Queen of Aces.

Below is a sample from a rather silly short story set in the Regency Period, which I've been writing recently.

‘… A man is nothing more than a man.’

Napoleon Bonaparte, 1816.    

The room was dark, dank and dusty, yet the smells of damp and dust were overpowered by the sickly sweet smell of opium fumes. A few rays of the midday sum escaped through the gaps in the faded velvet curtains to cast light over the wooden floor boards, stained rug and patched up sofas. In those beams of light, strands and spirals of smoke danced ever upwards.

            In one corner of the room a well dressed young man huddled on the floor with his eyes closed. A young lady who wore far more make up that she did clothing reclined on one of the sofas and stared into space.

            It had once been a grand room in a fine house, but it had become a home for the lost. It was a meeting place for the hopeless and the invisible and the forgotten… and all of this was agreeable to the young lady who had just walked in.

            She took her place on the empty sofa, put her little lump of opium in her long, curving clay pipe and lit it, adding her own fumes to the dense smoke that drifted across the room. She inhaled deeply and reclined further back into the padded leather of the sofa.

She hoped that she would see flying horses again.

Charles George James Spencer- Harvey Esq. rode away from the Sir Arthur Wellesley’s home with an even greater sense of urgency and self importance than he normally possessed. The Duke- Sir Arthur, Wellington, the greatest living Englishman; and therefore quite possibly the greatest man on earth- had given him - Charles George James Spencer- Harvey Esq. formally Captain Spencer- Harvey of the 14^th Dragoons, formally Knight of The Garter- a job.

And not just a little job. Not at all. Not another silly errand. No. Not in the slightest.

He had been charged to find…

The Greatest Spy To Have Ever Lived.

‘Faster, Harry, faster,’ Charles George James Spencer- Harvey Esq. urged his carriage driver.

Harry obeyed, and flogged the two white stallions which pulled his fine carriage. They sped away from the Dukes office, down several streets, over the Themes and along a few more streets until they reached the majestic mansion where The Greatest Spy To Ever Live was rumoured to live.

            Charles George James Spencer- Harvey Esq. leaped down from the carriage and knocked briskly on the door with the golden head of his cane. A few minutes later, the door was opened by an elderly butler, who gazed down his nose at him.

            After a few minutes of very awkward and confused conversation, Charles George James Spencer- Harvey Esq. learnt that The Greatest Spy To Have Ever Lived had not resided at that address for several months, and had moved several miles further up river, and that the butler had a shockingly low opinion of The Greatest Spy To Have Ever Lived and of himself- Charles George James Spencer- Harvey Esq.           

            There followed a longer and more rapid carriage ride to a modest house on the outskirts of Whitechapel.

            Once there Charles George James Spencer- Harvey Esq. was met by an other elderly butler who told him that The Greatest Spy To Have Ever Lived was not at home and was mostly likely to be found several miles to the west.

            To his astonishment this address turned out to be a large, but ill kept house near the docks. This shabby house had an equally shabby sign above the door which claimed that it was a ‘Parlour of Relaxation and Recreation.’

Charles George James Spencer- Harvey Esq. knocked cautiously on this door. It was opened a fraction and a very large man stared down on him.

‘Yes?’ the large man asked.

‘I am here on very important business, as a representative of The Duke of Wellington and His Majesties Government,’ Charles George James Spencer- Harvey Esq. said.

‘Of course you are, sir,’ the large man said as though addressing a child, ‘do come in sir’.

He entered and directed up a flight of dusty stairs. On the way up he wiped the sweat from his face and readjusted his long, powdered wig. He knocked on the door, waited for a few moments then pushed it open.

He saw three bodies in the smoky room. A young aristocrat who was clearly far from home; a lady who was almost certainly a prostitute; and a lady who may have been a prostitute in mourning.

Looking more closely at the third figure, he saw a petit girl with long dark hair plaited behind her back, who looked to be in her mid twenties. She wore a heavily corseted, ankle length black dress, which left her shoulders, neck, arms and a fashionable amount of cleavage exposed. A certain degree of modesty was preserved by a pair of black lace gloves. Her skin was of a deathly pallor, and yet radiated an inner vitality. A long, black jacket and a clay pipe lay discarded beside her.  

‘Madam?’ he greeted her

She did not stir.

“Madam!’ he ventured more loudly.

He was about to poke her with his cane when she burst into life. One of her delicate hands shot up and grabbed his neck, pulling him down, the other hand produced a cut throat razor from her jacket and held it to his throat.

‘You interrupted my flying ponies!’ she snarled at him.

The Winter Nights.

Brunhild from The Ring, by Arthur Rackham.

The Winter Nights are upon us.

