Corruption.

It's a slow, sneaky process. Corruption bides its time - a great evil that cloaks itself in the greatest of virtues - patience. Corruption takes the opposite path of its comrade called revolution. Instead of shouting in the streets and banging on the doors, corruption whispers seductively into even the deafest of ears, the tiniest of trickling brooks that slowly carves a deep riverbed over time.

Looking back over the last year, I realize just how truly deep the seeds of corruption have been sown in me by my friends. I've changed. I've relented my unabashed, ignorant, and unyielding stances on many things. I'm running Firefox: I swore I'd never leave IE. I want an iPod Touch: I swore I'd never give in to the iPod craze. And the final nail in the coffin? I made the switch to iTunes last night, leaving my beloved Windows Media Player and never looking back.

Pretty soon, I expect I'll be installing Ubuntu or Debian, or worse - buying a MacBook. God forbid.

New chapter!!!

This one was a lot of fun (but very hard) to write.

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At least she didn't scream. Alyxandre thanked the powers that be for small blessings as he half-dragged, half-carried her unconscious form down the hallway and into the kitchen. Muttering quietly, he began preparing her for the procedure. The past was a wonderful teacher, and in this case the relevant lesson was that some people were more resilient than others, and sometimes wake up faster than anticipated. As such, restraint is sometimes necessary. Half a roll of duct tape later, Alyx was satisfied that the girl would not be moving from her position on the steel tabletop. After a half second's deliberation, he chose not to gag her – it was three in the morning in the back of an empty coffee shop. Nobody would hear her anyways.

Alyxandre left her right arm free, hanging over the edge of he table, extended nearly perpendicular to her body and hanging free at the elbow. Carefully, he washed and dried the limb, and then made his marks. Now came his least favourite part. Eyes never leaving her face, Alyx placed one hand firmly on her bicep, and grabbed her wrist, took a deep breath and pushed down sharply. The elbow gave way with a sickening snap, and the arm flopped down at a ninety-degree angle, fingers coming to rest over the edge of a large metal bowl sitting on the floor.

“Didn't even twitch. Must've hit her a bit harder than I thought.” Alyx muttered as he unsheathed the slender silver dagger nestled against his spine. Again, as always, the irony of a vampire carrying a silver blade brought a hint of a smile to his normally dark, expressionless face. Force of habit made Alyx wipe both sides of the dagger on the sleeve of his black silk shirt as he stared intently at the arm dangling in front of him. Deftly he twirled the dagger through his fingers, catching the handle and wielding it like a pencil. A quick breath, and a precise, controlled slash. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Alyx smiled. He'd done it right then. Much like a controlled swing with a razor-sharp sword, the aftermath always took time to reveal itself. And, much like the delayed sliding of a head severed from body, a fine line of red appeared, running from elbow to wrist. Rich red blood, bright with oxygen, began running down the girl's arm, briefly collecting on her curled fingertips before dripping into the container below. The drip became a drizzle, which then became a steady flow.

Normally, arterial incisions spurt blood, but five and a half centuries of practice had honed Alyxandre's skill to the point of art. For such a sharp, swift movement, the cut had been remarkably delicate – the incision had cut the artery clean in half, dropping the blood pressure down to next to nothing. As a result, what would normally spurt energetically simply pooled and ran. Nonetheless, five minutes later, and the flow was reduced back to a steady drip. Satisfied that he had collected enough, Alyxandre carefully raised the bowl to his mouth, pausing to inhale the cloyingly sweet scent of fresh blood. Standing up, he took one last look at the girl. She was probably about twenty-one or two, stood about five foot seven, and the natural black hair that haloed her head was probably shoulderblade length. A normally pale complexion was made paler by the severe loss of blood. She had been very beautiful, and that saddened Alyx, as it always did. Through the centuries, he had always chosen the prettiest girls as his victims, if only to remind himself that in spite of the world's filth, life could still be beautiful, even if only in appearance. It was his one reminder of a past lifetime, that even now, five and a half centuries later, Alyxandre Charon was still human, no matter what the virus had done to him.

