Modern Monster

Darkness falls as the sun disappears around

The edge of the world that no one can seem

To discover, that no one can ever seem to

Catch up with as they go through the pathways

That they choose to call their lives.

 

Everyone likes the day, they feel the most at

Peace then because the creatures of myth that

They have been trained to be afraid of are always

Asleep while the sun still rises, they are raised

To believe that the creatures they are afraid of

Will only come out when the sun goes down.

 

So many people remain afraid of them despite

The fact that as they grow up they know that

These creatures are fake and that they have nothing

To worry about from them. They still fear the

Things that come out after dark.

 

Everyone has learned that all evils will only come

Out at night and that their days will always be the

Safest things they have even when their all alone.

No one is willing to admit that there may be a

Problem with the theory in the modern world despite

All of the crime that exists in the world and despite

The fact that the news has proof that modern monsters

Will always exist.

Isolation

            Like a lot of other days I was late to school. It wasn’t anything that surprised me or any of my teachers. Most mornings I could never make it on time and the same thing went for the class right after lunch. I always struggled when it came to keeping track of time even when there was a clock nearby and the fact that I not only wore a watch but owned a cell phone that I was almost always texting on. Sure, texting was almost majorly an American phenomenon since we’re a group of super socializers and always have to be talking to people we’re not currently with.

            For me the people I was texting were people that lived in other states that I’d never really met in person. I met all of them online and had never had the option of meeting in real life up until this point. Many of these people did seem to have lives away from their cell phones and the internet which was something I hadn’t seen for myself since I was a little kid. Many of my classmates had started to run away from me when I started discovering I had crushes on other girls. It seems so common that people run away from the things they don’t understand or that they don’t want to understand.

            Being a lesbian seems to have given me a huge reason not to look for real friends, friends that exist away from my cell phone or my computer. For the “friends” that didn’t have my phone number they were all on IM or in my email and I often rushed home to log in to both and catch up with everything. Some of these people were even in foreign countries so I wouldn’t be able to text them. I would really like to get something like a blackberry so I could check it all of the time but unfortunately the bill would be way too expensive. Some of the emails were also long which would be a pain to reply to on such a small keyboard.

            If the high school I attended would allow personal email on their computers or would allow students to access their wireless it would make my life a lot easier. I could take my computer with me to school and it would allow me to use all of the programs that were already installed. It would help me keep in touch with a lot more people at once with less to worry about despite the fact that my laptop was large and heavy. My teachers and other students knew me to be very isolated and that I didn’t talk to others much. Many of them had accepted this to be my way of being and that there was nothing they could do to change it. This I was thankful for. No matter what I will always be isolated.

Plight of a Vampyre

Fairmount Mortuary, Denver, Colorado.
Base of statue inscribed J.W. Iliff.
Photograph taken by the author.

            I woke up and looked at the clock. It was 8 pm like it normally was. I could never tell if the sun was down because I covered all of my windows completely with blackout curtains to prevent myself from getting sunburned while I slept or while I woke up to get a glass of water. My skin always was very easy to burn and I prided myself on being vampire white anyway so getting any sunlight wasn’t something that appealed to me. For most of my friends being very tan was something to pride yourself on but it never was for me. Skin cancer was not something that I wanted to encourage by spending long amounts of time in the sun.

            Sure, I got tattoos, lots of them and all of them in black and grey. Those did encourage skin cancer some but since I didn’t tan I was willing to take this risk. It was something I did to make some sort of design to my body that I found attractive instead of one that would fade as soon as it got too cold to spend a large amount of time in the sun. Being someone who prides pale skin anyway it wouldn’t do me much good to spend time in the sun even if I had wanted to. Being the daughter of a man who owned a large amount of used car lots who also made sure that not only would the business run without me but that I would get plenty of the profits (the business itself kept a mere 30%, I get the rest) I had no reason to even seek a normal job.

            This being the case I often spent my time out in the middle of the night with my camera, taking pictures of things as they occurred in the dark, things so many people chose to ignore. If there was a graveyard open in the area I would usually choose the graveyard due to how beautiful I found gravestones. So many people saw gravestones and cemeteries creepy that few people would visit there unless one of their favorite celebrities was buried there. I went pretty much anywhere for my photographs, even common cemeteries where pretty much anyone can be buried there. The stones have a lot more variety than the ones in rich cemeteries and would often have big and small mixed together.

