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thequeenofthenightgentlyweeps · 3 years ago

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The Bucci Gang As Supernatural Beings

*So, I was chatting with @mrsgiovanna about this lovely art ( please, check out the artist and consider giving them a follow! They're insanely good! ), and I came up with these new HCs about the Bucci Gang as paranormal / supernatural beings ( she also helped me with Fugo and Mista ). We hope you like them! ❤❤❤👻👻👻

*WARNING: Mentions of blood, death, violence, and sexual topics

***

Giorno Giovanna

*Giorno is a Vampire!

~ He's not the creepy, kill all humans, kind of Vampire, no. And no, he's not the sparkly type, either! He's just a lonely, centuries - old Vampire ( he is four hundred years old ) who lives at an old, secluded villa in Italy and spends his eternity there blaming himself for being such a vile creature, and most probably for killing innocent people just to feed himself. Occassionally plays piano, too.

~ He's so beautiful! His skin, pale. His eyes, deep red, like the color of blood. His honeyed baritone voice, so hypnotic. His scent, so alluring,... everything about him is made to lure you in! And that's exactly why he thinks he's a monster! A predator who doesn't deserve to live.

~ The only thing he could remember about his mortal life? Someone had turned him into this! He's not always this monster who hides beneath the shell of a beautiful earthly vessel, no! He had a life. He was a Don once, and he was about to be married to his beautiful fianceé. However, he was attacked by something on the night before his wedding. Then, the next day, he wakes up as a newborn Vampire. He couldn't remember anything else. He has searched for that monster for centuries but, he had no such luck.

~ Poor thing has convinced himself over and over that he's a villain, a fiend that must be destroyed. Of course, he has tried ending his own life, he even sunbathed, but nothing seems to work! ( Contrary to some beliefs, the Vampire, like any night creature, can move about by day. Though it is not its natural time, and its powers are weak. Quote directly taken from Van Helsing's phonograph entry about Prince Vlad Of Sagite, circa 1897 ) So, he went out in search of something, anything, that could put him to eternal rest, and that's when he found this powerful group called, Passione. It is rumored to have powerful members with supernatural abilities. That's it! Maybe Passione is the solution to his problem! However, Giorno found out that Passione, indeed, is a group of powerful members with supernatural abilities! Why, it is inhabited by creatures of the night, just like him! What would happen to Giorno now? Would he fight them? Befriend them? Or would they be the key to him finding the enemy behind his curse?!

Bruno Bucciarati

*Bruno is an Incubus!

~ This taste,... is the taste of a Nosferatu, Giorno Giovanna! Oh, you could bet Vampire Giorno and Incubus Bucciarati's first meeting is not a good one. Being born a Demon, an Incubus, to be exact, Bruno Bucciarati feeds on mortals' sexual desires. It gives him sustainance, and keeps him strong. Although he can go a few months without it ( the longest he survived without a meal is three months ), he would never deny fresh meat when one so closely wanders about the vicinity. And, oh boy, he's ridiculously strong! Unlike Vampires, he doesn't need to kill his victims. Needless to say, Giorno, who hasn't fed in a while, has a hard time fighting him.

~ Just like the rest of his kin, Bucciarati's physical body appears so unearthly beautiful to his victims. Yes, everything about him is perfect, and he could bring any mortal to their feet with his bidding. However, the same couldn't be said about his true appearance. Let's just say you wouldn't want to see Bucciarati unveiling his true form right in front of you. You might just wish you were dead than see him in all his demonic ugliness.

~ Although he takes everything when hunger truly strikes, Bucciarati actually has a preference - he adores innocent virgins. Their scent just drives him wild. He would relentlessly stalk his victim and find out everything he can about them. When he gets to know them, he would slowly come to their life, entangling and attaching himself to them like a lover pining for their affection. And when they're finally ensnared by his charm and beauty, his trap would set off. Next thing they know, they are being fed on with no hope of ever escaping.

~ If there's one thing he hates - then those are Vampires. Giorno is a Vampire, so he initially hated him. Yes, they fought, but, eventually, he found out that Giorno doesn't have an insidious intention. He only ever wanted to be free from his own curse. He found out Giorno is very different compared to his barbaric kin who knew nothing else but to slaughter. What would Bucciarati do in this situation? A Vampire, declaring his allegiance to his mortal enemy?

Guido Mista

*Mista is a Summoner!

~ After fixing things with each other, Bucciarati introduced Giorno to his team. And that's when he first met Guido Mista, an ancient Summoner. Now, he can't summon Unicorns, or Dragons, or any mythical beings like that, no. They are way beyond his power and comprehension. What he does summon are Imps, evil little critters that could ruin anyone's life. One could even say these Imps are the cause of half of Naples' death rate.

~ His Imps, which he dotingly calls, Sex Pistols, are very small and mischievous. And they cause Mista enough problems to last a lifetime. They may be small, but they are relentless when they are pursuing their target. First, they'll follow you to your home. Then, they'll purposefully steal your belongings, like your keys, your cellphone, or your wallet, and make it look as if you only misplaced them. Then, they'll start hurting your pets, your children, your loved ones. You would think you are cursed, until you're driven into madness. And that's when they'll deal the final blow.

~ Now, Mista wasn't always the Summoner we know now. He was just a regular mortal back then, living the best life, eating cheese with red wine, flirting with girls, occassionally getting into trouble. However, an incident involving a girl who was being assaulted by a corrupt Lord truly awakened his summoning powers. He wished for power, any kind, that would let him save the girl. The Imps answered to him, and the rest is history.

~ At first, Mista finds Giorno so suspicious. A Vampire who refuses to kill humans? That's funnier than Nosferatu hitting his head on a chandelier when he rises from his coffin! However, this Nosferatu is different. He's only looking for a way to break out of his curse, or die trying. Pssh, so dramatic. He's actually really kind, though! A great chap. However, he looks so familiar, like he's seen him somewhere before,... Maybe Fugo the Witch Doctor knows something that could help this Giorno guy,...

Pannacotta Fugo

*Fugo is a Witch Doctor!

~ And so, Mista leads Giorno to another room in the building. Mista opens the door, and immediately, strong scents began assaulting their nostrils. Followed by an angry voice. "MISTA, DIDN'T I TELL YOU TO KNOCK FIRST?!" This is none other than the resident Apothecarist and Witch Doctor, Pannacotta Fugo. Now, Fugo is normally a mild - mannered man. Normally. During times like this when his privacy gets compromised, he explodes like a bomb and yells at people. Not only because he doesn't want to be disturbed. The concoctions he's brewing are simply too dangerous to anyone who would sniff them, even to himself. So, he wears a special kind of mask to protect himself. But, then, Giorno is a Vampire. He may find the scent of Fugo's potions a bit foul but, other than that, he is unaffected. Naturally, Fugo's curiosity and interest was piqued at their first meeting.

~ Being the intelligent and curious man that he is, Fugo has been making brews and concoctions for the last 100 years. Potions that could kill, potions that could bring luck, both good and bad, potions that could heal all types of sickness, potions that could make anyone fall in love. It was also his knack for mixing different things out of curiosity that led him to his creation of the ultimate concoction - The Elixir Of Immortality, which he accidentally ingested, giving him an unnaturally long life. Fugo wasn't able to replicate the Elixir ever since, no matter how hard he tried.

~ It was also said that Fugo's concoctions were well - known in Naple's Black Market. Many come to him to ask for a special brew but, his creations aren't cheap. "My creations are not for the vulnerable and the faint of heart. Should you proceed with this decision to acquire one, you must be prepared to pay a handsome fee." That being said, Fugo is one of the wealthiest Passione members, next to Bucciarati and Abbacchio.

~ And speaking of the latter devil,... "Huh? I do not know what you're saying. A Vampire who lived more than 400 centuries ago? You must ask Abbacchio. He's older than 400. Maybe he knows something about the monster you are searching for."

Leone Abbacchio

*Abbacchio is a Wish - Granting Demon!

~ Now, don't call him a Genie! He is a far cry from that! Yes, Abbacchio can make all your dreams come true! Fame, fortune, a lover, ANYTHING. However, these wishes come with a price. Your soul, that is. An eldritch ( and very grumpy ) Demon who also hides in the guise of a beautiful mortal skin just like Bucciarati, Abbacchio has lived for a millennia, and over those years he is active, he has acquired more souls than you could ever imagine. Souls of Anne Boleyn, Marie Antoinette, Nostradamus, Niccolò Paganini, and many more. All of these souls made a contract with him for a wish, and when he finally fulfilled them, he immediately orchestrates their death, so it would seem as if they were able to enjoy what they obtained from him. Only to find out a month or two later that they would be doomed to serve him for all eternity.

~ He is also the oldest member of Passione, and because of this, other lesser members fear him, except for Bucciarati, of course, who is also a Demon, like him, although a different kind. He also only obeys Bucciarati's orders and nobody else's. Seldomly, that is. Most of the time, he just keeps to himself. He is a cold - hearted monster who only cares about feeding on mortals' souls who are stupid enough to make a contract with a Demon such as him.

~ However, just like Mista, Abbacchio was once a mortal. Legend says he was a Knight who served this long lost Kingdom in Europe where Italy now stood. One night, his King was betrayed, and his partner was brutally murdered. He was captured by the neighboring rival Kingdom and was almost tortured to death. It was then that he abandoned his faith in God and turned into a Demon. He was able to kill all his enemies but, he was cursed to walk the earth for all eternity.

~ And, oh man, he hates Giorno the moment he sees him. Nonetheless, he answers his question. "A Vampire who lived more than 400 years ago,... You must be referring to Dio Brando." He says. Dio Brando?! That's the name of the person who killed Giorno's father, Jonathan Joestar! Dio,... is a Vampire?! "Do not get too cocky, you snievelling brat! Dio Brando is still at large and is currently making a huge army of Zombies to conquer the mortal world. I do not care about the destruction of the human realm, or your damned lineage,... "

Narancia Ghirga

*Narancia is a Poltergeist!

~ "Snivelling brat? Do I look like a snivelling brat to you, huh?!" Says the resident Poltergeist, Narancia Ghirga, who just went through a wall from his own room. Narancia, the ghost of a teenager who died of drowning a hundred years ago, is a very sensitive Ghost who gets easily offended at the word, brat. Maybe it was only his guilt that made him sensitive to the word. After all, his father used to call him that when he was still alive. It's what made him run away from home. A storm passed, and a day later, his lifeless body was found adrift on the Bay of Naples. It was said that the spirit of the mischievous child never left the place.

~ Indeed, he hasn't. Bucciarati adopted this lonely ghost and ever since then, he has become a member of Passione. At first, he was only given the task to scare away anyone who would dare to get close to their secret hideout but, as his powers grew over time, he was given more difficult jobs, like possessing mortals to do bad things or kill others, making furniture and ouija board planchettes move, and playing pranks on innocent people. You might say it's only Narancia's way of having fun but, he is a Poltergeist, after all. Everything he does is like a game to him. A game where only he could win.

~ Narancia is always seen around places with lots of sweets. It was said that he adores snacks and treats when he was still alive, and his favorite holiday is, of course, Halloween. It's where he could truly mingle with the living and play endless pranks without his true nature getting revealed. His ghostly appearance always wins over adults. They find him cute so they give him lots of treats. He brings home his huge stash later on to eat them but, alas, he can't. So he just displays the treats he collected in his room. He's been doing it for many years. Aha, so that's where the rotten smell is coming from. Giorno could smell it from a distance.

~ Narancia is never lonely, though. He and Mista are very close. And he takes a liking to Giorno almost immediately. "Ah, but it must be so nice to live forever with your flesh still attached to your soul. Know what I'm saying?" Narancia says when they leave Abbacchio's room. And that's when they hear a terrible noise coming from the next room. A noise that almost sounded like,... wailing?

Trish Una

*Trish is a Banshee!

~ "Hear me! Hear me! An insurmountable force is heading this way! A fiend with an army to do his bidding,... He is coming! The man you are searching for, Giorno Giovanna! DIO IS COMING,... TO END PASSIONE!" Wails the Banshee named Trish. Now, Trish may be docile at times but, she suddenly bursts out like this to foretell the immediate future, which always happens. She does this on a weekly basis, and ruins the appetite of anyone unlucky enough to listen to her during mealtimes. Trivial things like earthquakes, flooding, the death of a politician, a broken teacup, or a missing pet. Trish would wail about it in all her Banshee glory and shatter everyone's eardrums with it. Thank goodness, she lives with monsters with unbreakable eardrums. The neighbors, though,...

~ Normally, Trish has a very pleasant voice. She actually sings for this recording studio and is considered somewhat of a Pop Star in Italy. However, her nature has prevented her from going into her concerts and doing interviews, live or otherwise. That is why her true identity remains a secret, and only her voice and stage name are known by her fans. She is very fashionable, though, and pretty ( the team thinks it's her own way of making it up for her Bansheeness ).

~ She has been a member of Passione since she was a baby. One day, Bucciarati was about to buy groceries when he opened the door and almost stepped on her. She was abandoned by her parents and he found out the reason why when he brought her in. Why, she started wailing like nobody's business and almost gave Narancia a second death! Nevertheless, he took care of her like a real parent, and Trish grew up believing that Passione is her only family. That is, until she found out the identity of her true parents. One of them, a mysterious man by the name of Diavolo,... But, that is a story for another day. "Huh? Did I just say something?" And yes, Trish immediately forgets what she's just predicted as a Banshee and turns back into her docile self.

***

"Dio, personally coming to end Passione?!" Bucciarati questions upon hearing Trish's prediction. "But, why? We have been in the dark for too long. We never mingle with the affairs of the Vampires!"

"Yeah! Why do we suddenly have to fight that sadistic Vampire?!" Mista, who puts his hand on his head, complains.

"Passione controls all of Italy." Fugo muses. "If Dio destroys us, there would be nothing left to stand between him and the mortals. Italy, no, the entire European continent would be his for the taking!"

"This is your fault, Giorno Giovanna!" Abbacchio growls and grabs Giorno's collar. "If you didn't come here, then this would not have happenned!"