Indeed, they have been upon us more a while now. From the Old Norse calender, The Winter nights begin in early October (are Oktoberfest/ Ale festival time) and last until Samhain (Halloween for you non Pagans). They are a time when the veil between the living and the dead, and the gateways between this and other worlds are at the thinnest. It is a time for magick, and communion with ancestors and spirits (and drinking lots of ale).

Thus far, in the mighty town of Kendal, I have heard of two UFO sightings and one ghost sighting...

"Day and night: one dream interprets another" Austin Osmond Spare

One of those ancient Chinese philosophers once dreamt that he was a butterfly. When he woke, he asked himself if he was a philosopher who had dreamt of being a butterfly or a butterfly that had dreamt that it has a philosopher.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge once wrote something along the lines off; 'what if you dreamt of finding a flower and holding that flower in your hand, and when you woke you still held that flower, and what then...'.

Do not entirely agree with the above three sentiments, but they are certainly worth considerable thought. 

"...to sleep, perchance to dream..." Shakespeare.

The above image was tattooed onto my arm by Emma at Aurora Tattoo a few moths ago, based on a drawing by Holly Payne. Seeing as I can think of nothing better to write about, I shall attempt to explain its significance.

It depicts a girls holding a scythe, and 'tis something of a tribute to Neil Gaimane's Death character. It seems reasonable to me that Death should be beautiful. Old age, and illness and fatal accidents are all terrible things, but Death itself is not. As on the tarot card, Death is a new beginning- a change. We know not what happens after Death; be it reincarnation, asendance to some other world, or the end of our material lives, but we know that it is a change. "The last great adventure", as Mr Pan tells us.

There are two Ancient Greek quotes which are rather good;

"And perhaps we are actually dead, for I once heard the wise men say that we are now dead, and that our body is a tomb." Plato.

"We live the death of the immortals, they live ours." Heraclitus.

The point is that death is not finite, it is not a horror to be feared. That is why Death wears her ankh and her spiral (eternal coil) eye liner.

Death is beautiful, yet it is not to be desired above all other things. Let no one say that this writer encourages suicide- even if his body be marked by death. Quite the opposite. 

When death is not feared, life can be lived more thoroughly. 'Tis a curse of this materialist age that we fear death so. We ought to know what the Vikings and the Samurai knew, that when we loose the fear of death, we gain a great deal from life.

The Will To Die

Read Moby Dick recently, t'is a fantastic book which I would reccomend to anyone. One thing, however, which particully struck me was the way in which it illustrated The Will To Die.

Schopenenhauer stated that every one has a Will To Die, an impulse which drives them towards death. From a Jungian or Hermetic outlook, it is logical that every person should have a Will To Die to counter balance the Will to Live. Normally it is unconscious most of the time, and 'tis the think which drives people towards dangerous sports, fighting and such like. In a suicidal person, the Will To Die has become stronger than the Will To Live. 'Tis the brave person, with the strongest Will to Live, who is most willing to die for a greater good.

In Moby Dick, Ahabs crew of tourmented and unbalanced men are driven to the sea by their Will To Die, and in hunting the White Whale, they seek their own death.





  

Vampye: Hunting The Moon.

Just finishing writing my 'Vampyre: Hunting The Moon' novella. It describes the lives and deaths of several vapyres, their daily struggles and century spanning romances. It explores morality and death, amorality and reincarnation.

Don't wish to give the plot away, but have included a small sample below, from a flash back to the early twentieth century, during the later half of the story. In this extract, Charlotte is introducing Victoria to type of life which she was born for. This gives a the reader a fair ideas of the type of Vampyres which the story is about (no supernatural silliness, these vampyres are psychotic chaps who happen to like blood rather more than they like day light), and the sort of debauchery they get up...  

 “There were initiation rites, most of which you would find immoral and horrific, but which were mostly very enjoyable. I became a Godi, a Priestess of Freya, but I became something more. My teacher knew it, she said that nothing of the like had happened since her grandmother’s time, and she accepted my authority. The blood lust fell upon me, as did the night love, and the sure and curtain knowledge that I would never truly die until the Ragnarok, and that even after that, I would rise again.

            “I became what I am now. I believed that The Lady had made me that way, so that I could slay Her enemies, and so that I would always remember and honour Her. I have died many times since then, but I have not forgotten Her, I have not changed. I am what you are- a Vampyre.”

            “A vampire? You are telling me that we are vampires?”

            Charlotte stubbed out the end of her cigarette and finished drinking her mead.

            “Yes. We are the Daughters of The Night. The creatures which men call vampires.”

            “I find that hard to believe.”

            “I am sure that you do, but you find it harder to ignore. You are beginning to remember.”

            “Yes…”

            “Come with me, Miss Victoria,” Charlotte stood and took her hand, “I shall show you something beautiful.”

            They steeped out of Lady Charlotte’s chauffeur driven Rolls Royce into a dingy street of narrow building in the East End of London. The night was dark, and the smog thick.

