Birth:

You woke up coming out of your mother’s cunt feeling rejected in the sterile cold of the hospital and a man you didn’t know handled you in plastic gloves and artificial comfort was familiar to you as soon as you begun. Bright lights shrunk your eyes back into your skull and blood and flesh clung to your skin in thick strands along with hair and bodily fluids lined your skin. You were almost dropped as your were handed to a pair of loving arms and then you were handed to a nurse and put away, filed under Unknown Valor, as your name had not yet been chosen. Ironically in the nursery you knew exactly what your life would be. Numbers and statistics made up those around you, you didn’t have a personality, and you were just a product of a bitter love that was slowly dying in your parent’s eyes.

Childhood:  

The scent of your mother was comforting and the caress of your father’s hand over a carpet of short curly blonde locks that hung in your eyes, beautiful baby blues stared curiously out at the world that unfolded around you. Your toys lay broken at your feet as you twisted them and you pulled your sisters hair just to make yourself smile, then you flicked pees at your brother and snickered as you snuck away to eat chocolate behind the orange orchard. And amongst this there was the dreaded loneliness when your mother caught a flight and your father attended another seminar. Your sister was molested by the gardener in the orchard as you greedily ate chocolate that was all yours and it was the only thing you could call your own apart from damaged toys scattering the floor of your bedroom that was so big it made you feel insignificant and the carpet mocked you in its vastness. Then there were your friends that climbed out of the walls and animated your toys, causing you to burn them with the lighter your brother used to smoke his heroin with. Whether or not you were hallucinating you don’t know to this day. The sunset would make you cry and the darkness would envelop you on the porch and swallow you whole.

Adolescence:

LA was bright and things moved quickly, people addressed you as Valor; you didn’t even have a first name, not to them. You didn’t have to use fake I.D.s to get into clubs because you slipped the bouncers a point of coke and then you hung out in booths with the children of the stars. You swum in pools filled with naked women and some of them sat around smoking weed while other cut coke on mirrors with razorblades. They wore Armani, Gucci, Valentino, Trent Nathan and you wore Armani and Gucci and Valentino. Your shirts were made of silk with beer stains on them and you could feel your nose collapse and deteriorate. Brother’s veins were weak and there was always the sound of a jet lighter burning through metal and cooking heroin in the kitchen. Sister was a whore and Mother was dead, the tragedy of a car accident, Sister gave head in her bedroom to three men at a time and occasionally you’d watch and jerk off, while doing a line of coke when you woke up. Everything was disjointed and fragile, moving with an uneasy pace and there was always an emptiness that nibbled at your bowels that was uncontrollable, when you smoked a cigarette you needed to take a shit. You listened to Guns ‘N Roses and Nirvana and then you listened to Snoop Dogg and NWA, you listened to what was cool and you bathed in superficiality. One time you raped your girlfriend and smacked her across the face with your dick and laughed then you smoked weed and passed out on your bed feeling guilty, while she cried in the corner. Because when she touched you your skin went numb and you didn’t feel anything, just bored and void and her eyes staring up at you helplessly sickened you. She kept trying to come back to you and all you could say to her was:

‘I’m just fucked up’

Your best friend didn’t come around anymore, you remembered playing baseball but the image was starting to fade and a syringe took place of a bat and the ball had become a burning spoon. His face, once lit with happiness was now drawn out and pale, his eyes almost black as sweat dampened hair hung over his face. He became a whore and occasionally, simply because dealers wanted to degrade you, you had to suck off old business men that would fantasise over their sons as you swallowed their cum.

Another club and another hairstyle, pierced noses and bellys and then came the mechanics of getting up. You put together a bong made from kitchen utensils and nobody really looked after you, eventually people started staying in your room that you didn’t know and the door to your room was always locked. The night sheltered you now and its smell was a cigarette and weed, and its feeling was euphoria. You couldn’t smell the fresh rain drops that stained your face black. You’d drive your father’s 1956 Jag Roadster as fast as you could along the desert roads towards Palm Springs, where you’d hold up for a few months before returning to LA, finding Sister gone and Brother OD’d, the gardener had taken care of everything and the house had been sold. You had an immense amount of money in your bank account but it meant nothing because there was nothing at all left. You were empty and hollow, something inside had died, perhaps your soul, perhaps your conscience but you still retained some kind of youthful innocence. You travelled to New York driving your car as fast as you could, occasionally throwing a backwards glance over your shoulder to make sure Father wasn’t sleeping in the back seat, to make sure he wouldn’t sit up, smile and say ‘Hey Son’.

