A Faustian Origin of Vampires
by William Cook
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Faust never wanted power.
He never wanted kingdoms, armies, or worship.
He wanted something far more dangerous:
To stop feeling like a fool.
Faust wasn’t a genius. He wasn’t even respected. He was a man who felt small in a room full of learned men, haunted by the sense that he was always one thought behind.
So one night, stripped of dignity but full of desperation, he did what no professor, priest, or philosopher would dare:
He summoned the Devil.
Not with flame or thunder — but with a whispered plea.
“I want knowledge,” Faust said. “Real knowledge. The kind men would kill for.”
The Devil smiled — not because of the request, but because of its predictability.
He arrived not as a monster, but as confidence incarnate — standing in Faust’s small room like he owned it, because in a way, he already did.
“Oh, Faust,” the Devil said, voice warm and perfectly measured.
“Not just knowledge. You could have more. You could have—”
A faint scratching filled the air, like claws carving symbols onto stone.
Then — a parchment appeared out of thin air, suspended between them.
Words began writing themselves on the page, one stroke at a time, as though an unseen demonic scribe was taking dictation straight from Hell.
“You could have…” the Devil repeated, letting the scratching slow to a crawl.
“Not just wisdom, but…”
“Unlimited—”
“Yes!” Faust shouted, before the Devil could finish. “Yes. I want it all!”
He didn’t even know what the Devil meant by “unlimited.”
He just knew he didn’t want less than it.
The scratching sped up, sealing the word in black, curling script:
UNLIMITED…
Knowledge
Just the demand of a man who believed that more was the same thing as enough.
The Devil handed the parchment to Faust.
Faust signed it before the ink dried.
Because the Devil had not offered what Faust needed — he had offered what Faust hoped others would envy.
And then the Devil vanished.
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For years afterward, Faust lived as a man convinced he had finally been chosen. He spoke languages he’d never studied. He read ancient texts with the ease others read street signs. Secrets opened like flowers in his mind.
But something else opened too — a hollow space.
A sense that if he pressed hard enough, there were things he should know… but didn’t.
Shadows where answers should have lived.
Questions too large for the words he now understood.
And then someone else noticed.
A friend — not a mystic, not a demon-hunter.
Just a lawyer with curiosity and a clear mind.
He skimmed the contract one afternoon, and laughed.
“Faust,” he said, “you didn’t ask for all knowledge. You asked for unlimited knowledge. That’s impossible.”
Faust blinked, the words hitting him like cold water.
His friend continued:
“There is no unlimited knowledge.
There is only all that can be known.
Infinity isn’t knowledge — it’s an illusion.
The Devil promised something that doesn’t exist.”
The contract wasn’t just flawed —
It was broken the moment it was written.
Faust hadn’t outsmarted the Devil.
But now he believed he had.
So he summoned the Devil again — not with fear this time, but with triumph.
“You made a false promise,” Faust said, holding the contract in shaking hands.
“You can’t give what you promised. The contract is void. You can’t take my soul.”
The Devil didn’t flinch.
He didn’t argue.
He simply stood still — and smiled.
“You’re right,” he said.
“The contract is broken. I cannot take your soul.”
Then he leaned in close, and Faust saw something far worse than rage.
Wounded pride.
“You wanted everything,” the Devil said softly.
“Now you will have everything — except rest.”
Faust felt his pulse stutter.
Then stop.
His breath left and did not return.
His body did not fall — because it could not die.
He staggered to a mirror, needing to see if he still existed.
He looked.
And saw — nothing.
No face.
No eyes.
No trace of the desperate man who once thought knowledge would make him whole.
Only the room behind him.
Only the world he no longer belonged to.
The Devil’s voice curled into the silence like smoke:
“You wanted to escape death.
Now death will escape you.”
“You wanted to know everything.
Now you will know eternity — without ever knowing yourself.”
“You wanted to win.
And so you have.
But victory,” he whispered, “is not the same as freedom.”
He was not dead.
He was not alive.
He was nothing that lives — and nothing that ends.
He was empty inside, all undead, all except the hunger.
Not damned.
Not redeemed.
The first trespasser in creation.
The first shadow that hungered.
The first vampire.
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END
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