The House of Vasser
Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2006 3:11 pmHe found that it made him weak to witness this.
The cemetery necropolis was so still, reverent, that it was only left to wonder how it could endure. It was immune to many things, and it was given to secrecy. Its consecration was so vivid that he could taste it in the air; it had massacred its own sanctity as the dead are wont to do. It was a tomb of one hundred soldiers, a tableau of dark creatures painted and set atop stinking cushions and mummified in their own flesh, withered, frozen, lifeless, enchained. The dark full earth was being fed with the bread and wine of sacrilege, of sacrifice; bones turned beneath the enslaving dust.
Imprisoned! Imprisoned and alive. These were bodies who in their cold wooden boxes and the stench of the swampland, bore the rot. She had piled their corpses like kindling in the damp, so that even now there was macabre, architectural drama appealing to her eye; like exclamation points to her sentences, she lay them. The tender figures of her waiting-women were dead, gray, emptied of organ; profanity was in their infestation, in the white worms that swelled in their skin, and prolific males lay cloven like meat, willing to become the food of maggot for her. She was mistress of this, of the mahogany hides melted from bone, painted violet with craters of waste and refuse, of the poisoned bowels withering beneath the carcasses' bent sickles: sin, and filth, and her ecstasy. Their eyes had already become a gothic gelatin, slipping down into the skulls like tribal paint; their tongues had become altar ash, lost to language, lost and lost.
And he was mad to bear witness to this, to long to ask her about the martyrs. Mad, when he could see their flesh soft like the fur of old fruit, the intimations of it naked, the scent of her feeding thick on the air! The antheral tongue of decay had sought out the bones, had fed on the narrow shells of their mortality; but what would become of her, or would she continue her art unpunished? Hedonism fed upon what lived within those milky organic sacs, as had she; her masterpieces were legendary, her furious paintings the stuff of gods. The rhythm of his heart counted the devouring of the men who were still entombed within those rotting prisons.
"I would have it so," she breathed. She came to stand beside him, and the emotional power of her presence startled him so much that he could not disregard her. "Do you not see? Do you not know why?"
They died when her work was finished, long after they had been buried.
**
Understand completely the perfection that is a vampire’s face.
An artist’s brush is put against its outline and by adding the faintest lines of provocative humanity makes it real. A china mask, stroking light; ashlar flesh flows upon tender, enigmatic bones; the design is made with millions of tiny planes so that every arch is magnified and even more immaculate. Even the angles make it a romantic painting, something cathedral, something of auspicious tragedy. Oval, this thing; its brow might be carved from bone, the notes of a divine symphony exist in the preternatural quality of the eyes. A sly mouth curls in the torment of passion, a nose is made of smooth, Grecian, elegant sculpture. And there is a defined notion of symmetry to this face, an impression of litheness, wild and yet impeccably, unmistakably sensual.
Perhaps it is a reflection of a nature that longs for similar perfection. That is the way of the Old Ones; the ones who slip past a kine of brethren with an existence immune to Time; they long for this ability to emote without flaw. This is the very hedonistic elixir that consumes the fanatic, degenerate, aroused immortal blood: to see, to feel, to touch, to create. Understand completely this: that is the way of the Kindred Artists, who have died only to Live.
The blood of the Rose: the Toreador.
**
They had been standing there for quite some time. Around them he could see the congregation of sarcophagi and the passages of rock. The figures of the sculptures crouched by twilight. Around them rolled that macabre field, the small hills and valleys like contusions in the body of the earth, this dark plain marked in neat columns with the small headstones. It was as if the carcasses were being grown, sown as seeds and watered by the rain and the land.
The eyes of the vampire were upon him; there was blood on her chiffon, on the sole of her sandal, and it struck him that she was like some gothic angel dashed against the earth, left for the bosom of immortality to care for her as she saw fit. The very incongruity of her presence was enough in and of itself to leave him in intangible silence, how she watched him as one beast watches another, lost as they were in the empty, stark, unimportant little land heavy and fragrant with her work. Her beauty startled him. Her hair was in a great, brilliant cascade of gold around her shoulders. He took a step towards her, and it seemed that the whole of the field moved with him and began to breathe.
"Am I to be your prey?" she asked him. Yet those aureate waves of hers, those were the focus; they fell like sumptuous fruit to gather at her ankles, their tips curled becomingly. They beckoned to him in their shining, hypnotic way.
