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anncanta · 3 years

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Atrium

Well, the first shock is gone, and I return to the routine. I thought a lot if I should post some kind of 'entertaining' content now. And I decided: yes, I should.

We are fighting for life. We are fighting for freedom. We are fighting for love. So I need to keep living and do what I know how best. To tell the stories.

Glory to Ukraine!

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Atrium

Fandom: Dracula (2020)

Characters: Count Dracula, Agatha Van Helsing

Relationship: Dracula/Agatha Van Helsing

Rating: Explicit

Atrium – originally the central part of the ancient Roman and ancient Italian dwellings (domus), which was an internal courtyard of light, from where there were exits to all other rooms. In early Christian basilicas, an atrium is also called a rectangular courtyard in front of the entrance to the temple, surrounded by a covered gallery.

@hopipollahorror @ravenathantum @dragatha @ladyhaley28

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The dream mingled with reality like blue ink with water. Dracula rolled onto his side, shrugged his shoulders, opened his eyes. The bright spring sun shone through the bedroom windows. Sitting on the bed, Dracula looked at it narrowly for a while. It had been five years since he found out that the sun could not harm him, but still every day that golden glow, its first touch in the early morning seemed like a miracle.

In 1897, having managed to escape from the burning Demeter, Dracula did not expect that his sleep under water would last longer than a week. Maybe two. So when he climbed out of the box and walked ashore, reached the nearest town, and saw shops with strange clothes, passing through the streets (brightly lit in the dead of night) cars that in the nineteenth century could only be known from science fiction books, he understood that slept for at least half a century. But it turned out – it was more.

In this new world, everything was bright, spectacular, ardent and fast. Everything, in general, was as he liked. Dracula figured out pretty soon how to get food without being caught – discos and Tinder helped, and when, after one of the nightly adventures, he was nevertheless captured by the police, he remembered the law office that had worked for his family for many years. A new company representative, Frank Renfield, got Dracula out of the police station in fifteen minutes, and in general, turned out to be a godsend.

Renfield was the one who suggested to him that, in fact, in the twenty-first century, when literally everything, including food, is brought to your house, you do not need to constantly hunt, much less bite your prey to death. With the help of a newly created gasket company, Renfield provided Dracula with free access to the blood donation fund, and from that time on, the refrigerator in Dracula's London apartment was always full.

Dracula still hunted but – like most modern hunters – for the sake of sport. It was almost as much fun as hunting for food. Most often, politicians, jaded aristocrats or teenagers, who at all times were fond of men in black cloaks and were distinguished by violent imagination, became his victims. For such people, it was not even necessary to invent dreams too much: they coped very well on their own.

It didn't work out well with that girl, Lucy Westenra. Dracula met her at a club in the first few months after his awakening. He was hungry, confused, slightly annoyed, and Lucy was greedy for impressions and deafeningly young. Dracula did not like to remember how he drank the girl for a month and then tried to convert. He could not know that the Westenra family had been cremating their dead for decades. When Lucy, having escaped from the furnace, came to him, burned and ready for eternal love, Dracula was not against it at all. But a look in the mirror destroyed the idyll and almost drove the unfortunate Lucy crazy. Dracula killed her without waiting for a request, and since then he went to parties and discos well-fed.

Dracula got out of bed and stood for several minutes, basking in the sunbeam. His life in the new time was full, varied, he had everything he could wish for.

And yet he was bored.

He did not immediately realize this, he did not immediately admit even to himself that the nights and days that flashed by did not leave a trace in him, they were erased from his memory, like those first imprints in the sand that stretched behind him on the seashore. Like the ashes that scattered Lucy Westenra. Like memories of old battles.

He learned and tamed London, and a few years later he went to Paris, traveled through Europe and Asia, and visited America. He went on foot to the Himalayas, learned to play the lute in Italy, rode jeeps in Africa, crossed the entire continent with caravans. He. Was. Bored.

Renfield did his best to amuse him. Looking at his efforts, Dracula could hardly restrain himself from joking how lucky it would be to have such a devoted servant, ready to almost give his blood to the owner, too literal a joke. Dracula was angry at the new world. Well, what a time – complete bad taste!

Going down to the dining room, Dracula habitually stalked into the kitchen, took a bag of fresh blood from the refrigerator, splashed it into a glass, drank it and grimaced.

American. Quincy Morris, twenty-seven, single, runs a farm in Texas. Dreams of living in London. Confuses the words ‘affect’ and ‘effect’. Backslapper.

Dracula returned to the dining room and turned on his laptop. Opened the internet, ignored the news feeds. The phone next to the computer beeped two messages from Renfield. Having lazily looked at them, Dracula once again kissed the glass of blood and began to leaf through booklets advertising new travels. Frank left the booklets a week ago, apparently hoping to please the ‘dark lord’. Dracula chuckled at the absurd treatment from which for many months he could not wean Renfield, and then his eyes fell on the cover of one of the brochures.

