Work Text:
WELCOME
"Welcome to my house," is what she tells me when we exchange spoken words for the first time.
I had not known it to be a castle. Certainly it had been put to me as such, but I had not expected it to be one. England has many castles, they do not all live up to the word. Now I am faced with one on this scale and I cannot wait to write my Jonathan about it.
She is a flash of lightning in a dreary evening in these colourless surroundings. Dressed in yellow, a flame in hand.
"Countess?" I ask though I have no doubt now that I see her.
"Yes."
"Dracula."
"Indeed, Dracula." The name sounds different when she pronounces it.
She holds out her hand, slim and cold.
"Pleasure to meet you."
I shake her hand. She has a strong hand, in an accidental manner, one that indicates she is not mindful of it.
"Miss Murray."
I try to catch her eyes but her gaze is an illusive one. It drifts behind me to the night plains, the valley of shadow and death, and the noises unleashed therein.
"Harker, if you please."
"Married?"
"Almost."
"My congratulations.
Come in, the night air is chill and you must need to eat and rest.
Let me see to your comfort."
The rich lady carries my luggage in one hand.
I struggle to object. I would carry it up myself. Fumbling my travelling case up the hill had already been murder. Heaving it up these stairs seems impossible.
We proceed on many winding stairs and past many doors. I find myself encased in heavy stone and timeweary possibilities. These age-old paths hewn out to dictate ancient lives, that go on commanding those of the present. Ours is a burdened trajectory.
At last we reach a well-litroom, flamed and flared.
As herself.
"Your name is it, of the dragon?"
She is composed, not a breath out of place in spite of the weigh she bore up the stairs, if anything she appears more invigorated by guiding her guest to her castle's heart. She succeeds to bind me here.
"Or the impalor? That is what you wish to ask, is it not?" she laughs. "Depends on what we are impaling. Warriors? Christians? Virgins?
We have ghosts to spare. I can share with you which bedrooms to visit in particular should you wish to be frightened. But I urge you not to go exploring without me. Not all parts of the building are...safe."
There is a twinkle in her eyes.
"I would not have an ancounter upon you that you do not wish to have had."
I am shown my bedrooom. It is very near to the warm room where my dinner is to be served.
I find a desk ready for me. That is all I need to feel at home in any part of this world.
Her nails lick the paper I am hastily writing on.
"You have no time for this."
I fall back on using short hand.
"I am making time." I wear my industrious face. The one that makes it clear that I am not to be disturbed. It is my indispensable tool at the office.
"And I had dinner made."
I scribble, which I rarely do, in my haste and sink deeper into my seat as if that will save me her attention.
I should not fail my host. I will spare her my grumbling moments.
"You can continue this writing of your personal reports to your heart's content once you have eaten."
Her eyes land on mine. There is such caring there. From her overflowing eyes I believe and trust her intentions towards my health.
"What a journey you have taken. Such stamina the young have, the lovers. Are you not?"
"What, my lady?" I eat with more care than I should. I cannot help being on guard.
"In love?'
It would not do to answer to one who employed me for matters of stone. Not of heart, not of flesh.
It would not do.
"Do you know how lucky you are?"
She keeps me engaged for hours, during and after my meal. I have little to get on with. My bites move slowly.
My eating gets caught up in phrases, inspirations, full explanations and most of all in little desire to hasten my meal. I find have little objection to her wellnatured attentions. Her offered cup overflowing.
I am blushed red from our animated cultural exchanges.
"We should talk much, in your English." she says. She wishes to practice.
The night stretches out into morning.
My letter sticks to my mind. It has quite run away with me.
I know of no feasable way to write all down that I wish to share with my Jonathan, if I am to cultivate any sleep here.
For I am a representative here and for my work I should present as freshly as I can and have my mind as ready as for any other assignment.
Perhaps in the future I shall refuse such pleasantries over hours of wine and warmth.
It is however the only room heated at a late hour, it is inevitable we will sample each other's company there often.
I am afterall here to be at her disposal.