"What, dearest?" His hand was at his throat.
"Are you thinking to hurt me?"
"Elaine, Elaine; I would never."
"Do you mean to return me?"
"I could not claim you..."
"But you have followed me here like any hunting dog; you do not long to see these things, Andreaux. You are far too sensitive."
There was something significant and terrible of her that left him longing, thinking of a cliché dark and stormy night, with the immortal here draped in all her layers of refinement, of enigmatic and most romantic loveliness. It took only a moment to catch her, to have her in his arms as he had wanted to for a time; he had her waist, and she came startled to his grasp, affording him that dainty, melodic stare of reproach. "No," said he, with fervor, "no. I would follow you farther than this -- this city -- and witness far more than your sins."
"You could do nothing but."
"If you would have it so. If you would have me here. It is forever beautiful to me: this, and you."
"Am I forgiven, then?"
"For what?"
"For my crime against you. For your pretty, precious mouth."
"How could I? I am nothing without you. I was nothing before you."
"You say such things!"
"Elaine, I hold nothing against you. Only my body, my benedictions; now or ever."
"And the rest?"
"The rest? What need have we of 'the rest', dearest, when we have each other? And so you have brought her to us..."
"You say such things."
"The three of us, Elaine; such a House I will build you. Darling, darling! It will be mad..."
He was whirling, spinning, lost in her; she was against him; they were two amidst the utter turmoil of lapping existence, their souls incomplete, their humanity something shared and yet scornfully denied. Her head was back upon her shoulders, her laughter like a requiem from another age; there was a submissive gait in the swings of her pendulum-tresses, in the body which had been prodigal, been Holy, been born again. He was drinking her profile like the Cup of her Blood, the utter perfection and immaculate quality of her being that made her something untold, of irreverent and damnable charm, something that wounded his eyes when he looked on her too long. There was the picture of her throat offered in divine rapture, the tease of the vitae-road traveling the intimate dimples of her flesh, the surrealism of her veins; was she real? Would she ever be?
Her flesh; his hunger was an eternal beast, impressionable, damnable, degenerate, paradoxical.
And he indulged in her, again, and again, and again. And she... devoured.
"Elaine, Elaine; I could never let you go..."
The cemetery necropolis was so still, reverent, that it was only left to wonder how it could endure. It was immune to many things, and it was given to secrecy. Its consecration was so vivid that he could taste it in the air; it had massacred its own sanctity as the dead are wont to do. It was a tomb of one hundred soldiers, a tableau of dark creatures painted and set atop stinking cushions and mummified in their own flesh, withered, frozen, lifeless, enchained. The dark full earth was being fed with the bread and wine of sacrilege, of sacrifice; bones turned beneath the enslaving dust.
Imprisoned! Imprisoned and alive. These were bodies who in their cold wooden boxes and the stench of the swampland, bore the rot. She had piled their corpses like kindling in the damp, so that even now there was macabre, architectural drama appealing to her eye; like exclamation points to her sentences, she lay them. The tender figures of her waiting-women were dead, gray, emptied of organ; profanity was in their infestation, in the white worms that swelled in their skin, and prolific males lay cloven like meat, willing to become the food of maggot for her. She was mistress of this, of the mahogany hides melted from bone, painted violet with craters of waste and refuse, of the poisoned bowels withering beneath the carcasses' bent sickles: sin, and filth, and her ecstasy. Their eyes had already become a gothic gelatin, slipping down into the skulls like tribal paint; their tongues had become altar ash, lost to language, lost and lost.
And he was mad to bear witness to this, to long to ask her about the martyrs. Mad, when he could see their flesh soft like the fur of old fruit, the intimations of it naked, the scent of her feeding thick on the air! The antheral tongue of decay had sought out the bones, had fed on the narrow shells of their mortality; but what would become of her, or would she continue her art unpunished? Hedonism fed upon what lived within those milky organic sacs, as had she; her masterpieces were legendary, her furious paintings the stuff of gods. The rhythm of his heart counted the devouring of the men who were still entombed within those rotting prisons.
"I would have it so," she breathed. She came to stand beside him, and the emotional power of her presence startled him so much that he could not disregard her. "Do you not see? Do you not know why?"
They died when her work was finished, long after they had been buried.
**
Understand completely the perfection that is a vampire’s face.
