planed on killing her, but fell madly in love with her upon first sight. He knew their love was forbidden on earth, so he planed to seduce her, and take her underground to be his forever. This demon had all the beauty of the Dark One, and some have rumored it to be the Dark One Himself.

Persephone resisted at first, but she naively gave into temptation, unaware of the consequences. She was banished from earth, and the demon claimed her for himself. The humans protested to the angels, begging them to let her return. But, the angels said, there was nothing that cold be done. However, they would not accept that Persephone was gone forever. After much protest, the angels made an agreement with the demons of the underworld that Persephone could return once a year, in the springtime to flower the earth with her bliss. This is how she became known, by some, as the goddess of the harvest.

After her return, Persephone fell in love with a mortal. It was for him that she created the most beautiful of all the flowers, the rose. But, since she was only allowed to return to earth for brief intervals, and he was mortal, there relationship would be short lived. One year, just before she was about to rise to the surface of the earth, another demon told her of a way that her mortal could live forever. He said that if he let her drink of her blood, he would not know death. So, Persephone let him drink from her. However, because she belonged to the underworld, the man was banished from the light, and his heart would never beat again, and he was forced to drink from the blood of man. His soul was also condemned; to choose temporal immortality over the immortality of the soul was the greatest sin. It was a forthright act of denial. That is also why our kind can never look upon the sign of a cross.


I knew that Angela would ask me to turn her eventually. Our love was forbidden, and it occurred to me the price that we must both pay.

iv


She walks between both worlds,
Between the dark and the light,
But she is not free.

Her pleas to take repose in the ever slumber of death,
Forever go unanswered,
And each morning the dew on every emerald blade of grass,
Are tears from Hades captive Persephone.


Tears from Persephone, a reminder of her constant mourning; her gift to the rising sun. I gave this poem to Angela, hoping that it would change her mind. I told her that being a vampire was a burden and that she would be forever condemned to the darkness; but it was to no avail.

“Persephone was a fool,” Angela said bitterly. “She had the ability to live amongst two worlds, and her love would forever live! And yet she weeps!”

Angela could not realize what she was asking me to do. She walked into my arms, and turned her neck toward me. I said nothing, knowing that there was no way I could change her mind. I leaned into her, and before I bit into her neck, I whispered “I love you,” into her hear. She closed her eyes as my teeth sank into her neck. Hers was the sweetest blood I had ever tasted. Her body trembled in my arms as I drained the life from her body. I stopped, and watched as she struggled to turn her head to me. She weakly grabbed at my wrist, waiting for me make the cut for her to drink. After a moment, her hand fell away. Her heart first hastened, then beat slowly and heavily, like a pounding drum. Each breath was more of a struggle. Then her heart stopped, and her eyes rolled back into her head. She was gone.

Whenever you drink from a vampire, weather or not you are aware of the consequences, you are making a choice. You choose to forever walk in the darkness, and you condemn your soul never to be reunited with paradise. Had I not taken Angela’s life, I know some other vampire would have gladly turned her; in this city, unscrupulous creatures of the night are not hard to find. I know she would have sake one out. For me, the decision had already been made; I could not save my self. But that night, I was able to save Angela.

Cody Hobbs