Like in Edgar Allan Poe's "the Telltale Heart" it was his eyes that tormented me.
He was a very kind looking man, he almost seemed to be suppressing a smile. But his eyes--such eyes. They were a light brown, and they followed me. It was the eyes that convinced me that he lived. I never saw him move, but in the dark, when I could see nothing, I knew he did.
His unblinking gaze drove me mad. If only once he had looked away from me, or even blinked, all the horror I felt would have vanished in an instant. I cannot stand being watched. I knew I had done nothing wrong, I was innocent, but yet his eyes stirred in me feelings of such terrible guilt! I could not bear living under his relentless stare, stern and eternal.
The days, at first, were bearable. Then I could seek refuge in other rooms of the house, but always the image of my empty room, scrutinized by his painted, living eyes, haunted me. But the nights--the nights were torment. Even the very first night, before the true horror of his scrutiny had possessed me, I could not stand his eyes. I lay awake, staring into the darkness, knowing that cloaked by invisibility he had begun to breathe. I was convinced he would desert his frame altogether, that I would feel his painted fingers brush my cheek. I slept with a knife in my hand, but he always knew when I fell asleep, and waited until then to walk over to me, to comb through my copper hair, to trace the bones of my face.
He did it to drive me mad. He wanted me to become a raging lunatic, God knows why. Perhaps out of spite.
I cannot say how the idea entered my mind, but once there it refused to leave. Perhaps I too had power over him, perhaps my eyes as well as his had strength. Perhaps he moved only when I was blinded by night because my observation kept him motionless. Perhaps he could not move while I watched. My eyes, perhaps, trapped him in motionlessness, confined him to his crumbling frame.
That was the sin his merciless eyes accused me off. He hated me because I kept him imprisoned. But instead of alleviating my torment, this realization only made it worse. He hated me, and he had good reason to hate me. Perhaps next time he walks over to me he will unclench my fingers on the knife, take it, and slit my throat, my wrists, open my veins, drain my life and take it for his own. Perhaps with my blood he could live, make the force of my life his own.
About a year after he had come, I could stand it no longer. I took my knife and slashed the canvas, again and again and again, shredding it, then burnt the pieces.
He was gone, but the terror of his watching remained. I could still feel the painted, moving eyes on my back, invisible, perhaps only imagined. The stares of others seemed to accuse me as his had done, the cats especially, with their slitted pupils and glowing eyes. They did not need to die, I thought, they were innocent, had done nothing, I only imagined they watched. But their stares too were unbearable. I did not kill them, though, I am not cruel, not inhuman! Their eyes only were gone. They wandered blinded, but even the white scar tissue of the blank sockets shouted a silent accusation, called me murderer, demon, outcast.
I ran from the cats and their blank eyeless stares, ran from the house haunted by the ghost of the murdered portrait of a king long dead. But every eye watched me, accused. I could not bear it, retreated into the woods to live like an animal, far from all life, but even the trees and grasses seemed to watch. I screamed and screamed for help, reprieve, and then I sobbed, but no one heard, no one answered! And then they came, only one at first. His eyes--human eyes! Dear God, spare me the human gaze!--were worse than the cats, worse than the trees, worth than anything I did not think about my actions, but ran at him, gouged his eyes out with my fingernails, tore his body limb from limb, threw it into the river that would carry it so far away from me. But his eyes did not stop haunting me. I dreamed first of his rotting head, threads of flesh clinging to yellowed bone, but soon there was only a skull, giant, grotesque empty sockets always watching.
More of them came, too many at once, all in white coats, and they stabbed me with a needle, carried me away, and I woke in a padded cell, stared at by so many eyes! Dear God, far too many eyes, human eyes, grey and green and blue and brown--dear God, brown like his had been, the same light brown! All watching, staring, never leaving me in peace, never! Even when I sleep, when all is dark and no eye can see, even then they watch me, not the living eyes but the dead ones, the painted eyes, the cat's glowing eyes, the light blue eyes of the only man I killed, never looking away, accusing, their gaze burning through my skin, the layers of tissue and penetrating my soul, piercing, dear God so sharp! Even my own gaze torments me, but at least I can fix that, living in darkness is not to great a price to pay for even that little bit of relief! My fingernails are sharp, no one comes near enough to cut them, sharp enough to gouge out my eyes, blind me, so my own stare no longer torments me! I cannot see them staring but I know they do, and I can hear, hear them whisper that the insane woman gouged out her own eyes, screaming that she could not bear her own gaze, and they shake their heads, marveling that I could do such a thing, but who would not, would not end even just a small bit of their torment, even if it meant blindness? But blindness doesn't help, I can feel their eyes, can feel even my own eyeless gaze! Dear God, is there no relief? None? Will I live out my life like this, trapped in darkness, always watched and never left alone, screaming my lungs to shreds and my throat to ribbons and then still screaming? What can I do, what can I do, what can I do? They tied my arms, tied them so I can't hurt myself any more, but why would I? I only wanted to take my eyes, only eyes can watch, but even eyes that have been gouged out still watch you, watch me, all the eyes, even painted ones. Eyes are everywhere, even where they are not, even blank walls watch, even trees, even flowers, even blind cats and shredded pictures, even blinded insane women like me who killed a man with her bare hands because she could not stand being watched.
I'm know he's happy now, the old king in the picture, I hear him laughing at me, taunting me in my wretchedness. You thought tearing me to shreds would help, he says, but I still watch you, will always watch you. We will all watch you scream and curse and sob and then you will die as we all died, but even then we will watch you, then and always.
And he speaks truth, painful, horrible, tormenting truth, curse him! Curse them all, all the watchers, all the thrice-cursed watching eyes!
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Guardian
This would be the last night of my vigil. For the past week I had sat in the dark, alone, with nothing for protection but a crucifix and a wineskin filled with holy water.
My defenses had not yet been tested. No one had ever seen the nameless horror.
A shadow moved, my heart raced.
Perhaps I will be the first.
A shriek, and cat creeps into my vigil chamber, bottlebrush tail erect, back arched.
Perhaps not.
I am tired, so very tired. It would be death to sleep, but if I could just close my eyes for a moment…
I stand in the middle of a barren wasteland. The scorching sun beats unmercifully down upon me, the light reflected off the bleached sand sears my eyes. And the thirst…the horrible thirst. Burning me up from the inside.
A wineskin hung at my side, but when I tried to drink the liquid spilled onto the sand and turned to blood…
My eyes flew open, just in time to see the wineskin of holy water, and the crucifix wrapped around it, fall into the river that wound around the base of my tower.
Now it was only a matter of time. I was unarmed, ordinary weapons would not harm the creature of the night I guarded against.
She came without warning, a fleeting shadow of the night.
She was more beautiful than any human woman ever could be. Each limb was perfectly sculpted, exquisite in all its dangerous glory. Each limb shone silver in the moon’s stark light. Her hair was black as a raven’s wing, and the dark feathers that covered her powerful wings reflected no light. Her black dress entwined her with tendrils of gauze. Immediately I felt I would welcome death at the hand of this dark angel.
More than diamond-hard skin protected her from mortal weapons. No living human, male or female, would ever be able to strike a blow against such incredible beauty as was hers.
I knelt at her feet, a stream of incoherence pouring from my open mouth, desperate only to hear her voice, feel her breath stir the air, so incredibly blessed even to humble myself before her.
The tip of one cold finger beneath my chin lifted my face.
“You are not worth killing,” she spat, dripping contempt from every syllable.
A flurry of black and silver, the scent of winter, and she was gone, winging swiftly towards the town. A terrible yearning filled my now-empty heart. I crumpled and wept, head locked in my arms, rocking back and forth, sobbing. Gone. She was gone.
All through that night and into the next day I watched the town, watched her kill.
None of her victims died painlessly. Her delicate, translucent hands ripped an old woman limb from limb. Her powerful arms thrust crying children into the flame ignited by a dropped candle. She wrenched an infant’s head off, laughing as she tossed the small body into the raging inferno that had been my home.
Even knowing I had caused all these deaths, knowing that my family was being brutally murdered because of me, she enthralled me. Her every movement, even if she moved to kill, seemed to me like a dance. I only wished she would return to my solitary guard tower.
My most fervent wish was granted. As the orange sun rose amidst clouds of blood, a winged silhouette darkened the bright orb, flying swiftly closer.
She alighted at my windowsill, graceful as the wind, beautiful and dangerous. There was blood on her hands and her mouth, a smudge adorned each cheek, emphasizing the nobility of the high cheekbones.
Again, I knelt to her.
“Still?” she asked scathingly, venom filling her musical, deep, rasping voice, “Still you kneel to me? I burnt your wife alive. I tore your infant son limb from limb. I ripped out your mother’s throat. I pulled out your father’s intestines while he screamed. And still you adore me, grovel at my feet? You disgust me. You should hate me now, after what I have done. You should be clawing and biting at me now, not caring that you merely hurt yourself in your vain attempt at vengeance. Would you be kneeling now, I wonder, if I were scarred and twisted and repulsive? If my skin did not glow silver, if my wings did not shine black? You are like all men, seeing only an empty shell when you look at me. You care not for my soul, for my mind or my heart, you love only my beauty. At least the women hate me when I return covered in the blood of their loved ones! Think of how you dishonor your dead wife, kneeling at the feet of another woman, begging for another woman's favor, wanting nothing more than the touch of your wife’s murderer! Her body has not yet cooled, and already you have deserted her! How then, could you ever truly have loved her? How then can you call yourself faithful? Her last breath was spent in whispering your name, the very fact of your existence defiles her memory! I chose this life, and I never dreamt I would live to regret it, immortal as I am. But I never wanted an eternity of loneliness. But how can I create a companion for myself, if every man who gazes upon me sees only beauty, not strength or independence, but beauty? To you and me both, I think, death would be a blessing. My very nature denies me that deepest of sleeps. You deserve death, but I will not kill you. Life will be more a punishment than death for you, murderer and traitor as you are. Yes, murderer I called you, and I did not lie! You alone had the power to prevent those deaths; my nature forces me to kill! Had you not knelt to me, had you tried to fight, I could have killed you then, and left your village alive. I only needed one death tonight. You sealed their fate, not I, their blood should by rights taint your hands. I despise you, traitor and murderer. I will not kill you.”
