The Journal of Michael O'Shane

I watched the countryside roll past while I traveled by train from Baltimore to Boston. An evening travel with somber undertones, it marked what I deem to be the beginning of the end.

Sabrina had not been herself in years. While I held out hope for a long time that she would come around again, each year passed with little more than a steady cancer growing between us. The decade rolled from ninteen forty to nineteen fifty. One year into the new decade, I heard the sound of the inevitable approaching.

A choice laid in wait for me on the horizon, whether or not I cared to admit it. Would I remain beside Sabrina? We had been together for decades by ourselves until she turned a young, blonde-haired woman named Rose and made her a companion as well. I welcomed the newest addition with no small amount of resentment. Suddenly, my company was not good enough for the vampiress who gifted me death’s immortal kiss.

Still, I lingered. In part due to loyalty, but a wistful romanticism remained a part of it, too. While Sabrina sank deeper and deeper into abject apathy for anything other than her ambitions, I looked at her and thought of happier times. Waltzing through the streets of Paris after a fresh kill, their blood still warm in our veins while we laughed and carried on like lovers. Alighting from the boat to Japan, having just traversed China and taken in its culture and now ready for the next phase of the Orient. Arriving in the port of San Francisco…

I stopped myself. San Francisco. That would remain a blight on my existence as long as I lived, going to San Francisco. Sabrina told me she wanted to see the trolley cars, and dining from the servicemen headed for war in the Pacific proved to be a feast. San Francisco was where I lost her, though, and she never came back to me. Each year passed with the poison spreading further and deeper between us, even though we never stopped traveling. The Northwest. The Midwest. Texas, St. Louis, Chicago and Baltimore. She traveled ahead of me to Boston and sent for me once she and Rose found a flat to occupy there. I tied up personal matters and followed when summoned.

Except now, this was becoming more than my immortal heart could bear. What started with a chance meeting in my hometown of Kilkenny, Ireland seemed to be ending and I could not figure out were to alight from this metaphoric train of travels with my maker. My lover. No, former lover. I breathed a heavy sigh of emptiness as I realized seventy years with Sabrina was drawing to a close.

All the while, as the countryside flew past and the clack of the train on the tracks provided the background music for my reminiscing, I found myself wondering what might distract me from my sadness. As a vampire, the typical outlets sprang to mind. Blood. Sex. That in gratuitous amounts and without any remorse for taking either or both at the same time. The train pulled into the station just outside of Cambridge and after a short walk, I found myself in one of the pubs adjacent to Harvard University.

After two brandies, I summoned enough confidence to begin surveying the prospects. The young minds of rich America surrounded me, all only affording me a passing glance before continuing on their way. I sipped from my third glass and glanced across each face, sizing them up for who would be my supper that late night. As the bartender issued the last call, I spied a young man sitting across the room and sobered at once. Memories came flooding in my mind.

There sat my reflection, in a pub near Harvard Yard.

My mind drifted seventy years in the past, to when I was a young man sitting in the back of an Irish pub with my nose buried in a book. The young gentleman I spied in the present glanced up when the bartender rang the bell, starting a feeding frenzy amongst the lot for one final drink. As his blue eyes intersected with mine, I swore I heard his thoughts echo across the space between us. They sounded like my own had been. Lonely and in search of adventure. Tired of the status quo, knowing there was something else waiting out there.

I approached him before I could stop myself.

He wore glasses much like I had and his gaze appeared older than his features suggested. Black hair short atop his head, he had a wiry frame much like mine. A dark air lingered around him, but I didn’t mind. I sat across from him and asked what he was reading before I could stop myself. If time had corridors I could peer down, I might be able to relate what novel held his fixation that night. I only remember he placed it aside so we could chat.

We exchanged all the normal pleasantries and he studied my appearance, telling me he thought me young for an Irish professor. I merely smiled past the partial lie of my mortal profession and engaged him in discussion over what occupied his time in academia. He told me he was a teacher’s aide, an English major with a passion for nineteenth century literature. We found ourselves discussing the Brontë sisters by the time we were kicked out of the establishment.

The night air possessed a chill I saw affect him immediately and the hour prompted me to suggest a more private place to continue our conversation. All the while, my eyes studied the veins in his neck and the vampire within warred against the lonely man enjoying the distraction of another intelligent mind. Each time I glanced into his eyes, I saw him questioning me with them. The intrigue could not be masked with any amount of effort on his part. Finally, I asked, “What is your name?”

“Timothy,” he said, far too quickly. It seemed to jump from his mouth as though waiting to spring from there. “And you?”

