Slowly he regained his control and soon realized his head was empty. Thinking for a moment, he couldn't recall his name, his location, or anything about himself. His mind was a blank slate, it didn't even hurt to try to remember, there was absolutely nothing there. For some reason this was incredibly sad to him, to have no knowledge of his life. Suddenly he felt tears well up but nothing more, his eyes wouldn't open far enough to even let him cry.

His sense of time was completely destroyed, he was aware of being awake for extremely long stretches of time but had no idea if these consisted of hours, days, or years. Occasionally, he could hear people walking above but he was unable to make any significant noise to alert them. Sometimes they came in large groups, but more often than not it was a lone walker. He had no idea where this place was or why it attracted such a small but steady stream of people. Occasionally he would doze, sometimes there were dreams, but usually it was a black oblivion that he fell into, more death than sleep. But the dreams managed to keep his waking moments occupied, he tried to decipher a meaning or memory from their contents.

In one, he was surrounded by a large group of people who he thought he knew but they were all faceless, he could see no distinguishing characteristics from any of them, just a sense of familiarity. They were all dressed in a thin orange material that was transparent and crinkled when they walked. On some he noticed the words "Reynolds" or "Saran". On a few others he saw the words "sealed for freshness" in a bizarre watermark. They seemed very concerned for him, asking him questions in a strange tongue that he didn't know. He could see the concern spelled out on their featureless faces and was very touched. After a while their faces to began to unsettle him and their questions became more insistent. He began to slowly push his way through the crowd seeking an exit.

He came to a group of these strange people that weren't concerned for him, they barely even noticed his presence. They were dressed in ruby red drapings, instead of the customary orange. Most of them had short straws projecting from their temples, pointing upward as if inviting a tiny taste of what was inside. Those without the straws were busily accepting that invitation, gorging themselves on the fluorescent pink contents that flowed through the straw. For some reason, he found their activities extremely appealing and revolting at the same time.

Walking a little farther through the thinning crowd, he spied a faceless man sitting on a rock. He was clothed in the red material but his was a much deeper shade, verging on black. When the light shown through it, it cast a dark, blood red shadow on the ground. His eyeless face watched the dreamer as he made his way through the crowd toward him. As the dreamer neared, the man's face blurred, and almost took on actual features. But they were like looking through a fish bowl, distorted and unrecognizable.

"Greetings, Sammael," said the man as the dreamer neared. He seemed to be expecting this meeting though he waited patiently. Then he reached down without looking and picked up a violin that appeared there. Setting it on his lap, he began to peel off splinters and eat them.

"Is that my name?" he asked. "Am I Sammael?"

"Of course, do you not know your own name?" replied the watcher, who seemed to not realize the strange food he was eating. "I thought that the creature had freed your memories. What happened this time?"

"I know not, just that all the knowledge is gone. I don't know of the creature that you speak of, and neither do I recall my own name. I awoke and have no recollection of anything."

"Now, you know that's not true. If you truly remembered nothing, then how am I here? No, somehow you've managed to lock all your memories into an even tighter vault than before, I doubt that even a gleaner could force you to remember this time. No, you'll have to come to terms with yourself, and soon, or else you may never free yourself from this prison." As the man talked, his features coalesced into recognizable human features, though Sammael was still unable to recognize them. He was a man of approximately twenty eight years, with brown hair and brown eyes. Standing, he looked to be around six feet tall and had wide shoulders.

"Can you explain to me what happened? I'm completely lost," said Sammael. Looking around, he noticed that the rest of the people had drifted several feet away, as if no longer important to the dream. Looking down he discovered that in this dream he had no body, he wasn't even sure how he could look down.

"I can start but we don't have much time, you're about to awaken. First of all, you're Sammael, on of the oldest beings known to man. You are a vampire, but your age has granted you abilities beyond the scope of normal vampires. Right now you are buried several feet below ground, on the site of an old English sanitarium. After your remembering, you lost all control of yourself, completely destroying the place where you had been staying for a few weeks before you freed yourself. You were buried under the wreckage and were packed down when they built the monument to all the inhabitants and workers who were killed the unexplained disaster. Its been several decades since you were trapped and the monument has been largely forgotten, which is why less and less people have been traveling near there. The creature that released your memories..."

At that moment he awoke, once again trying to free himself. As the minutes (days?) ticked by, the dream faded until he wasn't sure what had happened except that his name was Sammael. He listened for a while but detected no one above for a very long stretch of time. The silence was maddening, he wanted to scream, kill, just make someone realize he was there. But it seemed his burial place had been forgotten by the world above.

After a while, he began to feel an annoying nudge against his right side, just above the waist. He tried to squirm away, but that was as effective as all his other attempts to move. More time past and the nudge became insistent, it actually began to hurt. It pushed into his side with an incredible force, he could feel it begin to pierce is flesh in a slow but steady ripping. The pain began to cloud his mind, he no longer had the tiny relief of his napping. The object in his side continued to grow, spreading the wound wider. He could feel it begin to branch off, as if actively seeking the far corners of his body. In his delirium, he never noticed that he could open his mouth to scream. Hidden in the sensations of agony, another object poking into the left side of his chest. He didn't feel the pain from that intrusion until the object was almost touching his heart. He felt it touch his heart, then slowly press inward.

A rabbit, slowly sniffing along the ground above his head, burst apart as he screamed. The object pressed into his slowly beating heart and he lost all control of his body. He began to convulse, screaming and foaming at the mouth, a dark crimson foam. His mind shot out and the several feet of dirt above his head exploded outward, flying in all directions. The nearby trees burst into a flame, burning so hotly that they were ashes inside of a minute, leaving only smoldering stumps. He continued to writhe in his uncovered grave, as the object in his heart slowed, and then finally stopped moving all together. In one last twitch, it tore his heart asunder and he experienced true death.