June
Lucy's Age: 19
New York had been in a state of panic for days. Everyone seemed to think that it was just gang warfare that had gotten out of control, but Venice had told me that it was actually a massive fight between nearly every vampire elder inside of the city. The gangs were just pawns and camouflage to hide the fact that some of the kills were being made by vampires.
Venice hadn't needed to tell me to stay inside because anyone with half a brain knew that the city turned into a war zone as soon as it got dark. Even during the day people walked around with more of a hurried, furtive feel than was normal for New York. As odd as that was, it was downright eerie just how quickly the streets emptied once the sun went down.
I waited for days for the violence to peter out, but although Venice had indicated that Imastious was running out of targets, it seemed like normal human looters were picking up some of the slack. I looked forward to each of Venice's regularly-scheduled texts, hoping that she'd tell me that the city's reign of terror was at an end, but if anything she seemed to be getting more skittish as time went on.
When the violence did stop, it was with an abruptness that left me feeling like something worse was about to happen. It seemed impossible for so much killing and arson to just stop in the course of less than twenty-four hours.
Venice's latest text was more verbose than normal.
Lucy, you need to stay inside as much as possible for the next little while. The legends about vampires are real, but so apparently are the legends about werewolves. Geoffrey and I have killed a couple of them, but they are the reason the fighting has ground to a halt. None of the others like us are willing to go out by themselves, so Imastious and the other elders have organized groups to try and hunt them down.
It was absurd for me to doubt the existence of werewolves after I'd faced off with telekinetic vampires, but I still had a hard time believing that there were hairy half-men running around New York at night. Still, as hard as it was to believe, I wasn't about to go outside at night and risk something bad happening to me.
I made my decision to play it safe as soon as I read Venice's text, but it became harder and harder to stick to it as the day wore on and the city started to take on all of the various signs that business was back to usual.
The morning rush of people commuting from home to work was just as scared and hurried as it had been all week, but by midmorning the number of people out on the street had doubled as compared to what I'd seen the day before. It was as though people had needed a couple of hours to process the severe drop-off in violence the night before.
By noon I could see bike messengers back out on the road, and the first few brave souls had come out for the lunch rush hour. I spent half an hour watching the streets from my window and then forced myself to turn away and go back to my laptop.
Part of the problem was that my heart wasn't really into what I was doing. I'd been fascinated by the opportunity to watch Geoffrey work the market and I'd really enjoyed the specific research tasks that he'd assigned me, but I didn't have the same love of the game that he'd had.
Still, I knew that the money that Mrs. Agosti had left me wouldn't last forever, not if I wanted to live in the same style Geoffrey had kept me in. I'd decided to start relatively small, investing no more than a hundred thousand dollars spread out over three or four different opportunities, so that I could start learning the kinds of things that had allowed Geoffrey to make obscene amounts of money. I had a plan, and it was a good plan, but now I needed to start identifying opportunities and I was finding that I just couldn't muster up the kind of excitement required to really make a go of things.
Back when I'd been working on projects for Geoffrey a knock on the door would have been greeted with frustration that someone was interrupting my work, but today I felt nothing but relief when I heard Hal knock on our heavy metal door with his characteristic three-knock pattern.
"Hi, Lucy. A delivery service just dropped this off for you."
"Thanks, Hal. I've got it."
I'd only thought that I'd had it. The box was big, so it was unwieldy, but it was also a lot heavier than I'd expected it to be. Luckily Hal hadn't taken me at my word and he'd kept a single hand under the box so that he was able to help support it when I nearly dropped it.
"Wow, it must be full of books or something."
"Yeah, sorry. I probably should have said something before I let you take it."
"No harm, no foul. Can you just put it there in the center of the living room?"
Hal nodded and carefully made his way around the couch. He was kind of slow leaving the apartment after he put the box down and I suddenly realized that this was the first time Hal had ever been inside my apartment. He'd stood for days just outside my door, but he'd never entered before now. I hadn't forgotten the way he'd looked at me back on the day that Geoffrey had taken me to the cathedral, but I knew Hal wasn't my kind of guy. Honest and painfully loyal, good to his core, but safe where I needed dangerous and bland where I needed the unexpected.
Still, I appreciated everything that he and the others had done to keep an eye on me over the years and I decided it was time to address something that had been worrying at the back of my mind.
"Hal, I don't know what kind of compensation arrangement you all had with Geoffrey, but he's moved on now so we'll need to discuss that here in the next little while. I've come into some money, but I don't know how long I'll be able to keep a protective detail onboard. I'll probably have to cut back coverage at the very least."
Hal shook his head. "I don't know anything about that, Mrs. Lucy. Geoffrey told us he'd made arrangements a little while ago. We got a four-month advance last month and then last week the normal amount for the month came through as well, so right now you're paid up for the next five months and Mr. Geoffrey didn't say as though we should be expecting anything different."
