Dear Diary,

It’s been a week and a half now, and bit by bit, my new condition has begun to lose its novelty. I believe I underestimated how difficult it would be to handle the dread lurking behind this fact. I believe I underestimated how difficult it would be to handle myself at all.

It was so much simpler before I released that last blog post. I wasn’t thinking about anything else, it was the most excited I can recall being in decades despite the situation. I was making mistakes all the time, of course I was, but it would all be worth it. I could convince myself of that.

But the article has been finished for the better part of a week, now, and so the hard work has begun. The long, annoying, confusing, strange, and completely unmanageable work.

Perhaps it would be easier if I could trust myself in crowds (or indeed trust crowds with myself). Or if I hadn’t destroyed that specially ordered batch of blood samples I’d intended to use for Kell system testing. Or if I wasn’t having my sleep interrupted by hunters. But here we are, exactly where I can’t stand being. Always back here.

It’s not as if things were better before the article, either. If only. No, my feverish pace of work did nothing to prevent me from hurting Caitlyn, it only made the denial more intuitive. I might’ve been more disgusted by how desperately hot her vulnerability was after what I did, but I was still busy developing my third incorrect framework for understanding what her blood had tasted like, you see, so there was no room to process it.

And now, to cap it all off, I was attacked by a hunter for the first time… and fucking humiliated. I had always thought the tales of vampires lunging like wild animals at a simple AB- blood bag must have been false or distorted, but lo, we need no further evidence now, do we? I was full, I had no reason to lose myself like that, and yet I barely spared a few seconds to forge some excuse I can’t remember before proving that hunter’s dogmatic horseshit correct. I made a fool of myself, of everything I’ve ever stood for. Mary would have done a better job, and she would’ve enthralled the hunter afterwards.

There has to be another way. I have to find it before I’m out of time. Already, my perspective is skewed in the midst of all this instinct. I fear I don’t know quite how it’s skewed, or how to get out of my own head so I can un-skew it. I so desperately need to know that I can control this, that my knowledge of the ‘trade’ as such is actually helping rather than just rendering me a more dangerous monster, but the actual experience which would grant that control is so slowly forthcoming.

The problem is that humans are just so… so delicious. They’re adorable, and their scent is intoxicating, and they’re full of blood that’s free for the taking. And that blood just tastes, feels, it’s… it’s like I can feel it rushing through my own veins, spreading everywhere, stimulating, pressing into me, unavoidable, and every inch of my insides becomes an erogenous zone. I need the rush more than anything I have ever needed, my every wayward impulse lusts for it, and I smell the one thing that gives it to me, the one thing I can take so easily, absolutely everywhere.

I handle it better around friends. People I care about. It was actually lovely to speak with Linda in person for that voice research… but then, that won’t be an option for a little while yet, not extensively. How many other people do I know who are willing to risk my presence right now? I’ve never exactly been a social butterfly, and with this constant preening of blood lust inside me now… I’m still so far from being able to simply make a friend, and I have to.

Mary is finally helping me, at least. She’s quite the talent at this sort of thing. It only makes sense… She must have learned quite a bit of restraint, sitting in front of that mirror as her begetter tormented her. Perhaps even now she thinks back to the woman she killed after being turned, the way that made her feel. That’s not what she tells me, of course, but I doubt it would help anyway, and what she has been telling me does help. Unfortunately for everyone, she’s my last hope.

Of course, she’s being her usual dense self about the whole thing. She insists this is all for the purposes of me ‘finally’ enthralling Natalie and ‘getting over myself’, or whatever. Many of her internal mantras for holding oneself back from attacking humans even rely on this framework: ‘I’ll get her later’, ‘think of how much more blood she’ll have if I wait’, ‘she should beg me to take her first’, etc. But then, perhaps that infuriatingly wounded self-assurance is just what is necessary for handling this sort of condition. I have to compromise at some point. Especially if I ever want to get through to her.

After all, I’m her last hope, too. I think she knows that somewhere in that thick head of hers. I’m her last hope, and she is mine. It’s fitting, in some strange way.

Listen, I’m not going to pretend as if her and I haven’t been engaging in something approaching flirting for some time now. I won’t insult the intelligence of this book I write my thoughts in. We were essentially there before I was turned, and now, it’s just… Well, she’s no ‘mistress’ anymore, but she’s been all over my body, and I’ve been all over hers, and she’s been inside me in the most intimate way I know of. It’s hard to know what to do with that.

If I could blush, I’d be blushing right now. That strange sort of blush which only shows itself when one hates and cares for another in this particular way. The one which makes me want to taunt her, and slam her against walls, and look straight through those big round photochromic glasses of hers as I relish in the sight of red eyes jumping for repressed joy. It’s such a contrast and I need as much of it as I can get. I need her.

All that is to say, I found a button I can push, a way to turn the words of her ‘mistress’ against her, and I have been using it relentlessly when we meet up. It reminds me of the way Cheryl used to talk to me, whenever we stumbled across some aspect of Violet’s control I had still yet to root out, and somehow that makes the experience all the hotter.

Recently, we met up with Helen, one of Mary’s thralls who I believe works at a café, in order to test my ability to resist certain things. It went alright for a while, a bit better than I expected. Eventually, though, I got so sick of hearing Mary refer to Helen as just ‘food’ that I dommed her until she relented on it. Helen was watching the whole time, and I could smell the cortisol spiking in her blood, and somehow that was even more incredible knowing that I wasn’t taking it. I suppose in that way I managed to handle myself.

By a similar token, I’ve already gotten so much out of Mary without having to relent to her constant insistence that I must take Natalie again soon. Even now, as I write this, I am relieved to pick up Natalie’s scent, still free, still safe, and to feel only a passing urge to go take her immediately. Even if I would like to eventually do something about that. Consensually.

It’s actually a bit odd that I’m smelling her at full activity right now, though… it’s 4 AM. And thinking about it, something in her blood smells… familiar. Like Helen’s did. And if I’m not mistaken, she’s pacing… She must be disturbed by something.

…

I may need to do something about this. I really was sloppy with how I left her before… She deserves better. Maybe I can give her that. Caitlyn remembers her hospital stay now, after all… Compartmentalizing has proven a useful tactic. And I can leave her with the failsafe, too. I can keep her safe. I can protect her. Just because she's my prey doesn't mean I can't show her the proper respect.

…I sound like a fucking pastiche again. My perspective is skewed, and yet I have no choice but to trust it. Because of course, maybe she’ll want me to take from her again. And maybe she’ll come back again after that. And maybe, if that happens, just maybe, I can hold it over Mary’s head forever. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Well, I need something here, and so does she, clearly. We can work out the details in time, as soon as we can begin to be in a state to work said details out. Hopefully these problems might eventually all cancel each other out.

Sincerely,

Luminita