The Blood, Continuing where we left off with The Beasts

[ChrisGibson]

CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER THREE



Myron Keller sat on the borrowed bed, and pulled out his phone to see that it was four in the morning. He looked around the room for a minute and tried to think how it would be a nice enough place stay in if it were a B and B and he had a girl and this was another world. But right now all he could do was think about everything in the night that had passed.
He ran his hands along his jeans and felt the disk. He pulled it out, opening the case.
“The pills,” Myron said.
He turned on the phone, was glad to see that vampires had internet service. Of course they did. Everyone does these days. Reading the label for the disk of pills, he typed in aconitum lycoctonum.
“Aconite,” Myron murmured as the article came up. “A northern European root often used for poison, often called… wolfsbane.”
Myron thought of tossing the pills against the wall, and then thought that was some dramatic shit that happened in movies along with people who were so overcome with grief that they smashed thousand dollar laptops with all of their data on them.
He heard his door open a little and was about to say something to Dan when he saw it was Anne, the pretty tea color haired woman, vampire, and she stepped across the room and sat down. She was in a nightgown or dress of red and yellow paisleys, and her hair was in ponytail wrapped in a scarf. She looked like the 1970s.
“I remember the first time I woke to a different life,” she said, “when I was no longer the human I had been, but what I am now. Sonny did that. He gave me life. He taught me everything. And then, one night, I fought. I fought men who had attacked me, who nearly killed me. I killed them,” she said. “I did things I never thought I could, felt a strength I never knew I had. No one told me how terrified I would be by it, this change.”
Myron nodded his head.
“It’s scary, isn’t it?” she said. “But in all of it, when you feel that strength in you, when you know you are not what you thought you were, but more, more savage, more capable of doing what you never thought you couldn’t, there is another feeling.”
“Pleasure,” Myron said, quietly.
“When I killed that man, when I broke his back, it felt good. I wanted to do it again. I want to do it again. That’s not me,” he shook his head.
“But it is you,” Anne said. “It always was. Cain killed Abel, but then he built the first city and became the father of all mankind. They say that we are all torn between Cain and Abel, but I don’t believe that. All of us here bear the mark of Cain.”




“None of this would have happened if not for me,” Sonny said
“How do you figure?” Kruinh was sitting in the great chair in the bedroom that was easily as large as Myron’s loft.
Sonny, who was till furiously beating a punching bag thatwas incongruously set up in the room stopped and turned, taking his hair out of his face.
“It was me who said take Levy to Dan’s place, he’ll be safer there. But instead Dan almost got killed. This is all on me.”
“Maybe it’s a little on you,” Kruinh allowed, holding out his hand and tipping it, “but I wouldn’t be so quick to put everything on you. You could not have known that Evangeline misread the situation. Besides, if tonight had not happened the way it did then we would still be waiting for Evangeline to make a move, and she might have made it more intelligently, might have gotten Lynn. She might have gotten us, though I doubt it. Myron would not know what he is, which is a good thing, and we would not know about Levy. Everything that happened is a good thing.”
“But still.”
Kruinh got up. He touched Sonny on the wrist.
“You know what I like about you, Alexander?’
“My chest and my golden smile.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” Kruinh agreed. “But everyone in this house is one of my children, and I love them, I do. But you, very quickly I knew you were a companion. My companion.”
“Was this before or after you tried to kill me?”
“If I’d really wanted you dead, you would have been dead.”
“So,” Sonny said, “you just really wanted me to jump around on fire for a while in the middle of broad daylight, but not kill me?”
“It was the principal of the thing, and I hope you’re not still holding it against me.”
Sonny smiled and said, “I am actually not holding it against you at all. But Chris—”
“I’ll tell him myself. Evangeline would have killed him along with the rest of us. She had to go. She’s two hundred years overdue. It was only a matter of time and he knew he’d kill her in the end. I will not mention Dan’s name. It was my order.”
“Dan might guilty and tell it himself. In a very bad way,” Sonny said. “I worry—”
“You,” Kruinh said, “are forbidden from worrying about another blessed thing. It’s almost morning.”
Sonny tried to look serious. He tried so hard they both laughed, and then he turned to the large bed before the drawn curtains.
“You saying it’s time to go to bed?”
“I need to go to bed,” Kruinh said wearily.
Sonny took off his gloves and took Kruinh’s hand. “I need to go to bed too, and not because I’m so sleepy.”
As Sonny pulled off his tee shirt, and came to the bed he said, “Levy’s gonna ask what a catamite is. You know that right?”




“Come here,” Laurie commanded, pulling Dan to him
In the darkness of the room as the sun came up beyond the curtain, he kept Dan wrapped in his arms.
Dan pressed the back of his feet into Laurie’s and pulled his arms tighter around him.
“Sometimes I think this is all I ever really wanted from you,” Dan said.
Laurie placed his chin on the top of Dan’s head.
“Why are you always giving me grief then?”
He tickled him and Dan laughed, “Stop!”
“Why are you giving me grief all the time?” Laurie demanded, tickling him quickly again, Dan turned around and swatted him.
“Careful now,” Laurie said, “you gave me some of your blood, so I’m strong now too.”
“I gave you some of everything,” Dan said. “and while we’re at it, don’t ask me why I give you so much grief and I won’t ask you why you insist on being a stick in the mud.”
“Really?” Laurie demanded, thumping his own chest. “After last night, you’re going to call me a stick in the mud? After this morning.”
Dan pushed his face into the pillow and pretended to groan.
Laurie gently placed himself on Dan’s back and gripped him around his chest.
“I’m not going to let you go until you look at me. I’m just going to lay on top of you forever until you say something.
“You know that’s actually fine with me,” Dan murmured to the pillow.
Then he said, “You know, the first time I met yu, when I was new. I remember I was terrified of you.”
“Well, that was only appropriate.” Laurie grinned.
“You really did seem like the most serious person in the world, and you were all, in your suits and your shades just like a vampire was supposed to be, and all of that. And you…” Dan turned on his side and Laurie thought how beautiful he was, soft and sweet and king and he could not stop touching Dan’s chest.
“You were sad,” Dan said. “You never ever laughed.”
“I laughed,” Laurie said.
“No,” Dan said. “you didn’t. Not ever. You seemed to be not just serious, but sad. And so I just, I don’t know, I thought I was going to make you notice me. I was going to get past that surface.”
“You were going to fuck with me.”
“Oh, I was most definitely going to fuck with you. And, what’s more, I was pretty sure you enjoyed it.”
“Were you now?”
“Are you going to tell me, I’m wrong?””
“I’ll tell you what I enjoy,” Laurie said, and pulled Daniel to him and kissed him on the mouth so hard he bit him, and Dan moaned, his fingernails in Laurie’s back drew blood, and neither of them noticed it. It was just part of what happened when two blood drinkers were together.
“Laurie, I know you have to go,” Dan said, “But do you have to go right away?”
“I can’t really go at all.”
“Why not.”
“Are you serious?” Laurie suddenly looked like his old, irritated self.
“Dan, they almost killed you. That was… That almost destroyed me.”
Laurie lay on his back.
“You knew that. Underneath all of this…what is you call me? A stick in the mud? You knew, you’ve always known how important you are to me. I can’t bear to think of them hurting you again.”
There was a knock at the door and Laurie casually said, “Come in.”
But Dan called, “Who is it?” and hit Laurie, who chuckled.
“Sonny. I was just looking for one or the both of you.”
“Is this important?” Laurie asked casually.
“Nope, just checking you were home.”
“Well, alright then, We are.” Laurie said, and Sonny walked away.
Laurie looked the very opposite of a stick in the mud now as he grinned at Dan.
“What the fuck is up with you?”
“Because it could have been Levy. Or Myron. And neither of them understands us yet, how we work. How things are different for us than… mortals.”
“You mean why we’re laying in bed naked together.”
“Yes,” Dan said. “If either one of them, but especially Levy knows, there’re going to be all sorts of questions, and I’m going to have to give all sorts of explanations and—”
Laurie pulled Dan to him and kissed him.
“Just explain that I love you.”
Dan blinked, not looking loved so much as irritated.
Laurie pulled Dan’s face to him.
“Explain that you are my little brother and bloodrinkers do things with other blood drinkers that mortals usually do not, that our feelings can be stronger and we express them differently and that,” Laurie kissed him quickly, “I,” Laurie kissed him again, “love you.”
Laurie shoved Dan, very much as if he were a little brother.
“Even if you are ithe most irritating person I’ve ever known.”
“Is Loreal going to understand?” Dan said.
“What?”
“I’m serious, Laurie. You love her so much and you have wanted a woman who understands you. Is she going to understand this or what? Cause…I’m not human anymore, not really. I don’t have human feelings. When I was human I would never have done this, and now that we are what we are, I have no problem with you having a wife and going to her and us never having this again. And I don’t have a problem if we’re lovers forever, and you’re still my brother, and that’s the way I feel about you. But… is she going to get it?”
“She’s the kind of girl, the kind of woman, who gets things.”
“But should she have to?”
“Dan, look,” Laurie said, tenderly, holding his face. “Baby, look, you and me need time together, lots of time, to unfuck up the way we’ve been silly with each other. I want to say in this bed with you all day. I want us to sleep together tonight and the next, and whatever happens happens. But right now this is what has to happen. Because we love each other. You love me right?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Dan said. “you don’t even have to ask that.”
“Alright them,” Laurie said, “Then, let’s just work through this. One minute at a time.”


MORE TOMORROW NIGHT

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a well done conclusion to the chapter! I think the repercussions of Evangeline's attack are going to last a while. Dan and Laurie are cute together. I hope you are feeling better and staying safe in these tough times! I look forward to more tomorrow.

 

[ChrisGibson]

In these tough times I have managed to catch a cold. It isn't coronavirus, in fact its the same cold i get every year around this time from all the school children. But our school system has been shut down for the next few weeks, so we all went home coughing and sneezing to be temporarily unemployed.

I feel like Dan and Laurie are cute as fuck, which is why I knew they had to come together despite all other complications. As for Evangeline, there will damn sure be consequences to her death, but maybe not the consequences you think.

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT THE RETURN OF PAMELA STRAUSS AND NEW REVELATIONS WHICH BEGIN TO FLESH OUT THE STORY OF THE STRAUSSES AND DUNHARROWS!!!!




F O U R

FOLKTALES


Beauty and strength, leaping laughter and delicious languor, force and fire, are of us.