            I think part of my fascination with the gravestones was the fact that I knew I would never have one. I have always wanted to be cremated and have my ashes spread in a river. Its something that sounds more interesting than having my body buried underground forever. Not to mention there would always be issues with any grave I ever had. The town I lived in was small, it had only five hundred and fifty people in it. We all knew each other in some form and many of them worked in other towns. Some of them even worked for the car dealerships my dad once owned since many of them were close enough for many to drive to. Many of them believed that I was turned into a vampire and am now cursed to walk the earth until I have a natural death I will come back from my grave to haunt the world forever.

            I’ve had many of the members of my community have told me that once I die my natural death they will stake me through the heart so I cant come back to torture the community. They may have to dig me up to do so but they will never give up until at least one of them can prove that he or she did it. Since the morticians here wont let them get to the body this would mean there would be repeated attempts to dig me up until someone managed. As someone with a lot of respect for gravesites I don’t want to be repeatedly dug up until someone finds my heart (or, depending on how long it takes, what used to be my heart) and sends a stake through it. Cremation will assure everyone that I’m truly dead and scattering the ashes will keep any of the local teenagers from convincing their parents that them being all in one piece like that means I can still come back to life one day. With how superstitious most adults in this town are it would be no surprise if any of them believed it.

            I do identify as a vampire so their suspicions aren’t completely unfounded. I often go to other towns to purchase animal blood from the stores that will sell it. Thanks to the invention of the internet I’ve found a way to store the blood for long periods so I can buy it in large amounts and the townspeople will be less suspicious. In this town any sort of large purchasing out of town with local grocery stores being so close is something that attracts a lot of attention. A lot of the teenagers in the area would go to a mall in another town but many of them get away with it. Me leaving too late to enter any mall makes it look a little more odd and many of them do notice. It took me forever to find a place open late enough for me to get there and get the blood I so desperately need.

            With none of my friends being understanding of my lifestyle (and many of them thinking its funny that I do so much to make myself “look” like a vampire”) I’m sure none of them would be willing to complete my trips for blood so I wouldn’t have to do it. It’s also a very odd request. The store I currently buy from has gotten used to me buying large amounts of blood every few months without asking questions but I’m sure it would be even odder if a friend did it that didn’t look the same way I do. With as pale as I am I’m sure many of them assume many of the same things as my city but are glad to get the blood sold since so few people from other countries are sticking with the cooking of their original culture.

            Being one of the few vampires that wants to live what we consider a vegetarian lifestyle it makes it just as hard to get blood. I also don’t choose to eat meat very often since what is sold in my town often goes bad. Much of the area are hunters and keep their meat in their freezers for much of the year making grocery store meat less common. The last thing I want is blood that has had a chance to rot in animal meat because the grocery stores in the area don’t want to remove it from the shelves. Unfortunately this will always remain the plight of a vampire in a small town. Maybe the plight of vampires choosing a similar lifestyle to me in larger towns. For now I don’t know. Maybe, one day, I’ll move to a larger city and learn of the plights of all vampires. Maybe I’ll one day join my people in a way we’re meant to live.

