~ORIGINS, THE TALE OF A WOMAN OF UNCERTAIN TEMPERMENT~
What do you do when you are an outwardly pious, dedicated pastor’s daughter who gets knocked up by the high school sweetheart you were just about to break it off with? Simple… You marry the boy, have the baby, tell your Daddy you’ve repented of your sins, and set up house somewhere on the edge of town.

So what if you and the boy have come to hate each other, you resent the baby for forcing you into a lifestyle you never wanted, you despise your Daddy for being a useless son of a bitch who cares more about his faith than your future, and your relationship with God is apathetic at best… abortion is murder, and in a town this small words travel faster than bacon through a duck.

So you marry the prick, move into that house that’s just far enough away from everything that when he beats you after a night of hard drinking there’s nobody close enough to hear your screams… you spend the pregnancy filling yourself with every kind of poison you can think of, drugs, alcohol, regular beatings, all in hopes that you’ll wake up one morning sans responsibility and be able to resume life again…

Then, when the little shit has the nerve to survive all the pre-natal torture you’ve put it through, you saddle it with a name like Temperance, a personal joke referring to your excess when you tried to trigger a miscarriage… As the kid grows up you turn her into your personal slave, and if sometimes she screams when her papa visits her room in the dead of night, nobody lives near enough to ask questions, and you remind her with frequent beatings who the real woman of the house is…

All toward one purpose. The little bitch got herself born, she can get herself up on her feet and out the door sooner rather than later, and when you wake up one morning to find an empty bedroom in the house and a note on the pillow demonstrating what an ungrateful little whore the kid was… Its one less thing you have to pretend to care about.

Now maybe you’ll slip that bottle of rat poison into his beer and watch him choke and puke himself to death before you skip town in a different direction from the one your little fuck trophy took when she lit out… and everyone lives happily ever after.

Except they don’t.


~INTERMISSION, THE PLACE IN BETWEEN THINGS~
Temperance managed to slip out of the house with a hundred dollars in assorted small bills and a sock loaded so full of change it could have choked a horse, what few possessions she had were stuffed into a backpack and the heavy down coat she wore against the cold was stolen from where her father had tossed it at the coat rack on his way in from the bar. Within twenty minutes of crawling between strands of barbed wire she was up on the edge of the freeway, shivering in the draft of each vehicle that passed by her without a second glance.

The guy that picked her up was a pervert, caressing her creamy seventeen year old thigh and telling her how much she looked like his oldest granddaughter… She was used to it though, and the three nights she spent on her back in the bed of the truck were a small price to pay for the hundred and sixty four miles it got her away from home. Guy even bought her a meal every time he stopped for gas and condoms, and when he dropped her at the bus station he slipped a folded twenty into her cleavage as he kissed her goodbye and squeezed her tits one last time.

The twenty and a blowjob got her a room at the Holliday Inn, where she spent about four hours scrubbing herself in a hot bath, trying to wash away all the stench and filth and shame of a lifetime of abuse and neglect. She broke open the mini-bar, got herself thoroughly sloshed and passed out in the fetal position in the center of the bed where nothing could get at her while she slept.

The next day found her at the Greyhound station, what few shot sized bottles she hadn’t consumed were tucked safely into the side pocket of her backpack, and she caught her bus with ten minutes to spare. She’d bought a ticket for as far as she could get on eighty dollars and the fulfillment of the clerk’s naughty schoolgirl fantasy, destination Mexico, because that’s where people in the movies always went to escape persecution and extradition. Dinner was anything that came from a dollar menu.

End of the line was a dead end town called San Simon, Arizona… she stood next to the diesel pumps waiting for a friendly trucker to take her up on the offer that neither of them would voice outright for fear of entrapment or accusations of prostitution. To her surprise it was a guy driving an old Dodge Ram with a camper that approached her, offering a cold hand and a warm smile. “Come on, then.” At least this one was attractive.

How could the reign of terror begin so simply?

~NIGHTMARE, THE KIND YOU DON’T WAKE UP FROM~
In the beginning, it seems unreal, like a hallucination, a nightmare. You wake and sleep at strange hours, in fits and bursts. The things that happen to and around you during the waking periods are difficult to determine from the things in your dreams. Everything is soft focus, a “B” movie, vampires and zombie dogs, this sort of thing doesn’t exist.