Her great wings beat once, twice, and she was gone. Where she had stood was a single black
feather, razor-edged, and a frozen tear.
My defenses had not yet been tested. No one had ever seen the nameless horror.
A shadow moved, my heart raced.
Perhaps I will be the first.
A shriek, and cat creeps into my vigil chamber, bottlebrush tail erect, back arched.
Perhaps not.
I am tired, so very tired. It would be death to sleep, but if I could just close my eyes for a moment…
I stand in the middle of a barren wasteland. The scorching sun beats unmercifully down upon me, the light reflected off the bleached sand sears my eyes. And the thirst…the horrible thirst. Burning me up from the inside.
A wineskin hung at my side, but when I tried to drink the liquid spilled onto the sand and turned to blood…
My eyes flew open, just in time to see the wineskin of holy water, and the crucifix wrapped around it, fall into the river that wound around the base of my tower.
Now it was only a matter of time. I was unarmed, ordinary weapons would not harm the creature of the night I guarded against.
She came without warning, a fleeting shadow of the night.
She was more beautiful than any human woman ever could be. Each limb was perfectly sculpted, exquisite in all its dangerous glory. Each limb shone silver in the moon’s stark light. Her hair was black as a raven’s wing, and the dark feathers that covered her powerful wings reflected no light. Her black dress entwined her with tendrils of gauze. Immediately I felt I would welcome death at the hand of this dark angel.
More than diamond-hard skin protected her from mortal weapons. No living human, male or female, would ever be able to strike a blow against such incredible beauty as was hers.
I knelt at her feet, a stream of incoherence pouring from my open mouth, desperate only to hear her voice, feel her breath stir the air, so incredibly blessed even to humble myself before her.
The tip of one cold finger beneath my chin lifted my face.
“You are not worth killing,” she spat, dripping contempt from every syllable.
A flurry of black and silver, the scent of winter, and she was gone, winging swiftly towards the town. A terrible yearning filled my now-empty heart. I crumpled and wept, head locked in my arms, rocking back and forth, sobbing. Gone. She was gone.
All through that night and into the next day I watched the town, watched her kill.
None of her victims died painlessly. Her delicate, translucent hands ripped an old woman limb from limb. Her powerful arms thrust crying children into the flame ignited by a dropped candle. She wrenched an infant’s head off, laughing as she tossed the small body into the raging inferno that had been my home.
Even knowing I had caused all these deaths, knowing that my family was being brutally murdered because of me, she enthralled me. Her every movement, even if she moved to kill, seemed to me like a dance. I only wished she would return to my solitary guard tower.
My most fervent wish was granted. As the orange sun rose amidst clouds of blood, a winged silhouette darkened the bright orb, flying swiftly closer.
She alighted at my windowsill, graceful as the wind, beautiful and dangerous. There was blood on her hands and her mouth, a smudge adorned each cheek, emphasizing the nobility of the high cheekbones.
Again, I knelt to her.
“Still?” she asked scathingly, venom filling her musical, deep, rasping voice, “Still you kneel to me? I burnt your wife alive. I tore your infant son limb from limb. I ripped out your mother’s throat. I pulled out your father’s intestines while he screamed. And still you adore me, grovel at my feet? You disgust me. You should hate me now, after what I have done. You should be clawing and biting at me now, not caring that you merely hurt yourself in your vain attempt at vengeance. Would you be kneeling now, I wonder, if I were scarred and twisted and repulsive? If my skin did not glow silver, if my wings did not shine black? You are like all men, seeing only an empty shell when you look at me. You care not for my soul, for my mind or my heart, you love only my beauty. At least the women hate me when I return covered in the blood of their loved ones! Think of how you dishonor your dead wife, kneeling at the feet of another woman, begging for another woman's favor, wanting nothing more than the touch of your wife’s murderer! Her body has not yet cooled, and already you have deserted her! How then, could you ever truly have loved her? How then can you call yourself faithful? Her last breath was spent in whispering your name, the very fact of your existence defiles her memory! I chose this life, and I never dreamt I would live to regret it, immortal as I am. But I never wanted an eternity of loneliness. But how can I create a companion for myself, if every man who gazes upon me sees only beauty, not strength or independence, but beauty? To you and me both, I think, death would be a blessing. My very nature denies me that deepest of sleeps. You deserve death, but I will not kill you. Life will be more a punishment than death for you, murderer and traitor as you are. Yes, murderer I called you, and I did not lie! You alone had the power to prevent those deaths; my nature forces me to kill! Had you not knelt to me, had you tried to fight, I could have killed you then, and left your village alive. I only needed one death tonight. You sealed their fate, not I, their blood should by rights taint your hands. I despise you, traitor and murderer. I will not kill you.”
Her great wings beat once, twice, and she was gone. Where she had stood was a single black
feather, razor-edged, and a frozen tear.
The Cat
I did not hate the cat.
Or rather, I did, hated her more than I had ever hated anything else, but only because I feared her. Feared her more than I had ever feared anything, more than I had feared opening my closet in the dark as a child, more than I feared death, more than I feared a life of agonizing pain.
I do not know why I feared the cat.
Or rather, I do. I feared the cat because no matter how much it seemed I was acting independently, no matter even if I was doing precisely the opposite of what it seemed the cat would have me do, I knew that I had no choice in the decision. The cat was manipulating me. She knew every aspect of my psychology, could anticipate every thought process. She knew I knew. She knew I was afraid. She wanted me to be afraid, wanted me to be so terrified that I would lose all vestiges of sanity, even of humanity...
Eventually, I could no longer stand her. I would have to choose between my sanity, even my very life—and the cat. So I gave her away, that little black kitten with the glowing green eyes. Sent her as far away as I could...
The next day, she came back. She did not appear in a puff of smoke, nor did she slowly fade into existence, first a grinning mouth, as Louis Carrol’s Cheshire Cat was wont to do. She was simply there, sleeping at my feet, as she always was. As, I am now convinced, she always will be.
She awoke, stretched, yawned, purred, asked to be petted.
I was horrified. I did not want to pet her, did not want even to touch her, the unnatural thing, the aberration that I had for some unfathomable reason been cursed with. But I had no choice.
She wanted me to, so I did.
I did not try to give her away again. Much as I wanted her gone, I was too afraid that she would return the next day. There was only one way, I decided, to be rid of the monster.
As Edgar Allan Poe says; “Object there was none. Passion there was none.”
I had once loved the cat, I grieved for her, but I could no longer bear the cross that its foul presence had forced upon my already laden shoulders.
I killed her quickly, painlessly, with a chloroform rag placed over her mouth and throat.
At first I was elated, felt as if I had finally been freed.
‘What if I did not escape her chains?’ I thought, as I buried her, ‘What if she wanted me to kill her?’
Fear ran her icy fingers up and down my spine, but I dismissed the thought.
The next morning, the cat was sleeping at my feet, the slightest traces of decomposition evident. Slowly, she began to rot, a living corpse. First her eyes were gone, yet still she saw. Muscles disintegrated, yet still she moved. Vocal cords tore, yet still she mewed.
If she had been an abomination before, so much worse was she now. Her flesh twisted and writhed with maggots, flies covered her like a rippling blanket.
Soon, a skeletal cat paced my halls.
She was horrible. The scent of decay hung about her like a cloud. Shreds of flesh clung to yellowed bone. The baleful glare of eyeless sockets constantly transfixed me.
I was wrong. Her death could not relieve my burden, could not free me from the bonds of fear in which I had so long been imprisoned.
It was not a difficult decision to make. I think it was the easiest I have ever made. My death would be swift, painless, just as hers had been. I did not know how much chloroform was necessary to kill an adult. I used probably many times more than was necessary, but I could not risk survival.
I knew then what the cat had wanted, why she had wanted to be killed. She knew that she could not die, that her corpse would torment me more than she had in life.
As my vision went dark, I heard her laugh.
Or rather, I did, hated her more than I had ever hated anything else, but only because I feared her. Feared her more than I had ever feared anything, more than I had feared opening my closet in the dark as a child, more than I feared death, more than I feared a life of agonizing pain.
I do not know why I feared the cat.
Or rather, I do. I feared the cat because no matter how much it seemed I was acting independently, no matter even if I was doing precisely the opposite of what it seemed the cat would have me do, I knew that I had no choice in the decision. The cat was manipulating me. She knew every aspect of my psychology, could anticipate every thought process. She knew I knew. She knew I was afraid. She wanted me to be afraid, wanted me to be so terrified that I would lose all vestiges of sanity, even of humanity...
Eventually, I could no longer stand her. I would have to choose between my sanity, even my very life—and the cat. So I gave her away, that little black kitten with the glowing green eyes. Sent her as far away as I could...
The next day, she came back. She did not appear in a puff of smoke, nor did she slowly fade into existence, first a grinning mouth, as Louis Carrol’s Cheshire Cat was wont to do. She was simply there, sleeping at my feet, as she always was. As, I am now convinced, she always will be.
She awoke, stretched, yawned, purred, asked to be petted.
I was horrified. I did not want to pet her, did not want even to touch her, the unnatural thing, the aberration that I had for some unfathomable reason been cursed with. But I had no choice.
She wanted me to, so I did.
I did not try to give her away again. Much as I wanted her gone, I was too afraid that she would return the next day. There was only one way, I decided, to be rid of the monster.
