Prelude

[DinMacXanthi]

Όνομα Συγγραφέα: Κέλλης Κωνσταντίνος

Είδος: τρόμος (αν και είναι περισσότερο περιγραφή)

Βία; λιγο

Σεξ; λιγότερο

Αριθμός Λέξεων: 2700

Αυτοτελής; Ναι

Σχόλια: Η ιστορία είναι παλιά, πάνω από έξι χρονών. Είναι το πρώτο διήγημα που έγραψα. Ξεκίνησε σαν σκαρίφημα για να διαβάσω σε έναν παίκτη ωστε να τον μπάσω σε ένα παιχνίδι ρόλων. Το παιχνίδι εκείνο δεν έγινε ποτέ, και κάπου τότε έκοψα τα παιχνίδια ρόλων και το γύρισα αποκλειστικά στην δημιουργική γραφή. Είπα να το μοιραστώ μαζί σας.

Α ναι, είναι στα αγγλικά.

 

 

 

 

 

Prelude

 

 

 

 

October 16th 1997

 

 

Bratislava 22:34

 

 

 

 

 

You are driving with your motorcycle through the narrow and empty streets of the northern districts. It always seemed to you that this old part of Bratislava had been forgotten, not just by people but by God himself. The route is always the same. Bunicca Nostrova. A few upper-class buildings with an air of old times that now comes rotten and rancid to your frozen nose. This part is quickly left behind. More derelict structures, built in the last few decades by worthless people and quickly left behind for prostitutes, criminals and the homeless. The cars that pass through here are few and far between, hurrying to get to the safety of their destination. The pedestrians are almost non-existent apart from the few homeless that gather around weak fires. Some of the light posts are flickering, futilely trying to stay lit. The rest have been left smashed for years. The conscious part of your brain pushes most of these images back, since you have suffered this course, from your apartment to the library and back again, dozens of times in the last few months.

 

At last, the great building is seen in front of you. This cold giant seems stripped from the pages of a Gothic writer and the designs of a Teutonic architect. Half a mountain of granite it seems to you, given form to raise an awe-inspiring construction, at least six centuries before you were born.

 

A part of it, the one you know very well, is being used as a library, while the rest is abandoned to its decaying fate. Huge doors behind rusty but sturdy locks seal the secrets of the stone giant with grotesque forms of demons and gargoyles on them, silent eternal guardians. Not that these doors ever caught your attention. The library hall was always more interesting to you, with its huge volume of old books greatly aiding your research and of course, the absolute silence that is always welcome.

 

You are usually one of a handful who visit this place. Today, apart from the old man working and living there, you were alone for many hours till a late arrival from a young couple. The two lovers’ night visit signaled the end of your research for tonight. It also meant an abrupt end of the silence but that didn’t bother you anymore. You go outside and the Slovakian chill wind engulfs you. The small heater inside seems very nice in retrospect.

 

As you get on your bike, you can see the old librarian watching you with his eerie eyes. Through a rotten smile, he talks to you while holding a dirty scarf in his hands. Your grasp of the language is not that good yet. He is saying something about protecting your neck. His little laugh is creepy and you linger no more.

 

It is now almost three o’clock. The sky is cloudy and the moonlight gives a sickly brownish hue to the smog tainting the industrial areas of the city. You want to escape the hostility of this place. You can’t wait to get behind the door of your apartment, locking the rest of the world outside. The bike accelerates, 50 miles per hour. Your mind is slipping away, traveling back a few years. Those were the nicer times of your life living in the suburbs of...

 

No, the nostalgia makes you forget about the dreadful moments.

 

It was even worse then. Depending on parents that never understood you. It is so much better now. Your own works and actions made you stick out of the crowd. A writer of fiction who travels around Europe, searching for the next precious thought that will ignite your imagination. Three books before your 26^th birthday and now, here in this dreadful city, that next precious thought that you were seeking is finally a reality. Your life will become better with just a little more patience and a lot more work.

 

Your life is starting just now.

