#two pieces from 'a place called home' (the extended version) and one from 'when rats catch cats'

[pyrriax]

[cosmic-has-moved]

The Vamp N Wolf - Chapter 5

Link to the Ao3 version: HERE

It had only been a few minutes since the Mistress read and put away Hayden’s documents in a safe place, now all she needed to do was look for the maid mentioned in the files.

The rooms where the servants stay were at the other side of the castle in the basement, the room was reasonably big, with single beds against the wall starting from the room entrance to the bathroom. Bending down to enter the room, Alcina began examining the beds, most of her findings were only letters, snacks, books and personal toys.

Nearly giving up on the short investigation, she noticed a loose brick next to the bed on the right of the entrance. Removing said brick had confirmed her suspicions, a secret hole that had contained a syringe and a medium sized jar half-filled with what could definitely be her blood.

Grabbing the items and placing them on the bed, she examined the end of the bed. When a maid is hired, a small board with their name written is place at the end bed frame. There was a board there, but it was from the previous maid before she was used for food.

This could only mean that the maid in question was placed here during the draining process, quite sneaky of Mother Miranda.

Now the only thing the Mistress needed to do was find this maid, luckily for her it was easy. A scent of vanilla mixed with blood coming from the bathroom had been filling her nose, a scent she had made for the uniforms to help keep track of them for wolves and herself. Making her way to the bathroom and bending down, she peeked her head in before going in.

Glancing over at the shower stalls, she noticed a few strands of tied up hair in one of the stalls, bingo. Walking over to the stall and gripping the door, she tore the door open and stared down at the maiden.

The woman sat on the floor covering her mouth and trembling, it was clear that she as hiding from her. With a swift hand movement, Alcina held the maid up up the collar. The Mistress knew what all her maids looked like, this one not one of them.

“So I take it you’re the one Mother Miranda sent?” The tall Mistress asked, watching the terrified girl tremble in her grip.

Stammering out her words, the maid answered. “Ye-Yes, Madam.” She gasped in terror as her grasp she was held at got tight. “I-I was only doing what she told me to do, I swear!” She cried out loud before whimpering in silence.

Giving a slight knowing nod, Alcina dropped her. “Thought as much, but did she plan on picking you up or leave you here to stay?”

Looking down at the ground, not daring to look at the Mistress in the eyes. “She had promised to bring me back home when she next arrives here.”

A smirk formed on the pale lady’s face, “Well she was just here before, she must’ve forgotten about you.” She extended her claw and lifted the young girl’s chin, her face now filled with shock. “Or she lied to you. If that’s the case, I guess I’ll have to show you what I do to unwanted guest.”

Lifting her clawed hand up, she watched as the poor maid sat there too scared to move. “No hard feelings, sweetie.”

___

Nibbling on her thumb making sure to clean it of remaining blood, Alcina stood back as the servants took care of the body. Cassandra standing next to her, eyeing her shiny new necklace.

“Looks like Hayden finally finished it.”

Her ears perked up upon hearing that and she looked down at her daughter. “You knew about this?” She gently held the jewelry under her index finger.

Cassandra smiled and nodded. “I helped him with the flower design, he’s been stuck on it for a while because you liked a lot of flowers.” She turned her head away. “I only mentioned that it was that specific one you really loved.”

Huffing out a smile, she patted her child’s head. “I love it.”

“MOTHER!”

The two looked at the source of the distasteful screech. It was Daniela, holding up a torn up and slobber covered brown skirt. It was rather ugly.

“Look at what the mutt did to my skirt!” She shouted angrily.

…

“Let’s take that as a blessing, Daniela.” Alcina responded while holding back a giggle.

Too bad Cassandra could hold it back, she burst into laughter whilst pointing at her younger sister.

Even more angered by their reactions she growled. “This is serious!”

Calming down from her fit, the youngest replied back. “You’re right, it is. A wolf have better fashion sense than you.”

That’s when their Mother decided to let her fits of laughter out, to Daniela’s great dismay as she continued to whine.

___

It had been a few hours after the maid incident, it was easily and quickly dealt with thankfully enough.

After the clean up the daughters were called to the family room, Alcina sat on her chair and waited for them. They were quick to arrive, their expressions of worry visible.

Waiting for them to sit down on the couch, she spoke up. “I think it’s about time I tell you three what’s going on, this involves Mother Miranda and Hayden.” Getting out her cigarette holder that already had a stick in and lit it up.

The three were confused at first but still responded. Bela being the first one to. “Does it involves that conversation you had with her, about Hayden being given your blood?”

The Mistress took a puff of her smoke and exhaled. “Mother Miranda has been using Hayden for an experiment, he’s a full wolf but has my blood running through him.” Glancing at their shocked looks, she continued. “I don’t know how he’s surviving, but the thing is that she’s using him to make a vampire and wolf breed.”

Daniela butted in “But wasn’t the first experiment related to that a complete failure? Why is she doing it again?”

Alcina sighed “She wants to make an army that only obeys her, the mixed race part is most likely because she knows they’ll be more powerful. I’m against the idea for reasons, but I can’t stop it.” Taking another drag of her cigarette and blowing out the smoke. “But the main point here is that no matter what, Hayden shouldn’t be treated more than just a lab rat, he’s your brother and my son. Treat him with the same respect we give each other, understand?”

The three looked at each other, Cassandra and Bela nodding before Daniela hesitantly did so as well. “We understand, Mother.”

Putting her cigarette away and standing up off her chair, she walked over to her daughters and knelt down to hug them tight, kissing them on their foreheads. Them loudly protesting from the embarrassing motherly embrace. It would take some good scrubbing to get the lipstick off her foreheads.

___

A day had now passed and Mother Miranda had kept her words. Hayden had returned home, granted he did look drained but overall he was in one piece and that was all that mattered.

Hayden upon walking into the Dimitrescu castle was to rest in his room, Alcina had made sure he was comfy after what she assumed to be a rough night. She helped him to bed and let him fall asleep, Hayden immediately passed out upon his head hitting the pillow.

The Mistress left the room and closed the door, quietly wishing him to rest well. After that she made her way to her room, the castle needed a new servant.

It was around dinner time was when Hayden surfaced, the smell must’ve woken him up judging by the bed hair. Sadly enough for him Alcina told him to wash up before eating, which he hesitantly did.

___

The next day, it was also the day Alcina decided to let Hayden be the one to interview newcomers for work. She of course watched from afar making sure nothing went wrong, he had been doing a great job so far to the Mistress’s relief.

After the interview was done and Hayden sent them off, Alcina waited for him to come with the results. Watching him come inside and to the balcony she was on.

“So.” Alcina poured her son a glass of wine and gestured him to sit next to her. “Anyone of interest?”

Complying with her and sitting down, Hayden gave her the resumes he had picked out. “A lot of boring ones that don’t have experience, but I did find three of interest.” Picking up his drink he continued. “Claire Velvetine, Sarah Jinkins and Velma Dalph.”

Looking over at the files and pondered on who to choose, they only needed one maiden, but it was tempting to hire these. “Oh I hate these decision making moments.” Cupping her chin and huffing in slight frustration. “I suppose I’ll go with Claire Velvetine, she seems to know what she’s doing.”

Hayden agreed while sipping his drink before placing the cup down. “Figured you will, you always go for the young lookin’ ones.” He said before chuckling. Well he wasn’t wrong.

“As long as they’re legal, everything will be fine.” Alcina said before taking a sip of her drink. “That does remind me. Before moving here, do you remember your previous area of living?” Putting her glass down, the Mistress stared at him and noticed a slight change to his expression.

Hayden blinked a few times and furrowed his brows before averting his eyes away from hers, nibbling on his bottom in thought. “It’s a bit fuzzy, but I do remember being in a stone room, different from yours.” He looked up at her and tilted his head “And after that I woke up in front of you. That’s all I can remember.”

