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In the beginning, the world was perfect.
Okay. Well, maybe not perfect. That might be giving the universe a bit too much credit. Besides, what I'm about to tell you is not a story of perfection at all. Quite the opposite.
But you should understand this: the world was good. At least, it was to Owen. All around him was something amazing, precious. Something to defend and protect.
But everyone starts life out just like this: naive. Stupid. Foolish. Owen was no exception; why would he be? You hold the world in two hands and tell it you love it. You wait for a reply.
And two hundred and twenty five years later, you’re still waiting.
Owen had come to learn that that was how the world worked. It left you cold and hurting, bleeding and alone. That's all it did; that's all it would ever do.
It was a lesson well taught. When his disease had deemed him a monster in the eyes of his town, when Louis had been ripped from him, when he’d lost the one person who truly mattered–
Well, you stop believing in goodness after something like that. And you certainly don't believe in perfection. You realise that all that nonsense was just the foolish thinking of a child.
You realise that good is relative. Everything comes to an end. People always wind up on their own.
That is how the world works.
Owen knew in his heart that he could spend every waking moment missing Louis. He also knew that missing someone does not bring them back.
(Why would it? The only person you hurt when you miss them is yourself.)
But, honestly, that was never the goal. Of course, to bring Louis back would have been…incredible.
It was, however, also very impossible.
Even so, impossibility doesn't stop someone from imagining. And two hundred and twenty five years later, Owen was still imagining a way it could have gone different. A way that would have saved Louis, a way to make it all better. To rewind.
That is another thing that's impossible: to change the past. Everyone learns this lesson at some point. Some learn it more than once.
Of course, Owen hated that he was still missing Louis. Such a thing was a parasite in his chest.
But…how could he not? After all, Louis was still gone.
He would always be gone.
********
Legundo did not cry.
It wasn't that he couldn't, physically speaking. Of course he could. Everyone can cry.
But he just…just didn't.
It was something he held himself to, he supposed. A sort of deal he made a long time ago in the war, a way to push everything aside and deal with it.
Crying for the enemy was weak. Crying for your allies was weaker.
Crying for yourself? That's selfish.
So Legundo made sure he kept it all in. He got very good at making himself untouchable. Impassive as a stone slab. Blank as one, too.
Sometimes, an empty canvas makes a very good soldier. If you don’t care who you kill, if you don’t care who gets caught in the cross-fire, you’re basically a war machine.
This happened to be the case with Legundo, though he never wanted to be a killer. He didn't enjoy what he did, and he didn't look forward to it. The more he fought in the war, the more he wanted to call it quits. Leave. Never go back.
He didn't do that, obviously. Maybe in a perfect story he would have.
But I already told you that this is not a perfect story.
Let's get back on track. The whole point of the matter was, crying would have only made Louis compromisable. A failure in the eyes of his general. A worse soldier than the others around him.
And so he taught himself how not to do it. How not to feel anything.
Legundo did not cry.
But even with this knowledge, that doesn't change the facts: right now, Legundo is sitting at his desk, sobbing into his hands.
It’s not a pretty sight. Most grieving people aren’t. The last thing on a hurting person’s mind is, Gosh, I hope my face isn’t red.
You don’t care about things like that anymore. You don’t care about anything, actually. It’s peculiar how numb grief makes you. How sobbing into your hands is routine.
Why, someone could ask, is Legundo crying?
Simple. Owen is dead.
(Such a harsh word, isn’t it? Dead. The way the ‘d’s curve. It’s so pronounced. D. e. a. d.
Dead.)
“Hold on,” you say. “Wait just a minute. Wasn't Owen just alive a few hundred words ago? Now suddenly he's dead?”
Well, dear reader, a lot can happen in eight little asterisks. And don't worry, I'm getting to the details. Remember, they're not perfect, and so neither are my story-telling skills.
Back to the scene at hand: Legundo, sobbing over his desk.
In all actuality, the man should have been cheering. Throwing a parade, even. At the very least, he shouldn’t be mourning in such a way.
But it’s strange how things like this work. You think losing someone is like turning off a light. You don’t realise the light will never, ever come back on. You don’t realise that you can flip the switch over and over and over and over and over and–
The light stays off. You are cursed to blackness for the rest of your life.
Legundo is sobbing into his hands and it’s dark outside. It always seems to be dark, here. Missing someone is a parasite.
********
Okay, now we can address your complaints. You’re missing some pieces, aren’t you? Are you a little confused?
That’s okay. That’s fine. Let’s just go back, some. Just a little bit, and I'll tell you all about what happened.
In the beginning, the world was perfect.
(Do you understand that?)
Another thing you need to know: perfection does not last long.
Owen is a young boy when he learns this. Being born with a skin condition, dear reader, is not considered perfect. Or even good, for that matter.
