I’m a parasite with a human face. ‘’Ryan’’ is what I go by now. No one notices anything unusual about me unless it is my blue eyes, glimmering with an unnatural light. I always hide those, anyway. I wear dark glasses. I’m a vampire of sorts, though I don’t drink blood to survive.
I drink memories instead. I suck them out of people. Memories are what has kept me alive, through the centuries. They have to be vital ones. I steal memories through my eyes. My eyes can see memories inside people’s brains.
I remember when I stole a girl’s first kiss. She thought of the moment when he had first kissed her tenderly. She had felt a shriver running though her, and his sweet lips upon her face.
In an instant, it was gone. I had stolen it. She could not remember the kiss. It was mine. I left her with the moments before, with what had happened before the kiss. But took the kiss.
That was the vital moment, the one that would keep me alive.
She walked on, bewildered by the obliterated memory. I could see her thinking it through. She saw his face leaning towards hers. Nothing. She saw nothing after that. A dark hole was left in her mind.
Through the many years I have watched with fascination, how people react to their sudden loss of memory.
My life comes from intense memories. They are vital. I would die without them.
I steal tears, I steal a moment of passion, I steal the instant of rage, when a man is willing to kill another.
The things of drama. That’s what I steal.
It has undoubtably destroyed people’s lives not to remember. They wonder what happened, when it was no minor incident. But what do I care?
I’m the memory vampire.
Everyone knows vampires are monsters. Or at least they should.