Love, Life, Death, and Chocolate

The chocolate cake was like a splinter in my brain. A knife through the very fabric of my mind. Slicing, millimetre by millimetre. Severing those synapses. Rendering me more and more useless, and less and less interested, with each passing day.

But it was just a cake. I didn’t even bake it. I bought it at the bakery on the corner two days ago. And here it had sat since then. On the table. In the kitchen. Out of its box. Ready to rock. Ready to roll. Ready to please and dazzle all who would look upon it.

It was my birthday. Twenty-seven years old. I was a Scorpio. At least, I think I was. I can’t remember. I’m not really twenty-seven. More like seven hundred and twenty-seven. Yep. I’m a vampire. I live in this dark apartment, day in and day out, just watching the city go by beneath me. Nothing I can do to join it. Nothing I can do to be in any way a part of it.

Well, except for this cake. I ordered it over the phone. I do it every week. On Tuesdays. At 3PM. That’s my favourite time to order cake. Because by 3PM, the cake is not as fresh as it was when the bakery opened. But it’s not stale either. It’s kind of in a perfect zone. That zone is where I enjoy things the most. Makes a kind of sense, I think. It almost describes me, as a vampire, being so old. Not as fresh as I once was, but far from being stale.

What is this about then? Why cake? Why chocolate? Why me, telling this story? To answer all those questions, I have to take you back a few hundred years.

Now, I won’t bore you with the historical facts about that time, because, frankly, I’ve forgotten them, and plus, it’s boring anyway.

So, yes, several hundred years ago. We’re in France. I am a vampire, obviously, at this time, because I’d be about four hundred years old. And there’s this woman. Beautiful woman. About twenty-five years old. SHE works in a bakery. Right? Or she was a baker. Or a chocolatier. Or whatever. I don’t know. It was years ago, for crying out loud. Point is, she made cakes. And they were, for want of a better word, terrible. Yeah. Her baking skills were not up to a standard that anyone would consider acceptable.

One day – a Tuesday – I found her sat outside on the street, on a small, ornate little bench, crying softly to herself.

“Ah, my beloved flower,” I began, as I stood before her, “whatever is the matter with thine lonesome self?”

And she didst look up to me, eyes all puffy and wet. “They say my cakes are terrible,” she says, with some difficulty.

“Who says?” I ask, sitting down next to her.

“My father. My mother. My sister even as well.”

I give her a look of sympathy. With my face alone I tell her that I understand her plight completely. I tell her that I have been there myself – to this most awful of places where one’s own family disapproves of the very thing that makes you happy. In my case, it was alchemy, but I digress. That is for another day.

“Perhaps I can cheer you up,” I suggest, as her cries become even more pitiful.

She shakes her head, emphatically no!

“Oh, if only you could, dear, kind, stranger,” she says, not even noticing that our tenses seem to have switched from past to present, and possibly back again. Ah, the wonders of time, I think, and thought, to myself.

I stand up, and offer out my hand for her to take. She takes it, and stands up too.

“Comes with me, my dear,” I tell her. “I shall introduce you to a whole new world. One beyond your wildest imaginations and dreams.”

And so off we went, down the street, and away from that horrendous hive of misery known as…the bakery.

After ten minutes, she stops me. I turn to face her. I seem to tower over her. She seems like a treat. A snack. Something to quench the thirst. I am licking my lips, as the veins in my neck pulse and throb.

“Hmmmm,”I groan.

She eyes me ever so suspiciously.

“Sir,” she starts, “what are you, and why are you leading me away from my troubles?”

“Ah-hah!” I exclaim in response. “Do I not seem to be a friendly gentleman, simply out for an evening stroll in the shade, happening upon damsels in distress, and offering my charitable services for all whom may require them within their hours of great need?”

She considers this. Evidently, she has never faced such deep and probing questions before.

Eventually she nods. And smiles. The tears are gone. Her face is now a picture of glee.

“YES!” she proclaims, with much enthusiasm. “I do believe that what you say is true!”

I nod and smile too. Things are going better than I had hoped. The old tales are true, then. When you find the one that you will love forever – the one to whom you will be bonded for all eternity – you will instantly know it, and it shall be unquestionable.

“Marry me!” I say. “And I will turn thee into a creature of the night. A beautiful dark angel. And we shall roam the Earth as one. Soul mates in a soulless world. Feeding. Loving. Living. Vampires of the New World.”

She squeals in delight, claps her hands together, and spins around on the spot, excited like a child in a sugar sweet shop.

She throws her arms around me. She feels it too. This unspoken bond.

“Yes, Bernard,” she says, “Marry you, I certainly will. With great, unabashed pleasure, I will!”

“Oh, my lovely Marianne, I am beyond thrilled at your decision. What a world awaits us.”

And what a world DID await us. We travelled it all. Together. As one.

We did everything.

We carved our way through this great place like a hot knife through butter.

Nothing and no-one stood in our way.

We were feared.

We were loved.

We were despised.

We were cherished.

We were chased.

We were caught.

Marianne was killed.

I have wept each day since.

One hundred years of not being whole. One hundred years as a half-being. One hundred years adrift on a sea of heart-wrenching grief. One cannot even begin to describe it.

That day was a Tuesday. And as I watched her burn away to ashes in the bright and baking midday sun, I swore to whatever God I thought might exist, that I would wreak havoc on those responsible. I would lay upon them a revenge so mad, so brutal, so biblical, that they would question the very nature of existence as they watched theirs slip away into the darkness of hell.

Only, I never found them. I looked. I looked for a long time. I’m still looking, I guess. But I haven’t found them yet. I doubt I ever will. I am cursed. Some would say I deserve it. And maybe I do. But, that is not for me to judge.

So now, I live a quiet life. A life as peaceful as it can be. I stay out of the public’s gaze. I watch from afar. I wish for nothing. I hope for nothing. Nothing is all I desire. I am empty inside. Dead, and long forgotten, by the world that killed me.

But I have cake. Nice cake. Pleasant cake. Cake at the right time of day. It reminds me of her. My one true love. Marianne. I eat one slice. And one slice alone. The rest I leave. For her. As I just sit and stare. And if I sit and stare long enough, I am transported back to another time and place. A beautiful Tuesday evening. In Paris. Outside a bakery. Where, for a brief moment in time, everything seemed fine. The end.