The Cliffs of Insanity

THE TALE OF FAUST

Life was great. It was absolutely swell ! I hadn’t a care in the world, hoofing it to the wee hours in joints, then working on musicals all day with the hope of making it big someday in the Big Apple. I’d rode in on the rails to New York at the age of 15, old enough to know better, but still very young enough to not care! It was all an Adventure then. Still is.

I came from Illinois, what was then the heart of Gangster country. Faust rolled his eyes and gave an almost weary smile. Those were really violent days, the Age of Prohibition, but fun too, if you knew how to handle yourself. That mess should have taught this country something: the more Free Will is meddled with, the further away from the Plan you get. Hmm-mmm. No doubt there.

Now my generation, we were all about Free Will. Give us a snifter, a hookah, a cigar, and a dress made of stringed beads and a little air, and we’ll give you a party you’ll never ever forget. For my part, I wanted to embrace my Inner Bohemian and help others realise their own. I wanted to take the hilarity you could find in the prohibited substances of the day, and translate them onto stage and maybe even radio, so folks who couldn’t afford liquor or the risk they’d take trying to buy it could still enjoy the effects of it in the bland safety of their parlours.

I already looked young for my age, but nobody cared. In New York, nobody ever cares about your story as long as you’re doing what they expect of you or you’re doing something they think is aces. I was acing it in every way in those days. My song and dance routines born on Tin Pan Alley were the cat’s meow in certain circles back in the day. I was the community’s little darling. Everybody knew me and everybody loved me. Not braggin’, just sayin’.

I spent years on Tin Pan Alley and every year just seemed to be even better than the one before it. The whole world was in a full-on perpetual celebration, or so it seemed. And then that fated day in 1929 came, when we saw invincible men cast themselves from atop the highest structures they could find because everything we thought existed, everything we were so certain would always be there, suddenly….vanished.

( how Faust became a Vampire )

Faust, known also as the Confessor amongst those closest to him, was a young Darkling who dwelt in the Soho area of New York City but, every night, could always be found at Studio 54. He had a section of one of the infamous balconies of hedonism partitioned specifically for his particular activities of preference. No one really knows for certain from whence he came as a mortal child, somewhere in America, that’s for certain. He always had that fresh-faced, hopeful enthusiasm you tend to find in the American face. It was known that he had been transformed by Rebekah and Mephistopheles, and that Mephistopheles gave the new Vampire his name, as a nod to the legendary Faust character. It was also known that Faust had traveled far and wide before finally settling in New York City to embrace a freer existence than perhaps he had ever known. He was truly a child of his age, but was ever seeking to learn the ways of his present incarnation or, as he may have perceived it, predicament.

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