Not only does it, in fact, apparently exist… You have been drawn into this world completely against your will, a moment of weak judgment, an instant of hesitation when reason should have prevailed. If you had said no when he offered his hand, if you had turned, or screamed, or rejected him in some way, you would be safe and warm in Mexico by now.

But you were stupid, you accepted him, even with the premonition of dark things happening in that camper… you smiled and when he told you to come, you did. Followed like a little lost puppy, like a moth, like a creature caught in the spider’s web. You ceased to exist the moment your hand slipped into his. You became his property, his plaything, knowingly or not –and certainly some small part of you knew what you were agreeing to- you walked into the demon’s lair and now you belong to it.

This is why you linger on the edge of sanity, terrified to consider it real, unable to convince yourself that it is not… reality or falsehood, fantasy or nightmare, it doesn’t matter, because the single unutterable truth is this. You deserve it. It is your own fault. No one is coming to rescue you. You are alone, and if you don’t play the game the way they like it, you will never survive long enough to find a way to save yourself.

You are alone.

Except you aren’t, you have your Master, HE who watches over you, who protects and sometimes punishes you. Your life, in those first hazy months, is a seamless cycle of terror and nightmares, of pain and… on rare, blissful occasions, just enough pleasure to reinforce the bond that HE has created between you. HE is your Master, you are the slave, the pet, the subservient, you exist not as the person you were the day you stepped off of that bus, but as the creature he is shaping you into… and there is nothing more terrifying than the knowledge of what he intends for you to become.

You are ill, your body and mind weakened with a feverish need, an internal battle. The creature you are becoming demands that you stay, that you respond and think of yourself only by the name he has given to you. Temperance is too uppity, he says. You are Chasey Lane now, and when he calls you by that name there is a bit of a smirk in his voice, and it makes you shiver in response to the leer that he regards you with.

The other self, the former, the nearly forgotten, the frailest remnant of the human you were once upon a time, even if it wasn’t much of one, determined to survive, to wait for its chance, to be free… The optimist, the hopeful, the shard of self respect, self knowledge which remains aware that without it, you will in all reality cease to exist because the creature that will replace the human that you were… it will be only a shell of what preceded it.

So you struggle to keep yourself in one piece, struggle to hold yourself together. You watch, always, for an opportunity, for an opening. During the daytime you are chained to the wall in the tiny little shed that is your cell, and outside those dogs… those horribly demonic things… snuffle and growl at your every movement and helpless sob. At night you are kept on a leash, your eyes cast always upon the dirt at his feet, looking up only when ordered or permitted to do so.

But there is a window in your cell, high up on the wall, and if you shove those crates all the way over to one side you can stand up on them and see out, and its just high enough that if you stand very still and hold your breath, you can imagine yourself finding a way to escape… Away from all of this, away from HIS brothers, who watch your every movement as if you are a midnight snack they should very much like a taste of, just exactly the way your own father looked at you so many times…

Then, one day the chance comes, the dogs have been taken away on a hunting trip, you have behaved perfectly for over a month, you have been allowed the tiniest bit of leniency… It takes you well into the afternoon to pry the loose boards from the wall and create a hole large enough to squeeze through, and a handful of splinters are the smallest price to pay for that first moment of leaping joy… You run for all that you are worth, run as if the very hounds of hell are half a step behind, run until your legs cease to function and you stumble into that truck stop again. The sun is setting behind you as you rush into the store in search of a phone, the police will help you, they’ll save you, that’s what they do…

It isn’t fair, it isn’t right! You find yourself handcuffed, shoved into the back of the police cruiser, headed back to the trailer park. The face that glances back at you through the rear view is familiar, one of those that HE calls Cousin, a creature both like and unlike yourself… One who has been force-fed the blood enough times that he considers himself blessed by it, and who anticipates great reward for having captured you.

Master is displeased, there is something evil in his face as he smiles down at you, tells you to go into the kitchen of his trailer and take your time deciding on which knife he’ll use in your punishment. There is something almost kind in the way he undresses you and leads you into the common area, standing you before the Family as he details your sins and explains to you exactly what your punishment will be.

If you don’t scream too much while he cuts into you, he will give you enough blood to heal the worst of it, maybe even sew up the wound… But if you do scream, one of his Brothers will get to decide how you spend the rest of your night, and they are already squabbling amongst themselves as to which one of them will get to violate you first…

Somehow you manage to stifle all but that first scream of terror as the blade slices into your belly and his hand reaches inside, showing you the bits that should have stayed neatly arranged, and even though tears stream down your cheeks and drip salt onto your new extrails, you remain silent. He seems pleased with you as he uses the same knife to slice himself, offering you the blood that will make the pain stop, and beyond him you can see the disappointed looks and glares of hatred that are directed at his back.