The human vampyre

Lestat, played by Tom Cruise in The Vampire Chronicles

Vampires are something built of myth, something so many of us read about. Characters like Dracula from Bram Stokers book and Lestat (pictured left) popularized by Anne Rice novels have been present in popular culture for a long time. More recently the Twilight novels and movies (no matter how great/horrible you believe they are) have popularized a newer version of the mythical vampire regardless of hundreds of years of myth that we have all had to go on. Twilight being noted the fact that there are some people (which I'm hoping are mostly teenagers though I have seen pictures of horrible tattoos that picture someone who is clearly well over the age of 18 and often over the age of 30) that choose to claim they are "real" vampires despite the fact that many of them have little or no interest in real blood, animal or otherwise. Some of them, instead of being real vampires, are what are called lifestyle vampires. Lifestyle vampires being people that emulate the looks of real vampires but don't need blood or psychic energy to survive. They may find it from time to time in the bottom of their grocery meat packages or from some ethnic/Asian/Oriental stores that are willing to sell it, they may even replace it with a glass of wine, but it wont be something tat is a permanent part of their long term lifestyle.
There are some of us, however, that can't help but run off of blood or psychic energy. Some, like me, can easily run off of both and it doesn't matter which one we use since we all need it in some form. We have no choice in if we emulate the creatures we're so used to reading about in our favorite (or maybe not so favorite) novels and see in so many different movies. We know how hard it is to have a long period when we wont or cant feed and the effect it has on us. We are the real vampyres that have little to do with the creatures of myth. We can walk out into sunlight without bursting into flames or turning into a small pile of ash (though many like me will get headaches or migraines in daylight without sunglasses and will often need sunscreen to prevent burning). We don't have to sleep in coffins during the day to make sure no light gets to our skin. We don't have to worry about standing out to the general public because most adults wont worry that we're not truly human as we wonder around any street we like.
Many of us will hide from the general public due to the fact that many of us will be told we have clinical vampirism and asked to speak to a psychiatrist or other mental health professional. Some of us may have this condition this is true but a small fraction of us will be in this group. Another small fraction (thanks to modern education and access to things like the internet being so common) may have a blood fetish but are yet to decide to label it that way. For those of us who know we don't have clinical vampirism or a blood fetish we do rely on blood or energy to survive. The ethics for both will depend on if they are a sangrinarian (sang) vampyre, a psychic (psi) vampyre or energy worker, or are a hybrid which can do a mixture of the two and for the person themselves.
Some may choose to use animal blood instead of human because of the easy access to it. With grocery stores selling raw meat in trays being so abundant it makes it easier to simply by the package somewhere and drink whats left in the bottom of the package. With the psi vampyres and energy workers out there simply going to a place with a crowd where they can do ambient feeding is easy enough to do while some (that like using sexual energy the best) will find a willing donor one of many ways. The hybrids can easily use the ethics of both groups on which type they use and how they choose to obtain it.

Personally on my end (being a hybrid) I prefer to do ambient feeding and draw things from a crowd. Working at a very busy grocery store at the time this post is being written it makes it easy to ambient feed as often as I need without needing to worry about finding or paying to find a large crowd and without needing to feed in large amounts every time or often. For the sangs out there this may be harder for many to do since they often seem to want human donors and many of them may connect them to more of the Twilight fans that are claiming to be vampyres to emulate their favorite characters.

No matter how we feed we do exist. We are out there and not all of us are emulating creatures of myth. We will continue on living in many different societies and we will be the only predator that man will never be able to completely kill off despite their attempts.

Love's Name In Vain

            I had met her 6 months ago. Well, technically it would depend on how you define the term “meet”. We both sit at opposite ends of the same lunch table and don’t seem to be interested in actually saying hi to each other. All I know is she is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen and I would do anything to gain the confidence to talk to her just once. I would do anything to be able to say the words “I love you” to someone other than my mom and have them know I mean it. I want someone else out there to know that I would kill to feel their pain so they wouldn’t have to feel it anymore. I would want them to know that they could share whatever they wanted with me and that it would never be spread around the world unless they really wanted it to be. The only way I could spread any of their secrets anyway would be to post them to my blog which was starting to get a following without me trying all that hard. Not to mention my blog remains completely anonymous to anyone who isn’t one of my friends. I have no way of knowing if my friends even bother to read it since I have so many views now.

            For right now all I can do is watch the clock slowly tick by until the last lunch of the school began and it would be my last chance to give this girl a piece of paper with my name, phone number, and the link to my blog. Before leaving for school this morning I’d written what I consider to be a beautiful post about her and I would love for her to be able to read it and understand that I want to have the kind of relationship that will never fade with her, the kind of relationship that is guaranteed to last forever. The few friends I do have would most likely make fun of me for going so coo coo about a girl I’ve never even spoken to but they were never the greatest friends anyway. They were always picking on me like all of the other kids did. The entire reason that they even bothered to hang out with me was because I was old enough to buy them cigarettes. If I wasn’t 18 already that wouldn’t even happen.

