AKA The Dirt Goblin Era
The first two years are the worst. Or were they three? Four? If anyone asks, Clementine will say she can barely remember. But she does.
Oh, she does.
After Marcel pulls her out of the dirt pit, he spends a while explaining “the rules”, a lot of what NOT to do, but not what she should or could do. She was very hungry at the time and too shocked with everything that happened to remember it all, but he makes sure she understands to stay out of the city and to NEVER return until he comes back for her. He points to the far west of the city and her still partially human brain screams
DANGER.
And so she goes west, she thinks. With no time to spare, she runs until she’s far enough and finally alone to let out a long and pain-filled scream. She eats the first thing she finds, some wild animal that’s not enough to satisfy or stop the hunger, but it’s all there is. She digs a hole with bare hands in the middle of nowhere and buries herself, makes sure she’s VERY deep so the sun will not touch her, but it’s not quite enough. She still feels a slight burn all over her skin the next day.
Run, hide, survive. AT ALL COSTS.
On the third night she looks for somewhere safer, a haven. With just a few hours left she lucks out and finds an old abandoned shack far removed from the city and near some woods. It’s tiny but it’s perfect. She digs a new hole, this one deeper and buries herself once more.
The shack becomes her home, the woods all she knows. She’s there for a long, long time but her rituals do not change. Wake up, hunt, think, think, think, count the days, THINK about the man staring at her from above the pit. She becomes a prisoner of these thoughts, only feeling safe once she is buried underground and her mind finally shuts down.
The one good thing about being a vampire is that no dreams or nightmares come for you.
"Those come after you're awake"
- Storyteller
One day she finds human prey and after the first one, she can never go back to drinking from rats and other wild animals. She has a new obsession that won’t be satisfied by anything else. Most humans are rare to see, one a week, sometimes even longer. She kills a few in her wildest nights, when the hunger is too hard to control.
At some point her woods become popular among drug addicts and similar lowlifes. Being high off the blood of her victims is something new, but helps, keeps the thoughts away. When the beast takes over she feels less guilty.
It’s on one rainy but otherwise unremarkable spring night that Elliot finds her. It shouldn’t have happened, it takes her a while to comprehend what she’s seeing. She almost forgot she used to have a friend, a BEST friend. He’s also confused and surprised, he can barely recognize her but his relief, his happiness? It’s so genuine it makes her cry tears of blood.
For the first time in years, she talks to someone other than herself; or at least tries to. He has many questions, but she has trouble explaining. Takes him a few more visits to have her open up. He keeps visiting after that, more frequently with the passage of time until Elliot is the only bright spot, the only thing keeping her together.
He brings her new clothes and human trinkets that she would have appreciated before. She takes Elliot to her shack for the first time, to place the gifts inside. He stands outside for a while, too shocked to come in, but once he does he looks nervous and a little afraid.
This is the home of a monster; paint-peeled wooden boards look almost black, covered by crude lines (four and then a fifth one across). There is not much decor, only what was left by whoever lived here first. The most remarkable thing being a bed covered in dirt and mold, with its sheets merged into the old cushion, never used. Scratches are left on the wood beneath and beneath that is a barely visible but wide hole.
“That’s where I sleep,” she explains after a long silence.
Elliot barely says anything that night, Clem is half worried she finally scared him off but after that day he comes back and then the day after that and the day after that. She used to be the talkative one, but their roles are completely reversed-- now he’s the one that tells her about his day, about the company they used to run together and other trivial things like who’s running for president or a new song he loves.
He brings her a phone, assures her he made sure it’s safe but the moment she touches it, it’s useless in her hands, just static and flashing colors. She laughs hysterically and leaves Elliot standing in her shack alone while she goes to kill something.
Time passes just like that, with Elliot being her constant and the only thing she looks forward to. He brings her a letter one day, says it was addressed to her but sent to his address. It has a wax seal and looks like something she would have seen in a movie.
The letter is from some guy, a man called Montano and it’s the first time she sees the term “lasombra”, which is what she is, apparently. She reads the letter another twenty times and Elliot smiles uneasily at her as he reads over her shoulder.
“This is a good thing, right?”
And it is. It fucking is. Because she might hate her situation and what she was forced to become but the first step to control is knowledge, and she’s tired of not being in control.