As Edgar Allan Poe says; “Object there was none. Passion there was none.”
I had once loved the cat, I grieved for her, but I could no longer bear the cross that its foul presence had forced upon my already laden shoulders.
I killed her quickly, painlessly, with a chloroform rag placed over her mouth and throat.
At first I was elated, felt as if I had finally been freed.
‘What if I did not escape her chains?’ I thought, as I buried her, ‘What if she wanted me to kill her?’
Fear ran her icy fingers up and down my spine, but I dismissed the thought.
The next morning, the cat was sleeping at my feet, the slightest traces of decomposition evident. Slowly, she began to rot, a living corpse. First her eyes were gone, yet still she saw. Muscles disintegrated, yet still she moved. Vocal cords tore, yet still she mewed.
If she had been an abomination before, so much worse was she now. Her flesh twisted and writhed with maggots, flies covered her like a rippling blanket.
Soon, a skeletal cat paced my halls.
She was horrible. The scent of decay hung about her like a cloud. Shreds of flesh clung to yellowed bone. The baleful glare of eyeless sockets constantly transfixed me.
I was wrong. Her death could not relieve my burden, could not free me from the bonds of fear in which I had so long been imprisoned.
It was not a difficult decision to make. I think it was the easiest I have ever made. My death would be swift, painless, just as hers had been. I did not know how much chloroform was necessary to kill an adult. I used probably many times more than was necessary, but I could not risk survival.
I knew then what the cat had wanted, why she had wanted to be killed. She knew that she could not die, that her corpse would torment me more than she had in life.
As my vision went dark, I heard her laugh.
The Blood Countess
August 21st, 1614
I am Erzebet Bathory. Today is my last day alive.
I cannot stand this cell any longer. I have not been outside of this prison in three years. They keep me imprisoned, call me the Blood Countess, and why? Because I dared to live, I was brave enough to embrace the darkest impulses of the human heart, and I did not shy away from them, as weaker souls are so like to do. They are afraid, afraid of me and of what I have done. Would they be so afraid, I wonder, if I was a man? If I was a man, would they call me abomination, aberration, monster, demon? Perhaps, but I think not. Violence, even cruelty in a man is tolerable, in a woman, a weak, delicate, fragile, timid, demure and gentle woman, it is an unnatural phenomenon, something to be feared, something to be hidden, imprisoned, suppressed.
The maidservants I killed should have been honoured to die at my hand, I who dared what no mortal ever dared even to dream before. They should have come to me begging for torture, not shied away from my knives, my teeth, my nails. But they were silly girls. They deserved death.
I do not deserve to die, not like this, but at least I will not let them kill me. By taking my own life I deny them the satisfaction of stealing life from me, giving it up freely at least allows me to keep my pride. For I am proud, proud and stubborn and independent and cold. I have loved nothing. I have chained myself to no one. I die alone, feared and hated and unwept, but I die strong and brave and untouchable.
But I will not be forgotten. My story will be written here, that years later it will be read and again the name of Erzebet Bathory will strike fear into the weak human hearts that shrink in fear from cruelty, that cower like blind worms in the burning heat of the sun even at the word murder.
I was born on August 7th, 1560, in Hungary, to George and Anna Bathory, but my story truly begins nine years later...
1569
The peasants were rebelling. The Bathorys have long held sway here, but our reign has always been tainted with blood, every since Stephen Bathory fought beside Vlad Dracula there has been innocent blood on Bathory hands, innocent lives taken by Bathory swords. The peasants distrust and fear us, some openly hate us. None had ever before gone so far, or been able, to kill any of us.
Not so now. While I was forced to watch, my two older sisters were brutally murdered.
Not long after this, I saw a gypsy sewn, alive and terrified, into the stomach of a dead horse, and left there to suffocate. I was dragged away before they finished stitching the horse shut, but I returned not long after. I could still hear faint screams emanating from the grotesquely bulging equine carcass. I waited a few minutes, and they ceased.
I was repulsed, of course, but morbidly fascinated by the blood, the screams, the obvious agony. I was too young then to realize I had the power to hurt others, but I was able to hurt myself. I gloried not in the pain of the scratches that disfigured my wrist and the backs of my rough hands, but in my ability to control it, even to embrace it, to make it not a hated parasite, sucking my will to live, but a part of me, a beloved friend, held close to my heart and only reluctantly relinquished. The scars constantly reassured me that I was strong enough, brave enough, controlled enough to inflict pain upon myself, to endure that same pain and to love it.
But the burning thirst rises in my throat, and the nausea grows ever greater, and the words begin to dance on the page before me, the smell of blood chokes me and I must stop writing, but soon, soon I will continue, soon you will know all...
1571
I was betrothed to Ferencz Nasady. The marriage was arranged by his mother, Ursula Nasady, the most hateful woman ever to walk this earth.
I hated him. He was sixteen, arrogant, weak, and cowardly. I refused to spend my life with him.
But what could I do? I was a woman, not even that yet, but a girl. How could I prevent a marriage that would benefit both families?
In 1674 I gave birth to a daughter. I was fourteen. I do not even know her father's name, only that he was a peasant. As soon as it was known I was with child, they hid me away in a remote Bathory castle until the bastard girl was born.
I did not want a child. I wanted only to taint myself, to make it so that I could never have a husband who would not be ashamed of me. A fourteen-year-old Bathory virgin, that is a desirable bride, but a fourteen-year-old Bathory who is not only no longer a virgin, but has an illegitimate daughter, that is something that can bring only shame.
But Ursula Nasady wanted a Bathory wife for her son, and my two sisters had been murdered. I was the only marriageable Bathory left. She was not willing to give me up, and so I was left a mother at fourteen, with a daughter I didn't want and a stain on my name that would never be sponged away.
But I was not long burdened with my daughter. As soon as the missive came from the Nasadys, telling me that hateful Ferencz still was willing to marry me, I killed her.
Not brutally, not painfully or slowly, I merely suffocated her in her sleep. Better this way, so that she dies an innocent, happy infant, unaware of the horrors and injustices and cruelties of the world.
I was fourteen, hers was the first life I took. Flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. She was a part of me, the only part of me that would ever, could ever have loved, would ever weep, would ever feel pity or show mercy. I killed her, and so I became a creature of darkness, cold and unloving as stone, merciless as Death, unloving as Time.
At fourteen, I had given birth and I had murdered. I am fifty-four now. I have four living children, and the lives I have taken number the stars.
1585
I gave birth to Ferencz's daughter, after having been married to him for ten years, during which he was away at war more often than not.
I named her Anna, after my mother. I had not been particularly fond of her, but had she not been Anna, Ferencz would have insisted I name her Ursula, after his mother, whom I despise more than anyone or anything else in this life or the next.
I had three more children not long after Anna's birth, three daughters and a son. My second daughter was Orsika, or Ursula in your language, the third was Kato, or Katherina. My son was Paul.
I had never truly loved my daughters, but my son I hated. I did not dare kill him, Ferencz would not hesitate to take my life did I murder his beloved son...for Hungary, and not doubt the rest of the world, places much value on male heirs.
But now it comes time to begin to recount the focal point of my existence.
Ferencz was often away at war, and left the running of the household to me. Mine to oversee was the cooking, the cleaning...and the disciplining of the servants.
They say that beating servant girls with clubs was the least of my punishments, and perhaps that is true. I stuck pins in their lips, under their fingernails, and then they screamed, the silly, foolish things.
The most disobedient would be led into the snow, and then I, assisted by my wonderful maidservants, would pour freezing cold water over the disloyal girl until she froze to death, an unrotting corpse, perfectly preserved in ice.
I was not alone in these endeavours. The wet nurse, Helena Jo, was an indispensable accomplice in torture, as were Janos Ujvary--we called him Ficzko--Katarina Beneckzy, the washerwoman, and Dorothea Szentes--Dorka. It was later that I found Anna Darvulia--or rather, she found me.
1604
It was ten years ago, I was forty-four. An old woman requested an audience with me.
"I am Anna Darvulia," she said, "I am called boszorkány, witch . But you--you are Erzebet Bathory, her they call nosferatu. Are you not?"
She taught me much of torture, taught me to make my girls scream and beg me for death, to spill their blood again and again, keeping them alive that I can use them more fully. She taught me never to kill quickly. A quick death is a waste of a murder, she says.
I truly grew fond of the old woman. She would never tell us where she came from or anything about herself other than her name, but she knew more of torture than I could have learned in ten lifetimes.
Six years late, in 1610, when I was fifty, four years ago, she was striken with a terrible illness, which left her blind. We never knew what became of her, she simply disappeared one day, leaving me to torture alone.
I had to sell Castle Blindoc that year, I was deep in debt.
Also that year, on December 30th, my cousin, Gyorgy Thurzo, raided Castle Csejthe, and arrested me, Helena, Dorka, Ficzko, and Katarina.
1611
The first trial, January 2nd.
Dorka, Helena and Ficzko were found guilty. Katarina was held, awaiting further evidence. I myself was not tried.
The second trial, January 7th.
I begged the court to allow me to attend the trial, to defend myself, my thrice-accursed cousin Thurzo would not let me appear and thus disgrace the Bathory name.
Helena and Dorka were sentenced to have their fingers torn out with red-hot pincers, and then be burnt alive. I mourned the loss of my two willing helpers, but I envied the executioner...it was a torture almost worthy of my beloved Anna Darvulia. Ficzko, my one male servant, was decapitated, and his body also burnt. They said his punishment was not so harsh because he was young, but they lied. It was because he was a man that he was granted a quick death. For a woman to torture, to bathe in the blood of virgins, to tear chunks of flesh out with her very teeth...that is a crime worthy of a slow and agonizing death. But for a man to assist her, to torture and to find joy in the afflicting of pain, that merits only a quick death. For a woman who helps a torturer, a murderess, nosferatu, as they say I am, there is pain and a fiery death.
