Joshua has never been really effectual. He’s always kind of viewed life as a punishment. It has to have been, the way things have gone in his life. His parents were very poor; his father worked in a factory in the developing industrial district of London. His mother stayed at home to take care of him most of the time, and took him to a fish and meat stand where she mostly cut meat, and left Joshua to his own designs on the sidewalk and among the crowds. She did not neglect him, and Joshua seemed to understand that she did what she did to keep the family going. Joshua would sit next to the meat stand and would watch people. He seemed enthralled with how people acted, how they spoke with each other, and how they haggled over prices. Every time a prospective customer would come up, Joshua’s wide blue eyes would fix on the customer and the man selling the cuts, seeming to drink in the barter, the exchange of money, and the conversation that passed between them.

After a while, when there would be a line in front of the stand, he would go up and start talking to some of the customers. He seemed to have an instinctive understanding of people, and would stay away from those whom his mother would distrust. He’s ask them all sorts of questions, which the customers found cute and entertaining. Someone finally asked what he wanted in return for his entertainment. Joshua had never thought of getting something in return, he was just having fun. After a bit of thought, he asked for a word. The customer was a bit confused, and asked Joshua what he meant. He said he wanted to know a new word, one he didn’t know, and what it meant. The customers were quite entertained by this, and would come to the market with the strangest and most odd words that they could find. Joshua quickly memorized the words and their meanings, and started playing with them, putting them in odd sentences describing the customers, the meat, the shop, and their surroundings.

He continued doing this growing up. His
father was killed in an accident in the factory when he was twelve. He was given, as a gift of consolation, a small notebook and a pen and ink set. He began to write down some of the sentences and paragraphs that he’d come up with. He began to walk down the street toward the factory, back and forth, stopping along the way to write down what he was feeling in an odd way. He’d read books on poetry, on iambic pentameter, and none of that really clicked with Joshua. It was all very nice and pretty and neat, but Joshua viewed the feelings that caused him to write as anything but. They were messy, chaotic, and ever-changing. He never really called what he wrote poetry. Not until his mother passed away when he was fourteen. She had never recovered from the loss of his father, and had never been able to completely support them. They had both become fairly emaciated, and his mother, in Joshua’s mind, had died of a broken heart.

That left Joshua alone. He had no way to provide for himself, no way to provide food. He had not been alone in his life, besides his parents. He had a few friends among some of the poorer kids of the area, as he was. He went to them, and asked them how they could make money. All they had was Joshua’s words, his friend Nicholas’ drums, which were badly beaten and small. Eventually, out of desperation, Joshua and Nicholas hit the street, putting out his father’s workman’s hat to collect any change that someone might throw. To the beat of Nicholas’ drums, Joshua read his words. Word began to spread of a “beat poet” performing on the street, and with this came attention. Good and bad.

Joshua and Nicholas were getting enough money to live, barely, which was good. Every once in a while, the police would come along, scatter the change he’d earned, and give them what they thought was a well-deserved roughing-up. Joshua and Nicholas would always move on, though. They began to pick random spots to perform to avoid the police and the subsequent beatings. Joshua’s vocabulary amazed even Nicholas on a constant basis, as did his ability to twine the words and express emotion to the beat of his drums. Even when Nicholas would change up the beat, Joshua would keep up, varying the emotion or the meaning of the piece slightly to match the beat. It was amazing, or so the people that dropped off change would say.

One night, after performing nearer the University, one of the most beautiful women Joshua had ever seen approached Nicholas and asked for an impromptu poem. He asked only for her name, and a word in return. She gave him both. Rose, and predator. Joshua bowed, and signaled the sleepy Nicholas to begin a beat on his drums. He closed his eyes, and let his mind wander to the beat of the drum, and the words began to flow from his heart, his soul, and his mouth. Rose seemed to zone out, her eyes almost glazing over, as he wove a story involving a rose, its petals, its thorns, and its victims. When the poem ended, her eyes were rimmed in red, and she seemed about to cry. She quickly folded a few bills and stuffed them into his father’s work hat. She whispered, again, seeming on the verge of tears, “Stay away from a man named Lord Welcomb. He will be your undoing if he gets his hands on you.” Then she rushed off, eyes darting all over the street.

A gasp from Nicholas brought Joshua’s mind and eyes back to the present. “What?” Joshua was completely unsure what kind of sense he could make out of the encounter.

“There’s over one hundred pounds here. This is room and board for several months, Joshua! You’ve got to find that woman and thank her!”

“I doubt she wants to be found, Nicholas. The way she ran off like that? she’s better off without us trying to search her down. You saw her clothes. You heard her accent. She’s obviously nobility, and us chasing her down would hurt more than help her situation. No, we’ll leave her alone. Plus, she tried to warn me about some Lord? Lord Welcomb. Bah. All of the nobility are looney.”

The next clear memory that Joshua has is waking up, seeing Nicholas’ broken body over his bed, held up by a bearded nobleman with a cane. The nobleman tossed Nicholas’ body onto the floor as if it was a rug, then turned his gaze to Joshua. “It was silly of him to attempt to attack me, even if it was to save your pathetic life, young Kine.” Joshua could only stammer, as light poured into the window and reflected off of the nobleman’s ivory white teeth, which included elongated canines. Fangs. Bloody hell. The next instant, the nobleman’s beard was scratching his neck as his fangs were entering it. Joshua’s body twitched as an unnatural pleasure shot from the wound and through his body. There was a darkness, then a red haze of animalistic anger and rage tore him back up from wherever he was floating into. He awoke, and clamped his jaws around the wrist that had been offered him. As so many tales have told in the past, it was like liquid fire. Appropriate pain, pleasure, and punishment in a neat little red package that he could not deny.