‘New extreme entertainment for those who can afford it,’ the bright inscription on the brochure said.

Dracula chuckled sceptically and turned the page.

‘Space tourism – unforgettable, extravagant, bold!’

‘Become a discoverer of a new world!’

‘Touch the stars!’

‘Exclusive unique tour!’

‘Just now!’

Solaris.

***

Renfield was delighted with his idea. After a conversation with a lawyer, it turned out that the booklet about Solaris was among the others by accident – in search of the best for the dark lord, Renfield went to tourist exhibitions, looking at colourful stands and collecting advertising brochures, and probably took this one from the agent without looking.

Dracula was never particularly interested in space, so he did not pay attention to the breakthrough in this area that occurred a few years earlier. According to Renfield, it appeared that expeditions and projects to study not only the solar system but also distant galaxies were not new for a long time. Especially after the technology of hyperjumps was discovered at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Renfield did not go into details, but if Dracula understood correctly, it allowed covering huge distances in literally days or hours.

The industry was developing, the galaxy was rapidly growing into a network of industrial and transit, potentially – trade routes. Most of the industrial production has moved to alien bases.

The first expedition – the so-called Ravintzer project – went to Solaris in 2023. A few months later, it was decided to create a research station on the planet. For about four years, a stormy life was in full swing on it, but gradually the activity of scientists subsided.

‘Now the Solaris station is doing routine work to monitor the local plasma ocean,’ Renfield said, laying out on the table in front of Dracula photographs of a golden sea stretching to the horizon under an earthly blue sky. ‘The project is actually forgotten. Two enthusiasts remained at the station. I think, paradoxically, that was what attracted the organizers of the tour.’

‘An opportunity to capitalize on someone else’s stupidity,’ Dracula nodded. ‘All the infrastructure is ready,’ rummaging through the photographs, he found among them the one depicting the interweaving of futuristic corridors. He chuckled, ‘One might say, a hotel among the stars. It remains to get a license – or talk to whom you need – and earn money on satiated moneybags.’

‘Moneybags don’t seem to be in a hurry to get there,’ said Renfield, embarrassed. ‘But yes, dark lord, you are right, there are questions about their license. Last year, it seems they were even sued... It seems that the first client who bought the tour was dissatisfied with it.’ Renfield consulted his notes. ‘He claimed that he almost died of boredom, I quote, staring at this ocean of theirs.’

Dracula's gaze returned to photographs of golden waves spilling glittering light. Renfield's report, which he sent to Dracula by mail, collected all the data worthy of attention about Solaris and the ocean. And none of it even came close to describing what Dracula was seeing now.

‘I want to go there, Frank,’ he said. ‘Take care of the formalities.’

***

The station was cold and deserted. Dracula was not afraid of the cold and generally assumed that this place, in which neither NASA nor the cunning tour operator was in a hurry to invest, would not be too comfortable. Still, he was surprised at how bleak and lifeless the metal-plated corridors were.

After getting out of the single-seat shuttle, in which he spent five hours, Dracula left the docking airlock and, without taking off his hypersuit, moved further up the stairs leading somewhere up. As far as he remembered from the materials obtained by Renfield (the firm was in no hurry to share the plans for the station), there should have been a level of technical staff behind it. They should have been informed, Dracula thought as he walked down the narrow passageway, shimmering in silver in the fluorescent light.

After a few meters, the passage widened and sharply turned to the right, revealing a chain of doors of the same type. Dracula moved along it, examining the doors and cabin numbers.

If they were cabins. However, judging by the plan… Suddenly from the far end of the corridor, there was a deafening roar, screams, and the clinking of glass. Frowning, Dracula quickened his pace.

The sounds came from the fourth cabin. Forgetting about the touch bell on the control panel, Dracula knocked on the door.

For some time nothing happened inside, then the roar was repeated, and a crunch was heard – as if someone was trudging through large fragments with difficulty. After that – a rustle, a quiet curse, and the doors parted.

A man appeared in the resulting opening, dressed in wrinkled jeans and a not-too-fresh t-shirt. He was unshaven and had a kind of haunted look. The man seemed to be in his sixties, perhaps a little younger.

For a couple of moments, the man silently stared at Dracula, as if trying to remember why he left the cabin. Then he shook his head and stepped over the threshold. The automatic doors closed behind him. Before the doors were fully closed, Dracula caught a glimpse of a silhouette behind them, lean and short, like it belonged to a child. Dracula frowned.

‘Who are you?’ the man asked. His voice, more mournful than menacing, sounded weary and hoarse. ‘To whom –’ he stammered, coughing. ‘To whom did you come?’

