Letters

A collection of notes, found in the archives, written by an unnamed monster hunter.

## On Fire Vampires

> And thus I beheld what was assuredly the source of so much distress…
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> A Faberge egg of curdled plasma, radiating a bizarre, paradoxical not-heat; as though drawing the intrinsic, vital warmth from all parts and depth of my body at once, ignoring that most essential insulation that evolution has gifted us
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> Its roiling, tumorous clouds evaporated and dispersed backwards, spiraling inwards towards its unknowable core, in a surreal rejection of the laws of thermodynamics.
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> As my core body temperature dropped, I could feel my very existence slowing down. My flesh prickled into goosebumps as I began violently shivering, dropping into hypothermia faster than any ancestor once finding themselves adrift in the hyperborean snowfields of yore. The pounding of my heart grew loud and then quiet in my ears as I began to freeze on my feet. I knew in that moment, with a horrible and vivid clarity, that I was going to die. I could taste my fate approaching, and it was the taste of snowflakes burning on my tongue. My body flushed with a sudden warmth, and knowing that last harbinger of my doom, I drew my weapon almost as reflex, and fired upon this twisted angel, come to deliver me to that beyond…
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> I heard a muffled noise as I sunk to the ground from the exertion of lifting my arm, my vision spinning, dark spots clouding around my eyes as though they too had become such similar miasmic monstrosities. Through a bleary haze, I saw the creature reveling as it spun its moons and planets before vanishing.
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> I recall no sudden change in myself as it left, but it seems I was fortunate enough that the last remnants of summer could revive me, for when I awoke next, I was not on that cold morgue table, but on the warm loamy dirt of the forest floor.
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> My gun lay next to me, and just beyond it, a bullet, unmarred, looking for all the world like it had simply detached from its casing and fallen out of the barrel.
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## On Myself

> I am repeatedly assured that it is only with the grace of God or, in some spaces, gods, that I am given leave to continue my humble existence. I find it most difficult to refute these assertions with confidence, as I too oft share that sense of wonder at the implausibility of my escapades. On late nights, with only the swaying of a flame to provide company, I have taken leave to consider that miracle that is my mere existence. That the tumbling Sisyphean boulder of entropy that millennia of my predecessors have pushed up the hill a generation at a time, and that my antecessors will, with luck, push slightly further again, now lies in my all too small hands. That not one of my ancestors was squashed by beast, nor man, nor coconut, lest the tree whose roots lie in my heart and stomach be cut tall, and left hanging from the branches.
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> It is not without reason to imagine the lines of the past carved into the stone of history, as though a great river has implacably rent a canyon in the great not-space of all possibilities. However, several problems lurk within such a seemingly simple metaphorical device, a small number of which I shall presently enumerate.
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> Most apparent of these is that of momentum - the illusion that the course of history is not so great that it cannot be shifted by the most seemingly insignificant of detail. The thought of history as some great and powerful flow impresses upon the thinker that it is beyond that or any given individual to influence, when nothing could be further from the truth. History, at least as we mere mortals record it, hinges on the decisions of those selfsame mortals. One cannot let the decisions of the past, good or bad, command the decisions of the future, for to do so is to foist responsibility onto less experienced and no longer extant versions of oneself. Nothing is written, until it is.
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> Of similar nature is the illusion that the past is immutable. While at first glance this seems tautological - what has happened, has happened - it ignores that most crucial truth, that the past had, at one point, not happened. To illuminate this point, I invite you to consider that you are, in this moment, creating a part of history, and that you have in front of you an innumerable array of choices through which you must navigate. At some indeterminate future moment, those choices will have been collapsed, and the past will have followed that course which you captained, but there is not, and there cannot be, at this moment, a foregone conclusion what that chart will look like. The consideration of chance adds an altogether unfathomable depth to the possibilities.
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> I speak of these misconceptions for I wish to clearly avoid and discount them in my analysis. I am indeed still alive, but I assure you, my current existence is due in equal parts to blind luck and the immense gifts our ancestors have gifted us, and indeed not from unknowable machinations of beings whose scope undoubtedly far exceeds my meager self. Nor should anyone attribute my dubious success and continuance to some deterministic outcome of a fixed game of chance. I have too oft felt skeletal hands caressing my cheek to accept that my life was a conclusion forgone. I must believe that the outcomes I will experience are mine to influence, if not control. If I do not believe this, then I can believe nothing at all, for I would be naught but fate's marionette.
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> I am unique in all of history, as we all are, for should one tributary of the grand river of history have shifted from the most insignificant of details, then so shall all those tiny people who come after. And thus those insignificant details and tiny people are vitally important to our collective journey.
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## On a Dream Bird [Incomplete]