During the trial, I attempted to escape to Transylvania, hoping that I might take refuge in the ruined castle of Vlad Dracula, where so many had died, so many had been so afraid...
My attempt at freedom was unsuccessful, and Thurzo condemned me to imprisonment in Castle Csejthe.
King Matthias II continued to try and bring me to trial, but I remained locked in a small room in Csejthe, with little light, little food, and little hope of ever leaving. Deprived of victims to torture, I returned to slicing at my wrists at hands, reassuring myself that pain could still be born, be embraced, even, reassuring myself that I still had the power, the self-control, the will to inflict pain, even if only on myself.
I had my diary still, in which every detail of the six hundred and fifty murders was painstakingly recorded.
It is the torture and the murder that will be recorded here. That is why I write this now, on the last day of my life, so that even if my diary is lost someone will know of my fumbling experiments, and, eventually, the hard-earned ease with which I could inflict pain.
As I have said before, I used to shove pins under their nails. In the summer, I would smear them with honey, drag them outside, often begging for mercy, and watch as the insects slowly stung them to death...I would slice their skin with razors, again and again. I would sew their mouths shut and watch as they slowly starved, I would force them to eat strips of their own raw flesh, I would touch a candle to each of their open eyes, blinding them. I would place rats on their bare skin, trapped by a metal bowl, and slowly would heat the bowl, until the rat became so afraid that it burrowed deep into their skin...they died hours later, in agonizing pain. I would tear them apart with red-hot pincers, I would place paper between their toes and light it on fire, I would rip their heads apart, stretching their mouths wider and wider until the ligaments and muscles released their hold, I would draw blood with my teeth, drinking it directly from the wound, I would eat their flesh while they screamed. I would trap them in iron cages, rock the cages back and forth until the spikes that lined the inside tore them to shreds, would prod them with red hot pokers, burn my name onto them before I ripped them apart...I found such joy in these tortures, such freedom, such wonderful freedom, watching them scream, hearing them beg for mercy, feeling the still warm blood covering my skin, burning, lending me the warmth and vitality of the living body it had so recently nourished...to bathe in blood, that is true power, true freedom...I have never felt, not will I ever feel, more alive than I did when I was first fully immersed in warm, scarlet, living blood...
My husband used to sometimes watch me torture, when he was home from the wars, but he was weak, he was afraid and, like the coward that he was, he fled in disgust even when I smiled and laughed as fountains of blood arched and sprayed, as burning scarlet droplets sprinkled my face, my dark hair, my pale skin, filled my mouth with fiery, iron nourishment, ran down my neck, along my arms, rivers and waterfalls of ruby fire, and even Anna Darvulia turned away in fear, whispering nosferatu, vámpir, boszorkány, but I was not afraid, I gloried in the pain, the agony, I danced on floors slick with blood, I lived.
But not now. Now I am trapped, imprisoned in this tiny room, a worse torture for me than any I could concoct...even I would not be cruel as to do this, not even to the most disobedient of servants, this is true torture...but now it ends. Today I will finally, in spirit, leave the four walls that my living body can never escape. For many days now I have neither ate nor drunk, my head swims, my vision shifts in and out of focus, I hallucinate. Now, this will come to an end, this pain-filled mortal life. I will not live through another night.
The full moon shines through my narrow window, bathing me in cold silver light as once I bathed in warm red liquid...I can wait no longer, hunger is a slow killer, ponderously weakening me. My teeth, still so sharp, flash, once, twice, and there is blood on my wrists. The cuts are not deep enough to kill, and my teeth flash twice more, four times, again and again, until it seems I can have no blood left...yet still I bleed and still I write and still I live, but now I grow faint, my vision goes dark. I am free! At long last, free!
I am Erzebet Bathory. Today is my last day alive.
I cannot stand this cell any longer. I have not been outside of this prison in three years. They keep me imprisoned, call me the Blood Countess, and why? Because I dared to live, I was brave enough to embrace the darkest impulses of the human heart, and I did not shy away from them, as weaker souls are so like to do. They are afraid, afraid of me and of what I have done. Would they be so afraid, I wonder, if I was a man? If I was a man, would they call me abomination, aberration, monster, demon? Perhaps, but I think not. Violence, even cruelty in a man is tolerable, in a woman, a weak, delicate, fragile, timid, demure and gentle woman, it is an unnatural phenomenon, something to be feared, something to be hidden, imprisoned, suppressed.
The maidservants I killed should have been honoured to die at my hand, I who dared what no mortal ever dared even to dream before. They should have come to me begging for torture, not shied away from my knives, my teeth, my nails. But they were silly girls. They deserved death.
I do not deserve to die, not like this, but at least I will not let them kill me. By taking my own life I deny them the satisfaction of stealing life from me, giving it up freely at least allows me to keep my pride. For I am proud, proud and stubborn and independent and cold. I have loved nothing. I have chained myself to no one. I die alone, feared and hated and unwept, but I die strong and brave and untouchable.
But I will not be forgotten. My story will be written here, that years later it will be read and again the name of Erzebet Bathory will strike fear into the weak human hearts that shrink in fear from cruelty, that cower like blind worms in the burning heat of the sun even at the word murder.
I was born on August 7th, 1560, in Hungary, to George and Anna Bathory, but my story truly begins nine years later...
1569
The peasants were rebelling. The Bathorys have long held sway here, but our reign has always been tainted with blood, every since Stephen Bathory fought beside Vlad Dracula there has been innocent blood on Bathory hands, innocent lives taken by Bathory swords. The peasants distrust and fear us, some openly hate us. None had ever before gone so far, or been able, to kill any of us.
Not so now. While I was forced to watch, my two older sisters were brutally murdered.
Not long after this, I saw a gypsy sewn, alive and terrified, into the stomach of a dead horse, and left there to suffocate. I was dragged away before they finished stitching the horse shut, but I returned not long after. I could still hear faint screams emanating from the grotesquely bulging equine carcass. I waited a few minutes, and they ceased.
I was repulsed, of course, but morbidly fascinated by the blood, the screams, the obvious agony. I was too young then to realize I had the power to hurt others, but I was able to hurt myself. I gloried not in the pain of the scratches that disfigured my wrist and the backs of my rough hands, but in my ability to control it, even to embrace it, to make it not a hated parasite, sucking my will to live, but a part of me, a beloved friend, held close to my heart and only reluctantly relinquished. The scars constantly reassured me that I was strong enough, brave enough, controlled enough to inflict pain upon myself, to endure that same pain and to love it.
But the burning thirst rises in my throat, and the nausea grows ever greater, and the words begin to dance on the page before me, the smell of blood chokes me and I must stop writing, but soon, soon I will continue, soon you will know all...
1571
I was betrothed to Ferencz Nasady. The marriage was arranged by his mother, Ursula Nasady, the most hateful woman ever to walk this earth.
I hated him. He was sixteen, arrogant, weak, and cowardly. I refused to spend my life with him.
But what could I do? I was a woman, not even that yet, but a girl. How could I prevent a marriage that would benefit both families?
In 1674 I gave birth to a daughter. I was fourteen. I do not even know her father's name, only that he was a peasant. As soon as it was known I was with child, they hid me away in a remote Bathory castle until the bastard girl was born.
I did not want a child. I wanted only to taint myself, to make it so that I could never have a husband who would not be ashamed of me. A fourteen-year-old Bathory virgin, that is a desirable bride, but a fourteen-year-old Bathory who is not only no longer a virgin, but has an illegitimate daughter, that is something that can bring only shame.
But Ursula Nasady wanted a Bathory wife for her son, and my two sisters had been murdered. I was the only marriageable Bathory left. She was not willing to give me up, and so I was left a mother at fourteen, with a daughter I didn't want and a stain on my name that would never be sponged away.
But I was not long burdened with my daughter. As soon as the missive came from the Nasadys, telling me that hateful Ferencz still was willing to marry me, I killed her.
Not brutally, not painfully or slowly, I merely suffocated her in her sleep. Better this way, so that she dies an innocent, happy infant, unaware of the horrors and injustices and cruelties of the world.
I was fourteen, hers was the first life I took. Flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. She was a part of me, the only part of me that would ever, could ever have loved, would ever weep, would ever feel pity or show mercy. I killed her, and so I became a creature of darkness, cold and unloving as stone, merciless as Death, unloving as Time.
At fourteen, I had given birth and I had murdered. I am fifty-four now. I have four living children, and the lives I have taken number the stars.
1585
I gave birth to Ferencz's daughter, after having been married to him for ten years, during which he was away at war more often than not.
I named her Anna, after my mother. I had not been particularly fond of her, but had she not been Anna, Ferencz would have insisted I name her Ursula, after his mother, whom I despise more than anyone or anything else in this life or the next.
I had three more children not long after Anna's birth, three daughters and a son. My second daughter was Orsika, or Ursula in your language, the third was Kato, or Katherina. My son was Paul.
I had never truly loved my daughters, but my son I hated. I did not dare kill him, Ferencz would not hesitate to take my life did I murder his beloved son...for Hungary, and not doubt the rest of the world, places much value on male heirs.
But now it comes time to begin to recount the focal point of my existence.
Ferencz was often away at war, and left the running of the household to me. Mine to oversee was the cooking, the cleaning...and the disciplining of the servants.
They say that beating servant girls with clubs was the least of my punishments, and perhaps that is true. I stuck pins in their lips, under their fingernails, and then they screamed, the silly, foolish things.
The most disobedient would be led into the snow, and then I, assisted by my wonderful maidservants, would pour freezing cold water over the disloyal girl until she froze to death, an unrotting corpse, perfectly preserved in ice.
