L.

Part 1, Paris [1.] Of Softly Kissing You

[All writing here obtained has been collected in private folio from heretofore unseen collection. They have come into my possession in exchange for services rendered. Note that letters are addressed but unsent. Most leaves indicate an addressee, but it does not seem that any attempt has been made to deliver them. From this, it may be inferred that they were written for Laurent's eyes only, unless otherwise marked. To be kept in private document collection for the foreseeable future. Notes in brackets are my own. -- note, 2001, Miriam]

[Laurent. Writing from 1955, Paris]

The last time I spoke with you, weren't we upset with each other? J'en ai marre, how boring it all is. What am I meant to do without you? You may say that I am wrong, but I mean for you to know that I have my own mind. I am not just an appetite. Dasius. May I speak to you plainly?

I think that the last time we spoke, that you were saying to me, "I do not know you, truly I do not." But I could not hear you well, because of your hand on my head, pushing me down into my bathwater. It is puzzling to me that you would say that. It must be that I heard you wrong.

But because it is the case that I am sorry for you to find me in your bed en flagrant delit, I am writing with the intention to give all of this to you. And I am embarrassed, so I promise to be honest, though it is also the case that you are so good at pretending not to be wounded by my promiscuous attitude. Comme il faut. I cannot change that. But it is true, as you said, that I do not need to have two boys at once, and not, as I have admitted, where you sleep. So I am apologizing for that, officially, and without any hang ups. I will tell you all that I know, so that you do not need to hear any whispers anymore about me from other people. They do not know my mind anyway.

Oh, how much more fun you would have had to join us under your bedclothes instead of pulling my hair. My hair that you have cooed in, that you have moaned in, sobbed out in, that you have rhapsodized about. "Ma blonde platine. Mes boucles." My platinum blond. My curls, you have said. What is mine, is yours. Maybe that is the most fun for you? Pulling my hair? To be honest, I liked it. You are my little pinprick. You annoy me so much, and I let you drag me down the hallway. Did you think it was any fun? My letting you feel like you were subduing me? You seem to like it so much. Did you think that you were punishing me? I have loved you all of this time. 

The first time I saw my Dasius, you, I was walking alone in the countryside. Normally, I would not have been so far North, because this region, near to Douai, holds so many harsh memories for me. But I had to go there because a man who had made himself my enemy, many years past, had decamped there from Paris. I know that you do not like it, when I talk about killing, but I had been seeking him for some time. What did he do? Why was I pursuing him? You have always wanted to know it, though you are too shy to ask.

Oh, I have a memory of you, holding onto his head as if you were your namesake by birth, David, holding the giant by the hair. He was not my blood. Not one of mine. Not your relative or a lover. Perhaps you think of him in bed with me and it causes you pain. Touching him would have blackened my hand! He was a devil and hell is hot. But I digress.

Surely you know what I did him for, for did he not do it to you? That devil, Aureil.

I was in a bad position when I first heard of Jean Aureil. Perhaps it is the lowest I have ever been brought in my life. In the 1490s, the effect of the Black Plague of a century earlier was still in full evidence in Paris. I had retreated to the North during that earlier century, to care for the young men I loved who had been poisoned and starved by the pestilence. Everywhere, the air smelled of rot, and even there in the countryside, wherever there were people, there were too many bodies to burn. The vampires I loved could not afford to go without good, whole blood for as long as I could. I do not want to linger on what I had to do. They could not go on living like that. We were six men, and then only me after two hundred years together.