The Leech

It is my four hundredth and fortieth year upon this Earth, and I can no longer recognize my own face. I know it in essence. I have seen the portraits, done in heavy oils, gnawed by rodents: a slanted brow, eyes narrowed to the dark gleam of an ink-dipped quill, nose curving like an osprey. No matter. The paintings of the regal man I once could have recognized are the spectre of a memory. The creatures that eat away at the crumbling paint are a grotesque parody of the worms that heaved their slippery coils across my undead flesh.

Perhaps the fourth turn of a century has changed me in ways that the bubbling venom of the leech’s curse could never have. I sit sometimes, amid the gossamer thread of cobwebs, strewn like frost, that coat these stone walls. I dream, with fantastical, wild notions about what I may look like. Possibly I am transfigured into a cracked and wrinkled nightmare, glittering feline eyes peeking out from puckered flesh streaked with bile’s yellow brushstrokes. Maybe my features have been warped into a lupine mask, flesh tight against my skull, eyes burning lamplights. And perhaps there is no change, and the haughty gaze of that man, once buried in in a coffin whose lid bears the marks of claws rending the rotten wood from the inside, has not moved. Immutable. Alabaster flesh turning aside the scythe of Father Time as a coat of mail would a dagger. I would not know. 

  

All I can do is search the expanse of my pearlescent skin, run my fingers clumsily to feel the bridge of a nose, the curve of an eye-socket, the quivering softness of lips. Awkwardly trying to construct one whole image like a blind man clutching at the walls of a cave, palms fumbling along shards of stone. The mirror that sits above my bedroom table is as much a prop as the mattress itself. Standing before it I see an empty room, a man erased. The shadow of silhouette flickers on the carpet, begging to be heard, answered only by an empty glass.  

In the beginning I welcomed it.                                                                                 

After years of glutting myself on the living, it finally struck me….so much time to learn, better myself. I could hone my already prodigious capabilities to new lengths, be unrivalled among men in both body and mind. Think, what lengths the immortal could rise to, when unshackled from the limitations of finite life! Why, he could soar to the heights of da Vinci and Botticelli, compose symphonies to shame Handel and Vivaldi, trample on the works of Shakespeare and Marlowe, achieve feats of natural philosophy that would consign Albert Magnus to utter mediocrity! Yet only once I strove for perfection, did I truly realize what it meant to surrender one’s soul.                                                

The paintings I produced were the scribbles of a child, ham-fisted smears of colour devoid of rhyme or reason. In an agony of confusion, I fought to breathe life into the canvas, a ludicrous task for one undead. Howling, raging, tearing at my flesh I thrashed back and forth, racking my mind to produce something, anything, but these slender fingers could only clutch the paintbrush in the fist of an ape. The gift of creation had been spirited away under my nose even as I gloated, unaware that I would never reach the true immortality of men who could feel.

 Heaps of parchment filled the castle halls in a blizzard, ripped by savage paws that could only throttle a quill in impotent frustration, spotting the paper with tears of ink. I procured a violin and set it on the rack to screech and whine, until I left its gutted carcass to collect dust, and the creatures of the night made no music, no music at all.

No passion could fill this void. My brushes with love were reduced to the palest of imitations, as close to romance as the efforts of an artist gone decades without practice would be to the masterworks of his youth. A sweet creature would catch my eye, my fingers running over her skin, but to grip and pierce rather than caress. My hunger would be of an uglier kind than any spark of lust, teeth finding the neck not to nibble but to bite, clasping the body close to feel the heart pumping, quickening in fear. Her flesh draining where once it would have flushed with the same blood gushing in bitter streams down my throat. The quivering gasps of pleasure were now the jerking frenzy of a body in its death throes. As for a wife, I only ever took one, forgetting, in an instant of desperation, the nature of my curse, how brief she was compared to mine.                               

She stood before me. I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, she was gone, powdered bone left to be swept by the wind and carried away.                          