I feel I wish for her to be as prepared as she clearly desires to be for her cultured travels. She explains to me that her heredity within these walls has not allowed her out much, she has been constricted to this place for longer than she cares to remember.
I smile and laugh, as she does, when she discovers I take my fascination with her personal superstitions, which she has collected from history, from books and from interviews with the occassional passerby's.
She speaks to me of the beliefs of her engaged workers who do not undertake wide travels but live them, their existance a full one, a constant change and journey of the world. They do not like this place, she heartily suspects they curse it in languages she has not yet mastered. She has a mind for languages and a hunger to learn more.
Then there are those quaint phrases and rituals of the local villagers who are ever true to this speck of land, mining it for all its worth, enriching it with every fancy they come up with.
I never would deny a love for folklore. Snippets of the human mind. Distilled, erratic, loving.
Everything comes down to love, to protection.
Fearing.
"I shall make myself scarce and leave you to rest.
Be ware, I will grant you precious little time to yourself tomorrow." she winks, teasing out a performance. I can imagine she does not get sufficient social company, secluded here, with few servants.
I tell myself I will see those servants in the morning. How wrong I am.
ENTER
I start my morning with my toilette, as is my usual routine. A mirror is nowhere to be found. I pin up my hair and draw a fine hairnet over. Decent and very neat.
"How are your coaches? Do they operate by such strick timetables as your trains do?"
"No, you can take a coach anywhere. There are stops, coaches go up and down, you can go on and off any time during the day. It is quite easy. Timetables of trains are a particular fondness of mine."
"I see.
Are your horses very headstrong? The ones that pull the carriages must be meek. I take it they startle easily?"
"London is full of loud noises, they are accustomed to it."
"How difficult are they to break? How long do they take?"
"I suppose that depends on the trainer."
"In your England," she drawles, she reinstigates her favourite topic.
Her accent thickens on -ng sounds, she adds a -k to it, especially at end of words.
She excuses herself for her rudimentary English often enough, she is frightfully proficient at the language.
"Heavens," I sigh and rest my pen, unable to write with her incessant inquiries.
"I drive you to distraction, I fear." She does not fear so at all.
She smiles. "What will I make of you."
Tired, very tired. That is what she does and means to do. It is but midday. I succumb to a battle of exhaustion.
She knows all too well what her questions are doing to me.
"You will push my mind to madness." I answer as by automatum.
"Am I welcome to?" she asks sincerely and all in all too mirthful.
I remain silent. For the first time there is an unease between us.
I become aware of how eager I've been to please, to smooth over any distrepancies between us in order to make this a success to my company and to the one engaging with our services.
I do not know this person. I am cut off. In her home. At her mercy.
Food for wolves, who howl outside serenading for their supper and what if it is me? She's been feeding me well. What is the point of a countess' wild alliance with wolves? In a land as this? Is it in any way remarkable?
Any more remarkable than the creature who drove me to this castle and has since vanished, a creature of silence and edges in dark reptilic wrappings, a creature which in movement I suspect by now, has much of her, was her.
She twists her fingers in worry, looks away.
I have been impolite with my remark, it was unfit to the situation. What happened to my predecessor wears heavily on us both. His fate unmentioned between us.
He had been the best of us, capable, learned, a good friend too and suddenly gone, from himself, suddenly as though I never knew him, he had become another, insane.
I should not have spoken of such a topic. I vow myself to pick my visits to him back up once I return. If he is still there at the sanitarium.
"I did not seek to imply..."
"Write now,"
she speaks with a frown, she shifts, then a very wry smile. "to your friends and family, any loved ones, anyone at all, anyone you like."
I hear her throat constrict, her voice adopts the tempetuous non-sound to a glottal stop. "Write to those you love."
-----
Her habits quickly become clear to me.
She prefers to wear yellows and greens. Queer colours. Envious, venomous, luminous. Colours for beings not quite of this world.
Her hair is done up, always, carried in jewels and sparkling nets. Her nets are always embellished, by gold or bejewelled in delicate looking threads.