"Oh, well, that's a pleasant surprise. I guess please just let me know if anything changes in that regard."
"Yes, ma'am."
I closed the door behind Hal and then grabbed my knife off of my dresser and set about opening up the box. It was indeed full of books, but it wasn't just any random set of books, it was a series of black, leather-bound journals.
One volume, slightly newer than some of the others, caught my eye. It was resting across the top of the rest of the books and there was a note underneath it.
Lucy,
I'm not sure how long this will take to get to you. I had to arrange for some unorthodox pickup and delivery methods given the circumstances and my desire to make sure that it couldn't be traced to you at some future date.
These are the journals from the long years of my imprisonment to Imastious. The journal on the top is the most recent and contains a current overview of my finances. Given the timescales, I've been unable to shift all of my assets into your name, but I've also left you the contact information for my forger. With a good set of fake ID's and a decent actor you should be able to take control of the remaining assets without too much trouble.
I'm sorry to burden you with the knowledge contained inside of these volumes, but I find that after everything I've been through that I'm unable to just let all of this knowledge be destroyed. I give you permission to read any and all of them should you desire, but all that I ask is if we should meet again that you'll give these journals to my future self so that I can truly understand what I gave up in the pursuit of a possible future with you.
—Geoffrey
My hands started shaking as I set the note down and picked Geoffrey's final journal back up. I would need to read it to get access to the money he'd left me, but that wasn't what was driving the surge of emotion that was overwhelming my ability to hold my hands steady.
This was probably as close to the real truth behind Geoffrey's actions as I was ever going to get. He would have written these entries only for himself and therefore there would be much less in the way of deception inside of them than I'd find anywhere else.
I opened the journal and carefully thumbed through the stiff white pages, skipping past the older stuff. I got into the more recent entries and was tempted to stop and follow along through the development of his feelings for me, but ultimately I knew that I needed to read about his last moments before I'd be able to focus on anything else.
The first entry took me by surprise. I'd never imagined Geoffrey capable of feeling fear.
I've decided and it's the right decision, but I still must confess to a degree of fear. I've possessed the capability to do something like this for years now, but I never would have considered using it before now.
All of the arrangements have been made. I've moved all of my most liquid assets into an account under Lucy's name, I've provided a healthy shot of capital to Venice and discussed my wishes with her. Venice has agreed not to hurt Lucy as a result of what I'm about to do, and I believe that she actually means her promise, although I think she herself is a little surprised by her own willingness to let bygones be bygones.
All that remains is to talk to Lucy, to tell her what I have planned.
There is a part of me that wants to just disappear without saying anything to her. I keep trying to rationalize it as some innate love of big, dramatic gestures, but if my goal is to create a universe in which there is a possibility, however small, that Lucy and I might be together, then going with my first instinct would be counterproductive in every way.
In the harsh light of day I can only surmise that there is a hidden streak of cowardice that has persisted despite all of my efforts to eliminate such things.
I would say that I'm disappointed with myself but for two things. I've come to realize that so much of the cold calculation I'd prided myself on for so many years wasn't an achievement but rather a lack of something vital.
Once you eliminate the good emotions from your being it becomes easy to view everything as a dispassionate analysis of the odds simply because you no longer view your life as being worthwhile. I always wanted to continue living simply because the alternative would be to cease to chart my own course, but I lacked any kind of attachment to anything or anyone that would drive the kind of hopes and dreams that make life more than just a series of choices.
I said there were two reasons by which I justify my cowardice. The second is simply the fact that the sacrifice I'm about to make is on a scale that I've never experienced before and never will again. I'm about to wipe away every emotion and memory gathered over my decades of life.
I'm committed to doing this, but it still causes me to feel a unique strain of terror that I haven't felt since those first few years after Imastious killed my family and turned me. Doing this will take all of my willpower and it is going to be exquisitely hard to convince Lucy of the rightness of my path given how hard it was for me to decide on it.
**
It's done. Not the dissolution of my being, obviously, but rather the act of telling Lucy of my plans. She was so beautiful sitting there in a pool of sunlight from the window. I arrived only seconds after she did, and was able to observe her for quite some time before she noticed me.
The minutes passed as seconds though and all too soon I was deprived of the pleasure of tracing the lines of her face with my eyes. As she looked up and saw me, a cloud momentarily covered up the sun and some of the luster of her hair vanished.
The symbolism wasn't lost on me. Interaction with me in any form, no matter how insignificant, has always dimmed some of the light inside of her. Pursuing her as I am now would lead her to a darkness even more severe than what I saw in that moment, but the only way to stop that is for me to accept a different kind of darkness which is even more absolute and enduring.