"Maybe it's destiny that led Giorno here." Trish says. "After all this time, he would finally be facing the monster who gave him the curse of Vampirism."

"Then, let him come." Declares Giorno through gritted teeth as he effortlessly swats Abbacchio's hands off him. "I'll be prepared for him. I'll put an end to his tyranny, and destroy the curse that's coursing through my immortal flesh!"

"But, if you destroy your curse, you'll be destroyed, too." Narancia lethargically points out, and he's right.

But, Giorno doesn't care. All he cares about is finally putting an end to his cursed bloodline.

Bucciarati sees Giorno's resolve and puts a reasurring hand on his shoulder. "With you here, things have began to move. Maybe it truly is Passione's destiny to end Dio's reign. I'll help you in your cause to destroy him!"

"Count me in!" Mista says, summoning his Imps. "It'll be problematic if we run out of mortals to bully."

"I can't die again, so I'm in!" Narancia raises his hand. "And he can't have all the candy here!"

"I can predict his movements. I'll help you." Trish offers.

"W - whatever! This is too reckless!" Cries Fugo, retreats back to his room, and shuts the door.

"I don't take orders from you, Bucciarati." Abbacchio points out. "A Demon doesn't. I only take orders from one thing, and that is my own demonic flesh. However, it is only through my own kin that I would truly find rest, and that is with you, Bucciarati. So, I'll help. Do not get cocky, Giorno! I'm not following you!"

And so, Passione has began preparing for Dio's attack, with Giorno and Bucciarati as the leaders,...

Here! Have the Monster Mash theme to set the monster mood 👻👻👻❤❤❤

youtube

#Giorno Giovanna #Bruno Bucciarati #Guido Mista #Pannacotta Fugo #Leone Abbacchio #Narancia Ghirga #Trish Una #my writing #jojo's bizarre adventure #Youtube

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big-fang-andrei · 3 years ago

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May i be so bold as to ask your opinions on the other clans, my lord? Also, your opinions on diablerie

My, that is quite the bold question indeed. But I have an even bolder answer. I’ll tell you what I think of the other clans but also of the other denizens of the night. So pull up your chair and open a new tab to drivethrurpg(I WISH THIS WAS A PAID PROMOTION), as uncle Andrei tells you of the World of Stank-Piss!

Assamites/Banu Haqim: they claim to be our judges yet they lack any form of self control when a drop of vitae hits the floor. It’s true, I’ve blood bonded several with this method.

Brujah: I’ve seen maggots in cum socks lead better revolutions than them. If I wanted to see a bunch idiots yell about their ideas on how to fix the government I’d go to twitter, thank you very much.

Followers of Set/The Ministry: Claim to be masters of darkness yet a night light scares the shit out of them.

Gangrel: Nomadic cowards that spend more time making stories for their OC’s than anything. I find it humorous when one tries to make peace with a lupine only to get torn into thirds.

Giovanni/Hecata: They fuck their sisters, dude.

Lasombra: Ah yes, our brothers in the Sword of Caine. While I do appreciate they’re bravery in the Anarch revolt I do not enjoy their constant reading of the scripture. And dear Caine, they’re so annoying with their dreadful sea shanties.

Malkavian: I once had to share an apartment with one during the 70’s. Malkavians by themselves are a constant overflowing dam with small cracks gushing forth the most insane and obtuse thoughts one shouldn’t be able to imagine. Couple that with his herd of never sober hippies and a philosophy class and that my childe is a recipe for becoming a quiet pair of pants.

Nosferatu: Many assume I despise the Sewer rats for aiding the camarilla, but if anything I pity them. They think they’re so clever hiding behind the skirt of the Ivory Tower when they know we’re the only ones that can help. Run little sewer rats, run all you want from the scary Nictuku, but the ivory tower will crumble long after the last of Absmilliard’s childer wipes the blood from her lips. What? Jealous? Why would I be jealous of their looks… WE work hard to look like this, those bastards get embraced and stay like that cursing over their beauty as if it were a curse. Ungrateful fucks...

Ravnos: I haven’t seen one since my trip to Vegas. Tricksters, liars but I gotta admit good dancers. In fact I haven’t seen much of any in a while. All of ours ended up diablerizing and slaughtering each other a while ago but that’s just another Tuesday around here.

Toreador: Silly, silly children the whole clan. They bore me with their constant slobbering of human art and sobbing of their humanity! It drives a motherfucker INSANE!

Tremere: If I could still shit I’d turn them into toilet paper. ‘Nuff said.

Ventrue: you spend your formative years sucking the dick of a king hard enough until he gives you some armor and a dull blade now you think living in massive sky scrapper with solid gold socks can make up for being a spineless tryhard.

Kuei-Jin: I’d tell you but I don’t want to get cancelled again.

Werewolves: If the Gangrels are the furrys that post their art and ask you to leave positive comments only, than lupines are the maniacs that eat roadkill off the street butt naked at night.

Mages: pah, charlatans with parlor tricks that tell you the secret of magic is to “believe in yourself”. What hog wash, real magic comes from that old gnarled up bastard Koldun.

Ghosts: I rarely have failed experiments but in some even rarer occasions, they result in a phantom. Sure it’s startling at first waking up and seeing something had broken all your windows, flooding your room with sunlight and the occasional threatening words drawing in blood on your living room, clashing with your own blood art. But all you have to do is call in a Nagaraja and those bastards eat ghosts like Papa Andrei eats blood ice cream.

Faeries: I tried to turn a kid into a bike chain once, until he pointed at me with the stick he held, declared it a hammer and smashed my watermelon sized testicles with the force of one. Not one of my finer moments.

Hunters: The Society of Leopold or the Second Inquisition are just as reckless, poorly organized and limp dicked as the Camarilla… but a month or so ago as I was buying some batteries for my custom all flesh furby, when a person behind me claimed to see past my disguise and tried to beat me to death with a flaming fortnite action figure before I twisted him like sausages. Funny thing was I wasn’t wearing a disguise. Hell that was a nude Tuesday for me, but whatever that “thing” was that it certainly piqued my interest.

Mummies: I had a mummy friend during the French Revolution, made me play salty cracker all the time. Not all dusty, covered in bandages or Tom cruise looking like in the movies but they seem ok, naive even. Still trying to save humanity by helping some crummy god.

Demons: In my short time in Mexico I’ve witnessed more things one could experience in two weeks than one could in a life time. A vampire lupine, a toreador glutton fat from vitae, vampires not of Caine or Kuei-Jin origin and a bootleg vhs of regreso al futuro. But in the Tremere Antitribu chantry, Universidad del Tercer Circulo de la Serpiente Dorada, I saw Goratrix preform an unholy ritual with the blood of a virgin and said bootleg vhs, unleashing a fallen Angel chained to the deepest bowels of hell that the Lasombra claim to be their domain. The devil looked upon us and cursed we childer of caine before Goratrix in his pansy Tremere nature banished the fiend back to the abyss. I fear no demon, but the Tremere are superstitious suckers. I left the country the next few days to return back to LA thinking nothing of my encounter until a week later I had heard something happened to the Tremere of the Sabbat. All members simply bursted into ash one night. If that isn’t a sign of Gehenna, then I don’t know what is. Orpheus: Who?

#vtm rp #VTMB rp #Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines #world of darkness

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immortalonus · 3 years ago

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Where You Belong: Chapter 3

A/N: I hate this chapter so, so much. Unfortunately, I also couldn't find any way around it. If I got anything wrong, chances are I just missed it, so feel free to let me know.

Read on AO3 here.

“...Humans with ghost powers!? Crazy, right?” Valerie snorted, then paused.

“Or humans that turn into ghosts, or ghosts that—stay human when they die or whatever. The important thing is that there was a part of Ellie that was real. And if it hadn't been for Phantom, I'd have just left her there with Plasmius, to do whatever—to hurt—to—”

Valerie took a moment, struggling to admit out loud what she had already begun suspect for herself.

“—kill her. he was gonna murder a little girl, mama, and if Phantom hadn't convinced me she still had some human in her, if I hadn't listened to a ghost, I woulda let him.”

Phantom, if she hadn't listened to Phantom, specifically. It was a detail that still irritated her every time it came up.

The ghost boy had been so persistent, for so long in his charade of being a “good guy,” that most days, she simply tuned him out.

And truly, was that so wrong?

Up to that point, Everything Phantom had said in his own defense had been nothing more than talk. Oh, he said sorry, he said he felt bad about it, but at the end of the day, what had he done?

Ruined her fathers job and her life, then fled the scene like the criminal he was.

Stole for the hell of it and couldn't even be bothered to take the blame when he got caught.

(Valerie still had no idea why the ghost thought an “evil mind controlling clown guy,” was a reasonable excuse, at all, for anything.)

Who was always ready to fight, but never to help.

Never, not once, in all the wretched aftermath of the Grey's financial dissolutionment, had Phantom come to their aid. Not in the immediate events that came after, nor during the process of her father's dismissal, when he could well have stayed his expulsion simply by appearing, proving Damian Grey's assertions of spectral interference months before he would have been otherwise believed.

Not during the move from her childhood home to her current residence down in Elmerton. Too strapped to hire assistance, it had been down to Valerie, her father, and Fenton, who had taken his weekend off to help her move instead.

No haunting the creditors who dogged their every step, even now.

Hell, he couldn't even be bothered to tell the public that it was his fault her life was ruined! In private, yes, where he knew no one could hear. But never where it mattered, to whom it mattered, since that would require Phantom to actually give something up for once and admit what he did was wrong. Which he would never do, because Phantom, like all ghosts, was a fundamentally egotistical creature, right down to his very core.

No, Valerie had good reason to believe that she had Phantom all figured out: A showboating prig, full of hot air and false excuses, distinct from other ghosts only in his capacity to fool the masses into believing he was ever anything more.

Then Elle happened.

The ghost girl's mere existence had managed to throw Valerie's world into a whole new tailspin, leaving her reeling even as events conspired to yank more and more of her footing out from under her, teetering on the edge of her own understanding as all her convictions suffered blow after blow.

Living ghosts.

Ghostly humans.

Friends acting as enemies.

While enemies acted as friends.

“I woulda let him kill her.” She repeated, “Just like I let him kill—end—All those other ghosts I gave him, just handed 'em over for whatever freak experiments he had cooked up.”

Just like she had snuffed out who knew how many other specters during her own patrols.

How many of them were still alive in there, she wondered, underneath the ghost?

Her mother's brows seemed to furrow in response, worried, no doubt, over what exactly her daughter had done.

“I didn't mean it mama, it wasn't my fault! It was all Plasmius, you know Plasmius? That knockoff Nosferatu all the time picking fights with Phantom. He used me and he lied, and—“ Valerie licked her lips futilely seeking moisture from a mouth gone dry.

“He played human to do it.”

Valerie felt a flush of rage and shame wash over her at the words. She had been used all over again, played for a fool and manipulated just like her so-called “friends” had used her before, dangling control and importance in exchange for the very essence of her soul.

To learn that she had struck the same deal with a different kind of devil, that all her power was a tool in someone else's hands had curdled into an ache that rivaled the raw burn of a whole new betrayal.

Because unlike the A-listers she'd run with not too long ago, or even Phantom, who she'd always hated, Vlad Masters had been a man she'd seen fit to trust.

“Plasmius was Masters, and—God, they even share the same first name—My sponsor, the guy who gave me my first suit, trained me up, even kept me and daddy off the streets when things were at their worst. And me stupid enough to think it was 'cause he cared.”

A hard exclamation escaped her throat at the thought, to forceful for a scoff, too sharp for laughter.

No such thing indeed.

“Everyone's out for something. Masters—Plasmius, he was out for Phantom, and I was just the pawn that was supposed to get take him out.”

That's part of what scares me too. Why was Plasmius so dead set on Phantom? Why'd he sink so much money into taking him out? Why does Phantom hate him back?”

And it was peculiar, how much Phantom seemed to hate Plasmius. Valerie had thought for a long time that it was some kind of territory dispute, a conflict over a rare and valuable thin spot between realities. After years of chasing after Phantom, however, it became more and more clear that the ghost boy's resentment of Plasmius went beyond that of simple competition.

The mere mention of the vampiric specter was enough to turn Phantom tense and snippy, as though the mere thought of the other ghost irritated him, somehow. After witnessing the two up close, Valerie's suspicions had cemented into certainty: Phantom hated Plasmius, and he hated him personally.

“There's so much I don't know, and no one to tell me. Plasmius doesn't know that I know, and until I get out from under him, that's how it's gotta stay.”

How Valerie was supposed to get out from under Plasmius was another question entirely. Plasmius, in Vlad Master's guise, was the sole reason the Grey family had managed to keep on top of its debts for as long as they had. To make matters worse, he also provided most of the materials Valerie's suit consumed for its more elaborate systems and weaponry.

Even so, the temptation to throw it all away and smash Plasmius' smug face against her boot was a strong one, stayed only by the fear of what would happen to her father if she tried.

“Phantom went squirrelly on me too,” she said. “I thought maybe I could get something from him, since we never ended that truce. But in the end, he was still just a ghost.”

She hadn't wanted to go to Phantom, in those days between Elle's escape and her decision to plunge into the Zone, had felt too much like would be admitting something, somehow, to do so. Had it not been for the fact that Phantom was her sole and only choice, she was sure she would never have asked at all.

Once she'd made the decision to do it, he'd been easy enough to track down. She found him—where else?—but In the middle of a fight, duking it out at altitude with one of the countless animal ghosts that regularly made their way across the paltry excuse for a veil stretched across Amity Park.

The fight had been easy, the conversation that came after it, much less so.

How could someone be alive and dead at the same time? Were they alive and dead at once? all the time? Did they alternate at will? Were they born? Were they made? How many were there? A lot? How did she spot a human-ghost if she saw it? Was there a way to tell? Or did you have to guess?

Phantom had been the one to tell her that these human-ghost, ghost-human things could exist in the first place, which had lead her to expect, rather despite herself, that perhaps he could explain them, too.