Four hundred years and more I count, though why I bother I could not truly say. It keeps the mind fresh, staves away the rot blossoming in my head. Cancerous petals bloom and mould has snuck its way between the cobbles of my abode. Mildew is adequate perfume for the days that eke their way forward with arthritic grace. The tapestries hang heavy with dust, and the grime has claimed the stained-glass windows, reduced to trinkets deprived of the sunlight that once made them gems.

My God I miss the sunlight! The torments I would endure to see my halls dappled in jade and ruby, the blood I would spill, If I had any to give, for an evening watching the surface of a lake in the summertime, strewn with winking diamonds. A kingdom, my kingdom for the warmth of a June morning on my face!                 

The urge, macabre, insane, often springs on me, seizes me with such force I begin to shake and grow weak. The prospect of finality, once incomprehensibly daunting, is now one I envy with the flaccid ruin I call a heart.                            

I yearn to pluck away at the thick curtains that shield my windows and let the burning tide flood inside in streams of molten gold. 

Oh, flay me alive with your fiery whips, I care not! The tongues of Hell cannot be worse than an eternity clothed in midnight!     

I would cling to memory for salvation but can only pounce at half-remembered lives, too many for one man, a dozen faces to go with a hundred names. Sometimes I am rooted to the spot as if speared by lightning: the sound of hooves and the bellowing of Boyars flourishing banners wet and heavy with gore, the cacophony of London and the stench of a river turned cesspit. Ocean spray, a ship’s rudder groaning, the scream of a dull-eyed peasant ripped open in a forest clearing, a madman with zealot’s eyes lapping blood from a bleached floor……can I really call these fragments my own?                                                                       

Here I sit, and time has passed me by like a carriage overtaking a poor man by the side of road, leaving him with snatches of laughter and good cheer. The glimpse of a true life he will vainly chase as a fool dances with his shadow, always one step behind.

What existence for a man is this? Yes, the power, the elegance, the beauty of gliding through the night, shadows chased away by crimson eyes that see every quiver of a leaf, every twitch of fur on a rabbit’s hide, it is intoxicating at first. I remember the deranged glee of freedom from the mortal coil, the joy, terrifying, electric, of jeering in the face of God, my very existence the ultimate affront to His will, yet agonizing by His design.       

Now the sneer fades from my lips. I scamper from the oncoming dawn, night after night, to curl in a cellar with no company save a hunger that can never be abated roiling in my stomach. The fine silks, the lace and velvet and furs that swaddled me have long-since rotted away. The candles sit cold in puddles of hard wax, for what use is light for eyes that see in darkness? My court is one of shadows, and when I dine my banquets become masques for the rats and the spiders.                                                                                               

The clustered hovels scattered below my keep have grown into towns. Hovering in the empty sky, the moonlight casts me in silver. Lamplight from a hundred houses is the glare of torches in the hands of the mob. I am not welcome here. I can hear the sounds, a thousand lungs drawing breath, the laughter, the whispers, the sobs. If I close my eyes, for an instant, long enough, I can pretend that giggles burst from my lips, that it is my salted tears that stain barren cheeks, that the throb of life comes from within my breast and not theirs.               

Once, such delusions would not have troubled me. Once, I held men in my thrall, but the sands of time slip ever onwards, and the monster that hides in the castle becomes just that: a monster, banished to the realm of the storybook and the tall tale. The whispered memory of a thing, nightmare of bared fangs and billowing cloaks, a terror for children dispelled by pulling a blanket over a sleeping head.               

Pure cowardice keeps me as I am. Even centuries later, for all my wailing, the thought of hearing the thud of the gravedigger’s soil on my casket terrifies me. Consigned to a Hell of my own devising, I flee from the Hell I know awaits me if I stride into the daytime. White flesh, a man made of candlewax…would I melt, or simply crumble?           

I twitch the curtain aside, ever so slightly. Across the pine-dappled hills, the orange glow of morning begins to creep forward. Touched momentarily, the grass becomes emerald. I had almost forgotten grass.                                                                                                  

I let my hand fall. The curtain being drawn is the sound of a coffin slamming shut.           

It is my four hundred and fortieth year on this earth.

Inspired by the work of Bram Stoker

The End