Over the coming weeks your wounds heal, and everything seems to have settled back into the right places, but a jagged scar remains as an unnecessary reminder of what price disobedience will be repaid in… For months you dream of waking to the tickle and squirm of maggots deep in your belly, creatures of rot and decay having taken hold during that time of healing… Every waking you probe at the flesh to be sure there is no sign of infection, even after nothing remains but the markings.

It is around the time that the nightmares stop that you begin to plan your second escape, putting more thought into it because you know you cannot afford to be caught again. You turn your mind back to that first escape, from a hateful mother and a lecherous father, and with that success in mind you slip out a second time… Finding your way up onto the freeway, fully confident that you will find a ride and be miles away before sundown.

You find an enemy in yourself, a weakness, your own fear of being caught is as great as your need to escape. Every time a car slows you become convinced that it is someone who is only there to return you to the monsters who have kept you captive for over a year now. You walk along the side of the road for hours, aching and bruised from your repeated panic induced dives into ditches and mesquite bushes in search of cover.

By the time the camper rolls to a stop beside you, you are filled with relief, even pleasure at the stern face of your Master as he leans across to push open the passenger door. Words scramble over each other in effort to apologize both eloquently and profusely for your mistaken flight, only to have the tide stemmed as his order of “SILENCE” seals your lips as firmly as the needle and thread will do once you are kneeling before him in the trailer… Even as you endure this punishment, you find it a comforting sign that he still cares for you, as you are alive still… and you catch yourself wishing to tell him how grateful you are to be Home again…

The fourth, halfhearted attempt, is punished by the Brothers… One peels away bits of your flesh with a vegetable knife as another violates you in ways directed by yet a third of them… Afterward you are shown the worst discourtesy, as you are given to the Cousins, mere ghouls like yourself, who spend the daytime devising ever more creative ways to use you. They lay bets on how loudly they can make you scream in fear, pain, and shame.

A fifth escape attempt, and by now it seems that they are handing you chances to run for freedom, just so that they can chase you down and drag you back again… This is exactly what happens, as you race out into the desert only to be tracked by the dogs who howl and claw at the tree you’ve climbed in hopes of escaping their vicious looking teeth.

More attempts, you have lost count by now, once a week, sometimes more depending on how extensive the punishment is for each attempt. Sometimes a harsh punishment has you cowed, terrified to disobey again… more often it has you increasingly more aware that you survive only because you still amuse them, and you are obsessed with the idea of escaping them.

Then comes the final attempt, where you are already aware that your time is limited, and there is no surprise in the fact that your heart has barely resumed its normal pattern before your Master comes to reclaim you. You nod in response to his tense whisper that the game has grown old, and it is time you settle down. This time your punishment is the greatest humiliation you have experienced yet, as they shove you into a hole beneath the old outhouse. It may have been decades since the place was used, but the smell lingers, you are unable to eat the food they toss down at you with jeers and laughter, you are unable to sleep, to sit or stand. After a week of living in this cave of petrified shit you are so happy to be brought back up into fresh air and allowed a lengthy shower…

You are now ready to submit and obey, willing to prostrate yourself before your Master and pledge your devotion to Him, and to His Family. You are watched constantly throughout the first year of actual service, but slowly you win their trust. You ignore each new escape opportunity that comes along, having thoroughly learned your lesson, you cannot even pass by that outhouse without experiencing a wave of nausea…

You occupy yourself during the sunlit hours by learning how to whittle, then how to carve. You lose yourself for hours at a time as you struggle to bring out of a piece or block of wood the shape you see buried within. You even find with time that you have some talent at this, and you begin making little gifts for members of the Family, and are taught how to carve weapons as well as trinkets. Your Master makes special gifts of your elaborately carved and engraved wooden stakes.

Your nights are spent accompanying your Master, anticipating His every whim and fancy. You become so adept at pleasing him that you are given liberties, you are allowed to accompany another of the Cousins into town on shopping trips, although you are not permitted to speak to anyone you encounter there. You are given the freedom to enjoy the sunshine, to move through the trailer park so long as you don’t pass its borders.