I can't lie to myself any longer. I truly don't want to do this. I don't want to proceed, but I can't see any other way forward. I'm not strong enough to maintain my distance from her of my own free will. I might succeed for a period of time, a few days or even months, but it would only take a single moment of weakness for my defenses to crumble and for me to go running to her.
No, this is the only way to preserve the goodness I see inside of her, the goodness that drew me to her more than any other thing.
I will do this. I just wish I wasn't so scared, although I suppose that is an impossibility. Barring that, I wish that I had someone I could talk to. I wanted so badly to tell Lucy just how terrified I am, but that would have only made it harder on both of us.
Sitting there across the table from her and not letting on regarding the true state of my feelings is without a doubt the hardest thing I've done to date. I could see that I was hurting her with my words, but failing to hurt her now would have just led to a bigger hurt later on.
**
I'm finally here. I rented a small apartment last week and had two extra copies of the key made. Venice has one and my courier pickup choice has the other one. The rest of my journals have all been packed up, leaving only this one here in the bedroom with me.
I've never been as hedonistic as some of my kind become after centuries of life, but there is still a level of Spartan simplicity to my current surroundings that is completely different than my normal apartment and yet it's perfectly appropriate for this undertaking.
I have food and water sufficient for a week as well as enough blood to last for at least that period of time. I only expect my dissolution to take a day or two, but in cases like this it is better to over prepare than under-prepare.
Looking back at what I just wrote, it is apparent to me that I'm just stalling. While the urge to do so is understandable, now that I've recognized it, I must proceed. If I don't my determination will swiftly unravel.
**
The sense of loss is both more and less than I expected it to be. It's still early on in the process, but I have made significant progress nonetheless. Although the possibility still exists that my journal entries are a form of procrastination, I've decided that it is important nevertheless to document what I'm doing. It is possible that my notes will provide help to some future version of myself, and this is an undertaking that likely has never before been attempted.
While meditating to prepare myself for the first phase of memory destruction I realized that my memories arranged in concentric rings around my mind with the oldest memories out on the edges of everything.
I can only surmise that new memories are anchored in the center of my mindscape and that each new set of memories then tends to push the older memories further out away from the center. I've chosen to begin working from the outside of my mind inwards so as to maintain my more recent memories for as long as possible. This should help me maintain my determination to proceed until the very end as the memories that are driving to this action are all relatively recent.
There are two groups of memories which are located out on the end of my mind that I've chosen to delay destroying. The first is the hidden blind where I've traditionally moved memories to protect them from Imastious. The knowledge of how to destroy and move memories around is located in this blind and therefore it too logically must be one of the last few things to be destroyed.
The second is the memories from my early life. Recollections of the times back before I became a vampire are of questionable value, but I find myself oddly unwilling to lose them yet. Possibly the physical resemblance between my older sister and Lucy is what is giving me pause.
Regardless of the reason, I've decided not to proceed with wiping away those early memories quite yet. There are still plenty of other memories which need destroyed. I expect that I'll be quite occupied with those other memories for some time still before I'll need to circle back and deal with my previous life.
I said that the sense of loss was both more and less than I expected it to be. It's less because I have no recollection of what I've lost, and the oldest memories are already insubstantial and transparent. I'm generally unable to see where memories have just faded away and been forgotten and where I've artificially destroyed a group of memories.
I expect that will change as I progress on to memories that are more recent, but for now the only way for me to even know that I'm missing anything is my recent memories of destroying stretches of my mindscape.
Not knowing what I've lost, what is now gone, is really what is eating at me right now. I can foresee a problem developing as I progress where I start second-guessing the destruction of a particular group of memories and wondering if I should delay their sanitization similarly to how I've delayed the erasure of memories of my sister.
**
I've started to notice that my short-term memory is holding onto more and more of the content of the memories I'm destroying. It seems to be a kind of mental self-defense mechanism similar to what I encountered with Mrs. Agosti.
I'll be forced to destroy pieces of some memories two or even more times to accomplish what I've set out to do.
It is odd the things that my mind has started focusing on as this process has continued. Mrs. Agosti has taken up more and more of my thoughts over the last twenty-four hours. I paid lip service to understanding what I took from her, but I truly didn't understand until just now. It is a terrible thing to have a stretch of your life completely disconnected from what came before and after.
I've now destroyed enough memories that I'm feeling a sense of dislocation. I remember bits and pieces of my early life still, but nothing of growing up. All of the terrible things that Imastious did to me in the decade or so after he first turned me are now gone.
Yet again I must admit to a level of fear as I examine the future and contemplate being completely unanchored from the experiences that went into making me who I am today. I'm not entirely happy with what I've become, but the more that I lose the more I come to appreciate the strengths that I do have. It seems a waste to destroy the good qualities I've managed to hold onto along with the bad qualities that Lucy so rightly despises.
**
It's becoming harder with each passing hour to continue with the destruction of my memories. The sense of loss continues to grow and seems to be compounding as my recent memories tell me that I've lost things I value greatly.