I saw strange small flowers outside and went to pick them to wear in my hair. I just about managed it without a mirror, by how used I am to my own never changing way of hairdress.
She complimented me on it. It suits me, but would not her. Her accents there are those of metals and jewels. The long-dead. She says those have a shine that compliment her own, a shine that flowery youth does not need to enchant.
She told me of traditional flowercrowns beyond my imagination.
She wears dresses with high shoulders that are not of this time. I pause myself. The cuts to her dresses are not familiar to me, they may be very much in keeping to this land.
She pairs these dresses with large ostentatious jewels. Her dresses are more stylish than many in England. She appears more refined than most of English society. She is beautiful too. She would stand out, not fit in, with the nobility. Her way of being, the way in which she carries her lavish dresses feels more of dress-up than of an honest expression of hierarchy. She would be seen as 'exotic' and 'eccentric'.
I feel a sharp stab at how they would love her.
And how left out she'd feel.
I do not always correct her English. Hers sounds prettier.
I find the accent pleasing to hear. It has a great deal of charm.
The involuntary twists in sound are conquering something that language should not have a hold over.
As do her unusual expressions in phrases.
I should not find an at odds with herself and the world older woman who I hardly know this endearing.
"Oh no," she smiles. "I will never understand your rules of courtesy."
She cries out:" You will have to come with me. To see me settle in."
Her hair is a soft shining red, it pales and glows in the firelight. A colour that has moods as the devil.
I must look a certain way for she reacts succinctly with: "That settles it."
Her gaze is cheerful at most times and in the evening she has a pensive one, as trapped behind bars, but it is not her castle she is trapped in. It is something about her, inside of her, something very shut in.
Something not closed at all. Looking out vibrantly, planning before she leaps.
"You are a very good solicitor. I commend you."
"I have hardly...."
"You are wasted as a solicitor." she follows-up.
"It is fortunate I am not doomed to be a governess, that is worse."
I tell her more of maps, of timetables, trains, steam, the age of inventions.
She stears towards other ventures.
I blush when I tell her freely of my best friend, Lucy the 'scandalous' and rich and free.
Yet I want to talk of this, nothing rather.
There seem to be implications to her comments on my life, of a lot of freedom that I do not let myself have. It is a closed freedom I have been painstakingly aware of my entire life. Also regarding Lucy.
I do not think it a curse that can be lifted. I do not think it any of her business.
My client, for a piece of land and an old abbey.
When I cease to answer she burst out: "How you English stiffle yourselves. Your features so schooled. And for what? Over nothing! I care not for your English stiffness!" she says, and I see as I never have before that she is one hundred percent a thing of passion.
Her dresses, her interests, her travels, she wears her ambitions for all to see. "But I care about you. Tell me, should I encroach upon your feelings or sensibilities.
Your ways are not my ways and that should be beautiful for us both."
FREELY
She holds her cup in hand. I have not seen her drink. I long to see her drink.
In this dramatic lighting, with its height on her cheek, her jaw, to see it travel down her neck as she swallows. I'd sell the world to see her swallow.
My fork falls. My hand lost its grip.
"Take a care." She stands to take my hand, to direct it, her painted nails almost touch. I hold my hand close to my chest.
I cannot let her. I know not why it feels so vital to be holding my own.
Except that the line is slipping.
I cannot fall.
"Where were your thoughts?" You had them, I almost answer.
She had taken over, she removed my grip. That is nonsense, I tell myself later, she cannot reach into your mind and make you drop a fork. But she had, an impulse not my own she planted it, made me act on it.
It was a strange power. One I'd seen brimming behind her eyes for a long time and she now decided to boast.
She etched herself onto me.
Reaching far beneath my surface.
"I shall retire." I say to save myself shame over this... this event of...nothing.
She walks behind me, falls in line, my shadow.
"Should you go to bed..."
She plays with my guilt and discomfort, I must not give her that.
I want to see her satisfaction more than anything.