‘I am Count Dracula,’ Dracula answered, glancing at the strange interlocutor with an incredulous look. ‘And I would like to know where I can report about your disgusting service.’

‘About the service?’ The man furrowed his brow in disbelief. ‘So you don't –’

‘Listen,’ Dracula began to lose patience. ‘I flew here for a week. Four hyperjumps and three starships, plus this shuttle that still makes me sick. For my money, I expected that I would at least be greeted kindly.’

The man's face slowly cleared up.

‘Ah,’ he drawled. ‘So you are a tourist.’ Sharp relief rippled through his entire body.

‘You should have received a message,’ Dracula said coldly. ‘And take the cargo.’

Three weeks before Dracula left for Solaris, Renfield sent two boxes of Transylvanian soil and a year's supply of donated blood by tech shuttle.

‘A cargo... yes, of course,’ the man said as if waking up. ‘My name is Gordon Snout,’ he suddenly added, looking straight at Dracula. ‘I'm a cybernetician and a local... local signalman.’

Dracula nodded briefly, shaking Snout's hand.

Something about all this was wrong.

‘Mr. Snout,’ Dracula said, turning his gaze to the door. ‘How many other people besides you are at the station?’

‘Just me and Sartorius. Victor Sartorius,’ Snout replied quickly.

‘And why –’

From behind the door, there was another roar and thumps, as if someone was throwing a large ball at the wall. Snout turned pale and licked his dry lips.

The noise at the door intensified.

‘Please... Please go away,’ Snout begged. His voice thinned, brittle, like parchment, translucent through.

Dracula completely stopped liking it.

‘How can I find Sartorius?’ he asked. Maybe that one is more adequate, thought Dracula.

Snout licked his lips again and looked at Dracula fearfully.

‘Further along the corridor, the cabin number ten,’ apparently judging that it was not worth arguing, he answered quietly. He hesitated and said, just as hoarsely and quickly, ‘You... you are a tourist, I understand. You don't know anything. And you can't know. Settle in and… But as soon as…’ Snout ruffled his hair and absentmindedly ran his hand over the door behind him. ‘If you… Whatever you see… Don't be surprised. And don't trust anything.’

Dracula raised an eyebrow.

‘If someone shows up… If… guests come to you,’ Snout was obviously struggling to find his words. ‘Not me and Sartorius. Do not be surprised. And don't trust... them.’

From the other side, a crystal vase flew into the door. Dracula had one, he knew how they broke. Snout leaned his palm against the door, as if afraid of falling.

‘You will understand,’ already turning around, Dracula heard his voice behind him. ‘Believe me, you will understand everything. Later. But I can't tell you.’

Cursing silently, Dracula moved towards cabin number ten.

The door was just as featureless, indistinguishable from the others. The warm light gave them a beige hue.

This time Dracula touched the bell on the panel. He listened. Quiet. The call was short, – unpleasant high trill. Silence followed the sound, and footsteps, light and slow. It was as if someone had crept in from the other side and was waiting – in the hope that the caller would leave. A muffled fuss was heard from behind the door, then a woman's laughter, singing, recitative in a thick bass. Dracula called again, stronger and more insistently.

The right side of the door lit up and a screen appeared on it. A man's face with three-day stubble and sunken eyes looked at Dracula from the screen. The light falling from somewhere to the left bleached the short-cropped greyish hair, making the head look like a bare skull. A white faded robe completed the picture.

Everyone's gone crazy, Dracula thought. And asked aloud:

‘Mr. Sartorius?’

‘Doctor,’ the scientist answered hoarsely. ‘What do I owe?’

‘Do you know who I am?’ Dracula stated.

‘Well, of course,’ Sartorius shrugged his shoulders. He made a pause. ‘Now they send tourists.’

Too bitter for a disparaging remark, Dracula thought, and too angrily for ridicule. What's happening at this station?

He felt his body begin to itch under the suit, which was not designed to be worn outside the shuttle. The latter – in essence, just a hibernation capsule, was a single whole with the suit. During the flight, the passenger, dressed in this suit, made of a material like ultra-thin latex, floated in the nutrient fluid that filled the capsule. Without contact with it, the suit, drying out, unpleasantly stuck to the skin.

Dracula terribly wanted to take a shower.

‘Mr. Sartorius,’ he said, ‘doctor. I don’t know what you are hiding from me and why you didn’t bother to meet me. But for the next six months, we are... neighbours. So I advise you –’

‘There are several vacant cabins down the level,’ Sartorius interrupted quietly. ‘You will be… comfortable there.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Maybe. Sorry, I have to go,’ he added, and the screen went black.

Feeling the rivet of the collar around his neck, Dracula unbuttoned it as far as he could and, turning around, went back to the stairs.