I was not alone in these endeavours. The wet nurse, Helena Jo, was an indispensable accomplice in torture, as were Janos Ujvary--we called him Ficzko--Katarina Beneckzy, the washerwoman, and Dorothea Szentes--Dorka. It was later that I found Anna Darvulia--or rather, she found me.
1604
It was ten years ago, I was forty-four. An old woman requested an audience with me.
"I am Anna Darvulia," she said, "I am called boszorkány, witch . But you--you are Erzebet Bathory, her they call nosferatu. Are you not?"
She taught me much of torture, taught me to make my girls scream and beg me for death, to spill their blood again and again, keeping them alive that I can use them more fully. She taught me never to kill quickly. A quick death is a waste of a murder, she says.
I truly grew fond of the old woman. She would never tell us where she came from or anything about herself other than her name, but she knew more of torture than I could have learned in ten lifetimes.
Six years late, in 1610, when I was fifty, four years ago, she was striken with a terrible illness, which left her blind. We never knew what became of her, she simply disappeared one day, leaving me to torture alone.
I had to sell Castle Blindoc that year, I was deep in debt.
Also that year, on December 30th, my cousin, Gyorgy Thurzo, raided Castle Csejthe, and arrested me, Helena, Dorka, Ficzko, and Katarina.
1611
The first trial, January 2nd.
Dorka, Helena and Ficzko were found guilty. Katarina was held, awaiting further evidence. I myself was not tried.
The second trial, January 7th.
I begged the court to allow me to attend the trial, to defend myself, my thrice-accursed cousin Thurzo would not let me appear and thus disgrace the Bathory name.
Helena and Dorka were sentenced to have their fingers torn out with red-hot pincers, and then be burnt alive. I mourned the loss of my two willing helpers, but I envied the executioner...it was a torture almost worthy of my beloved Anna Darvulia. Ficzko, my one male servant, was decapitated, and his body also burnt. They said his punishment was not so harsh because he was young, but they lied. It was because he was a man that he was granted a quick death. For a woman to torture, to bathe in the blood of virgins, to tear chunks of flesh out with her very teeth...that is a crime worthy of a slow and agonizing death. But for a man to assist her, to torture and to find joy in the afflicting of pain, that merits only a quick death. For a woman who helps a torturer, a murderess, nosferatu, as they say I am, there is pain and a fiery death.
During the trial, I attempted to escape to Transylvania, hoping that I might take refuge in the ruined castle of Vlad Dracula, where so many had died, so many had been so afraid...
My attempt at freedom was unsuccessful, and Thurzo condemned me to imprisonment in Castle Csejthe.
King Matthias II continued to try and bring me to trial, but I remained locked in a small room in Csejthe, with little light, little food, and little hope of ever leaving. Deprived of victims to torture, I returned to slicing at my wrists at hands, reassuring myself that pain could still be born, be embraced, even, reassuring myself that I still had the power, the self-control, the will to inflict pain, even if only on myself.
I had my diary still, in which every detail of the six hundred and fifty murders was painstakingly recorded.
It is the torture and the murder that will be recorded here. That is why I write this now, on the last day of my life, so that even if my diary is lost someone will know of my fumbling experiments, and, eventually, the hard-earned ease with which I could inflict pain.
As I have said before, I used to shove pins under their nails. In the summer, I would smear them with honey, drag them outside, often begging for mercy, and watch as the insects slowly stung them to death...I would slice their skin with razors, again and again. I would sew their mouths shut and watch as they slowly starved, I would force them to eat strips of their own raw flesh, I would touch a candle to each of their open eyes, blinding them. I would place rats on their bare skin, trapped by a metal bowl, and slowly would heat the bowl, until the rat became so afraid that it burrowed deep into their skin...they died hours later, in agonizing pain. I would tear them apart with red-hot pincers, I would place paper between their toes and light it on fire, I would rip their heads apart, stretching their mouths wider and wider until the ligaments and muscles released their hold, I would draw blood with my teeth, drinking it directly from the wound, I would eat their flesh while they screamed. I would trap them in iron cages, rock the cages back and forth until the spikes that lined the inside tore them to shreds, would prod them with red hot pokers, burn my name onto them before I ripped them apart...I found such joy in these tortures, such freedom, such wonderful freedom, watching them scream, hearing them beg for mercy, feeling the still warm blood covering my skin, burning, lending me the warmth and vitality of the living body it had so recently nourished...to bathe in blood, that is true power, true freedom...I have never felt, not will I ever feel, more alive than I did when I was first fully immersed in warm, scarlet, living blood...
My husband used to sometimes watch me torture, when he was home from the wars, but he was weak, he was afraid and, like the coward that he was, he fled in disgust even when I smiled and laughed as fountains of blood arched and sprayed, as burning scarlet droplets sprinkled my face, my dark hair, my pale skin, filled my mouth with fiery, iron nourishment, ran down my neck, along my arms, rivers and waterfalls of ruby fire, and even Anna Darvulia turned away in fear, whispering nosferatu, vámpir, boszorkány, but I was not afraid, I gloried in the pain, the agony, I danced on floors slick with blood, I lived.
But not now. Now I am trapped, imprisoned in this tiny room, a worse torture for me than any I could concoct...even I would not be cruel as to do this, not even to the most disobedient of servants, this is true torture...but now it ends. Today I will finally, in spirit, leave the four walls that my living body can never escape. For many days now I have neither ate nor drunk, my head swims, my vision shifts in and out of focus, I hallucinate. Now, this will come to an end, this pain-filled mortal life. I will not live through another night.
The full moon shines through my narrow window, bathing me in cold silver light as once I bathed in warm red liquid...I can wait no longer, hunger is a slow killer, ponderously weakening me. My teeth, still so sharp, flash, once, twice, and there is blood on my wrists. The cuts are not deep enough to kill, and my teeth flash twice more, four times, again and again, until it seems I can have no blood left...yet still I bleed and still I write and still I live, but now I grow faint, my vision goes dark. I am free! At long last, free!
A Grave Marked 'Murderer'
In the graveyard, the tyrant of silence reigned absolute. All the natural sounds of the peaceful night were hushed here. Fear ran her cold fingers up and down my spine, and the wind of Death's passing bristled the tiny hairs along the nape of my neck. The moon barely shone from behind the scudding clouds that hid her silver light. The chill wind whistled eerily among the graves, which sprung up from the ground at odd angles, like legions of mossy and crooked teeth.
This was the domain of the dead, no place for a living human woman in this lonely haunted burial ground. This was a prison graveyard. No peaceful dead here, the restless souls of murderers, thieves, rapists, and one innocent man did not sleep easy.
I reached the grave I had come to visit, and knelt on the frozen earth, my black skirts pooling about my knees like a tide of blood. I laid the white roses in front of the headstone, which read simply:
Nathaniel Weaver
Born November 4th
Died September 13th
Murderer
Murderer. That one word had condemned him to death, me to a life of loneliness and pain. That one world had torn asunder our love, and kneeling on his grave, shivering, I remember. It was ten years ago...
First the body, a nameless stranger lying a pool of his own blood behind the town hall, every detail of his slit throat and once-bright eyes, blank and milky as glass orbs, wide open in terror illuminated by the lurid glow of the streetlamp. Then the accusations, the pointing fingers, the lies.
'It was him,' they say, 'It was Nathaniel Weaver. We saw him. He was running away.'
No, I thought, it wasn't him. He was not the man who fled. He was with me.
But I did not speak. How could I? I would happily burn beside him--for fire was the death that awaited an adulteress and her love--but he forbid me. I never got a chance to speak to him after that last night, that last 'I love you,' that last goodbye. Passing by me in chains, while I struggled to keep my face blank, he pressed one finger to his shut lips. Be silent, the gesture said, clearer than words, tell no one.
And so I kept silent, condemning him to hanging and not to flames.
A burning tear slowly found it's way down my frozen cheek, to land, glittering, in the snow. It froze almost immediately, a perfect, glittering sphere of grief immortalized in ice. Another tear follows the first, and then another, and with the tears come the memories I have tried to forget for so long, a relentless torrent of the past...
Nathaniel was given a trial, the barest hope of survival. I was forced to attend, the whole town would be there and my absence would be conspicuous. He stood alone, tall and straight, before the judge, in chains. New lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes and mouth, his hair, once shining black as a raven's wing, was streaked with bold slashes of silver.
The judge was kind, he knew Nathaniel was a good man, perhaps at some subconscious level knew he was innocent.
'Son,' he said, wearily, almost sadly, 'You claim to be innocent. What is your alibi? If you were somewhere else, you don't have to die.'
He said not a word, though it cost him his life.
Standing there in the back of the courtroom, my heart aching for my Nathaniel, I almost spoke, almost cried out, 'Halt! It is I you want, not him, I who have sinned! Spare his life, I beg you, spare him!' But as if sensing my impulse, he slowly raised one arm, weighted with iron chains, and placed his finger against his lips. He held it there for a moment, his arm trembling with the strain, and let it drop to his side, with a clatter of cold metal.
And so my silence was not broken.
'Guilty,' said the judge, almost regretfully, and the gavel descended with a deafening finality, 'Guilty of premeditated murder on one count. Sentenced to hang by the neck--there was an almost imperceptible pause--until dead.'
Nathaniel did not flinch, but simply nodded, resigned, for he had known all along there was no hope for him. I felt tears welling in my eyes, desperately told my husband I was not feeling well, and rushed out of the courtroom, running and running until I could run no more, and then I sank down and wept until my tears ran dry.
And then the worst memory, the one I had feared for so long, the one I had forced into the darkest corner of my mind, praying that the wound would heal were it not re-opened...
The crowd shouts and jeers as he passes, chained hand and foot, gagged with a dirty rag, eyes covered. The gallows stood silhouetted stark against the setting sun, the noose dangling, empty, ominous, whispering dark significance and evil purpose.