New York:

You work on a dock out of boredom but you have a penthouse up town. During the day you sleep, severe case of heroin hangovers gnaw at your mind and at work people are noticing your productivity going down immensely. You work for a kind man, strong and silent named Ricardo Giovanni and one day when unloading a crate from a Chinese ship you accidentally stumble over a shipment of firearms, it doesn’t bother you. You almost load the clip into one and massacre your co-workers, for a split second you fantasise about killing everyone around you. Being a bullet and tearing your way through necks and jaws and eyeballs and skulls, emerging pure in a baptism of blood. All you feel is the steady hand of your supervisor clamping on your shoulder telling you that you’re required in the office. Once there you talk to Mr. Giovanni who hands you a silver plated Dostevei, telling you it’s his favourite Russian gun, that it’s automatic and fires bursts rounds quickly and efficiently. As the steel gun sits in your hand you toy with the trigger, almost pointing it in his face and testing it, which is what you want to do. He sees your killer instinct born of idle boredom and hatred directed at the world for giving you such a shit deal. He thinks it’s funny when you have all the money you want and you still work for him in this dead end job and you’re angry because of it. He looks at the track marks in your arms and expects you to die the first time he gives you the gun and points you in the mark’s direction.

The First Kill:

The night watched over you the first time you went out, holding the gun in the rim of your Hugo Boss pants, a jacket thrown over the top coolly… you thought that too. That you were a stylish hit man, working through a seedy underworld and you were the weapon and the night guided you. And when the elevator took you up to a penthouse much like your own, you knocked on the door, pointed the gun at the face of a young man, with a warm smile and as you pulled the trigger, his face was torn apart as acid was released from the hallow point bullets your gun was filled with and it burnt his face off. He then fell to his knees and as he clawed at his burning face you saw fangs and then a woman came in, dropped her bottle of wine, which smelt strangely like blood and you unloaded three bullets into her without thinking. Then came the third, a larger man who when you raised the gun, told you to put it down on the ground and to come to him. As you did he grabbed your neck and lifted you above his head, clenching his fist around your throat and all you could do was laugh as breath left your lungs. You laughed for all that was lost, all that had become your life, you were killing people you didn’t know for no reason, just because there was nothing left for you. This is what you had become, nothing amongst a vast numbers of people, stretching a globe and none of them knew who you were. You weren’t important and the reason you would so gladly kill would be that hopefully you would become notorious and people would remember your name once you died. If that time was at hand then so be it, you closed your eyes and laughed.

The First Love:

But you didn’t die, a stake was driven through the man’s heart from behind as an Arabic girl stood, shaking her head before she beat you so badly that you couldn’t feel your face and your teeth were missing. A quick stop to the dentist fixed that though. And afterwards she sat down and explained that what you did was stupid and that you were stupid and her lack of interest in you turned you on; it made you want her beyond your own selfishness. The fact that she despised you made your lust take control of your body, you wouldn’t even contemplate raping her, she’d kill you. She was an Assamite, you loved her, eventually in time she loved you and the more she loved you the less you did. But she taught you the tools of the trade and she finally explained to you one night who she was, who the Assamites were and then she ghouled you without the permission of her clan. Her blood tasted hot against your tongue and it made something inside you feel, something that was left dormant and you wanted to taste it again and again, you wanted to inject it into your veins, sniff it through your nose or smoke it, anyway you could you wanted it. Then you went out, down town to have dinner with friends from LA who kept saying you looked pale. You had lost that golden boy tan that you used to have and your hair had gotten darker, what shit were you on? That’s what they’d ask, then excuse themselves going to the bathroom to do coke, they even smoked joints during dinner. So did you. When you went home stoned and high with euphoria running through your veins all you wanted was her blood and when you opened the door to your penthouse you found it. It was covering your walls, it was in your bath, it was in your sheets and it was even in your microwave, it was everywhere and her skin was hanging from place to place, body parts and bones were scattered all around, hidden down the side of couches of all places. She was gone and the smell made you vomit all over your hands and you simply passed out. When you woke up you were covered in blood and vomit and as you stood you didn’t do anything, you took your car keys and started driving away again, driving as fast as you could towards New Orleans.