So it was only natural, really, that in that moment precisely, he had chosen to clam up. He knew nothing of these miraculous hybrids, could find out nothing concerning them, and as to finding them, he had no clue at all. Nevermind that it had been he who had first told her such beings were possible in the first place, the ghost was a veritable well of ignorance, utterly unable to aid in her pursuits.

“Ghosts are narrow minded and selfish, they go round everywhere like they've got blinkers on both sides of their head. You stick an idea in front of their nose, and they grab it if they like it, and shove it away if they don't. They don't consider where you got the idea from, they don't think about why its there, they don't even goddamn care why you picked it up in the first place. All that matters is somethings blocking their little slice of the world, theirs, specifically, 'cause they wouldn't never consider any other kind.

That was Phantom's problem, he wanted a truce yeah, but his way, not mine. A truce for beating things up, not a truce for trusting and talking or or anything that might give trouble to him. That wasn't how he wanted it to work.

He was even worse with Elle. She's the only other one I could talk to—not counting you, ma—who could tell me anything about anything about what was going on!

And Elle, I couldn't track her down. When she said she had places to be, I thought she meant like Phantom when there wasn't anything fun for him to hit, not just gone! I tried tracking her, I did, but it didn't work. Either staying human hides her, or she's run too far to track.

Stupid Phantom wouldn't help me with that, neither. It was just 'oh she's fine,' this and 'why do you care' that, like I can't worry about a human girl wondering on her own without nobody to make sure she's even fed!”

Not only had he been absurdly reluctant to answer her questions, but even had the audacity to wonder if they were at all related to her continued association with Plasmius. It was an insult, beyond all doubt, as though he didn't know how little choice she had.

As though he wasn't the one who forced her into making it.

“I guess so far as he figured, if Elle wasn't being kidnapped, then she was fine. It didn't matter that she's a kid, or alone, or was stealing apples just to eat. She was strong enough to survive on her own and not melt, and that was good enough for him. He just sat there when she left, too, watching her scat like any other ghost."

Did he know how far she intended to run, or simply fail to understand why he should care?

"No matter how well he thinks he means, Phantom can't help the human parts of her. Just because she could beat any man that tried to take doesn't mean that she doesn't get—scared, or lonely, or—“ Valerie wriggled uncomfortably in her pallet of dust. “—Or that she doesn't need people. Phantom can't give that, and Plasmius is a sick piece of shit, so that left me. Just me. If I let that go, then Elle'd be alone for real.”

The worry in her mother's gaze didn't lighten, exactly, but it did shift, consternation giving way to curiosity mixed with a hearty topping of concern. It was easy to imagine the question she would have asked, if she could but speak.

“Then what is it do you think you're doing all the way out here, hm?”

Valerie sighed. This, at least, she had a clear answer for.

“I'm on a mission. There's this thing called the infini-map. Don't have all the details, but with a name like that?” She scoffed, “don't need 'em. Whatever it is, its good enough to send Plasmius into a fit just at the idea of laying claws on it.

If I could get something like that, imagine, I could find Elle in a heartbeat. No more lookin', no more running blind and hoping for luck. And when I find her, I could use it get out from under Masters thumb for good. Use it, sell it, whatever, with that thing, it would be easy. Me and daddy could be set for life.”

At the time, the idea had seemed brilliant. With her search for Elle stymied, and rental payments approaching their inevitable due, she had latched onto the idea of a Ghost Zone mission the instant her so-called benefactor had brought it up. It was a chance to bleed “Mister Masters” of a little more of his money, without actually having to tolerate his presence for any length of time. Even better, it presented an opportunity to do right by her father while staying far away from the quiet anger, the soft, dispirited sense of regret that had seemed to overtake him as jobs remained scarce, and Valerie continued to hunt.

Perhaps most selfishly, it was the opportunity for the Red Huntress to become what Valerie had had always wanted her to be: A free agent, no puppet masters, no expectations, just the world, and herself within in it.

It was one thing she truly did not regret, even now, lying in the dirt looking up at the memory of a memory ripped to tatters in her hands. Whatever else happened in this strange, wild place, it was her decision, her choice. She was finally in control.

Thinking of control, there was another reason why she wanted to speed up her search for the ghost girl.

“Elle's a good kid, but she <i>is</i> a kid, with a ghost in her she don't even know to fear. I'm not sure how long she can fight it like that without anyone to tell her what's going on. She needs someone who knows about ghosts,who can show her how to fight back, 'cause if she doesn't, I'm not sure how long she'll last until she ends up Plasmius."

“Or Phantom.”

It was an ugly theory, but explained a great deal. The identical looks, the raw antipathy towards Vlad, in particular, or how a full ghost could see himself as related, somehow, to a being that was something so much more.

All ghosts came from somewhere, and Valerie rather doubted Elle was truly Plasmius' only attempt at capturing a hybrid of his own.

“'Cause I think they're the same kinda thing. It explains why Plasmius wanted her so bad, and they change the same way, too. They go from being a ghost, ectosignitures and all, to being alive. Not some fake, but breathing, heartbeats, everything. There's something in them that's really, truly alive.

Plasmius and Elle, they're both alive," she whispered, "but only Elle's human, and I don't know how long that's gonna last.

I can't stay stupid about all this ghost shit, neither. There's so much they won't tell me, and Elle's my ticket to figuring it out. If I can find her in time, I could fix it. Bring her to the Fentons, maybe, take out the ghost before it gets too big, make cash, move out me and daddy and Elle all together. Either way, this is how I do it, right here, right now. This is my chance.”

No more being lead around like a particularly witless donkey for his carrot wielding master, no more suppressing every violent impulse that threatened to take her over any time she chanced to look “Mister Masters” in his insufferable face, no more long, interminable periods of her nose against a grindstone day after day, scraping her fingers bloody against poverty's wall in the way her father seemed convinced was better, somehow, for all the pain it so obviously caused him.

“I know it's risky, but it's worth it, it's gotta be. If I can get the infinimap, then I can fix everything, all at once. I won't owe nobody nothing, and I can start fixing things again, for everyone.”

And perhaps her mother agreed, as the shadow that had gathered against her brow seemed to ease, relaxing back into something more serene.

Valerie smiled, running her thumb over the place where her face once was, pointedly ignoring the sensation of absence in favor of the smiling visage still shining across her display.

“See, I knew you'd see it my way.” Valerie was pretty sure she'd had to have gotten her sense of adventure from somewhere, after all. “It's hard, but I'm fine. And when this is all done, it'll be more than fine, it'll be better.

Just you wait.”

Overlay image: Session end.

The memory of Theresa Grey vanished slowly, victim of her daughter's own reluctance to see her go. But vanish she did, sunshine grew pale and laughter faded, memory crushed into data and erased of meaning, and Valerie was once again alone.

She sighed, finally allowing herself to lower the photograph as she reached over for her other parcels, which she began collecting into a small bundle atop her chest.

Technically, she could reach over to put her mother with her boots and rations instead of the other way around, but found herself suddenly disinclined to do so. Without the stress of the day to keep her going, she found exhaustion pushing down at her very bones, keeping her pressed against the meager comfort of her body warmed hollow of dirt.

No, lifting herself up as little as possible seemed a very enticing proposition indeed.

She grabbed both her boots, then her gloves, peeled off to reveal the same skintight leather which coated the rest of her, the remains of her wallet, and a single, battered bag, too smooth for leather, too thick for silk: All supplies from her earlier run in with the thieving insect from before, pared down to those goods and supplies she could actually use.

She chose not to dwell on how few of them there were.

Her mother came last, placed gently at the head of the pile, where she could look it over one last time.

She should have done this sooner, she knew, perhaps even the moment she entered the Zone. Keeping the photograph on her physical person was too much of a risk, one born of foolish sentiment and thoughtless desire. She had just wanted so badly to keep one good thing with her, somewhere tangible and real, she'd disregarded the threat she put it in.

Because if there was one thing death was guaranteed to do, it was steal everything and everyone it thought was yours.

Valerie placed her hands over the small collection, reaching once again into the inorganic hum prickling ever at the edges of her mind.

Unit_1 selected (Gen_Storage:)

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A flick of her mental fingers, and it was done. Boots, bag, and all turned into their own kind of mist, dissolving into the small pocket dimension that followed her always, shadows diffusing into the surrounding light, the weight of them dissipating until nothing but the memory of their pressure remained.

Valerie brushed her fingers over the space they left behind, a half smile tugged at the corners of her trembling lips.

“Goodnight, Ma,” She whispered. A grief like seaglass hung heavy on her heart, smoothed over edges cut no longer, though the heft of its sorrow lay leaden even yet.

“Sleep good now, you hear?”

No voice answered in response.

Valerie no longer expected it to.

Deep in the realm of the dead, a figure turned on its side, curled against itself on its small outcropping of stone. Legs up to its chest, arms clenched tight around its shoulders as it heaved, breath by mortal breath, seeking some moment of repose.

#Valerie Grey #Danny Phantom #Fanfiction #Where You Belong #Chapter 3 #Writing

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illimitablespaces · 3 years ago

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Ghost, Candy Corn, Trick or Treat, Black Cat, Haunted House, Corn Maze. c:

Ghost: Do you get scared easily?

Admittedly, yes. I think part of this tendency to be scared easily, more so as I am older, is the fact that I am often riddled with anxiety, which does little to help.

Candy Corn: What is your favorite kind of candy?

I am not fond of candy but there was a time when I loved bit-o-honey. I discovered those from my grandmother. And now that I think on it, Werther's caramels (the hard ones). My great-grandmother had those in her home. Oh, and another one I remembered, there were these little bon-bons (which is what they were called, generically) that are made up of a ball of peanut butter encased in a wafer shell, covered in chocolate. I haven't been able to find these since I had them years ago. Ferrero Rocher is close but not quite the thing.

Trick or Treat: What was your favorite Halloween costume?

When I was little it was almost certainly obligatory for me to dress as Dracula. I was obsessed with bats for a time and I have remembrances of Tod Browning's Dracula (with Bela Lugosi) and Nosferatu that have stayed with me over the years. I only managed to watch Nosferatu completely when I hit my 20s because I found it so grotesque and fantastical (I still do).

To answer the question: Dracula (or some similar vampire).

Black Cat: Are you superstitious?

No, not really. I don't put much stock into anything like that.

Haunted House: Would you prefer to live in the city or the country?

The country, most definitely. Although I live in the city, I long for an extended stay in the country, away from all the importance and noise that seems so integrally tied to life in the city. Things proceed more simply and calmly in the country and, I think, there is a certain breadth of time that one can appreciate.

In the city, I am not afforded the opportunity to walk out my back door and wander over the field and into the woods as I once did. I cannot go out late into night in summer and stare in awe at the Milky Way. And winter too, when I would bundle up in my wool coat and go to the forest edge and listen to the wind make moan and here coyotes laugh far in the distance.

These things I miss dearly, and much more. The city has its positive aspects, of course, but I am a country mouse at heart.

Corn Maze: What is your favorite autumn activity?

Walking is perhaps my favorite activity in all seasons but there is something special about an autumn walk--the breezes have a bit of bite to them, not too cold though; the sun, when it shines, shines bright but not too hot; the trees reveal their colors in the most brilliant degree; the earth is scented with a spice-sweet fragrance, akin to wood but also old books; the moon, when she's visible, seems a more dear companion; tea becomes something of a ritual... I could wax poetical for many lines but I think my point is clear. And while I have not had the opportunity to enjoy autumn as I did in years prior to moving to the city, I think this year I will make a point of savoring these little joys in whatever way I can.

Thank you, @ant-soul, for these. I think in answering your questions I revealed my sentimentality, which is most welcome for me indeed.

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robotslenderman · 3 years ago

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Hi, absolutely loving radio silence!!! But just thought I'd something. I wonder how bias Wendy's view of robin is? Like is he as bad as she says? Or just bad in a more downplayed way and nossie are exaggerating? Like look at calebros in gerards words. When in reality, it's quite different. Also, what made you decide robin as your antagonist? He doesn't hate nossies cannonly. But this is a fanfic so it was your call and it was a good choice too. Really seems like a bad guy! It's a great portraya!

Honestly at this point my fic is more inspired by canon (yes, I know, just go with me XD) than based strictly on it. That's because I only skimmed the Nosferatu Clan Novel, didn't read the Ventrue novel (where Prince Isaac Goldwin appears, which I found out after I wrote the first draft and put a LOT of headcanon into Isaac which is almost certainly wrong... headcanon that the end of my story relies on in order to function), and accidentally based half of the story story on an assumption I ended up finding out was false.

Cut because this got long and I know not everyone reads Radio Silence, but Cock Robin, Wendy, and their relationship to each other addresses one of RS's biggest themes. Discussing this without spoiling their character arcs was actually damn hard lol.

TL;DR at the bottom

The assumption I got wrong -- "Cock Robin is a Justicar."

RS takes place during BJD after The Anarch Freefall and before Azhi Dahaka. And uh, somehow I completely and entirely forgot that Cock Robin quit his job as a Justicar to be an Archon instead, and this was mentioned in The Anarch Freefall.

Problem with that is if I fix it, it throws my entire plot and his role in it out the window, so I've had to completely ignore his resignation in order for the entire second half of the story to work, oops. If I went with canon, I'd honestly have to remove him from the novel entirely in exchange for another Justicar.

Which would be a shame because I explicitly wanted Cock Robin in it because he's a Nosferatu.

One of the big themes of Radio Silence is family and community. The Nosferatu are a family. They're a collection of smaller family units in one big extended family.

Cock Robin is a foil to Wendy. Wendy is very much stuck in the image of the Nosferatu as they tell themselves as -- that they're one big supportive family, that they're collectivists instead of individualists. Cock Robin, when he appears, is a depiction of a criticism of this. Where Wendy brushes the Nosferatu's biggest flaws under the carpet, Cock Robin drags them kicking and screaming into the light and says "this is not good enough, I demand better."

So how does this relate to Wendy's view on Cock Robin?

She's not so much wrong about him so much as:

Not aware of the full story

Not presenting the full story

These are both due to the same reason: she doesn't like to think about the worst parts of the Nosferatu culture.