"Your ladyship," I breathe, direct myself to her, straighten, dull myself, dull who I am, to be easier to digest as I must stand up for myself.
"Please, my chamber is so nearby, do not trouble yourself to walk me there. It is not worth your station."
Class means little to her, emphasising it could do little but infuriate her.
I do not find her anger,
I find my head grow heavy as she guides me back into the room. I find her hands on my arms to support me. Her whisper in my ear, lines that fade from my mind even as they are spoken.
"I am dead. I have no station."
"My condolescences." a mutter of my own, a nothingness in this moment.
"I have murdered in life as I have in death.
I am dead and found no hell.
I found you and I have the world beneath my sway."
She pauses, I feel myself pressed to answer. To what?
Her arms encradle my abdomen. It is the improper touching that amuses when it is Lucy and I. That is light then. It is different from her. She burns body and soul.
"What do you say to this?"
Has she made me some offer? "To see the world."
I answer "What is this?" and forget once she replies.
"What we would have it be.
All.
And everything."
I regain my vision, my focus slowly peers back at myself, the flames are still burning, the table is decked the same.
I had been leaving. I would curl up with a book on one of these sofa's if I could.
"We shall try again later." Her words are clear now, not as when I had my dizzyspell.
"You can take your writing material and entertain yourself here."
I let her order me, for her concern, for my own growing worry. I am embarressed to mention my faintness, my moment lost to the dark, even more than I am to bring up how she happens to be, how I happen to be, when I should not be at all.
-------
She sits half in shadow as she talks to me. She sits eerily straight in the full night, her lips so dark, her eyes intent and huge as those of a hunter. They reveal a light of their own.
I know now I can shall not get out of here.
I light candles, she does not need those to be able to see. I do.
She tells me to write a letter and write that I shall be staying for months longer.
She taps the poker to the wall as she speaks, to distract herself.
When her dictation is over she raises the poker as a walking stick, it digs hard into the plying floor.
She stands before the fire a while, a ghost, a vibrant evil spirit, too tangeable, she pulls a bundle of papers from her robe's pocket.
She has the letters, she has the letters still. She stands with them in hand, posed as to throw them in the fire.
It feels a lifetime since I wrote them.
"I thought you'd have written more highly of me."
She puts my papers down on the table again.
She looks over my shoulder as I attempt to pen more to my Jonathan, my Lucy.
The current paper no more than a canvas of tears and inksmudges.
Her voice coaxes me to look aside.
"Is it so detestable?"
"What is?" I attempt to sound professional.
"Eternity, with me?"
Eternity it is then, I knew already, somehow.
OF YOUR OWN WILL
Where did my studious dependable self go?
My next decidedly not clumsy moment that I cannot for the life of me account for occurs when I unfasten my broach for the night and it slips from me, bites me in the hand.
I would not have attributed this slight to her if not as by a mist or unknown force she at once stands behind me as this plays out.
I can only paint this moment happening as orchestrated by her, evidenced by her mysterical apparation.
"Oh my darling," she says, taking the broach from my hand, "be careful." there is no concern to her voice. I espy nothing human to her sound at all and how I can pick up on this I do not know.
She does not look upon me at all. She draws the pin to her lips.
Until she watches me with a complete fullness of focus, a compulsion that aches.
Her eyes trace my jaw, while hers is so much more lovely. "so delicate, " she weighs in. "you are. You have such fine, delectable features."
Where did she get that word from? Book or person. Curse what means taught her.
These are words designed to have me turn away. Words to feed these uncharacteristic feelings of mine of embarassment and shame.
It is toying, I debate with myself, it is rational, I am rational. I calm myself and have myself look upon her sooner than she expected.
I am faced with something else entirely unanticipated.
She licks the pin, half turned from me, but she holds my gaze when I have caught her doing this.
The thin red line clear upon her tongue, it runs inside.
I run through her now. My destiny runs through her.
She flings the broach away, onto the bed.
How very clean, I used to be.
I hold my hand clasped over my own to address and cover the small wound instilled there myself, I refuse to have her look.