Tilting her head and cupping her chin, the Mistress began thinking “If that’s all you remember, than I won’t have to worry about questioning you.” Getting up off her chair and grabbing her cup, she continued “I may have to ask her myself.” and with that, she walked inside.

Hayden sat there visibly confused, “Question me on what?”

___

A few days have passed by now and life has been normal so far. The new maiden that had been hired has been a wonderful job and been handling the daughters without breaking a sweat, she’s definitely a keeper.

Nothing of interest has happened, besides Hayden growing more and more interested in the new Maiden. He should know by now that the Mistress is always the first one to taste the servants, but werewolves are always kinda possessive. Alcina might have competition.

___

24th of March 2019, a whole year had passed now. Alcina sat at her desk going through book on animal anatomy, she was invested in it until she heard a knock at the door.

Closing the door she called to the person to come in, it was Hayden. “What is it, Hayden?”

Walking over to her and sitting on her bed, he got out a piece of folded paper. “I did some more patrolling and noticed a few more empty underground huts, so I copied the map of the castle and drew where each hut was located.” He unfolded the paper and gave it to her.

Looking at the sketchy mess of the map, Alcina examined where he drew the huts. They were surrounding the village and castle. Letting out a huff she gave the map back to him and crossed her arms. “Sneaky bastards, I’ll have to send someone down to investigate.” Standing up off her bed, Hayden replied “I’ll investigate them, I have a good sense of the area.” He gave her a smirk “And I found them myself, so I at least gotta search them.”

Mirroring his smirk, the Mistress tilted her head. “Alright, but take one of your sisters, it’s always a good idea to have a back up.”

Nodding in understanding, he left the room. Getting up off her chair and standing at the window, Alcina sighed. “If they managed to get six huts around my castle without getting caught, I’m gonna have to prepare the kids for a break in.”

___

Now was finally the time for Alcina to do something she’s been putting off for way too long. Paperwork.

She sat there signing the paperwork, bored out of her brain. Drinking her wine and rubbing the bridge of her nose, “Why must I do this to myself?” She asked herself before finishing her red liquid goodness. The good news is that she only had sixty pieces of paper to sign, that was her only light of hope.

Gulping down her wine, she went back to work. Until there was a knock at the door, sighing at the sudden interruption. She called the person in and was happy to see that it was Claire Velvetine, her wonderful work had given the tall Mistress a bit of relief and respect towards her.

Bowing to her and going to work cleaning the office, the brunette began humming. The Maiden would hum around the Mistress after knowing that it kept her calm, Alcina enjoyed it. Calmly she continued working.

After she was done writing and putting her quill away, Alcina looked over at Claire who was cleaning bookshelf behind her. Sitting back and closing her eyes, she let the hum invade her ears.

Suddenly the humming stopped and Alcina opened her eyes to see why she stopped, the maiden had finished cleaning and was putting the last book she had dusted back in. “I am done, my lady.” Claire bowed “I’ll now be going to clean the family room.”

Seeing a chance knowing that Hayden wasn’t around and her daughters being busy, The Mistress shoot her shot. “Thank you, but may I ask where you managed to hum like that?” Resting her chin on her palm and crossing her legs in her chair, she smirked. “A lot of the servants here hum as well, but yours seem to catch my interest.”

The maiden smiled in response, “Why thank you, my lady. I started practicing when I was quite young, my little brother would often have night terrors and being in the same room with him, I would sing to him.”

Arching her brow in interest, Alcina asked. “Such responsibility for a child.” She stood up off her chair and walked closer to her, kneeling down to the young woman’s eye level and grasping her chin. The maiden blinked at her but still remained calm. “Why not come to my bed chambers tonight and give me a show?” Her ears perked upon the woman’s brown eyes glancing at her crimson lips.

Claire looked back up at her slightly wide eyed and became flustered, but she still responded. “Why I would like to, Mistress.” She gently removed Alcina’s hand from her face and smirked. “I am afraid that I prefer being taken to dinner first.” Turning around and opening the door, the maiden left.

The Mistress bit her bottom lip and covered her mouth, she had struck something she hadn’t struck before in a long time. “Oh I am definitely keeping you, Claire,” She playfully purred to herself, she would’ve been mad at the reject, but she can’t blame a lady for wanting dinner first.

Standing up straight and clearing her throat, Alcina walked out of her office and towards her room. “While I’m free I better go check that book.” She went to grab her door handle

and stopped getting a sudden wave of worry, a feeling that she couldn’t shake.

___

Instinctively she walked inside her room and looked out her window, in the far distance there was a trail of smoke coming from the tress. Right where one of the secret huts were.

Grabbing her coat and getting the other girls, Alcina ran to the location of the smoke. Praying that her children weren’t harmed. Bela and Cassandra followed behind her, both just as worried.

Running close to the location Alcina saw Hayden in his werewolf form on top of Daniela, he was covering her body from the sunlight while dragging himself up to the shade, collapsing upon getting his top half away from the sun. As the three got close and pulled them into the shade, Alcina saw pieces of shrapnel and debris into Hayden’s back as he slowly transformed back to normal, his torn clothes failing to cover his nude body.

Getting him off of Daniela and laying him down on his chest, she got a good of the damage. From the distance was an explosion hole, there must’ve been a bomb in there. Daniela was knocked out with a bloody broken nose and her left leg burnt from not being covered quick enough, overall she was still in one piece. Bela wrapped her sisters leg with a cloth and got Cassandra’s help to carry her.

Hayden’s back area was horribly burnt, Alcina gently pulled the broken pieces out of his back before picking him up with her coat but made sure not to touch his back. The Mistress looked at her injured kids and bit her bottom lip in guilt, they were fine but they’re still hurt.

After checking for more wounds, Alcina, Bela and Cassandra carried the two back to the castle. The servants were quick to get the tools needed to help them and ready their beds.

___

Daniela laid in her bed still unconscious, her leg bandaged up and resting on top of a cushion. Her mother sitting next to her bed holding a small cup of blood, sprinkling a few herbs in it before stirring it with her finger.

Her and Hayden have been asleep for about a day now, Alcina hadn’t been able to sleep yet and has been doing nothing but look over the two. Tapping her finger on the edge of the glass to get the liquid off, she perked up seeing Daniela stir awake.

“Dani?”

Cracking her eyes open and looking at her mother, Daniela sat up whilst groaning in discomfort. “Mother?” She mumbled before resting her head against the bed frame.

Smiling in relief at her daughter finally being conscious, she swiftly placed the cup on her bedside table and hugged her tight. “I am so glad you’re alright, Dani.” She said to her child as she planted kisses on her cheek.

Not having enough energy to fight back, Daniela accepted the hug before grabbing the cup of blood. “Ohhh blood drink.” She took a sip and immediately yelped in disgust. “Oh god it’s medicine blood!”

Chuckling as Alcina let go and she patted her shoulder, she thought Daniela would’ve gotten use to the blood medicine by now, but she guessed she thought wrong. She gave Daniela sometime to fully awake before asking what happened.

After finishing the drink and grimacing from the taste, Daniela suddenly darted her head to her mother, a look of concern on her face. “Wh-Where’s Hayden?” She went to get off the bed but flinched to a stop upon her leg throbbing in pain. “Ah fuck!”

Quickly putting her daughter back in the resting position, she did wonder why Daniela had grown concerned for him knowing that the two don’t get along, She smirked at the thought that her feral like daughter had finally started to like Hayden. “He’s in his room recovering.” A serious look now formed on the tall Mistress’s face. “Daniela, what happened?”

___

Dragging her feet on the snow covered ground, the redhead groaned in annoyance. “Why did I agree to this again?” She stared at Hayden who was just looking around cautiously. “What are we even doing again?”

