Memoirs of an Unknown Man

The memoirs of an entity that subsists upon the blood of the living—a something unable to define its own existence.

Wandering the world in boundless solitude as a solitary, unfathomable anomaly, he encounters an “intruder” he may have spent lifetimes waiting for. And as he learns what it means to feel, he slowly, inexorably draws nearer to humanity.

The record tracing his journey toward that very first encounter begins in the winter of 1883, in Norway.

A year when an epidemic swept across the land and mortals perished in droves.
Drowning in an inescapable futility, he takes an isolated castle as his coffin and buries himself alive.

Until one day, the sound of unfamiliar footsteps comes persistently trudging into that desolate fastness.

“Are you, Sir, the master of this castle?”

The moment he looks into that longed-for radiant blond hair and those deep blue eyes, he flings himself once more into that agonizing cycle before he can even muster the will to resist.

Praying desperately that this time… it might be different.

***

“Adrian.”

Flushed crimson, his breath ragged, he cupped both of my cheeks in his hands. Drawing me close as though seeking a kiss, he pressed his lips not to my mouth, but against my forehead. A gesture so sacred it seemed inconceivable that we were in the midst of mating with a monster—as though he were bestowing a holy baptism.

“Since I gave you your name, Sir, you belong to me.”

With that, he pulled my face tight against himself once more, guiding it toward the pale, slender expanse of his exposed neck.

“No one can ever know you as deeply as I do.”

Beneath my buried face—no, beneath my parted lips—I felt the fierce, rapid thrum of his pulse.

“…No. No one else must ever know.”

The scent of his flesh, which had been excruciatingly hard to endure from the very moment we met—that overwhelmingly sweet warmth poured forth right before my senses as if to suffocate me.

“So…”

The crimson rushing into my eyes took but an instant.

“Devour me.”