 

 

 

Or probably ending just now, the thought comes as a stab in your mind as you see, at the very last moment, a taxicab closing the road and with more than 60 miles per hour; you are inches away from the car’s front.

 

You suddenly feel like you are flying and your mind spins so that you cannot be sure if this sensation soothes you or sickens you. But just one or two seconds later, you feel the cold kiss of the sidewalk on your cheek and understand that your stomach has gone numb. That crack that came from your skull didn’t sound very nice either. You stay there, motionless, with your eyes on the taxi. A man opens the car’s door and walks towards you. He is middle aged, wearing a heavy woolen jacket and a beret, although these details mean little to you. His look is what gets your dwindling attention. He seems cold. There is no regret there, no worry or fear, only a calculating calmness. A calmness that makes you wonder if this is the logical response to a crash. Why does he sit over there? What the hell is he looking at? You just want him to get in his stupid car and get lost in… in this city whose name now eludes you.

 

The man finally turns away. You are thinking if help could be on the way. That’s probably too optimistic to be true. He gets in his taxi and starts the engine. Then something, a human figure falls from…the sky? No, probably from a nearby building’s window. It lands heavily, crashing the car’s front like a ball of lead. The figure, a woman it seems, shoves her hands through the windshield and pulls the man outside. He doesn’t seem so calm anymore as he screams for help. You can see her seizing the man with one hand from his throat. He is struggling in vein to break free from that iron grip. She speaks.

 

Her voice seems like droplets of black velvet.

 

‘Help? Here? My poor little man, the good people of this city know what is good for them. Beg them for help in their face and they will just turn around.’ She says that and then twists the man’s neck like it was a little doll. The man’s screams are stopped. You can see his head lolling freely as she lets the corpse drop on the smashed car.

 

You are watching the scene in total apathy, as your thoughts are scattered. You still got enough sense to understand that the little crimson river on the pavement that runs directly to the sewers through a small grate begins from your broken head. Seeing your belly, you can understand that its numbness is largely due to a long rusty pipe that, just a minute ago, was a part of your bike and now it is stuck through your abdomen. You cannot decide if you don’t feel pain at all or if it is so great that it won’t even register in your injured brain.

 

Does it even matter? You know that you are going to die and you hope that all that crap about a better life after death is actually true.

 

Then you see that the woman is beside you and she smiles.

 

You can hear a voice, probably belonging to the woman. It is in your mother tongue.

 

“Well my child, it seems that they killed you. Fortunately for you and me, they didn’t kill you enough. I was hoping that you would enjoy this experience but there is not enough time anymore. Don’t be afraid. You’ll have your vengeance.”

 

“Vengeance? Experience? They killed me?” The meaning of words is lost to you. You just want to go to sleep. Curiously, you can see the eyes of the woman shining with a yellow tinge, like those of a wild animal or is it just your imagination?

 

No way, your imagination along with many other precious fluids of your brain is running freely towards the sewers.

 

Your thought is then extinguished like a candle next to an open window as you feel a bite on your right wrist. Seconds, minutes and hours seem to fly away and you lie there, thrown on a filthy concrete sidewalk with a broken skull, an iron bar through your stomach and a woman you never saw again sucking, sucking the blood from the veins of your hand!

 

Around that point you are beginning to wonder what the hell are you waiting for to get on with it and die. All the others seemed to do it without any difficulty. So you do the second thing that comes to mind. From the depths of your wounded abdomen comes a terrible cry of pain, fear and agony that stood there building, waiting for its queue, and now echoes freely in the empty street and the walls of the abandoned buildings.

 

 

 

Your vision fades out.

 

 

 

Your vision fades in.

 

 

 

You can see the woman over you, with her mouth and chin, smeared with your own blood. She smiles and bites her own tongue, allowing a drop of her blood, black as ink, to drop in your open, parched mouth. The droplet careens through your neck and it seems to burst into flames as a thousand needles of ice pierce it and you can feel raptures of ecstasy and joy, living the most blissful moments of your first two and a half decades of your life.

 

The soothing hand of your mother, your first bike, the first night of drinking and smoking with your friends, the first time you made love to your sweetheart, your degree, the great news about your first book and then…nothing.