An artist’s brush is put against its outline and by adding the faintest lines of provocative humanity makes it real. A china mask, stroking light; ashlar flesh flows upon tender, enigmatic bones; the design is made with millions of tiny planes so that every arch is magnified and even more immaculate. Even the angles make it a romantic painting, something cathedral, something of auspicious tragedy. Oval, this thing; its brow might be carved from bone, the notes of a divine symphony exist in the preternatural quality of the eyes. A sly mouth curls in the torment of passion, a nose is made of smooth, Grecian, elegant sculpture. And there is a defined notion of symmetry to this face, an impression of litheness, wild and yet impeccably, unmistakably sensual.
Perhaps it is a reflection of a nature that longs for similar perfection. That is the way of the Old Ones; the ones who slip past a kine of brethren with an existence immune to Time; they long for this ability to emote without flaw. This is the very hedonistic elixir that consumes the fanatic, degenerate, aroused immortal blood: to see, to feel, to touch, to create. Understand completely this: that is the way of the Kindred Artists, who have died only to Live.
The blood of the Rose: the Toreador.
**
They had been standing there for quite some time. Around them he could see the congregation of sarcophagi and the passages of rock. The figures of the sculptures crouched by twilight. Around them rolled that macabre field, the small hills and valleys like contusions in the body of the earth, this dark plain marked in neat columns with the small headstones. It was as if the carcasses were being grown, sown as seeds and watered by the rain and the land.
The eyes of the vampire were upon him; there was blood on her chiffon, on the sole of her sandal, and it struck him that she was like some gothic angel dashed against the earth, left for the bosom of immortality to care for her as she saw fit. The very incongruity of her presence was enough in and of itself to leave him in intangible silence, how she watched him as one beast watches another, lost as they were in the empty, stark, unimportant little land heavy and fragrant with her work. Her beauty startled him. Her hair was in a great, brilliant cascade of gold around her shoulders. He took a step towards her, and it seemed that the whole of the field moved with him and began to breathe.
"Am I to be your prey?" she asked him. Yet those aureate waves of hers, those were the focus; they fell like sumptuous fruit to gather at her ankles, their tips curled becomingly. They beckoned to him in their shining, hypnotic way.
"What, dearest?" His hand was at his throat.
"Are you thinking to hurt me?"
"Elaine, Elaine; I would never."
"Do you mean to return me?"
"I could not claim you..."
"But you have followed me here like any hunting dog; you do not long to see these things, Andreaux. You are far too sensitive."
There was something significant and terrible of her that left him longing, thinking of a cliché dark and stormy night, with the immortal here draped in all her layers of refinement, of enigmatic and most romantic loveliness. It took only a moment to catch her, to have her in his arms as he had wanted to for a time; he had her waist, and she came startled to his grasp, affording him that dainty, melodic stare of reproach. "No," said he, with fervor, "no. I would follow you farther than this -- this city -- and witness far more than your sins."
"You could do nothing but."
"If you would have it so. If you would have me here. It is forever beautiful to me: this, and you."
"Am I forgiven, then?"
"For what?"
"For my crime against you. For your pretty, precious mouth."
"How could I? I am nothing without you. I was nothing before you."
"You say such things!"
"Elaine, I hold nothing against you. Only my body, my benedictions; now or ever."
"And the rest?"
"The rest? What need have we of 'the rest', dearest, when we have each other? And so you have brought her to us..."
"You say such things."
"The three of us, Elaine; such a House I will build you. Darling, darling! It will be mad..."
He was whirling, spinning, lost in her; she was against him; they were two amidst the utter turmoil of lapping existence, their souls incomplete, their humanity something shared and yet scornfully denied. Her head was back upon her shoulders, her laughter like a requiem from another age; there was a submissive gait in the swings of her pendulum-tresses, in the body which had been prodigal, been Holy, been born again. He was drinking her profile like the Cup of her Blood, the utter perfection and immaculate quality of her being that made her something untold, of irreverent and damnable charm, something that wounded his eyes when he looked on her too long. There was the picture of her throat offered in divine rapture, the tease of the vitae-road traveling the intimate dimples of her flesh, the surrealism of her veins; was she real? Would she ever be?
Her flesh; his hunger was an eternal beast, impressionable, damnable, degenerate, paradoxical.
And he indulged in her, again, and again, and again. And she... devoured.
"Elaine, Elaine; I could never let you go..."