The young man sighed, “I told you just five minutes ago that we’re going to investigate one of the underground areas.” He stopped near a weirdly shaped pile of snow and kneeled down. “You don’t have to help, just sit back while I do the work. I’m only bringing you because Mother said so.” Digging his hand through the pile and tugging on something, opening a steel door leading to an underground room.

This suddenly peaked the woman’s interest as she was the first one to enter it, to Hayden’s protest of course. “Heck yeah! A secret room!” Examining the room eagerly, she huffed disappointingly upon realizing that it was practically a modern office with a fridge, bathroom and a bed. “Oh come one!” She exclaimed loudly. “At least have a naughty magazine damn it!”

Closing the entrance after walking in and going over to her, Hayden began looking around. “I did warn you that it’ll be boring.” Walking up to the old fashioned computer and pressing a few buttons, he gestured to the bulky device. “Here, I put a game on for you. Play while I look.”

Already on the chair in front of the computer, she eagerly played whatever game he had put on for her. “Heck yeah! Prepare to die, zombies.” She cackled loudly as her baby brother looked around the small bunker. The quietness being broken by the electronic sound effects from the computer.

Hayden chuckled “Never took you for a video game person.” He asked before tearing the bed.

“When I get the chance I play, Mother isn’t a fan of modern technology and doesn’t allow things like game consoles in our home.” Daniela groaned in annoyance after getting killed in game. “Some of our victims have such devices and we play with them a bit before Mother destroys them. She can be very lame sometimes.”

Opening the fridge door and riffling through it, secretly nibbling on the edible snacks in there. “Wow that’s sad, maybe we should try to convince her.” Hayden closed the door and walked over the desk, going through the drawers. “And if that fails, I’m good at finding hidden places.”

Daniela giggled “Oh I would love to see you try to do that, she has a thing for knowing all of her castle’s room.”

“Still worth a shot.” Hayden went back to the bed and lifted it up.

Rolling her eyes, the woman replied. “Okay than.” She smiled.

It only took about an hour for Daniela to get bored of the game and groaned loudly, “Uuuuuuugh! This is boring.” Leaning her head back to stare at the ceiling, she noticed the vents and began thinking. “You think they’ll hide stuff in vents?”

Putting down the bed and dusting himself, Hayden walked over to her. “I mean I guess so.” He looked up at where she was staring and crossed his arms, the vent door was too small for him to fit in and he knew that. “You need a lift?”

Sliding off the chair and standing up, she gestured him to come closer. “Yeah, give me a lift.” She let Hayden come close to her and hop onto his shoulders, gently lifting the crate up she looked inside.

The first thing Daniela saw upon peaking her head was a small device with a beeping red light on it, “Hay-” Before she could finish herself, she got tugged down close to Hayden’s chest before hearing an ear piercing explosion.

When she opened her eyes all she could see was fur, ashy blonde fur. Her body felt tight from being squeezed closed and her left leg stinging like hell just like her nose, she could only smell her own blood.

She felt herself getting dragged, hearing a croaky distorted voice quietly calling her name. She could’ve sworn it sounded like Hayden, she couldn’t be fully sure as she lost consciousness again.

___

Daniela finished retelling what she could remember to her mother and sisters. “And I guess that’s it.” She said before eating a small piece of meat, her face frowning a bit. It wasn’t fully clear, but Alcina felt as if Daniela could’ve felt guilty about Hayden being harmed from protecting her. She didn’t need to express this as her other daughters teased her about it.

“So Hayden’s finally growing on you.” Cassandra asked with a grin before getting a pillow thrown in the face as a response.

“Well now she has too because he nearly got his whole back destroyed.” Bela added before getting a soft punch in the chest by Daniela.

“Calm down, girls.” Alcina added before speaking more. “So from what we know now, these huts have emergency bombs in them. I just hope they don’t send signals out, that’ll just be icing to the annoying cake.”

Laying down on her bed and stretching, Daniela scratched her stomach. “Eh, if they come we’ll just eat them.”

Alcina got up off the seat and sighed “Well the main thing right now is that you’re okay.” She walked over to the door. “Now rest up, I’ll go check up on Hayden.” She said before walking out of the room and closing the door, leaving the three alone.

___

Standing at the doorway of Hayden’s bedroom, Alcina watched as two of the maidens tended to Hayden’s wounds. Removing old bandages and applying the needed medicine before wrapping him back up, she was thankful that the maidens were gentle.

After they were done and packed up, one maiden left while the other, Claire, stayed. The brunette moved the young man’s head up to remove the pillow and fluffed it up before putting it back under his head. She even made sure he was in a breathable position giving that he was resting on his front, the Mistress appreciated it deeply.

Turning to the Mistress and bowing, Claire went to walk out of the room but stopped to say something. “His breathing is at a normal pace and I’ve noticed his eyelids moving a bit, He’ll most likely wake up later today.”

Alcina smiled at Claire as she left, it was now only her and Hayden. Closing the door and grabbing a chair, she sat next to the sleeping man and watched his back move from his steady breathing.

“You’ve saved one of my daughters and are left unconscious in bed again, Hayden.” She let out a soft chuckle. “It better not be a pattern, patterns like this never end good.” Stroking his hair, the Mistress began humming softly.

She continued humming for a while before slowly coming to a stop, leaning in close to his face moving his fringe out of the way, she planted her lips on his forehead. “Rest well, sweetie.” The Mistress stood up off the chair and left the room, making sure to close the door for his privacy.

[nieuwsuitdejungle]

Blog Post Two

Sunday 19th November

“Just occasionally you find yourself in an odd situation. You get into it by degrees and in the most natural way but when you are right in the midst of it you are suddenly astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about.” – Thor Heyerdahl 

The Prologue

Let me first provide you with a little background story on the Grande Synthe Jungle (which is where our team mostly operates on the ground) and the role of the Refugee Women Centre, in the hope that my future blog posts will make a bit more sense.

In March 2016 France’s first ever refugee camp to meet international humanitarian standards opened near the northers port of Dunkirk called Linière. The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) had built around 200-375 cabins at the Grande-Synthe site to house 2,500 people based there in the hope of reaching Britain. Most of those migrants – mainly Kurds from Iraq – had been living for months in atrocious conditions in the boggy, rat-infested camp of Grande-Synthe. Damien Careme, the local Green mayor, had fought for the right to build the new camp against the wishes of the French government, which had refused to pay a centime towards it.

Three Iraqi Kurd families were the first to be bussed to the new site, whose wooden cabins boasted proper lavatories, heating, a collective kitchen, public lighting and a field hospital but no fences. The camp also had no police controls to enter or exit, with authorities hoping this would make it easier to persuade migrants to move in.  

The Refugee Women Centre has been present in Grande Synthe even before this first official camp. In 2015, in the first camp of Grande Synthe, Baroch, women would rarely – if ever – leave their tents, because they were either felt uncomfortable with the conditions in the camp or were not allowed by their husbands to go to the social spaces that weren’t female-only. This led to the creation and opening of a first Women’s Centre in two parts: one tent for the distribution of women’s clothing and hygiene products and another to serve as a social space where activities would be organised.

Based on this idea, a Women’s Centre was officially integrated in the planning of the Linière camp in the spring of 2016. The Women’s Centre was a community kitchen reserved for women, and their children if they wanted, in which volunteers would organise material distributions, activities, an generally provide a space in which women could spend time.

The overall management of the camp was initially handed to Utopia 56, a French organization that ran the day-to-day activities of the camp overall and ensured the presence of volunteers in different areas. This included the Women’s Centre. At the end of the summer 2016, the management of the camp was given to a different organization called Afeji, who only did general management, but didn’t place their employees in specific sections of the camp.

This is when independent volunteers arrived, during the Autumn and Winter of 2016, to take care of the Women’s Centre, and to ensure the continuation of the activities and distributions that were taking place until then. Those volunteers redefined the workings of the centre, boosted the activities and interactions between the women living in the camp and the volunteers, developed its support network around Dunkirk and abroad, and officially created the Refugee Women’s Centre as an independent charity.

