Vampires, Werewolves And Humans Roleplay

Everyone has a breaking point. Remember that.


I first came to the city a couple of years ago. I used to
work in the North for one of the national papers. I did
pretty well for myself, even if I do say so myself, but not
enough for any widespread recognition. Having long had
the ambition to segue into more literary circles, I moved
here upon my resignation to pursue a career as a writer.
The initial plan for my first book was to write a
modern homage to Joyce’s “Dubliners,” using our very
own city here as the backdrop in the modern day: an
examination of modern life in the metropolis, albeit
with a darker slant perhaps. After all, I think the world
has become a much darker place since Joyce’s time.
I began by looking for interesting sites around the
city and researching historical events that I could use
as inspiration for my stories. The more I dug, the more
I ran into the face of recent events that overshadowed
the past. You might recall some of these from the
papers. I know that when I pored over some of those
archives, I remembered the eye-catching headlines,
so if you tend to keep an eye on the media like I do,
you might well recognize them if you saw them again.
Around the spring of last year, police recovered a body
from the shoreline, and the headline of “GANGLAND
TRASH” splashed across the front page the next day. (No
prizes for guessing which publication ran that particular
piece of sensitive and respectful reportage.) A presumed
gangland hit, the body had washed up on the riverbank just
out from the suburbs and was found by a young boy fishing
one morning. What the reports didn’t mention was the odd
condition in which the boy had found the body. Its throat
had been torn asunder, as though savaged by a madman.

Now, I can’t remember how long you said you’d been
in town over the coffee we shared. Likewise, I don’t recall
asking if you’d ever been down on the south side, a couple
of blocks from the park, to what, up until last year at least,
had been one of the more popular, albeit smaller, live music
bars in the city. Jake’s Place was situated down an alley off
the main street, the name of which escapes me now. The
story ran in the paper that Jake’s Place was closing down
after the owner had died in a fight on the premises one night
last autumn. It was quite an extensive article, recounting
the man’s life and achievements at the popular venue over
a two-page spread near the front of the paper. It was a
pleasant, artistic piece meant to say “farewell” to the place.
Well, I’ve got a few friends in that particular
publication from my days up north — they’re part of the
same syndicated group for which I worked, so we bump
into each other every so often — and I mentioned in
passing to one such friend about how good I thought
the article was. He promptly went off the record, stating
that the first draft would never have been published,
owing to the disturbing details it had originally included.
When I inquired as to what he meant, all he said was
“That wasn’t a barroom brawl. It was a slaughter.”

After a little more digging, I found that he was
right. Seven people, including the owner Jake, had
all died there that night. The first officer on the
scene after an anonymous tip-off said that it looked
just like a wild animal had torn them to pieces. The
police promptly made an arrangement with the media
to spare the public from the more gruesome details.
Given the horrific nature of the deaths, the police
said it would only upset people.
I could go on listing anecdotes, but there’s no need
to dwell on the lurid elements. I must admit, I just
thought it was a run of odd killings at first, and for
a while, I even contemplated basing the short stories
for my collection upon the more macabre of these
events. That soon changed.
My own involvement in events unfolding on our
doorstep occurred a few days before Christmas last
year. Another headline you’ll probably remember:
“CHRISTMAS CHAOS!” No one knew the exact
reason why riots broke out across the city on those
cold December nights. The media speculated they
arose from the economic problems facing the people,
compounded by the almost obligatory consumerist
frenzy of the holiday season. I saw them with my own
eyes, though I wish to God I hadn’t.

I was heading back from a party that night. I’d
drunk enough to mean I couldn’t drive home, but not
enough to impair me beyond reasonable action, so I
took the subway most of the way back across town.
I was coming out of the station… I still remember
the moment, all too vividly. The cold wind, the rain
on the verge of turning to snow, the sound of crying
and screaming, and the wild sound of feet rushing
past on the streets around me. And then they came
around the corner.…

The papers made it out that there were dozens
of people in the gangs of “rioters.” There were just
five in the group that found me, but they were far
from rioters. Blood-splattered, fingers extended as
though they were claws, reddened eyes, and extended
canines… fangs.…

Do I need to spell it out for you? Do I need to state
exactly what, rather than who stood before me on that
street corner?

