Category Archives: Jason

Chronicles – Entry 11

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I awoke this morning as the sun was just peaking through the window. Sarah was gone, but the sheets were still warm where she had been lying next to me. She must have waited till the last minute to head to her lair. I wondered briefly if last night had been a mistake, but decided the chemicals coursing through my brain were much too fresh for me to make an informed, unbiased decision. I got up slowly, she was right about the light-headedness, though I think I lost a little more blood last night than I would have at your average blood drive. It’s fortunate I wear long sleeve shirts at work, otherwise the scars on my wrists and chest, even though they are healing much faster than regular bites, might have proven troublesome.

– Jason Tilden from a journal entry marked “July 17, 08″

The bank I worked at wasn’t actually that bad. The people I worked with were great. It’s just the job itself that sucks the fucking life out of you. There’s this one girl, Kelly, sweetest girl in the world. And beautiful, which you don’t often find together. She has one of the brightest souls I’ve ever seen. Except when I arrived at work that particular morning, Kelly’s there, bright and cheerful as ever, but her soul is nowhere to be seen.

– Jason Tilden from an interview by Elijah Frost for the Percy Herald.

Chronicles – Entry 8

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We usually met in my apartment. It’s in the outreach center, which Sarah and I had named Wolf Heart Outreach. I know, horrible pun. We all call it WoHO for short. It’s generally easy for all of us to get there. Sarah’s accommodations are a little more, shall we say, sparse. Excepting the three nights I have to chain myself up in the abandoned metro station under the center, I lead a relatively normal life. My apartment occupies the whole top floor. It consists of a bedroom, guestroom, bathroom, kitchen and living room. Sarah doesn’t really need most of those things, so her place consists of a windowless room in the basement.

– Bryan Shel from an interview by Elijah Frost for the Percy Herald

“I don’t know why you put up with her, Jason.” said Sarah. I shrugged. What else could I do?

“She can’t help it, anymore than you can help sucking blood.”

Sarah got up from her seat on the couch and stalked over to me, she leaned close to my ear. Her silky red curls brushed my cheek and I could feel her warm breath on my ear.

“You know, with me, you might be a little light-headed in the morning, but you should be good for work. No worse than a Red Cross blood drive, I promise.” This took me a little by surprise. We had been friends for a long time, and I certainly found her attractive. But Sarah and I had never even talked of anything ever happening between us. I wondered briefly if doing what she was suggesting would be a good idea. But only briefly.

Fuck it, I thought, why not? I reached out and squeezed her hand in affirmation, then headed for the door.

“Night guys,” I offered.

“Night,” said Zach as he slipped into the Playstation and the TV blinked off. He was going to be in there all night.

“Later.” mumbled Bryan. I detected a slight hint of jealousy in his voice. He’d had a crush on Sarah since the first semester of college, but she views him like an adopted younger brother. I felt just a twinge of guilt, but it was no worse than what I was used to. I’ll try to save another soul tomorrow.

– Jason Tilden from a journal entry marked “July 16, 08″

Chronicles – Entry 7

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Vicky came up behind me and began massaging my neck.

“You know, love, I could help you forget that guilt of yours for awhile.”

I smiled. Ah, Vicky. She would make me forget my guilt, too. For a little while. Alas, I couldn’t afford it tonight.

“Not tonight, sweetheart. I have work in the morning.” As much as I enjoy Vicky and I’s occasional trysts, they leave me drained, physically and emotionally. Tim looked over at me, I knew immediately what he was thinking. I shrugged. I didn’t own her. I could never satisfy her. No man could now. Who was I to be jealous?

“You know,” said Tim, “I don’t have anything important to do tomorrow.”

Vicky giggled, jumped over to Tim and grabbed his hand in both of hers.

“Well let’s go.” She dragged him up out of his seat and to the door.

“So, when’s the next meeting of Monsters Incorporated, eh? How’s Saturday? Same place, same god forsaken hour?” Tim asked from the door. Vicky was acting like she was pulling Tim with all her might, and Tim was playing along, acting like he was barely holding out from Vicky dragging him through the door. In actuality, she could have lifted him up and carried him away with one hand.

“What say next time we meet in the afternoon?”, offered Bryan.

“Ha!” said Sarah.

“Right then, Saturday, same place, same time. Night, gents.” Tim shouted this last line from two steps down the hall, as Vicky dragged him away.

– Jason Tilden from a journal entry marked “July 16, 08″

I said Sarah was the first of us to grow up. That wasn’t entirely true. Sarah is the earliest one I can be sure of. Vicky had left on her eighteenth birthday. Hadn’t even waited to graduate. She went to California. When she came back six years later, she was a succubus. She never talked about what happened, but I pieced some of it together. I found her, under different names, on a dozen or more websites. She did porn for four years, and then vanished. I still don’t know what happened in the two years between then and when she reappeared here.