 

Darkness overtakes you and as you are unsuccessfully trying to breathe, you are thinking: “Was that it? Was that, death?

 

The last thing you feel is your broken body being lifted off the ground and then your thoughts are no more.

 

 

 

Light.

 

 

 

You can see a light. Not that bright light that you are supposed to see when you die. No, it’s just a light bulb swinging from a stony ceiling, a few meters above. You are in a small cold room. There is an empty fireplace in front of you, a bloody jacket, probably yours, and a black door. Your head doesn’t hurt anymore. Risking a look downwards at your belly, you can see that the iron isn’t there anymore.

 

You shouldn’t be alive. How can you see these things? You realize that you are not breathing. The sound of your heart, that small insignificant thud that one can only comprehend its existence when it stops, isn’t there anymore.

 

You are trying to feel, find it, by clutching your wrist. It is quiet. As you release your grip, you can see a bite mark on it. The thought sickens you. How can you feel if you are dead? How can you move? How can you think about all these details and why the hell, since that iron pipe isn’t sticking out of your belly anymore, it is now burning more than ever?

 

“I’m thirsty…” The instinctive thought becomes a whisper.

 

-“I know.”

 

You turn to your left, towards the voice. It is the woman that…saved you? Killed you? That’s a complicated question. You look at her more closely. She is tall and slender, nearing her thirties, a beautiful pale face with long strands of ebony falling around it, and two thin pink lips that form a smile. Her eyes are of a purplish hue but… but you are almost positive that back there, on that dreaded sidewalk, they were yellow and black.

 

“You are dead, my sweet child, but your story isn’t over yet. No, your story begins now.”

 

-“What is going on? What happened to me?”

 

-“Can’t you tell?”

 

-“What have you done to me?!”

 

“Shush, my dear. You understand very well what has happened to you, how your life changed in the past hour. You are now the ruler of it. Not just a mere pawn to be killed off by common thugs.”

 

You hold your guts and start to tremble. The flames roar.

 

“Yes. Ruler and slave too. This life, it comes at a cost. What you now feel, burning and gnawing inside your guts is the beast within. You will need blood to dominate it and survive.”

 

With these strange and awful words, she points to your right. There is a man and a woman, lying on a table. They are young and their dirty clothes ring a bell. The lovers from the library. Are you back there? It doesn’t matter.

 

Are they dead? You can’t be sure.

 

Why doesn’t that bother you? Why is it the last thing on your mind?

 

It’s because the scent of their blood assaults your nose more than anything else you have ever felt.

 

don’t know how, but you already have the frail body of the woman in your hands. You can feel, FEEL, the veins bulging with her blood. She is still warm. Then, with an instinct so strong, it seems to burst from you like an explosion, you sink your teeth in her exposed neck.

 

It is wrong! The thoughts stab you but cannot stop you.

 

She is a human being! I’m a human being! I cannot do this…

 

Your mouth doesn’t obey your weak commands. The sensation in your neck, your chest, your whole body is indescribable as you drink her life away. Never, did a human being feel so good as you do now. The flames raging inside your stomach seem to die down.

 

“Easy now, child. We don’t want to kill the little girl. That’s just enough.” Her hand touches your shoulder and…you stop.

 

You feel sick.

 

The pale body lets out a little moan and slips from your grasp.

 

You are crying. No tears come out of your yellow and black eyes.

 

Eyes of a beast. An unholy monster.

 

“Oh, don’t be such a romantic, love. All of them died centuries ago. I am here to aid you in understanding your newborn self.” She helps you to a chair.

 

“My name has been Gloria Kierth for the last seven hundred years and I shall be your mentor, a teacher and probably one of a handful of friends that you will have from now on.”

 

You try to calm yourself. Your guts are now soothed. Your mind though races. Millions of thought particles gather inside it, forming a nebula of understanding. So, the stories are true? The legends are more than scary tales? Can you really be…

 

“I know your thoughts and yes, they are correct. You are immortal and eternity lies in front of you.”

 

Eternity?