This is the point where I pray that you will carry on
reading. This is the point where I hope that it’s all
been worth a damn. This is where you either believe
me enough to carry on, or you cast aside what I have
to say and move on with your life. Here’s hoping.
If you’re still reading, thank you. Those two simple
words can’t express just how much I appreciate your
leap of faith right now. I know how insane it sounds.
I know how unbelievable it is. I know — I was there
and felt it all in those few seconds as I stared into
those hungry eyes that looked back at me. I did what
any rational human being would do in my position:

run like all hell.

I ran all the way back home, losing them a couple
of blocks before I got there. And I don’t really think
I lost them. I think something else seized their
attention, someone they surprised, but who was too
paralyzed by fear to run. That didn’t stop me from
going straight inside, locking and barricading the doors
and windows, turning out the lights, and hiding in a
corner with a baseball bat for the rest of the night. It
was mid-morning when I finally summoned enough
courage to open the door and check outside.
I must have picked up the phone a good half a dozen
times, deciding whether or not to call the police and
report what I’d seen. In the end, I couldn’t do it.
What the hell would I have told them? “Hi, officer, I’d
like to report, um, vampires.” I knew if I’d got some
smartass ringing through to me with that, I would
have a sarcastic reply ready and waiting for them about
April 1st being a few months away. I had no proof,
nothing but my word to go on. No one was going to
believe me on my say-so alone. I couldn’t sit by and
do nothing, though. I had to make people believe.

Then again… what if it was all a drunken delusion?
Trust me. There were plenty of moments when I
questioned myself that way, too. In the end, I went
back out there to find what evidence I could. No
one would admit to anything besides seeing “rioters”
running through the streets. The look in some of their
eyes told me there was something more to it, though.
They were too scared to say anything, too scared to
believe what they saw was real. In the end, though,
the evidence wanted to be found.

The first file you’ll find enclosed (001.avi) shows you
my first piece of hard proof. Taken a couple of blocks
north of the docks, in an alleyway not far from the
main road, I was following up on a tip I got that a lot
of the rioters had come from there that night. When I
arrived, I found that one of the creatures had taken a
warehouse worker down an alley and had fastened itself
to his neck. Thankfully, from a distance, in the dark,
with it distracted, it didn’t see me. I didn’t push my
luck though — as the length of the clip demonstrates.
I must have replayed the file a hundred times to
confirm once and for all in my mind that there was
no longer any doubt. Strange, and more than a little
stupid, that even after the first half- dozen viewings,
some small part of me still denied the truth. When I
finally came to accept it, I had to consider my options.
I mean, what do you do when confronted with that
kind of realization? You don’t simply move on and
accept it as an interesting quirk in life you simply
hadn’t noticed before. “Monsters are real.” It’s a
hard fact that slaps you in the face and changes your
worldview, not something mundane like “scientists
estimate there to be between six and ten million
species of insect life on Earth.”

I had proof, but even so, it wasn’t enough. If I
had trouble accepting it, the rest of the world would
as well. Skeptics would declare it was just a couple
of actors and a sketchy piece of camera work. Hell,
they might even think, “It’s blatantly CGI.” I’d have
to gather enough evidence to metaphorically fire
a cannon-load of grapeshot at them to make them
believe. I invested in a safe, kept the file backed up,
physically copied, and hidden, and then I set about
gathering more proof.

After a while, I was able to recognize the signs of
their movements and could identify the types of places
where they congregated. Solitary for the most part,
they had some things in common, so observing one
helped to learn the habits of the many. They certainly
aren’t stupid. That much was evident. Appearances
to the contrary, at least based on that cold December
night, they are not monsters all the time. At least not
when they don’t want to be, anyway. They walk and
talk like us, they dress like us, and if you didn’t get
close enough to realize that they weren’t breathing and
that they had no pulse, you’d be excused for thinking
that they were just like you or me.

The more I watched and recorded them, the less I
came to think of them as beasts. They are more like
drug dealers. They move with purpose to mix with
normal folk and then act out their vile practices in
the darker corners of the world. Backstreet bars, shady
clubs, alleys in run-down parts of town… I could find
them there feeding, preying on the poor souls they
found. Surprisingly, after subsequently following a
number of those victims, they appeared to show no
signs of turning. Evidently the stories of “one who
is bitten by a monster becomes a monster” seem to
be bullshit. Short dossiers on 10 people I saw being
fed on who I observed for about a week and a half
after the event are listed on the flash drive in the
“victims” folder.