New Orleans:

Once you arrived in New Orleans you had become an accomplished killer and you had thrown away all your good clothes, you wore long trench coats and night vision goggles, everything was high tech and cold, mechanical and sterile. You covered yourself in body armour to make sure that none of the vampires you now knew existed would tear you apart. And then you came upon Young, an Assamite just like your lover whose name now you’ve forgotten. And Young embraced you and as he bit into your neck you got an erection. You fell in love again with Majestic who left you and you decided that one day you would kill her. He soon started to hate you and you embraced Lizzy, who eventually you grew to love but she also ended up hating you, flirting with a Brujah named Ricki. And there was nothing you hated more than Ricki, he was all you wanted to destroy, him and Lizzy. But Lizzy stuck around and you fell in love and then Setites took her and erased her memory and then your memory was erased and everything is drawn out longer than it should be and you just wish that everyone was dead. They were but they kept living, kept smiling and talking, making love and firing guns. Most people begun to hate you and Lizzy was more accomplished killer than you and she was your fucking kid, you made her everything she was. And Young left and Lizzy left, but not after she had pointed out all your worthlessness and the Black Hand had tested you, found you expendable and placed you part of a raiding party in Atlanta.

Atlanta:

Atlanta hated you more than New Orleans did. People around you didn’t know your name, you were just an Assamite gone antitribu after you failed in serving the Assamites, but you were always antitribu, Young just let you decide to take the path in honour and your naivety led you there. You wouldn’t have even thought of raping and killing without need anymore, you were close to being pure again. And then they told you to assassinate a Primogen who was being guarded by the Sheriff. But before you did you had decided to relive your old days and go clubbing. You stumbled upon Jess Davies, a perfect specimen of woman. Beautiful with huge tits and a little ass she seduced you, reintroducing you to the blood of an addict, causing everything you knew to come back again and then by candles created by human skin she cast your life to oblivion. She prophesised your death and said there would be another way to get back at everything the people around you had done. So she sold your unlife to her masters, to the Pit, to the Absolute, she signed you over in blood in Foedus Infernus, a demonic pact pledging your service.

When you died, fighting furiously but stupidly against a Gangrel and a Tremere who extracted almost all bones from your body, Jess, whose real name you didn’t know, took care of your body, taking it to the Pit with her to make sure it was preserved once you found a way back from the Shadowlands. And the demons all laughed at your stupid, stupid little skull and pissed on it and used your bones as dildos, crucifying your bones and skin before you even managed to be reborn in them, they had been baptised in the flames of the Inferno.

The Shadowlands:

And in the Shadowlands you were lost, you didn’t understand what you were, you didn’t understand those around you. All you saw was the ghostly image of a world that you no longer existed in, with strange buildings in place of the clubs you’d been to. And Renegades hunted you and Oblivion lapped at your ankles as you spent months alone. Finally you realised how to materialise and effect the physical plain and you tried to hurt everyone you could back in New Orleans and then Lizzy was back and you were in what you thought was love again but it was just another lie. You visited her at night once you’d found out how to turn your spirit into matter but it wasn’t enough and again she left… and you were alone… and you were alone… and you were alone… and you were alone… and you were alone… and you were alone… and you were alone… and you were alone… and you were alone… and you were alone… and you were alone… and you were alone… and you were alone… and you were alone… and you were alone… and you were alone… and you were alone…

You were alone again and you seeked out people called the Puppeteers, a Guild that had made themselves Risen before. The insistent ramblings and put downs of your Shadow was driving you insane and your dark passions were devouring those that were pure. All you felt was hatred, envy, greed and loathing, you wanted to destroy the world, to watch it burn. You wanted to skin children and hang their bodies in front of their mothers just so that you could see the anguish tear apart their souls before you could send them across the Shroud where you’d had to dwell. You were desperate and they wouldn’t help you, you had nothing to give them. And so you prey to the Absolute to save you from this so that you could wreak havoc on the world and purge the innocent for it, you again bargained the devil to put you back into the body waiting for you. There was a deal made with the Puppeteers and the Shadow after you promised to help Armageddon come and you were reborn straight back into the dimensions of the Pit…

