The Stepping Stone (Original Short)

Michael sat back for months, watching all the infighting, backbiting, murders, and now ensuing power vacuum. He smiled. All this from three words and a little blood spilled. It was beauty. Four hundred plus years on this earth and he relished and abused, now, one simple fact: violence is in people's nature and so is the want to contradict. Now, the fever pitch was being reached, and it was time to initiate the next phase of his plan.

The streets were quiet as he walked, letting his highly tuned senses wander and take in the world around him. Orange street lights above gave everything a glow that was almost beautiful. Michael's thin frame was at home in the cold, the wind blowing softly against his designer shirt, giving him a thrilling chill. He wouldn't be cold for long. Soon he'd be soaked in blood and gore, his tender flesh would be bruised, and his appetite whet. Very soon. The block was approaching fast, and through his mind he ran the plan again, double checking for errors and faults.

Three bouncers sat outside the nightclub and asked for identification and a cover charge. Michael idly scratched his newly grown beard and wondered how his lengthening hair looked as he stepped through the door, sniffing the air for what he wanted. Pulsing music pounded his sensitive ears, a kaleidoscope of colors danced across faces and bodies, and Michael couldn't help but think of the last time he was in a place like this. A fanged smile ghosted across his thin lips.

Gently and politely he made his way through the crowd, to the bar. He didn't usually drink, but this place stank, he needed the liquor to drown out the smell. This particular club wasn't filled with vampires, no, this was a completely human place. After receiving his vodka on the rocks he leaned against the highly polished metal of the bar and expected a sting from the holster he'd been wearing lately, but it was absent. He didn't need guns for this part. This was easy.

He let the night go for an hour, taking in a few drinks to help cancel out the stale sweat stench, he even tried to enjoy the music. If random beeps and squeals and a voice thrown in every now and again to humanize it was what was considered music these days. Michael's eyes kept glancing over the second floor of the place, waiting for a certain light to come on, signaling his prey had arrived. As he waited people would try to make conversation with him, complimenting his clothes, his hair, his beard, and even asking for a dance. He smiled and politely declined them all, thanking others.

The alcohol flowing through his veins gave him a warm feeling inside, and made it all a bit more bearable. Doubt started to rear it's head as his violet eyes again played over the room he needed to be occupied. He sighed, breathing out the atmosphere, and looked again. Eureka. The tinted window lit up blue and shadows of men and women began to pile in. Michael left his drink at the bar and began to walk, now with purpose, to the staircase.

The first bouncer, human, held out a hand and attempted to stop him. Two choices lay ahead of him: violence or smarts. He opted for the latter. "I'm here for Anna. She's expecting me. My name is Jeremiah." The man reached into his pocket and drew out a paper, read it, eyed Michael up and down, then let him through. This happened three more times before he made it into the room. The door closed behind him and almost no one paid attention to him as he measured the four men in the room and his one target.

The violence was lightning fast. Michael's claws and superior strength made quick work of the body guards and now he stood before Anna, a woman in her 30's, well dressed and attractive, with blood sprayed across her face. She was the advocate and the peacemaker between the human hunters and certain political parties in the vampire world. Michael's hand, stained red past the wrist, making his hands look like they were gloved, grabbed her by the neck and stood her up.

She pleaded, clawed and kicked at him as he walked over to the window with her. Finally she asked, "What do you want?" Michael could only grin as he answered, "War." She began to protest but then he sank his fangs into her neck, shaking his head back and forth, tearing open her jugular. He drank deep. Her heart began to slow and he stopped, rearing back and licking the precious blood from his lips. "Please. Don't misunderstand. You're only a stepping stone. You had to die. But know, that in doing so, you will bring about great change."

Her glossed over eyes stared at him as her pale lips tried to form words. He slammed her head against the glass, cracking it. Again he slammed, more cracks. One last time and she flew through. Glass and chaos rained down upon the scene below. Michael walked away, enjoying the screams and the cacophony building below. With her dead the vampire houses that used her would have to do a lot of explaining to the humans, it would be obvious who killed her. More fuel to the fire. As he walked out the back door, wiping away all the crimson he smiled again.

The heavy door opened into the cool night, the smells, noise, and buzzing of the club were now behind him. Michael turned left and walked down the alley behind the place, lacing himself through the cars. He came upon another alley. He was about to enjoy his little victory when a fist collided with his chin, sending him against a brick wall. He met the floor fast, almost as fast as his assailant. With a spin Michael was on his feet, ready to meet his foe, but suddenly halted. He stared into the face of an old friend. An ancient friend. His sire. The name of the one who made him, and was now standing before him, fell from his lips, "Balthezar?"

