Vladimir

Chapter I--Alone

The first memory that I have is of being alone; a parentless child crouching against a wall, weak teeth gnawing at the remains of a rat long dead. I do not remember the year that I was born, only that it was in the midst of the black plague, thus my estimates are between the years 1340 and 1350 A.D. In the nearly seven-hundred years since then, I have experienced every kind of pain and every kind of ecstasy that exists in this world. My heart has been sick, broken, wounded and even stopped and here I still am.

I believe that I was around six or seven years of age during the aforementioned scene. It was the dirty, decrepit east side of London and the plague only made it worse. The poor who had once pissed in the streets were now coughing, being sick, dying in the streets. The smell of death—of decay and bodily excrements—permeated everything. And I, being six or seven, with perhaps parents and siblings all rotting away in a small building, crouched by the wall knowing only one thing—food was more important than anything else in this world.

I needed food. I knew that. I did not even know my own name. I did not know the names of my parents or even if I had parents. I only knew that I was alone, I was sick, and that I needed to eat. My skinny frame; my dark, soulless eyes; my sallow, putrid skin—all of these things lent to the fact that I needed to be fed, and the rat that I was chewing on was not helping.

It was then, standing against that wall—raw, red, bloody muscles of the rat lodged between my weak, child's teeth—that I met Solomon for the first time.

We had some hackneys, but it was extremely queer already to see a coach in the east side of London and doubly so since the plague had come about. I had never seen one before, and marvelled at the dark grey stallion and the large black coach making its way through the streets—streets filled with sick and corpses. The magnificent coach did not belong in a place like this. I was amazed as I watched it roll past.

It came to halt a few meters in front of me and a man descended from inside. He was very well dressed and had beautiful pale skin under his black tailor-made suit. His hair was black, somewhat long and had a wave to it, and was under a black top-hat. His left hand held a black cane and his feet were encased in a pair of black heeled boots. His entire ensemble was black from head to toe, emphasizing the perfect paleness of his features. In my first moments of seeing this man, none of these thoughts came to my head, I only mention them now for the reader so that he or she may know what it was like to look upon perfection for the first time.

My first thought upon seeing this man was that he had a loaf of bread in the hand not holding the cane. Bread, oh how I longed for it. I could not remember a time before when I had had bread, but I had seen others who had tasted it and looked in absolute ecstasy at the action. I dropped the half-gnawed rat on the ground and walked forward towards the man. He proffered the bread to me. He spoke, but I could not understand what he had said.

I had not had much human interaction before this and as such, did not even know how to speak properly. I knew how to growl and bare my teeth when someone tried to take a dead rat from me, but that was the extent of my communication skills at the time. I put my hand out, palm side up. He asked me a question. I did not understand. He held the bread out and I seized it from his hands. He smiled. I devoured the bread.

A/N: I'm writing the bones of this story and seeing what kind of feedback I get on it. If anyone would like to leave some constructive criticism, it would be very helpful.

Thank you,

Charlie.