The cabins on the lower level were unnumbered. Instead, the doors were adorned with off-screen signs. Once upon a time, the cabins must have been occupied by scientists who did not need laboratories and chemical reagent kits for their work. Historians, philosophers, solarists – theorists.

Dracula selected the cabin second from the right, tapped the standard code on the door. Entering, he finally took off his pestered suit and, having taken a shower with pleasure, lay down on a wide pull-out bed. He sent a message to Snout on the internal telephone, indicating where to move his things, and after a few minutes of absently watching the golden glow that penetrated the portholes, he closed his eyes.

***

The dream mingled with reality like blue ink with water. Dracula sat up in bed.

She sat in a chair opposite the window, illuminated from behind by the amber-yellow Solaris light. She was dressed in a monastic habit, hands folded in her lap. The veil was absent, dark red hair spilt over her shoulders.

He stared at her silently, unsure whether he was awake or still asleep.

She got up and walked over to the bed and sank down on the edge. The Solaris sun had left her hair and now only reached the bottom of it. Dracula reached out and touched them. The ends of her hair straightened out, driven by static electricity.

Agatha looked at him with a slight smile – as then, in the very first dream, in the niche of the wine cellar. She smiled cheerfully and with affectionate anticipation.

What's happening?

Drowsiness left Dracula so abruptly that he was surprised he didn't jump on the spot. All the objects in the cabin became clear and real, sharp to the point of pain. Dracula looked at Agatha, who was still staring at him.

‘Agatha?’ he called cautiously.

She shuddered as if she had woken up. She stared at him, at her own hands, at the furnishings of the room. Slowly said:

‘Count Dracula.’

Silence fell again. As if none of them was able to express the strange feeling that united them.

Agatha straightened up, frowned, as if trying to shake off her drowsiness, looked around again.

‘Where are we?’ she demanded. ‘On the Demeter ?’ She stopped. ‘Are you… are you still alive? Did I fail?..’

She bit her lip, thinking hard. Dracula watched her, not answering, not moving, – also trying to figure out what she remembered.

‘I blew up the ship,’ Agatha said. ‘You grabbed me…’ then her face contorted, and she began to cry. ‘Why can't I remember what happened next?’ she asked through tears.

Dracula reached out to her.

‘It's all right, Agatha,’ Dracula whispered. ‘It's all right,’ he repeated, pressing her against him and ruffling her long hair.

***

‘You fool me again!’

‘Agatha, I swear, I`m not.’

‘As if you have anything to swear by!’ Agatha, nervously pacing the cabin, stopped and looked at Dracula. ‘How do you prove that now is the twenty-first century?’ seeing that he wasn't trying to argue, she asked.

Instead of answering, Dracula got up from the bed, left the bedroom and immediately returned with a small box in his hands. Putting the box on the glass coffee table in front of Agatha, Dracula took the glass and slipped it into the small indentation at the front of the box. Then he pressed the button, and the box buzzed. When the buzzing stopped, Dracula pulled out a glass and handed it to Agatha.

Agatha carefully took the glass and sniffed.

‘Coffee. Coffee with cream,’ she said. ‘Did you cook it without a kitchen? No fire, no stove?’

Dracula sat down in a chair at the table.

‘The kitchen is over there.’ He nodded in the direction from which he had brought the box. ‘And everything is the same there. You can go and check for yourself.’

Frowning, Agatha raised the glass to her nose again.

‘Smells delicious,’ she said confusedly. She took a couple of sips and drank it to the end. ‘Dracula, what's going on?’ she asked, setting the glass down on the table.

Dracula ran a hand through his sleep-tousled hair.

‘I wish I knew it myself.’

***

He managed to get through to Snout on the third try. The strange scientist answered reluctantly, muttering something about being very busy when asked to come. It was only Dracula's angry shout that made him shake himself: “Snaut, I have ‘guests’!’. Silence hung in the receiver, after which, accompanied by a rumble in the background, a rustling, desperately bitter voice was heard:

‘I'll be there in ten minutes.’

When Snout appeared, he did not want to go into the cabin and seemed surprised that Dracula invited him inside.

‘Don't test my patience, Snout,’ Dracula said irritably, moving away from the door.

Snaut, apprehensively, as if afraid that wild animals were waiting in the room, looked back and entered. Dracula grinned. In the end, they did wait here. Dracula terribly missed Renfield. Wow, how you get used to people when you live like them.

‘Come in here,’ said Dracula, seeing that Snout was trampling on the threshold. ‘Come in and get to know each other.’ He turned to a chair at the back of the bedroom. ‘Agatha Van Helsing.’

Agatha stood up and held out her hand. Snout didn't accept it.

A couple of seconds passed in tense silence.

