About the Author: Mikaela Zemaitis (Creative Writing & English, Class of 2018) has been serious about writing since the young age of 9. These days she writes both poetry and fiction, the latter being her main focus and the former being a form of therapy. Currently she is writing a fiction story for the Shires Press Publishing Program and hopes to continue to publish novels in the future.

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Part 1 –Aaralyn

by Mikaela Zemaitis

Silently I stared at Aaralyn, taking in her image as she sat in front of a large window and looked out on the winter wonderland before her. As white as the snow that she stared at, she was quite the sight to behold. Looking at her felt surreal; as if she could not possibly exist. She reminded me of one of those marble statues that were done in honor of the Gods. Then again, she might have been more of a true white, because unlike marble she did not discolor over time. Alive for millenniums and Aaralyn was just as pale as she had been when she was lounging on the top of Mount Olympus.

Back then her skin tone served a purpose, allowing her to blend in perfectly with her snowy surroundings, and now it just made her stand out. Though in reality it didn’t matter, for there was virtually no one to take notice of this from within her personal prison. No longer an Oread, the former nymph was reduced to something far lesser as vampire-kind kept her locked up like a criminal.

Though maybe it was the right thing to do. Nymphs are spirits of nature, manifesting in a beautiful female form, and while she was still beautiful, there was no longer anything natural about Aaralyn. When you take one of the purest beings and curse it with existence of one of the most horrid creatures on the planet, let’s just say nothing good comes as a  result.

One would think that her skin would have made it so no living thing could detect her presence. However, vampires have stronger senses, like being able to hear heartbeats, so we don’t rely on sight alone to find our victims. Thus not even a nymph with such a natural talent for camouflage like Aaralyn could remain undetected. This leads us to the story of one unfortunate day, one that started with a newborn vampire wandering off from Thessaly and up to Mount Olympus.

In retrospect this all could have been avoided as he had more than enough feeding options in his village. Ancient Greece was vast enough for vampires to chase after humans without suspicion arising. This was beneficial because of their love of storytelling. If one idiot messed up, then we would have been put down in the books for real. It was bad enough that there was a story based upon us, referring to us by the name Vrykolakas, but having full out mythology based upon us would have been a nightmare. Then again, it’s been over two hundred years since Dracula came out and everyone still thinks that was just a story, so we may have been fine.

Point is, that newborn vampire should have never messed with the nymphs. There is this unspoken rule among, what mankind likes to call, the supernatural. Basically, we supernatural creatures stay away from each other and only kill humans. Hell, sometimes we even get tipped off on who to kill when certain humans try the patience of other supernatural beings. Might as well help the Gods to stay on their good side. Especially since we were one of Hades’s “accidental” creations, resulting in most of the supernatural world hating us.

To make a long story short, Hades pitied the original ones of our kind and thus decided to give them another shot at life. But it didn’t come without strings attached. They got another chance at life, but in return they’d have to do his bidding. Some humans just didn’t deserve a nice death, so Hades made the originals give them the torturous end they deserved.

Killing wasn’t the only problematic aspect of the deal, as this lifestyle exempts us from ever having an afterlife. For even when doing the bidding of the Gods, murder is still murder, and thousands of years of bloodshed would land us in the deepest pits of Tartarus. So technically, not having an afterlife was one of the bonuses in the deal. For while we could never see the Elysian Fields or even Asphodel Meadows, we also weren’t sentenced to an eternity of suffering. It was kind of like getting a “get out of jail free” card, except once we played the card, our game ended.
Thus it wasn’t a terrible deal, which is why we were so scared to lose it all.

Aaralyn’s turning wasn’t just terrible because she took out a whole village, but because the newborn who changed her drained two other Oreads dry before he reached her. In the eyes of the Gods and Goddesses this was a terrible offense; one of Hades’s precious little pests had broken the unspoken rule and now our race had to pay.

Upon hearing the news of what happened, Zeus ordered the newborn to be executed and every other “pest” to be tested on its ability to have self-control. Those who failed and those who turned those who failed were also sentenced to the same fate as the infamous newborn. The Gods had no patience for those with bad judgment and Hades had never wanted our race to get this large in the first place. We had grown too fast and too large for his liking. He had no difficulty killing off 3/4ths of our population. He had a habit of picking favorites and all the vampires he cared for passed the test. Thus all the originals and the most loyal second generation vampires survived, making it so Hades could care less about the demise of the others.