I mentioned that Wendy brushes the Nosferatu's biggest flaws under the carpet. There is a hugeass one that Wendy actually withholds from the reader because it's such a bad flaw she doesn't even like to think about it, and this flaw is hinted at in the very first chapter, but she immediately glosses over it because it's so fucking bad she can't stand remembering it exists.

Wendy she loves her family. She loves her clan. But there are enormous flaws in Nosferatu culture that are there to stay, and won't stop happening because one fledgling (indeed, a lot of fledglings) has a problem with them.

Because Kindred are immortal, so old viewpoints don't die out. Instead of the new generation developing different norms, the new generation is eventually forced over time to accept these norms and eventually perpetuate them. Wendy adores her clan, so she just... uncomfortably acknowledges these flaws at best, and flat out ignores them at worst, because she doesn't know how to reconcile her love of her family with the at times horrific nature of the Nosferatu.

Cock Robin's canon story is that he was abandoned by his sire, so he didn't get to spend his chidlehood in a nice, big, warm, fuzzy, happily family like Wendy did, who had a doting sire and a supportive family. So he never had that conflict between the people he cared about and the fucking awful things they do to maintain and support the family.

Much like Wendy, Cock Robin knows that the flaws of the Nosferatu are not something that are ever going to be addressed or changed on a clan-wide scale. While Wendy accepts that they're there to stay whether she likes them or not, Cock Robin takes actions that says he'd rather burn the whole thing down and start over from scratch.

That is an interpretation of Cock Robin's issues with the Nosferatu as Wendy and many Nosferatu understand it.

But truthfully Wendy doesn't have the full story either. I mean, in a way she does, but she also doesn't because again, she doesn't like to think too deeply or look too closely at the Nosferatu's flaws, which means she doesn't come to certain obvious conclusions that anyone would if they thought about it for longer than three seconds. If she allowed herself to really face the flaws of the Nosferatu, it wouldn't be hard for her to put two and two together and form a theory as to why Cock Robin is the way he is.

So TLDR -- on the surface, Cock Robin is as bad as the Nosferatu say. But if you think about the Nosferatu from a certain perspective and are willing to examine their worst flaws... well, you'd probably supply him with the gasoline so he can burn it all down.

#Radio Silence #I've gotta get back to my assignment so will respond to other asks at another time

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chiseler · 4 years ago

Text

Great Zilches of History

Film is light. There are times, though, when that light may take on a Stygian cast, burning with a flamme noire severity, a weird and otherworldly keenness. Or it may burn lurid and loud — especially if it’s a very old film, acting like a séance that summons the unruly dead. The darkness in cinema best typified by that form we call film noir is in its essence an extension of the peculiarly American darkness of Edgar Allan Poe.

Early, nitrate-based film stock, with its twinkling mineral core, gives Poe's crepuscular light its time to shine and thereby illuminate the world. No longer held in the solitary confinement of a page of reproduced text or an image, frozen, rendered in paint or ink. Poe's singularly tormented vision is finally written alchemically, in cinematographic rays beamed through silver salts; into moving images of such aggressive vitality as to blast every rational thing from one's mind. A Black & White image flipped into negative makes black fire, or black sunlight such as illumines Nosferatu’s Transylvanian forests, through which a box-like carriage rattles at Mack Sennett speed. But with the slightest underexposure, a little dupey degradation of the print, or even a little imagination (such collaboration is not discouraged), this liquid blackness will spread everywhere and anywhere, the most luminous pestilence known to creation. Be it in the laughing nightmare of Fleischer cartoons of old (Out of the Inkwell, indeed) or John Alton’s vision of the night, we are left to wonder: is daylight burning out the corner of a building, or is it the blackness of the building which is eating into the sky?

As with many such questions, film permits us no easy answer. We are simply to watch as the characters smudge. As their shadows pulsate and flicker, emanate out beyond themselves. But if Poe represents the loss of control over one’s existence and the ensuing panic, then cinema, consciously or not, takes existential dread as a given.

God, a vague and unseen deity, died at the moment cinema was born, replaced by a new celestial order. Saints and prophets made poor film characters, giving off the feeling of having stepped out of a stained glass window, flat, Day-Glo icons moving uncomfortably through three-dimensional space. Movies rather rejoiced in dirt and rags, texture and imperfection, so that the most lacklustre clown easily outperformed all the icon messiahs. At 45 minutes, Fernand Zecca’s The Life and Passion of Christ (1903) is one of the earliest feature films, but compared to the same filmmaker’s less ambitious, more playful shorts, it’s a beautiful snooze. A different execution climaxes his Story of a Crime (1901), in which we get to see, by brutal jump cut, a guillotine decapitation before our very eyes. This, as Maxim Gorky prophesied, is what the public wants. Or maybe the events of 1901, cinematic and otherwise, allow “the public” to define itself in ways heretofore unthinkable. The year brings Victoria Regina’s propitious death. And with her passing, Edgar Allan Poe’s pronunciamento on celebrity, “the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque," comes to new and anarchic fruition as an incendiary schnook, one of history’s finest.

When he shot President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo on September 6th, 1901, the currents of fear and vengeance unleashed by Leon Czolgosz would carry him on a journey from reflexive beatings at the hands of police and a post-Victorian mob – ladies in bustles shedding all restraint, transformed from well-honed symbols of middle-class decorum into yowling banshees, screaming “GIVE HIM TO US!” – straight to the electric chair, from whence his corpse would be taken for additional punishment, a process where ghoulish prison authorities at Auburn separated the head from the body, and then poured sulfuric acid on what remained, before secreting the sorry residue of America’s anarchist son into an unmarked grave.

Despite attempts to erase Czoglosz from history, a visual document survives, oozing with pathos and bitter recrimination. It is impossible, looking into those eyes, not to feel unnerved and, yes, sympathetic with him – his desperate act, after all, was as critical a part of America’s greed-engorged industrial fantasia as the near daily spectacle of peaceful strikers, his friends among them, being slaughtered in the name of profit.

Cinema’s misspent childhood years in late-Victorian fairgrounds are followed by a grimy adolescence in Edwardian nickelodeon parlours. The medium, which finally comes of age amid gaudy palaces built in its honor, morphs many times. However, All Talking Pictures are the final death knell for the Victorian standard, belching from the screen a thousand inbred tongues that invade the ear willy-nilly. They remind us that when Queen Victoria breaths her last Naturalism sheds decorum, taste, breeding, good table manners.

Edgar Allan Poe essentially owns motion pictures via ongoing necrophilic obsession, since celluloid preserves the dead better than any embalming fluid. Like amber preserved holograms, they flit in and out of its parameters, reciting their own epitaphs in pantomime; revenant moths trapped in perpetual motion. Film is bona fide illumination — as opposed to religion’s metaphorical kind – representing the supremacy of alchemy and necromancy over sackcloth and ashes. The inmates, emboldened under the spell of Klieg lights, were not only running the asylum, but re-shaping the world in their own image. Both Church and State with their blunt instruments of repression proved impotent against the anarchy of this freshly liberated ghetto.

Holy men were unceremoniously defrocked, their doctrine of abject compliance to class-based norms re-written into storylines enriched by grease-painted floozies, costumed villains, and snooty dowagers brought down a notch by the drunk hobo in her drawing room. Amidst widespread labour unrest and mass poverty, followed soon by the Great Depression, filmgoers of the silent era had a front row view of the plutocracy’s helplessness against a swelling tide of restless humanity. Charlie Chaplin’s itinerant laborer may have accidentally thwarted a plutocrat’s plan for world domination and/or a house renovation, just as Groucho Marx seemed to have spontaneously derailed a social climbing matron’s equally fierce ambitions.

All hail the magic mirrors! Celestial mandalas! Giant eggs and butterfly women! Segundo de Chomón’s The Red Spectre (1907) ruthlessly assaults our eyes with a wraith-magician dissolving through his coffin lid in a red, hand-tinted, flame-flickering hell. His presence, caped, skull-masked, was to herald a new thespic truth, that from this moment forward the art of acting would be reduced to how you respond to light, and how light responds to you. The Specter of Chomon’s dark bauble is in every element Poe’s Red Death — japing and performing tricks for us, his adoring fans and welcome guests, before announcing our doom — literary metaphor slammed against a literal backdrop of amber stalactites, pellucid as an ossuary.

That was a long time ago, in the first decades of the 20th century, before artifice and studios and the commercial paradigm of stardom finally swallowed cinema in one ravenous bite. It was a period when one could see, if one paid close attention, the dreariness of ordinary life at the centre and around the edges of every motion picture brought forth. It lived onscreen in film’s early days, exposing the pretense, however fitful, of opulence or period as simply that: pretense, a fundamental desire to escape reality. But this “escapism” had always been erroneously attributed to the audience’s needs, when in fact it was rather those bankrolling the nascent medium not yet sufficiently in control of itself to impose any order.

The censors were on to something, even if they could never fully articulate what precise blasphemies were being committed.

Take Hitchcock’s Vertigo, for instance, which isn’t pure noir but is pure Poe: what would the surgical excision of an influence look like? Granted, the noir genre seems an unlikely Poe derivative, but what of Laura — fatalism, romance and necro-fantasy (with Lydecker as Usher)? DOA is the kind of concept Poe might have dreamed up; one of the great noir scribes, Cornell Woolrich is channeling Poe through an all-thumbs pulp sensibility. And how hard would it be to cast Val Lewton as the horror noir hybrid, with premature burials, ancestral disease, lunatics taking over bedlam? Jean Epstein, who adapted The Fall of the House of Usher in 1928, complained that Baudelaire’s translations fundamentally mistook Poe’s innocence for ghastliness.

The dead in Poe, writes Epstein, are “only slightly dead.”

To the extent that Epstein was correct, the whimsy that Poe bequeaths to cinema finds itself absorbed in almost material terms — not as sensibility but as a texture whose particular nap or weave is never granted names. In Mesmeric Revelations a voluntary subject is quite near physical death and under the ministrations of his mesmerist, answering precise questions about the nature of God. Before dying, he says God is “ultimate or unparticled” matter: “What men attempt to embody in the word ‘thought,’ is this matter in motion”. The same unnamable textures apparently survive on television, a case of Poe resonating inside our minds, a collective consciousness replaced by cathode rays.

Deep within the 18 hours of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return, there is a moment that, on its incandescent surface, could have been lifted weightless from the great post-war dream of material deliverance; as if the zeitgeist of the mid 20th century had somehow got lost and ended up in this one: Daytime, the top on the convertible is down, the radio tuned, The Paris Sisters singing I Love How You Love Me as a reincarnated Laura Palmer lifts her face to a cloudless sky. Within this tapestry of an early Phil Spector production — his trademark reverb eternally evocative of Romance and Death (two conditions Spector knows well) — the voice of Priscilla Paris could be a siren sound from the American Beyond, or a dream goddess lullaby from the whispering gallery, or sweet nothings from the crypt. We don’t know. We’ll never know.

In this oneiric echo chamber, Poe smiles down upon American blondness, muscle cars soaked in sunlight, candy for eye and ear; the terrible ecstasy of unending motion and immortality.

If Lynch’s Return means going back home, then home is that Lemon Popsicle/Strawberry Milkshake species of innocence proffered by America's music industry between 1957 and 1964. The horror genre always has to have some component of innocence to devastate, be it the existential kind which inspires the malevolence everyone paid the price of a ticket to have vicarious transit with; or the mere victimisation of the unsuspecting. Either way, there was no other period in American popular culture when innocence, of any variety, was so lavishly examined, toyed with, killed. The free floating chord that opens The Everly Brothers song, All I Have To Do is Dream, remains a lamentation in sound: the sudden recrudescence of Poe’s beating, tell-tale heart. Adoring such guilt-free teenage odes to sleep, death and sexual desire, David Lynch finds a muse in Amanda Seyfried. Specifically her visionary eyes melting Phil Spector’s dark edifice of sugar in a deathless, Sternbergian close-up — iridescent search lights, ever more urgently scanning the sky above, waiting for the sun to swallow her whole. We can only bear witness, and internalize this shimmering ingenue, this angel in a red convertible, trading places with Old Sol; as if whatever she just snorted has entered our system through hers. But in that ephemeral instant she achieves oneness with all things; the transcendence of stardom — true, temporal stardom — shorn of fame and the imperatives of show-business.

To this day David Lynch’s favorite film remains Otto e Mezzo, directed by Federico Fellini: Western Europe’s sorcerer of confectionary delights and unending motion; the man who put the “dolce” in La Dolce Vita. Fellini, he states, "manages to accomplish with film what mostly abstract painters do; namely, to communicate an emotion without ever saying or showing anything in a direct manner." Even if one were to take him at his word — and we must, of course, for no filmmaker has ever been known to misrepresent themselves to us — this seems a strange instance of gravitational pull, particularly in the light of the formal strategies of both men as they developed through time. Lynch has always favored a blunt pictorialism that, in its bluntness, borders on the language of Imagism: the studied simplicity of the language used to complex, powerful effect. Fellini, in 8 1/2 and throughout much of his career, by contrast, unleashes upon the viewer an insanely fluid, brutally precise camera ballet. Any good cinephile might be tempted to resolve the disparities and move toward a brighter, less subterranean comprehension. But, ultimately, such understanding would be a didactic burden no moviegoer needs. For here, in these conflicting dialects, you have a fleeting taste of ideologies swirled together like ribbon candy: a blur of four-wheeled luxury from the New World zooming past regional splendor into that fraternity of man: the socio-economic nirvana imagined by Karl Marx in the Old.

Careening from one via to another at harrowing, white-knuckle speed, Fellini was once heard to lament that “Some of the neo-realists seem to think that they cannot make a film unless they have a man in old clothes in front of the camera.” George Bluestone, recording these words for the pages of Film Culture in 1957, was sitting in the literal passenger seat of that ideal metaphor for post-war ebullience in action: expert, 20th century precision hurtling them through Roman streets with graffiti-scrawled churches proudly bearing the hammer and sickle; that famous Black Chevy skirting the Italian Scylla (the Vatican) and its equally dogmatic Charybdis (the Party). At that velocity, anything could make sense.