Since the fire that destroyed the camp in April 2017, the Women’s Centre has gone mobile. Using a van, blankets and sometimes a tarp to create temporary safe spaces, the team on the ground continues to provide close support to female refugees in Dunkirk, and has more recently started to do so in Calais as well.

Week One statistics

Number of days I’ve been here: 7

Number of showers I’ve had: 2

Number of times I’ve wondered why on earth I came to this place: 0

Number of therapy sessions I’ve been to: 2

Number of cats currently in the mobile home: 4

Number of truly amazing and inspiring people I’ve met: countless

Number of bonfire-on-the-beach-sessions: 1

My first week of being in Northern France is almost over. Time to try and tell you about my experiences so far. I say try, since I clearly underestimated writing a blog, or frankly writing anything. Getting my thoughts on paper feels like a diabolic task. I’ve been struggling with this post for well over a week now. In the end I’ve decided to stop editing and rewriting. Here is the raw version, that might well leave you in the same confused state of mind I was and to some extend still am.

Let me start by telling you about what my housing situation looks like. I live with 5 truly amazing young women (and four cats) in a teeny tiny mobile home on a camping site by a slightly muddy but gorgeous beach. It’s about 11 degrees Celsius during the day and 5 degrees Celsius by night. The mobile home is our cabin, our shelter. It’s where our team catches up on the day’s events, cooks dinner and share beers. It’s a warm, cosy, chaotic space lit by candles. There is very little room with food, boxes of children’s activities and personal paraphernalia littering every surface. Moving around feels like playing real life Tetris with human beings as the tiles. The shower was broken for the first five days of my time here which means we were using bottles of hot water from the kettle to wash ourselves whilst we waited for the campsite owner to come fix it. I took my second shower of the week this morning, and let me tell you, it was amazing. Not showering for five days after being outside in the cold basically all day is a true gift.

The thing about arriving in a new place, is that you need to figure out how everything works. It’s like being in a dark cave with only a lighter to help you see. You need to find patterns, familiar faces and structures. Last year I arrived in Hamburg after the summer to study there for a year. Which was a completely new city for me and I didn’t know anybody there. However, it was still a place where I knew the language and things soon felt familiar. This new place however, is next-level-new. I went here with a very open mind. Of course I did do some research on the situation, but that didn’t prepare me.

Writing a comprehensive blog post on my first week in this state of mind, where I’m still trying to figure out everything is thus also quite a task. So forgive me if this post is very much all over the place. It feels like I’m making a really big puzzle, but I don’t have all the pieces yet.

This place feels like dystopian novel, as someone here accurately described it. And I’m now living in it. A place where the biggest supermarket I’ve ever seen is only a couple of hundred meters away from the jungle. A place where children of only two years old are sleeping outside in the cold and rain. Where the police takes any blankets or sleeping bags they find or spray them with pepper spray to render them useless. From where you can literally see the white cliffs of Dover, that are so close for some, but almost unreachable for others. Where asking the question ‘can you check if we have more sleeping bags for children’ is now the most ordinary thing. Where hotels refuse to rent out a room to a couple with a two year old because they are migrants. A place where people as young as 18 years old volunteer to try to make a difference and show some humanity. A place where trench foot has returned to the front of Dunkirk, and scabies is the order of the day. Where days off are as holy and precious as they are difficult. Where contrasts are so big, it seems as if we are living in a parallel world, like none of this is actually real. A place that I’m falling both in and out of love with more and more every day.

I’m writing this post on my second day off. We take our days off very seriously here. I slept in which felt reenergizing, had a home-cooked lunch and then headed for the beach. Our cabin is only a few hundred meters from the sea which has basically been my lifelong dream. I went for a long walk by myself hoping that this would provide me some time to get my thoughts into order. The beach here is stunning, the sun was out and the only sound I heard was the waves crushing on the shore.

I ran through this first mind-boggling week in my head. Starting on Tuesday when I first encountered the jungle in Grande-Synthe, to Thursday when I got to know so many different life saving organisations working on the ground and Saturday when we did administration and coordinated a dentist session in the jungle.

Every morning I wake up to wrap myself up in fleecy layers, pull my trusty fanny pack a little closer round my waist, get some breakfast inside of me and head of to the jungle with the team. We mostly operate in the jungle of Grande Synthe which is located close to Dunkirk. We start by preparing the orders we took the previous day in the warehouse we share with other organizations. These orders mostly consist of clothes and hygiene products. After that we take our van into the jungle to see what the situation is like, hand out orders, take new orders and do activities with the kids and the women, creating a safe space for them. There are around 200 young men living in the jungle and about seven families with little children (however, the numbers change every day).

The situation in the jungle has been changing quite a bit over the past few weeks. The police are carrying out major evictions in the jungle lately. Most, but not all the families have been bussed out to reception centres. No one knows exactly where they’ve gone.The single men mostly remain. The State wants people gone, out of the jungle, they slash tents and take possessions, but many refugees return. While some will claim asylum in France many wish to reach family or friends in the UK. The evictions mean that our team now also visits families in accommodation to provide them with the things they need.

My first encounter with the jungle was on Tuesday. After driving our van through the misty fields of Northern France, just in time to see the breath-taking sunrise we arrived at the warehouse from where we operate. With the team we walked from the warehouse to the jungle. Since it was still fairly early, not that many people were around (most people try to make it to the UK at night and then try to sleep a bit after that, which means people won’t really be around until midday). The busses were already waiting to take people into accommodation centres. We asked around whether people were getting on the bus or not and tried to make sure the ones who wanted actually got on the bus. We also took some orders and then headed back to the warehouse to prepare them. After which we returned with our van to play with the kids and distribute.

And yes, yes it is striking to see how two year olds are sleeping outside with these temperatures, how a nine year old who speaks perfect English comes to pick up his mum’s order and hands us back a bag full of warm blankets because they already have some. It’s truly heart-breaking to see people living in these conditions. Every day new people amongst which many unaccompanied minors arrive at the jungle. A seventeen year old boy came up to me and asked me for a sleeping bag. He just arrived in the jungle and  the only thing that would provide him warmth that night was his thin jacket, he looked desperate, out of place and cold. I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that there are so many unaccompanied minors in the jungle. This is reality, this is happening in Europe, this is what is happening right here in Northern France.

In the afternoon we went to the warehouse of Help Refugees (one of the biggest organisations helping refugees in Northern France and other places in Europe) that is located in Calais, to pick up stuff for our afternoon distribution for women in the jungle Calais (about which I will tell you more about later). We returned to the warehouse in Calais in the evening for a training session with the amazing Dr. Lynne Jones who is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, writer, researcher, and relief worker. We did a ‘personal resilience and supporting others’ training session in which we learned a lot about our work on the ground and how we as volunteers can do it better. I feel like it’s so good to reflect on our work and take some time to understand why we are doing what we are doing and how this affects the people around us, but also how we can justify ourselves and to trust our ability to help others. About working with people who have lost so much and have no certainty considering their future whatsoever.

My other therapy session of the week was on Friday, where me and other members of the team met up with ‘the refugee resilience collective’. They support volunteers in the traumatic and stressful situations in which they are operating. It’s great to experience that also as a volunteer there are places you can go when you want to talk since this is clearly not your ordinary moonlight job. The thing that has actually struck me the most this week is the warmth and resilience of everyone I’ve met here. That is the refugee women, children and men I met, but also all the volunteers. People are so caring. From other volunteers bringing you a warm lunch during therapy, to unexpected smiles, hugs and encouragements. One of the men in Grande Synthe asked me if we get paid to do this work, and when I said we didn’t, he looked at me in surprise and told me he was so happy that humanity still exists.