So Owen becomes a lumberjack. Of course he does. Chopping down trees is a good way to relieve stress. Or else, it’s a good way to hide from the general population. It’s a good way to seclude yourself and promise that you will never, ever trust anyone.
Never.
But then: somewhere along the way, Owen meets someone. It’s mostly by accident how these things happen, how the world can turn very suddenly on its head.
The mayor is a kind, gentle man who doesn’t seem to care about Owen’s condition at all. The mayor is a good host. The mayor is well-loved and probably as close to perfect as someone can get.
I’ll give you three tries to guess his name.
Louis (did you guess right?) invited Owen into his home. To Owen, this was unheard of. He didn’t understand why the mayor of Oakhurst would even bother with scum of the earth like him. Being inside a house that wasn't his own was like a dream.
Conversation was dream-like to him, too. Most people in their quaint little town wouldn’t even speak to him. Some screamed when they saw him coming. Most ran the other way.
All refused to interact with him.
But not Louis. For whatever reason it was, Louis did not seem at all bothered by Owen. The mayor sat and made them both tea and he spoke to Owen, and he talked to him, and he saw him.
Note again: he saw him, not his disease. This is incredibly important to Owen, who, for all of his life until now, was just a collection of ruined flesh wrapped in filthy bandages. He had been a ghost.
Now, he wasn’t. At least not to Louis.
And what’s more: Louis kept doing it. Once a month, and then once a week, and then twice a week, Louis invited Owen in.
See, this is where you might think that perfection happens. For once in Owen’s life, he is being treated as human, as an equal. Things cannot get more perfect than that, can they? Acknowledgement is the gateway to happiness?
But–-oh, you already know this story. And you know that perfection has never existed.
The twist happens on a random visit on a random day that Owen doesn’t know. Louis, bless him, decided that this was the time to tell Owen something. A secret.
A cure.
Louis was a vampire.
In other circumstances, Owen might have freaked out. Might have screamed and yelled and cried and begged for his life. But here, he sat there, dumbfounded, because he knew Louis, and Louis wasn’t going to attack him.
(Besides, Owen had been called a monster enough times in his life to know what one looked like. Louis was no monster.)
This was further proved when Louis offered Owen a gift: the gift to become a vampire. To cure his disease.
“The scars will remain,” he’d warned him, when Owen had readily agreed, without hardly stopping to consider it at all.
He’d brushed Louis off. What were scars in the face of this? Immortality with the one person who mattered to him! A cure for his wretched skin! Everything in his life, for the first time ever, was going good.
(Once again, this is not perfection. It seems important to keep reminding you of this.)
And so Owen accepted the gift from Louis and became what everyone called him already: a monster.
Of course, becoming a vampire in a respectful way requires some rest. Owen did this by retreating to a secluded coffin, where he slept for several days, peacefully dreaming of Louis and a life he might get to have.
If you know the story, which you do, this is where things turn bad.
In the midst of all of this, the townsfolk grew suspicious. And why wouldn’t they? None of them liked Owen anyway, but suddenly he’s being invited to the mayor’s house over and over and over? And then he goes missing?
It sounded peculiar to them. It sounded like foul play.
And even though none of them had cared for Owen at all, they took personal offense to his alleged death. It’s strange how death twists people into friends.
So the townsfolk did, of course, the only logical thing they could do: they burnt Louis at the stake.
There was joy for a time. The monster is gone! He’s dead and conquered! Owen would have been proud!
The celebration did not last very long, because that is not perfection. What happened next can only be described as horrific bloodshed.
Owen, upon waking, went to find Louis. Louis, the one person who had cared about him at all, the one person whom he had dared to allow himself to open up to. Louis, who should have been waiting for him.
Louis, who was ash. Louis, who was fertilizing flowers.
Louis’ death brought something to life in Owen. Something violent and angry, something that had maybe always existed in that man.
And he did what came natural: he promptly murdered every man, woman, and child in Oakhurst. All of them. He wiped out the entire place without hardly batting an eye. He made them suffer while thinking, I miss Louis I miss Louis I miss Louis I–
Murdering an entire village comes out to about 2800 people. (It's actually 2799, but later in his life he adds one more, so I'm rounding).
Those of us that have lost someone know that Owen's massacre was largely out of his control. When you lose someone you're close to, the world does not matter. You would let the world crumble to dust to have them back. You try to make the world do this.
Owen succeeded in only wiping out the town of Oakhurst. Then, overwhelmed by grief, (not by guilt; this is a careful distinction), he collapsed into sleep.
This is another thing grief will do to you: make you lose track of time. Owen, as fate would have it, slept for two hundred years.
This should sound familiar. Two hundred and twenty five years later, and he was still grieving. He would never stop grieving.
But now, we have to detour from our beloved, grieving Owen. There's another man to this story, and he's called Legundo. You met him before, when he was crying.