            That had always been part of being a looser for me. There was always someone out there that wanted me for something that I could do for them and they only came around when they needed that thing. I never got friends that wanted to hang around me because they actually wanted to be around me. That just seems like something that is way too hard in my life. It’s almost like I automatically repel people and love so I can never see what some may call the face of god or use loves name in vain. I may never be the person that sits on the edge of a cliff and watches the sunset with someone that truly loves me and actually wants to keep coming around me. Even my own mother seems repelled by me a lot of days.

            Sure, being the mother of the creepy kid that wears nothing but black clothing and makeup can be a bit embarrassing but at least I don’t look scary when I do it. I actually try to make myself look better when I apply makeup and often do a lot better than the girls in my grade. Many of them just looked like they slapped it on in the morning and didn’t bother to look in a mirror. Most of these girls just managed to scare any guy that actually wanted a good looking girl. More often than not they ended up being the girls that end up on those teen pregnancy television shows. What tends to scare me even more is how many girls in the school actually want to be like those girls. None of them realizes how hard those girls lives actually are and how badly it may effect their lives in the future because they couldn’t wait until later in their lives to have children.

            The lunch bell finally rang. Since my last class before lunch was a study hall I never used for anything productive I didn’t need to put anything away. It made leaving the classroom a lot easier and quicker as all of the other students were too busy talking about where they wanted to walk for lunch than actually packing up and leaving the classroom. Half of them were like me and were on free or reduced lunch because so many people in the area were poor. In my case my mom usually couldn’t afford to feed me 3 meals a day at home and without school lunch I often barely ended up eating even 1 meal. That’s kind of what sucks about having a single mother who can’t seem to be able to get more than a part time job.

            I went through the lunch line as quickly as I could so I could get to my usual table faster. I wanted to be able to hand the girl the piece of paper that I had written all of my information on as quickly as possible so she had a lot of time to make a decision on if she wanted to talk to me or not. Maybe she would even make that decision during our lunch break. I really had no way to know since the two of us really did no nothing about each other. I sat down and started eating as slowly as I usually did. There was no point in rushing the crappy cafeteria food since no one really wants to eat it in the first place. Most people that ate school lunch, unless they were like me and might just starve without it, sat there and stared at their food like it was some alien glob.

            All of lunch went by and she never came to our usual table. It was really odd that she wasn’t there since I had never not seen her sitting there. I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to her since this was a small town after all and neither of us seemed to have any real friends. I can’t even be sure that she had fake friends that she could hang out with like I did, not that I even saw them much, anyway. None of them smoked enough cigarettes to need me more than once a week. They had a routine where they would ask me to buy them whatever they needed on Mondays. The cashier at the gas station I always went to practically had them all memorized by now and made very few mistakes. It’s even already gotten to the point where she doesn’t even ask for my ID anymore, there is no need.

            When lunch was finally about to come to an end an announcement came over the loudspeaker. It asked the entire school to come into the auditorium for an important announcement. Usually this meant we had some sort of surprise guest speaker they decided to not tell us about and all the teachers magically knew was coming. It was their way of having general study days or catch up days for the slower classes. When I entered the auditorium I noticed the girl’s picture was projected. She was actually smiling in this one, something I had never personally seen her do in all of the days that I was sitting across the table from her.

            When he was fairly sure that the entire school had finally assembled to hear what he had to say the principal started speaking. It turns out she had committed suicide the night before because no one ever spoke to her. She was tired of being treated like societies outcast and she felt that her death would be the best way to solve that problem. My heart sank as the news rang through the entire auditorium. Some of the people sitting around me were shooting awkward glances at each other. The last thing any of us had expected to hear in a school assembly was that someone had killed themselves the night before because of something we had all done, either intentionally or otherwise. They mentioned that her funeral service would be Sunday at 3 at the town cemetery for anyone interested and allowed us to all go home.

            Other than her family I was the only person that had decided to attend the funeral. I even stayed to watch the gravediggers fully bury the coffin with her body before leaving. I come every day now to leave a new flower near her headstone. Never will I ever be able to use loves name in vain.

Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi. A man so many have heard of and know for the things he has done for India. Even now he inspires many different people because he is a peaceful person that did a lot of good for many. It is even believed that he inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. while he was advocating for the rights of black people so many years ago. He struggled with school as a young child though he did do better with his studies later on with life. After he finished his grade school learning in the UK where he studied law.
During his time in the UK he promised his family that he wouldn't touch wine, women or meat. With his wife back in India having had his first son when he left on the boat he was leaving a lot of his life behind. With a lot of the UK not being vegetarian finding food that didn't have meat was a struggle. Many of the dishes he found at first he described as tasteless and he didn't enjoy any of it. One day he found a vegetarian restaurant that he enjoyed and found a pamphlet on vegetarianism which he really enjoyed. He started reading a lot of books on vegetarianism after this to learn more about the diet. He was happy to see that science was starting to back the diet that many Indian people had enjoyed for many years and decided that spreading vegetarianism would be part of what he wanted to do with his life.
He met a Christian friend in a vegetarian boarding house one day that introduced him to the bible. The Old Testament put him to sleep but he loved the New Testament. He respected his new friends religion since it had been something he had been taught early on in his life. Once passing the bar and becoming a formal lawyer Gandhi went back to his home in India where he worked on helping all in India gain the much needed change that the entire country needed.

Third Bridge in Aurora Colorado

Dust or orbs? You decide.

*All photographs taken by the author on October 29th, 2008 during her second trip to Third Bridge*
Third Bridge, one of the most famous haunted places in Aurora. Many teenagers will go there with friends to be obnoxious and try to create one of the many sounds and apparitions that are said to happen on the bridge. With the correct timing you can run into many of these sounds and have a lot of experiences that are something that aren't something many will experience during their lifetimes. Some skeptics may even have their own first experiences there and may no longer be a skeptic by the time they leave. Many of them will never be the same again after they can't find a way to explain away some of the events that happen there, some of the things both their friends and themselves have found that they will never be able to explain away or will ever be able to say didn't happen or didn't exist. For the average person a visit to the Third Bridge here in Aurora will mean little to nothing. It will do nothing that will effect their lives other than alter their idea of what really happens in the spirit world.

View off the side of the bridge

 For someone like me who is sensitive to the spirit world like me a trip to the bridge is a completely different experience. It's something that many of us will take with us no matter where we go and no matter what else we choose to do with our lives. It's something that could change us forever and could make us walk away not knowing what to do with ourselves. Nothing can prepare any person that is sensitive to the spirit world for a trip to the bridge, nothing can prepare them for the things that are going to bombard them while their on the bridge if they see the spirits or if they feel the energies of the spirits. I've been to other places that are also haunted (or simply rumored to be haunted) and I know that not a single one of those places could have prepared me for anything that has gone on at the bridge or any of the things that I've felt while I was there.

Tree off the side of the bridge

 The energy felt by the spirits of the Indians and early american settlers that were killed in the fighting there is so strong that any person that is sensitive to the spirit world may end up feeling nauseous or sick during their time on the bridge. Sensitives that tend to be more sensitive to the emotions of the spirits will feel the negative effects of the bridge more immediately than those that tend to be more visual. Of all of my friends that tend to be more visual with spirits I tend to pick up the fact that a place is haunted a lot faster than a lot of my more visual friends though they would feel the emotions of the spirits eventually as well, it just takes them a little longer than it does for me.
Those that are more visual in  their sensitivity to the spirit world more often than not will not be followed home by spirits and will have few ill effects after leaving the site. They'll have the images in their head from what happened there follow them home like so many others that are out there.

View of the guardrail from the opposite
side of the bridge, orb present on the right

Personally, as someone who is sensitive to the spirit world as far as the emotional range goes I often feel like a lot of my physical energy has been drained and it takes me weeks to recoup the energy I lost from my time on the bridge. As someone that has to work the next day I often wont go to the bridge if I have to go to work the next day, energy wise I simply can't do my job the next day. Emotionally I remain depressed for a few days and feel a lot of the feelings of the people that were killed there during the battle. All of the energy that reaches a person sensitive to the spirits emotions its impossible to not take some of it home with you no matter what you try to do to leave it there at the bridge. Something always has to follow you home no matter how hard you try.