“Appearances aside" Bluestone wrote, "the Chevrolet is at every moment under Fellini’s control. He weaves in and out of traffic, misses pedestrians by inches, swerves away from Nomentana’s interminable monuments, dodging yellow traffic blinkers as if he were trying out a darkened slalom.” It is every bit a performance. Rome, after all, is the land of Bernini’s The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, Apollo and Daphne — marble-cum-flesh, even as flesh itself gives way to forms that leave the viewer in terrified awe. While reliving his own mythic, carbureted experience, Bluestone does some weaving of his own, quoting Genevieve Agel’s one-line pronunciamento (and, in the process, defining what would soon be labelled 'Felliniesque'), “Fellini is a visionary of the real”, as the passenger positions his driver somewhere between corporeal reality and ecstatic truth while the big man (no old clothes for this maestro) drives and drives. “As one hand lightly guides the wheel, the other gestures — it acts.”

Spirits of the Dead is one of those compendium films, with voguish directors (Malle, Vadim, Fellini) entrusted with bringing to the screen a Poe story each. Only the Fellini episode, Toby Dammit, is notable, but it's very notable, a hallucinatory yarn owing as much to Mario Bava's Kill, Baby, Kill! as to Poe's Never Bet the Devil Your Head, its ostensible source. The title character, played by Terence Stamp with white-blond hair and dark roots and constant beads of witch hazel perspiration, is in Rome to attend an awards ceremony and to play Christ in a western, but he's fatally distracted by his new sports car and a vision of the devil in the form of a little girl. Toby's ride through a hellscape of nocturnal Rome seems lifted from Jules Dassin’s 10.30 p.m. Summer (1966), but works even better for Fellini than it did in the Duras adaptation. An oppressively subjective film, Toby Dammit narrows down to the view in the Ferrari's headlights, a ghastly floodlit interzone where human forms are gradually replaced with mannequins and cut-outs, as the city becomes unreal, an elaborate movie set, an uncanny valley laid out for the staging of an epic stunt/snuff film.

Fellini and Lynch celebrate bodily extremes in intriguing if differing ways, which should, in our time, naturally gallop beyond the pale, but nevertheless become wholly, weirdly digestible. It is perhaps the innocent glee of these artists, their wonderment at the vast variety of shapes the human body can assume; an innocence which suspends toward erasure our awareness the way physical representation functions in the 21st century. Lynch presents the disabled as childlike, mysterious, magical beings without ever worrying about lending them agency (The Elephant Man’s John Merrick functions both as passive whipping boy and chic spectacle for the whole of Victorian London), or the mendacity of adult sophistication (the latest Twin Peaks iteration includes a pint-sized hitman who whines like a puppy when his icepick is broken). Is it any wonder Lynch evolved a style which placed them front and center in unmoving shots, without irony or pity?

Poe, while certainly a pioneer of fake news, also had a way of vindicating the lumpen masses of humanity (to the middle-brow’s abiding chagrin).

The Mystery of Marie Roget, a Parisian murder mystery, presented as a fictional sequel to The Murders in the Rue Morgue, was simultaneously trumpeted as a correct solution to the real-life murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers in New York. When a news article presented fresh evidence while the story was still being serialised, Poe made minor changes to the final instalment to keep his fiction in line with the facts.

He later published a story about an Atlantic crossing by balloon, accomplished in three days, in The New York Sun in 1844. "Signal Triumph of Mr. Monck Mason's Flying Machine!!!" The piece was presented as truth, and only revealed as "The Great Balloon Hoax" a couple of days later. “The more intelligent believed," wrote Poe, "while the rabble, for the most part, rejected the whole with disdain.” He saw this as a new development: “20 years ago credulity was the characteristic trait of the mob, incredulity the distinctive feature of the philosophic.”

What had changed? Perhaps the acceleration of scientific and social progress meant that the more literate and scientifically-minded had become inured to startling new developments, so the most surprising events now seemed credible. And since these same technological leaps were always presented as social benefits, the working class was growing skeptical, since they rarely saw any improvement in their condition.

by Daniel Riccuito, R.J. Lambert and David Cairns

Special thanks to Richard Chetwynd

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rosevanhelsing · 4 years ago

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FANFIC. LORD OF CHRISTMASLAND

Chapter 4.

Father and daughter walked the park together for days and months, and although Chistmasland was not exactly the same as they had imagined, it was close enough. Charlie and Millie tried all the attractions, sweets and played all the time. Millie was left with the Nutcracker costume which was her favorite Christmas story. When exhaustion overcame them, the two of them would lie on a bed in one of the wooden houses. Millie snuggled close to her dear father, he was all she had and her world, yet Millie was developing a hunger that she could not calm with the Christmasland food. Charlie was concerned about the issue, it also seemed that he looked older and even gray hair began to appear.

A few months later:

Millie's hunger was so unbearable that she suffered terribly and told her father: - Dad, I need meat ... I'm very hungry.

- Millie, my sugarplum, I promise you that Dad will bring you whatever it takes so you don't go hungry. I will have to leave Christmasland to look for food but I will be back very soon.

- Please, Dad ... come back soon ...

Charlie got on the Wraith, however he didn't know where to start or what to do, so it occurred to him to go to his mentor and old friend Abe. He set course for Florida where he remembered the Night Road was and with the Wraith he managed to reach the Parnassus after many years.

Charlie entered the Parnassus, there were not many people, at most two or three people who looked at him curiously. Charlie surprisingly noticed that they were like him, yet he went straight to Abe.

- Abe, I need your help ...

- Well, the prodigal son has returned ... You are a scoundrel, you did not invite me to your wedding and I found out by chance that you had a daughter ... - he said mockingly

Charlie was speechless but Abe said:

- I was joking, Charlie ... I know that until recently you had not found your new knife, I also know that you have a new inscape, and that you had no way of contacting me. Come on, tell “honest” Abe everything.

Relieved, Charlie explained everything and when he finished Abe said:

- You have a good little problem. Charlie, as I told you years ago you are a really powerful creative, perhaps you will be the most powerful of us ... and you have found an equally powerful knife, so much so that it converted you and your daughter to create Christmasland.

"Is that what you meant when you said that our gift caused you harm?" But I don't notice anything.

- ¿Are you sure? Doesn't it seem strange to you not to feel anything for the death of your wife?

- She deserved it ... I was going to take my girl away ... Manx said through his teeth

- I think I know what your gift takes away from you… but I want to see your knife first.

- No! The last time you put your hands on my knife, you destroyed it! I will not let you put your hands on my dear Wraith… she… Abe, please, don't!

Abe ran into the parking lot with a steel bar looking for a vehicle he didn't know about. At the back of a parking lot and next to an old blue pickup was the Wraith parked. Abe approached cautiously, Manx's car turned on the headlights and the engine began to purr softly. Abe continued to advance toward the Wraith, ignoring Charlie who was begging him to leave his beloved car alone. The Wraith went from a soft purr to something that seemed like a roar as it began to accelerate towards Abe, Abe narrowly dodging it but one of the Wraith's stirrups grazed his leg causing a deep cut. Abe ran back into the Parnassus, pale as dead.

"My God, Charlie, what kind of knife is that?! It is the knife that has found you and has possessed you ...

- What are you saying?

- Charlie, do you remember that movie you saw years ago with your wife? Nosferatu's… that car is like a vampire! She has converted you, she has given you the power to create Christmasland and immortality and in return she took away your humanity from you and Millie and when you need to return to Christmasland you will need someone to give her what you can no longer give her. To make up for what our gift takes away and to be able to continue using it, we need to hurt ourselves or someone else ...

Charlie got out of the Parnassus confused and hurt, got in the car and drove off. For some reason, no matter how much he accelerated and thought about Christmasland, he could not enter in his inscape.

- No, no, no…. Please let me in ...

The Wraith continued to advance but did not show any static or the like. Charlie stopped by a service area, bought some meat and some discount candy canes, and noticed an ad that read:

WE MAKE PERSONALIZED PLATE LICENSES

Charlie walked into the store and said:

- I want two of those license plates. 2 equal.

- Sure, sir, to what size? And what do you want me to put?

Charlie thought for a few minutes, told him the size of the license plate, and said:

- I want it to put N0S4A2

- Okay, but what does that mean?

- Nosferatu- Charlie said with a disturbing smile, - How long will it take?

- About an hour.

- Well, I'm going to eat something

Charlie went to load the food into the Wraith and saw a girl of about 6 years old staring at his car.

- Hello, little girl- Charlie greeted her affably- What are you doing here?

- Are you an assistant to Santa Claus? - Said the girl turning to him.

- Why do you ask that?

- His car is full of gifts and carols are heard inside.

Charlie looked at the car in surprise but didn't let the surprise show on his face, instead he looked at the girl and said:

"Yes, I am indeed an assistant of yours, but don't tell anyone," he said putting his finger to his lips with a gesture of silence.

The girl smiled and said:

- Can you give him my letter? Tell him Lorrie Mitchell has been very good. – She gave him the letter and left.

- Sure dear.

Charlie went to collect the license plates he had bought and put them in the trunk, to put them later. When he got into the car, the Wraith emitted static again.

- What are you trying to tell me? - He said as if the car was going to answer him.

Suddenly the car started up and into a snowy landscape, Charlie was stunned. Was that part of his inscape? The car was driving alone on a road, Charlie saw, surprised and amazed, the snowmen he had created when he was little and that they greeted him as he passed. Suddenly the car turned and braked. Charlie saw a sign:

“Graveyard of What Might Be”

Surprised, he got out of the car and went there. There was an iron gate, with two angels next to the door very similar to the ornament on the Wraith's bonnet. Charlie stepped in and slipped on the ice, nearly hitting his head on one of the gravestones. Surprised, he read the epitaph:

LORRIE MITCHELL

Day after day beaten by her mother

When she only wanted her affection.

How happy would she be instead

If Chirstmasland she could come.

Charlie put his hand to his mouth in horror and looked around, it was a gigantic cemetery. Charlie struggled to his feet and remembered Abe's words.

"You need someone to give you what you cannot give the Wraith"

Charlie looked at the tombstone again, stroked it, and said:

- Easy Lorrie. I will come to rescue you and you will be very happy with me... and Millie. I must rescue that girl from the dirty hands of her mother's whore who beat her

Charlie went back to the Wraith, ran his hand down the long hood and said:

- This is what you wanted me to see, right?

#charlie manx

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bunnylouisegrimes · 5 years ago

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Her Savior, Her Nosferatu (NOS4A2 Fanfiction)

Her Savior, Her Nosferatu

A NOS4A2 Fanfiction

By: Bunny Louise Grimes

A/N: This (very long) fanfic contains some disturbing things, so be ready. It involves a certain creepy character doing some very disgusting things, but I assure you, he will get his in the end, and near the end there will also be fluff. Avoid if that’s not your thing because this is a pretty dark fic with a hopeful ending, yes, but it is very dark. Some Trigger Warnings: Rape (both mentioned and part of the plot), gore, and mentions of Charlie’s child abuse and domestic violence (read Wraith Welcome to Christmasland comic to understand his backstory if you haven’t to get the full picture).

This is also a Charlie X Vic fic, but their relationship is extremely platonic and there is little to no romance at all.

Note that there are quite a few AU-ish elements in this story too.

It is set (generally speaking) roughly after episode 8 in the first season, although it is isn’t entirely canon-based.

Please, enjoy.

The blistering heat of a summer in July would’ve normally bothered Charles Talent Manx The Third, but with the windows down in his sleek and sable 1938 Rolls Royce Wraith antique, the breeze made him comfortable enough. Automobile air conditioning was not a luxury yet in the years this car was made, so having the windows rolled down was your only way of not baking in the humidity.

The ancient FM radio was cranked up. Instead of Christmas music, for once, Charlie was listening to a channel playing old music he enjoyed. Most of the music playing from this channel was from the 1970’s, but a few 1980’s songs came on, such as this one. Currently, Tears For Fears were singing joyfully about what a Mad World they were living in. The old vampire clacked his long nails against the steering wheel, humming along and gazing at the bright blue sky. The sun irritated his eyes, so he was forced to look away once it came out from behind some fluffy white clouds.

Currently, he was in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He was on his way to The House of Sleep, as he called Bing’s house. He called it that due to dead bodies of bad parents “sleeping” for all of eternity before being disposed of. Or, that is what Charlie thought...

He slowed his car down and halted outside the rickety house. The vocals to Tears For Fears died down just as Charlie released his keys and placed them in his coat pocket, leaving an awkward and almost unsettling silence. He was on his way to talk to Bing about a new child to save from a perverted uncle who was harming her, and she was in desperate need to be given a pure and happy life as a healthy and strong vampire such as himself and his other children.

He stepped outside the car and closed the door behind him. A collection of pinwheels blew in the wind, making a rapid noise that accompanied the trees rustling. He made sure the car was locked using his powers. The moment Charlie used his powers to lock his car, he froze.

His psychic senses were tingling at the moment of being activated. Something was wrong. He could taste something heinous on the tip of his tongue. His brain felt as though it was vibrating behind his eyes and within his skull. His heart rate picked up and his hands started to tremble. Yes, something was wrong, and he needed to figure out what exactly was the matter.

His instincts screamed at him, telling him to peak into one of the basement windows once his eyes happened to meet them. He slowly and carefully approached the house. His hands continued to quiver and his heart continued to thud as he walked over to the windows and got on his knees. He leaned into them to look carefully.

The dusty basement with colorful Christmas lights had some kind of noises coming from it. He squinted his sharp eyes and made sure to tilt his one ear to make sure his bat-like hearing could actually listen in. A young female voice in distress, crying out in pain.... a deep man’s voice chuckling and clearly being overjoyed... a rhythmic rocking sound was the beat behind their moans and whispers.