-The Book of the Law




THE BOOK OF PAMELA STRAUSS

FOR THE FIRST FEW years of their marriage, it seemed as if Katherine was not capable of bearing children. This was, in its way, fine, for Friederich already had me, and Ada had begun to suggest that what might be needful was for me to marry, a thing I had never planned. I still didn’t, but in those day, this was the only respectable way to have a child. My plan was to go to college, and I was enrolled into Wallington out in Rawlston. In this day and age Wallington is a trip down the road which can be accomplished in about forty five minutes, but in those times, when much of the what is now is city was still wilderness and ponds, when the automobile was new, we took the train, and the journey by train, including the trip to the station, was an hour and a half. I remained in Wallington, in the women’s dormitory four nights of the week for the next four years.
In 1922, about the time I graduated, Katherine was pregnant with her first child, and I returned to the large house on Dimler Street. Her father had died. and Friederich, grown wealthy on his wood business as well as the business of the Dashbach family. Nevertheless, he insisted that the house needed fewer servants. He was truly the master of his domain, and it was as if America was forgetting its hatred of us during the war. Ada and I attended the birth, but when the baby was born, and named Friederich, it died the same night.
“There are charms,” Ada said, “which can be said, if you would say them so that the next time the child will come full and strong. I believe Katherine Dashbach was never a strong woman, and she gets no younger.”
I did not say that my father was getting no younger either, but then, he was not carrying the child. Again, Katherine became pregnant. A bundle of herbs was hung over the doorpost that led to her room, and in the spring of 1923, at last she gave birth to her first living child, my sister Maris. Though she was my sister, I was well old enough to be her mother. A year later Katherine was pregnant again, and by the end of 1925 she had Claire.
Still, with all the magic, Katherine miscarried easily. She lost a boy, and she lost a girl, and around this time, Ada died, and her family mourned. Often I worked with her daughter, Liesle, but we were not close as I had been with Ada or with Frau Inga. After this Peter, Ada’s son, became the master of the house, and he already had two sons.
I believed that Katherine was well past childbearing, and also that she was not long for this world. I conceived the beginnings of a plan. Maybe, also, I was afraid that I would lose my own fertility, my own best years. I took herbs for a month, herbs that made me supple, and wet, filled me with life, and then, because I knew Friederich was tired of Katherine, because I knew they slept in separate rooms, I came to him at night, and loved him as I had, long ago, when it was only the two of us in that long gone house. Even as an aging man, his grip was still powerful, his body still strong. His manhood, and I had almost forgotten it, was so thick and so firm, it almost hurt when he was inside of me. I gave myself to him all too willingly until, at last, I knew I was pregnant.







Pamela! Was pregnant? By Friederich? But then, Marabeth thought, she had never known that the Keller side of her family came from the same place as the Strausses, was descended from these two witches. She had never known that Peter’s great-grandfather, hers as well, was also named Peter, or that Friederich and Pamela had once bordered in the house that was now her cousin’s. She hadn’t known anything, anything at all about the Dashbachs or about that faded sepia print in the library of Friederich’s wife, and how many children her great-grandmother had lost. That Pamela, in the very old house Marabeth grown up in, had not only had an affair with her father, but intentionally been impregnated by him…






I CARRIED THE SECRET within me, savoring it like a growing treasure under my heart. My body did not show it, except that my breasts were rounder, my body tighter. I was swollen in a way Ada would have identified, though I doubt even she would have approved, and it was in the midst of my joy that Katherine announced, that, at last, she was pregnant again.
I had no intention of not having my baby, but I could not very well remain pregnant in my stepmother’s house, carrying my own father’s baby, so I took much money for myself and went journeying with good clothes, a wedding ring and the sad story of a devoted but rich husband who had died. I felt ripe, and powerful, and I was already making plans for my son, for I knew it would be a son. I even had a name, and this you will learn in time. When I gave birth to him, I planned to have him near me. I had already spoken to a family that had worked for Friederich in our first years, and told them I would give them the child. If Katherine’s baby died, and I expected it would, then I would come for the child, perhaps even switch it with the dead one.
Early in 1928, I returned to Lassador and resumed my life, feeling strangely free and full, and around that time Katherine gave birth to the last of her children, a pale, frail, sickly looking boy who, despite all evidence, continued to live, and who was baptized James. I gradually came to understand that Katherine’s child would live as my father’s heir, and the one I had born would simply have to be loved from afar. And, at last, I began to understand, or to remember, that this baby I thought competion for my own was my brother, and the child I had born was his brother two, that I had given birth to my own sibling, and to both of these babies I must be a sister and put aside all envy.


James B Strauss, the first of that name, was a thin boy who grew from wasted away to sinewy. Strength came to him, and his hair was honey colored. He looked more like the Dashbachs than any Strauss I had ever seen, and he did not speak.
“What is wrong with him?” Freiderich demanded. “Is his brain slow?”
“He is a quiet child,” Katherine said. “He is quiet, like my father was quiet.”
“He is sickly, as your father was sickly,” Friederich said.
I feel like his accent became thicker, and as the years continued, I cannot pretend that he was not a crueler man. There was ltitle love between him and Katherine, and one wondered if there was much love that Feirderich had for any of his children by her. I cannot deny that the shadow that lived in this house spread from Friederich, and his threatening presence filled the house, crushing my sisters and terrifying my brother.
In those days the children were friends with the Kellers. Peter had two sons. He had three daughters as well, and the middle one was golden haired and fair. She reminded me of Ada, and of Ada’s mother, for there was a steel in her, and in her grey eyes, and I had an admiration for her. As Jimmy grew I began to think she would make him a good girlfriend, a good wife, a good replacement to the weak Katherine Strauss, a new Mrs. Strauss. This was how I began to think of Natalie Keller.
But James had his own friends, and wasn’t much interested in the Kellers. Very early he had come to be friends with the children of our old friends, the Frey family, and he had become close friends with their youngest child, Staler. The Stalers had born three children, and the last of them was fifteen when Staler came, the child of their old age. There were no children in his household, and so I I suggested to Freiderich that he come and stay with us. Friederich grunted assent, but by now he was old and mean and it was best to ignore him.
Hagano still came, and his presence was stronger and stronger, but I was afraid to let him see my aging body, for his never did.
“What are you?” I demanded, as we lay together.
“I am the first of you.”
“But what does that mean?”
“I will always be here. I am the spirit of you.”
“Nothing, and you still tell me nothing. Well, then,” I decided, “I will not care about this old body if you do not.”
“Pamela,” he said, holding one heavy breast in his hand with deep love, “Your body is not old. It is beautiful.”
And life went on in it’s normal course until Jimmy turned thirteen. He and Staler had been at play when, suddenly, the boy came running into the living room screaming, and before I could ask what was wrong, a wolf came snapping into the hall.
“Pamela! Pamela!” Staler shouted, “That’s Jimmy.”
I sent Staler out of the house.
“I can’t leave you,” he said, but I told him I would be fine, and he obeyed when I shouted for him to leave.
As the wolf I tried to speak to my wolf turned brother, but there was nothing there where his mind should have been. There was no communication with him as I would with another wolf, and certainly not as I would communicate with Hagano. His mind was gone. He was something else. I had to threaten him my growls and bites, bites that he returned, down into the basement. I could only lock him down and change long enough to let Staler see I was safe, and then depart, transform and rejoin him. By then Freiderich‘s attention was drawn, and it was as I transformed I realized that he had never known I was a wolf, and as he looked on the snarling dog in the basement we were trying to restrain, I told him, “This is Jimmy This is your son.”

There was no time for Friederich to question me about all of the things he wanted to know. How long had I been able to transform, why had I not told him. He knew nothing about Hagano, and I saw no need to tell him. It was during this time that we showed the wolf to Katherine, and the girls saw him as well.
“Look, look well,” Friederich commanded them. The wife and her daughters nearly fainted away at seeing Freiderich change. He commanded me to do the same, and I refused. He attempted to slap me, I restrained his hand.
“Calm yourself, old man,” I said, and went out of the house, taking my little sisters with me. They were nearing at an age to court, and both of them were fond of the Keller boys. I brought them to the old house on William Street, a little sad that Ada, who would have understood, was gone. But Peter understood enough, and when I brought him to our house, when I showed him the basement, and he looked down and saw the snarling wolf, he said, “But I had thought these were tales that Mama told. I had thought they were tales. Nevermind, Pamela,” he said, “I will do something.”
This madness, this Change, lasted the three nights of the full moon, and then the next night it was done. For days the women of the house walked about Jimy warily. and there was a look on Friederich’s face I could not discern. Perhaps it was disapproval, for he always preferred Staler to Jimmy and thought, “There is a boy who will be man. If only we could give some of what he has to that sickly Jimmy.”
Only Staler did not change in his love for best friend, and meanwhile, in the basement of the house, Peter Keller set to work. His work took nearly to the next full moon, and when he was done, he showed me a system of rooms, each with a bolted door, that led to one final metal door, and in that room, with the windows high up to let in the light, was a harness hanging from a great iron peg bolted to the wall. And so, at the evening of the full moon, when he was thirteen almost fourteen, when he begun to tremble and rave and shake his head until his blondish brown hair fell in his face, we took him down, down into this darkness beneath the house, and bound him, like Jesus in the tomb, three nights, bringing him up, drained and ashamed in the day. This was the beginning of the Strauss werewolves as they are now. I do not know what happened to us, but I had my own reasons for believing it was Katherine Dashbach’s weakened blood. From then on I was determined to have my siblings marry the Kellers, and from then on there were no servants on the third floor. Strauss House and all that took place in it would have to remain strictly a Strauss affair.
I wonder if I might have allowed Jimmy this treatment for ever if not for Staler. Claire and Maris seemed horrified at their brother being locked up, but you could tell they were relieved that he was downbelow and not in the house, and they always went to the Kellers on William Street during the full moons. Friederich was more or less ashamed and irritated by the whole affair, and Katherine wept in her room, but it was Staler, who like Mary Magdalene beside the tomb, wept at the door to the basement.
“Let me go down there with him!” Staler said, “If he is restrained then it won’t be a danger.”
“Don’t be a fool!” Freiderich raged, and then he calmed down and said, “And yet you have such a strength to you. Would that you were the one who was my son.”
The hand he had raised in anger, he lowered. “There will be no going down there.”
But it ws during this time when Jimmy suffered, that Staler also suffered, great headaches, tears uncontrollable. It was for those two that I began to wonder if there was anything I could do.
As a midwife, I went all through Germantown. I had gone to all women and Ada and I learned from all women. The Negro women of Saint Agatha’s were Catholic as well, and practiced their own form of magic. And so it was to them that I went wondering if they knew any kind of cure for strange ailments. I could never have said, “My brother becomes a wolf, what can you do?” But I knew the Negroes had their ways, ways they told very few white people. And who could blame them? I myself had seen what damage white people could do during the years of the war.
But the women and some of them had told me about a strange benefactor of the community. One woman, Florence, said, frankly, “How else would we have been able to build this church,” and it was a fine church, what with its rose colored stone and the great pillars of white cement, the high towers, the stain glass like jewels. “We did pay for it, but we had one benefactor, and he is like us, like some of our number, for he practices the Art and is mighty in his works. There are things he knows that not even I know.”
I waited for her to continue.
“I am a mere conjure women. I light my candles and say my prayers, but this man is a true witch, a sorcerer, and if you were not in such need, I would never tell you his name. I will write to him, and see if he will speak to you.”
“And if he says no to you,” I boasted, “I will write to him myself.”
“Ah, the imperiousness of a white woman!”
“The desperation of any woman.”
“Ah,” Florence looked at me differently now. “Well, then, I will send word to him and see.”
“His name?”
Florence stopped and said, “Why do I hesitate. He can protect himself, and if he does not wish to be found, he surely won’t.
“Augustus Dunharrow.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