The team of lovely ladies I work with are also an absolute dream. Going home to our cabin in the evenings feels so safe. Having these miraculously resilient and kind-hearted bundles of joy around me fills me with warmth. We share our highs and lows of the day, eat delicious home cooked meals, read, write, drink, watch documentaries and have conversations about both world problems and spirit animals. We make bonfires on the beach, look at the stars and dream of brighter futures for this planet and the humans that inhabit it.

I’ll leave it here for now, thank you for making it this far. Even though I deeply want to share more experiences, I feels as if I lack the vocabulary to express them and I’ve already used so many words to puzzle this together. In my next post I will write on difficult distributions, my one day trip to Dover and home cooked falafel dinners.

[meltingalphabet]

The Black

I’ve never liked hospitals. They feel dirty. All the supposedly white surfaces permanently stained a dull brownish-yellow from age, bodily fluids, illness, and death.

Yesterday, I decided to clean out my attic. I have the unfortunate destiny of being a pack-rat, like my dad, and a minimalist neat-freak like my mom. This dynamic of their vastly different lifestyles would converge like water and oil, never mixing but instead bumping up against each other. Frustrated with the inevitable resistance from the other side, they would fight while I turned up the small television in the living room in an attempt to drown them out.

However, when those opposing forces exist within the same person, there is no way to release that friction. After hours or days, my parents would come up with a compromise. My father would promise to get rid of some stuff and my mother would buy a new bookcase or other organization system to try and sort his mess and make the house more livable for everyone. I, however, have a mental breakdown that involves throwing everything I own onto the floor and then reshelving each item in what my delusional mind convinces me is a better organizational system. My love of stuff and my hate of clutter trying to live at peace with compromises for no one. Some days I’ll wake and feel as if I am going to suffocate under all my shit. Some days I wake up and relish the full and interesting life around me, how each item and book tells another story completely unique to myself.

Cleaning out the attic has always been my least favorite household chore. I take spring cleaning very seriously, and so it needed to be done, yet, the attic is my stuff’s safe space. A place where odds and ends that don’t fit neatly on my shelves can still have a home. Yet, walking up into that cluttered, dusty, filled-to-the-brim space always makes my heart feel heavy and claustrophobic.

I took a deep breath, and exhaled, reminding myself that once I started working, I’d get in the zone and feel better.

An hour later, I groaned against the strain of lifting a heavy box of books and moving it to my large tower of “must keep” boxes. You never throw out books.

The box dropped with a heavy plop, and I heard a smaller thud behind it, sounding muffled in comparison. Craning my neck, I looked behind my tower of boxes and saw a white worn book, face down on the dusty floor. I recognized the tear on the top right corner of the now more off-white than white cover, and the large crease at the bottom. It was my cherished copy of J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey.

Using all of my upper arm strength, which isn’t much, I pushed the tower, allowing me access to the dropped artifact from my youth. My hand reached for the book, and I stopped, hovering just inches from its cover. At the side of the attic, where the roof meets the floor at a sharp angle, was a large black mass. I stayed there, hand extended towards one of my most prized possessions, mouth agape.

The black, whatever it was, was inherently disturbing. It didn’t look like mold, at least not any I knew of. Instead of spread out like most mold or fungi, this blackness was very much clumped together. It was as if it was simultaneously one organism and made up of hundreds of individual pieces. The closest thing I can compare it to is used coffee grounds. It looked dry, but also wet. And it looked like it was moving.

I shuddered, and grabbed the book, holding it to my chest protectively. The black looked almost like a swarm of ants. But, it also didn’t. It seemed to have the illusion of moving, without actually moving.

The black mass had a foul presence, like something I shouldn’t touch. I bent over to get a better look, letting my face hover above it as close as I felt comfortable. No matter how I looked at it, the black mass looked the same. Like wet, but also dry, moving, but not. I crinkled my nose, and began to back away, wondering how on earth I would clean it up, when I heard a sucking noise. Not quite like a vacuum. More like someone slurping the last remnants of liquid through a straw. I looked around trying to find the source before realizing that it was coming from the black mass. And it wasn’t just making a sound now, I could feel suction dragging me closer and closer to the blackness.

I tried to pull away, but the force was too strong. I cried out, attempting to throw myself backwards, but my face and body were drawn down. I screamed as it grew to encompass my entire vision. Soon everything was black and grainy and damp. My face was being drawn forward, until I was mere inches from the black. I tried to scream, but the sucking drowned out any other noise.

Then, total darkness. The blackness filled my mouth and my lungs, yet did not suffocate me. I tried to blink, but I could no longer tell when my eyes were closed and when they were opened. My existence felt heavy and thick, like I was wrapped in blankets that were being absorbed into my very being.

And then it stopped. Stunned, I blinked at the blinding lights above me. I was standing in the waiting room of a hospital. It looked vaguely familiar, which I brushed off, assuming it just looked like any other hospital, when my heart stopped.

“What room is Heather Mitchell in?” It was unmistakably the voice of my mother. I turned towards the nurses station, and saw, to my horror and amazement, that it was, in fact, my mom. The woman who birthed and raised me. The woman who died two years ago from cancer.

Yet, she didn’t look like the woman whose hand I held day and night in that hospital, her grey frizzy hair barely contained in the elastic at the back of her neck, her ice blue eyes faded with illness and exhaustion.

She looked upset, but a healthy upset. Not like that long year through chemotherapy. I stared at her, tears welling up in my eyes. I went to take a step towards her, when I saw the young girl standing at her side, the top of her head barely reaching my mother’s ribcage.

It was me. It was me when I was a pre-teen. My face stained white with tears, my cheeks still damp.

I realized why the hospital looked so familiar. It wasn’t because it looked like every other hospital. This was the hospital my grandmother died in when I was 12, 24 years ago.

I remembered this day. The day my grandmother finally passed away. I watch my mother and I walk into room 802, hearts heavy with the knowledge of the inevitable. I stared at the door, dumbstruck. How could this be? How could I be here?

Like a flash, the memories came back to me. I remembered walking into her room, the bodily smell of age mixed with lysol, shit, and bleach assaulting my nostrils. My grandmother laying on the bed, her eyes opened a sliver, her grey pupils staring up at the ceiling, unaware of the two people crying by her bedside.

I looked down at Franny and Zooey in my hands. The novella that was given to me on this day, by a stranger. The stories that had gotten me through the death of my grandmother, the struggles of being a teenager, the harsh truths and realizations of suddenly finding myself as an adult, and finally, the death of my own mother. The book I had received as a gift from an angel.

My gaze rose back to the door and I watch my mother leave the room, tears flowing freely from her eyes. I remembered this. Mom left the hospital room to call Uncle Ron. That was when the angel came in. An angel, I suddenly realized, that looked a lot like 36 year old me.

Filled with the knowledge of what I had to do, I walked towards the room. The nurses ignored me as I passed their large circular desk, busy with their own tasks. I held back tears as I passed my mom, now speaking in hushed tones to my uncle, her voice thick with sorrow.

Stepping into the room, I couldn’t help but stare at my grandmother. The woman who taught me how to bake, how to stand my ground, and how to write. I felt eyes staring at me, and turned to the younger version of myself. Her eyes were rimmed with the thin saturated red of pain and loss. I knelt down, so that we were eye to eye.

“Hi Mary.” I said softly.

Younger me wiped her cheeks with the sleeve of her shirt, and sniffled.

I smiled sympathetically at her, and held out the book. “Here, this helped me a lot through a situation like yours.”

She took it hesitantly, never taking her eyes from mine. I opened my arms wide, and, despite not knowing who I was, she leaned into my embrace and I squeezed her tight. I remembered this moment. I remembered feeling comfortable in this stranger’s presence. That’s why I thought she was an angel. Because she felt like an angel.