Legundo, before everything that happened, was in the war.
You need to understand that war can do very terrible things to people. People can do very terrible things at war.
Legundo was both. He killed others. Others almost killed him. A push and pull, a tug or war of life, a rope that hangs around your neck. If you lose your footing, you'll choke and die.
Legundo did not lose his footing. He survived the war.
Physically. Another careful distinction.
He became a doctor, because what else was he going to do? He was done taking lives like they were worthless. He was done playing a god in that way, so he was choosing to do it in a different way.
(This is not perfection.)
After some time, he eventually moved to Oakhurst. This is approximately two hundred years after some sort of mass death wiped out the populace.
Legundo doesn't care. He's there for his studies, and for his studies alone. He won’t get attached to anyone, that’s what he tells himself.
But life has a way of throwing you off your plans. It takes wild turns and dips and when you’re sick, it decides to turn again.
Because then: Owen.
You’re recalling how Owen murdered all of Oakhurst. Well, he doesn’t take nicely to the fact that people have begun to move back in. Remember, it’s two hundred years after Louis died, but to Owen it was yesterday. The wounds are fresh. He is a brand new killer.
Of course, he meets Louis. The two of them are…strange, as they progress in the story. Their relationship is a bit difficult to name and even more so to understand. It's nothing like Owen and Louis, that is for certain.
For one thing, they are fighting on opposite sides of a war.
Isn't that funny? Isn't it crazy how this world works? Legundo left to escape the war and landed right in the middle of a new one. How grand! Life decided you weren’t sick enough yet.
The battle against vampires and humans is an old tale (just ask Owen and he’ll tell you all about it), but you can retell it about a hundred different ways.
In this particular story, Legundo tried. He was a valiant man, that Legundo. He never did anything halfway.
Owen, however, was not a valiant man. Maybe, once upon a time, in a different life, he might have been.
But you get one shot in the imperfect world, and Owen blew it when he killed 2,800 people.
(But he was grieving. Let's cut him some slack.)
The point is, Legundo was wasting his time, trying to redeem Owen. You cannot change someone who doesn't want to be changed, and Legundo, for all his bravery and courage, did not realise this until it was far too late.
They shared moments, of course. Tense, uncomfortable ones, mostly arguing and occasionally bantering. Once again, I will reiterate that their relationship was nothing like Owen and Louis’. Probably, it was actually awful for both of them. Owen took and took and took and left Legundo reeling each and every time.
Legundo worked for a cure. Owen was perfectly happy being sick. That was the main flaw in their story: one wanting one thing and the other wanting something else. You can’t walk away from someone and expect them to follow.
But Legundo did. He thought he could make Owen see, make him understand. If Owen became human again, if he left his past behind and stepped into a new day–
Legundo believed in redemption for those who did not want it. Legundo fought in a war and came out on the other side wishing he hadn't. Legundo tried so hard to help Owen that he lost himself on the way.
Legundo, who became a vampire because of Owen.
(This is not called perfection. This is the opposite. This has always been the opposite.)
Owen is nothing like Louis. He’s mean and callous and he changes Legundo forcefully.
Legundo never wanted to be a vampire. Legundo never wanted to be immortal.
There's some missing pieces, but Legundo and Owen part ways. There’s fighting and bloodshed and yes, there is more war. There will always be war; life likes to make you sick, remember?
Owen dies.
It happens on a mountain. Abolish is with him.
(You know this story. After death–
…Owen does not see perfection. He does see Louis.
Briefly.)
And now we come to the part where Legundo is crying.
Why is he crying?
Simple. Owen is dead.
I say again: he should have been cheering. Owen had been nothing but selfish and terrible to them all, had been nothing but a shell of a man who looked out for himself.
Owen had changed Legundo, on purpose, just to take away his illusion of choice. Owen had done that and he didn’t regret doing that, not until his final breath, when he thought, Maybe…
Owen is dead, and Legundo is a new vampire. And he’s crying.
It’s very strange how things like this work. Legundo is a man who fought through war, who made himself so blank and void that killing others didn't matter at all.
And yet when it came to Owen…
Legundo is not an idiot. He knows that Owen chose this fate for himself, he knows that there was never any changing it. Fate is funny like that.
But knowing all this doesn't make the loss hurt any less. That's the thing about missing someone. It's an ache in you. A parasite.
Owen had it when Louis died. Legundo had it when Owen died.
You know this story. You know that later, Legundo died, too. (As a hero, of course, but that doesn't make him any less dead.)
And now: who carries this parasite? Who hauls it around like a weight on their shoulders, like Atlas and the sky?
Perhaps it's the other people of Oakhurst. Maybe they carry it onward. Maybe grief spreads like a disease, like vampire bites.
Maybe it never goes away. I already told you: missing someone is a parasite.
In the beginning, the world was perfect.
(There is no other version of this story.)