Lowering her hand, Agatha sat back in her chair. On her face the first in all the time that he knew her, Dracula saw a blush of shame. He got angry.

‘What’s wrong with you, Snout?’ coming close to the scientist, he growled.

‘Dracula, wait!’ Agatha said. She got up and approached them. ‘Mr… Snout,’ she said, addressing the visitor, who was dumbfounded with horror. Agatha glanced briefly at Dracula. ‘Mr. Snout, I'm glad to meet you.’ Snout looked sideways at her and twitched. ‘Why are you… afraid of me?’

Dracula kept a close eye on both. Snout's skin, already painfully pale, turned blue-grey. His lips were trembling, beads of sweat appeared under his nose. He's about to faint, Dracula thought.

He remembered how Agatha stood at the porthole, looking at Solaris, sparkling in iridescent golden waves below. How shocked she looked to learn that they were in space, hundreds of light-years from Earth. She knew what a light-year was. How she agreed to change clothes and print out a simple summer dress (‘At this time, clothes are made on a printing press, Agatha. Don’t be surprised – do you want more coffee?’), how she enthusiastically delved into reading e-books.

She was so real. So funny, impulsive, furious. Such... Agatha.

‘Snout,’ Dracula said, closing his eyes. ‘This is Agatha Van Helsing, I have known her for many years. The only being she poses a danger to here is me. So stop acting like an idiot and explain what the hell is going on at your station.’

From this little speech, Snout seemed to wake up. He scowled like a child, reaching into his pockets and pulling out a cigarette. Looked at Agatha.

‘I can't talk in front of her.’

‘You'll have to,’ Dracula said coldly.

Snout took out a lighter. Without asking permission, he lit a cigarette.

‘She's not Agatha Van Helsing,’ he said as he blew smoke out of his mouth, clearly and distinctly. ‘This is a copy, a blende, a phantom. As well as other ‘guests’. I told you.’ The pace at which Snout said the words accelerated as if he were pushing them out. ‘I warned you not to believe anything.’

‘You told me not to be surprised. That you can't explain. That I can see everything myself.’

‘You saw.’ Snout shrugged. He looked like he didn't care anymore. It was as if the meeting with Agatha had robbed him of his last strength.

‘She is Agatha Van Helsing,’ Dracula said in the silence that followed.

Snout put out his cigarette.

‘How can she be here? She died.’

When the last word was spoken, Dracula instinctively turned to Agatha. He was ready for tears, screaming, hysterics. To contempt, hatred, accusations.

Agatha was silent.

‘So that’s what it means,’ she said quietly.

There was a short click. Snout, standing in the middle of the room, switched on and off the lighter. He looked at Agatha, at Dracula, and walked towards the door.

‘She's not real,’ he said in a sort of glassy tone. And left.

They stayed together.

When the door closed behind Snout, Agatha walked back to the chair and sat down.

‘How did you do this?’ she asked without looking at Dracula.

Dracula rubbed his face with his hands.

‘Agatha –’

‘Because I don’t remember,’ Agatha said with some eerie reasonableness. ‘I remembered everything that happened to me. The monastery, and the voyage on the Demeter . And after the explosion on the deck – there's nothing, emptiness.’

In a few long strides, Dracula was at her side.

He sank into a nearby chair, looked at her across the table.

‘Why don't I remember? Was it that terrible?’ She raised her eyes to him. ‘Did you convert me?’

If I did you wouldn't have died, Dracula thought. He was shaking and sick – a half-forgotten sensation from human life.

‘I went down into the hold and closed myself in a box of Transylvanian soil,’ he said, looking into Agatha's face. ‘You stayed on deck. And went to the bottom with the ship.’

There was a silence, during which Agatha sat, staring at one point.

Finally, she turned to him and asked:

‘How can you be sure that I am… her?’

He didn't understand very well what happened next. He only knew that he went up to her and forced her to get up from the chair, picked her up in his arms and pressed her to him. Tore apart that stupid dress and dragged her into the bedroom. And there he did whatever he wanted with her. And she was happy.

They were both happy.

‘After all these years…’ he whispered in a voice broken by screaming, ‘after all these years… how could you think… How… could… you…”

And then they lay embracing, and for some time Dracula did not distinguish between up and down. He hated and adored Solaris, who did this to him. Hated, and, it seems, for the first time wanted to forgive himself.

They were happy.

Dracula turned on his side and looked at the woman lying next to him. Dark red hair covered her to the waist, fair skin glistened with sweat in the glow of golden rays falling from the porthole.

Agatha tossed back her lush strands, sat up and stretched.

He got up after her, hugged her, touched the top of her head with his lips. Pulled away, ran his hand over her shoulder and asked:

‘Will you let me?..’

She nodded.