“I know this is really hard right now, but it will get better, I promise. Read the book.” I kissed her on the top of the head, and pulled away.

She looked down at the deeply loved cover in her hands, and I remembered how I took care of that book as if it were precious for 24 years. Starting today.

I walked out of the room, tears burning my eyes. I thanked whatever power got me there, that let me tangibly support myself. It made me feel better. It made me think about the day before. About going into another hospital, similar to this one, yellowing at the edges. My doctor’s sympathetic face as she told me I had breast cancer. That, without chemotherapy, I only had 6 months to live. But that it was my decision how to proceed.

I thought of my young self, of Franny and Zooey, and the prayer that Franny said meditatively to set her tremulous mind at ease: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

[salutethepig]

My Dad's pigs

Well, strictly, there weren’t his.

OK, I’d better give you some more background hadn’t I? There’s already some words on my Mum in this blog from earlier, so it seems only right that he also gets a fair crack of the narrative whip in my ongoing pig tales. And I’m actually more than a little surprised that I’ve not got around to talking that much about them — except in passing — until now, some years after the blog was started. So, sorry to you both! I love you; it wasn’t a deliberate slight 🙂

But first, here’s a shot of the (in-)Famous Five. Not sure where this was taken but I’m the one on the right in the back row. By the way, you will note that my pristine discriminate suss vis a vis clothes, hair-cuts and general hard-core posing, has always been with me…

Dad had an interesting, varied life. He’d been a merchant sailor on the Russian Convoys in WWII. He’d graduated from the Royal College of Music as a pianist and, initially at least, taught piano, but after he’d met my Mum (met up again that is; they’d split up and gone their separate ways, until Mum went down to Devon and, so her version goes, “dragged him back to Oxford and away from that other woman”), five children came along in rapid succession and it was soon apparent that the measly pay offered a music teacher wasn’t enough to support us all. Taking a cue from his own Dad, he re-trained as an accountant and started working for firms up & down the country. We moved. A lot. By the first 10 years of my life, I think we’d had 4 or 5 different places we called home.

And a couple of early shots of them attending someone elses’ wedding and, in the second, their own.

[I’ve even recently attempted to map some of the houses — it’s available here as The Bulow Clan homes for any of you stalkers out there — and, using Street-view, took a look at how they’re doing now. It’s quite surprising quite how much hasn’t changed from my memories of them, memories in some cases, from over 40 years ago]

Whilst it meant that we were forever making & then saying good-bye to short-lived friendships (at first those children next door, or just along the road, then later, those at primary school), it also resulted in us becoming a superbly well-tuned and tight-knit fighting unit, skilled at packing up one day and then efficiently moving these 7 people, their dog and their furniture to a new location, the very next day. I think I said before that my Mum could easily have organised the Normandy landings — her grasp of logistics was that good. We were the civvie equivalent of the Royal Engineers, moving men, vehicles & supplies through a devastated wasteland.

Here’s a later retirement shot — from the back garden in their nice, newly built, modern house. Finally, my Mum got to have a house that she didn’t have to look after all the time. Didn’t stop her still doing so, mind you…

And then, just like that, Dad gave up the life of an accountant and became a pig farmer. Well, in my memory, it was like that. In all likelihood, it took probably a few weeks or months — at least — to convince my Mum that this wasn’t the most insane idea he’d ever had. Dad was bright (and funny and kind), but sometimes you wouldn’t know it. He also could (and did) drink. And that was a problem at times. I recall being driven by him (in retrospect, a very pissed him) at high-speed around Bournemouth, where we were visiting his parents and after he’d had a row with Mum. He was often pretty useless with money; rather surprising for an accountant and I recall Mum keeping separate little pots for each bill and, once or twice we kids and Mum had to hide silently under the bed and pretend that we weren’t in, when the milkman (or similar dunned debtor) came a’ knockin’.

But become a pig farmer he did. There were, I’m sure, some sharply hissed, unkind words from behind the closed bedroom door or from the front-room, as they discussed it, but again, in my memory, we just effortlessly and calmly segued into our new lives on farms. Dad had always loved pigs, working with them in Devon, so, whilst an unexpected change of tack — at least to us — maybe not a total bombshell for my Mum. Who knows now? But there we were. Living in farm cottages as Dad never owned his own farm; he was always a tenant farmer. But one big advantage of this was that the job came complete with a large house. I’m sure the wages were pretty crap but at least they didn’t have to find rent money and were able to have separate bed-rooms for (most) of us!

Here’s the place at Kingsdown, in Kent. We moved here when I was just 11, from the previous farm in Essex. This was the last one he worked at and it specialised in careful, highly skilled breeding programmes. Now. this pristine, white house is divided into two properties but when we were there, it was all ours. Complete with nests of rats under the garden shed. An endless source of fun for us and the family and farm dogs. Corn fields behind. Bluebell woods on the horizon. And an old Royal Marine training ground  further along the farm road — dangerous as all hell, full of collapsing tunnels, hidden drops and unstable sandy banks, so therefore irresistible to us.

And here, the farm buildings that housed the pigs, now looking almost deserted (and a likely asbestos health & safety nightmare), but these were where Dad worked, where we all ‘helped’ him and, from the concrete jetties, where the animals were loaded and off-loaded. The grain store and chute, at the back, was another treasure trove of rats for hunting. Oh, and it also had a large oil-drum sized tub of black molasses given to the pigs to supplement their diet. Scooping a fistful out when no one was looking, was a treat for all of us kids.

And so, as I said therefore, not his pigs. But as far as the porkers and we were concerned, they may as well have been. He loved them. He cared for them. He bedded them down when they were ill, supervised their births, farrowing, feeding, growth and deaths.  As a breeding experimental site, we had quite tight access controls (for that time); and the occasional foot & mouth outbreaks nearby meant we often went into lock-down and once — luckily only the once — we had to watch as all the animals there had to be killed and burnt. An horrific sight, sounds and a smell that lingered in the air and clothes and even the hedgerows for days afterward. A lot of us cried that day. Including my Dad.

An earlier farm was also the cause of more than one or two nightmares for me. The pig manure was swept into huge underground pits (using what were, in effect, giant rubberised Squeegee mops) from where it was rather (to me) ingeniously pumped out, through a network of pipes either onto the nearby fields or into tankers for disposal elsewhere. Leaning over the manhole covers, seeing the churning, stinking dark, seething mass below, made me wake screaming in the night as I ‘watched’ Dad slip into it and get sucked away.

Gentle reader? Of course, it never happened. For which I for one am profoundly grateful. He went on to live for another 30 years or so.

But “what about the pigs”, I hear you cry? “Tell us more about them”?

Despite (or rather because of) the intensive breeding attempts, these weren’t anything special — certainly not rare breed types, just pink & large — except in their ability to grow quickly to weight, to be low in fat, to produce large litters. You know, the same as everyone else, the same as almost the entire rest of the world was looking for. We (Dad and his fellow pig-herds) were ‘guilty’ of the crimes I’ve previously excoriated the English farmer for. I suppose we could claim that this was a different time and that we “knew no better”, and in all honesty, I think that’s pretty much the case. I don’t recall anyone then extolling the benefits of the old style pigs — hardier, tastier, able to live outside — whilst calling for them to be retained. The dash for profit was headlong and Dad’s employers weren’t immune to that siren call. So these ones weren’t kept outside; they lived in inside sties. The floors were concrete (although they had huge quantities of fresh straw changed twice daily to move around on, root round in, dig for their food in). Food was generally high-energy pellets. They got given some fruit on occasions. But precisely because this was a breeding farm and the owner was paranoid about infections or diseases from outside, pigs weren’t allowed the scraps and swill from school canteens that we saw used on the earlier farms.