> Before I laid eyes upon the creature, I heard its call. A tinkling, sparkling noise that sounded like the precursor to a sneeze feels, a tickling sensation on the underside of my brain. As I scanned the room, coiled like a spring, I reviewed what I knew, so as to prepare for yet another encounter with the unknown.
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> I was merely passing through the village earlier that day, when a distraught father sought me on the street, having heard that frustrating romanticization of my most misunderstood adventure -that one of Egypt of which I do not speak- from a merchant and bard who had passed through some weeks prior. He claimed that a demon had taken residence in the local chapel, from which it was tormenting his family with nightmares. I was initially skeptical, for while I have not known any creature besides man to find particular spiritual meaning within a church -at least those constructed with mortal hands, mind you- they are assuredly not the calm, quiet, and dark places which call so sweetly to the creatures of the night. I found it much more likely that this man was seeking any excuse to avoid confronting some difficulty in his life.
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> Despite my skepticism, I did not presently have occupation, as the caravan with whom I was traveling had stopped for the day to resupply and would not resume its course until the next morning, and so, as usual and ever to my detriment, I grew curious about what manner of trouble this man found himself in. I decided thusly to entertain his ramblings, and assured him that I would investigate at once.
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> Upon my assurals, he led me to the church, which to my considerable surprise, was exceptionally well built, featuring a particularly spectacular stained glass window. I observed the building, noting that it did not appear large enough for all the village's citizenry. The distraught man refused to enter the church with me despite my repeated requests, so I continued forward alone. The inside of the church was pleasantly quiet - always a sign of quality construction - and remarkably well lit. Depicted in the large stained glass window was a blue bird, clutching a golden orb, ensconced in an intricate circular pattern, equal parts spider's web and mandala of the east.
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> The bird's feathers were rendered in magnificent and vibrant color, highlighted further by solder imitating gold. Its rare beauty was accentuated by the thin light filtering through, transforming the wooden glade of pillars and ceiling buttresses into the bottom of a pond, dappled with subtle azure waves and the flickering of candles.
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> The nave was suffused with a faint lavender scent, likely originating in some hidden censer. I quite enjoy a moment to myself now and again, something I so rarely have the opportunity to enjoy on what feels like constant journeying from rumor to rumor.
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## The Winter Sun

> The winter sun is harsh, unforgiving, and unforgiven. It burns cold, like frostbite, a peculiar yellowness in it's unrepentant, often cloudless gaze. Those last leaves of autumn still clinging desperately to branches shorn, bleeding red into a bleak sky.
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> The Science offers a few explanations, as it so often does: The angle of our most precious rock places that closest star at a diminished angle, piercing through our gaseous defenses advantaged. The frigid air itself is lesser, and furthermore can hold less-thus the lack of clouds, the dust speckling so many plains on cold nights.
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> Yet these causes feel as rationalizations for the truths whispered by the lizard on our shoulders. The winter sun, it confides, is cold and merciless, just as the season. Even the mighty star's warmth falls prey to the cycle. The plants die, the animals hide, and the heavens weaken.
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> Man often forgets, often chooses to forget, but we all carry the past with us. Aeons of shivering, huddled wretches, hoping only to live long enough to see tender warmth once more. The lizard knows the cold. It fears it. It trembles and curls as it recalls the sensation of its vital blood pooling in veins and arteries. The lizard knows the frozen sun.
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## Time

> Sometimes I feels as a time traveler, looking back on myself as I struggle through the present. I find myself judging actions and consequences as though they happened decades ago, faded memories and burnt polaroids of distant eons. I dose myself with past participle nostalgia to blunt the suffering of the necessitudes of survival. How can the agony of existing be anything but the bluntest of knives when viewed from the lens of an inextant future. Bad decisions forgotten before they've been made. Lessons from suffering I've yet to experience. A world made of stamps sent from a second Pangaea.
> I don't know who was wearing my skin yesterday. The person in it tomorrow won't know me.
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