The vampire turned his head to the right, the direction the sounds were coming from. At first, he didn’t believe what he was seeing and thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. Perhaps his mind dirtied an innocent action due to the dust-coated windows making things hard to see and interpret, even to eyes as keen as his. But when it dawned on him that this was no optical illusion, and his initial thoughts were indeed correct, horror swelled in his heart. His stomach sank, and one of his hands went to his mouth in pure instinct. He gasped, his mouth left hanging agape. His eyes widened in pure terror. A scream begged to be let out of his vocal cords, but the stone in his throat died before ever leaving it. He jumped back, dumbfounded and overcome with panic and shock. His heartbeat now raced in his ears, and his body shook to its very core. His eyes never left what disgusting act lie just beneath his feet.

Bing Partridge, that gargantuan lump of a man, was on top of thin and average statured Victoria McQueen. He could recognize her soft, pale face, now with tears streaming down her cheeks. Her dark eyes looked to be even darker thanks to her dilated pupils. Drool was pooling out of her mouth, and pain filled sobs croaked out of her. There was no doubt she was drugged up. Was she drugged... with the gas? Something inside Charlie told him that fat bastard used his gingerbread gas, only to be used to knock bad parents out before killing them, to make her weaker and unable to fight back. Her white, long sleeved shirt and blue jeans were thrown to the side, and she was left in her black bra, unhooked and near her thin stomach, and matching panties around her legs. The hairy and large monster was still within his regular clothes, the only exception being his pants also pulled down, exposing his bare ass facing Charlie from where he was looking.

The vampire could tell this was no consensual act. Not only due to her being drugged up, and not only due to her looking and sounding to be in distress, but he could feel her fear in his bones and head. He could smell the dreadful sweat pouring from every crevice on her body, and the petrified tears streaming from her foggy eyes. Something stirred inside of him at this sight, something that had been dormant for years. He remembered, more vividly than he had in an extremely long time, when something very similar happened to him.

He was a young boy, barely 13 years old, when one of his mother’s clients was thrown out after abusing her in bed. He wasn’t fully satisfied with her actions for him, he had said, and he was bitter. His mother accused him of being a homosexual, perhaps, and a woman didn’t do the trick. Oh, if only she knew how right she was, and that young boys were this man’s type. The man had followed young Charlie as the boy went to play with his sled, as was typical when his mother got done yelling at him, slapping him, or ignoring him to engage in her sexual acts with great glee. The pain Charlie felt throughout his body and mind that day was unfathomable, and no matter how much he cried out for help, no one came to his rescue. Men like his attacker had a very special place in Hell, Charlie was sure of it. It wasn’t like his mother, Fanny Manx, cared if such a thing happened to her son. In fact, she would’ve probably said, had Charlie not stood up for himself in an incredible way he barely remembered, that he deserved to be used, and it gave him a purpose in this world, something he lacked. Looking back at his abusive whore of a mother, it was quite the surprise to Charlie that his mother never tricked him out to get extra money, when she very easily could’ve and would’ve if she thought of it.

He had managed to escape after all was done and the man was satisfied with using the young boy’s body. He slid down a hill, not noticing a tree, and once his head hit the tree, something unlocked inside of him. The world around him had changed slightly, and he gained a newfound strength to murder his attacker with one of the sharp blades of his now broken sled. He stormed back into town and did the same to his mother and one of the men who owned the inn and mortuary he lived in with his mother. He had little to no memory of this event, and it seemed to him a horrible nightmare almost entirely lost to time.

But the emotions and events of Charlie’s assault became fresh and open in his mind. The despair and suffering he felt during that moment of his life came flooding back to his heart, tugging at the faucets behind his eyes to release water. Wounds healed after an adolescence filled with nightmares, panic attacks, internal confusion and trauma with no guidance, and shame from so long ago were opened once more, with deep red blood seeping out of the near non-existant stitches. His shock and horror melted into equally crimson fury as that blood dripped from his wounds.

They had begun to heal once he was in his 20’s thanks to time and maturity, and meeting his first wife and starting a family with her during the prosperous Roaring 20’s certainly made him feel happy. Of course, once she began to abuse him during the Depression when they lost everything, this brought back similar feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness, an inner conflict that made him come crawling back to his abuser because a part of him still loved her. Becoming a vampire and starting a happy family of children similar to his case had certainly rehealed his wounds for a very long time. He hadn’t meant to become a vampire with his daughters thanks to his powers unlocking after his second mental snap that was even larger than the first, but he had to make due with what was given to him in life, and he had. There was a part of him that didn’t like that he was a vampire and that his babies were vampires, but he knew that there were benefits, and he simply had to focus on the positives, as they most likely outweighed the negatives, no matter what anyone else said.

But no amount of comforting childhood innocence and Christmas joy could stop his wounds from reopening while seeing this revolting act play out in front of him. The agony of this poor teenage girl full of purity... and that small part of innocence left inside of her (despite a scrappy home life) being ripped away...yes, that home life allowed her to discover her psychic talent of finding lost objects, and led her to him, but it had caused her lots of pain that he understood. She was gothy and rebellious, and very modern, but none of that mattered. Charlie had fell for her, he cared about her, even if she didn’t see it. It was more than just the fact she was a Creative like him, although that was part of it. He understood her and wanted to be with her. He wanted her to be with him and to give her happiness, to give his children happiness in having a mother, and to give him happiness in having a wife once again.

He would need her virginity to help her transform into a vampire like him one day. He would be the one to take it through sex, and then fuse it back inside of her by biting her neck and focusing his energy on her. But now, none of that could happen. Not only because her purity was destroyed, but because she would have scars just as he did all those years ago that would make it extremely hard for her to trust or want to be with any man, to even get through life. It was somewhat hard for him at first to have sex with Cassie for the first time, but it was easier than expected, most likely because she was a harmless woman, and his trauma was not as fresh. For Vic, any man would bring back these feelings until her trauma would heal, if she was lucky to have it heal enough or at all. And even then, what if she wanted children with a man? Would she be too old to have them by then? Her life, much like Charlie’s life, was destroyed by a sexual impulse from a disgusting waste of a man.

But Charlie’s hopeful romantic plans with Victoria being ruined were not the larger reason why he was so disgusted, although they were a part of why, and he acknowledged there was a strong possibility she wouldn’t have wanted to be with him no matter what in the end. It was the fact that someone else, and especially someone else that reminded him of himself, was going through the horrific event that he exactly went through. He hated it when adults would harm children and especially sexually. When it was an adult doing it to another adult, regardless of virginity being involved or not, it was still filthy. Some men, unfortunately, never understood the importance of defending the honor of a woman, and this insult to a pig violating and destroying this girl’s honor, chastity, and identity sickened Charlie. Even if he hadn’t loved her, his rage would still be just as fire hot.

The vampire got up off the ground, his claw-like nails almost digging into his palms as he held his hands in sweaty fists. His dark brown eyes could burn holes into anything. He shook even more violently now. He was going to kill Bing Partridge. He didn’t know how just yet, but he knew it was going to be long and torturous, and it would be quite the spectacle to anyone who enjoyed a good gore session.

Charlie walked back to his car to grab a weapon from the trunk, his hostile resent clearly evident from the way he stormed over to his antique. He unlocked his trunk and pulled it out: his autopsy mallet he stole from the morgue during an event where he had to play dead in his crippled, old form due to one of his previous assistants being a fool and allowing them to be caught by the police. He wasn’t believed by a soul and locked in the looney bin, but Charlie had managed to escape. This event seemed to be forgotten by all police involved, and the general consensus was a necrophiliac of sorts stole his corpse.

The silver metal of the mallet shimmered and reflected the sunlight in an almost beautiful way. He tapped it in his palms, his thick eyebrows furrowed and lips tightly together in a frown. His mind was swimming in fire and ways to rip apart the man who ripped apart this poor girl, both physically and mentally. He quietly closed his trunk and walked back over to the house. He knew he had to sneak down to the basement to avoid being caught and noticed, as surprise was his ally in this moment. To take the monsters of this world by surprise and revel in their pain while justice was served was a euphoria Charlie could only describe as heavenly.

He thought about how he was going to break in. He tried the door, just to be sure, and it was locked. Charlie thought back to when he first came to this house if there was any kind of simple lock he could pull or turn with his telekineses. He remembered there was a key from the inside still within the keyhole you had to turn, and a top lock you had to pull. He focused his mind on these two things. When the key turned and the top lock pulled back on the other side, Charlie tried the door again and it opened. As quiet as he could, the old vampire walked on the floor as though it were made of the most fragile glass. Using his telekinesis, he closed the door behind him with equal gentleness and locked it once again so that if the fat bastard did manage to get away, it would slow him down.

He tiptoed down the hallway, the sounds of Vic’s crying, Bing’s grunts and laughter, and the rocking even louder than behind the muffled glass. His grip tightened on his mallet, as his anger was getting stronger every moment. He winced at every small creak his black Oxford dress shoes made across the wooden floor, but the monster seemed far too invested in destroying the poor teenage girl’s life to notice little noises. The sweat beaded Charlie’s forehead, and he was sure he looked red due to the resentful, lava-like blood flooding his cheeks. Interestingly, the vampire’s body temperature, with the exception of his face usually, would drop significantly when he was very upset, angry, and so on. His hands had gone cold as they clutched the metal of the mallet. If he so wanted, he could’ve froze it using his abilities, but that was not on his mind at the moment.

He managed to reach the basement door. It was wide open, and the despicable act was right in front of his face. He couldn’t move for a few moments, paralyzed from shock and rage, but he managed to creep down the steps with little to no noise. As he got closer, he could finally hear Bing’s terrible words.

“Mr. Manx will be so proud when I’m done with you... yes, he will be... God, you’re so soft! You remind me of my mommy... so delicate and fresh... with such big tits too!”

Vic continued to choke out cries and screams, her head lopped back on the chair. Her messy black hair looked greasy and as though it was pulled on. Helpless and frightened, she couldn’t do anything as this bear-like man continued to ruin her. Her glassy eyes just so happened to roll over and see Charlie creeping down the steps. She noticed he had some kind of weapon in his hands, looking as though he was about to attack... her assailant? Oh, Dear Lord, please kill this... thing. Her vision was blurry, and her conscious was in and out, but it was quite obvious he was angry and upset. The monster was too oblivious and too lost in his own sexual ecstasy to notice where Vic’s eyes were or what was just behind him.

Charlie’s eyes met Vic’s for a few seconds, and they glimmered with pity and empathy. When his gaze shifted back to the evil monster, fire filled them once again. He bared his sharp teeth and growled lowly, sounding like an animal. A group of fangs came jutting out behind his teeth, turning his low growl into a vampiric hiss. His nails grew longer, and a stream of dragon smoke came out of his nose and mouth. His primal vampire instincts were kicking in, and this included his body temperature becoming ice cold to the point it burned, as well as the ability for him to see his breath. It was almost as if his lungs froze over from within, and steam-like air was the only thing that could come out. He looked more akin to a beast-like bat or wolf than a man. His pale skin looked like ice, and his dark eyes turned pitch black and shiny, with hints of blood red around the enlarged, onyx irises. He finally reached the bottom of the steps, edging closer to the large creature...

Bing grabbed Vic by her chin and forced her to look at him. He smiled and chuckled, saying, “Why can’t you look me in the eyes just like mommy did for me?”

Vic finally managed to let out a blood curdling scream as clear as the day outside. A sharp WHACK interrupted her scream. The gluttonous cretin fell to the ground, yelling out in pain. The sickening popping of the bone and brain matter within Bing’s skull was Charlie’s definition of satisfaction. Vic could now see the vampire clearly. Tall and thin, he already looked a bit frighting when he held his normal appearance, but in this form, he looked like a walking corpse, frozen in time, but also in some kind of rotting stage which made aspects of him look like a feral animal with rabies.

Bing continued to roll on the ground in pain, groaning, but was interrupted by Charlie hissing and grabbing him by his shirt collar. His sharp nails tore at the fabric as he slammed the autopsy mallet across his skull. Blood went flying in multiple different directions. The large creep yelled out as his skull and brain were being bashed in and apart by the mallet. Nauseating and cringe worthy pops and snaps filled the basement, elevating Charlie’s euphoria. Vic sat in the chair, trying to process everything happening at that moment and everything that had happened to her in the past hours. She couldn’t give a time or even an estimate to how long she had been down there. All she had known was the amount of fear and pain she felt.

The mallet was soaked in blood by the time Charlie grew tired of hitting this monster with it. Bing’s face was caked in crimson. Parts of his skull and brain were mushy and exposed. And yet... by some chance, he was alive. While all of his cognitive function was most likely destroyed, he certainly could still react to pain. Good, makes him easier prey...

Charlie, in his adrenaline and satisfaction, gave a deep chuckle.

“Now you’re going to know what it’s like to be helpless and torn apart, with the only knowledge going through your mind being your pain.”

An idea came to Charlie when he saw the curved edge of his mallet. He forced the sharp end through Bing’s right eye and popped it out like a cork. He continued to cry out as Charlie did the same to his other eye. The vampire grabbed the eyeballs and chewed on them like they were gumballs.

Despite now being blind, and with skull and brain outside of his head, Bing managed to attempt to push Charlie off of his large stomach. The vampire tossed aside his ruby red mallet, growled, and slammed him down with his hands wrapped around his neck, his nails digging into his flesh, causing streaks of blood to come dripping out of his throat.

“Still have some fight?! How in the hell are you still alive?! Why can’t you just die?!” His angry roars suddenly molded into dark snickers. “No matter; that just means for fun for me. Not to mention, you’ll know what it’s like to fight back and perish for having the strength and audacity to dare defy the one hurting you.”

He let out a hiss sounding like a snake’s before grabbing Bing’s hands. With his teeth, he managed to tear out all five fingers on his right hand, followed by his left hand. Gobbling them down with incredible greed, the sick imbecile continued to scream out. While his mouth was wide open, Charlie reached into Bing’s mouth and tore out his tongue using his sharp nails. He shoved his own tongue back into his mouth for him to swallow and choke on.

While the dumpy half-wit gagged down his own tounge, Charlie decided the best should’ve been saved for last. He stood up and grabbed his mallet again, the blood dripping down it like red wine. He threw it down with great force onto Bing’s penis multiple times, making the rotund monster yell and squirm in agony. Charlie flipped the mallet around and, using the sharp curved end, peeled the flesh off of his penis like a banana. Piss and blood came flooding out of it, but the vampire could care less. After the penis was peeled entirely, Charlie ripped it off using the curved end of the mallet, and did the same to his balls. He grabbed the elephantine man’s penis and shoved it up his nose, which had blood pouring out of it. His balls went into his ears, which also had blood pouring out of them.