Ideal? No. Unfeeling? Yes, pretty much I guess. The sows had large-ish farrowing crates even then, so the natural bonding that should occur was less likely to happen. We docked tails. We de-tusked the boars. They didn’t get to run around outside, to root, to dig, to play in the way that this most sociable of animals needs to. And whilst I never saw anyone treating them cruelly or unkindly, still, this was a processing operation. I’m not happy looking back at the lives these animals led because of us.  I’m unsure how to end this piece. For the time and place, they had a better life than some and Dad was uniformly caring of them. I suppose that’s the best I can say. Somehow though, it doesn’t seem a fitting epitaph for all the work and care and effort that he put into his animals. We never really spoke about this or how welfare for animals had changed when we’d both got older. And I regret that. And I miss him. Of course. But I think he’d have approved of my coming back to write about these lovely creatures. Thanks Bernie. For everything.

Oh, and one last thing? As far as I know, we’re not related to this branch of the extended Bulow Clan. We visited there whilst living in Florida. A beautiful place, calm, green, verdant. And yet. And yet. The stench of slavery — like burning pork — doesn’t wash away, even in the torrential Florida rains…

In 1821, Major Charles Wilhelm Bulow acquired 4,675 acres of wilderness bordering a tidal creek that would later bear his name. Using slave labor, he cleared 2,200 acres and planted sugar cane, cotton, rice and indigo. Major Bulow died in 1823, leaving the newly established plantation to his seventeen year old son, John Joachim Bulow.

After completing his education in Paris, John Bulow returned to the Territory of Florida to manage the plantation. Young Bulow proved to be very capable. John James Audubon, the famous naturalist, was a guest at the plantation during Christmas week 1831. In a letter to a patron, Audubon wrote:

“Mr. J.J. Bulow, a rich planter, at whose home myself and party have been for a whole week under the most hospitable and welcome treatment is now erecting some extensive buildings for a sugar house.” Bulowville, Florida December 31, 1831.

Bulow’s sugar mill, constructed of local “coquina” rock, was the largest mill in East Florida. At the boat slips, flatboats were loaded with barrels of raw sugar and molasses and floated down Bulow Creek to be shipped north. This frontier industry came to an abrupt end at the outbreak of the Second Seminole War. In January 1836, a band of raiding Seminole Indians, resisting removal to the West, looted and burned the plantation. It would never recover. Bulow returned to Paris where he died the same year.

Today, the coquina walls and chimneys of the sugar mill remain standing as a monument to the rise and fall of the sugar plantations of East Florida.

  My Dad’s pigs was originally published on Salute The Pig

[samjbatty]

An exploration of the ways in which the narrative of Dracula responds to late-Victorian attitudes toward the “Other”.

Dracula is an 1897 gothic horror story written by Irish author Bram Stoker. It is one of the earliest novels in the Vampire Fiction genre and created many of the hallmarks of the genre still seen today. The novel tells the story of a group of Englishmen hunting down a Transylvanian vampire to prevent him from spreading the undead disease in England. Due to its context as a piece of Victorian literature written at the beginning of the decline of the British Empire, the book is often read as an allegory for immigration, reverse colonization and race mixing. Other critics have read the story as a criticism of the concept of a powerful “New Woman”. In this essay I aim to analyse both these interpretations, specifically with Count Dracula as an allegory for reverse colonization and the female vampires as criticisms of feminism.

 It is important to note that Dracula (Stoker, 2008) is often categorized as a number of genres beside vampire fiction. These often include gothic fiction, horror but most importantly invasion literature. Invasion literature is a genre, popular between 1817 and 1914, which told stories of hypothetical invasions by foreign ‘others’. The genre was fueled by the anxieties of the British people as their Empire began to weaken. This is often where readings of Count Dracula as an allegory for reverse colonialism come from. Critic Arata believes, “A concern with questions of empire and colonization can be found in nearly all of Stoker’s fiction… [However] Only in this novel does he manage to imbricate Gothic fantasy and contemporary politics.” (1990) Arata also states that a reader cannot deny the political overtones of Dracula’s immigration to England. Lines such as “This was the being I was helping to transfer to London, where, […] he might, amongst its teeming millions, satiate his lust for blood, and create a new and ever-widening circle of semi-demons to batten on the helpless. The very thought drove me mad” (Stoker, 2008) seem to be written as to echo of the racist rhetoric of a jingoistic patriot. Stoker depicts the character of Dracula as savage, animalistic and uncivilized in his vampiric actions as a tribute to how vampires had been portrayed in the past but also to reflect the stereotype of foreign people in Victorian Britain. Arata (1990), calls attention to how the archaic, primitive forces unleashed by Dracula “threaten to overturn the progressive, scientific world of contemporary Britain.” Stoker highlights this in the character of Abraham Van Helsing, a doctor who performs many efficient and successful blood transfusions – a relatively new operation in 1897. Stoker also has many of the characters state that they cannot believe such events are taking place in the Nineteenth century. From these examples, Stoker seems to be very overt in his portrayal of Count Dracula as a primitive ‘other’ invading Britain.

 However, I believe that Stoker’s portrayal of the anxieties of invasion in a much more subtle way by depicting Dracula as a gentle mannered aristocratic man when he is interacting with Harker earlier in the novel. This parallels the fear of the undetected invader, in which the foreign ‘other’ masquerades as something unthreatening before taking over from the unsuspecting victims. This concept is supported by the line “"Well I know that, did I move and speak in your London, none there are who would not know me for a stranger” (Stoker, 2008) in which Dracula explains that blending in in London would help him to be a better predator. Stoker’s Dracula was the first novel to include shape shifting in the vampire’s repertoire of abilities, lending further credit to this reading. This allows the character to transform himself into animals such as rats, bats and wolves as well as a sentient fog in order to remain undetected. (Stoker, 1990) Another interesting aspect of Stoker’s vampire is that he is one of the first who does not sleep in a coffin but in a crate of Transylvanian soil instead. This highlights the depiction of Dracula as an immigrant who must sleep in his home soil to gain the power he needs to corrupt the Englishmen.

 An aside on this interpretation is that the heavy use of Christian symbols of faith, such as crucifixes, holy water, communion wafers and rosary beads, as means to weaken or defeat vampires implies a pro-Christian stance on religious conversion. This can bee seen in instances such as when Van Helsing “placed the Wafer on Mina's forehead, it had seared it—had burned into the flesh as though it had been a piece of white-hot metal” (Stoker, 2008). It is clear to see how the vampiric curse could be read as a new foreign religion and how Stoker utilizes the traditional vampire slaying methods to show that a strong faith in Christianity can overcome the ‘other’. This ties closely with the idea of reverse colonization as it takes the same concept of the ‘other’ but places their take-over in a religious context as opposed to a political one. Using this idea of religious conversion, Stoker creates a number of female vampires throughout the novel who seem to some critics to represent a criticism of the “New Woman” and the very early suffragette movements.

 The female vampires in Stoker’s Dracula (2008) play a much larger role in the novel than one would assume. There are many more female vampires than male and the main plot centers on keeping Mina, Harker’s fiancée, from fully turning. Since the release of the book, critics have argued over Stoker’s position on the female characters. Judith Wasserman explains the “fight to destroy Dracula and to restore Mina to her purity is really a fight for control over women” (1977). Senf disagrees, praising Stoker for seeing beyond the dichotomy of “angels or monsters” (1982), in his portrayal of Mina. Senf believes that whilst Stoker is not misogynistic in his treatment of women, he is “ambivalent […] to a topical phenomenon – the New Woman” (1982). However, to most readers, this rings false with the treatment of every character but Mina Murray.

