Dear Diary,

I have not had much cause for joy of late, not since the ‘Vampirism 101’ article was finally published. My days have been restless and confused as I am forced to finally settle in and sleep through them, and my nights have been an endless mire of temptation with options for escape concerningly limited. There have been moments where I nearly gave in entirely, some old, tired part of me desperate to finally rest. The alternative has felt like the flailing of a trapped animal.

But now, as I prepare for bed, the alternative is triumphant. For the first time in these weeks since being turned, I have finally made real progress towards something sustainable. I have finally taken Natalie, and I have done it willingly, and I have released her. Released her, hopefully, in more stable fashion than before.

I'd honestly hoped that her idea of simply hypnotically convincing her that release is possible and was done to her would've been more successful, but it has a key contradiction: the method requires a false belief, but its efficacy transforms that false belief into the truth. And yet, it is a truth that cannot become the universal truth, because it requires manipulation on the part of all vampires to maintain, something which, putting aside all the obvious ethical issues for a moment, could not feasibly be coordinated without letting the cat out of the bag. So the false is true, but it can never be the truth.

I believe I’ve just described the categorical imperative… All I mean is that this doesn't add up. From the beginning, it's absurd. I couldn't hypnotize her into not being mine, but I could hypnotize her into believing that I could release her— It's the same thing with extra steps. But I believe I understand the distinction now, with her feedback: In the former scenario, she is obeying me as she follows the order to disobey, while in the latter she is instead simply ceding to some natural cause and effect outside either of our control. My role is the key, so the lie fails when she realizes that the timeline doesn't add up, that I must have done something besides simply release her, and thus, that believing in the notion of ‘being released’ was obedience all along.

It may be a powerful breakthrough, when I can test it. For now, my hypothesis is that ‘release’ cannot ever be parsed as an order, or else it won't work, because the order will necessarily contradict itself. It must be something outside us both, not so much giving her back to herself as giving her back to the world, as if she has spent her enthralled time attuned to the wavelength of the Venusians or some such. Except the wavelength of vampirism is surely lower than that of humanity, to whatever extent such a thing exists.

I tried to focus more on the absence of influence than the presence of my desires or her ‘normal life’ while hypnotizing her, and that seems to have worked for now. It should be less of a contradiction to remember that I previously wiped her memory, with that lie… she does not need to believe in ‘release’ as my particular action, but in my influence leaving her in general, which can be accomplished by means both vulgar and delicate. Perhaps it is closer to the truth anyway.

Let us hope it will hold. We'll meet again next week to discuss her experience, among other things. With mutual respect, mutual appreciation, we will solve this mystery as human and vampire; it is hardly a mystery, then, why we would be the first to do so.

I can smell her now, above me, that earthy, exuberant A+ blood that I was savoring mere hours ago, free of all the stress and confusion that plagued it until recently. She must be waking up for work now… She works at a bakery, as it turns out, and has apparently had a lot of trouble getting out on time lately. I hope this experience can ease her difficulties as much as it has eased mine.

The night was not free of tension, obviously—Natalie is no more capable than myself of sorting her feelings about being taken like this—but it was important in ways even I had not predicted. There is something… calming about having a face, a voice, a sense of humor, even a set of annoyances to put to the smell of Natalie’s blood. It’s obvious in retrospect that understanding her as a person would make it easier to treat her as one, but these things can be difficult to see when her mere proximity sends your mind racing with thoughts of dominance and unyielding predation. I’m just happy that this sort of basic empathy has not actually followed my love for the sunrise in atrophy.

So… Natalie. She works at a bakery, and spends a lot of time besides that going to bars, parties, and other such things. And, of course, hiking, sometimes with friends. She’s quite the active person, quite the social butterfly… I’m surprised no one pointed out her bite mark to her before, but I suppose young people can be like that at times— Careless, free-spirited, inobservant… and so on. The point is, Natalie is much more active than I have been in a long time, and much more ‘normal’ than I have been in a very long time.