Being that I am not even one millennium old, I did not see any of this all with my own eyes, but my maker Alkaios did. I still remember what it was like hearing about it for first time.

“How could he do that to us?” I asked Alkaios, the vampire who had changed me. He always told me stories of what Greece was like when he was young, but this story was far more depressing than usual. He sighed and patted my shoulder. His pale hand contrasting intensely with my skin. We were like yin and yang, he was almost as pale as Aaralyn and I was almost dark enough to blend in with the night.

“Oh my dear Dakarai” He said with a smile, “We are nothing but pests to them. In their eyes we are lower than humans. We are a nuisance. We are a mistake. They killed us, and they did so with ease.”

“I appreciate that you have brought me into such a life, Alkaios.” I said bitterly and he laughed, smiling sadly at me.

“What? Is this life not better than death?” I had no answer to that question. Was it? I could have had an afterlife before. Yes, I was in the lowest of the classes in Great Zimbabwe and my health was so poor that I died before I could make it to my twentieth year of life, but at least I had a chance. Now, if I were to die that would be the end of it all. My existence depended on pleasing Gods who did not care in the slightest about whether I lived or died.

“Not if it does not last. Then I will be nothing.” 

“Dakarai, you are a great vampire. I know you will not fail the Gods…Plus they can be patient when they like someone.”  

“Really? Name one time.” I demanded. I had been a vampire for only a couple of years and was still very much a moody, young adult at this point in time. “When have they ever pardoned a vampire?”   

Alkaios sighed once more, most likely getting tired of my angsty behavior. “They pardoned Aaralyn.” He stated and I furrowed my brows. “She was the nymph. Zeus has a soft side for nymphs, which is why when all the vampires were executed, she was allowed to live.”   

“She doesn’t count. She was a nymph— she could have had a child with him.”   

“She did not,” His reply was short and harsh. If I hadn’t annoyed him before, I definitely had now. “Plus, nymph or not, she is a vampire and a violent one at that.” I raised an eyebrow and it was then that I was finally genuinely interested in what he was talking about. He must have been able to tell that I was intrigued because he continued on with his story, now with vigor. “She’s violent because, unlike us, her appetite never ceases. In fact, shortly after she underwent her change, she left her home in Mount Olympus and slaughtered a small village. When she was done, not a single person had been spared…not even the children and babies. The worst part was that she was still in need of more and, if we hadn’t intervened, she probably would have destroyed all of Greece.”    

“We?”   

He smiled at that. “Yes…As you know vampires live in groups and Hades likes to have at least one of us “originals” there to make sure the younger ones don’t step out of line. Yes, that means it was up to me to keep from letting that newborn into the mountains, but I didn’t know he existed. My son Kleon was turning vampires without consulting anyone first, thus we did not know of the newborn’s existence until it was too late.”

“Does that mean your son died?” He never replied, answering my question with his silence. “So Kleon was killed simply for changing the newborn vampire who turned a nymph, but she gets to live after killing off a whole village?”

“I wouldn’t call what she does living. She merely exists in isolation. When Zeus commanded that the reckless vampires be executed, he pardoned her, but that did not mean that the vampire community did the same. They were as bitter towards Zeus’s favoritism as you are now, and they have held onto that bitterness with a firm grasp. She will spend the rest of her life locked away. Now, if you ask me, I think meeting the inevitable void that follows our unholy lives is far more pleasant than living an eternity as a prisoner.” 

Back then, I was so shocked by what he said. Did he really think that living was worse than death? How badly had living this way been that he found death to be a good option? But it wasn’t until I met Aaralyn for myself that I understood what he meant.

She had nothing.  All her life was four walls, with one large window so she could look at the winter wonderland she had been exiled to. Three thousand years and all she has known within that time is bagged blood, thirty something (vampire) guard changes, and three different prison locations. I wouldn’t be surprised if she couldn’t recall her old life, with as long as she has lived in isolation.

This third location will be her permanent jail because, well, it’s in Antarctica. The continent is perfect, because it is far more desolate than her prisons in Scandinavia and Russia had been, making escape futile. She will spend the rest of her days in this hell hole and a new guard will come every 100 years and she will still have nothing.

Alkaios was right; death would have been the lesser of the two evils. The only thing he hadn’t been right about was Zeus pardoning her. This wasn’t a pardon—this was hell. Zeus had not saved her at all; he had doomed her to an eternity of suffering. Four white walls and one large window. This is what Zeus’s “grace” had given her.

Copyright © Mikaela Zemaitis (2017) All rights reserved.