            “Meet us back here in two hours, please,” Charlotte told her chauffeur.

            “Yes m’lady.”

             Charlotte led Victoria along the street, then down a cobbled ally between dilapidated buildings until they reached a door with peeling red paint.

            Charlotte knocked on the door three times sharply, paused, then two more times.

            They waited for a few moments.

“Who is it?” a girl’s voice asked from behind the door.

“Charlotte.”

They heard a bolt slide and a key turn, then the door opened.

A tall, slender young lady stood in the door way. Her large green eyes were unusually bright, and her red hair hung below her tiny waist. She wore a gentleman’s smoking jacket as though it were a dressing gown, and had no shoes on her stockinged feet. She looked inquisitively at Charlotte, then Victoria, then back to Charlotte.

“The usual, Charlotte?” the girl asked.

“No thank you, Violet, my friend shill be wanting something special tonight.”

“Come this way,” the girl said.

Victoria followed them up steep narrow stairs with a thread bare carpet. The rational part of her mind told her that the situation was very odd, the girl was clearly of the lowest classes and that Charlotte was being very silly in taking her to this horrible place. Yet some animal instinct, some mad hunger, drove her on. She found herself in a small, dim room with a low ceiling, a hookah pipe stood in one corner and the rest of the room was furnished entirely with an assortment of rugs and cushions.

The girl, who looked to be the same age as Victoria, reclined by the pipe, and Charlotte sat at the other end of the room on a pile of cushions. Victoria sat beside Charlotte, her back against the wall.

The girl undid her smoking jacket to reveile corset, briefs, stockings and a great deal of white flesh. Victoria could not help noticing how long and pale the girl’s neck was. Taking a candle, the girl lit the hookah, and puffed on it, filing the room with sweet smoke. She then offered the pipe to Charlotte, who inhaled deeply from it and offered it to Victoria, who declined.

“What’s it to be?” the girl asked sleepily.

“My friend has not done this before, I shall let her go first,” Charlotte said.

The girl looked at Victoria and smiled sweetly, then beckoned her over with her little finger.

Victoria had no idea what was expected of her, but a dreadful yearning was building inside her.

“Go…” Charlotte said, softly but firmly.

Victoria did not respond, the girl took her other hand and placed it on her thigh, leaving Victoria’s hand on her thigh; she then held Victoria’s head gently and faced it towards her. Victoria looked at the beautiful face inches from her own, smiling at her and gazing with emerald eyes into her own. She closed her eyes, and a moment later she felt soft lips on her own, and then a delicate tongue slide into her mouth.

Instinct took command of reason.

Charlotte lit a cigarette and watched as they kissed and ran slender hands over each others bodies.

Victoria’s lips found the girl’s neck. The skin was unbelievably smooth and the taste and sent irresistibly sweet.

The girl lay back, so that Victoria lay on top of her. Victoria held one of the girl’s hands in each of her own.

Then she bit.

The girl screamed as Victoria bit deep into her neck, fastening her jaws around her jugular. Then the scream turned to a sickly gargling and chocking as Victoria ripped her throat out. Still holding her hands, Victoria began to drink from her bleeding neck.

Vampyres

Vampyre Eyes.

Stare defiantly at the day,

Look wistfully at the night,

And curse The Hand of God,

Which shows Itself in light,

Sit comfortably on the tomb,

Dreaming of long gone days,

Of endless, endless nights

Spent in hellish ways,

See beauty in a slender neck,

And lust for joy in blood,

Taste the grave in every bite,

Which would steal you if it could.

Wrote this poem last week, whilst writing my novel 'Vampyre: Hunting The Moon.' Have decided to make that more of a novella than a novel, think a dramatic ending would be better than dragging the thing out. Ought to have it finished in a few weeks, then shall put some highlights on this blog whilst trying to get it published.

Have found it odd how popular the subject of the undead blood drinkers has become in the last year or so, what with all those books and films and television programs. Vampyres have always had a part in folklore, but they really seem to be quite the thing at present.

Partly this is because they are real, and people are aware of, and fascinated by, it to one extent or another. Not necessarily the stake dodging, bat transformers; but the 'blood sucking' bosses and landlords and the people who are just rather keen on biting a bit of neck and drinking a little blood (and those are quite common).

But the Vampyre also represents something. In the Jungian framework, the Vampyre is The Shadow; the part of ourselves which we repress because it is not socially acceptable. But 'tis more than that, because the Ego hates The Shadow, but we adore the vampyre. The vampyre appeals to us because of its wildness, 'tis darkness and freedom.

The vampyre is a predator, whilst we are conditioned to be herd animals.
The vampyre appeals to our desire to be wild, and beyond that it is forever young and it lives for ever more. It satisfies our desires, and our subconscious knowledge that our souls too shall live forever.

Image by Victoria Frances, a girl who knows how to paint girls.