“Michael.” I punctuated the introduction with a nod, my smile subdued enough to hide my fangs, but not enough to hide my interest. Hardly ever did I afford a mortal enough time to learn their names and certainly not to ask about their professions. Or to discover they held a dark fascination with Edgar Allan Poe. Feeling daring, I raised my hand and placed it on his shoulder as we neared his flat and he did nothing to shrug it off. Instead, he opened the door and invited me in, ensuring he engaged the lock once he shut us inside.

I watched him scramble around the modest room for a bottle of scotch and two small glasses. He filled one and handed it to me as he sat beside me and I smiled in an amiable manner while shifting my focus from his eyes to his neck and back again. As he lowered his glass, our gazes converged and the quickening within resonated with something more than seduction. I liked him, enjoyed his conversation and fancied what it might be like to continue speaking with him over the course of several nights instead of ending him right then and there.

We gravitated toward one another. Kissing another man might have been unusual for a mortal, but I myself had never been a respecter of persons as an immortal and made up for his nervousness by closing the gap between us. Timothy jumped back before our lips met, though, and peered at me, eyes wide. “What are those teeth?” he asked.

I raised an eyebrow. Of all the questions I expected, none of them involved my teeth. “What do you mean?”

“You have daggers.” He leaned despite himself. “Sharpest razors I have ever seen.” His eyes lifted to engage mine.

The presence of intrigue still in his gaze provoked a strange reaction in me. Lust overwhelmed me and not merely lust for his blood, although that was growing by leaps and bounds. “You mean my fangs?” I asked, my eyes closing partially, heavy-lidded with desire. “Have you never seen a vampire before?”

“A vampire?” Timothy pulled back a few inches, but stopped himself, allowing me to close in on his lips again. His eyes remained set on me the entire time. “Are you going to… bite me? Will it hurt?”

I grinned. “Now, it needn’t hurt and I certainly don’t intend to kill you.”

“What will happen?” His eyes began to shut.

“Would you like to see?”

Timothy nodded. “Yes, I would.”

I nodded and touched his cheek with my lips while allowing my fangs to slide out. Timothy tensed when I took firm hold of the back of his head, and relaxed when I gently nudged him to crane his neck toward my lips. Before my fangs even had the chance to pierce flesh, I filled his thoughts full of desire and ensured when I bit down, he felt not an inch of pain.

A soft moan filled the room as I drank from him. His hands closed around my arms. His body pushed closer to me while he whispered, “Michael…” in an aroused groan.

Grinning, I licked the wound closed and kissed him on the lips the moment my fangs slipped back into place. I never expected the sort of intensity with which he reacted, but in the space of mere moments, I had no thought of Sabrina and San Francisco. Instead, the mortal man I stripped and dominated kept me enthralled. My spirit felt much lighter by the time we were finished.

He kept me protected in his room that day. I rose in the evening to find him standing in his doorway studying me while I slept. Barely awake, and yet I accepted the kisses he met me with and while we tussled in his sheets, he asked me to stay with him however long I thought I would be in Boston. For the first time in twenty-four hours, I remembered I was to meet with Sabrina, but recollections of my melancholy train ride prompted my response. I nodded at him. Rose could tend to Sabrina from this point forth.

What developed between Timothy and me, in the interim, became a peculiar co-existence between vampire and mortal. We spent long nights talking, and when he would drift to sleep, I would entertain myself reading through his books and taking strolls along the Charles River. Timothy willed himself to stay up later with each passing week and one night, he accompanied me for a hunt, playing the role of patsy without being asked to do such a thing. Later that night, when I asked why he did so, he laid his head on my chest and said, “Practice.”

“Timothy…” I sighed, playing idly with his hair. “I’m not going to turn you.”

“So, you’ll let me grow old. Or do you plan on leaving me before that becomes an issue?”

“I haven’t thought any further than each night I rise with you.” I frowned when he failed to answer. “I don’t have any plans of going anywhere, though.”

He paused. “Then why won’t you turn me?”

“Because it never solves anything,” I said. “Believe me, I know.”

It was the first time in a while my thoughts returned to Sabrina. I opened my mouth to explain to him what happened between her and me, but stopped the words before they surfaced. Instead, I kissed his head and whispered for him to enjoy his mortality for the time being. We would discuss eternity when both of us were ready.

The following night, I forced him to stay home while I hunted and returned to discover his front door ajar. The immediate sense of dread I felt flashed images of my maker through my mind. A memory surfaced through the haze which made my stomach turn. When I was only a few years into my immortality, Sabrina announced once she’d be traveling ahead to our next destination, leaving me behind.

