Jack Kursed by Glenn Bullion

her
red hair behind her pale shoulders. Jack imagined she had no
trouble luring mortals into dark corners and robbing them of their
blood.
    "So, John-"
    "Jack, actually. Call me
Jack."
    "Okay, Jack. What have you been up to
these past hundred years?"
    Jack took a deep breath. What a
strange question. How did one go about catching up on a
century?
    "Well, not sleeping,
obviously. I tried every drug they've come up with, both legal and
illegal, to see if it would counter the curse. No luck. I made a
little money here and there. I skipped the past few wars. I did
lend a hand in World War II, though. I’m not humanity’s biggest
fan, but didn’t really want to see Adolf Hitler running the
show."
    Victoria shook her head.
"You know, you’re still human. Just because you’re cursed, doesn’t
mean you’re not human."
    Jack smirked. She always
knew what he was capable of, but didn’t know some of the things
he’d done over the past century.
    "Try not sleeping for two hundred
years, and see how human you feel," he said.
    She simply nodded.
"Anyway, I know what you mean. I helped out in that war, too. Did
you know that one of Hitler’s aids-"
    "Was a witch. Yeah, I
know."
    Victoria was quiet a moment as
awkwardness settled between them.
    "Well, half-witch," she said. "Only a
half-blood."
    Jack scoffed. "Like that would have
mattered to you. All witches have to die, right?"
    She leaned back, like
she’d been slapped across the face.
    "Wow. One hundred years.
You can really hold a grudge, can’t you? Do you really want to
fight about this?"
    Jack shot up from his
chair and paced in the kitchen. Events rushed back to him like it
was yesterday. He was again by the river outside Monterrey, looking
down at Annie's lifeless corpse.
    "That was my chance,
Victoria. My one chance. You took it from me, just like that. You picked the
town of Monterrey over me. I was supposed to be your best
friend."
    "I...no, we , saved that
town."
    "And what good did it do?
They're all dead now."
    "It wasn't just that town,
Jack. That witch…she was going to poison the water. Who knows how
many lives we really saved?"
    "Are you not listening?
None of that matters. They're all dead now. But I'm still stuck
here."
    Victoria stood up as well, keeping her
hands frozen on the counter.
    "There you go again," she said.
"Thinking only about yourself."
    "And this surprises you?"
    "You can't see the big
picture. You can't see that those people we saved had families, and
then those families had families."
    "Just like cockroaches."
    "My point is...we
saved thousands of lives. We did a good thing, and you should be proud. But
no, not you. You're so miserable, always whining about your curse.
I've been alive twice as long as you, and I enjoy
life."
    Jack stopped pacing and
held her gaze. The tension in the room was thickening.
    "Do you really want
to compare conditions? Do you really want to compare being a
vampire with never sleeping, never dying, never resting? Hell, the sun doesn't even
bother you anymore."
    "I told you before, you
are who you choose to be. And you choose to be a sad, lonely
asshole. I'm not gonna sit here and talk about who has it worse,
like children. Your problem, if we're gonna cut right through the
bullshit, is that a woman you cared about hurt you, and you never
recovered. Two hundred years, and you can't let it go. You haven’t
learned anything."
    He smiled at the roundabout mention of
Angela. Waving her off, he looked into her green eyes
again.
    "Cutting through the
bullshit, are we? You didn't kill that witch to save
Monterrey."
    "Oh, is that so? Tell me then, why did
I do it?"
    "Because you were afraid to be
alone."
    Victoria blinked and stood
upright. She was an expert at hiding her emotions. They both were.
But they had known each other too long. Jack watched as she
clenched her right hand, only for a moment, and rubbed her fingers
together. A sure sign she was upset.
    "I told you that I was
ready to accept death," he continued. "I