Nice to read more of Pamela's story with more revelations! I did not expect her to get pregnant so that was a surprise. The whole wolf thing continues to be a bit of a challenge for this family. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yes, well, being a wolf often is a challenge for families. I should have said tomorrow night no Rossford, but tomorrow night the Beasts, and yes, seeing Pamela again did me good.

 

[ChrisGibson]

THE JOURNAL OF PAMELA STRAUSS

I was distinctly at the mercy of Florence, or rather, the mercy off time, as I was waiting for a response from her that was in turn from this enigmatic man. She had already said he was colored. I knew of that their conjure people must, like Frau Inga, dealing in the wealth and wisdom of the land, but that there was a powerful sorcerer among them, and one so powerful he could amass architects and large sums of money, enough money for a Negro congregation to build such a fabulous church as Saint Agatha’s, was a wonder to me.
There were other things on my mind. I was not young anymore, and time seemed to fly. Only a few years ago, it seemed, we were afraid of our neighbors as their love turned to hate and the Kaiser Wilhelmstrasse was turned to William Street. But very quickly, people in the neighborhood seemed to respect the German homeland again. Americans will rewrite their history, but I remember that in those first days, when The Nazis arose, they spoke to a pride in the ancient Germanness of not only us, but all right thinking Anglo Saxon people. They sought a purer race, better order and a certitude as to who should rule, and that who was us, and it wasn’t only in Germantown that sympathy was aroused for Adolf Hitler when he took over Germany in 1933. In America he watched with real interest, and I have to admit, for those of us not entirely sure of what was going on across the sea, his success was our success.
But then Jews fleeing into New York with their own tales began to tarnish the legacy of Herr Hitler. Not as much has you might think, though, for there is something about America that creates a shame in those who immigrated long ago about those just coming in, and even the American Jews did not necessarily wish to hear anything about the suffering of their cousins fleeing Germany and Eastern Europe. As time went by the legacy of Herr Hitler was becoming more and more complicated, and the way we were seen in Germantown was complicated as well. In the night I could transform into a wolf and defend myself from anything, but what could I do as a middle aged woman with the traces of Bavaria in my voice?
All together, it was a time of caution, a time when many people spent more hours than usual in Saint Ursula’s, their fingers moving through the jeweled threads of rosaries, and it was around this time that Katherine brought me a letter with my name in fine spidery script and a return address Curiously, and at the end of another exhausting full moon, I opened it.

My dearest sister,
Your plight has come to my attention as well as the nature of your blood. I have heard of such things, and you and your family are certainly not the first of your kind, for there are many such people who change their skin, though the source of this gift differs from family to family how, and how it came upon you and yours I cannot say. There are herbs and potions to promote such a skill and also those which will stop it. I do not feel that I can be entirely honest with you or know you well enough to recommend what will aid you in a simple letter. Please come and see me at my home as soon as you are able. I await word from you, though it would be best, for expediency’s sake if you left as soon as you sent word.

Yours,
Augustus Heret Dunharrow



*******************

Here is the kitchen, and here is the living room I never use. And there is the bathroom.”
“Ha!” Seth declared, “I love a man who keeps candles in his bathroom.”
“The bathroom’s one of the most important rooms in the house.”
“I love this kitchen.”
“And I love your enthusiasm,” said Jim.
“And there is the bedroom.”
“I can turn on this light,” said Jim.
“Don’t worry about it,” Seth told him. “Light is overrated.”
“It is,” James Strauss agreed.
Jim plops down on the huge bed, watching his new friend look around. Watching him almost look lost in such a small place before, at last, Seth joins him and they lay down looking at the ceiling.
“I feel so at home here,” Seth says.
“Me too,” Jim says, and they both laugh.
“I don’t know,” Seth says. “It’s just… I feel at home with you. I don’t feel that way with that many people.”
“The darkness is good,” Jim says. But now Seth watches him get up.
“I want the moon,” he says and opens the curtains.
Back on the bed again, Jim feels the weight of it as Seth turns over and looks at the white disk in the cobalt sky.
“I think,” Jim says, “the reason we love the moon is because it’s the only way we have of staring into the sun.”
“I used to be afraid of the night,” Seth said.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose it’s natural.”
“In a way,” Seth agreed. “But until recently I couldn’t even sleep, just sat up through the night. Too many visions. To many things came. I’m not like that all.”
“You’re very beautiful you know,” Jim said.
“At the moment I do,” Seth said. “When you look at me like that. It’s… Isn’t it something how you feel beautiful when the right person looks at you?”
Jim gave a grin and shyly touched Seth’s hip.
“I’d like to look at more of you.”
“What kind of underwear do you have on?” Seth says just as simply.
And like this, Jim pulls down his trousers, and Seth runs his hand over them.
“You’re soft you know? In a good way. So soft,” Seth breathes, pressing himself against Jim.
Fairly swiftly Seth takes of his dress trousers, and then they pull off their dress shirts and ties and tee shirts and lay together in their underwear. They lay side by side in the light of the room until, at last, Seth’s hands slip through the soft waistband of Jim’s briefs and Jim begins to stroke and massage Seth at the same time Seth touches him. They don’t look at each other, just at the ceiling, then at the blackness of their eyelids, and, at last, Seth rolls over to kiss him, and, at last, the underwear is gone and their limbs link.
Oh, he is soft, Seth thinks, oh his kiss is just what I wanted, oh I could gather him up and be in his arms and feel his body, these thick thighs, this soft, sweet skin, this warmth, oh God, his thick hair is like, like a lion’s mane, these cheeks not shaved for a couple of days, of those eyelids and the mouth, the generous mouth, oh, those hands up and down me.

And oh, the hair on his legs! So gentle, the perfect length of legs, the firmness of his ass, the dent in the small of his back, oh his back, Jim gathers as much of him as possible between his thighs, pulls his face down to kiss him in the dark, to luxuriate in his kiss, in his kiss, in his firm kiss, in his tongue thrust into his mouth, in the tangling curls of his hair.
“I love you.”
It slips out of his mouth like a surrender. He never tells it to a lover and has never believed it from lovers in the past. But, they don’t know each other. But, they have always known each other. But, they have been the stuff of each other’s dreams.
How tender it sounds when Seth says it too.
“Be inside me,” Jim says.
The whole apartment is quiet and dark. The only sounds are small, the small creaking and giving way of the bed, of small moans and gasps. If one was there to watch you could see them, burrowed into the corner of the bed like a ball, Seth, white assed, on hands and knees, thighs gathered around him as he fucked Jim.
“I’m about to come,” Seth told him. “I’m about to come.”
“Come inside of me.”
“Are you…?”
But Jim was pulling him in, and Seth had not stopped and he could not stop, and his body froze, and then jerked. and Jim felt him pumping, pulsing, felt the slick semen coming between his thighs, cradled Seth’s damp head to his, kissing his face, feeling his own hardness, knowing he would do the same to Seth before the night was over. He could not say he’d always wanted to do it because he could not say this was planned. He could not say he ever thought it would happen. Seth, gasping, separated from him, and they held each other, lying face to face, unable to speak.


“Have you ever heard the story about the magic salad?”
“Is this some kind of joke?” Seth asks.
Jim chuckled. “No, it’s a fairy tale.”
“About a salad?”
“Yes,” Jim said, palming Seth’s face and then his palms separating into individual fingers, touching his lips as they lay together.
“So, do you want to hear it or not?”
“Sure.”
“Alright,” Jim lay back in the bed. Folding his hands behind his head.
“My Aunt Pamela used to tell me these stories, and then, after she died, my grandmother.
The story was a long one, and it ended thusly:

“Some days after, the miller came to him and told him that the old ass was dead; ‘The other two,’ said he, ‘are alive and eat, but are so sorrowful that they cannot last long.’ Then the huntsman pitied them, and told the miller to drive them back to him, and when they came, he gave them some of the good salad to eat. And the beautiful young lady fell upon her knees before him, and said, ‘O dearest huntsman! forgive me all the ill I have done you; my mother forced me to it, it was against my will, for I always loved you very much. Your wishing-cloak hangs up in the closet, and as for the bird’s heart, I will give it you too.’ But he said, ‘Keep it, it will be just the same thing, for I mean to make you my wife.’ So they were married, and lived together very happily till they died.”