“I will send for you, Michael,” she had said. It was the first time she and I ever failed to travel together.

“What if I get lost on my way?” I asked. The attachment I felt toward her had more to do with my nervousness than my directional skills. I had helped make travel arrangements with her long enough to know what I was doing. I simply couldn’t bear to be without her. “What will I do?”

She had turned toward me, moonlight playing off her face, giving her brown eyes a softer touch. “I will always find you, my handsome Irish gentleman. Don’t entertain those fears for one second longer.” While at the time, her words had settled me, in the present they unnerved me to the point of panic. I rushed into the flat and discovered my worst fears come to life.

Sabrina held Timothy tightly in her arms and Rose looked on, fangs elongated. My maker – the woman I once loved with all my soul – gazed at me across Timothy’s shoulder and smiled. “Michael, did you get lost, dear? I was expecting you weeks ago.”

“Sabrina!” My fangs extended, my eyes shooting flames of wrath. “You will not harm a hair on his…”

“It’s alright,” Timothy interrupted. He smiled. “Michael, she wants to turn me. She says she’ll do it for you so you don’t have to. We can be together forever now.”

“If you wanted a pet, darling,” Sabrina said, glancing at Timothy, then back to me, “You should have just told me.”

I hissed at Rose when she began to laugh. Sabrina chuckled, too, so I focused my attention on the one person I thought still capable of reason. I looked at Timothy. “Timothy, I promise you this will do nothing for you. It does not solve anything. Let’s wait and make sure it is what’s best.”

“But it is,” Timothy said, relaxing against Sabrina. The look in his eyes caused me to frown. He was already lost to me. “I’ll be like you and we can all be together.”

I knew at once any amount of arguing I attempted from this point forth would be futile. No, Sabrina had already convinced him to ask for immortality and agreed to turn him. The symbiotic communion of mortal and vampire commenced before I walked through the door. Now, I would only be forced to watch.

I settled into a seat with shaky knees before they could collapse under my weight and placed my head in my hands to ignore the gasp escaping Timothy’s mouth when Sabrina bit into him. The moan which followed nearly caused me to break into tears as I reminded me of every time I’d bitten into him up until this point. I was forced to clench my eyes shut when I heard Sabrina whisper, “Drink, dear Timothy.”

As could be predicted, when the fledging vampire rose some days later, the young intellect I’d shared a bed with didn’t care as much for me as he did his newfound immortality. Still, I trained him and slept with him, pretending I didn’t see Sabrina mocking me with her gaze every time our eyes met. Some night, months later, Timothy smiled at me from the doorway while slipping his arms in the sleeves of his coat. “Michael, let’s go feed,” he said. “Down near the pub once more, for old time’s sake.”

My eyes lifted to engage his and his smile dissolved into a frown. I failed to answer and the way I looked at him must have said it all. “What’s the matter, lover?” he asked.

I shook off my melancholy long enough to summon as agreeable of a smile as possible. “Never mind me, Timothy,” I said. “I think I need a night alone.”

He raised an eyebrow, then grinned once more. “If you insist. See you before dawn.”

“Before dawn,” I repeated, maintaining the smile long enough for him to open the door to our room and depart. The moment it shut, however, my shoulders slumped and my grin faltered altogether. I sat in this position for several minutes until I realized the silence surrounding me contained the message that it was time.

I stood and found my suitcase. Packing it full of whatever I could fit inside, I closed it shut and found a pen and paper to leave Timothy a letter. Sabrina eyed me with intrigue when I left my room and didn’t have the chance to speak one word before I informed her I would not be returning. “This time, don’t bother trying to find me,” I said. “Your Irish gentleman doesn’t need you to hold his hand any longer.”

Whether or not the verbal slap contained as harsh of a sting as I intended, it must have been enough to indicate my mind wouldn’t be changed. Sabrina stiffened her posture, informing me if this is what I wanted, she would let me go. I did not see fit to acknowledge her words with a proper response. I only told her to enjoy her new nest and found myself sitting in the train station within an hour’s time.

I held my composure long enough to board the train bound for New York City. Then as the countryside began to pass me by again and the moon shone down upon the trees and meadows, I finally shed the tears I had been holding in for weeks and months and years. Closing the chapter to one life came at a price, but by the time I reached another city, changing trains to Pittsburgh also changed my disposition. The pain became a dull ache, but I couldn’t help but think of what I lost the next time I ventured into a pub and looked for a young man reading a book, sitting at a table in the back.

Sláinte,
Michael