He was led blindfolded to the scaffold, his head placed in the noose. They removed his chains, gag, and blindfold, tying his wrists and ankles loosely with thin rope to prevent any desperate bids for freedom. His clear grey eyes, like the sea after a storm, scanned the crowd assembled to watch him die, rested on me. I wanted to turn away, did not want to watch this, but I would not let him go to his death seeing only a shoulder turned from him, a face turned away in cowardice and fear. He died for me, died because I loved him, and he would see the that same love in my eyes even as he was taken from me by Death's strong arms.
I did not weep for him then, nor have I wept for him in the ten years that lie between that day and this. Today is the first time I have shed a tear for him. But at night I wander the hills in a long black veil, a lonely windblown figure, returning always to the silent grave in the prison cemetery, the grave marked 'Murderer.'
This was the domain of the dead, no place for a living human woman in this lonely haunted burial ground. This was a prison graveyard. No peaceful dead here, the restless souls of murderers, thieves, rapists, and one innocent man did not sleep easy.
I reached the grave I had come to visit, and knelt on the frozen earth, my black skirts pooling about my knees like a tide of blood. I laid the white roses in front of the headstone, which read simply:
Nathaniel Weaver
Born November 4th
Died September 13th
Murderer
Murderer. That one word had condemned him to death, me to a life of loneliness and pain. That one world had torn asunder our love, and kneeling on his grave, shivering, I remember. It was ten years ago...
First the body, a nameless stranger lying a pool of his own blood behind the town hall, every detail of his slit throat and once-bright eyes, blank and milky as glass orbs, wide open in terror illuminated by the lurid glow of the streetlamp. Then the accusations, the pointing fingers, the lies.
'It was him,' they say, 'It was Nathaniel Weaver. We saw him. He was running away.'
No, I thought, it wasn't him. He was not the man who fled. He was with me.
But I did not speak. How could I? I would happily burn beside him--for fire was the death that awaited an adulteress and her love--but he forbid me. I never got a chance to speak to him after that last night, that last 'I love you,' that last goodbye. Passing by me in chains, while I struggled to keep my face blank, he pressed one finger to his shut lips. Be silent, the gesture said, clearer than words, tell no one.
And so I kept silent, condemning him to hanging and not to flames.
A burning tear slowly found it's way down my frozen cheek, to land, glittering, in the snow. It froze almost immediately, a perfect, glittering sphere of grief immortalized in ice. Another tear follows the first, and then another, and with the tears come the memories I have tried to forget for so long, a relentless torrent of the past...
Nathaniel was given a trial, the barest hope of survival. I was forced to attend, the whole town would be there and my absence would be conspicuous. He stood alone, tall and straight, before the judge, in chains. New lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes and mouth, his hair, once shining black as a raven's wing, was streaked with bold slashes of silver.
The judge was kind, he knew Nathaniel was a good man, perhaps at some subconscious level knew he was innocent.
'Son,' he said, wearily, almost sadly, 'You claim to be innocent. What is your alibi? If you were somewhere else, you don't have to die.'
He said not a word, though it cost him his life.
Standing there in the back of the courtroom, my heart aching for my Nathaniel, I almost spoke, almost cried out, 'Halt! It is I you want, not him, I who have sinned! Spare his life, I beg you, spare him!' But as if sensing my impulse, he slowly raised one arm, weighted with iron chains, and placed his finger against his lips. He held it there for a moment, his arm trembling with the strain, and let it drop to his side, with a clatter of cold metal.
And so my silence was not broken.
'Guilty,' said the judge, almost regretfully, and the gavel descended with a deafening finality, 'Guilty of premeditated murder on one count. Sentenced to hang by the neck--there was an almost imperceptible pause--until dead.'
Nathaniel did not flinch, but simply nodded, resigned, for he had known all along there was no hope for him. I felt tears welling in my eyes, desperately told my husband I was not feeling well, and rushed out of the courtroom, running and running until I could run no more, and then I sank down and wept until my tears ran dry.
And then the worst memory, the one I had feared for so long, the one I had forced into the darkest corner of my mind, praying that the wound would heal were it not re-opened...
The crowd shouts and jeers as he passes, chained hand and foot, gagged with a dirty rag, eyes covered. The gallows stood silhouetted stark against the setting sun, the noose dangling, empty, ominous, whispering dark significance and evil purpose.
He was led blindfolded to the scaffold, his head placed in the noose. They removed his chains, gag, and blindfold, tying his wrists and ankles loosely with thin rope to prevent any desperate bids for freedom. His clear grey eyes, like the sea after a storm, scanned the crowd assembled to watch him die, rested on me. I wanted to turn away, did not want to watch this, but I would not let him go to his death seeing only a shoulder turned from him, a face turned away in cowardice and fear. He died for me, died because I loved him, and he would see the that same love in my eyes even as he was taken from me by Death's strong arms.
I did not weep for him then, nor have I wept for him in the ten years that lie between that day and this. Today is the first time I have shed a tear for him. But at night I wander the hills in a long black veil, a lonely windblown figure, returning always to the silent grave in the prison cemetery, the grave marked 'Murderer.'
The Gift of Imperfection
Two sisters were born in a land far away. Even as infants they were as beautiful as the sun and moon. But their hearts were cold. The suitors that came to seek their hands were spurned, and even those rough peasants who knelt to them were scorned. As they realized what they could do to men's hearts, the two sisters began to torture their prey before they killed it. They would court one man's favour, then the other, until none of them knew where to turn. Once they tired of this game they would dispatch their hapless victims with a cruel word or two, and, brokenhearted, the suitors would ride away.
It came to pass that a young peasant girl learned off their exploits. She wished for beauty more than anything, for she was not beautiful, though she was strong and wise. She allowed the thought of them to conquer her mind, until she grew bitter and full of hatred for the cold, beautiful sisters who had had everything she longed for in their hands and had thrown it away like worthless garbage. To satisfy her tortured soul, she turned to witchcraft.
She went to the village apothecary, knowing that he would have a curse. To enter the small, dark building one must be either very brave, very stupid, or very desperate. No one knew much about the apothecary, where he had come from, where he learned his trade. They knew only that his potions, his charms worked to perfection—and his curses. Few people came to him for curses, the village was a peaceful place, the villagers kind and forgiving. But the simple peasant girl was bitter beyond the imagining of her peers, and it was for a curse that she had come.
She was greeted by the gentle hooting of an owl, out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed the gleam of golden eyes and cruel talons, the noble curve of a sharp beak. Shaken—for everyone knew owls were servants of evil—she continued. The apothecary stepped into view.
Scotia—for that was her name—gasped. The old man’s face was covered in a intricate tattoo, sharp hooks and graceful spirals in crimson and black and gold winging their away over his skin. Looking closer, she saw that one side of his face was broken, scarred, crumpled in and folded upon itself as to have lost any semblance of humanity. A match flared, was held to a candle and the light it gave showed row upon row of herbs and powders. The man’s gnarled hands were covered also with the strange tattoo, the beautiful patterns began to move and shift as if alive as the hands fluttered lightly as butterflies over the shelves. Under the curves and angles, Scotia could just make out many small thin scars crisscrossing the back of the old man’s hands.
“Why have you come here?”
“I need a curse.”
“Ah,” said the apothecary, “A curse. And for one so young…it is a sad world we live in, dear Charna, a sad world indeed.”
“Charna is not my name.”
“Well of course it isn’t!” snapped the apothecary, “You didn’t think I was talking to you, did you? Her name is Charna, and a good one it is too!” He stretched out his hand, and the owl flew out of the darkness and alighted on it, something small and grey and dead hanging from the wickedly curved beak. The owl turned her head, and examined Scotia with one beady eye.
“Charna—dark, it means. Very like to your own, it is. Scotia—dark one. And dark you are in truth, for there must be very little light in the heart of one so young—one so young who comes to me for a curse! The other little girls—they come for love charms, and for spells to make them beautiful. Why do you come for a curse and not a gentler magic?”
“What good would a love charm do me?” Scotia asked, bitter, “Could even your magic make this face beautiful?”
“My dear girl, you do not need a fair face to be loved! Look at me, would you call me fair?”
Mutely, Scotia shook her head.
“And my Charna loves me, and not out of pity for my tortured body. She is not repulsed by my scars, my shattered face, my twisted bones. You see? You need not have beauty to be loved. This sisters you wish to curse, they are beautiful. Do you think they are loved?”
“But of course they are! Their suitors are more numerous than the stars!”
“Ah, yes,” said the old man, “But they do not love the sisters. For something so perfect, so radiant there can be no love, only reverence. It is smaller, humbler things, the small imperfections of humanity that can be loved. The sisters already bear a curse greater than any you can impose upon them—perfection.”
“These are but the ravings of the mad, old man. I came for a curse, and a curse I will have, if I must tear it from you with the blade of a knife!”
“Peace, child,” the old man raised one withered, tattooed hand, “You will have your curse.”
The apothecary seized an ancient, tattered, and rather moth-eaten quill pen, a piece of parchment, and a bottle of scarlet ink. He began to write, the quill scratching insistently against the paper, forming illegible columns and spirals of strange symbols, full of sharp angles and broken lines.
“Here is your curse, dark one.” The apothecary quickly rolled the parchment into a scroll, tied it with a crimson ribbon, sealed with a bit of blood red wax.
“What shall I do with it?”
“All it needs to work is a drop of your own blood,” the apothecary smiled benignly at her, behind the tattoo he suddenly looked very weary. “Take this, it will remove the curse if you wish it.”
Rummaging through the contents of a drawer, the apothecary produced a stoppered vial, containing a clear liquid. He pressed it into her hand, closing her fingers tightly around the little glass bottle.
