The Donor House: Advent Story (part 21)

[k_a_webb]

Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5
Part 6; Part 7; Part 8; Part 9; Part 10
Part 11; Part 12; Part 13; Part 14; Part 15
Part 16; Part 17; Part 18; Part 19; Part 20

Lily stood alone. She looked around the reception, at the different groups gathered, and wondered if she’d ever feel comfortable around them. They were all nice enough, Georgina and Morgan had gone out of their way to make her feel at home, but she couldn’t help thinking that they’d turn on her, the way her parents had told her they would. It wasn’t as though she should listen to them, they’d always put her down and told her that she was worth nothing, which was why they suggested, in order to protect her siblings from homelessness, she should apply for a place at the Donor House. Even though they’d wished her luck she knew they were hoping she wouldn’t leave.

Blinking away tears Lily pressed her back against the wall. Like the others she’d invited her parents to help with the tree, hoping that they wouldn’t come, hoping they would and they’d finally see her as the person she was rather than an unwanted burden, and all she could do was wait for them to arrive. If she’d told anyone about the way they’d treated her, anyone at the House that was, she knew they’d all do everything in their power to look after her, but she’d never been able to bring herself to talk about it. Who wanted to admit that their parents hated them? An unwanted tear trickled down her cheek, that she hoped she’d wiped away without anyone seeing.

“Lily?” a voice asked, making her jump. “What’s wrong?”

It was a surprise to see Sullivan, looking at her with concern in his eyes, because he’d been so focused on what had happened to him that she didn’t think he noticed was was going on around him. “Nothing,” she lied, attempting to smile at him.

“We both know that’s not true. You wouldn’t be staring at the door, attempting not to cry, on a day when you’re likely to see your family, if nothing was wrong. Talk to me. Maybe I can help.”

“No one can help.”

Sullivan smiled. “I thought that, before I came here. This felt like my only option and I was so certain that Alice was going to chuck me out that I didn’t even really think it was an option. Now… I think I can get better. I can let go of my grief, because I have a chance of making a life for myself here, a chance that I wouldn’t have had if Alice hadn’t given me a chance. They can do the same thing for you, if you let them, Lily.”

“This isn’t something I’ve ever talked about before and I’m not sure I know how to.” Another tear trickled down her cheek. “I don’t know what words to use.”

“You can start at the beginning and go from there. That’s what I did. I’m not going to say it’s easy, but once you’ve talked about things they do get better.”

“If I start at the beginning it’s going to be a very long story.”

“I’m a vampire. I’ve been alive much longer than you, so no matter how long your story is I can guarantee that mine is longer and we’d be here for days if I started telling it. You’re a baby in comparison.”

“Even if I start from before I was born.”

“Even then.”

Lily shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Do you think talking about it would help?”

“Yes, but… I never thought any one would believe me. Talking always seemed to be a mistake, because I would be seen as a liar instead of a victim, and that made finding the words even harder.”

“Someone told you that you wouldn’t be believed.”

Even though it wasn’t a question Lily nodded in reply. “More than once. Every time I finally gathered the courage to tell someone, anyone, they reminded me again that nothing I said was going to be accepted as the truth. Why would my parents hate me? Why would they be emotionally and mentally abusing me? They were my flesh and blood. I had siblings. My siblings would back up my parents, tell them that I was treated the same way as everyone else, but I wasn’t. I was never wanted. They were. They didn’t destroy my parents’ lives with their unexpected arrival.”

“Being a parent doesn’t come naturally. I remember when my son was born I didn’t know how I was going to raise him. He was gorgeous, and innocent, and knew nothing. That was before I told my wife what had happened to me, when she still thought the reason I was sleeping during the day was the strange shifts I was being given at work, but in the end I had no choice but to tell her. That was when she told me she didn’t want me to be a part of her life or his, even though I told her that I wanted to, that becoming a vampire didn’t change who I was. I was still the same man I was when she married me. She wouldn’t accept that and in the end she found someone else, someone who always treated my son differently to the children he had of his own, so much so that he chose to run away when he was thirteen, because he didn’t feel like he was a part of the family.” Sullivan sighed. “He ended up, unsurprisingly, being picked up by one of the gatherers, going to an auction, and ending up an addict. I didn’t know what to do. I thought I should go to him, ask him if he wanted me to help him because I was his father, but what if he hated me for not being there for him.”

