Kristina

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gkmoberg1
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Re: Kristina

Post by gkmoberg1 » Fri Jun 20, 2014 12:22 pm

        • ----------Kristina---------
          .o oOo oOo 6 oOo oOo o.


"I've been here for months. Are you new?" - I asked the question to the child before realizing it might not be the best strategy to keep probing. I needed to switch my attempt at starting a conversation to something regarding myself or something neutral. What I quietly wanted to do was shift my balance and get turned about. To get down to the child's level would help. Yet the skittish thing was too able to see me. I needed to build a layer of calm between us first.

The sailor moaned, his weight falling against me. I shifted with the movement, keeping an eye on the child. It stepped further away but I took the moment, the sailor's collapsing form, as a means to similarly bring myself down from full standing height. I eased the dying body downward, awkwardly trying to keep it against the wall but having to shoulder it hard so as to keep it there. Gradually we sank to the base of the wall.

I exhaled heavily as I tried to steady myself and deal with the whiskey the sailor had been drinking. It was warming me. I was succumbing to its sublime feeling but the heaviness was not helping. I tried a slow blink at my own hands. I was learning Irish sailors can hold more drink than I had anticipated. Throughout, the child stood back, wary and watching.

"Are there many of us?" it asked. So innocent. If I had a heart that could melt, it would have. Here was a child in the same form of life as me – and apparently without a guide. Based on the outline, the voice, the posture and the movements, I could tell it was a boy. I wanted to draw my fingers though his hair and comfort him. I wanted to soothe him and tell him know he could be safe. With me he would be secure. And as well I wanted more: to wrestle him to the ground and claim him as mine.

But he was still wary and out of reach.

My mind was screaming, “Could this be one of them?”

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metoo
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Re: Kristina

Post by metoo » Fri Jun 20, 2014 12:27 pm

gkmoberg1 wrote:If only Malmö was not so far away!
Malmö is not particularly far away... :mrgreen:
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist


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Re: Kristina

Post by gkmoberg1 » Fri Jun 20, 2014 6:11 pm

        • ----------Kristina---------
          .o oOo oOo 7 oOo oOo o.


Young boys. In my prior life, I had become aware of them as the months unrolled under the direction of my new Master and the old woman who instructed me. There were more than a few. Yet they were like the mice: once spotted, they scattered. They'd appear along the edges of opened windows or squirting along the boundaries of the courtyard below. I never met them but was aware of them. Never by day and always at night.

I was best aware of them by their reek; it was if they had been allowed to wrestle in the most unmentionable wastes. That smell, drifting in an opened window would alert me that I was being watched. Yet even a slight turn of my head to get a glimpse would send their smudged faces and all too thin arms back into the night air.

When I asked about them I was redirected to something else. In my then simple ways and nature, simple distractions worked.
Mostly I was paraded about. I never thought about myself in this way during that time, but now I do. The merchants who stopped by the manor saw me regularly. The farmers who were bound to my Master saw me. And the few men that the Master kept at the tower; they too saw me. My role, unbeknownst to me, was to be seen; this I have come to believe. The Master had no other interest in me. I was a plaything that was shown off, almost like a distraction. He was never with me, but he would arrange that I would be in attendance at the right time on good afternoon. I was to be seen strolling or made to be present to make a greeting. Ohhh…

Also I heard things. And I heard of things. I asked and as before, I was redirected. I should have considered and reflected, but all was so new to me and the life that I had being shepherded into was like a spell building upon my foolish self-interests. Whereas my life in the country with the family I had lost was ordinary and regular, this new life defined a new ordinary and regular. At the same time that I was climbing into it, I was wrapped with the struggle and pleasure. So the warning signs came and went while I was delighted by fabrics, letters, glass windows, feasts, trappings and candles. And it was my doom.

Several years into my new life, on a different autumn day, my life changed anew for a second time. I heard shouting from the courtyard, men in hurry and then the dashing of horses. An unsettled air crept into my chambers during the quiet the followed. I stirred myself from a small piano that I had been introduced to and went to the window. Below, the courtyard stood empty. Worse, it gave the impression of deserted. As the remaining afternoon faded, the men did not return. Instead, men from Norrköping arrived. They streamed in, carried by four or five horse-drawn wagons. They filled the area and soon the house

By this time I realized I was alone. The men were gone; the servants were gone; the old woman and the Master – neither answered their door – were gone. So I hid behind the headboard in my bed chamber. As I listened, the men burst from room to room yelling oaths of vengeance, although from what I did not know. Things were taken away; things were broken; things were smashed. By chance they did not find me. I trembled as I overheard their plans. I had to get out.

