Writing: Inkitout Phrase Prompt

Warning(s): Allusions to gore/violence.
Fandom/Original: Original
Character(s)/Pairing(s): N/A
Word Count: 681
Summary: I'm not human and I haven't been for a long time.
Notes: Do not question the muse. Embrace the creativity. Also, I love vampires.
Journal-Specific Notes: Another prompt from inkitout.

Prompt: [Phrase] "The day the seashells went quiet."

In spite of what you may think, I am not human. I haven’t been human for a very long time. The spark of humanity you see in me is there only after centuries of relearning what it means to be human so that I could blend in with the rest of the mortals.

No, don’t say whatever it is you’re thinking. Please, don’t argue tonight, just listen. I’ve told you I was a young man when I turned, everyone knows that, but I’ve never said much of my life before Isabella, nor of the moment I first realized I was no longer human.

As a child, did you ever hold a seashell to your ear? Your parents or other adult told you the sounds you heard were the ocean waves crashing against the shore. Of course now you know it was only the echo of your own blood pumping through your veins, but to a child it was magic and you believed it really was the ocean you heard. I was no different than any other child who has listened to a seashell, and it was my sister who shared that magic with me.

I don’t remember where she found the seashell, maybe she traded some bauble for it from one of the merchants who traveled through our village. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that shell was her most treasured possession all throughout our childhood, so I knew how much it meant for her to give it to me the day I left to become one of Isabella’s servants. Anytime I felt homesick or lonely, I would find the shell and hold it up to my ear until the ache in my heart went away.

The sounds of the sea sustained me throughout my time with Isabella while I was human. Of course, when she made me one of her pets, I forgot about the seashell, my family, and my life. Yes, I was a vampire, but not your romanticized notion of what that means. Isabella kept all of her pets mad with bloodlust, never deigning to teach us how to control it. I didn’t pick out lovely maidens, seduce them, and fuck them while slowly draining them of life. I ravaged them after Isabella brought them down to her cellar terrified and bound. I tore at their throats, nearly drowning in the blood that gushed forth. Do you understand now? I was an unfeeling monster, an animal acting only on instinct.

Decades after the change, I escaped Isabella’s madness. To this day I’m not sure how I succeeded. I wandered from farm to farm, village to village, feasting upon any man or woman unfortunate enough to cross my path, never recognizing them as anything more than food or that I was once like them: human. I left behind me a trail of death and blood any amateur tracker could have followed had he known where to look. How it was Isabella, a millennia-old vampire and my sire, couldn’t find me I can only chalk up to divine intervention.

My memories of that time are jumbled at best, and save for the occasional nightmare of the horrific things I did to survive I only know that I travelled aimlessly until one night I found myself on some deserted beach. The sounds of the waves must have sparked some ember of memory locked away within me because I picked up a seashell and held it to my ear. There was only silence.

Clarity returned to me in that moment and for the first time since I tasted Isabella’s blood, I remembered who I was, or rather, who I had been. I fell to my knees in the sand and screamed to the sky. I screamed until I could make no more noise and sobs wracked my body. Bloody tears rolled down my face, staining the soil before the waves washed them out to sea.

And that, my dear, was the day the seashells went quiet. The day I learned what it meant to be a vampire, to be an inhuman monster.