After his castration, the Falstaffian rapist sharing the same name as a search engine was barely alive. His breathing was labored and rattling in his chest.

“Still alive, are we, Mr. Partridge?” Charlie asked with a tone dripping with venom, yet smothered with innocence. “Well, I’m here to tell you that your services are no longer required. You have let me down and failed me. Perhaps you’ll have a better job with Satan in Hell, when you awake in his arms to be his personal torture toy. Maybe your mommy will be there to join in on the fun, just as you had your fun with her! There is just one unfortunate thing, I’m afraid...”

He leaned into his face. “The fires of Hell are not hot enough for the lowest common denominators of shit like you.”

The vampire brought his fangs back out and bit into Bing’s jugular. Frost bite broke the skin around his neck and rotted it. Blood squirted into Charlie’s mouth as he guzzled it down like fruit punch. He consumed the last of Bing’s energy to gain some lost strength from the amount he had to put towards torturing him. When he had his fill of energy and blood, he clawed the literal motherfucker’s hairy face with his nails and tore away at the flesh with his teeth to have a snack.

All the while, Vic was staring in horror at Charlie’s transformation from the polite gentleman she first met at the bus station, offering for her to become his children’s mother... to a primal, animalistic vampire, a true Nosferatu. She didn’t know how to react in the first few moments of watching, but near the end, she was relieved that her rapist was finally dead. She didn’t want to admit it, but part of her was enjoying Charlie torturing him and making a grisly spectacle of him. She was humiliated and degraded by him, and now he was being humiliated and degraded by being a vampire’s play thing and meal. Her mind’s focus would dip back and forth between what was going on around her and her own pain. She pressed her knees to her body and held herself to feel safer.

When Charlie was done, he lifted himself off of the creature’s corpse. Blood dribbled down his chin. It was also splattered on his face and clothes. His hands and nails were soaked, and his teeth and fangs matched. He grabbed his handkerchief and wiped his face and hands off. When they were clean, he looked at the handkerchief and pressed it to one of his fangs. He drained the blood from it and sighed when it was all clean. He placed it back in his front vest pocket and drained any blood splatter on his clothes with his fangs. He lastly licked his teeth and fangs with his tongue, the faint yellow color returning to them. He retracted his fangs and his nails (though, his nails could only retract until a certain point), turning to Vic. She looked up at him with large eyes and a pale face. His gaze softened as he approached her.

“Victoria,” he hushed. “What happened? How did he find you? Why did he do this to you?”

She was silent for a few moments before saying, in a very shaky voice, “He... he must’ve followed me home, found out where I live. He must’ve broke into my house because I noticed my box of condoms and weed was sitting on my bed when I had them in my closet. My mom and I went to a party, and she came home before I did, so she found them. He knew I had them, he told me when I woke up down here, so it had to have been him to place them there and break into my house. My mom got mad at me, but I tried to tell her I was being safe and careful. We got into a fight, and I went off to where my bridge was. I thought I could just get away for a bit and cool off in the woods, but he must’ve followed me then too. He knocked me out and kidnapped me. I woke up here and...” Her voice broke, and tears flooded her eyes.

Charlie nodded, knowing what she meant to say next. Normally, it would’ve bothered him that a younger person, especially a young girl, would be interested in drugs, but he understood weed was a weaker drug, and as long as she was careful and not careless, he supposed he could make do with such behavior. Had this disgusting event not happened, but he still knew she had such belongings somehow, he would’ve been concerned that she had condoms, as that meant she might’ve been interested in losing her virginity to someone else without giving him a chance and therefore couldn’t be with him forever, but he would’ve been fine with it, at the very least, if she had given him a chance and still wasn’t interested in him (as long as she didn’t want to destroy everything he had built), and especially because it meant she truly cared about her life and safety to the point she didn’t want to get knocked up while so young or get a disease. None of that mattered now, of course. In fact, all he cared about was her safety and helping her.

Charlie rested a hand on her shoulder. “When did this happen?”

“I... I can’t remember,” she choked out. “I want to say last night, but I lost track of time.”

He hushed her softly and leaned down to caress her cheek. “Did he ever give a reason why he did this to you?”

“He said it was to make you happy... if that’s true, why would you save me?”

While most of the angry flames in Charlie’s heart had died down after blazing so intensely, this comment made them spark back to a low flicker.

“I would’ve never wanted this. Victoria, I love you. I know you don’t love me, but that doesn’t matter. Even if I hated you, I would never wish or want this upon you. I had an experience very similar to this when I was a young boy, barely a teenager. Why would I want such pain to happen to you or anyone else? Even if I never had that experience, I still wouldn’t want it to happen to you or anyone else.”

“He told me he did it to Hailey’s mom, Sharon,” she whimpered.

Charlie’s eyebrow went up. “Did... this to her?”

Vic nodded. “Is that what you wanted him to do?”

Charlie shook his head firmly. “No! I never asked him to do that. His job was very clear and strict: kill the parents and dispose of them. I never asked him to... for God’s sakes, why would he...” He stopped and rubbed his hand on his temple. “I would never trust a man like that around my children. I would never ask a man to do that... I trusted him, and he failed me. I’m...” He stopped and covered his eyes in shame. “This is all my fault. I’m the reason he did this to you. My God, Victoria, I’m so sorry... I never should’ve hired him. Using my abilities, I knew what he did to his mother, but I thought I could use him for my benefit and the children’s benefits based on his ability to seemingly get away with murdering his parents. I thought he wouldn’t do what he did to his mother again because I was very clear in my directions and I thought he wouldn’t ever want to go against my wishes, but as it turns out...” He paused again, choking on his regret. “I was going to have my babies eat him if he ever made it to Christmasland, anyways. I couldn’t trust him around my children, not after what he did to his own mother! But the fact he did this to you and Sharon, despite me telling him to just kill the parents and dispose of them, and despite me never telling him to lay a finger on you, I... good God, please understand me, Victoria. I don’t expect you to forgive me at all-“

“Charlie,” she interrupted. “This isn’t your fault. Please don’t feel guilty.”

He looked at her, almost confused. He couldn’t believe she was saying these things to him. He expected her to be furious with him, but instead she was... understanding his point of view.

“You were only doing what you think is right, and in some ways, what you’re doing is right. I can see that now more than ever. You didn’t force him to do any of this, I understand that now too. You couldn’t control him doing any of this.”

“If I hadn’t come into your lives, he wouldn’t have-“

Her voice continued to tremble and tears ran down her cheeks. “Charlie, I trusted him before we met you, but I’ll be honest: now that I’ve seen what a monster he was, he was a ticking time bomb. He could’ve turned on me even if you hadn’t shown up in our lives. I could’ve been ‘too nice’ to him, and he could’ve interpreted that as a signal and done things to me. Maybe... it was just some fucked up thing meant to be...” A few sobs squeaked out of her, but she managed to regain some strength to finish what she needed to say. “All I can say is... do not blame yourself, and thank you for saving me. I’m sorry I didn’t understand you before.”

“You don’t feel sorry for anything,” the vampire told her, rubbing her back. “I don’t blame people for being afraid of what I do. In addition, vampires are misunderstood beings. We look frightening, aspects of us are frightening, and we can’t help it. People only look at our covers and don’t read the words in between. It’s an easy thing to do.” He stopped and looked down at his feet. “I still feel guilty and believe it to be my fault this happened to you, and I can’t even express how sorry I am it did...” He changed the topic. “...And I’m glad we’ve made up in a way, but now we need to get going. We need to get you out of here and to a hospital.”

He gingerly lifted Vic up off the chair. Blood dripped down her legs and she began to cry again. Charlie gently hushed her and held her close to him.

“Do you need my help to put back on your bra and panties?”

She shook her head and pulled everything back on, trying to fight her tears. She grabbed her other articles of clothing and slipped them back on as well. Her biker jacket was tossed near the staircase. She grabbed it, but pain from within her body caused her to cry out and hesitate. He came to her aid and grabbed her jacket for her. She thanked him and pulled it close around her body.

“Do you have everything?” He asked her.

Vic checked her pockets and nodded.

“Good.” The vampire grabbed his mallet, lapped at the blood on it like a popsicle, flipped it, and stuck the sharp, curved end through Bing’s forehead.

“I’m taking this to Christmasland. I promised my children a delicious dinner full of fat, and I’m not letting them down. Plus, without a body, it will make things harder for police to trace things back to me or you. There’s no need for a case, as justice has been served. We will tell the hospital and any police that it was a large man, neither of us could get any physical details, I found you in the woods near your bridge because I heard screaming while I was driving, and I saved you because I scared him and he ran away. Is that okay?”

Vic nodded again. “What if my school or Bing’s other job notices he’s missing?”

Charlie pointed towards the gas, huddled in a corner of the basement.

“We’ll burn this place down, and make it seem as though he lost his house and he’s now gone homeless. Either that, or his remains were destroyed entirely. Nobody will know.”

“Okay, that’s perfect.” She grunted at another pain near her stomach. “These feel like period cramps, but so much worse...”

“I know, dear, I know...” Charlie held her close to his body with one arm and dragged Bing’s corpse with his other as they walked back upstairs. “You’re safe now. You’re going to sit in my front seat, we’re going to take you to a hospital, they’ll treat your injuries, give you Plan B, give you some anti-viral drugs to prevent HIV, any antibiotics as well, you can call your parents, and you’ll return home with them. You’re going to be alright. I know it doesn’t seem like it, believe me, I know very well. But I will be by your side and I will help you as much as I can.”

She clung to him, the two of them going down the narrow hallway. Using his telekinesis, Charlie unlocked the door and threw it open. They walked all the way back to the car. The passenger door creaked open. Charlie led Vic to it. She crawled into the car and sat down on the cushiony leather seat.

“Wait here,” he told her. “I’ll be right back.”

He closed the door and dragged Bing’s bludgeoned carcass to his trunk. He opened it up, raised the body (with the extra help of the mallet), and half threw it into the back of his car. After pulling the end of the mallet out of his head and setting it to the side of his body, he closed the trunk with great force. He walked over to the driver’s side of the car and opened his door. Vic was a bit startled at this, as she had been lost in time for a moment.

“Don’t fret, darling,” he hushed. “I’m just grabbing my lighter.”

He popped open the compartment near her knees and rustled through his candy canes, pine tree air fresheners, and map of The United Inscapes of America until he found his red lighter.

“I’ve got a few more at home, I can easily replace it.” He turned his keys and the Wraith purred to life. He smiled at Vic warmly and said, “I’m starting the car for an easy and safe getaway. There is going to be a big explosion, and I want you to enjoy that beast’s den going out with a big bang.”

He closed the door behind him and trotted back to the house. He went back down to the basement, organizing the sevoflurane canisters in a particular order he felt fit. He turned them all on. He went into Bing’s garage and gathered up a bunch of gas cans. He emptied all of the oil out all throughout the house. This not only ensured the house would burn, but it would throw authorities off and they would struggle to figure out which was the exact cause for the fire, if they could even find one or the other. Making things as confusing as possible for the police was key, because the more confusing, the colder the case.

When Charlie was done with the oil, he walked downstairs for the last time. He opened his lighter, flicked it on, and threw it at the containers. The second it hit them, he took off running out of the house. Heat picked up behind him as he jumped out of the doorway and fell onto the ground. The Wraith in front of him lurched backwards on its own from his control. It screeched to a halt when it was far back enough.

The initial explosion of gingerbread smoke in the basement caused the whole bottom half of the house to blow to smithereens. The fire spread from the basement to the rest of the house thanks to the oil and the fact the house was wooden in a matter of seconds. Fireballs exploded the windows just as Charlie threw himself down, causing glass to rain all over him. Heat as warm as the sun made his face drip with sweat instantly. The light was blindingly bright, strong enough to make one want to cover their eyes.

That is what Vic did the moment the house burst into flames. She gasped at the intensity and hid her eyes from the light comparable to that of a nuclear blast. When things seemed to die down, she looked up like a timid child from their blankets.

Charlie stood up and brushed himself off. He was completely unscathed, just had some dirt and dust on his clothing. He brushed his hands off as he approached his car. The door opened for him and he slid into the driver’s seat. Before he pulled the door shut again, he sniffed, and Vic got a whiff of what he was smelling.

“Gingerbread, oil, and burning wood,” he observed outloud. He closed his door and turned to Vic. “Certainly an interesting scent. Perhaps they should make a candle out of it. They can call it, ‘Dead Rapist’s Burning House.’ They could make a cause out of it: buy a candle, and you’ll be putting money towards torching a just-murdered rapist’s house down. Think of all the money that company would make, and think of all the sinister creatures of this world they’d be dealing with. Quite frankly, they should really make that a business. I know I’d donate.”

“I’d donate too,” she said softly. “Kill them all and burn all their houses to the ground.”

Charlie backed up his car, and as they were about to leave the burning house, Vic said one thing:

“It doesn’t matter that we didn’t leave his body in the house, because he’s already experiencing the heat and scent of his own poisonous gingerbread in Hell as we speak.”

Charlie nodded. “Yes he is, Victoria. Yes he is.”

Father Christmas took off on his sleek and black horse, the Brat by his side. His car served as a hearse as the dead monster in the back rolled around limply at every bump in the road.

They arrived at the local hospital. Vic was silent for the rest of the ride. She was too lost in her muddy thoughts, and Charlie didn’t force her into conversation. He didn’t expect her to speak, he understood that very well. Plus, there wasn’t much else to say at the time. They had made up loosely (for the time being), misunderstandings were clarified, their plans for the police were clear, and they had dealt with the creature behind it all.

Vic’s mind wandered throughout her torment in various directions. Charlie’s mind wandered throughout his guilt. A part of his mind told him that he was not at fault. He was clear in his instruction to Bing, it was that creature’s doing and fault. But a part of him felt it was his fault. Had he not entered either of their lives...