"What frowns..." Indeed, what frowns she sees upon my face, frowns that are not heeded. They instruct her to be gone, to keep distance. My face is always set more friendly than I aspire it to be.
She draws her hand over my clavicles, my breast bone, towards my heart.
Her hand shirks away and she makes to leave of a sudden.
She reconsiders, to advice me before she heads from sight. "I think you should not go venture to the dungeon alone, dear Mina."
Has she ever called me Harker?
I wait, for a time, longer than I care or dare commit to paper, in unease, before I bind my hand after it eases its bleeding. If it is not clean, if it infects...
I take off my blouse to exchange for my night shift.
I must pace, compelled by my subconcious, my impressions. I turn about my room. Tired and unable to sleep.
I see from my narrow chamber window. The strange blue light of my arrival is gone now.
A natural phenomenon?
I have heard of northern lights. I almost pride myself on having witnessed something similar.
I wish I had not been as scared when I did.
This is not north, these lands are much unknown to us, so much of its nature and tales, lights, people, its many lakes, its forests, legends of swans and fae, and of the evil buried here.
The villagers I encountered, her people, are as wary of the devil as we are, if in less cloaked manners.
I peer below.
Even at this hour I see the Romani workers she's employed toil crates for her to take on her travels. Does she intend to ship wares for trade?
What stories do they know of the world?
I circle, circle, until I am reminded by my restless overzealous mind that circling entreats the devil to you to offer you a cup of soup, of milk, a broth unknown.
How she holds the cup when she passes it to me, how she holds her own.
Has she not come to me in this same way? To my bedroom door?
But such a summoning only takes effect in certain places. In ancient stones, in meadows and moors.
In very different spheres from this.
And this, would this not be such a place where such an enchantment would take hold?
The signs so far indicate this is very much a magic stronghold.
I hold my cross beneath my shirt. It is hidden from view, where I have kept it since it was gifted to me.
I decided to keep it on for the night when I first arrived. It would comfort me to sleep with it and so I do.
It is the gleam of the dark green dress that recognises me to her.
I stand at the window, sleep lost its love for me.
I went to see the night sky when I beheld her. On the wall. In that dress that clung and stuck to the wall with her as though it was drawn to it.
She moves, a lizard. Her hair loose, her eyes fixed upon me in flight. I look back. "Goodnight." I mouth, as not to scream.
I look up at the deep swirls of stars and night, it does not taste as sweet as it did before.
I find myself walk back to bed, I find myself walk past it, I hasten down the stairs. I know not where to. I imagine I am asleep in bed and safe from her until the morning comes.
GO SAFELY
"Why must you have her?" spoken in baleful whines. Upon first hearing I understand these voices are not of this earth.
I hear a sharp laugh, not hers, I have grown accostumed to hers. Yet it shares her character, it is undeniably her kin.
"She," she hisses "a bauble of your vanity! Your pride could not have one stay here and not have her fall under your spell."
One cries out and is hit with what sounds like a whole solid wall being smitten upon her. More rational would be a strike by a hand, the sound though definitely does not match that violence.
"You have bled millions, you have won your beauty and immortality a thousandfold over, what more can you want?" a third entity complaints.
"The world of course." That is her, the dark sun herself.
Since when do I think of her as such?
"Travels without any of us, travels with hér."
"The ingrate,"
"the strega, the innocent,"
"the foreigner, the charlatan,"
"the play actress, the heathen,"
"the one in lamb skin yet to come off,"
"Silence!" A thunder loud clap of a word by the Countess Dracula.
"Silence." she repeats, soft as can be,
and sinks down with them. They gather on her skirts.
"My lovelies, come close."
They are already embracing her, crawling over her, undoing her hair, her clothes, her limbs.
-----
I watch, petrified, until it is safe for me to scream.
I have seen her flesh, the arching of her back, her voice, their writhing voices, so mingled I cannot pick out the thread of hers.
It is burned upon my mind, the images, the terror, forever.
I cannot face her again.
