No ownership of the Vampirates series by Justin Stomper is intended by this inspired fictional work.
P e r f e c t x C i r c l e
"a circle is the reflection of eternity. it has no beginning and it has no end – and if you put several circles over each other, then you get a spiral." Maynard James Keenan
{PerCir}
As it came to pass, she could not escape him. No matter of will or way of her own was she able to eclipse his. She had stood before him, small and weak and delicate. It was shameful, she thought, to be caught at such a moment of vulnerability. But she was tired, and foolish; had been placed up against a creature that far surpassed her in all but intellect. And in that hot, terrible moment of capture, the young girl had doubted that vital tool of survival. She supposed, in the end, she had no prudence to speak of; rather, she thought herself impractical and terribly useless.
"Grace," she spoke her own name, "a meaning of God's favor or blessing." Not much anymore, was the afterthought. There was no God here. God is dead, spoke Friedrich Nietzche, and Grace couldn't agree with him more. What God would denounce her to this state of living? Bitterness twisted her soul and hate tainted her heart.
Grace lay beneath him, still and silent; mock sense of serenity and obedience. Sidorio reared above her, a strike of lightning movement against her statuesque stillness; he thinks that he was worshiping her in the holiest of ways. In the open he treats her like she is the finest of stained glass, but in the silence of their world, he fucks her like she is strongest Toledian steel. As he grunts and bursts inside her, he likens himself to God: blessing his favored disciple, a righteous and mighty God next to his luminous Lucifer. Below him, in shame and receiving his reviling, demonic seed, Grace wonders if the beast above her knows that the favored angel of God rebelled.
"You remind me of someone I once knew," Sidorio whispered into Grace's ear. He brushed an auburn hair away from sullen green eyes. Grace turned on her side; the sheet slipped from her shoulders and the vampire was offered the tantalizing view of a firm, small breast.
"Who?" Grace came to rest her head on an olive-skinned shoulder. She darted a hand on his chest, gently scratching with curved nails. Sidorio took her hand, guided it down below the sheets, the young woman's face froze into icy stillness as she obeyed the cue. Graced hated herself for this mistake and thinks, you are a damn fool, Grace! He chuckled indulgently, and leaned back in pleasure.
"Does it matter? Does anything matter, besides you and I?" Grace pulled and pushed obediently, hating herself, hating this man who is too far gone into desires and dreams to know who she is.
As a matter of fact, other things matter. I wonder what you would think if you knew you were fucking your own flesh and blood?
There was one moment that Grace had sincerely felt grateful towards her captor. It was half a decade in their relationship that Sidorio remembered the girl's desire for knowledge and written word. After a successful raid he brought her two worn books: Dante's Infero and Milton's Paradise Lost. In the hours that pass when Grace is not pulling and sucking, fondled and drunk from, she read. In the end, she found Lucifer far more sympathetic and relatable. In the fading twilight of sex one quite blue-mooned night, she walked to the grand, silver-rimmed mirror of the stateroom, pressed up against it and said to the pathetic reflection that was bruised and bleeding,
"The mind is its own place, and in itself,
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell a Heav'n."
Grace heard once that only the insane could make perfect circles. She wondered if she was one of them. She saw circles everywhere, in the dark marks under her eyes, in the design of the Spanish solid-gold plates and in the Greek ruby-studded chalices. She saw them in fingernails, on skin, upon the ground she walked upon and the sky she often started at longingly on the lonely days on that damnable ship. But most of all she saw that dreaded circle inside herself: in the almost invisible bulge that made that perfect half-loop on her stomach.
Back to the circular theory of relativity to life and death (as Grace called it since she created it), the woman thought she had made a break through. Sitting at the dark mahogany desk, she picked up that snow white sheet of paper and held it up to Sidorio. He looked in a way of indulgence, and it turned to confusion as he glanced at it. Black, curved lines on a square paper. He was far from impressed. He told her so. Instead of flaring up in anger, she glanced lovingly at the paper,
"Oh, you don't understand. But it's perfect, just perfect!" Connor would be proud.
Grace is not her mother. She'll not love a child born from fear and a desire to possess. The monster that has grown insider is not worthy of her love. She will not love Sidorio, lead him on and fall for another. She's not as foolish. But the one thing that she will echo her mother on will be the ignorance of that child's lineage. This is a circle that cannot be unbroken; it's a broken spiral of confusion, fear, incest and rebirth that must always continue.
Grace stows herself in a seedy inn too far away from the waters for Sidorio to find her. Locks the door, and gives the slow, tearing process of life. Wipes away the life blood on the child that her father-lover will consume next. She swathes it in the warm afghan in the inn room, names it Delilah. This girl-baby will be the downfall of Sidorio, he was the David to her Bathsheba and her child will be the Delilah to her Samson. Let Sidorio remain ignorant of his offspring, let that be his downfall.
She takes the knife that she cut the bond between child to mother and thrusts it into her heart. Her breath catches. She falls and dies. For the longest time she has been encased from the waist down in ice, unknowing of time and languidly anguishing in a punishment she did not deserve. But now the ice has cracked, weakened and she has broken free and she no longer cares.
{PerCir}
Mmmm…I have no idea where this came from or why I wrote it. I think that it was something I had to write down. Anyways, I hope the parallels between the bible and Grace's situation isn't too painful to read. I hope things link up a bit and that it was enjoyable to read. Also, the quote of Grace speaking to the mirror is from Paradise Lost. That isn't mine either.
~ Crocheting Brouhaha