Maybe he died too, Dracula thought as he re-entered her flesh. Maybe this is his paradise. Or hell. He wrapped both arms around her, sinking further and deeper. Feeling how she opens up completely, letting him in where no one has been before. Where she herself could get lost, astraying on some lonely night.

He drank her blood, recognizing not the taste, but the sounds, lights and colours, words and music, shadow and light. She smiled, cried, celebrated her fifteenth birthday, fell in love for the first time, tumbled into a small ravine near her house, played games, pulled unruly hair that did not give in to a comb, wrote diaries, studied vampire legends, talked with Jonathan Harker, stood on a barrel with a noose on her neck, and challenged him – Dracula – again and again.

It was Agatha Van Helsing. Down to the very last cell, to the smallest detail. In every movement, in every drop, in the body, mind, and soul.

Dracula pulled away from her and closed the long wound with his fingers. Still holding Agatha in his arms, he watched as the scar immediately healed and became almost invisible. Then he looked up and saw a new, previously unfamiliar smile flared up in her eyes.

***

Agatha gathered her hair into a ponytail and tied it with an elastic band. All this was so unusual. Ten years in the monastery – this kind of thing doesn’t go away. Every time Dracula began to tease her about some modern machine or small daily routine that she couldn't do, she reminded him of it. Agatha straightened her tail and smiled, shaking her head.

All this was unusual and strange. And she didn't know what was even stranger: that she was here, or what happened between her and him.

About a month had passed since the day when Snout came. None of the inhabitants of the station – according to Dracula, there must have been four of them, including the ‘guests’ of Snout and his colleague, if not more – never visited them. It was like everyone forgot about them. But it didn't matter, because they were together.

Agatha never thought that what began in the monastery in Budapest, from which she so diligently hid on the Demeter , and which until the last hour of her life – her former life – she hid from herself, would suddenly turn out to be so clear, joyful, and simple.

For the first few days, they didn't go anywhere. There was enough food in the kitchen for Agatha, and Dracula stocked up on large amounts of donated blood as he flew away from Earth. Therefore, they spent a significant part of the time at the beginning… well… thinking about what they were doing, Agatha blushed. However, never in her life did she remember ever talking so much before, arguing so much, playing, laughing, never did she have so many new stories and books to read.

When the excitement of the first days passed, Agatha regained her natural inclination to explore the incomprehensible, and she started to research Solaris. It turned out that the planet had been studied for ten years, no less, although the scientists who did it could not boast of great success. Having studied with Dracula almost all the data on ‘solaristics’, they were convinced of one thing: no one, neither physicists, nor biologists, nor anthropologists, nor chemists, have yet been able to understand what Solaris is.

The planet was definitely habitable – electromagnetic sensors recorded the presence of organic matter, although it probably existed in a different form than it was on Earth. There were no humanoids on Solaris, and there were no conditions suitable for ones. This baffled Agatha, and even more so Dracula. If Solaris did not know the human form, how could he recreate it? And why did he do it?

Too many questions. The scientists of the station may have known the answers to some of them. But Dracula was in no hurry to resort to their help. Agatha guessed why. But it couldn't go on like this forever.

On the evening of the first Monday of summer (as Dracula called this day – they all looked alike at the station), Sartorius called. Agatha knew his name because Dracula had mentioned him several times in their conversations – always in a negative way. He himself saw Sartorius only once but claimed that he had had enough.

Declaring that he had found out something important about the ‘guests’ and the possibility of ‘getting out of their situation’, as he floridly put it, Sartorius said that he, Dracula, and Snout needed to discuss all this – today, at eight in the wardroom, – and hung up.

Dracula was originally going to take Agatha with him. But she insisted that he would better go to the meeting alone. Her experience with Snout suggested that it would be wiser for them to do so. But now, when Dracula had been gone for more than an hour, Agatha was suddenly seized with anxiety.

She couldn't tell what exactly worried her. What tormented or embarrassed her. Maybe the fact that she knew Dracula well – if the meeting had gone the way he wanted – whatever this meant – it would have ended a long time ago.

Thinking about this, Agatha got up from the chair in which she was sitting, leafing through another ‘solarist’ electronic magazine and, putting off reading, walked towards the door.

The station, obviously, was planned in such a way that even the one who first came here could not get lost on it. Therefore, finding a wardroom was not difficult.

‘How can you not understand’ as soon as the automatic doors parted, an unfamiliar voice fell upon Agatha, impatient, stubborn and brittle-dry. ‘The ‘guests’ are not people and not even their likeness. What you see, feel, is a mask, down to the very last structure, down to molecules and cells, down to atoms in depth. I have done the most detailed analysis. This is a neutrino form, on top of which is a phantom.’

