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

Part 13 - Torture

 When he was a child, he insisted to me that if I beat him, he would never scream. "Master, do not trade me," he'd told me, as a boy, "Flog me if you like." He was then, and always was very good at hiding his suffering, at not screaming under the rod. He had been taught as a child, before he came to me, that keeping his true feelings secret was a virtue to be praised, and he suffered in silence from a fear of being thrown away.

As he grew older, he became withdrawn. He would pick at himself sometimes, at night, at his skin. I wrapped his fingertips in white cloth so that he couldn't bite them, and wrapped his hair so that he couldn't pull it out. When he begin to pick at the rims of his ears, I began to slap him.

Why did I do it? What did I care? Sometimes I sit and think about it, and it worries the ones who care for me. I know it. Sometimes I sit and think about him as he was then, sitting on our bed, crying because I had struck him, and telling me that he could not bear it. He would tell me the things that a teenager says, of running away, and anger, but you will understand that a seventeen then was as good as grown, and certainly, he was grown by that age. I would like to think I thought him beyond my tutelage, though of course he was subject to my whims still, and loving of me, and hurt. And I hurt now over what I did, and have for many years, and I can sit for quite a long time, reliving it.

Sometimes, I would slap him reflexively, if I couldn't remember who he was. Yes. You saw it in his last years, what not taking blood does to us. Sometimes he would come into our bed, if he had been missing awhile, and say, "Atta," and I would blindly strike him, confused. And he would be virtuous, and say it didn't hurt him, and say that he loved me, and hold onto my shaking hand until I believed him. "It's me, Escha," he would say. "It's me, atta, it's Escha," and sigh. He would touch my forehead and under my chin, as if I were human like him, and ill in a way he could understand. Occasionally I would wake up, having fallen asleep on the floor in my corner, and rise to get into bed, and find that he had come home while I slept. And it was like that, that day.

He woke at the sound my voice, and turned over, and saw that I didn't know who he was, and he put his hands out, stretching his arms out on the thin mattress.

Without a word, I climbed him, head turned to the side, curious. I was aware that I was confused a lot, so knew that he might be someone known to me who I had forgotten. He smelled slightly sour, like unbaked bread, and of sweat, and horses, and something floral, a sachet of crushed flower petals tucked beneath his clothes earlier. I drew my hand through his hair, so light, bleached white-blond in the sunlight, but well cared for. When I moved my face past his neck he swallowed, and began to breathe deeply. The same sunlight had darkened his complexion to a honeyed color, freckling his shoulders, and I rested my head against his chest. Listening to his heartbeat, I knew him instantly, which relieved me, and brought over me a gentle calm. He pressed his welcome hand to my hair, his palm against my ear. I listened to his body's secret language, the heartbeat with each stroke's secret gasp.

"Somebody has beaten you without regard for your life," I hummed to him sadly, without parting my lips. "Malicious beating."

"Don't worry," he said. "You didn't do it." He breathed out, chest rising and falling under me. 

"Assured?"

"Some other," he said. He shook his head and gasped a little air, as if dizzied by any small sound or movement. 

"You are concussed." When had he grown older? I stroked the fine linen of his tunic, feeling his fine stomach beneath, the muscles in his taut abdomen. 

He said, "Tell me about how it was, because I can't remember," and he meant his childhood. 

A bruise is warm to the touch, and I could feel them beneath his tunic, the flushed skin. There were fingermarks around his neck, and when he opened his eyes, his left was bloodshot from a slap that had left a bruise on his cheekbone the size of a palm. "Oh, Escha," I said, "why do you let them hit you?"