This is a story I first wrote in High School. It has since gone through some revisions and, following the advent of modern vampire lore (no longer creatures of the night, monsters and demons), I shelved it for another day. This story still has a long way to go before it's finished but I find it helpful to break down stories from time to time, find their strengths and their weakness' and then build from there.
Obviously, if you've read the story, you'll know that this is not my best piece of work. I first wrote this story in High School and it has since gone through a handful of revisions. However, with the advent of the modern vampire lore, where they are no longer fearful demons of the night but rather sleek and sexy people who also happen to have a hankering for blood and perhaps some supernatural abilities, I dropped the story. I don't want to disparage the creators of the modern vampire, I just want to make it clear that Gideon is a demon, not a man, and that the creatures in THE LAST were to be very different from what most readers today might expect. I did add a bit more humanity to Gideon in this edition just so that this story would be a bit more palatable. However, I intend to revise this story a bit more and bring it back to the more classical roots it started from.
But enough of my waxing eloquent, on to the actual commentary.
Let me begin with some characters and then move on to the story itself.
In THE LAST, the character of Gideon is hundreds of years old. I wanted to be able to tell the story from the perspective of an experienced vampire, he's practiced in his vampiric abilities and therefore comfortable with them. There is no time spent exploring or explaining them, he simply acts and the reader must follow. With a story like THE LAST, I find this more interesting as a writer and a reader as it involves far less blatant exposition and draws the reader into the world. Gideon has become calloused against the evil he is forced to do, justifying it to himself as he preys upon the wicked (as he deems them) as he hunts down the rest of his kind. Gideon is plagued with loneliness, but has long since given up on trying to find companionship and so he suffers in silence. Again, I find this kind of established character a lot of fun, as I don't have to take so much time to explain, but rather I get to move forward immediately. Then, later when I do explain aspects of his past, the reader is already looking forward to it and so it less risk of getting bogged down in exposition.
I feel I must explain a few points about the demonic aspects of Gideon that I've softened for this version. Originally, Gideon had to struggle to regain himself, that for years following his being turned, he was just as the vampire who had turned him. Only after decades of acting as a demon did his old self begin to surface. Even now, with all the years of experience controlling his curse, he is still a monster and he still feels little or no remorse for the murders he commits. He chooses to feed on criminals because, deep down, he remembers a time when he knew killing was wrong. But he still kills the officer. He was willing to let him live if he left him alone, but since the officer had proved an annoyance, Gideon decided to feed on him and be done with it. The only real pain/guilt the Gideon feels is for the loss of his family and it is that pain/guilt that gives him the power to fight back his curse and maintain some control. It is also that pain/guilt that drives him to hunt down his own kind.
In a way, it is Gideon's desire to kill his own kind that makes him into a true monster. One of the difficult things to convey in the story is that as a vampire, he is no longer human. Feeding on a human, for him, should be no different than a human feeding on a cow. And so killing a human, to him, is not murder. Killing another vampire, however, is.
The police officer, though a small role in this story, becomes quite important in another (yet to be written) story that gives a bit more history and action regarding Gideon's pursuit of his own kind. The officer is, as Gideon appraises him, a good man, just doing his job. He is also, however, a bit unwilling to bend from the ridged formalities of police work and so, even once he discovers what Gideon is, he is undeterred from his sense of duty and continues to hunt down the vampire.
Gideon's family, again small roles (most are dead and never speak in this story), were important to have fleshed out in my mind at least so that Gideon could have those memories to draw strength from and fuel the trace humanity left in his soul that holds back the vampirism within.
As for the story, I wanted to take a snapshot, a day-in-the-life sort of thing. It was never meant to be a complete or finished story. Just as we meet many different people every day and never get to learn their full story, so I wanted to write a story that gave us a glimpse, a taste, of what this character is about and then leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions about what it all meant. Would Gideon succeed in killing off the last of his kind? What would he do once he had succeeded? What had happened in the past that lead the police officer to his untimely and gruesome death? As the writer, I know the answers to these questions, but for reasons all my own, I felt it important not to answer them in this story.
The bit of back story about Gideon, as it is written right now, is poorly done (so please forgive that on my part). Eventually it will become a dream, a dream he has every day while he sleeps, over and over again and it is that dream that spurs him on, keeps him from yielding to the demonic impulses he would otherwise be slave to. Vampires are not suppose to dream as dreaming is connected to the soul and vampires are not suppose to have souls (part of the riddle that makes Gideon interesting).
I dabbled with introducing a female character, and playing with that angle, but as a demon, he has no need for such things and, to be honest, he would probably end up feeding on her in the end and I didn't want to make the reader so detached from Gideon that they couldn't relate and begin to hate him...though by all rights they should anyway. Gideon is not a good person. He hunts the vampires out of spite and a need for vengeance, not because he wants to protect or save human kind from monsters like him.
As I said before, THE LAST is a work in progress and in the future I will post the newer version and let you see the evolution of the story, but in the mean time let me know your thoughts on this story as it stands now.
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