The Path of Screams:

Upon returning to the Pit you realise that virtue has no place within your being. You look towards the void inside you for answers and you want to drown in your own abyss to self-destruct and take everything with you. Time in the Shadowlands has left you hungry for blood and death even though you’ve ironically been surrounded with it your whole life.  You took part in a Black Mass and declared your hate for everything that was before, all done on your own will. And then upon enlightenment what’s left of your soul is raped, every bit of pain, helplessness, loneliness, hopelessness, hatred, envy… all of it comes back a thousand times over and licks your skin, taking you to the brink of Hell and you taste the searing waters. You are now reborn amongst the Fallen, you are nothing to the world but everything to the Pit, a soldier of destruction waiting to taste the world’s bitter crust between your teeth.

The Branding:

Your Master is beautiful and vile. To make sure that you don’t forget whom you belong to your skin is branded with black tendrils that stretch from around your ankles all over your body, down your arms and over your chest, none of them touching the revoltingly beautiful face of an Angel they have preserved for you. They have left your spine free of markings so that you may record the killings you make for them on your own skin and when you awaken from the pain of your branding your eyes are empty, there is nothing but a void that leaves them stained with darkness, forever black and lifeless.

Infernally Risen:

Once you step out into the world the sunlight burns your eyes, you haven’t seen it in years, you don’t know what it is to feel the warmth on your pale, cold skin and the rays of sunshine disgust you anyway. You travel to New York, you take revenge on every person that looked at you funny while your worked the docks, you skin them and take their bones back to your alter to give to your master in exchange for gifts. You don’t feel pain as they rip apart your body with automatic weapons and their fists leave tiny bruises on your body, nothing hurts you, the only pain you know is the damage caused by the super natural and even that’s bearable. You are invincible as long as no one knows how to sever your cord. You travel back to LA and feast on the blood of everyone who snickered at you during high school for being a drop out junkie, you tear their stomachs open and you do it easily, with a smile and the smell of blood no longer makes you vomit but thirsty, more so than when you were a vampire and now you don’t even need it, you just want it.

New Orleans:

You return to New Orleans and everything moves quickly at first, you’re tested, people try to kill you but slowly they start to recognise your power and they begin to fear you. You are known, you are evil, and you will never be forgotten. The women love you, they’d sell their souls to lie with you and that’s exactly what you intend to do to them, take their souls and rape them in the night. People line up to be devoured by your honey jaws and your masters are more than happy with your progress. Already you have perfected yourself into the broken image of an Angel, demonic wings hid between your shoulder blades, claws hide underneath your black fingernails and horns nestle secretively in your skull, all waiting for the day that you can release your brutality freely and carve your initial over the world’s face. Your fury is unending and you relish it, everything works for you, you are above the whores that frequent the bars, they don’t know anything of how strong you are. They believe they can step on you but you are glorious, you are fucking beautiful, you are perfect, you are a God amongst the weak and the frail and you don’t know the word mercy.

You don’t feel anything though… there is no happiness inside you, brief glimpses pass you by as you carve people open, there’s counterfeit euphoria coursing through your veins at the sight of blood and twisting people into nothing makes you smile, but you don’t know any truth. You aren’t even real, some days you wake up and find it hard to deal with the person you are. You’re not even a person, that makes you want to cry for all that is lost. You won’t be remembered you are nothing in the scheme of things, there’s no way out, there’s no retribution for what you’ve done so you’re stuck between nefarious evil and innocence that you miss. You’re sick of being this being, you’re growing tired of constantly hurting people, it bores you, you’ve done it for as long as you can remember, you’re real life is now a blur spread over your black eyes.

But you love what you do; you love the feeling of being so fucking powerful.

You have nothing though.

You are going through an identity crisis and everyone wants to laugh at you, just like they always have, just like they always will… that is why you feel the need to destroy them, because nobody truly cares about you.

You wait for the Reckoning and once it comes you will decide which side you will take.

When you close your eyes at night, nothing changes once you open them.