The following journal dates from shortly after Christian Parker's embrace. It is contained in an old book with a tattered red cover. The first three pages contain journal entries of a young woman, written in a faded blue script. Her fiance went off to fight the Nazis in World War II, then returned to marry her. In the last entry she mentions having plans to visit her mother over the weekend, and nothing further is written. Our research has shown the woman's name to be Janet DeWitt Lawrence, and she lived in a lower-east side apartment building in the late forties. She died September 24th, 1948, while visiting her mother. No connection has been found to any of the subjects. A page is skipped after the last entry, and the writing drastically changes to a bold black print. It is written in a very distinctive spanish dialect. ---------- My name is Christian Parker, and I haven't had to write anything down in a long time. I guess I still don't. I guess I don't really have to do much of anything. I have to stay out of the sun if I want to stay “alive.” I have to drink blood if I want to be able to survive. I guess I need to write down some of the shit I've been thinking about if I mean to keep myself together. I'm taking notes on my own sanity. Great. I found this great little book after I broke a hole in my floor during a weight-training accident. I really have to move. Maybe find myself someplace a little more earthy. I'm currently entrenched in my strange present, and I don't think it would be very wise to leave much of a record of it. Maybe I'll really get to like keeping this and I'll start talking about some of the nightly traumas…the powers. Damn, ya gotta love the powers. I'm writing way too much down. Pardon me while I do the Kimmie/Ugly check… I feel like I'm forgetting my past. Not like it's much of one. I'm more conscious of my actions now, ironically enough. I was a pretty nasty fucker for a while there. Then I calmed down. Then all this happened to me. Maybe it's about time to go back to where I started. Maybe not. Maybe I should do this right. The guys would crack up if they knew I was pulling the Anne Rice routine… I'd never be able to look another Torrie in the eye if it got out that I have a flair for storytelling. I feel the urge to tell this like a story. Here goes nothing. Picture it: A town called Cherokee in Hyde County, South Dakota. Small-town America if you ever did see it. My home was a two story white wooden house with gray shingles, I think. I remember when I was little I had a dog. It was an Alaskan Husky. His name was Amoeba. I never understood why. Our house sat on a two acre piece of property with some woods that extended into the back. There was a house on each side about a half-mile down the road. The road stretched east to west directly, and my house sat upon it, on the western outskirts of town. There was one house further down than mine, and after that, a tremendous industrial wheat farm. For my entire childhood there was always bread. There were schools in town, which I attended, up until high school, but this is all besides the point. My story, the story of Beth, centers around my home. Home was something I definitely understood when I was younger. When I was little, home was my house, with its paint peeling in the back, and the tire swing I had hanging from a tree out in the woods. Home was when Mom would make pancakes on Sunday morning in the summer, and I would sleep in. There was a time when things were normal for me. Sometime around reaching the age of seventeen, I left that time, and have been unable to return to it since. When I was younger I did well in school. I really only turned into a warped and violent motherfucker after high school, so I had plenty of time to get at least enough of an education to sound white-collar if the situation calls for it. There wasn't much to do in South Dakota. I mean don't get me wrong, I was happy. I played little league for a while. I wrestled a bit in high school, even did a little boxing. I was around. I got along pretty well with my parents. I guess that was the first step on the road to ruin? Did I violate some kind of universal necessity for problems in the home, or were they just covered up very well? I never tried to answer any of these questions before. I don't know that I want to now. My father was a large, kind man. He had tremendous hands, a trait which I partially inherited. He was fair-haired, and blue-eyed, with a generally pale, german complexion. He worked at a factory in town. My mother was a small woman with dark hair and dark eyes. I had my mother's eyes. My mother was half portuguese and half something else…I only know about her mother, who had died a long time ago. She would never tell me about her father. Dad called her a gypsy sometimes, and I was always confused when I was a kid, because I thought gypsies were made up, like faeries or ghosts or wizards or something. Beth was my sister, and the most beautiful girl in the world. She had golden curls like a doll, and I don't like to look at a certain insane individual because of the resemblance she bears to my own sister at that age. Beth would spend hours in the field, playing with her dolls, and the flowers. She was very much a little girl like that. As she grew into her teenage years, she was quickly becoming