No, stop, his brain said. It could’ve happened anyways. You didn’t know the full story behind his end of his relationship with Vic. Maybe he was to do things to her regardless. If you had known him to desire to do this to her or anyone else earlier, you would’ve killed him then and there, but you didn’t because you didn’t know. But if you approached things differently... no, again, you would’ve had to know. You knew what he did to his mother, but you also knew he hated to disappoint and loved to please a fatherly figure. He was perfect for following orders. He went completely against them by hurting Vic and Sharon the way he did, that’s his doing, not yours.

But it doesn’t matter, it’s still my fault, isn’t it? It wasn’t intentional, but it’s still my fault.

Charlie pushed his mental conflict to the back of his mind for a moment as he pulled into a spot in the parking garage. He helped Vic into the hospital. They talked to a few nurses, who took her in. They gave her Plan B to prevent a pregnancy, collected evidence through a rape kit, and catered to her injuries. Police entered her room a few minutes later. She told them everything that Charlie and her agreed to say, and the vampire corroborated the story. They wrote everything down and said they’d do the best they could to catch the assailant. Once everyone left the room, Charlie and Vic looked at each other, their eyes knowing that the assailant was already dealt with.

He looked down, feeling disappointed in himself and painfully sorry for Vic. “Sorry doesn’t change anything,” said he, “but I want you to know from the bottom of my heart that I am. I will never forgive myself for this.” He covered his face. “What kind of man am I?”

“Charlie, please don’t,” She croaked. “I told you it was him, not you. If what you’re saying is true and you never told him to do these things...”

“Yes, I never told him to do these things.”

She sighed through her nose, looking down at her wringing hands. “You only do what you think is right, and in some ways, what you do is right. He went above and beyond all of what is questionably good and did a lot worse. He disobeyed you. He’s the monster, not you. You’re not perfect, and your actions aren’t entirely saintly, but I think I understand you more. Watching you murder him like that... I understand you have a moral code. He didn’t. I also now know you don’t harm the children, based on your protectiveness of them. Yes, they’re all vampires like you, but they’re safe from harm and can hurt those who would want to harm them, people like him. Plus, you’re preventing them from having dark futures, ones that you and I had coming for us when we were kids. Again, you’re not perfect, but you’re certainly not that sack of shit in your trunk. You’re better than him. This isn’t your fault. Don’t live in guilt for something you never did.”

“I’m psychic, I should’ve known-“

“Psychics aren’t perfect or know to use their powers to read everything in the future. That’s exhausting and unrealistic.”

“I had the power in my hands-“

“People have the power to do a lot of things. Does that mean things go perfect and they’re fully able to do or stop something or see something? Of course not. Charlie, please stop putting the blame on yourself.”

Their wounded eyes met each other.

“You really think all of this?”

“Of course. Why else am I saying it?”

He rested a hand on her shoulder. “Thank you, Victoria. I’m just... relieved he’s dead and dealt with.”

“I am too, and I have you to thank for that. Nothing can change what happened to me, but... who could know or control a rapist’s actions...” She wiped tears from her eyes and pointed towards her jacket set on the chair next to Charlie. “Could you give me my phone so I can call my parents? I told the cops I’d let them know what’s happening so that they wouldn’t have to, and I’m sure they don’t want to wait around any longer.”

Charlie nodded and gave her the phone. She opened it up and saw a bunch of texts from both parents. She called her mother first and foremost.

On the first ring, her mother picked up. She was clearly worried sick and her father’s voice was heard too, just as worried. Vic explained to them both what happened to her in a shaky voice. She told them the hospital she was at, and they agreed to come to her. The entire time, Charlie felt a sick pain in his heart.

Within twenty minutes, her parents came through the door. They hugged her and held her tightly as she wept in their arms. After a few minutes of talking to her, her father turned to Charlie.

“This must be the man that saved you,” he said. He hugged Charlie tightly, which made him awkwardly hug him back.

“Thank you for saving my little Brat,” he whispered. “You’re a life saver.”

Shame and guilt still swelling his heart, Charlie whispered back, “There is no need to thank me, sir.”

“No need?” Her mother asked. “You saved our Vicki from that man. I hope to God justice is served and he gets what he deserves.”

“I’m sure he will, mom,” Vic hushed. “Even if they don’t find him, he’s gonna get what he deserves. Who knows, he might be getting it already as we speak.”

“I’d like to think that...” She walked over to Charlie and hugged him. “Thank you so much, Mr...”

“Charles, madam, you may call me Charles,” Charlie told her, hugging her back. It was still awkward, and guilt still clawed at his heart, but he continued, out of courtesy and comfort. They ended their hug and he gave a glance at Vic, who looked up at him with equal sadness in her eyes.

“Alas, I must be going. I shall leave you all amongst yourselves to heal during this time. If you need me for whatever reason there may be, here is my number. I will be more than willing to help in anyway I can.”

He pulled out his wallet from one of the inside pockets of his coat, took out a small piece of paper from it, and wrote down a set of numbers. When he was done, he gave it to Vic, who nodded.

“Thank you again,” her father said. “We can’t thank you enough.”

“You are most certainly welcome,” Charlie replied, shaking hands with him. He shook hands with her mother and replied similarly upon her thanking him. He gave one last eye-to-eye exchange with Vic. They both had relief in their eyes, but there was also a deep, empathetic sadness.

“Farewell, Victoria. If you need me, please do not hesitate to call me. I will help you to the best of my ability.”

“Goodbye, Charlie. I will. Thank you for everything.”

He half smiled and nodded at her. “No need to thank me, my dear.”

He closed the door behind him, remorse still egging at him. He left the hospital and stepped inside his car, off to go back to Colorado and to Christmasland to provide his children with dinner.

He drove with his emotions still drowning his mind and heart. His car, almost seeming to know his feelings, turned on the radio by itself to play music fitting his mood. The Animals serenaded about the House Of The Rising Sun as he left Haverhill, all the shame and pity clinging to him.

When he reached Christmasland and provided warmth and smiles to his children, joy came back to him for a while as he watched them enjoy their fat meal. But that night, after tucking the children to bed and retiring for the night, the shame and pity came back to him through his sleepy thoughts.

Before slipping into a very bad and vivid dream about the day’s events, a few tears shed from his eyes, and he mumbled, “Victoria... I’m so sorry...”

Months had passed. Within that time, Charlie had found a better assistant, one that had no intent on doing disturbing things to the parents, only ending them intelligently and saving the children. He was a former hitman, and he quickly became friends with Charlie. The girl being harmed by her uncle was the first to be saved, and the hitman proved his worth from the beginning. The girl was brought to Christmasland completely safe and fine, now a strong and forever young vampire, and the uncle was dealt with in a proper manner. The hitman, named Crosby, was definitely a keeper, and he would be on his way to spending an eternity in Christmasland, only leaving to save more children. The kids would know he was a good man based on their father knowing he was a good man, so he was to not end up like the previous assistant.

Vic had not contacted Charlie at all, and he had not contacted her. He thought about her often, and hoped she was recovering and healing. He decided to visit her one day. He bid his children good bye and told them he’d be back later that evening. He arrived in Haverhill a few hours later and searched the local neighborhoods, trying to sense Vic. When he sensed her at one house in particular, he knew it was her mother’s house. She was not home at the time, and Vic was by herself in her room.

The vampire parked in her small drive way, stepped out of his car, and knocked on her door. She answered, a bit surprised to see him.

“Hello, Victoria. I do hate to be rude and arrive unannounced, but I had to check on you. It’s been so long, and I admit, I’ve been concerned about you.”

“Oh, hey... yeah, I’ve been doing better. I’m still... rough, as you can imagine, but at least things are starting to look a bit better.”

“That’s splendid,” he said warmly.

“You, uh... wanna come in?”

“Certainly.”

He came inside and she led him to her bedroom. Various gothy, horror memorabilia was scattered throughout it. A pack of Little Debby cookies sat on her bed, next to her sketchbook opened up to a detailed drawing of the woods. She was in the middle of playing a game on her Xbox, as her Mortal Kombat fight was paused. Through the menu options, you could see Queen Sindel letting out a banshee scream, knocking over Emperor Shao Kahn. Her purple lava lamp and the sunlight from the windows were the only source of light for her, so she turned on her ceiling light.

“Sorry for it being so dark. My lava lamp is sort of... my nightlight. I’ve been having nightmares ever since... the incident. I keep the curtains open because it helps me to sleep when I look up at the moon and the stars. Although, I have to close it when I have one reoccurring nightmare. It’s where... he, comes back and breaks through my window to hurt me...” She paused to regain some strength. She turned to Charlie, who sat next to her on her bed. “Is that normal?”

“Of course,” he hushed. “Nightmares are a completely normal reaction to such a horrible event. I had lots of reoccurring nightmares throughout my teenage years after my incident. They stopped once I met my first wife, but I’d rather not talk about her. Let’s just say we had a great bond in the beginning, but she... changed into a venomous snake later on and made things worse for me and my daughters. Enough of me, please, let’s talk about you. I’d like to help you in anyway I can. I understand every ounce of your pain, and I am here for you.”

She looked up at him. “Thank you, Charlie. I really mean it. Have you been feeling any guilt, even after we talked about how you shouldn’t?”

“I admit it, I have. At least once every day.”

She shook her head. “Please don’t. That’s all I can tell you. I’ve told you why you shouldn’t, it’s just up to you now to not feel guilt.”

He nodded. “I brought you some gifts, one of which I bought on my way here.”

He fished through his one jacket pocket and pulled out a book. The book looked dusty, but well kept. It was a copy of “Little Women.”

“Forgive me if it isn’t your type of literature, as I am not familiar with all of your interests. I had this book among my vast collection and figured it would be a nice gift for a woman. Plus, one of the few things I know about you is that you like art, and it comes with very pretty illustrations here and there.”

Vic smiled when she flipped through it. “Charlie, this is very sweet of you. I’ll be sure to read it. I’ve already blown through all my comics, and I’ve never read this before, so this would be nice. Maggie gave me a few books to help me too, she’s been very supportive and helpful. She actually stopped by a few days ago to talk... I’m very glad I have her as a friend.”

Charlie nodded. He was weary of Margaret and her suspicions towards him, but at this point, he decided her safe, especially if she wasn’t after him now (well, at least to his knowledge). “I’m glad you two have each other. Friends are always good to have when times are tough. And I’m glad you like the book. There is another thing I have...”

He pulled out from the same jacket pocket a necklace. The necklace had a shimmering green Emerald in the middle of a silver lilly. Vic took it and analyzed it with sparkling eyes.

“Emerald is my birth stone,” she said. “And my birth flower is Lilly of the Valley... where did you get this?”

“It was one of my wife’s necklaces. She wasn’t even a May baby, she just liked it. You are far more deserving of it then she ever was. Do take good care of it, especially because it comes from... 19...24? 1925? I don’t remember. Either way, it comes from the 20’s, so it holds great value.”

“Charlie, that’s... beyond nice. Thank you.”

“You have one more. This is the one I got on my way here at a thrift store I saw.” He pulled out her final gift: a small My Little Pony figurine. The pony was pink with violet red, orange, and yellow in her mane, and greenish-blue and violet blue in her tail. Her eyes were aqua, and her cutie mark had an artist’s paint brush with a few squiggle lines. A tag around her neck read, “Toola Roola: My Little Pony 3rd Generation.” Vic took the toy horse and analyzed her.

“I thought of you when I saw her because of the connection to art she has. I don’t know how much you like them, if you even like them at all, but I thought she’d be a nice gift.”

Vic smiled even wider. “I’m not a fan of My Little Pony, but I certainly do like her. It’s perfectly fine, Charlie, you thought of me and got me something, and that means a lot to me.” She set the pony aside and gave Charlie a hug, which he happily gave back to her.

“Thank you so much for all you’ve done for me.”

He smiled even wider and said, “Of course. I know exactly what you’re going through. I know how hard it is. But you don’t have to fight this battle alone, even if I feel I’m the cause it had to begin-“

“No, Charlie, you’re not.” She patted his back. “Enough with that.” She separated from him, and that’s when he noticed a picture on her nightstand.

“Who is that boy, might I ask?”

“Oh, that’s Craig. He’s my boyfriend, and we’ve known each other since we were kids. He’s been helping me a lot too when he can. He’s a sweetheart.”

Had these horrible events not taken place, jealousy would’ve filled Charlie’s heart, and he knew he would’ve had to really show off to get Vic’s attention so that she could perhaps choose him over a mere boy. But the events had taken place, and Charlie was just happy that Vic had someone like a boyfriend to help her, especially when her trauma could’ve been to the point she wouldn’t have wanted a boyfriend at all. Part of him wanted to be her boyfriend... but he knew that he couldn’t be with her because he couldn’t be with her forever, just like his heart wanted. So, it was something to forget about and just hope for the best for the both of them.

“I wish the best for the both of you,” he smiled and said.

“Thanks.”

They were silent for a few moments before an idea occurred to the vampire.

“You know, I could help make your nightmares go away, and I can help ease your mind. I’m capable of hypnosis, and if you’re willing, I could hypnotize you to help you.”

“You’d do that for me?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, all right then. Do I look you in the eyes?”

“Yes. Just look me in the eyes and relax.”

Vic did just that as she laid back on her bed. Charlie’s eyes became rainbow filled, and he lulled her to sleep while singing Pure Imagination. Her own eyes mimicked his, and she fell into a deep and restful sleep, peaceful dreams coming to her at long last. Charlie gave her a few suggestions to help ease her pain, and when she was done agreeing to them in her trance-like state, he beamed proudly.

He decided he wanted to sleep too, so he laid back next to Vic. They didn’t snuggle or touch intimately, as they were simply lying next to each other as two tired friends. He closed his own eyes and fell into her dream with her, a dream about sugarplums dancing in their heads.

The Wraith and The Brat became unlikely good friends. They both helped each other through their pain, and ever since that cruel day, one good thing amongst all the horror came out of it: Father Christmas became her guardian vampire, her savior, and her Nosferatu, and that was how it was always going to be.

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