 Many critics, such as Demetrakopoulos, believe the story can be split into two parts, each centering on a “different type of woman” (1977). The first vampire encounter in the novel is between Harker and three sisters. Harker describes the women as “thrilling and repulsive” (Stoker, 2008), using animalistic imagery such as “the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth” (Stoker, 2008). This is typical of how all vampires are portrayed throughout the novel – they are primitive and carnal. However, Stoker also portrays the female vampires as very overt in their sexuality. The sisters are shown bending over, arching their necks and licking their lips in a suggestive manner. Swartz-Levine points out that as the female vampires become more sexual they become less and less humanized as Stoker switches from using possessive pronouns – “her lips” – to the definite article – “the lips” (2016). Swartz-Levine believes that the behavior exhibited by “Dracula’s brazen—and therefore monstrous— women do not adhere to standards of middle class morality” (2016). This behavior extends to the first ‘type’ of woman at the center of the novel – Lucy Westenra.

 Lucy is a young English woman who is stalked and converted by Dracula when he first arrives in England. She is Mina’s best friend and Arthur Holmwood’s fiancée. Before she is turned Lucy is seemingly portrayed as a proper young woman, stereotypical of Victorian expectations, however during a conversation with Mina the reader comes to realize that she is much more naturally sexual than her friend. Stoker shows this through the way Lucy views marriage - stating “Why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her” (2008). Lucy’s ���indecent’ behavior is implied to be the very reason she fell victim to Dracula. The result of this reading is that Stoker is condemning Lucy’s attitudes towards sex and as a punishment worsens them. As a vampire Lucy is portrayed very similarly to the sisters; she is violent and sexually aggressive. Stoker’s disapproval of an openly sexual, female character fits with Victorian attitudes, as Demetrakopoulos explains, “In the Victorian view, only fallen […] women enjoyed sex” (1977). Lucy’s sexuality reaches its peak in her death scene wherein Arthur pierces her heart with a wooden stake. Lucy becomes “The Thing” further dehumanizing her in the same way as the sisters (Swartz-Levine, 2016). Stoker begins to highlight Lucy’s mouth, using language that conjures images of sexual organs. With lines such as “Then he struck with all his might” (2008), and the phallic imagery of the stake, the scene is often read sexually. Despite the moment evoking images of an act of violation and an allegory of gang rape, it is clear that Stoker wants the reader to view the event as chivalrous. This suggestion is the “Victorian version of [the]‘blame the victim’” (Swartz-Levine, 2016) mindset that is seen so often today towards victims of sexual abuse.

 The focus of the second part of the novel, which Demetrakopoulos refers to, is Mina Murray (1977). She is a schoolteacher who is engaged to Harker. It is often argued that Mina is the most complex character. This is perhaps because she is the only female character whose perspective we see certain events from. She is described as intelligent and caring displaying both stereotypically masculine and feminine qualities, underscored by Van Helsing’s comments that Mina “has a man's brain […] and a woman's heart” (2008). When the group slaughters Lucy, Dracula begins to pursue Mina as his next victim. It is interesting to note that when Mina is forced to drink Count Dracula’s blood, she is described as “a kitten”, which infantilizes her maintaining Stoker’s perceived notion that good, proper women are desexualized (Demetrakopoulos, 1977). Mina is severely idealised throughout the novel, acting as caregiver for most of the fully-grown men in the group. It can be argued that this is Stoker’s way of showing that Mina is a caring individual, who also has the competency to keep up and work well with Professor Van Helsing. Critics such as Demetrakopoulos argue whether Mina was truly supposed to be a feminist or “New Woman” as many of her references to the movement can be read as either mockery or discomfort. Swartz-Levine argues for the latter, stating “Stoker helps to characterise his heroine by her discomfort at [the “New Woman’s] frankness [toward sex]” (2016). She argues that having Mina be a “New Woman” but also less sexually open than other members of the group, creates a multi-faceted character. When Mina drinks the Counts blood she does not fully turn but instead has a telepathic link with him, which Dracula uses to control her. However Mina, despite being scared of the link, manages to reverse this with Van Helsing’s help allowing them to track Dracula down. In general, Mina seems to be Stoker’s attempt at a strong, feminist heroine yet his Victorian ideals of female sexuality and stereotypes of women as reserved caregivers prevent him from succeeding.

 In conclusion, Stoker’s vampires are definitely indicative of Victorian opinions towards the ‘other’ in terms of gender and race. Count Dracula is depicted as a Transylvanian aristocrat who immigrates to England in order to spread his undead curse. This reflects the Victorian anxiety of reverse colonialism as well as religious conversion. Arata, in particular calls attention to the primitive forces, which Dracula uses to “threaten […] contemporary Britain” (1990). In the same way, Stoker’s female vampires reflect the Victorian attitudes towards women. This is a much more complicated allegory as the gender politics of the time were very complex. Stoker tries to create a complex heroine in Mira but ultimately falls into the trap of idealising her whilst presenting the other female characters with no depth whatsoever, as evil seductresses. I believe that supernatural beings will always be indicative of society’s attitudes towards the ‘other’ and that Bram Stoker’s Dracula follows this notion completely.

 -----------

References and Bibliography:

Arata, S. (1990). The Occidental Tourist: 'Dracula' and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization. Victorian Studies, 33(4), pp.p.621-645. Available at: Leeds Trinity University Library http://lib.leedstrinity.ac.uk  [Accessed 25 March 2017].

 Craft, C. (1984). "Kiss Me with those Red Lips": Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Representations, (8), pp.107-133. Available at: Leeds Trinity University Library http://lib.leedstrinity.ac.uk  [Accessed 25 March 2017].

 Demetrakopoulos, S. (1977). Feminism, Sex Role Exchanges, and Other Subliminal Fantasies in Bram Stoker's "Dracula". Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 2(3), p.104. Available at: Leeds Trinity University Library http://lib.leedstrinity.ac.uk  [Accessed 25 March 2017].

 Light, D. (2012). New Directions in Tourism Analysis: The Dracula Dilemma: Tourism, Identity and the State in Romania. 1st ed. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Available at: Leeds Trinity University Library http://lib.leedstrinity.ac.uk [Accessed 25 March 2017].

 Morgan, S. (2007). A Victorian woman's place. 1st ed. London [u.a.]: Tauris. Available at: Leeds Trinity University Library http://lib.leedstrinity.ac.uk [Accessed 25 March 2017].

 Pikula, T. (2012). Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Late-Victorian Advertising Tactics: Earnest Men, Virtuous Ladies, and Porn. English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920., Vol. 55(Issue 3.), pp.p283-302. Available at: Leeds Trinity University Library http://lib.leedstrinity.ac.uk  [Accessed 25 March 2017].

 Rose, A. (2008). Gender and Victorian reform. 1st ed. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Pub. Available at: Leeds Trinity University Library http://lib.leedstrinity.ac.uk [Accessed 25 March 2017].

 Scott, N. (2007). Monsters and the Monstrous. 1st ed. New York: Rodopi. Available at: Leeds Trinity University Library http://lib.leedstrinity.ac.uk  [Accessed 25 March 2017].

 Senf, C. (1982). "Dracula": Stoker's Response to the New Woman. Victorian Studies, Vol. 26(1), p. 33-49. Available at: Leeds Trinity University Library http://lib.leedstrinity.ac.uk  [Accessed 25 March 2017].

 Stoker, B. (1897). Dracula. [e-book] Oxford, Oxford University Press. Available at Planet eBook http://www.planetebook.com/ebooks/Dracula.pdf [Accessed 25 March 2017]

 Swartz-Levine, J. (2016). Staking Salvation: The Reclamation of the Monstrous Female in Dracula. Midwest Quarterly. Summer 2016, Vol. 57(Issue 4), pp.p345-361. Available at: Leeds Trinity University Library http://lib.leedstrinity.ac.uk  [Accessed 25 March 2017].

  Wasserman, J. (1977). Women and Vampires: Dracula as a Victorian Novel.

Midwest Quarterly

, 18(405). Available at: Leeds Trinity University Library http://lib.leedstrinity.ac.uk  [Accessed 25 March 2017].