It can be obnoxious at times, and less judgementally, it can make it hard to think of anything to talk about. The life of the academic and the life of the drifting ex-student are quite different ones indeed, though in a way, that’s ideal. If Natalie is not borne of… well, of the particular cadre of people I normally surround myself with these days (professors, autistic people, vampires, autistic vampires, strangers who want me dead), and we are able to see eye to eye, then that means that I am hopefully not so strange that I cannot be appreciated genuinely by other sorts.

Of course, I’m still going to seem rather strange to most, but that’s hardly anything to be afraid of. I was strange when I was getting my first medical examinations after immigrating, I was strange when Cheryl and I made a point of making out publicly at every protest back in the 60’s, and I am strange now, a miscalibrated academic learning to manage her unbearable bloodlust and passive psychic manipulation well enough to entertain one person successfully for a single night. Strangeness is the utmost value of being alive, and I’ve learned by now that showing it is the only true way of endearing oneself to others.

All that remains now is to apply it, such that I may have sustenance independent of Mary's grip. I have that situation under my control, of course, because she needs me, she’s desperate for my help, she's mine… but the possibility still exists for her to cut me off, should she adopt an uncharacteristic viciousness.

Not that… Well, feeling the way I feel about Natalie now, I suppose it would be more of a natural viciousness. I've long been an advocate of free love, but the thought of Mary taking Natalie presses a feeling against me that is beyond jealousy, beyond my ethical objections, beyond even my concern for Natalie's well-being… it is a fundamental wrongness, the sense that she simply cannot be there, because that is mine. And, like everything else, it is indistinguishable from love of all sorts.

I've felt it before, too… a visceral satisfaction in taking what is hers despite my disdain for that framework. It is a show of force, a proof of superiority, a victory, and the whole sensation is uncomfortably similar to the heterosexual framework of male dominion and male cuckoldry. In that way, I suppose, Mary is being more ‘generous’ here than she may be inclined… perhaps only because she sees it as a means of controlling me, even if she would never follow through on that power. It certainly helps to explain her constant displays of control when we're both around one of her thralls.

It's just… pathetic. Weak, pathetic, easy. We both know I'm the better predator now, we both know I will only grow stronger while she stagnates, we both know I will win. But her weakness is… is…

She is still too weak to resist that stagnation, is the point. And her thralls aren’t hers. They aren’t, they shouldn’t be, it’s not… not a game. I’ll win because I understand that. Because I listen to them.

Already, I’ve been getting to know Caitlyn better, and Helen, and Jessica… They like me, they appreciate my strangeness, just as I have come to appreciate the autistic strangeness that Mary so often fails to show them. I care for them, and for Mary, and they all care for me, and that is why I will win, and that is why they will all be mine. Not hers, mine. Mine to take, mine to control, my territory, my fledgling, my… my…

People, people, people. Caitlyn is an engineer, Helen loves medical dramas, Jessica lifts weights every day. Mary watches children's TV shows I've never heard of and leaves bite marks in all her plushies. They're not things. Not things. I know that.

But I have to protect them, to help them, to help myself. I have to take them, have to… need to… I need more like Natalie. More to know, to take, to love. It's pounding against the inside of my skull, the life I want to lead, the hope for some compromise with this horrible thing inside me that hungers and thirsts and lusts for their bodies, their lives, their very souls. I have to win, against her, against myself, against everything. Looking at this, now… I can see what is changing inside. I can see the edge before me. It would be so easy to take Natalie now, to obliterate her life, to obliterate her, and if I fail, then… then…

Having tasted her, tasted all of this, I… don't have the will to end myself anymore. I don't know if I ever did. It's clearer than ever to me now… I will be a savior, or else I will be a monster. I will win, or we will all lose, and the only way to win is to engage with how desperately I want to lose now that I've worked myself up writing this. So I will just have to hope I have the strength to land somewhere admirable.

On that note, I should stop writing and hit the hay. Let us hope that the sleep, at least, is restful.

Sincerely,

Luminita