“I don’t know if I could be happy with a guy who turned me into a donkey,” Seth said.
“Well, you have to admit, she kinda had it coming.”
“I’m sure they talked about it,” Seth said. “Had a real heart to heart.”
“I’m sure he told her, if you don’t fly right, I’m gonna turn you into a donkey.”
Then Jim said, as Seth snuggled into his arms, “Marabeth used to say that story was sexist. She’s probably right, but it’s the story with no wolves in it, and so that’s the one I told. Aunt Pamela liked the wolf stories.”
“And now we know why.”
“Yeah.”
Jim sank into the covers, curling into Seth.
“I feel so safe with you.”
“Safe?” Seth said.
“Yeah.”
“Do you usually feel unsafe?”
“I… don’t think about it, but right now I do feel safe, like you wouldn’t hurt me and nothing can as long as you’re here.”
“Well, yeah,” Seth said touching Jim;s sideburns and laying a finger at his temple. “I’ll keep you safe.”
“And I’ll keep you safe too,” Jim said, turning to him, the remains of Scotch and cigarettes faintly on his breath.
“You better,” Seth said, his finger tapping Jim over his heart. “Or I’ll turn you to a donkey.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an interesting new portion! I look forward to Pamela and Augustus meeting. It was nice to read some more of Seth and Jim. Great writing and I look forward to more soon! I hope you are having a nice week even if it is in quarantine.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yes, I don't think Augustus has actually shown up in person in the whole story yet, has he? Well, when he and Pamela meet that will be interesting, and I did like having a part of the story that was all about Seth and Jim.Right now I'm just going to enjoy the night and have another bowl of soup. More tomorrow.

 

[ChrisGibson]

F I V E

HYPAPANTE

This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all.

-The Book of the Law








“We left that boy with Dan,” Lewis said as he stepped out of the shower, towel wrapped about him, and sat on the edge of the bed in the hotel downtown where they were staying.
“There wasn’t much else we could do,” Chris said, “And Dan is safe.”
“True, but, I felt like Levi should be with us. Seeing as I named him, and well,” Lewis shrugged.
“And I killed his stepfather.”
“Yes,” Lewis said, “and spirited him off from his mother. And who knows what the hell she’ll do? Call the police, put out a report.”
“Lewis, I don’t know exactly what you’re capable of, I honestly don’t” Chris said from were he sat on the bed, nude—he never wore pajamas or anything like that, “But we’re more than capable of hiding a child from the authorities. We are more than capable of hiding anything from the authorities.”
“That may make school enrollment difficult,” Lewis said. “A boy ought to go to school.”
“I thought you said school was overrated.”
Lewis stood up, drying himself and placing the towel on the bed as he reached for the Vaseline, then the lotion, and began to open both and rub them into a mixture.
“Well, a boy should have the chance to be normal.”
“You always say normalcy is overrated.’
Lewis began to massage his arm, and then Chris crawled over, and began to rub lotion Vaseline in his own palms. As Chris began massaging his back, Lewis said, “It is overrated and yet, he should have the chance to choose it or reject it.”
“If he stays with us,” Chris’s hands stopped on Lewis’s shoulders, “He’ll never have anything like a normal life, and I want him to to stay with us. I know if he did our lives would change. We would have to get out of that apartment, or at least get a larger one, and you might not—”
“No, no,” Lewis said, “I was thinking the same thing. When we return from this, we can get back to the boy.”
“When we return from this?”
“You know,” Lewis said, turning around and gesturing for Chris to turn around so that he now began to oil his long white back, “going to visit Augustus.”
“You say it so lightly,” Chris said.
“Why shouldn’t I? At the end of the day I am the Master, not him, and though he is longed lived, I am many lived? Lifed?”
“But still, you said at first, not when we come back from a visit, but when we come back from this.”
“Christopher,” Lewis said, “what the hell are you getting at?”
“Just what you said, and not many days ago, that now, for the first time, witches and vampires and drinkers are all together, people who knew so little of each other. Kruinh knows of Augustus, and apparently so did Pamela, and it seems to me that going to see Augustus will really only be the beginning.”

“And Seth.”
“Yes.”
“Is he with that Jim guy?”
“I would guess that he is.”
“Then is he still with us?”
Often, Chris was infuriated by how hard Lewis was to read, and as Lewis answered: “I really couldn’t say,” this was one of those times






They talked all night. There had been lovemaking, but the talk lasted so long, was so deep, it eclipsed it.
They are awakened by a squawk.
“What the fuck is that?” Jim murmurs.
Seth does not laugh as he watches Jim rising, and jim blinks and says, “My God, but what?”
A Canada goose is standing in the living room, and it lifts its black bill and squawks importantly.
“How the fuck did that get into my apartment?”
“I’m afraid it’s my fault,” Seth said. He sat up in bed, and wrapping the covers about his waist so that, only for a moment, Jim saw the loveliness of his naked body, Seth turned to the goose and said, quite formally, “Yes, friend.”
Raising its wings so that Jim feared the bird might shit on his rug, and honking, hoarsely, the bird gave whatever report it had and then Seth said, calmly, “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
The bird gave another noise, which Jim fancied to be a sort of your welcome, and then, in a waddle, turned and left the bedroom.
“Do I need to….” Jim began. “let it out?”
“No, Jim,” Seth said, laying a hand on him. “They don’t like you to know how they get in or out. It’s a peculiarity them. When they are summoned.”
“Do you think he…?”
“Shit on your carpet? No. He wouldn’t do that. Geese do that outside because it’s outside. They wouldn’t do it in their home, and they certainly wouldn’t do it when visiting yours.”

Now Seth is dimly aware of what a pinhead and or nutjob he sounded like. It makes him laugh. He was so very serious about the hwole thing, about a goose walking into Jim’s apartment, and Jim had been so blown away that he didn’t even ask what the goose had said.
“Does this happen… a lot?”
“Not a lot,” Seth said, shrugging “But it does happen. More with squirrels. Once with a groundhog. I do love groundhogs. They’re so… serious. But funny and cute all at the same time. I’m going to stop talking now. I sound sort of mad.”
“No,” Jim disagreed. Then he said, “Well, yes. But this whole thing is mad. It’s only that I never knew the world was like this.”
“How do you feel, knowing that it is?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Jim confessed. “I think, though, that I like it.”



They got up and had breakfast and Jim said, “Let me take you to your family.”
“You want to see them?” Seth offered, and then he said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.”
“Of course I want to see them, Jim said, squeezing his hand. “You’ve seen yours.”
“I just want them to see you,” Seth said, “and maybe you think that’s silly.”
“I don’t think any thing you do is silly.” Jim said. “Life is so lonely so often,” Jim said.
“I’d had a dream,” Seth said.
“That’s right. I remember. You were murmuring something about it when we were half asleep. Before…”
“The bird came.”
“Yes.”
“My father came to me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes,” Seth said. “And… you don’t mind this, do you?”
“Mind what,?”
“Me talking about my father coming ot me.”
“No. Hell, my uncle came to you. And I never really knew my father, and I don’t know what I’d do if my mother came. Did he ever come to you before?”
“Yes. I was twelve. I was living with my Uncle Owen. I went out one day, to bring the trash cans in, and there was this man. I wasn’t sure at first. My father, my dad, Kyle would be younger than me now. He stopped, across the street. He didn’t come up to me, maybe he couldn’t. I don’t know, and he just pushed his hair out of his face, because he had dark hair like mine, but it was wavy like yours, a little longer. He was mostly white, you see, his grandfather had been Owen’s brother. Anyway. He looked at me, and he waved at me. He whispered, ‘I love you.’
“I was so happy, I didn’t even feel like I wanted to cry. And then I told him I loved him too, and he kept walking. I went back inside and I told my uncle. As soon as I told him I thought he might tell me I was crazy. Or I was wrong.”
“He’s a witch, right?”
“Yes, but he’s not mad. Anyway, I told Uncle Owen, and he was washing the dishes and he just sighed. Now, you’ve seen Lewis, and Owen is lot like him, and Owen is kind, but not emotional, you know. But then he just began to cry. Tears ran down his face and he said, ‘I miss your father so much. I wish he had been able to come to me.’
“He told me, ‘Next time you see him, tell him I love him too.’
“It was really… you know, up until then I had known that I loved my father, and I understood that I had lost him, but I never understood that Owen had lost his nephew. I feel like that was the one gift of his first visit. Whenever Dad comes it’s not just to say hello.”
“Does your mom ever come?”
“No,” Seth said. “There was a time, a long time, when I couldn’t dream of them, when my dreams were filled with nightmares and Lewis had to come with me into my dreams to clear them.”
“That’s possible?”
“Not for everyone.”
“Maybe he could clear out my dreams.”
“He is a witch. He is the head of our Clan.”
“What is a clan, exactly?”
“The Clan,” Seth began, then said, “Well, that’s a whole other explanation. That’s a lot of explaining, I don’t even know if I understand it, myself. And right now, I just want to eat.”


“The first thing to do,” Laurie decided, “is to find Chris and Lewis.”
“That’s easily done,” Myron said. “My cousin Amy called. She said they came to my cousins house last night. Lewis and a guy named Chris. I wasn’t there. I only heard about it, but they’re here, now.
“Then we have t go,” Levy stood up, as if he was about to leave the room right now.”
“Not at this moment, little friend,” Tanitha said with a half smile.
“But soon,” Dan decided. “We should all decide where Levy’s going to be. With us or with Lewis and Chris?”
“Scuse me, guys,” Sunny said, and they looked to him while Levy’s mouth was half open. “Don’t you think Levy should get some say in his future?”
Levy tried to not look satisfied, and Sunny said, “He may not be an adult, but he’s not a baby and, quite frankly, between staying with a punch of vampires and making camp with a nomadic gay couple that’s one haff witch and one half drinker, I feel like he should get to choose.”
“I didn’t even get to spend that much time with Lewis and Chris,” Levy said. “They might not want me.”
“Do you want them?” Laurie said simply.
“I’d like parents,” Levy said after a moment. “And… Lewis named me, and Lewis is a witch. Like me. I don’t know,” Levy shook his head. “We’ll all find out everything soo enough, I guess. And I don’t guess I’m the most important part of what’s going on anyway.”
“Levy,” Kruinh said in that voice that was always quiet, but managed to cut through so much, “At this moment we are not really sure of what is important. We know that an old threat seems to have been neutralized, and we know that now we have you and we need to find you a home and we know that now, somehow, we are tied up with Myron’s family, and they may need out help.”
“Well,” Myron said, though it looked like he was hesitating to speak, “I don’t know that my family is ready for witches and vampires to knock on the door of 1948 Dimler, but maybe your friends, the Dunharrows, might not mind if I paid them a visit, asked some questions? Is there a chance we could go to them? Knock on their door, ask what they know?”
“Chris is at a Residence Inn on Springbok Street in Lassador,” Kruinh said simply.
When Laurie looked at him, Kruinh said, “Why would I not know that? I’m his bloodfather. You all can go by there tonight.”
“There’s something else,” Dan said.
They looked to him, Anne taking a hand through her hair.
“Evangeline did not tell the entire truth. I have so many of her words, her memories, toward the end. When she talked about that battle, where she killed Myron’s ancestors, she left out, possibly from fear, maybe from spite, something else. That there was a spirit with them. A man who was like a spirit or a spirit who was like a man. He was also a werewolf, but different from them.”
“How strange,” Anne said.
“It’s all weird,” Myron said.
“Anyway, she thought it was this man who had hidden Freiderich away. Their spirit, their totem or something… more than that.”
Dan shrugged.
“Perhaps I could pay a visit to Rosamunde,” Tanitha said. “I haven’t seen my cousin for some time, and I’m sure she’d love to tlak. Under the right circumstances.”
“You’re good and showing her the right circumstances,” David told his wife, blandly.”
Laurie nodded, still looking at Kruinh, and then he said to Myron, “Whatever she doesn’t know, Lewis will.”
Dan and Laurie looked at Levy, and Levy said, tiredly, “And I will stay here.”
“Thank you for not making us say it,” Laurie told him.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Wow so much going on in this story at the moment! I like reading more about Seth and his powers. Sorry I don't have much to say, I am still really enjoying this story but there is a lot to process. I don't know where this story is going but I look forward to reading whatever happens next. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, there is a lot going on and Seth is finally coming into his own and I'm glad you see that. He was so afraid in the first book and so easily overshadowed, and now I like seeing all of these people come together and be a little bit fabulous. I'm glad you had fun reading, and there'll be more tomorrow.

