SOMEWHERE IN GRAZ, STYRIA, 1890

Dracula holds me close. Dracula consumes me when I sleep. He has done for the last six months when I turned 21, like I am ripened, and was ready to pick.

The metallic taste of his lips. The colour of cherries. I lick at them. I savour the taste, because it was a taste I savoured every night.

Mother told me that I was a dreamer. That I should find some rich influential man that I could settle down and make a life with.

But why? Why must I, when I can taste Dracula...my night-time guardian, the one whose always there for me at the deadest of hours of those long nights.

Father says nothing. He just sits in that stuffy old chair in the study, reading musty old volumes under a reading lamp.

Always the same, him. Wearing black velvet jackets and neck ties that were only a hairs breath of choking him.

Dracula likes to choke me. Especially when I'm in the mood to taste him.

I like to stare out on sunny days in my silken night dress just waiting for the sun to go down. So that when sunset finally arrived, I can lie back in the sheets of my bed and wait for him.

I usually like to wear my hair loose and hung down one side, so the left side of my slender neck is in full view, because I know he likes me like that.

Dracula keeps me young and fresh.

But tonight feels different. It had felt different all day. Not once, but twice did I hear carriages pull up outside of the house, and strange men I have never seen before keep my father in meetings in the parlor.

Keeping my father from his reading.

The maids were in and out, serving up fine wine and cheese for fathers guests whoever they were.

I sat on the top step, and watched as the men left and were back again a few hours later. The Grandfather clock in the hallway chimed 2pm when they first came, and 5pm on their final visit.

I didn't want this to bother me, but it did...it felt like they were talking about me.

Maybe father was arranging for my marriage. Maybe these gentlemen were forced suitors for my hand.

I longed for night. I longed for Dracula to take me...if I marry, then I'll lose him forever...Dracula will find someone else to feed on, another delious flavour to satisfy his cravenings.

Someone else would feel his cold breath on theirs. Someone else would taste him. The metallic taste that flowed through me.

That would never happen. I wouldn't allow that to happen. Why should I?

At last the sun had long disappeared, and I stayed in my room like I always do, except on a Sunday when I would go for a walk with Mother in the park.

That's when I had to get dressed up. All frills and velvet and ribbons and uncomfortable satire...I hated it and when I got back to my room after, I rid them as quickly as I could get out of them.

Tonight I sat on my bed. Tonight the cool wind came in through my open french doors. The lace curtain lapped in the gentle breeze.

I smiled to myself. I no longer had a reflection. The mirror on the dresser was useless, but that was a price to pay for the goodness that was him. Dracula coming in through the doors and letting me suck and lick at the sweet serum that was his.

Dracula. The man of my dreams...a god like idol who holds me close and rests his mouth to my sweet slender neck and whispers all what I ever dreamed of. Tall...dark...handsome... A most beautiful man who commands a presence.

I close my eyes and I lie down to let him feed on me and abuse me to his hearts content.

But tonight is different. There was voices downstairs. A group of voices. Did father have visitors so late?

I go to the window and see nothing but the gas lamps. There was no traffic, there was no body about, just a full fat shiny moon that hung up above, giving the rooftops sharp shadows that lapped down to the narrow cobbled streets below.

There was a knock on the door. NOBODY ever came to my room at this hour...not like this.

I approached the door and grasped the brass knob, turned the key, and opened it on ajar.

A nun was standing there. Dressed head to foot in her religious robes and habit.

She smiled warmly at me.

"please...I must enter your room...I have your father's kind permission...there is a ritual I need to carry out, my dear"

Ritual? What kind of ritual? I never replied to her, I just stared at the nun.

"Please ...it has been going on for too long now...it's time you were made free of his devilish desires"

I look down to the silver cross in her tight grasp. It was plain and simple.

I shake my head and was about to close the door, when the nun put her black shiney boot to it.

"I have to DO THIS...If this carries on, then your father has no choice but to send you away..."

I don't know why, but I opened the door and let the nun inside my bedroom.

I close the door and turn around and watch as she paces about, looking over my room. My dresser, my wardrobe, my oil lamp.

The soft glow making our faces form shadows on the walls.

I look towards the window...there was no way Dracula was going to come tonight...not with a stranger in the room.

The nun went to the window and closed it gently. Then turned and smiled at me.

"For months you have endured this...but I can see that the root of the problem is too deep...gone much too far as I feared..."

She was looking to the mirror on my dresser. At both of us...but there was only her...but I knew that anyway.

My heart begins to race. I start to grow concerned and unsettled, "Are you going to force him away? Are you going to take me away from him..?"

There was a trembling of fear in my very own voice.

"Child...", and she came and took my hand into hers and gave me a warm smile that reminded me of my old school governess.

"...if I was to force him away...then it is likely that you will fall foul to his dark desires"

I stare at her...at first I am lost in that gracious smile. I am confused. I am caught off guard.

"How long has his unearthly presence come to you, child? You can tell me...I have dealt with many others like yourself... that...have fallen victim to his unnatural existence"

I look to the window.

"He comes to you every night...he makes you want him even more...he feeds on you...not just your blood...but he wants your soul, too"

I swallow and sit on the bed, I start to twirl my finger through my hair that hung on my shoulder.

I smile, "He won't come...he won't come when you are here"

The nun sat beside me and took my hand, "I know...but I am here not to confront him...but to stop him from destroying your soul further"

I smiled at her, "but, like you just informed me...it is too late for me...I have no soul...I have no reflection in the mirror...as you can see there is no me"

The nun got up and made for the window. She held up the silver cross and charted something I couldn't understand from the Bible...was it Latin?

The energy built up from within me. From within me where my soul should have been, maybe.

I stood up like I wasn't in control anymore...I looked at the nun. She had her back to me, chanting.

And then he was there. In the window. He came in and stood tall against the nun. She stopped chanting and looked up to him. Dracula tilted his head and smiled at her like he was amused by her presence in the room. He then looked at him and gestured his hand towards me.

"Take her...the time has come for you to meet your destiny"

I Move towards her like my feet were not on the floor. My hands are out ahead of me...I cannot help it, but I was clawing at her face...she was helpless because I had a great strength within me I never thought that I had.

Dracula was laughing.

The nun was on the floor. Blood was trickling from the corner of her mouth. I knee down and brushed my hand over her face to close the eyes that stared out in horror.

Then my fingers dabbed the warm blood and they were to my lips...tasting the metallic essence.

It tasted good...it tasted like...his. My guardian of the night...I looked up to Dracula and he smiled down at me and extended his hand, I took it, his sharp nails digging into my palm, and I rose to my feet.

He leans in to me and he whispers in my ear, "Go my bride...go and be free like you so wish to be"

And it was from that time...Dracula never came to me again...because from that moment on, I didn't exist no more in the flesh .

The newspapers told all about my mysterious disappearance of what was once myself. The nun it seemed survived and I heard last seen boarding a train to the east.

That's where Dracula was. She was chasing him. Chased him from the beginning.

I see nothing of the daytime...just the night time when I can see above the roof tops and see into windows at beautiful young men going to bed.

There is a beautiful young man I am visiting now. I have come to him for a couple of nights. He is young, maybe 20 or 21, not quite fully mature.

But he is ripe and he wants me like I want him...he tastes me...he lets me abuse him...and he yearns for me to come to him every night.

I am a bride of Dracula. I will carry on his work. I understand that one day, he will rule the world. The world needs to be afraid, because his power is growing and when the time is right...he will make his move at domination.

How I know all this I do not know...it is like I am thinking what he is thinking...And I know that I will be there standing with him, at his side.

END