As a second, then a third year pass and your dedication remains firm, you are entrusted with a mission. One of the Uncles has taken a particular interest in one of the local girls, and it is your duty to befriend and invite her to visit you for an overnight stay. That small spark of the girl who was Temperance is reawakened, but you stamp her down and focus on your duty. Master has hinted that, should you perform as he has come to expect from you, a great reward will be yours.

Not many weeks later you find yourself stretched out on the bed beside His cold and corpselike visage, drifting in and out of a doze as the late afternoon wanders on into eventide. Over time you have come to find that he enjoys awakening to your warmth, and you have taken to having a nap in the hours before twilight deepens into darkness. On this particular night you wake with his hands upon your body, his lips against your throat, and you think nothing special of it. He often enjoys a light snack and a bit of sport upon awakening.

Yet as the moments draw out and his touch becomes more urgent, more forceful, you begin to remember the terror of your disobedient days. It seems you are being punished, that you have displeased him so intensely that tonight instead of merely tasting… he will devour you, body and soul… You struggle, cry out, turn your face away only to see the faces pressed to the windows, staring in as if you are the diorama encased within the snow globe’s shell.

As your struggles grow feeble and your mind begins to weaken so that even the traditional flashing of scenes is something which takes too much effort, you are abruptly jerked into a sitting position. Your bleary eyes watch as he draws a claw across his chest and pulls you against him so that you have no choice but to obey the instinctive reaction, convulsively swallowing as the warmth of your own recycled blood flows back into you, bring a parody of life back into the shell that remains of the mortal you were only moments before.

The following nights will never become clear within your memory, and perhaps this is best. You were never the most moral of creatures, lacking any sort of actual upbringing, or even an example of what might be considered normal behaviors… You have vague impressions of thought, subsisting on the sustaining blood and fits of emotion, need, hunger. Especially the hunger. A lifetime of neglect and abuse have taught you that there are two sorts of creatures. You have the choice between being the victim of circumstance and what passes for society… or you can be the Victor.

Your years of service to the Family have caused that thin line of morality and sanity to become blurry, rubbing it raw with each new torment you have been subjected to. Upon your change into the true Predator, the importance of… rather the line itself… ceases to exist.

Back into your shed, a chain wrapped tightly around one ankle. Now when the reanimated dogs growl at your shuffling movements, you growl back. When the door opens to admit your night’s meal, you lunge upon it, your teeth ripping away chunks of skin in your eagerness to feed, to feel that rush of warmth and ecstasy as blood spills down into your belly. The first offerings you are allowed to rend and tear, venting an unfocused rage upon your only offered target, losing yourself in the lustful frenzy of hatred and hunger.

As the months pass your meals become larger, but you remain a creature without a concept of restraint, it is only your Master… your Sire’s sharp command that brings you into check. Control returns slowly, although it is as tenuous as your grasp of reality has become. Under his patient tutelage you venture out of the trailer park, learning how to hunt, how to bring down the prey, even how to feed without causing permanent harm. It seems a waste of a good hunt, and when you tell him as much he laughs, promising you the best and most satisfying hunt you have ever known, if only you will focus on your lessons.

You see the pride in him as he gazes upon you, and the envy of the Brothers as they watch you improve. You begin combat training. You continue working with wood. As a fledgling, you are no longer considered your Sire’s pet or slave, you are given freedom as an entity unto yourself. As the years pass you are even given responsibilities again.

Twice a week it is your responsibility to venture out in search of sustenance for those older members of the Family who have become prey to the peculiar weakness of the blood. You have become adept at choosing those which will be most appreciated, knowing who has a weakness for the youngest flesh, and who for the firm, who for the peculiar…

It is not long after the anniversary of your embrace that you cross fully into the Family, a true member of the bloodline. On one particular night your Sire comes to you with a secretive sort of smirk, saying he has a special gift for you. Together you move through the darkness as he guides you into an abandoned farmhouse. There, cowered in a corner, naked and shivering, is a familiar figure.

The cold blood within you rises as your claws involuntarily extend, and your teeth bite into your lower lip as you struggle for control. From behind your Sire whispers his approval, giving you permission to do as you please. Your mind is filled with images, memories of beatings, neglect and abuse. You realize that on every night when your father visited your bedroom… this woman had stood just beyond the threshold, savoring the experience in a way that only the thoroughly petty and vindictive can manage. An affront to the concept of motherhood, lacking any concept of nurture or mercy… and now the woman is looking up at you through her tears, she recognizes something of herself in your face.