 

[ChrisGibson]

HYPAPANTE

PART TWO

“So,” Levy said, “Laurie was friends with Chris.”
“He is friend with Chris . They are best friends. Strictly speaking, Chris is his Master.”
“Explain that.”
“Whoever makes you is your Master. Chris made Laurie, but Kruinh told him how to do, and Kruinh is Chris’s master, so he is Laurie’s grandmaster.”
“Flash.”
“What?”
“Nevermind,” Levy shook his head. “And if I ask anything else I’m going to get distracted and forget what I was really curious about.’
Dan grinned and shook his head while he strummed on his acoustic guitar, “Okay. Shoot.”
“So Laurie is your brother?’
“Right.”
“Even though technically he’s like your blood… cousin? Cause Kruinh’s niece made him.”
“I voluntarily became part of Kruinh’s clan, so Kruinh became my Master. You can have more than one Master.”
“Oh.”
“But that’s not what you wanted to ask.”
“You guys are having sex with each other, right?’
Dan hit a discordant note on the guitar then muttered, “And there it is!”
“I mean, but I thought that would make him your boyfriend, like Lewis and Chris, and then, like he’s going to find Loreal, and I thought he was in love with her.”
“He is in love with her.”
“But he;s in love with you too.”
“No,” Dan said. “He’s not in love with me. He loves me, and I love him.”
“Oh.”
Dan began playing the first part of “Silver Dagger”, his fingers moving up and down the strings, and then, as he played quieter he said, “It was something we didn’t bring up because I didn’t think it was something you would understand.”
“My mother used to say that when she had sex with men for drug money,” Levy said. “But when she said it she just meant she was doing something nasty and didn’t want to explain it.”
Dan stopped playing, but Levy seemed not to notice and, anyway, Levy could probably kill him with the swat of a hand.
“I’m not saying that’s why you said it though,” Levy said. “I’ve had to… had to figure out things about how you all work. I’m guessing that in a way whatever vampires do is different from what humans would do, or even what a human would do with a vampire. So, whatever you and Laurie do must be different from what two humans would do. I can’t really put my finger on it, but that seems to be it.”
“Twelve years olds shouldn’t really be talking about sex.”
“Actually twelve year olds who don’t talk about ti become thirteen years who have it,” Levy said.
Damn, this kid!
Dan put down his guitar.
“You wanna talk like a grown up, fine.”
“I just don’t want to be treated like a dummy,” Levy said. “I want to understand.”
“Fine,” Dan said.
“I… when I became what I am, when I was turned, I became different. I mean, I killed. I drank blood. I liked it. I was able to hunt people. I became a different person who liked different things. I had known about vampires being more or less what I guess you would call, bisexual. I knew that if you really cared for someone you might end up being their lover, for a time. Or forever. And it wasn’t the same as choosing a partner or a spouse. Just, two people who had that connection. I had heard about it, but humans don’t really work that way. Most of the time when you say you’re bi it pretty much means you’re gay and you just can’t handle it. So, I didn’t understand the intensity I felt for Laurie. And then, the other night, when I took Kruinh’s blood, and then Evangeline’s, that changed me more. I felt more of Laurie’s love for me. I was more aware of it, and I was more of aware of my feelings for him. And so, we’re doing what we’re doing.”
“When you are with each other, do you drink each other’s blood?”
“Why would you ask that?” Dan looked mildly irritated, or as irritated as Dan Rawlinson ever became.
“It seems natural.”
“Yes,” Dan said, sitting somewhere between amazement and discomfort at Levy’s perception. “that is part of it. It happens and when we share blood, we share ourselves. So I’m more joined to Laurie. He’s more joined to me. And I’m joined to people he was joined to. We can feel each other, sense each other, even be each other to a certain extent, and whatever we do… as a couple... to a certain extent, once we share blood, we’re always doing it.”
“So like, in a way, you’re having sex with Laurie right now.”
“Yes,” Dan answered not willing to be embarrassed anymore, and realizing that Levy had no judgment. He was really a lot like this Lewis whom Daniel had known for only a moment.
“So… like, even if you never slept together again, you’d always be sleeping together?”
“Something like that. And,” Dan added, “the blood has the power and the memory, so I understand him more because I literally become him more, and he becomes me. So, I don’t want you to think we’re all just wildly jumping on top of each other. It’s… a serious thing. I’ve been a vampire for years and this never happened to me till the other night. For Laurie it only happened with one other blood drinker.”
“Chris.”
“How did you know?”
“I… it’s like his relationship with Chris just seems like that. I had wondered if they broke up, but no. It just became something else, right?”
“You’re a smart kid, but I don’t want to talk about my sex life with you anymore. You wanna learn how to play the guitar?”
“Not really.”
“Go upstairs,” Dan Rawlinson said more sharply than he ever spoke, “and get my spare guitar.”



When Lewis answered the door he seemed completel unfazed by the appearance of Laurie, Kruinh and Myron Keller.
“Loreal is down the hall in her own room,” Lewis told Laurie as he opened the door to let them in.
“Kruinh I now know. You, I don’t.”
“I’m Myron Keller.”
“Oh,” Lewis said in an amused voice as he gestured them to sit and went into the kitchen to bring out drinks.
“Another Keller. Things are getting deeper and deeper.”
This afternoon, Seth had returned with Jim Keller, and the whole time Lewis socialized with the golden haired Strauss, he thought, Does he know that Seth has been sleeping with us? What in the world is Seth planning? But since he’d turned forty, Lewis realized that his problems were few, and Seth’s problems were not his, and this was something for his cousin to figure out so he said to these new visitors, as he had said to Jim Strauss:
“Thirsty?”
He looked to Kruinh.
“No, friend Lewis.”
“Laurie, Bourbon? Bourbon. You Myron? The same?”
“You’ve changed, Lawrence,” Lewis said. “I can’t put my figner on it, but there’s something lighter about you.”
Lewis was coming with drinks when Chris came out of the bathroom, and he actually was surprised. He cocked his head, looking at Laurie so sharply that the other vampire went red.
“What?”
Chris shook his finger at Laurie, grinning, and said, “You and me will talk.”
“But first,” Lewis said, his arms out, “it seems like we all need to talk.”
“We were attacked by a rival vampire clan,” Kruinh said simply.
“The clan that Evangeline is a part of,” Chris guessed.
“Evangeline is no more,” Kruinh said, simply, and Chris nodded.
“We can,” Kruinh’s eyes were lowered for once, “talk about this privately, if you wish.”
“I don’ t want to talk about it at all,” Chris said, his eyes wide open and somber.
“I have no doubt I would have been next after you. It’s taken me a long time to realize that she was my enemy… That…”
Now Chris did looked briefly pained, and Lewis wanted to touch him, but stopped himself
“Nevermind,” Chris said, regaining himself. “Please go on.”
“Evangeline was not only part of the clan. She founded it. She had separated from Rosamunde. Laurie’s baby and Lynn,were her undoing. She knew we were brining a mortal with us and assumed it was Lynn, and so she attacked us. Our destruction was a bonus. Eve Moreland was tied in this,” Kruinh said to Lewis. “But I doubt Augustus knew anything.”
“So do I,” Lewis said. “His bloodlusts were always in different directions. “
“There was one other thing, though,” Kruinh said, “and it was this: Evangeline mentioned, quite casually, that she killed the Strausses. The original ones. Doubtless, you will know more about that. She said her clan was once allied to the old werewolf clan, but things fell amiss, and so the vampires destroyed nearly all of them, but Freiderich Strauss. We found out,” Kruinh said, that there was another one, a ghostly man, a man who was not a ghost, but not living like the others, who was also a werewolf, and that he had taken Freiderich away and protected him.”
“Marabeth would probably like to know about this,” Lewis said.
“Marabeth?” Myron said.
“Yes, she inherited your aunt Pamela’s journals. She’s learning all about this now.”
“So Marabeth knows, Myron clapped his hands to his knees, his mouth a little open, his eyes slits as he looked about the room.
“Not always. It is new to her.”
“Then none of us has known.”
“I doubt that,” Lewis said. “More likely, some of you have known. I know your cousin Peter has always known.”
“Peter.” Myron’s voice changed. “Well, fuck him.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! It was interesting to hear Dan explaining his relationship with Laurie. Sounds like there is going to be some action in the next portion by the end of this one. I look forward to that. Excellent writing and I look forward to more! Hope you are having a nice night despite being stuck at home like most of us are.

 

[ChrisGibson]

To tell the very boring truth about a poet in the middle of the midwest, this night is no different from most nights of my life and my days are pretty much the same too. All of this enclosure just keeps me from all the people I have to makes excuses to get away from. However, in this weird and fucked up time I hope my stories and poems give you some happiness and a little bit od adventure.

