•Alexander Tepes•

[Warnings for a suicide attempt, medical talk, and blood.]

Alexander's life began when he died.

At 12:13 EST on September 18th, 2000, Alexander's heart stopped beating. A swarm of nurses and doctors descended upon his room and at 12:15, they got it beating again between compressions and shocking paddles, slow and thready. It would stop twice more that night, but never for as long as they pushed packed red blood cells back into his body.

The next day, he woke up in the ICU, pretty white bandages going from his wrists to his elbows, the line of an IV disappearing somewhere under the dressings. He'd both succeeded and failed in what he wanted to do, as he had managed to die, but not to stay dead. What followed after were days and days spent in the ICU, nurses, techs, doctors, occasional visits from his parents ('We don't understand why you did this honey!' his mother's tear-free choked voice), but most importantly was the change he could feel growing in himself.

On his discharge, his family moved him to a private psychiatric facility, money could pay for anything they wanted, including privacy before this breach of decorum became an even greater embarrassment. Diagnosis: Severe Depression with suicidal ideation. A fancy way of saying that he wanted to kill himself, throw in the towel on his (past) life and get the fuck out. Before they got out the hot little paddles to attach to his temples so they could shock the shit out of his brain, he discharged himself. He'd been depressed before, but now he felt a quivering, shiny thing sitting in his belly. Something he hadn't had before, that his parents couldn't buy their son.

It was brilliant until the moment his father decided that if Alexander wanted to acquit himself of medicine, he could be cut off from all the family accounts. Everything in him raged against it, but he finally agreed to meet with a quiet, very private psychiatrist three times a week. As long as he took his medications and went to his appointments, he could have a very modest monthly allowance. He'd have to move out, of course, but he should be able to find a nice flat somewhere.

Alexander only went to make sure that it wasn't fake (post-mortem) elation causing him to feel the way he did. It wasn't. Eight months later he was discharged from her care and he came back with a counter proposal for his father. He could give him a bloody decent monthly income, or he could take his story to every newspaper that would print the story. He'd start with his childhood, being shuffled between nannies while mummy and daddy were too busy with their political careers to bother with the children. Then the boarding schools, how he never felt loved by his parents, his suicide (he refused to call it attempted when he'd managed to succeed) and how they'd tried to hide it. Oh yes, that street did go both ways, Father.

His parents agreed and he wished them well. Money was to be delivered every month into his bank account and with that, he left the island of his birth and migrated west, to the Americas.

So brash, so young, and so very ripe for the picking. Because that which was dead could not live again, except if it was undead. Like him. It began as a wild thought, stray like a dog in the street, but then it grew on him, latched until he found himself in New Orleans of all places. A city steeped in history. It captured the imagination of horror writers for vampires, as if the humid bayou place was just perfect for blood hungry monsters.

In Alexander's case, it was. Caps for his teeth were made (one set, his usual set, only made his canine's slightly longer and end in more of a point than his real ones), but the second set was truly made for a vampire. Clothes were bought, rich silks and heavy brocade fabric, each of them tailored to his slim frame. All his life, his previous life he had stayed in the audience for his sisters, let them steal the spotlight, and now it was his turn to steal the shadows.

At first it was only a game, a performance for the rag tag gaggle of friends that he collected when they drank too much wine. (And it was always wine, as if their taste buds would be offended by something so common as hard liquor.)

The first time a girl (pretty, blond, horribly American and bent on having something unique) had asked him to bite her, really bite her, he'd done it just for laughs, nicked the pretty white skin of her throat. As she moaned in his arms, she promised to bring some friends by the next night.

She had, and they all pleaded for the same thing. Wine wasn't their drink of choice, wasn't what would ply them into submission, but his fangs and their free flowing blood would.

Life changes not in huge ways all at once, but in slow blips, like water wearing at rocks. Being undead was no different. Soon enough he had a fresh group of people, those that didn't play at anything, but wanted what horror writers wrote about. More and more he retreated from the daylight life and into the night. He learned what his followers were expecting to hear, what they wanted from him, and Alexander made himself into that illusion. The final straw came when he went into a New Orleans courthouse and had his name legally changed to reflect who he was becoming. That was the last time he saw the sunset.

He quoted Poe, Nietzsche, Byron, read Shelley and Thoreau. Whatever his devotees wanted and privately thanked authors like Anne Rice who moved vampirism out of Nosferatu and cloaked them in romanticism. Nothing ever helped him so much as that and few wanted anything more than the loving vampire, someone who loved another, that posed a challenge to see if anyone could saw him from whatever immortal love he held in his heart. (There was no one, not really, but there was one that could have been, should have been, but she'd gone into the arms of another.)

He threw himself into the world, let his followers purchase him an old Victorian manse that was perfect for a vampire. Alexander even had a bed custom made so that it resembled a coffin. If he was going to do something, he might as well go all the way.

Then came a rather interesting phone call. His assistant took the message and delivered it to him when he left his room that night, sun safely set below the horizon. His sisters, both of them, were in Las Vegas. That night he made the decision to move. He missed them as he did not miss his pompous parents and it had been so very long since he'd seen them. Perhaps Eloise had finally ditched that man she thought good enough to marry. Perhaps.

Alexander would find out.

Banner by ??, Quote from Nenia Campbell, Horrorscape

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