I will see her body and she will see it in my eyes.
The knowledge, emparted by the unwilfully bitten apple.
The wrong place at the wrong time, despite her warning not to go here, not to seek out the ghosts and ghouls of this home.
Are these the bedroom? Is this the dungeon?
Women can do that.
What I have seen here rivals with the tangled illustrations I watched with Lucy in the fallen book.
How unknowing those moments feel now. Those giggles, our carelessness, the safety of it, in her stylish, clean drawing room.
Unlike the bloodied dampness, the unclean in all meanings of the word, quarters of these creatures, of her, lying on the floor, lying in the air by some unholy magic, mouth crying out in bliss and hunger, mouth, with fangs, of an animal, of the devil.
Her being keening, my own bones clawing for her cries. To get to her.
Damned women.
They drank from her. They slaked themselves. She drank from them.
I will not fall prey.
Yet I am imprisoned with no other fate available to me.
This is how witches burn in this country. The kindling flame arises from within themselves, is shared by all, consumes all.
The devil reigns these lands,
and it is her.
For my pain for liking her, for her charm and wit and elegance. For the ease of hours shared discussing with her as I never have with any other, not even on my many nights shared with my darling Lucy.
As she preens over me, fills my cup, sees to this herself although she is the noble lady of the house.
For all this I will be punished in spirit.
To all this I must be impervious. I must unequivocally deny, and be denied where she would accept me. Where evil would welcome me in deceptive kindness.
She keeps track of my state, sees to my comfort at all times as a servant would. As her servant should. Instead there was her and she wooed. Had I not thought it strange she lacked servants? No, I only thought it foreign. Foreign, good, benevolent, a mere cheerful subject to touch upon in conversation. One of their personal costums, one of their conventions more hospitable than ours.
I am seated on my knees, I have not moved from this room. I must have shouted, howled. I have not heard my own voice, my throat hurts so, I must have.
My way of seating, my current location, are not suitable for prayer. Not possible for prayer.
She holds me.
"That's it. All is well." She is stroking me, over my shoulder, my back, my hair, untying it, to calm me down. Does she care? "Was that too much for you, my dear? Shall I give you more?" Are these mindgames? What did I witness? My own demise.
Something is pressed to my face, a handkerchief?
No, it feels familiar, it feels like it's been there a long time and I'd rather not detach from it, from her and this rare warmth of comfort. Some cloth, fabric of her clothes, sleeve, that is the something to my lips, to the edges. It was cold when I began. Her skin. Began what?
A nick to her skin, that is what is there, I remember now, before she knelt, before she had me stay seated like this with her restraining hold, her fixed hand bearing down upon the back of my neck, before she had her arm to my face, forced me to drink, as forcing a kitten to.
AND LEAVE
The complexion of her hair is honeyed by the light of the hearth's fire. She so far, so often wears gold jewellery. It is amber today, a creature inside her necklace, preserved. The form of a bug trapped within. The amber glow on her hair heightened by the amber dead.
Her mouth, her speech have somehow led me here from the underground of her forbidden places.
She likes me pressed up against her secrets.
As her words kept me calm, she let me sit on a chair, poised as the woman I was before. I feel only a misplaced gratitude to her, for her forgiveness and gentle ways of leading me here after my fragrant tresspassing.
"It won't protect you," she whispers, it is the first time she has acknowledged my cross, my faith.
Her eyelashes are so close, pale and long and why do I imagine its brush to my touch?
I see the shadows next to her eyes deepen, to reach out to me in turn?
It's her hands that have cradled in my neck, I did not feel it, her hands that trace the coarse rope and untie it.
I cannot object her touch, I hardly feel it is there, it would not do to comment on something so slight, on something not even there, it is so very welcome, I wish it were more pronounced.
The object drops to the floor, without relevance. She does not catch or hold the cross in a tenderness I have come to associate with her. It is forgotten.
"Mina," she says, she pronounces me,
body and soul.
She holds it all within my spoken name. It tears myself from me. Leaves me in her hands.
