The Story of the Vampire, L (Completed | Featured )

Part 6 - A Red Virgin

I do not have much sensibility for history. I'm not much for facts, figures. There are others, I'm sure, who have offered you perspective. I know quite a lot of things, but I'm not one to construct a grand historical narrative, or paint you a picture. I haven't read anything written for your folio, and only know some of what Leechtin said because he confessed it all to the little master in exchange for one kiss. 

All my life, my understanding of the times has come from my understanding of people. All of the politicians and wars blend together after some time. I have on occasion been caught in a situation unaware that another situation had ended. But if I think of the people I have known, it is easier to understand what has happened, and where, and when, and why. I like the times I live in now, and I enjoy inhabiting the little world that I see. It's easier to focus on a small section of the world for me, than to try to contemplate all the places I've been, and everything that has happened that I haven't seen. If I tried to hold it all, like some do just fine, I think I'd go nuts.

If I want to know more about the human spirit, I like to read poetry sometimes. I like poetry a lot. But I suppose that is personal and irrelevant. We are talking about Laurent. Perhaps later, I can talk about what he liked to read. I taught him how. Though he had such a difficult time learning his letters, he always did like to listen to stories.

After the banquet, Vivacio returned within two weeks, as or more vicious than before. He had two methods then, either monitoring us very closely or abandoning his duty completely. Both methods meant random thrashings for all of us, and occasional bizarre, cruel punishment that suited his whims alone and always outsized to the offense. However, variety and unpredictability in punishment certainly played a role in training then. One can anticipate and be mentally prepared for a thrashing. One can even decide that a thrashing is worth the offense at times, and decide to offend. If a particular punishment is not guaranteed, and not even guaranteed to match the degree of the error, there is no rebellion. It simply makes reasoning about one's position impossible. To be able to reason is a freedom that some do not realize. What will I do today? Stand up for eight hours doing nothing for holding my brother's hand. Receive a flat-handed slap for eating my lunch too fast. Have my face submerged under water for a minute for getting a sunburn. The children began to take on a hollow look, even Escha, especially after Vivacio began refusing to let Escha wash himself in an effort to cure the child of perceived vanity.

It was around this time that Cassius became quiet. He became preoccupied with not making a sound. I regret deeply, to this day, not having the time or awareness to talk to him. I thought, wrongly, that because he was older, he could sort himself out without a friend. That was wrong.

There was no mention of banquets. Of parties. We watched the season go in and go out, one so usually packed with such occasions, without a single guest or invitation. Every once in awhile, one or more of us would go to serve as staff at an acquaintance's house. Such times were always an exciting event, that we might see how other slaves lived and compare our fortunes, or have a glimpse at our possible fates. It never happened. More than that was the absence of the master, and the silence this absence produced. Vasvius, also, seemed to have vanished, except that we often heard him whispering to Vivacio in the night. When Aulus, bold, checked Vasvius's room during the daytime, no one was there. But he swore to us, through the window he had seen a shadow in the shape of a man, and not the shadow that I knew.

So one day in early fall found me standing beneath a tall, wide fig tree, hissing up at the branches. "Escha," I hissed. "You'll want to come out of the bleeding tree this instant."

"No," he shouted, as he had been shouting all day. Just "No!" to everything. Over the past few months he had been becoming more and more agitated and stubborn, and the more we tried to talk to him about it the worse he got. We couldn't get a single thing out of him about what his bloody problem was.