Thinking of folders, you’ll find a few other short
clips in the file marked “powers.” It looks like the
bullshit can be scraped off a few of the other myths.
Exceptional speed, enhanced strength, mesmerizing
gaze, etc. all seem to be real. I caught one using a
mind-control technique on a cop who had stopped
him. I can tell you now, that freaked me out. If they
can manipulate people like that, turn what people
know on and off, no wonder they’ve remained hidden
for so long.

The more evidence I gathered, the more I
wondered.… It wasn’t easy for me to gather all I’ve
been able to, but it wasn’t remarkably difficult,
either, after I knew what I was looking for. However,
if I could do it, out of the millions upon millions of
others in this world, why hadn’t it been done before?
Why hadn’t it been publicized on TV, shouted on the
radio, dominated the chats or video sites, or otherwise
been shown to the world in all its dark glory? I started
some more research.

You know if you look hard enough on the Internet
you can find anything. I found a couple of message
boards and blogs where people have been trying to
get in touch with others who have learned the truth.

After a while, they all came to the same conclusion:
People wouldn’t listen, or those who did make a stand
to try and tell the world simply ended up disappearing.
Most ended up walking a lonely path, keeping their
heads down and doing the best they could to make
their neighborhoods safe.

Some folks out there, if the monsters don’t get
them, the police sure as hell will eventually. Forget
The Anarchist Cookbook. Those crackpots have posted
a whole load of ideas on how to turn stuff found
in your kitchen or cleaning closet into a full-blown
armory. They treat it like urban guerrilla warfare
against these monsters. I never thought I would end
up walking that path myself.

I changed my mind one night about a month ago
when I was out following one of the vile things. I
watched her go into one of the goth clubs on the
east side of town. It’s not really my scene, so I stayed
outside. I’d stick out like a sore thumb in there. When
I finally spotted her again, she was with a guy, and they
headed around the back of the building. I followed
when I thought I heard a cry above the dull throb
of the music from the club. I arrived in time to see
her vanishing around another corner. The guy she’d
lured outside had been thrown into the gutter with
his neck broken. I can only guess that he realized what
was happening and cried out at the last moment, so
she silenced him as quickly as she could.

The poor guy didn’t stand a chance against something
like that. I kept thinking for a while what I would do
if I had been there to intervene. I guess I would have
just ended up as another corpse beside him. Even
so, as I stood looking down at him, I realized that I
couldn’t just observe and record anymore. That was
my breaking point: I had to do something. Something.
Whereas before I had run away from them, now I ran
after them. I ran as fast as I could to keep up with
her, trying to work out which way she’d gone, and
I finally found her again. I followed her out to the
poor neighborhoods, working her way through the
underpasses and down the back streets to a house
on Oakwood Avenue. I think you know that part of
town… that’s one of the reasons why I’ve left this to
you rather than anyone else.

I’ve been watching the place ever since, trying to
work out how many of them are inside, what their
movement patterns are, what defenses they have on
the place. I’ve seen tripwires they step over going
inside. Oh, yes, they like to keep their little dens
well defended, not just from the sun, but from the
people who know, as well. In all, I think there are four
of them staying there. I’ve detailed exactly what I’ve
found there in the “Oakwood” subfolder.

It was after one long night, observing and following
them to and from the house, that I went into the
coffee shop two blocks away, which is where we met.
I remember you saying that you were used to pulling
the night shift in your line of work. Hell, after doing
this for months myself, it still doesn’t get any easier,
so I envy you for that.

I remember what you said, that you had to bring in the
money because the baby was on the way. I wish I’d found
someone special with whom to share my life. Actually, I
hope I still get the chance. And that’s why I hope you’ll
never read this. If all goes well, the guy who runs the
coffee shop won’t need to hand this over to you, as I’ll
have come by to collect it after I do what needs to be
done. I have a good memory, you see. I remember you
saying that you come by every morning on the way back
from the night shift to grab a coffee. If he’s handing it
over to you, it’s because I won’t be around anymore.
I hope this doesn’t come across as some kind of
suicide note because that’s not what it’s meant to be.