a beautiful young woman, and I broke several noses in high school because of it. Some boys have no manners. I was the protective older brother, and anyone who messed with my Beth got his ass handed to him. I was never treated poorly growing up. I think it was understood that I would go to school, then get a job in town fixing cars or maybe working out in the fields on farm equipment or something. I had a little knack for machines back then, and my abilities with automobiles continues to improve to this night. Life was simple. It was suffocating, but it was simple. We just didn't know any better. My family had to die before I had any motivation to leave. When I was sixteen my mother began getting very pale, and increasingly thin. Doctors had no idea what was going on. In a week's time, she was bed-ridden, and her pulse was fading. She started to get stronger in the second week, but something happened. Halfway through her third week being sick, we lost her in the night. We waked her the next night in her bedroom, which was the room she had me in. I guess everything goes in little circles like that. Over the course of the next two years, things began to get bad. Very bad. A lot went wrong that shouldn't have to happen to people. Mom had always run the house, with dad bringing in the money. After she died a lot of stuff started getting run-down. Meals were pretty much pot-luck, and everyone went their own way. Things were getting cold in my home. After maybe six months, I noticed my father frequently spending evenings in my sister's room. I hoped, prayed even, that they were only reminiscing about Mom, and when things had been good. That the problems we had to deal with were bringing them together. I was sure that was what it was. Even while Beth withdrew more and more, until she cut school twice a week, never went out with her friends anymore, and barely spoke to me, I remained unsure. She had been a pretty popular girl, and I saw it all drop off, and I couldn't make the god-damn connection. My disgusting pig of a father had his hand in the cookie jar, and I didn't see it. I didn't see it right until the day I found my sister in a bathtub of luke-warm water and blood. Great, huh? Her suicide note blamed my dad. I'll let you make the necessary connections. I'm not sure what I did immediately. I think I might have eaten the note. Maybe I buried it, or shoved it into the cieling or something. Whatever I did, I assure you that the time that elapsed was definitely spent in temporary (probably) insanity. Everything that had been familiar was officially either gone or repulsive, and I was an 18 year old kid. I let the police come and go. I stayed locked in my room. I answered a few questions. I festered. If my father spoke to me I didn't look at him. He knew I knew. I can't explain how, but he did. About a week after Beth died a cop asked me if I thought my father had anything to do with the suicide. I told him no. I bode my time. I let two weeks pass after that before I made my move. I let myself hunt my father down. I watched the way he moved, the things he did. I turned our home into a hell for him and I knew it, with my knowing presence a constant tribute to his crimes. I worked out a plan. On Friday nights, my father always worked late, earning a little overtime. He was just that kind of guy. At nine o'clock on a cold fall night I huddled behind a wall stroking the result of three weeks of working my tenuous connections on the streets in town. A .22 piece of crap you can only find on the street. You know it's funny, back then that gun was a thunderbolt to me. It was the beginner and ender of worlds. Now if somebody handed me a weapon like that I'd laugh in his face and ask him to take it away. Ah well. Que sera. I saw his car sitting in a lonely corner of the lot. I was in a perfect position. He would have to cross the whole lot, with no one around to see anything. He walked toward the car, and directly toward me. I stood there, my hand on the .22, my heart in my throat, partially excluded from my father's view. I saw him looking at the place where I stood, waiting for him to really see me. Then he did. I burst out of the shadow I was standing in and pulled out the gun. I watched his eyes melt into a combination of fear and resignation. Not anger. There was no fight in him at all. It was almost like he was waiting for it, really. I aimed. I fired. Judging by the angle, the bullet must have come to rest in the geometric center of his brain. As his 190 pound frame thudded to the ground I felt at least that much weight lifted off of my shoulders. It was finally fucking finished. There was questioning after that, of course, but nobody could pin anything to me. I only came under casual suspicion, but nobody wanted to put me through any more shit than I had already had to deal with. And I was alone, finally. The warm, complete family I had until the age of sixteen was a distant memory, with the cold, darkening atmosphere of the last two years finally broken. All I had left was this stillness. It was very peaceful. I had no money, no property, and nothing to do. I was officially a killer, and would be from then on. I joined the army because it seemed like the thing to do at the time. The rest is certainly another story. The End. Transcribed and maintained Elizabeth Kent