Who I Am

My name is Carlisle Cullen. I also have gone by Stregone Benefice. I am the patriarch of the Cullen family. My wife is Esme and my children are Edward, Rosalie, Emmet, Alice and Jasper.
My chosen profession is as a physician. I have brought compassion over from my human life and it gives me purpose and fulfilment to aid others in need.
I was born in the 1640s in London, England. My actual birthday is lost to me as I remember very little of that time now. My father was an Anglican minister and during his time as a church official, he took it upon himself to hunt creatures such as witches, werewolves, and vampires, often mistaking innocent humans as monsters. When my father retired, I did what was expected of me and took on his role. During a hunt one night, I was attacked by a vampire and left to die on the street. What I remember (Carlisle's rememberance)

I felt a body slam into me and knock the attacker away. The instant his teeth broke free of my flesh the pain started. I couldn't localize the exact place. It was in one spot and EVERYWHERE all at the same time. I gasped, fell to my knees and blacked out. I awoke seconds later, a fire burning throughout my body, a raging inferno that I would have done anything to put out. Each move I made intensified the burning but I had to get off the street. I heard the yelling and chaos but everything was blurred and warbled. It made no sense. I was dying. I knew it and I just wished for it to be over fast. Never had I felt anguish before and this must have been my penance for what I had done. I deserved it. I judged them. How could I stand there and take over the role of God and judge anyone? How DARE I even let the thought enter my mind.
But I did. My father, Pastor Cullen... he had it in his brain. He feared them. Anyone different, in his eyes, was evil, "The incarnate of Satan himself!" He'd shake his fist and say, "They deserve to burn!"
My mind snapped back to my own pain, suffering. The burning. This was my fate, surely as a punishment for being judgmental, to burn in purgatory, forever.
My eyes started to cloud over and I knew my end was near. I lay on the street, pain to intense to move. I begged for the end to come to me, but it tormented me. I was engulfed in invisible flames. As I lay there gasping in pain I saw a small dark figure hopping on the road in front of me. It was a raven. How curious to see this bird in the street at night. I watched as it looked at me, titling its head as if examining me for its next scavenge. Surely this was a sign that I was momets from death. I lost all energy and gave up. I had to let the fire succumb. I closed my eyes. I felt a tug on my hair and was rallied. No!! I fought. I couldn't have my father or brothers find me. When I opened my eyes, the bird was still there, it hopped a few feet and turned and looked at me as if to beckon me to follow. I clawed at the dirt road, pulling myself through the burning agony. I had to get out of sight. The bird hopped a little further up onto the grass and stopped. It turned and flew onto the roof of a root cellar. I followed and fell in, escaping the chaos, the noise and to die, alone. I couldn't have my father or brothers find me. No one could find me, I couldn’t take the chance. As I lay there, struggling to bite back the screams, I saw the raven fly into the cellar and perch, staring at me with a gleaming black gaze.
I had landed atop a pile of potatoes. The smell and waves of nausea washed over me as I tried desperately to remain silent. Was there no end to the ways my body was rebelling against me? Surely my screams and moans could be heard for miles. I couldn't contain them. Each gasp of breath fanned the flames inside of me, roaring into a ball centralized in my chest and fanning out to every inch of my body. I gasped, for air and clawed at my chest, trying to rip it out of me. There was a rush of air and then I thought I felt two hands clutching mine breaking them free from my chest. The pile of potatoes gave way to something softer, and a soothing voice was in my ear. I had never heard it before. It was unique and melodic. The angels, I could hear the angels. But this song was lost as
the fire in my body that I thought couldn't get worse, increased 20 fold. It raged, burned, and escalated. I begged for unconsciousness but it never came. There were times I felt a presensce, a soft touch on my wound, water on my arms. Madness had come to call, and instead of giving me release from the pain and suffering, it made it worse. A smell of herbs cascaded around me, mixed with the potatoes and the dankness of the root cellar. I lay still, closed my eyes and tried to escape it. Time stood immobile. Surely this was purgatory, at the very least it was to be nothing less that my eternal tomb. Consciousness forever waxing and waning, I saw her figure, the raven was no more, but had become one of the angels I heard. She cradled me as I burned from the inside out, until I started to feel no more of my heartbeat, no more of my breathing. When I awoke on the third day the pain had gone, and the ravages of the trial on my body seemed a far off nightmare, yet I knew they were real. The burning had stopped everywhere except in my throat where it sat and nagged as intense, unquenchable thirst.
I looked about the cellar and spied her. The angel of my fevered and tortured mind, lying on the floor, the hem of her cloak ripped, blood on the white of her gown. Was I to blame? Horror overtook me as I feared I had so quickly become the monster my father reviled and I staggered from the root cellar, into the night, away from humanity and all that was decent in the world.