Here Without You

This story will take some explaining:

To start; back in the late 90's I accidentally found a site hosting the stories of an extremely unique author. It was a brand new site and had a handful of really well-written stories which seemed to have a common theme but not entirely a common topic. (That's what made it so addictive, even back then!) In time, some of my absolute favorite works would come from this man who as it turned out, was as unique as his stories. Who? (That would probably help, huh?)

"Comicality's Shack Outback" is the birthplace of an epic telling of a group of vampires that had been "turned" at a very early age. Carrying the title "half Life" was, in this existence, looked down on by others with disgust. The only form of life lower than a half life would be the vampire who would feed on the young, creating such offspring. In the story "Gone From Daylight" these "half life" teens would group together for safety. Once in a while, a pairing would happen and as we see in the case of the main characters, a dismal existence can suddenly become a spark of hope, laced with the daily turmoil of existing as such a low form of life in the eyes of your community. (Sound familiar to anyone?) The story can resonate with anyone who at a young age began to realize that they were in one way an outcast in the eyes of society, which for many generations absolutely was the case. It shows an inescapable prejudice that is almost impossible to overcome.

In honor of such a well written and widely loved story among the MANY stories Comicality has published over the years, it had developed a very interesting following. People began to create images and stories and poetry... based on the story. Treasures to Comicality himself and something that just had to be shared with the world. Hence the birth of the original "Gone From Daylight: BloodBank", which was a full archive themed in the world where these creatures ruled the night. I was fortunate enough to head up the project in building the original site and in secret, acting as it's archivist; another vampire named "Uriel".

As "Uriel", I posted as the site's webmaster and maintained the archive of fan additions which included a story named "Here Without You"; which is based on a relationship that develops between a man who moves to the same Chicago neighborhood that is shared by a certain group of young vampires from Comicality's story and a vampire who has some mutual friends within that same group. He ends out befriending the half life who has had a pretty long and tragic time of it since being turned and as one who wears the mark of protection, becomes accepted as one of the gang. Unfortunately, the story stalled after writing the third chapter and real-life ground all progress to a halt and put a  stop to the work "Uriel" was doing. The GFD Bloodbank thankfully was moved to its own URL (http://gfdbloodbank.com as the original was in a subdomain and was planned as a part of a bigger project at http://shackoutback.net) to be redesigned and relaunched as a stand-alone feature site.

Intending to submit all work to the new site, I felt it was time to revisit "Uriel's" previous writings and continue the story in his hand. "Uriel" in this day and age no longer exists among us but his original story has been collecting dust since his disappearance. It's my intent to dust it off, clean it up and let the world read what happens next. This will take some time so, I will start by posting the first three chapters right here on my site. As the next chapters are "recovered" I will be adding to this tale. I hope to also make this available in the new archive as well.

I hope you enjoy "Here Without You" as much as I enjoyed stepping into the world that Comicality created to write it!