Agatha looked around the room. The speaker – a tall, thin man in a white coat, all looking sort of uneven, as if folded several times and straightened out again, like a sheet of paper, was standing at the table. Glasses shone on his lean face, and he kept adjusting them. Snout sat in an armchair near the large window, holding an unlit cigarette in his hand. Dracula stood on the opposite side of the table from the thin man, with his back to the door, and therefore did not see Agatha. The thin man fell silent as she entered but immediately spoke again, raising his voice and pointing his finger at her.

‘Perhaps she reminds you of your beloved, perhaps that is his purpose. But we're not here to wallow in dirty love stories. If we do this, he will destroy us. You can not understand. I and Snout are scientists. Our task is not to mumble, but to learn about the world.’

Dracula slowly turned around and looked at Agatha.

‘And she,’ deliberately uttering the last word with the same contemptuous intonation as did… Sartorius, remembered the name of the thin man Agatha, he said, ‘is an obstacle? A bump in the path of progress,’ he added, markedly courteous.

‘Exactly so,’ Sartorius snapped, not noticing the irony. ‘I am not a sadist,’ he said, addressing either Dracula or Agatha; Snout turned his head around as if looking for something to light him up on. ‘I'm not going to set up a torture chamber here. The machine I invented generates solar wind. It destroys neutrino forms in a fraction of a second. She won't feel anything.’

Agatha saw that expression on Dracula's face, after which the only right decision for most of those in his path was to flee. Immediately and without discussion. She inhaled and exhaled.

‘Mr. Sartorius, please –’

Sartorius turned to her as if a table or chair had spoken to him. It was as if he was astounded by the audacity of a piece of furniture that dared to address him.

Dracula walked around the table and stood in front of Sartorius.

‘Please don't make hasty decisions!’ Agatha screamed almost in despair. Dracula and Sartorius turned around. After a moment's thought, Dracula gave a barely perceptible nod and stepped away from the table. He stood silently for a while, leaning against the far wall. Then he said:

‘Sartorius, you don't know anything about me. God knows it's better for you. You can read at your leisure. Search query: ‘Vlad the Third’.’ Dracula paused for a moment. ‘And this,’ he pointed to Agatha, ‘is Agatha Van Helsing. And you won't kill her.’

Sartorius thrust his hands into the pockets of his robe. There was cold silence for several minutes.

‘Victor,’ came Snout's voice. ‘Victor, leave him alone. See, he loves her. Let them go. Even if she isn't her.’

‘Snaut, perhaps your intelligence is above average,’ Dracula chuckled. ‘I was wrong about you. Especially for you, I will repeat once again: Agatha –’

‘Stop being sentimental!’ Sartorius exploded. ‘We have no choice. Do you understand? She is not alive. She just fools you. The one you loved is long gone. We must destroy her.’

Dracula grinned.

‘Are there any wooden objects at the station?’ he suddenly asked calmly.

‘No,’ said Sartorius cautiously.

‘Then try to kill me first.’

‘What is he talking about?’ Snout was surprised. But before Agatha or anyone else could utter a word, there was a crash of a fallen chair, a brief glare from the glass, and a smell of something prickly-sharp.

The next moment, turning around, Agatha saw Sartorius, stunned with fear, crawling along the plastic-lined floor, whimpering softly. She lifted her head and looked where the scientist, shaking and sobbing, was pointing with a half-bent finger.

Dracula stood against the wall, as before, completely illuminated by the golden light. On one side of his face, the skin was peeling and dripping like melted wax, gathering at the bottom in jagged folds. In the upper part, just above the exposed zygomatic bone, a new one was slowly growing – young and clean.

Dracula smiled.

Agatha walked up to Sartorius and, sitting down, put her arm around his shoulders.

‘What is he?’ chattering his teeth, said Sartorius, still looking at Dracula; he even seemed to forget that he was referring to the creation of Solaris. ‘What is he? Why... Is he, too?..’

‘He's a vampire,’ Agatha said wearily. ‘And still the same lover of spectacular shows,’ she added, sending Dracula an annoyed look. ‘Don't worry, he won't do anything to you. He just wanted... to set boundaries, so to speak.’

Something gurgled and wheezed in Sartorius' throat.

‘Give me some water, Mr Snout,’ said Agatha. ‘Come on,’ she looked up. ‘Can't you see he's not well?’

Snout sat motionless, seemingly not fully understanding what was going on, and barely hearing Agatha.

Moving away from the wall, Dracula took a glass of water from one of the small tables that stood here and there in the wardroom and, sitting down on the other side of Sartorius, handed it to Agatha.

‘I don't think he'll take anything from me,’ he said, shrugging and wiping the last of the caustic and melted skin from his cheek. ‘What was it?’ he asked Sartorius.

‘Sulphuric acid!’ Agatha rolled her eyes.

