For@phmonth2021’s vnc countdown, Day 4: Chloé and/or Jean-Jacques/Gevaudan!
A little poetic-prose Jean-Jacques character-study piece for you!
I might try and write something longer/more of a scene for this/him later, but this was what I came up with for now! I hope you like it!
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His parents loved him. At least…he thought they did. They had at one point.
Then he was rewritten.
Vampires didn’t turn humans into vampires. Some humans thought it happened through a bite, but it didn’t.
It wasn’t a bite, or a poison, or a curse, or a blight, it was…chance. Wild, unmerciful chance. One didn’t get turned by a vampire, rather one started out human and then were rewritten from the inside because Fate made a choice. Perhaps she frowned upon you. Perhaps she liked you. You’d never know. Being a vampire wasn’t all bad…and it wasn’t all good either.
You wouldn’t notice you were being rewritten, not at first. You’d just be…you. And then one day your eyes would start turning red, and your teeth would start getting longer, and you’d realize you could, sometimes, see the fabric of the world.
But at some point you’d start to notice. You’d start to realize… that’s what it felt like. It felt like you were a sweater, and that one thread holding you together, that one thread that made you human, was being pulled by a the naughty, mischievous child that was Fate. Then she restitched you, piece by piece.
No one tells you being rewritten hurts.
It truly does feel like needles going into you over, and over.
Jean-Jacques was rewritten.
He didn’t hate himself for it, and he didn’t mind the taste of fangs.
But his parents stopped loving him.
Others had been rewritten by now, and they knew full well Fate had only one other species-selection for those she rewrote.
It was a silly mistake, really. He didn’t know what he was doing.
His mother screamed.
His father shouted, and he…
That was the first time he hit him.
Why? He was still their son, wasn’t he? He was still the same person, just in a different color, or with a few pages missing. They could have been chosen to be rewritten just as easily. Didn’t they know that?
(Why weren’t they chosen too?)
And well, when your mother doesn’t look at you, and your father hits you, that’s about the time you start looking for a witch in the woods.
She was a fairy tale, a myth, a bedtime story his grandparents told him, during those times his family still loved him.
He wasn’t looking for some magic potion to fix his vampirism. He wasn’t looking for some spell of revenge on those who hurt him. She was a kind witch. A witch who never harmed anyone. He knew too few humans like that. He was looking for…a friend. For someone like him. Someone to say he didn’t have to be alone.
The stories didn’t say she was a vampire, but witches and vampires ought to get along, right? The heretics oughta look out for each other.
They may be heretics, devils, but when he looked up and saw her fangs, it was like he was seeing her angel wings.
He’d never met a vampire other than himself, and her presence wordlessly told him You’re not alone. You’re never going to have to be alone again.
He didn’t yet realize that his presence said the same to her.