She turned on her heel and left without thanking him, the hem of her cloak sweeping a cookie jar off the table. As if falling through molasses it descended, and was caught just before it hit the floor. Scotia returned the jar to its proper place, and left the shop, blinking in the bright light of day.
“Look, Charna,” the apothecary said, pointing to the cookie jar, “Look! There is hope for her yet!”
The next day, when the sisters awoke, they found that their beauty had gone. Their skin had turned to gray green, their features were drawn and hard. And inside of smooth, warm skin, they were covered with a hard, metallic shell. Their once beautiful faces were as hard and cold as their black hearts. They attempted to continue as always, but young men were disgusted instead of entranced, and turned their faces away, closing their hearts to the sisters.
The mask of beauty that had covered the sister’s cold hearts had been torn away, the ice within slowly began to melt in exposure to the sun of discontent.
The two locked themselves in the highest tower, and were seldom seen by living eyes.
But, confined thus, the two sisters grew thoughtful, repentant. Slowly they thawed, and emerged from the tower kinder souls than they had been upon entering,
Seeing them, so happy in spite of their affliction, Scotia realized that the old apothecary had been correct. The sisters had deserved her pity, not her hatred, for perfection was more of a curse than imperfection every could be. Unstoppering the vial the old man had given her, she poured it over the parchment, letting the pure water wash away the red ink, blur and soften the sharp lines of hate.
Slowly, the sister’s cold, hard skin melted away, leaving in its wake the two perfect beings that Scotia had hated so. However, they were not as completely flawless as they had been. Their perfection was not absolute. Their eyes remained inhuman, metallic, but not hard iron as they had once been, but pools of molten copper and brass, warm and kind and imperfect.
Their suitors still were rejected, but they were sent home with regrets and kind words, and often with generous gifts. And when the sisters did find men they loved, they welcomed them ungrudgingly into their hearts.
And Scotia soon found a man who could look past her homely face and see her soul shining bright through the eyes that had always been like pools of molten gold.
It came to pass that a young peasant girl learned off their exploits. She wished for beauty more than anything, for she was not beautiful, though she was strong and wise. She allowed the thought of them to conquer her mind, until she grew bitter and full of hatred for the cold, beautiful sisters who had had everything she longed for in their hands and had thrown it away like worthless garbage. To satisfy her tortured soul, she turned to witchcraft.
She went to the village apothecary, knowing that he would have a curse. To enter the small, dark building one must be either very brave, very stupid, or very desperate. No one knew much about the apothecary, where he had come from, where he learned his trade. They knew only that his potions, his charms worked to perfection—and his curses. Few people came to him for curses, the village was a peaceful place, the villagers kind and forgiving. But the simple peasant girl was bitter beyond the imagining of her peers, and it was for a curse that she had come.
She was greeted by the gentle hooting of an owl, out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed the gleam of golden eyes and cruel talons, the noble curve of a sharp beak. Shaken—for everyone knew owls were servants of evil—she continued. The apothecary stepped into view.
Scotia—for that was her name—gasped. The old man’s face was covered in a intricate tattoo, sharp hooks and graceful spirals in crimson and black and gold winging their away over his skin. Looking closer, she saw that one side of his face was broken, scarred, crumpled in and folded upon itself as to have lost any semblance of humanity. A match flared, was held to a candle and the light it gave showed row upon row of herbs and powders. The man’s gnarled hands were covered also with the strange tattoo, the beautiful patterns began to move and shift as if alive as the hands fluttered lightly as butterflies over the shelves. Under the curves and angles, Scotia could just make out many small thin scars crisscrossing the back of the old man’s hands.
“Why have you come here?”
“I need a curse.”
“Ah,” said the apothecary, “A curse. And for one so young…it is a sad world we live in, dear Charna, a sad world indeed.”
“Charna is not my name.”
“Well of course it isn’t!” snapped the apothecary, “You didn’t think I was talking to you, did you? Her name is Charna, and a good one it is too!” He stretched out his hand, and the owl flew out of the darkness and alighted on it, something small and grey and dead hanging from the wickedly curved beak. The owl turned her head, and examined Scotia with one beady eye.
“Charna—dark, it means. Very like to your own, it is. Scotia—dark one. And dark you are in truth, for there must be very little light in the heart of one so young—one so young who comes to me for a curse! The other little girls—they come for love charms, and for spells to make them beautiful. Why do you come for a curse and not a gentler magic?”
“What good would a love charm do me?” Scotia asked, bitter, “Could even your magic make this face beautiful?”
“My dear girl, you do not need a fair face to be loved! Look at me, would you call me fair?”
Mutely, Scotia shook her head.
“And my Charna loves me, and not out of pity for my tortured body. She is not repulsed by my scars, my shattered face, my twisted bones. You see? You need not have beauty to be loved. This sisters you wish to curse, they are beautiful. Do you think they are loved?”
“But of course they are! Their suitors are more numerous than the stars!”
“Ah, yes,” said the old man, “But they do not love the sisters. For something so perfect, so radiant there can be no love, only reverence. It is smaller, humbler things, the small imperfections of humanity that can be loved. The sisters already bear a curse greater than any you can impose upon them—perfection.”
“These are but the ravings of the mad, old man. I came for a curse, and a curse I will have, if I must tear it from you with the blade of a knife!”
“Peace, child,” the old man raised one withered, tattooed hand, “You will have your curse.”
The apothecary seized an ancient, tattered, and rather moth-eaten quill pen, a piece of parchment, and a bottle of scarlet ink. He began to write, the quill scratching insistently against the paper, forming illegible columns and spirals of strange symbols, full of sharp angles and broken lines.
“Here is your curse, dark one.” The apothecary quickly rolled the parchment into a scroll, tied it with a crimson ribbon, sealed with a bit of blood red wax.
“What shall I do with it?”
“All it needs to work is a drop of your own blood,” the apothecary smiled benignly at her, behind the tattoo he suddenly looked very weary. “Take this, it will remove the curse if you wish it.”
Rummaging through the contents of a drawer, the apothecary produced a stoppered vial, containing a clear liquid. He pressed it into her hand, closing her fingers tightly around the little glass bottle.
She turned on her heel and left without thanking him, the hem of her cloak sweeping a cookie jar off the table. As if falling through molasses it descended, and was caught just before it hit the floor. Scotia returned the jar to its proper place, and left the shop, blinking in the bright light of day.
“Look, Charna,” the apothecary said, pointing to the cookie jar, “Look! There is hope for her yet!”
The next day, when the sisters awoke, they found that their beauty had gone. Their skin had turned to gray green, their features were drawn and hard. And inside of smooth, warm skin, they were covered with a hard, metallic shell. Their once beautiful faces were as hard and cold as their black hearts. They attempted to continue as always, but young men were disgusted instead of entranced, and turned their faces away, closing their hearts to the sisters.
The mask of beauty that had covered the sister’s cold hearts had been torn away, the ice within slowly began to melt in exposure to the sun of discontent.
The two locked themselves in the highest tower, and were seldom seen by living eyes.
But, confined thus, the two sisters grew thoughtful, repentant. Slowly they thawed, and emerged from the tower kinder souls than they had been upon entering,
Seeing them, so happy in spite of their affliction, Scotia realized that the old apothecary had been correct. The sisters had deserved her pity, not her hatred, for perfection was more of a curse than imperfection every could be. Unstoppering the vial the old man had given her, she poured it over the parchment, letting the pure water wash away the red ink, blur and soften the sharp lines of hate.
Slowly, the sister’s cold, hard skin melted away, leaving in its wake the two perfect beings that Scotia had hated so. However, they were not as completely flawless as they had been. Their perfection was not absolute. Their eyes remained inhuman, metallic, but not hard iron as they had once been, but pools of molten copper and brass, warm and kind and imperfect.
Their suitors still were rejected, but they were sent home with regrets and kind words, and often with generous gifts. And when the sisters did find men they loved, they welcomed them ungrudgingly into their hearts.
And Scotia soon found a man who could look past her homely face and see her soul shining bright through the eyes that had always been like pools of molten gold.
Checkmate
Night begins to fall. Slowly, slowly, the sun sets, in a blaze of brilliant light.
A lonely girl falls asleep on a mattress on the floor, shivering under her thick down comforter, silently crying herself to sleep.
The sobs cease, and for several long moments silence reigns.
And there is movement, quiet scurrying, rustles, voices.
“Tonight!” the voices say, “Tonight we will win our freedom!”
Slowly, timidly, a phalanx of metal chess pieces makes its ways across the wood floor. The Queen leads the attack party, surrounded by knights and rooks, which in turn are guarded by pawns. Behind her comes the King with his bishops to guard him, again surrounded by infantry. Slowly, slowly, they climb over the mountains and valleys off the coverlet, until finally they see a hand, lying palm down above the blanket.
The chess pieces cheer faintly.
“Who would like to go first?” the queen asks, a note of vengeful triumph in her voice.
“The honour is yours by right, Majesty,” a knight said, bowing, “You are our Queen.”
She smiled, drew a long, slim, wickedly pointed sword, and sliced across the hand, spilling droplets of blood onto the beige comforter.
Another cheer, louder this time, and suddenly all the chessmen are hacking at the hand. Another appendage is spotted, and a handful of knights and rooks go with a bishop and several pawns to investigate. Soon they too are slicing away.
They soon disappear, leaving the girl to her dreams.
When she awakes, she is astonished to find that her hands are crisscrossed by thin cuts, which sting constantly. Shrugging, attributing the wounds to her cat’s razor sharp claws, she shoves the pain to a corner of her mind, and puts a large bookshelf in front of it, effectively shutting it out.
The next night, the same thing happens, but this time the chessmen manage to lift her hand, and the Queen manages two slashes on her wrist, following the line of the blue veins so near to the surface. They bleed more severely than any of the other cuts have, the Queen of the Stuardi—for that is what they are—is fascinated. She leans in closer and closer, touches her cold mouth to the warm blood.