I see only one route forward. I'm going to have to start destroying my recent memories at the same time that I destroy the older memories.
I am loath to do so, but I know that any sacrifice is worth it if it will create a chance for Lucy and me to be together.
**
My sense of dislocation is growing. It seems as though there is more of an interconnected nature to memory than I've ever before realized. From my past journal entries it is obvious that I was determined to preserve my earliest memories. I have no reason to think that I've done otherwise, but those memories hardly seem worth preserving now.
All I have left of the time before I became a vampire are hazy fragments of experiences that seem more constructed than real.
I live in an odd twilight world now. I remember nothing from the time that I entered this apartment and began the process of removing my memories. My life seems to have no beginning and the end is likewise insubstantial, meaning I remember only a disjointed period of time that is separate from anything else.
While my new situation is quite distressing, it seems as though my rate of memory destruction has increased substantially since I began removing items in my 'working' memory.
**
My entries have historically been made either before I started a session of memory destruction or after one had been completed. I suspect that this has been done intentionally as a way of saving myself from reading an entry done while in the midst of wiping memories from existence.
Honestly I know that I should be continuing that policy, but I can no longer force myself to be silent while experiencing the terror and regret that washes through me each time I begin destroying the bits of myself that make me more than just another eating, breathing animal.
I would give nearly anything for all of this to stop, but my memories of Lucy drive me onward even as they start to lose some of their cohesiveness as well.
**
Things haven't gotten any easier. I've completely lost track of time, but I've started noticing odd moments of insight. It's as though stripping away some of the distractions inside of my own head, some of the spurious layers of detail woven through my memories, has allowed me to see things that I couldn't see while living my experiences out.
Venice really has been better to me than I deserved. I've known that for quite some time on an intellectual level, but I truly felt it deep down for the first time today. She has done nothing but love me in the best way she knows how for year after year. If I were a slightly different person, this knowledge would have been enough for me to go back to Lucy and tell her that I want for the three of us to leave together, but I'm not that different person and neither is Lucy. I'm still beneath her in every way that matters. There is nothing left for me to do but continue forward with my original plan.
**
Lucy no longer means anything to me. I've read back through some of my entries and I can see that she was important to me, but I'm no longer able to say with any certainty that she is worth what I've done to myself.
I still have memories, but they are timeworn and moth-eaten, so riddled with holes as to be almost unintelligible.
I'm not just free of time and space, I now exist in a place where the only thing that exists is my knowledge of the methods used to destroy my memories and a question that I have to ask myself on an hourly basis. Do I trust the judgment of my past self enough to continue onward with this ritualized destruction of everything that I've ever known or been?
**
I only thought that my universe had shrunk down to a single point. What I had before was an infinite sea of experiences and possibilities. What I have now is nothing more than the memories from the last few hours. Lucy, I don't remember you, but if you ever read this, please be worthy of the sacrifice done in your name. I have no idea what I've lost, but I can't escape the feeling that it is immeasurable.
I've left instructions to myself to slide this journal underneath the door, but I can't bear to make myself do it yet. Even the knowledge that reading through my journal entries is the only thing repopulating my memory isn't enough to make me sever this last tie with the outside world, with my past.
I'll leave myself a message on the next page and just hope that it's enough to convince me not to look back at the earlier entries.
In a very real sense this is goodbye.
**
Geoffrey, I know that you're scared and disoriented, that you don't know how you got here or why you're locked inside of this room, but it's very important that you don't read this book. People you care about will die if you ignore this warning. When you're ready, slide this book underneath the door and then dial the first number on your phone and ask them to conduct a pickup. The address to the apartment is on the wall next to the phone. They'll know what to do, but if they ask questions tell them that Jackson knows what to do and that the code word is 'new beginnings.'
Don't make any noise when you hear them arrive to pick up the journal. Once they are gone you can text the second number and ask Venice to come get you. It's going to be hard, but do the best you can to trust her.
**
I'm about to follow the instructions in this book. I haven't read it, other than the page telling me not to read anything else. I feel very odd. I don't remember anything about my life, but I still remember stuff like how to use a phone or read and write.
What kind of person wakes up in a strange room with no memory of who they are? My only clue is in this book, but I left myself a message telling me not to read it. The handwriting is the same as this handwriting, so I know it was me, but it's still a lot to be taking on faith.
I…I feel sad. I don't think it's an emotion that I feel very often, but I just want to sit here and cry. I feel like I lost someone special, like the world changed and it can never be what it was before.
A part of me wants to just stay here in this room. Outside represents possibilities that this version of me has never even considered, but it also represents everything that I don't know, everything that could hurt me.
That's not normal, is it? Why should I be scared of everything out there?
I'm going to slide this book underneath the door and then I'm going to call the numbers just like I told myself to.
Heaven help me.