 

[ChrisGibson]

HYPAPANTE

CONCLUSION


“You and Dan,” Chris said, when the two of them were alone.
“What?” Laurie said.
“You shared with him. You’re sharing with him.”
“In the fight,” Laurie said, “he almost died. He… it made us closer.”
“No, it didn’t. You were always close. Don’t you think everyone knows the hold Dan has on you. You’re like some schoolboy throwing rocks at a girl you have a crush on. Since the day you guys saw each other he couldn’t stop razzing you, and you couldn’t stop pretending he bugged you.”
“He does bug me.” Then Laurie shrugged. “Sometimes. But, God, the other night… I got so scared. Kruinh saved him. If Dan hadn’t drank half of Kruinh’s blood he’d be dead, and then…”
Chris touched his cheek, “It’s sweet Laurie, It’s about time you all stopped pretending to squall all the time. It was meant to be. We can all see it. You’re bonded to him the way you’re bonded to me. I can almost see him standing right next to you. It’s amazing.”
“Do you think Loreal will understand?”
Chris shrugged, and touched Laurie on the cheek.
“There’s really only one way to find out.”





Loreal shrieked when she opened the door and gathered Laurie to her.
“You must think I’m the biggest idiot because its only been a few days, but I’m so glad to see you.”
She closed the door behind him and said, “You have to understand. I’m so glad to see you.”
She stopped, looking at him sideways and Laurie said, “What?”
“Lawrence Malone, you’re glowing. You look like you’re actually glowing. Something’s happened to you. You look young. You look… like a little boy. Something’s happened to you.”
“I was almost killed by a gang of vampire,” Laurie said, “But yes, something has happened to me.”
Loreal blinked and shook her head, then said, “Are you going to tell me?”
She gestured for Laurie to sit on the bed, and then she said, “Firstly, you need to hear something. You need to hear that I love you. I know that’s what it is. Not lust or not just lust, not just a fascination. A love. I am close to you. I dream of you. I know I belong with you. Let’s stay the night together. I don’t mean sex. I don’t even mean that. I mean, I want to lay beside you and talk with you all night. I want us to be together all night.”
He was so earnest, earnest in the way that boys were before they got dull and afraid and became men, earnest and happy and something had happened. He was in love with her, but there was a love in him that had little to do with her. She sensed this and she said, “Laurie, you have something to tell me.”
“I do,” Laurie said, “and I have to tell it to you gently, and slowly, and explain it, and when I’ve told you, you may not want me for your man, but I still hope you’ll want me.”
But Loreal looked into Laurie’s face which was the face of a killer, to be sure, and of a man with great complications, but which was shining with love for her, and she said, “I do want you to be… my man. I don’t think anything’s easy with you. I don’t guess. We can talk about it all tonight, if you wish.”
Laurie nodded seriously and caught her hand.
“The others are going to see the Stausses. I’m staying behind. I feel like I could be a bit much.”
“You didn’t think they’d be ready for you?” Loreal said as she sat on the bed, her legs folded under her.
“It’s enough they had one vampire,” Laurie said, as he sat beside Loreal, folding his trousered legs under him as she had done.
“I don’t think Chris said he was a vampire, and I don’t think I’m going with them to see Grandpa, or at least not for long.”
“What’s that?” Laurie raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that the whole reason you came?”
“The reason we came was to find truth,” Loreal said. “It was the truth about this family, the Strausses, but what if there is a truth to be found out about out own family? But I’d rather not think about it now.”
“Leave it for tomorrow,” Laurie suggested.
“I will,” Loreal said. “But you, your business. That’s going to be for tonight.”




That night there was a sharp wrap on his door, and Peter was pretty annoyed because it was much too late for company, but if company was coming, far too late for it to be so rude. Madder stuck his head out of the twin’s room, and Peter, pulling his housecoat over his pajamas, said, “Go back to bed. Dad’ll be right back up.”
The kids never crossed Dad. He didn’t have to worry about that. He came down the old wide staircase that had been his grandparents and before that his great grandparents and down to the foyer of the old house. He peered through the white door curtain and saw Myron, scowling, and he shrugged, then opened the door.
“Myre—”
Just like that Myron punched the shit out of him and sent him skidding across the hallway, past the doorway to the living room.
Myron kicked the door closed with his foot.
“You mother—fucker.”
Peter, on the floor, rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“I feel like Marabeth is at the bottom of this.”
Myron pulled the wheel of pills out of his pocket and tossed them at his cousin.
“Marabeth,” Peter shook his head, frowning, as he got up.
“Marabeth doesn’t have shit to do with this. I didn’t learn any of this from Mara. Apparently she just found out herself. But you knew, you son of a bitch. You knew. I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t fucked in the head. I was… a fucking werewolf.”
“If Marabeth didn’t tell you, then who did?’
“Is that really the most important thing?” Myron said. “Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with you? You and your little vendetta with Mara, and we’re… what we are, is what is important.”
Myron was furious and Madder had come down the steps. Both men stared up at him and Peter said, “Madder, what did I say?”
“Are you guys fighting?’
“No, little man,” Myron was still breathing heavily, but he had made himself smile. “Me and your old man are just… you know how it is with brothers.”
“Yeah,” Peter grinned. “Sorry, we gotta little loud. Go back to bed. Love you.”
Madder nodded. “Love you dad. Love you, Uncle Myre.”
They both looked after Madder, smiling, murmuring they loved him too. But when he was gone, Myron pulled Peter by his neck, squeezing his throat. Peter had tested letting himself become the wolf, and he was the oldest in his generation, Myron had always been his goofy, affable cousin, so he had never counted on what was clear when the blue eyes were staring into him,
Myron is stronger than me.
Myron let him go.
“You want to know how I found out?”
“Yes,” Peter rasped, rubbing his throat.
“A vampire told me.”
Peter frowned at Myron.
“You’re trying to figure out if I’m fucking with you, but I’m not. There is, even now, talking with Marabeth, a witch’s coven, a real witches coven—”
“The Dunharrows.”
Myron frowned. “Well, I guess you know every fucking thing.”
“Not about the vampires,” Peter said. “Tell me about them.”
For a childish moment, Myron thought of not telling him, of saying, Well, that’s for me to know and you to find out. But Myron was not a child.
“It turns out Friederich—”
“Great- Grandfather?”
“Yes, and for fuck’s sake, quit interrupting. Friederich’s father was killed by a group of vampires, a group of vampires which I fought yesterday. Is all of this sounding strange to you?
When Peter said nothing, Myron added, “And that our great-great grandmother was some German witch who helped Friederich fight off these vampires and… it gets crazier and crazier the more I say it, but I know it’s true because I’ve met them. I’ve been with them for the last day.”
“The… vampires?”
“Yeah, Pete, the vampires!” Myron made a mad flying gesture with his hands, “Because we’re with vampires now, cause we’re werewovles, who have witch blood, though if you think about Amy, that makes a lot of sense. And, and, you know who the vampire who was supposed to tell me about this is?”
“No,” Peter said. They had come into the kitchen now, and He sat at the table looking defeated.
“Dan Rawlinson.”
“Dan!” Peter looked almost disgusted. “Dan form high school.”
“Yup,” Myron said. “Dan’s a vampire.”



“Dan is the boy with the wide dark eyes and the chocolate colored hair we left Levy with,” Loreal said.
“Yeah,” said Laurie.
“The one who likes cheesecake.”
Laurie tried to stop himself from laughing, but said, “Yeah. that’s Dan.”
“He’s sweet,” Loreal decided.
“You were about to say for a vampire.”
“I was not,” Loreal said. Then, “Maybe I was.”
They were quiet for a while and Laurie said, “You haven’t told me what you think.”
“I don’t know what to think. I know the questions I’m supposed to have. I know how I’m supposed to feel, how ordinary people would feel, how an ordinary woman is supposed to feel. But I don’t know how I feel. I don’t know if the feelings matter.”
“They do matter,” Laurie insisted, “because I want us to be together.”
“But I’ve always been alone,” Loreal said. “I have. I don’t know what to do when I have someone and, I’ve never had you to myself, Laurie. You were with Lynn and now you’re with Dan—”
“I’m not with Dan,” Laurie said. “It’s different. “
“I do know that,” she said. “Only, it’s just that I don’t know how it’s different.”
The silence went on. It didn’t stretch. Loreal was fine with silence. She got up and went to her mini fridge. She pulled out a juice bottle and asked if he was thirsty. He kept looking at her strangely.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Laurie. I’m glad to see you. You’ve been gone a few days and now you tell me that Vampire Dan is your lover, but that you’re more in love with me than ever, and I don’t know what you want me to say. I can tell you want me to say something. I can even guess what it is.”
She handed him the unasked for juice and opened it.
“You want something predictable to happen. With Lynn she knew nothing. With all the other girls they knew less than nothing. With your wife, she knew the word for what you were, but not the reality of it. For me, I know everything, even this. And I could say to, never see him again. Never touch him again. Just be with me. Or I could tell you how much I understand this and move on.
“But you see, I’m not a jealous person, not like that. I don’t really care if you sleep with Dan. If it makes you happy, I want you to. And it seems to make you happy, and I do get that it’s a little more than that, or a lot more than that. Or I guess I’m supposed to say I fully understand that you too are not human, or not human in the same way I am, and this means something different for you than it would if you were, and I fully accept it, and please carry on, but I don’t think I would be honest if I said that.”
“Alright,” Laurie said, “Then what would you be honest in saying?”
“The truth is, I just want to have sex. I’m tired of not having sex. I’m fighting that training in me, that little Catholic girl that’s saying I won’t sleep with you until you stop sleeping with Dan. And… that’s stupid. And then there’s a part of me that feels like, I’m not going to sleep with you until I know I have someone else to sleep with, to even up the score. And that doesn’t sound right and…”
Laurie had not spoken. He also did not stare at her. He sat quietly waiting for Loreal to work out her feelings. After all. He didn’t entirely understand his own.
“It’s like,” Loreal said, “it’s like you’re telling me that when you’re with me you’re being your human self, but with Dan you are your vampire self.”
“That’s exactly it,” Laurie said, snapping his fingers. “That’s exactly it.
“You know I was with Chris, A long time ago.”
“Yes.”
“But with my wife, with Lynn, with every woman it was different. With Veronica I was the husband and the father of her children, but with Chris, I was… the blood drinker.”
“And that’s the problem,” Loreal realized.
She stood up and Laurie looked up at her.
“With all of them, even with Veronica, you were playing a part. You were supposed to be everything before me. Not everything to me, I don’t need that. But you were supposed to be your whole self, your vampire self for me. I have to have all of you. I can’t have one part of you and Dan have the other. The vampire self has to be mine.”
“I understand,” Laurie said.
He cleared his throat, and said, “Loreal, what if I told you Dan is right here, in this room with me, right now?”
Loreal only looked at him.
“What if I told you that the more we’re together, the more we become each other? That, the way you’ve seen me, happier, lighter? Younger? That’s Dan. And he is probably getting more… crabby and fussy, poor guy. We… I meant what I said. When mortals talk about two becoming one it’s kind of bullshit. Me and Dan are…”
“I know what you’re telling me even if you don’t,” Loreal interrupted him. “I know what you’re telling me even if the part of you that you want to be separate, that is asking me to understand and not be jealous is jealous.”
When she said it, it was then that Lawrence Malone understood, and after all, it was something Chris and Lewis were already doing.
“If I am to have the whole you,” Loreal said, “I’ve got to have Dan too.”


