It all started out so well.

I had wanted to flee into the woods and let myself fade before ever biting anyone, at first. After a short while, though, I decided that I could find a new purpose.

The one who turned me said that my superior strength and immortality came at a cost beyond avoiding the sunlight.

I thought it was a joke. “You are what you eat.”

Before I realized how wrong I had been, it was already too late.

I went after the worst criminals in the city, draining them completely so that they couldn’t come back in the same way as I had. I would be damned for my murders—but wasn’t I damned already? At least this way, I could put some positive points back in my ledger.

As time went on, I became less discriminating. Murdering the worst of society could only last for so long before those people began to hide.

The streets began to empty at night.

But still, I hungered.

One day, after catching a petty thief and leaving them lifeless in an alleyway, I realized just how far I had strayed from my original mission.

There was only one way back.

The child couldn’t have been older than seven. She had just won a teddy bear at the carnival ring toss, and she gave it to her younger brother as a gift. Then, she ran off to the next game at the carnival on her own…

By the time that I recovered enough goodness in my soul to realize the extent of my atrocity, she was already gone.

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