Date:         Tue, 5 Dec 1995 22:31:34 -0600
From: Julie Randolph <randolph@TENET.EDU>
Subject:      If I had but one life to live (1/1)


**This is one of completely experimental things I do to make your lives more 
confusing.  This will be toldin narrative form, for all of you who are English 
deficient that means first person or using "I" and told from t the point of 
veiw of the narrator.  Just for the record, the narrator is not me, it is, in 
fact, our favourite "Uncle" Lucien LaCroix.  This story is told before Janette 
left, since you will find out pretty damn quickly that he is actually talking 
to Janette...okay, off we go.**

JCR

If I had but one life to live
Julie Randolph (Yes, the weird psycho.)



I do recall the night she asked me these questions.  Young vampires have a 
tendancy to do that, but what started out as a simple discussion on the virtue 
and goodness and blessing of being what she was turned into more than perhaps 
I had bargained.  I had lived for a very long time at this point, almost 2,000 
years, and she was well beyond the age when such questions should come to 
mind.  Perhaps it was Nicholas rubbing off on her, and perhaps she simply 
wanted to pass the day.  At the time, I remember being angry, disturbed that 
she should want to know, but then again, when had I ever denied my children 
anything?  Granted, I spend quite a lot of time telling one of them they are 
on a worthless quest, but really...do I ever truly interfere?  Ah, well then, 
that is not really the point is it?

The sun had risen outside the bar, and I was trapped inside.  Myself and 
Janette.  And she asked me what I would do, had I but one life to live. The 
darkness sourrunded us, it closed in on me like it never had before. I did not 
know the answer.  For someone as old as myself, you would think I might have 
all the answers, but some questions simply cannot be answered.  Had I only one 
life I would be dead now, simply that, nothing more.  But there was more, 
wasn't there?  for had I only one life, I would never had had my beautiful 
daughter, Janette or my good hearted, slighlty mixed-up son Nicholas, and that 
I do not think I could bare. For try as I might to admit that they mean 
nothing to me, I know that they do.  As Ihave proven it so many times over the 
years.  Had I known that my young Divia was a vampire, would I have chosen 
this path? Perhaps that is the questionthat drives us so, in this eternal 
darkness. Now that I look back, on a time that was so very long ago, I don't 
believe I wouldhave ever chosen such a thing.  I was Lucius of Pompeii, a 
general with the pagan gods watching over me, surly I was eternal without the 
blood of a vampire coursing through my veins, and so I would be dead now.  
Death in another form, a form which I try to forget exists. Nicholas feels it 
so strongly from day to day.  he sees it in the eyes that look up at him inthe 
darkness, staring into blackness, into the night sky, dead.  Nothing is there, 
but on the other side, do we all get the choice?  Or does it only come to they 
who are being tempted with what the heavens call evil?  Death in itself may be 
evil for how do we know that we, who are as close to God as any other creature 
on earth, are not the angels of this planet, killing and hunting that the 
earth not grow overpopulated.  Ah, but that wasn't the question, was it?  If 
right now, I had but one life to live, what would I do with it, where would I 
go, what would I want to see that I had not already seen?  Love perhaps, I 
told her, or maybe to stand at the edge of a mountain and watch the colors of 
the sunrise at dawn stream across the valley below in flashes of gold and 
purple.  Maybe I would do things that this vampire body takes for granted, 
things that mean nothing to me.  A warm bath, or a hot tub, it is sad that 
humans take so very many things for granted.  That in their quest for a higher 
purpose, they forget the highest thing of all and that is to live.  For if one 
is not truly living, then how can you call it a life to begin with.  Do I 
truly live?  I do not know.  My heart and soul has been filed with so much 
rage and pain for so very long that I do not believe it is possible to live 
anymore, but to simply go on existing, as I have, for eternity.  And what a 
horrible fate that would be, which is why I try to bring my son back to me.  
He nad his mortal love look on me in hatred, they assume that my cold, still 
heart does not feel, but they are wrong.  Nicholas is all I have left.  If he 
leaves me, I will be alone.  And is that not the most horrible fate of all? 
Lonliness that kills even the last living vestinge in the heart, lonliness 
that breaks even the eldest of men until they no longer have the will to go 
on.  That is the vampires ultimate destiny, not to die of a stake, or a fire, 
but to doe of lonliness, that they have no one to share their days with.  I 
believe that one day Janette will come back to me, and ask me again those soul 
searching questions as she did on that day, until then, it is not my place in 
the world to stand as judge, but rather to take what is mine, or to return it 
to the folds from whence it came.  So, what would I do, had I but one life to 
live?  I would live once again for 1,000 lifetimes and seek out my son in the 
end.  That is my destiny, that is my eternal strife and guide in my darkened 
world. That is my life, and I must live it, lest I lose my grasp and fall.

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response, flames, oreos, letters of recommendation, definitions of
"irony" and/or Geriant Wyn Davies home address to
randolph@tenet.edu

"I do hope this wave of altruism passes quickly, it is
quite...distressing,"--LaCroix, Night in Question

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