TOMORROW NIGHT: A NEW SHORT STORY

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! I am glad Loreal reacted the way she did to Laurie's news. I thought for sure that she was going to tell him to get out or something. Looks like everyone who is a wolf finding out has some complications. I don't see that calming down anytime soon. Excellent writing and I look forward to more and the short story tomorrow! I hope you are having a great night!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Loreal is one of the strangest characters of all. She is by training and by nature a witch, and part of what this means is that as someone trained to affect reality and the world around her, she is always looking at things, including herself, and judging them for reality. She sort of explains this to Laurie. She knows as a twenty one year old girl her role is to be hurt by hearing about Dan, bt by her very nature she sees what the relationship is and that she would only be playing a role to be upset so she rejects it. She is sort of like a Bene Gesserit in Dune, a hyper aware and hyper rational person. She is very much like Lewis and not like Seth who wasn't formally trained, and not like any of the other characters who, despite being werewolves or immortal vampires are still more or less humans at the mercy of their feelings.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Thanks for that explanation! It helps me appreciate the story even more!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Weekend Portion Part One

S I X

STORIES
ABOUT
US



Every man and every woman is a star.

-The Book of the Law




Dan Rawlinson had shown up at the door of Loreal’s room, leaning against the wall, looking, she realized, delicious. She couldn’t blame Laurie and she remembered something about Laurie saying they shared, not the same mind, but the same self. That if he loved Loreal, Dan loved her too. And she felt, looking up and down him, that a feeling like and unlike she had felt the first time she saw Laurie touched her now.
She let him in, and they ended up talking for three hours. It was on the third that Laurie showed up, but by then, she and Dan were reading through Susanna Dunharrows journals.
The book was open, and Loreal’s hands were tracing a very old drawing, a quartered circle, and at the top was North, and to the sides, East and West and South at the bottom. In the first quadrant there was a blue circle, and then in the second a yellow circle with a dot in the center, and beneath it, in what would be the south east was a green circle, quartered like the original circle, and then, beside it, was a red circle with a bar through it.
“Ynis Witrin,” Laurie read, his eyebrows furrowed. “The Glass Castle, Glastonbury.”
By the yellow circle he read, “The Golden Castle, Fensalir, the Land of Elphame.
“What is this?” Laurie asked.
“I’m not entirely sure,” she said.
“And then read this. Here. In the South.
“The Maid,” Dan said, “The Golden Bowl.”
In the center, three spirals moved out, and in the middle of it was written, “The Spiral Castle.”
“I don’t know anything about this,” Loreal said.
“But your grandmother did. It’s in her book. Did she ever say anything about it?”
“No.”
“Well, then,” said Dan, “you could…”
“What?”
“Maybe this is a dumb idea, but you could look it up on the Internet. It is the twenty-first century.”
“I’m already with you,” Loreal had pulled her laptop out of her bag. It was not elegant and slim. It was much too heavy, and usually much too slow. She swore a little bit as it cycled on and then she typed, “Spiral Castle.”
“Why’d you do that?”
“It’s the only think I’ve ever heard of,” Loreal said. “I mena, I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of it in stories.”
She waited for the search to come up, and then said, “Well, there it is.
“Prydain. That’s it. From the Lloyd Alexander books, but that can’t be it. It’s an album too. I see pictures of it. Looks like the tower of Babel.”
“Why,” Laurie laid a hand on her knee, “don’t you try another search?”
Loreal frowned. “Nothing else on here looks searchable.”
And then she typed in, “Golden Castle. North East.”
She typed, and deleted, and typed and deleted and finally said, “Fuck, all I’m getting is Golden Castle of Stromberg, and that’s some type of video game.”
“Why are we just flipping through these books and the internet?” Laurie said. “In the morning, why don’t we ask Lewis?”


The door opened and Seth looked up to see Chris.
“I didn’t know you’d be in here,” he said.
“No?” Seth said.
“I thought you might be out. With Jim.”
“No, he and his family had something over at Marabeth’s apartment,” Seth said. “We may get together later.”
And then Seth said, “But why did you come, if you didn’t think I’d be here?”
Chris took one of the great chairs by the door and dragged it with what Seth was beginning to call vampire strength to sit beside Seth.
“Lewis was with Loreal, going over Susanna’s books. And he went to sleep. And I don’t really—” Chris stopped.
“I sound stupid to myself. I sound like someone who isn’t ot three hundred years old. I sound confused.”
He looked at Seth. Chris was taller, so he actually looked down on him. His face was narrow and high plained, and his pale blond hair was sticking up a little.
“I did hope you would be here. You’re comforting. Lewis is too, but you’re your own type of comforting, and it has been a while since the two of us have sat side by side. What with everything.”
“There is a part of me,” Seth said, “that assumed I was an interruption.”
“An interruption?’
“Between you and Lewis. That you put up with me.”
Chris laid a hand on Seth’s knee.
“You are not an interruption. You are a sweet, sweet strangeness, and the truth is we’ve missed you. I have missed you. I love having Lewis to myself, but I’ve missed you being with us.”
Seth nodded, smiling a little.
“I didn’t know.”
“Well, now you do.”
“How are you feeling?” Seth asked.
“About?’
“About your sister.”
“I…. I don’t rightly know.”
“I think,” Seth said, “if my sister died. If she was killed because she had come against me and what was mine, even if I was the one who had to kill her, I think at least part of my heart would be broken. Because I think all this time I would have held out the hope that one day she would be the person she once was. I think no matter how bad she got, I would always hope. And then once she was gone, once it was all over I would be hurt in a place it’s hard to show.”
Seth looked up at Chris.
“I think you feel like you don’t have the right to feel that way. But I think it’s the way you do feel? Am I right?”
And when Chris turned to him, his blue eyes were deep and wet, and a stream of tears was running down each of his cheeks. He didn’t blink, as humans would, and he nodded his head, his lips parted.
Seth had offered himself to the vampire, been bitten by him, but he had not gotten up out of his chair and held him until now, letting Chris Ashby weep on him. And suddenly, he kissed Chris. He kissed him hungrily, not out of pity or because he was with Lewis, but because he wanted him, and Chris kissed him back and they held to each other with a tight urgency until it was Seth who brought Chris to the floor, and they began to struggle out of clothing. Now Chris blinked away tears as he knelt naked over Seth, and the length of his cock bobbed before Seth.
Seth took him in his mouth. He wanted to. He wanted to take away his pain and sadness, or be part of it. And Chris cried out and his eyes closed as Seth’s mouth worked on him. And maybe, Seth thought, as he took Chris deeper and deeper down his throat, he wanted to know what his night with Jim had meant to who he was, because this was who he was. He lay on the floor and wrapped his thighs around Chris’s waist, and as Chris entered him, deeply, and they both groaned, as Seth’s whole body prickled with the pain, with the ache, with the ache dissolving into pleasure of Chris’s entry, he knew who he was. Ancient words played in his mind, but this was not the time to think about them.

This is the secret of the Holy Graal, that is the sacred vessel of our Lady the Scarlet Woman, Babalon the Mother of Abominations, the bride of Chaos, that rides upon our Lord the Beast.

Drain out the blood that is your life into the golden cup of her fornication.
Mingle your life with the universal life. Keep not back one drop.

No this was not the time for thought. This was the time to be and to feel, to wrap thighs around waist and drape them down so their backs landed on buttocks, to feel Chris Ashby move up and down and in and out of you like rivers, to lift up your shoulder and receive the bite that stung and connected, that drove in and then felt at home, to at that moment dig in fingernails like claws over Chris’s back and draw that same blood. This was the time to bite down on his lip while Chris moved in and out of him, shuttling faster and faster as the iron sweet taste of Chris Ashby’s blood dripped into his own mouth. They came together, their bodies crashing, shaking, toes curling, limbs twisting, hands and feet bunching, clinging to each other as the only things that could get them through the orgasm and keep their souls from flying out of their bodies.
They lay together exhausted, redeemed and crushed by each other, heaving on the floor. Looking up at the ceiling.
At last Chris turned on his side and stroked Seth’s cheek. Seth turned to him. And they looked with love on each other.
“Come to bed with us,” Chris told him.
Seth nodded.
The two men, the taller and the shorter, pale and cream colored, rose, and Chris opened the door first. Naked and heedless if anyone might come down the hall, he walked out, taking Seth by the hand, leaving their clothes and notebooks, and phones. They crossed the hall into the darkness of the room where Lewis slept. They closed the door, once in the dim and silent room, and on either side of him, climbed into bed.




They were all in Marabeth’s apartment, which she was finding pretty strange because she imagined her family safely in Germantown and not here. Myron kept walking around the painting of the wolf devouring the girl, and though he looked approvingly at it, almost happy, she wanted to cover it up.
Joyce brought Marabeth the story she had printed off and Marabeth said, “Just listen to this.”
Kris was there and Jim was there, and Peter was standing, arms folded over his chest and and legs planted apart on the other side of the easel Myron kept looking at. Strangely enough, Marabeth got comfort from the woman Anne, Myron’s friend who had come with him, her hair tea colored, her large Bette Davis eyes hooded.
Marabeth read.


