The Story of the Vampire, L (Completed | Featured )

7. [Nataniellus] 2003-2013, pt.1 - "The Unspeakable"

I woke as I often wake up, afraid, confused, my voice in my throat. My body knew that someone was there but not who. My nerves spooked, I lay still, in a wordless terror. It is a pattern that has followed me from life. Fainting left me vulnerable and defenseless, both to help and to hurt. An expectation of hands upon me, of being restrained, of the fear of drowning by water from well-meaning hands, or other penetration and abuse of my body. I wake not knowing who I am now, or where, or how old. Sleep brings with it so many unknowns.

My familiar body, in familiar sheets, is made a cruel strangeness by waking frightened. Waking so, fear lacquers the familiar in a haunted light. Not real. Not solid. Sometimes, I weep. My skin crawled on my body that morning, wild with the feeling of someone else.

"All right, Red, it's only me. It's America. You're in your fella's bed." 

When I didn't move, Iovita continued to talk, rubbing my side.

"The sky were looking somewhat dowly, but it's nicely now. Had a gander out the window and it's good as summer. Where's the snow? December and all. Your sweet one asked after you, our Nonus, but I said to him leave him he's paggered."

"Quit going on," I said. "It's cold enough."

"Nesh Southerner," he said. "Saw your fella heading down the back lawn. What's he up to?"

I rotated my hips, turning to face him. "Take your boots off and get into bed with me."

"There he looks better," he said, bending to drop his boots in a hurry. "In the bed you share with him?"

"Do what I tell you."

He slipped in, under the sheets, and he pulled me up close, against his body. Dusty farm boy, always working outdoors. In the old days, he smelled like a donkey, like a turned over vegetable patch, Iovita the steward, impressionable, easily won, predictable, but so much more than the sum of those things. He flexed the palms of his rough hands against my stomach.

"Tell me what's on your mind or I'll slap your belly red as a blushing sinner."

"I dreamed of Escha," I told him.

"Saw him just now down the hall. He's fine. He was asking about his goat."

The goat Escha had had as a child in Herculaneum, an elderly milking she-goat saved from slaughter by a child's affection. He had named her "The Little Bee" and could be found whispering to her between his daily tasks, harassing her. She was completely black in color, except for stripes of white inside her ears. She had made indifferent company for a young boy.

"He was asking after the little bee, about what we'd done with her after he left her behind."

"Nothing."

"That's right, nothing. Who would buy anything from us? We didn't have papers. We didn't own anything ourselves. If we'd tried to sell the goat it would have made buyer and seller both thieves. That's a strangling."

"So what did you tell him?"

"Told him she wandered off, which is probably what she did, old dried up she-goat like her. She was as mean as the day is long. She butted Escha whenever she could and she bit whatever she could catch in her teeth. If we'd had more time in the day, I'd have penned her up separately. She brought so much stress to the rest of the pasture. She was so spiteful that I couldn't tie her to a tree or she'd go round and round with the rope until she suffocated herself."

"I remember the tantrum you threw when the master said you couldn't have her slaughtered."

"Was it a tantrum you're calling what I did to you then?"