 

Sounds of motorcycles are heard from outside, interrupting your thoughts. Gloria stands perfectly still for a few moments then moves towards the door. A gunshot is heard, then another one. You are shrinking back, a frightened animal. Not her, though.

 

Steps, loud and fast, are coming towards the room. Gloria opens the door just as a man stumbles inside. You recognize him. It is the old librarian. His clothes are soaked in blood. It seems to you that you can hear his heart beating. Yes, you clearly hear it, fast, a tarantella inside his chest. He slides to the floor and grunts at Gloria as she double locks the heavy door.

 

“Mistress…They’re here. And…they are many. I locked the door behind me but they got me. They got me bad…”

 

“Damnation. They came sooner than I expected. Rest, Nikolai. It is the child they want.” She turns towards you and her eyes are once more, different. Feral.

 

 

 

“Eternity is such a nebulous term in our circles, my little one. How much will it last for you?”

 

Her laugh seems to echo inside the little room as shouts are heard from outside. So beautiful and yet so terrible. She offers her hand and as you grab it, she pulls you up with superhuman strength. The bangs are now just outside the black door.

 

“Probably a lot less than you can imagine or hope for. We will have to find out together, right?”

 

 

 

The End (for now)

Edited December 16, 2008 by Dinosxanthi

[Sonya]

Weeeeeeeeeel.... What have we here? A newly embraced? Well done, my dear.

 

Δεν είναι κακό. Δεν είναι καθόλου κακό. Έχει κάποια λαθάκια (ω, είναι γλυκιά η εκδίκηση της φασίνας :Ρ), οπότε κοίτα πιο προσεκτικά για ν' ανακαλύψεις το vein εκεί που θέλεις να πεις vain και κανα δυο άλλα μικρολαθάκια.

 

Στα νοηματικά τώρα. Είναι πολύ καλός ο τρόπος που δίνεις το embrace, αν και, διαβάζοντας προσεκτικότερα το PHB του Vampire, θα διαπιστώσεις πως ένα καινούργιο kindred, μετά την πρώτη κατάποση αίματος που δεν ανήκει στον sire του, ξερνάει τα μέσα του. Όλα. Στομάχια, κοιλιές, άχρηστα ζωτικά όργανα, εκτός απ' την καρδιά. Επίσης, θα μπορούσες να χρησιμοποιήσεις περισσότερο τις οξυμένες αισθήσεις και το αίσθημα του λαχανιάσματος χωρίς ανάσα. Αυτά για την πιστότητα του παιχνιδιού. Απ' την στιγμή που πρόκειται για διήγημα, βέβαια, δεν είσαι υποχρεωμένος ν' ακολουθήσεις τους κανόνες.

 

Καταλαβαίνω το σκεπτικό του β' ενικού, αν και ίσως δούλευε καλύτερα σε γ' ενικό. Για background είναι πάρα πολύ καλό. Για διήγημα, όμως, θέλει κι άλλα πράγματα.

 

Αχ, μου θύμισες τ' ατελείωτα sessions vampire....

[DinMacXanthi]

θες λαθάκια; το weeeeeeeel γράφεται weeeeeeell :-p

 

Ίσως ξεκίνησε αλλά δεν είναι περιγραφή vampire-the masquerade (you're such a rules-lawyer!) είναι η πρώτη προσπάθεια διηγήματος ενός έφηβου. Έχει πια sentimental αξία, (το πέρασμα από τα rpgs στην γραφή) oπότε δεν διορθώνεται. Χαίρομαι πάντως που το διάβασες (όπως και όλοι όσοι το διάβασαν εννοείται)

[Sonya]

Καλά, δεδομένου ότι είναι το παρθενικό, δεν έχω να πω τίποτα περισσότερο απ' το ότι είναι ΠΑΡΑ πολύ καλό. Δίνει και την απαραίτητη ατμόσφαιρα κι όλα τα γκόθικ στοιχεία. Απλά, με δεδομένο τον Κώστα που έχω συνηθίσει να διαβάζω τον τελευταίο καιρό, είναι πολύ πιο κάτω.