The Jaded Soul: Captain's Log

It used to be easy. If it's dead and it moves, kill it again. So simple. It didn't require choice or deep thought. It only required action.

You came home with dawn ripping at your eyelids, wishing you'd zigged instead zagged and that your sunglasses hadn't been broken, and the guards would defer to you as you entered. You waited for your turn to shower, always getting cold water; you washed ancient blood from your hair, proud of what you'd done that put it there. You fell asleep quickly once you found a position that didn't put weight on a bruise, and your dreams were uneventful.

So easy.

I'm not sorry that my eyes were opened. It's just that, however hypocritically, I miss the certainty. I was so sure that I was doing exactly what I was meant to do and that I had a positive effect on the world. I was helping, dammit, and I felt good about it.

Except that now I have to look back and wonder: who did I kill that I shouldn't have? I used to assist on daylight vampire raids; how many of those were just trying to survive? They weren't feeding on anyone when we saw them. And killed them. They may have had willing victims -- a prospect that still horrifies me, but there are some out there -- and been not in the least bit violent. And I killed them anyway.

I hate myself for going against everything I was taught and I hate myself for going along with it as long as I did. No rest for the wicked, you see.

Fuck it. I should get a room at some inn and try to socialise, even just a little. Find a dryad or a pixie or an Ice chest (*cough*) and listen to their woes instead of running down my own for the umpteenth time. Get off this desolate little ship on a rock of a planetoid and find myself some like company. Maybe even close up the ship for awhile and force myself to cozy up someplace where I'd actually have neighbors.

Maybe.