Suddenly, heat floods her body. Pewter flesh turns to living tissue, metal clothes turn to fabric. The Queen is truly alive, as she has never been before. Seeing this, the rest of the Stuardi drink, they too are transformed.
But, within the hour, the magic has faded, leaving them metal once more, standing in their alloted places in their homeland, the Wasteland of Opposites, for the landscape, when seen from high above, is comprised solely of black and white squares.
The girl notices nothing that day, but she over the next week she begins to grow pale, lethargic. She is diagnosed with anemia, but allowed to remain in her home, as it is not yet severe.
However, she grows only worse.
One night, the Queen grows tired of her plaything. She orders all her army to assist her, and begins to slit the girl’s throat. There is soon a rent in the pale skin, from which blood flows freely. The Stuardi kneel and drink deeply, for their thirst for blood is not easily sated. The blood keeps coming, bathing the Stuardi, and as dawn breaks they return to the Wasteland of Opposites, happy.
The next morning, the girl’s brother screams as he discovers his sister’s bloodless corpse, her neck mangled and tiny bloody footprints on the floor.
Exactly a year later, a group of bloodstained chess pieces are found outside of an abandoned house, and taken home by a little girl. The Queen of the Stuardi smiled, and said to herself, There will be blood tonight!
A lonely girl falls asleep on a mattress on the floor, shivering under her thick down comforter, silently crying herself to sleep.
The sobs cease, and for several long moments silence reigns.
And there is movement, quiet scurrying, rustles, voices.
“Tonight!” the voices say, “Tonight we will win our freedom!”
Slowly, timidly, a phalanx of metal chess pieces makes its ways across the wood floor. The Queen leads the attack party, surrounded by knights and rooks, which in turn are guarded by pawns. Behind her comes the King with his bishops to guard him, again surrounded by infantry. Slowly, slowly, they climb over the mountains and valleys off the coverlet, until finally they see a hand, lying palm down above the blanket.
The chess pieces cheer faintly.
“Who would like to go first?” the queen asks, a note of vengeful triumph in her voice.
“The honour is yours by right, Majesty,” a knight said, bowing, “You are our Queen.”
She smiled, drew a long, slim, wickedly pointed sword, and sliced across the hand, spilling droplets of blood onto the beige comforter.
Another cheer, louder this time, and suddenly all the chessmen are hacking at the hand. Another appendage is spotted, and a handful of knights and rooks go with a bishop and several pawns to investigate. Soon they too are slicing away.
They soon disappear, leaving the girl to her dreams.
When she awakes, she is astonished to find that her hands are crisscrossed by thin cuts, which sting constantly. Shrugging, attributing the wounds to her cat’s razor sharp claws, she shoves the pain to a corner of her mind, and puts a large bookshelf in front of it, effectively shutting it out.
The next night, the same thing happens, but this time the chessmen manage to lift her hand, and the Queen manages two slashes on her wrist, following the line of the blue veins so near to the surface. They bleed more severely than any of the other cuts have, the Queen of the Stuardi—for that is what they are—is fascinated. She leans in closer and closer, touches her cold mouth to the warm blood.
Suddenly, heat floods her body. Pewter flesh turns to living tissue, metal clothes turn to fabric. The Queen is truly alive, as she has never been before. Seeing this, the rest of the Stuardi drink, they too are transformed.
But, within the hour, the magic has faded, leaving them metal once more, standing in their alloted places in their homeland, the Wasteland of Opposites, for the landscape, when seen from high above, is comprised solely of black and white squares.
The girl notices nothing that day, but she over the next week she begins to grow pale, lethargic. She is diagnosed with anemia, but allowed to remain in her home, as it is not yet severe.
However, she grows only worse.
One night, the Queen grows tired of her plaything. She orders all her army to assist her, and begins to slit the girl’s throat. There is soon a rent in the pale skin, from which blood flows freely. The Stuardi kneel and drink deeply, for their thirst for blood is not easily sated. The blood keeps coming, bathing the Stuardi, and as dawn breaks they return to the Wasteland of Opposites, happy.
The next morning, the girl’s brother screams as he discovers his sister’s bloodless corpse, her neck mangled and tiny bloody footprints on the floor.
Exactly a year later, a group of bloodstained chess pieces are found outside of an abandoned house, and taken home by a little girl. The Queen of the Stuardi smiled, and said to herself, There will be blood tonight!
The Dance of Death
My disease worsens, my days grow fewer, my life drains away…
And still they dance, whirling around me faster and faster, in a horrible travesty of joy, in a grotesque parody of celebration, faster, ever faster!
They are horrible, the dancers. They are clothed in burial shrouds, rotting flesh hanging from decayed bones, faceless horrors returned from the grave. They sing, in horrible low rasping voices, calling me, beckoning me, summoning me. I know that in not so long I will have to follow them, and it is that, not the idea of death itself, that frightens me so.
I know that my life will only last as long as I do not sleep, as soon as my eyes close I will belong to the dancers. I have not slept since I first saw them, but I grow weary, I will not be able to resist much longer.
The doctor came to see me again today. He has nothing new to tell me, my condition worsens, I must soon die. I find him a great fool, he tells me nothing that I do not already know. But it is not this disease that will kill me, no. I will be killed by my own nature, by the human need to rest.
The days fade slowly into nights, and I barely notice the rises and settings of the sun. The figures dance, twirling ever faster, hollow voices laughing gently, mocking my frail hold on life.
I have grown steadily worse, so much so that my parents telegraphed the priest before the doctor. The doctor arrived first, however, and told my parents that I had a few days left…for the moment he would give me a medicine to make me sleep.
I screamed when I heard this, screamed in mortal terror, for the faceless things reached toward me and their laughs grew louder, more like shrieks of pain…
The doctor comes closer, holding the bottle of poison that he calls medicine, and I writhe, lash out at him, anything to prevent a drugged sleep…but to no avail. I am too weak to physically hurt the man, and he will not heed my desperate pleas for mercy, he thinks that I am delirious. The circle of dancers draws closer.
“Hold her,” he orders my family, and they do, mother, father, brother, all helping to kill me. The spoonful of death draws closer, closer, I will not open my mouth. The doctor’s hand closes strong on my nose, I cannot breathe. As long as I do not sleep, I think, and keep my mouth closed, but my body does not want to die, and as soon as my vision begins to go dark I gasp, and my mouth is full of bitterness.
Taken by surprise, I swallow. Immediately I could feel the drug spreading silent through my veins, although it would be several minutes before the medicine took effect. Everyone left the room, leaving me to die alone in the dark. Slowly, slowly, my half hour of life trickles away, the song grows louder, the dance faster, the figures come closer, ever closer, arms outstretched.
One dancer in particular draws near, featureless face shadowed by a black hood, carrying a scythe, laughing. His smile widens, arms spread as if to embrace me. My pale hands weakly rise towards him, trying to push him away, but the drug grows stronger, tugging at my consciousness.
He comes closer, closer, the dancers laugh, and I give myself over to Death’s cold embrace, thankful, at the last, for nothingness and the absence of fear.
And still they dance, whirling around me faster and faster, in a horrible travesty of joy, in a grotesque parody of celebration, faster, ever faster!
They are horrible, the dancers. They are clothed in burial shrouds, rotting flesh hanging from decayed bones, faceless horrors returned from the grave. They sing, in horrible low rasping voices, calling me, beckoning me, summoning me. I know that in not so long I will have to follow them, and it is that, not the idea of death itself, that frightens me so.
I know that my life will only last as long as I do not sleep, as soon as my eyes close I will belong to the dancers. I have not slept since I first saw them, but I grow weary, I will not be able to resist much longer.
The doctor came to see me again today. He has nothing new to tell me, my condition worsens, I must soon die. I find him a great fool, he tells me nothing that I do not already know. But it is not this disease that will kill me, no. I will be killed by my own nature, by the human need to rest.
The days fade slowly into nights, and I barely notice the rises and settings of the sun. The figures dance, twirling ever faster, hollow voices laughing gently, mocking my frail hold on life.
I have grown steadily worse, so much so that my parents telegraphed the priest before the doctor. The doctor arrived first, however, and told my parents that I had a few days left…for the moment he would give me a medicine to make me sleep.
I screamed when I heard this, screamed in mortal terror, for the faceless things reached toward me and their laughs grew louder, more like shrieks of pain…
The doctor comes closer, holding the bottle of poison that he calls medicine, and I writhe, lash out at him, anything to prevent a drugged sleep…but to no avail. I am too weak to physically hurt the man, and he will not heed my desperate pleas for mercy, he thinks that I am delirious. The circle of dancers draws closer.
“Hold her,” he orders my family, and they do, mother, father, brother, all helping to kill me. The spoonful of death draws closer, closer, I will not open my mouth. The doctor’s hand closes strong on my nose, I cannot breathe. As long as I do not sleep, I think, and keep my mouth closed, but my body does not want to die, and as soon as my vision begins to go dark I gasp, and my mouth is full of bitterness.
Taken by surprise, I swallow. Immediately I could feel the drug spreading silent through my veins, although it would be several minutes before the medicine took effect. Everyone left the room, leaving me to die alone in the dark. Slowly, slowly, my half hour of life trickles away, the song grows louder, the dance faster, the figures come closer, ever closer, arms outstretched.
One dancer in particular draws near, featureless face shadowed by a black hood, carrying a scythe, laughing. His smile widens, arms spread as if to embrace me. My pale hands weakly rise towards him, trying to push him away, but the drug grows stronger, tugging at my consciousness.
He comes closer, closer, the dancers laugh, and I give myself over to Death’s cold embrace, thankful, at the last, for nothingness and the absence of fear.
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