“Temperance” she whispers, uncertain, wise enough to be afraid even though she is cautiously hopeful. You notice marks on her arms, needles have become a familiar toy, her vehicle of escape, and you are not surprised to smell the stench of rot coming off of her. Even if she had not been brought to you tonight, she would not have survived long, and that brings with it an especially gratifying thought. This is your revenge.

You lean down, brushing her hair back away from her face as you whisper in her ear. “Run.” Like a child playing at hide and seek, you turn your back, counting out loud, studiously not peeking or listening for her flight. Still, you know that she is gone even before you turn again, and you spend a moment savoring the scent of her terror that lingers before you begin the hunt.

You play with her, slowing to a walk when she grows exhausted and begins to stumble, running as she regains her breath and fear lends her the energy she needs to continue. You allow her to think that you might let her escape, standing at the edge of a pit as she scrambles her way through and up the other side. You even give a friendly wave as she glances over her shoulder, and she gives you a tentative smile.

You are beside her within moments, and this time your smile is anything but gentle. Your claws are sharp as you grasp her shoulders and drag her to you, your teeth grinding into bone as you close your jaws on her shoulder. You drink slowly, lingering for a moment as she loses herself in the sensation of it… and then your claws are moving, digging into the belly which she once tried to poison you, the scene of your first great escape, your greatest triumph as yet.

Savage, merciless, you revel in this. Even the girl who once upon a time adored this woman, even that part of you recognizes the justice of this action as the beast you have become tears into her. Every last morsel is tasted, flesh chewed before being tossed away, bones gnawed on, cracked open to reveal the tasty marrow within…

Something within you dies as you destroy the woman who gave life to you… and it is your Sire who is standing at your shoulder as you finally regain your senses, congratulating you, asking if you enjoyed the treat…

The beast has been carefully cultivated, you are the creature that the Family has always intended you to become. A curious mixture of vicious killer and naïve child, she is a thing of instinct and bloodlust, their favorite feral little puppy-girl. You prove singularly effective at destroying those targets which are offered to you as prey, fulfilling every task to which you are appointed. They marvel in the beauty of the spiral that has dragged a defiant, vibrant young girl down into a half –or completely- mad young fledgling.

How long this time was you will never be certain of, although a Family tradition implies that it was at least a decade. One night your Sire comes to tell you of a time of passage, that soon you will be expected to exercise your 'breeding rights' as had been done in his choosing of you. Whether you follow his example of careful selection and reprogramming of a relative innocent, or some other method, he has every confidence that you will perform this duty as spectacularly as you've done all others that have been passed your way.

This may have been his greatest mistake... The following weeks are to be spent searching for the one you will sire, yet your mind turns upon those early days. You remember the maltreated youngster who was willing to use everything at her disposal to get free of an unacceptable household… the hopeful teen who had climbed into the Master’s truck that night after getting off of the bus… the slow yet steady slippage which had occurred under his careful guidance…

The creature they've created has somehow retained just enough of the one you've always hoped to be… One night, instead of returning home from your hunts, you continue onward until the very last moment when you need to find shelter for the day. The next evening carries you further away, and two more nights followed the same pattern. You are somewhere in the middle of the desert when you encounter a man who calls himself Johnny Walker, he seems to recognize you immediately. Or to recognize something within you…

Your tale doesn’t take up much time, and you are so lost in the telling of it that you barely notice his pointed questions as he probes for the exact location of the trailer park. Your hands are busily carving at a chunk of wood you’d found the night before as your mind drifts and your lips shape the words that slip out in speech.

Halfway through the night you found yourself alone, and the stake you’d carved is gone with him. Reluctantly you turned toward ‘home’, knowing that it will be easier to explain your absence if you return willingly than if they managed to hunt you down. Even so, you are picked up a few miles out and brought before the Grandparents for judgment. It is your first escape attempt as kindred, but considering the number of attempts in your early time with them… they will not even consider your story of having wandered far and wide in search of someone worth bringing into the family….

You remember the judgment being passed, your Sire being the one to force the wood into your chest… How much time passes between the sight of your Sire standing before you and Johnny leaning over you in the shed, you never do know for certain, but it can’t have been more than a night or two.

All you ever find out for sure is that he came after you, rescuing you from a hell that no sin should have been vile enough to warrant… In saving you, he has made a promise to protect you, and in return you are obligated to look after him.

He’s your new Daddy, after all…