– Jason Tilden from an interview by Elijah Frost for the Percy Herald.

Chronicles – Entry 6

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And me, well, I’m a monster of an altogether different variety, aren’t I?

“I just signed the paperwork that will ensure a couple and their three children will be evicted from their home within the year,” I said. I knew this would most likely cut the argument off at it’s head.

“Shit,” said Bryan, “maybe being a werewolf ain’t that bad.”

“Yeah,” added Sarah, “I may suck blood, but at least I leave ‘em with a home afterward.”

– Jason Tilden from a journal entry marked “July 16, 08″

Yeah, I used to be a loan counselor. But I also barter souls in my free-time. Most of the time I’m trying to trade the souls of criminals and murderers to get back the souls of honest people who sold them just to get out of a situation like I often put people in through my other job. It’s hard, as murderers’ souls are generally seen on the market as rather cheap and easily acquired, which, relatively, they are. But it’s the only way I knew to deal with the guilt of my job. Sarah and Bryan have their outreach center, I have my soul recovery practice.

– Jason Tilden from an interview by Elijah Frost for the Percy Herald.

Chronicles – Entry 3

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“I hate that goddamned cold-blooded cock-sucking motherfucker.”, Sarah said nonchalantly over her fifth cigarette of the last hour. “If I ever see him again, I’ll tear his motherfucking throat out.” All this is delivered with about as much emotion as if she had been discussing the weather or whether or not the trash gets picked up on Tuesday or Thursday. That’s vampires for you. They hardly ever show any emotion, except hunger, no matter how deeply they feel it.

“Could be worse,” commented Zack from where he floated over by the TV, half listening to the conversation, the rest of his attention focused on the status of the domination points in his Modern Warfare game.

“How’s that?” inquired Sarah.

“Could be dead,” he offered. She didn’t point out that, technically speaking, she was dead. After all, at least she still had a body.

– Jason Tilden from a journal entry marked “July 16, 08″

Chronicles – Entry 2

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Sarah was the first of us to “grow up”. She had just finished her seventh year of classes at Silver County Community College. Some she dropped, others failed. Most had nothing to do with her declared major of business. She had given up hoping the next year would be the year she graduated three years before. She worked in customer service, ringing people up at the local superstore to pay the quarter rent on the shitty two-bedroom apartment in Haven she shared with her boyfriend, Jake, and another couple, Diana and Steve. The only indulgence she really allowed herself was the girl’s night on Saturday when her, Diana, and a couple of their girlfriends would go down to Percy to hit up the clubs.

It was on one of these nights that Sarah met Jonathon. They were in some nondescript club down in the Waterfront. She was on her third apple martini, a drink she had chosen due to its common appearance on the sitcom Scrubs. Jonathon sat quietly against the far wall of the club, watching her, sipping a glass of what appeared to be red wine. At first she was flattered, then a little creeped out, but also strangely aroused. The stranger across the room was everything her boyfriend Jake wasn’t. Jake was short and muscular, a jock back in high school where they had met. Now he used his muscles for everything from mowing lawns to shingling roofs. He was fair, with dusty blond hair and gray eyes. This stranger was tall, thin, and dark, with a piercing green gaze that was making Sarah warm all over. Finally, she went over and introduced herself.

Jonathon was a successful artist, with a flat in the city. He was charming, and poured out compliments about how graceful and beautiful she was when she danced. When he offered to show her his studio, how could she refuse? His flat was easily twice as large as her apartment. With African and European artifacts decorating the walls and modern minimalist furniture that served its function and then stepped into the background. Against the walls were dozens of canvases, some blank, others with breathtaking portraits and figures. Some clothed, many nude. As they sat on his couch discussing art and politics and religion, as he brushed the hair back over her ear and asked, “If you could have anything in the world, what would it be?” How could she resist saying, “this”? It hardly seems fair to complain about it now, after she got everything she had asked for.

– Jason Tilden from an interview by Elijah Frost for the Percy Herald.

Chronicles – Entry 1

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Our parents told us our coming of age would be our high school graduation. They told us that after graduation we would be off to college to start our new lives as adults. They said we’d finally be able to be whatever we wanted to be. What they didn’t tell us, what our parents couldn’t possibly have known, is that our true coming of age would be much later. After the drop-outs, after the squandered money, after the parties and drugs and the tedious mind numbing menial jobs, the only jobs we could get, after we had hit rock bottom. That’s when we really came of age. Because it’s after you have nothing left that you begin to be willing to barter, to deal, to trade away anything you have left for a chance at that golden adult life that had been promised to you. And if there’s anything movies and fiction has taught us, it’s that if you’re willing to deal, someone, or something, always has an offer. You can have money, power, sex, anything you could possibly desire. All you have to be is willing to pay the price. Our humanity seemed like such a small fee. How could we have known? No one ever warned us except the movies.

– Jason Tilden from “A Tale of Fire : From Men to Gods”