With that last sobering thought, he raised the bowl to his lips and tilted his head back, letting the warm, sticky liquid fill his mouth and slide down his tongue, coating his throat. Alyx closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, and tipped the bowl back, letting the blood pour straight down his throat. Ahhh....delightful. A rare treat this is.

The cluster of wooden stakes blew through Alyxandre's ribcage like buckshot. Some glanced off ribs, shattering and splintering inside him, piercing every vital organ housed inside the cage. Some were clean through-and-throughs, punching in and back out, looking like minature comets with their trails of crimson. The shock and agony was paralyzing – a perfect counterpoint to the blissful savouring of wine. The bowl slipped from senseless fingers, impacting on the edge of the table and splashing everywhere. Alyx managed one last blood-filled sigh as his eyes rolled back, and he pitched forward on top of the girl, his lifeblood pumping out and intermingling with hers, dripping off the table and down her arm, which still hung at it's unnatural angle.

Two voices spoke, sounding like they were at the end of a long tunnel, and getting farther away.

“Got 'im.”

“Yeah, he won't be getting back up, ever. Good shooting, mate. What about girlie here?”

“She's bled out, bro. Too late to save 'er, I guess. Oh well. Let's go, before someone...”

Darkness enveloped his soul, cold and black and...comforting.

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This is my latest attempt at story writing. It's very short at the moment, but I hope to add some more to this chapter later tonight, and then have semi-frequent updates as time progresses. The working title of this novel(la) is "The End", and is basically going to be a series of flash images of critical events, that hopefully will all tie together somehow and make sense by the time I'm done. For those of you who've read my previous work, The Silver Blade, this is what TSB is becoming. I decided to gut the story and change the plot, but keep certain things from it, as you'll notice later. There will be constant editing and updating of each chapter/episode, so be sure to check back over old entries every once in a while, to see how the continuity and flow get tightened up. So yeah...without further ado...The End.

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He awoke to the sound of screaming. A few seconds later, the man came to the realization that it was the sound of his own voice that echoed off the storefronts across the deserted street. Picking himself up off the sidewalk, the man staggered onto the road, glancing up and down its lonely trail, hesitant and uncertain. I...can't...remember. The harder the man tried, the bigger the mental wall seemed to be. Again and again he threw himself against its unyeilding surface, bashing his head against the figurative wall hard enough that one could almost hear the “splat” of his brain matter on each contact. Each time, he found himself coming up blank on the smallest details. Where am I? *THUD!* What day is it? *THUD!* What is my name? *THUD!* Where am I from? *THUD!* Who am I? *THUD!* Do I have a family? *CRASH!*

Finally, breakthrough! A single fragment of a memory: a young girl being pulled from his unwilling grasp and thrown roughly into the back of a car, her panicked scream for help cut short by the slamming of the door, and the shriek of rubber skidding across pavement. They have my daughter. 

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Slowly being changed. Check back often!

...Does it really die? I've found myself debating kicking this tired old beast back to life, and wondering if there's really a point. Everyone's on Facebook now, and if they want to blog, they post a note there.

So, if that is the "norm", then I, as one who does his best to not conform, yet not be unconformist, shall continue to blog, rambling on about nothing and everything, and simply link it to my Facebook note application for the win. Conformation, yet not. Walking the same direction, but to the syncopated (and often random) beat of my own little drum.

I'd love to proudly proclaim that The Sandbox is back in business, but if I did that, we all know it'd promptly lie back down and die yet another horrible death. Entertaining though that may be, I derive more entertainment from amusing myself by writing entries that probably only David reads (scared ya didn't I, eh Dave?), but since I'm linking this to pretty much everything, people are going to be reading this and groaning, because Nik is playing mind games again, and making them read something completely pointless and not really that funny.

But you're still reading. And Nik is smiling all the more because of it. Because that, ladies and gentlemen (and Dave), is the mark of a great writer. Not to sound my own gong or anything...

Perhaps later this week I shall have a guest blogger, or perhaps I'll just have another blog entry, slightly more clever than this.

Au Revoir,

Nikolai