New Beginning 1039

My desires, before becoming one of the undead, were simple: party every night, and violate a goddess for hours. I achieved the former easily in my house in the English countryside, but was not naked with a goddess until my summer solstice orgy of seventeen sixty-three.

I was carefree and aroused on that hot, breezy night. Nothing was going to stop me from bedding every woman I pleased. But all I wanted was one of the thirteen naked women—referred to as goddesses, and hired to manage my biggest party of the year—to choose me as her pet. They were prostitutes with a mysterious pimp whose face I never saw without a mask. He went by Vlad. A friend of a friend had recommended him. I would mail a letter requesting his services, and a crow would return the next day with his obliging reply on crisp paper. A trained crow was a strange and wonderful creature to have.

The party began in my massive, oval shaped gilded ballroom used mostly for drunken, dirty dancing. Nearly one thousand people wearing Venetian masks stood under crystal chandeliers ablaze with lit white candles. Curious cherubs, virile gods, and sensuous goddesses watched us from the fresco on the ceiling. Whenever I looked up, I scowled. What did they care? Why wouldn’t they join us.

That's when I broke out my hunting rifle.

I had it tucked down the leg of my modestly Satanic trousers in the hope of attracting goddess after goddess, but if I was going to be ignored I was left with no alternative. When I put on my costume it was an easy matter to slip the rifle down past my hip; not so the unusually acrobatic feat of taking it out again while surrounded by hundreds of cavorting harlots. The best I could do was to unzip my flies to reach for the trigger and aim the gun by raising a leg. When it went off, I nearly lost a shoe, but those first few shots did the trick.

Goddesses and wrinkled bankers scattered in a reverse tsunami of panic and entrails. I could barely contain my excitement, hopping beneath the chandeliers with the devil-may-care pluck of a mongrel pissing on the door of a church.

Then a voice cried out — a pained voice.

"Stop Sir, please stop right away."

From the squirt of blood, the shrieks of horror, a tiny girl appeared, teddy bear clutched to her Marilyn Manson T Shirt.

"Those Satanic trousers of yours would fetch a mint on Ebay, but if you keep bouncing around like that you'll split the crotch. What say you take them off and we post a bid right now? I'll take the first hundred quid and you can keep the rest. You can even borrow a spare pair of my Daddy's trousers for a tenner if you like, unless it's your preference to continue romping around this Bacchinalian revel in your underwear like the people dressed as Satyrs."

My leg de-cocked, my hip clicked, and my eyebrow shot up. At that moment I must have looked like I was selectively epileptic.

"Fine," I said, "all we need now is a monkey wrench."


Opening: CavalierdeNuit.....Continuation: Whirlochre