When I had a chance I took it and used the secret panel that had been once shown to me. I secured the latch behind me and in my fine clothing and slippers I made my way down. The way was dark and steep. Down, I made my way into the basement room that I had been told would be there. Step by step I descended. As I went, a stench overcame me, a horrific reek that almost drove me to cease my efforts and climb up and out. But eventually a step of mine landed on dirt and I was at the bottom. But thereafter I was lost. Another step and my left foot sloshed into something awful. The foulness slapped up over my ankles and then subsided down into my slipper, settling around my foot and toes. There was no light and I had no way to find the way out. I worried what would happen if the men were to find me. I stood there like a trapped mouse: one foot in a muck that I didn’t want to learn too much more about, my two hands over my mouth and nose, my fears rising while I tried not to breathe in the rancid air.

But then, then, I swear that although my eyes were blind in the dark, the very walls about me started to move and I found I was far from alone.

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Re: Kristina

Post by gkmoberg1 » Thu Jul 03, 2014 11:23 pm

Between the last entry and up to about three days ago I've been suffering with a head cold. It's been horrible. Horrible!! Gah, do I have to spell it out for you? H O R R I B L E. Please, learn by the experiences of others - you don't want what I had. For me, there's been no writing or editing nor even much reading. And no movies and no looking at bright shiny computer screens.

But unfortunately for you I've recovered. And so will post the rest of this little story. ... :twisted:

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Re: Kristina

Post by gkmoberg1 » Fri Jul 04, 2014 12:03 am

        • ----------Kristina---------
          .o oOo oOo 8 oOo oOo o.


The men, the men who had invaded the house while swearing for vengeance, pried open the escape door I had been seeking. They had heard my screams and had come as quickly as they could to my rescue.

Yet what they came into was wretched. A stream of young boys, those awful dirty creatures, streamed up and out as the men came downwards tentatively. The late afternoon sun guided them. I could hear the boys screaming in pain as they made their way outwards, through the house gardens. It was as if somebody were scalding them in boiling water. Meanwhile the men, not comprehending what had occurred, found me shredded and lying prone in the mud of that cellar.

I barely remember the moment for I was in such pain. Dozens of little hands had come through the darkness at me. Without pause or warning they had become dozens of little grasping hands. And then those same dozens of hands had just as suddenly torn into my beautiful clothes. I had cried out in distress for what they were doing to my fine things. Still, I did not know what was to come next. To those men, my rescuers, I must have looked to have been ravaged by a horde of dogs. Yet there were no dogs to be found, only me in my mauled dress, steeped in my own blood and the muck of the cellar floor.

I passed out before the men could lift me up.

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Re: Kristina

Post by gkmoberg1 » Fri Jul 04, 2014 12:14 am

        • ----------Kristina---------
          .o oOo oOo 9 oOo oOo o.


"Are there many of us?" the little boy had asked.

I righted myself onto all fours and laughed. I think it sounded more like a cackle as the effects of the whiskey continued to surge through me. The boy was closer now than before; I was looking at his little knees. What I needed was for him to come a couple paces closer.

"No," I replied. "We are so few, so terribly few."

True words. The decades were advancing, and it was becoming harder to find any of ourselves. It was a thinning of what was already a scarce presence. (I confess I had something to do with that, more than I’m going to tell you about.)

Yet I found it regrettable that we were so few. We could be so much more. However what I had found the most lacking was the paucity of us who could be held up as being more than recluses hiding in the dark. I found the lot detestable. Most were smitten with themselves. Arrogant. Vile. Oh, I was vile as well, but I had learned to live in my new self. I had soaked it in. There had been the agony of releasing who I had been and releasing who I had thought I was going to be. Many fail at this point. To surrender the morals of what we each had once been and to find our way into a skin that we can continue on with – it was too stark.

"Why?"

"Why? Because most of us kill ourselves, that's why."

There is a sick humor to it. How many times had I caused it, just to see it play out on yet another pretty face? Turn somebody and watch their life fall into ruin.

"You must understand that,” I pressed on. “Such a heavy burden, oh my." I fluttered my hands before my face while behind the distraction I worked at getting my feet set beneath me and my weight overtop of them. "Oooooh, I cannot bear to have dead people on my conscious," I said in the voice of a mother on whom I had played out this little game some years ago.

"Can we die?"

"Of course we can. All you have to do is set fire to yourself. Or let other people do it; they are only too happy to oblige, have done so through the ages. Or…" Finally the child was within reach! I lifted out a finger to assess the distance. Sooner than I thought, my finger connected and poked hard into the child’s shift, stabbing him just off from center. "There. That's where it is, isn't it?” And I could tell by his reaction that he had the same impression as me: there was something within us, wrapped up in us, right at his spot, curled deep within.

The child stood, hesitating at the moment of my having a finger pressed into the ribs beside his sternum. My chance was at hand. “But now my friend. I have a wonderful idea..."