Once upon a time there lived in a certain village a little country girl, the prettiest creature who was ever seen. Her mother was excessively fond of her; and her grandmother doted on her still more. This good woman had a little red riding hood made for her. It suited the girl so extremely well that everybody called her Little Red Riding Hood.
One day her mother, having made some cakes, said to her, "Go, my dear, and see how your grandmother is doing, for I hear she has been very ill. Take her a cake, and this little pot of butter." Little Red Riding Hood set out immediately to go to her grandmother, who lived in another village.
As she was going through the wood, she met with a wolf, who had a very great mind to eat her up, but he dared not, because of some woodcutters working nearby in the forest. He asked her where she was going. The poor child, who did not know that it was dangerous to stay and talk to a wolf, said to him, "I am going to see my grandmother and carry her a cake and a little pot of butter from my mother."
"Does she live far off?" said the wolf
"Oh I say," answered Little Red Riding Hood; "it is beyond that mill you see there, at the first house in the village."
"Well," said the wolf, "and I'll go and see her too. I'll go this way and go you that, and we shall see who will be there first."
The wolf ran as fast as he could, taking the shortest path, and the little girl took a roundabout way, entertaining herself by gathering nuts, running after butterflies, and gathering bouquets of little flowers. It was not long before the wolf arrived at the old woman's house. He knocked at the door: tap, tap.
"Who's there?"
"Your grandchild, Little Red Riding Hood," replied the wolf, counterfeiting her voice; "who has brought you a cake and a little pot of butter sent you by mother."
The good grandmother, who was in bed, because she was somewhat ill, cried out, "Pull the bobbin, and the latch will go up."
The wolf pulled the bobbin, and the door opened, and then he immediately fell upon the good woman and ate her up in a moment, for it been more than three days since he had eaten. He then shut the door and got into the grandmother's bed, expecting Little Red Riding Hood, who came some time afterwards and knocked at the door: tap, tap.
"Who's there?"
Little Red Riding Hood, hearing the big voice of the wolf, was at first afraid; but believing her grandmother had a cold and was hoarse, answered, "It is your grandchild Little Red Riding Hood, who has brought you a cake and a little pot of butter mother sends you."
The wolf cried out to her, softening his voice as much as he could, "Pull the bobbin, and the latch will go up."
Little Red Riding Hood pulled the bobbin, and the door opened.
The wolf, seeing her come in, said to her, hiding himself under the bedclothes, "Put the cake and the little pot of butter upon the stool, and come get into bed with me."
Little Red Riding Hood took off her clothes and got into bed. She was greatly amazed to see how her grandmother looked in her nightclothes, and said to her, "Grandmother, what big arms you have!"
"All the better to hug you with, my dear."
"Grandmother, what big legs you have!"
"All the better to run with, my child."
"Grandmother, what big ears you have!"
"All the better to hear with, my child."
"Grandmother, what big eyes you have!"
"All the better to see with, my child."
"Grandmother, what big teeth you have got!"
"All the better to eat you up with."
And, saying these words, this wicked wolf fell upon Little Red Riding Hood, and ate her all up.

Once upon a time there lived in a certain village a little country girl, the prettiest creature who was ever seen. Her mother was excessively fond of her; and her grandmother doted on her still more. This good woman had a little red riding hood made for her. It suited the girl so extremely well that everybody called her Little Red Riding Hood.
One day her mother, having made some cakes, said to her, "Go, my dear, and see how your grandmother is doing, for I hear she has been very ill. Take her a cake, and this little pot of butter." Little Red Riding Hood set out immediately to go to her grandmother, who lived in another village.
As she was going through the wood, she met with a wolf, who had a very great mind to eat her up, but he dared not, because of some woodcutters working nearby in the forest. He asked her where she was going. The poor child, who did not know that it was dangerous to stay and talk to a wolf, said to him, "I am going to see my grandmother and carry her a cake and a little pot of butter from my mother."
"Does she live far off?" said the wolf
"Oh I say," answered Little Red Riding Hood; "it is beyond that mill you see there, at the first house in the village."
"Well," said the wolf, "and I'll go and see her too. I'll go this way and go you that, and we shall see who will be there first."
The wolf ran as fast as he could, taking the shortest path, and the little girl took a roundabout way, entertaining herself by gathering nuts, running after butterflies, and gathering bouquets of little flowers. It was not long before the wolf arrived at the old woman's house. He knocked at the door: tap, tap.
"Who's there?"
"Your grandchild, Little Red Riding Hood," replied the wolf, counterfeiting her voice; "who has brought you a cake and a little pot of butter sent you by mother."
The good grandmother, who was in bed, because she was somewhat ill, cried out, "Pull the bobbin, and the latch will go up."
The wolf pulled the bobbin, and the door opened, and then he immediately fell upon the good woman and ate her up in a moment, for it been more than three days since he had eaten. He then shut the door and got into the grandmother's bed, expecting Little Red Riding Hood, who came some time afterwards and knocked at the door: tap, tap.
"Who's there?"
Little Red Riding Hood, hearing the big voice of the wolf, was at first afraid; but believing her grandmother had a cold and was hoarse, answered, "It is your grandchild Little Red Riding Hood, who has brought you a cake and a little pot of butter mother sends you."
The wolf cried out to her, softening his voice as much as he could, "Pull the bobbin, and the latch will go up."
Little Red Riding Hood pulled the bobbin, and the door opened.
The wolf, seeing her come in, said to her, hiding himself under the bedclothes, "Put the cake and the little pot of butter upon the stool, and come get into bed with me."
Little Red Riding Hood took off her clothes and got into bed. She was greatly amazed to see how her grandmother looked in her nightclothes, and said to her, "Grandmother, what big arms you have!"
"All the better to hug you with, my dear."
"Grandmother, what big legs you have!"
"All the better to run with, my child."
"Grandmother, what big ears you have!"
"All the better to hear with, my child."
"Grandmother, what big eyes you have!"
"All the better to see with, my child."
"Grandmother, what big teeth you have got!"
"All the better to eat you up with."
And, saying these words, this wicked wolf fell upon Little Red Riding Hood, and ate her all up.




“And then the woodsman comes,” Myron said.
Marabeth said, “There is no woodsman.”
“I think I heard that before,” Jim said. “That there was a different version of the story.”
“Jim, that’s the story Pamela learned, the story Hagano taught her.”
“Hagano is the guy who protected Friederich. The… spirit?” Myron said. “Or whatever.”
“Yes,” Marabeth said. “But, listen to this.”
She read.



Once upon a time there lived in a certain village a little country girl, the prettiest creature who was ever seen. Her mother was excessively fond of her; and her grandmother doted on her still more. This good woman had a a hooded cloak of wolf fur made for her. It suited the girl so extremely well that everybody called her Little Hood.
One day her mother, having made some cakes, said to her, "Go, my dear, and see how your grandmother is doing, for I hear she has been very ill. Take her a cake, and this little pot of butter."
Rosamunde set out immediately to go to her grandmother, who lived in another village.
As she was going through the wood, she met with a wolf, who had a very great mind to eat her up, but he dared not, because of some woodcutters working nearby in the forest. He asked her where she was going. The poor child, who did not know that it was dangerous to stay and talk to a wolf, said to him, "I am going to see my grandmother and carry her a cake and a little pot of butter from my mother."
"Does she live far off?" said the wolf
"Oh I say," answered Rosamunde; "it is beyond that mill you see there, at the first house in the village."
"Well," said the wolf, "and I'll go and see her too. I'll go this way and go you that, and we shall see who will be there first."
The wolf ran as fast as he could, taking the shortest path, and the little girl took a roundabout way, entertaining herself by gathering nuts, running after butterflies, and gathering bouquets of little flowers. It was not long before the wolf arrived at the old woman's house. He knocked at the door: tap, tap.
"Who's there?"
"Your grandchild, Rosamunde," replied the wolf, counterfeiting her voice; "who has brought you a cake and a little pot of butter sent you by mother."
The good grandmother, who was in bed, because she was somewhat ill, cried out, "Pull the bobbin, and the latch will go up."
The wolf pulled the bobbin, and the door opened, and then he immediately fell upon the good woman, slaughtering her. He cut up her flesh and drained her blood into a vial and put them on the fender by the fire. He then shut the door and got into the grandmother's bed, expecting Rosamunde, who came some time afterwards and knocked at the door: tap, tap.
"Who's there?"
Rosamunde, hearing the big voice of the wolf, was at first afraid; but believing her grandmother had a cold and was hoarse, answered, "It is your grandchild Rosamunde, who has brought you a cake and a little pot of butter mother sends you."
The wolf cried out to her, softening his voice as much as he could, "Pull the bobbin, and the latch will go up."
Rosamunde pulled the bobbin, and the door opened.
The wolf, seeing her come in, said to her, hiding himself under the bedclothes, "Have yourself some wine and cake. It is there on the fender. then come get into bed with me."
Rosamunde at her grandmother’s flesh and drank her blood, and then she took off her clothes and got into bed. She was greatly amazed to see how her grandmother looked in her nightclothes, and said to her, "Grandmother, what big arms you have!"
"All the better to hug you with, my dear."
"Grandmother, what big legs you have!"
"All the better to run with, my child."
"Grandmother, what big ears you have!"
"All the better to hear with, my child."
"Grandmother, what big eyes you have!"
"All the better to see with, my child."
"Grandmother, what big teeth you have got!"
"All the better to eat you up with."
And, saying these words, this wicked wolf fell upon Rosamunde, and ate her all up.”

Myron looked from his cousin to the painting, and back at Marabeth and said, “That’s really fucked up.”
“It is… really fucked up,” Peter pronounced, “but I don’t know why the five of us are sitting in your apartment listening to fractured fairy tales when there are other things to do.”
“And what exactly is it that you have to do?” and it was Anne who spoke.
Peter looked at her, and the annoyance he would have loved to feel died gazing on her, sure that he knew what she was.
“We… need to know the truth.”
“And how do you plan to find out that truth?” Anne asked him, “because at the moment your cousin is looking into very old stories, stories that come from your aunt that she inherited from your family long ago, and while she is trying to see something in them you are… being a cunt.”
Anne lowered her eyes and Myron said, “Peter, in forty years you’ve never been that concerned with finding out the truth, and whatever world you thought we lived in, we’re in a world of blood drinkers and magicians and shape changers, and these stories might tell us whatever it is we need to know. I felt my power for the first time the other night, something I had been terrified of all my life, and it was wonderful and the world was bigger than it’s ever been. I want to know what I am, and if sorting through fairy tales can tell me… shut the fuck up, alright?”


More Later