House Of Lies (Original Short)

"Your father was a ruthless bastard..." My uncle Jimmy used to say after he'd had a few drinks in him. "We had M16's and grenades and he used to use a knife. Moved like a shadow at midnight." That New York cop accent slipping through though he's been living in California for the past 20 something years. I smile at him with practiced affection at his tale. He doesn't know that I know something: The truth about him and my father. Both my parents are dead. They had died in a vicious car accident leaving me to the only person that my family would have trusted: My uncle Jimmy Dons. After their death he took me and moved to the west coast in an attempt to start a new life and give me a shot at something normal. My name is Jack DeMonstros, 21 years old. Yeah, I know. Hell of a name. But we'll come back to that later. "After the war we'd come home and they called us 'Baby killers'! Can you believe that bullshit?!? Worse than that they could only give us jobs as cops!" I sip my beer and puff on a cigarette as I watch him, drunk and at the grill, in the back of my mind a theater plays all the things that I will make happen. He goes on with tales of the war, reciting them to his cop buddies that surround us in our tiny backyard, people he's known for years. The spatula in his hand is waved around like he was drawing the pictures of his narrative, and sometimes it was a rifle, sometimes a handgun, all to illustrate the story he was weaving at the time.

Before I was born my uncle and my father served in the war together. After that they became cops. After that my uncle became corrupt, trying to take my father with him into the depths. My father refused. So they staged a coupe. My mother and father were shot down and pushed off a bridge in their car somewhere in New York. My uncle pulled the trigger. He thought it was the end of it. But plans had already been made. Three years ago a box showed up on my doorstep, no return address, no postage. I managed to open the chest and inside were things that changed my life: Videos made by my parents. They explained what had happened to them, what they saw coming, and videos that trained me. Trained me to be a killer like my father. For three years I've studied them intensely, learning every trick, every word memorized. And soon I became like my father. Soon the blades in the box that was sent to me, 20 plus years later, by my parents, were second nature to me. Every night before I'd gone to bed, for three years, I'd watched a video of them both, telling me they loved me.

He hadn't even noticed that I'd been wearing the very cross necklace my father wore all those years ago. Didn't notice the extra inch or two of muscle I'd put on for the deed yet to be done. He would. I had them all here. Every one of them that took that which was most precious to me before I ever knew them. Now was the time. My empty beer bottle shattered against the floor as I launched myself forward, they never saw it coming. The blade on my hip was out and working, spilling blood and viscera, entering soft, screaming flesh as I dispatched them all. The metallic smell of what they'd spilled by my hand filled my nose, pushing me onward. My uncle Jimmy was stunned to see such violence from his frail, antisocial, quiet spoken nephew. My shoes squished audibly against the soil now soaked with crimson as I approached him, eyes wide in disbelief. He uttered one word: Why? The handle of my knife, my father's knife, came down on his head with a sick thud. He was unconscious. I dragged the rest of the bodies into the kitchen and arranged them, as I'd been told. Then drug my uncle to the den. My muscles quaked and shivered as I peeled the soaking shirt off myself while I tied him to a chair. He'd get his answer soon. While he slept I poured gasoline all over the house, all over his dead friends, all over him.

He woke with a groggy moan, seeking to move his immobilized limbs, but couldn't. I sat in a chair across him, shirtless, the cross hanging from my neck in a gentle sway. He asked why I'd done all this in a slur. With a grunt I turned him to face our TV and without a word let the videos my father and mother made all those years ago do the explaining. He was wide awake, making excuses, justifying his actions, pleading with me, then cursing me. It had been somewhere near ten o'clock at night when I began this spree of violence, but it was dawn by the time he rattled out his last breath. I took the knife with me, cleaning it, and storing it in my coat as I breathed one last, deep sigh, and tossed the lit match into the house he'd built. A house of lies and deceit. I only stayed a few minutes to make sure the flames engulfed and consumed everything inside before taking the few thousand dollars that were in the trunk and walking away. The last words to leave my mouth that night were the words my father had said from beyond the grave: "Revenge takes time, cunning, strength, and in the end the undying belief in the truth." I walked away from my life. Walked away from the lies. And into the night I disappeared with my hand gripping my father's cross tight, giving me the ability to start anew. Revenge is never easy. But it is very, very, gratifying.