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Re: Kristina

Post by gkmoberg1 » Fri Jul 04, 2014 10:04 pm

        • ----------Kristina---------
          .o oOo oOo 10 oOo oOo o.


My body, queer with my acquired intoxication, lurched forward. But the effort was absent of the dexterity required. The boy bounded back, easily evading me. And with that the game was up. In my state I could not pursue. The waif was free to go.

For so very long I had wanted to find those dirty little creatures who had led to my demise. To break their necks, one at a time, would be a satisfying. Had this been my first chance? I longed to know but the moment was fleeing.

When I had been brought back to consciousness following the attack on me in the muck of that horrid, fetid cellar, I had found myself under the care of the nearby farm women. The woman of the house where I had been taken, plus several others, had bathed me and had tried to address my injuries. The wounds, though, were grievous and did not let me rest. Within two days I was at an end. Ashen white, I could not lift myself up or speak. The undeserved and unforgivable traumas delivered by that swarm of filthy teeth and fingernails remained raw and infected.

The men returned several times, demanding that I be burned. The women decried this saying I was not a foul thing but rather a wreck who deserved comfort and to be allowed to die in piece. Even so, at one point I was dragged outside and left to lie in the dirt before the farmhouse. I had no strength to resist and so lay there in hot sun, finding I had to keep my eyes shut lest the brightness carve out my eyes. Men and woman argued over me. I lay in a heap before them, my strength utterly gone, my insides churning in a manner I had never before felt. Somehow it was allowed that I should be returned inside and was roughly carried there and left.

A fever overcame me within an hour. I wavered at the verge of passing out. The visions I was having were unworldly and my only consolence in those moments was to bite my own tongue. The immediate pain and sweet sensation of the damage I was doing to myself kept me breathing. Yet this too failed me.

A veil was drawn over my face. Finally, for it was with relief, the world fell away.

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Re: Kristina

Post by gkmoberg1 » Sat Jul 05, 2014 1:29 am

        • -----------Kristina----------
          .o oOo oOo 11 oOo oOo o.


My body had been carried outside and placed in a common field cart. I am not sure what the plans had been but a cloudburst postponed their next steps. It was there, on the straw the farmer’s cart, where I awoke and I started my new life. Soaking wet, I crawled and fell to the ground and from there made my way through the mud and away.

In the days that followed, the horror of my new self took hold. I discarded all I had once been and shook on my new shell. My looks were ruined. The scars from those filthy creatures were never to go away. Despite my age I appeared as a woman far older. Aches wracked me, even in my new form. These have never left me.

A vengeance I swore but the chances never came. My former ‘Master’ was gone. His horde of young boys scattered, best I could tell. Regarding the old woman who had been my instructor for those years, I still do not know.

The rain continued to fall. The boy stood for a moment at the end of the alleyway. I could see him assessing me one last time. I needed to get up and follow, but my body was still failing me. The wiskey was my undoing. All I could was watch. He stepped away and disappeared onto Norra Vällgaten. I swore I’d find him, get him, begin to collect on the wrong done to me.

        • .o oOo oOo ### oOo oOo o.

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Re: Kristina

Post by gkmoberg1 » Sun Jul 06, 2014 10:58 pm

That's the end. There is no more.

In looking at Elias' short reflection in the novel of the woman vampire he met once, this story is what I came up with. Surely there are many other settings and creatures we could come up with; this story is simply one. Maybe this story fits with you? Maybe not. Maybe you'd like to propose one?

For the several times I've read the novel I had not actually pictured _this_ story as being the opposite side of Elias' brief retelling. I don't think I had even spent more than a moment beginning to imagine what this woman must have looked like - the scene is so short. But then during a trip I was taking, I dug into it and this story is what I came up with. These events in Malmö are taking place in roughly the mid-1830s, the memories of her time at the Manor near Norrköping are from roughly the mid-1770s. Which means Elias' memory of this brief conversation, at the point when he recalls it in 1981 is approx 150 yrs in the past. Given the apparent rarity of creatures like Elias and Katrina, I decided to link their history - although neither can fully verify this during this brief encounter in Malmö, approx 60 yrs after their time 'together' in Norrköping.

My founding idea for Katrina was in pondering how the little scene that Elias describes could have happened. How did he encounter another in such manner that he was able to escape? And how would the encounter have started? The novel, other than by the ease that Haaken finds Elias in the basement, does not tell of any 'radar' ability. So, how would Elias have found this woman? Or, conversely, how would she have found him? I came to decide it had been by accident, and that Elias had both initiated and terminated the encounter on his own. Yet, give his small size, it would have been in a setting wherein he could somehow have the 'upper hand' in being to both initiate and terminate things, plus even have the bravery to feel confident in approaching the woman to begin with. And so I invited the entire scene wherein Elias is able to make a 'safe' approach and then manages a 'good enough' exit. The rest, of course, then was sheer invention.

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