Lily found herself reaching out to touch Sullivan, the way she’d seen Georgina do to Kisten and Jean-Luc, the way Morgan did with Caleb, Blake, Alice, and Nick, but when she realised what she was doing she stopped herself. She didn’t know Sullivan, so she didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable when he was opening up to her in a way she didn’t think she’d done with anyone else. It was nice. Hearing about his son made her feel less alone. “What did you do?” she asked.

“By that time I’d embraced what I’d become. My creator told me it was my best option and when my wife told me to leave I decided that he was right. I followed his every instruction for ten years, becoming the nastiest vampire I could be because if that was what people were going to assume I was that was what I was going to be, so by the time my son became an addict I wasn’t the same person I had been. I wanted to help him, he was my son, but at the same time I believed what had happened to him had been caused by his own stupidity. There were other options. He didn’t have to run away. Of course back then I had no idea how badly he’d been affected by what that man had done to him and in the end I changed him without asking him what he wanted. He was my son, so I was going to have him back, and I was going to bring him up, finally.

“When he woke up he looked at me and knew immediately who I was. My ex-wife had kept photo albums, even though she’d kept them in the attic, and he found them. There was a picture of me holding him when he was a baby, before my teeth changed, but even then I was a vampire. His mother had never mentioned me, never told him anything about who I was, and he wanted to know more, so he looked me up. Our eyes met and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He’d had no choice but to learn how to for his own safety. You see, what I never knew was that it wasn’t just emotional and mental, there was physical abuse involved as well. Normally it was only little things, so his mother would never find out, but that was bad enough.

“I realised then that I’d made a mistake. He needed help, not to become a vampire. He’d been through so much and I thought that I could help him by freeing him from his addiction, which was something no one else could have done, but by changing him when I did I gave him a chance to get his revenge. The first thing he did was kill the man his mother married. It wasn’t a surprise and I understand why he did it, but it was a step in the wrong direction. I didn’t want him to become like me. I wanted him to hold on to his humanity and I had no idea that it had already been abused out of him. He hadn’t felt like a human for a long time, because he hadn’t been treated like one, so becoming a vampire, becoming something that was better than that bastard, felt like a reward for being treated like a bug for the majority of his life.

“He went on to kill his siblings and then his mother. I tried to talk him out of it, as both his father and his creator, told him that he was taking steps down a path he wouldn’t be able to return from, but he didn’t care. He just wanted his revenge on the people who had wronged him. After that he walked away from me. As far as he was concerned I wasn’t vampire enough, because I wanted him to think about what he was doing before he did it, and he lost his vampiric life when he decided to try to kill the vampire who’d bought him at the auction. Instead of being careful, of planning his attack before he did it, he did the stupid thing – he went in during the day with a stake, because he didn’t know anything about being a vampire. He simply assumed that what he read about was correct, even though it wasn’t, and he ended up staked himself. Fortunately the vampire in question was friends with my creator, so he didn’t come after me for what my child had done, especially when I explained the circumstances. I even told him that I would of, if I had a chance, attempted to talk my son out of doing something so bloody stupid.”

Lily thought for a moment what she would have done, if she was in the same position, and she realised that she could easily have done the same thing. It was easy to remove the people from her life who’d caused all the pain, but that wouldn’t make the problem go away, because she would still be living with the after effects of what they’d done to her. She thought of a boy who hadn’t realised that, who’d simply thought that getting his revenge would help, and she felt sorry for him, sorry that he hadn’t been able to think about the choices he made because he hurt so much, and came to the conclusion that she needed to take steps to fix the damage that her parents had caused.

“Your son did what he thought would help him, Sullivan, and there was nothing you could have done to talk him out of it. He was hurting, he knew he could hurt the people who’d hurt him, and he honestly believed that he’d feel better after that. I’m guessing he thought he’d feel better after killing his step-father, but it didn’t work out that way, so he went after the other people who he felt had made his life miserable, for one reason or another. It wasn’t the best choice he could have made, but he wasn’t thinking. His hurt made him do stupid things because he didn’t know how to fix it.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

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