A stranded jewel she takes home. A bird. I gaze up. My eyes and face flit to her. I feel sharp, her sharpness. I have been cut into this, I have been cut from her.
"You are a new mind now. Free to want and explore."
I open my mouth to a screetch that will not come.
She rubs her thumb to my lips, unbares the corners of my teeth.
"There you are. Finally. You will need nourishment in this life."
A lightningflash passes through me. I know what she means. I do not.
I am puzzled and I would burn the world to end this confusion.
This is not life. What this is? I don't know. A fever, a hot blade, something, someone, beyond hell, that rules in Gods place, not in His grace, not what we are supposed to be.
I see the aching of her soul in her eyes. We belong dead.
Her golden eyes melt, dark and honey, over my thoughts.
I see no more than this, that which is her façade, sweet and treacherous.
I crumble under what is her insistance, the forceful pull of her unrelenting will, the other part of her that is her spirit.
Her truth possesses and pushes. She does not accept boundaries.
By unnatural forces she can bring down and hold her will upon others, wordless, destructive, to all she loves.
She takes me to her creatures, her wives.
She takes me to herself.
She is pleased with me, she is in rapture, in love, as one as her can be. Is there any other as her? Unlikely.
I am in trance, yet I can think. Continuously.
I cannot feel myself.
She will not have me marry him. She will not have me marry at all.
God is not a faded presence here. He is not present at all. There is only her distinguished utter debauchery. A banquet. Of me.
"I could give you the world." she states, a fact. Not a bribe, not a plea.
The lioness leans in, enveloping. She displays by this small motion her constant effortless strength which she always possesses, for me to lean on, to breathe in, be protected by, always.
Her edges look cruel. The teeth. She is cruel. I know it. I do not refute it.
I kiss her. My tongue moves as with a goal.
To wipe the grime out of her mouth, to rid her of the filth of this castle, of those women, of her old pagan blood.
Her tongue a whip, clever, sharp as the nails gathered in my side, their pinches have me gasp, have my cry high pitched, ghastly, of a ghost.
Her touch leaves me to recollect myself.
She leaves me until an idle finger moves a strand of my hair back to its proper place. Proper Mina.
Clever Mina. Dependable. Mind like a man's. Pure Mina.
SOME OF THE HAPPINESS YOU BRING
"I'd rather die."
Her mouth spreads and does not rise to a smile.
"You will."
My world dies with me.
----
She holds out her hand and I emerge from the carriage, called from a deep slumber.
"England." she breathes. "Carfax, London."
Her vowels wide. Her mouth taking in as much of the place as she can. The scent of it.
The life, filth, blood, people, sickness, despair, hope, smoke, fog, ... of modern times.
Her gloves travel over my sleeve and bracelets.
"Show me your loved ones.
We must welcome them."
To her world.
*********
Notes:
Behold the magical Gifset this story was inspired by:
https://stannisbaratheon.tumblr.com/post/119518468366/cate-blanchett-as-countess-dracula-and-emily-blunt
I included lines from there and from the book and quite some interactions from the Coppola film since that was velvet heavy on imagery from the castle.
Is she flirting? Or does she want you to invite her in, to your mind?
The Elisabeth Bathory castle has ghosts not surprisingly, I am told this from a special feature on my copy of Ingrid Pitt’s Countess Dracula.
Yes, I had to put some Bride of Frankenstein in there.
Gold-coloured eyes are very much in vogue for vampires lately, so have some here.
The dress-up is the straw hat.
Dracula with poker is Tremaine handling the glass slipper.
Are we copying Béla's accent? Yes, we are. Why? Because adorable.
”unclean, unclean, unclean” *singing*
I love the brides.
"Damned women": yes, we are bringing French lesbians, Baudelaire and the famous painting by Nicolas Francois Octave Tassaert into this. Draculina deserves the fun.
Edit: I just realized I must have put ’’how lucky you are’’ in here by subconscious Emily Blunt - the Huntsman Winter’s War association. I love that film.