‘Not bad. And why have you never had an attempt…’

‘Dracula, not now!’ Agatha, who had tried in vain to get Sartorius drunk, twitched her shoulder impatiently. Sartorius was trembling; he no longer tried to leave or move away, only turned away and groaned softly.

‘Look at me, Sartorius,’ Dracula said softly. His voice, usually melodious and mocking or deceptively light, became authoritative, confident, and deep. Sartorius shuddered and raised his sick eyes.

‘Nothing threatens you,’ Dracula said calmly. ‘Neither to you, nor to your ‘guests’, nor to Snout. As long as you do not touch Agatha, I do not intend to interfere in your life. I don't care what you do or what you run from. I don’t care about your fantasies, I don’t care about your fears and complexes, I don’t want to know you at all. But if just one hair falls from the head of this woman,’ he nodded at Agatha, frozen next to him, ‘you will regret it. Do you understand what I said?’

Sartorius looked at Dracula with surprisingly clear eyes. Traces of madness, pain and fear disappeared from his face, he even seemed to rejuvenate.

‘I understand you, Dracula,’ he said calmly and legibly. Then he got up, freeing himself from Agatha's arms, straightened his rickety white robe, and walked out of the room with a firm step.

Agatha sat down on the floor and closed her eyes.

***

The cabin was in twilight. The light filters are lowered, sparkling haze crowds in the portholes and the restrained golden night of Solaris penetrates the room.

Agatha lies on her back, covered with a blanket almost up to her chin. It's not cold in the cabin, but she wants to wrap herself in something, feel the touch of the fabric – it's more comfortable. She can't sleep – it seems to Agatha that she lies for a couple of hours in a row, looking absently at the liquid light seeping through the bulletproof glass.

She wonders if Solaris is ever dark at all. What a strange place, Agatha thinks, a planet that seems to be made of light. An ocean of light. Like in the visions of the ancient mystics, she chuckles. A thought, unexpected, passionate, important – as if sharpened, flickers so close that Agatha breaks a slight shiver. But the thought slips away. Agatha closes her eyes and turns on her side.

The quarrel in the wardroom does not go out of her head.

As soon as Sartorius left the room, it seemed easier to breathe in it. Rising from the floor, Dracula held out his hand to Agatha and helped her up as well. The automatic vacuum cleaner hummed softly, removing the remains of sulfuric acid and fragments of a broken vial. Looking at the figure-eights written out by the robot on smooth plastic, Agatha asked, not addressing anyone in particular:

‘Why was he talking about the solar wind?’ She glanced around the room with a distracted look. ‘Why such difficulties? Isn`t it possible... a noose, a knife or poison…’

Numbly, Snout woke up in his chair.

‘The ‘guests’ cannot be destroyed in the usual way,’ he said dully. ‘We have tested everything.’

Agatha remembered Dracula's story about the male and female voices coming from Sartorius' cabin, about the short figure that Snout blocked with himself. She was nauseated.

Still holding her hand, Dracula moved to the sofa on the other side of the room.

‘The ‘guests’ not only do not die,’ he said, sitting down on the sofa and taking Agatha with him, ‘they are cured of any injuries.’

Agatha immediately thought of the unusually fast healing wound on her neck on the first evening of her stay here.

‘And even if they are thrown out right from the station,’ Dracula continued, ‘along with technical garbage,’ he paused, ‘they will return again.’

Agatha looked at Snout with horror.

‘They don't remember anything,’ he said in a colourless tone. ‘And they start... anew. From scratch, so to speak.’

A gigantic golden wave rose behind the central porthole and lit up the wardroom with otherworldly fire. Clutching Dracula's hand tighter, Agatha turned to him.

Dracula smiled sadly, with only his eyes.

The golden wave has fallen, and from it only a coating of reflected light remains, lying on everything. It turned the silhouette of Snout rising from his chair into the outline of a bizarre animal from ancient legends.

Without saying goodbye and without looking at Dracula and Agatha, Snout walked to the door, and it closed behind him.

‘So who is more unhappy – the dragon slayer or the dragon?’ Dracula said softly after him.

...A soft knock made Agatha get out of bed. There was Snout in the streak of pale light between the parting doors.

‘What do you need?’ Agatha asked without greeting. She felt that she was beginning to tire of the complicated relationship between Dracula and the station staff.

‘To talk to you,’ Snout replied. ‘Just talk.’ He held up his hands, signalling that his intentions were not hostile. ‘And even if I wanted another,’ he chuckled, ‘you yourself know. I can't get away from him here.’

Agatha rubbed her forehead and nodded. Gesturing for Snaut to wait, she threw a synthetic cloak around her shoulders and left the room, closing the door behind her.

Snout's cabin was cool and empty.

‘Your ‘guest’ –’ looking around, Agatha began.

‘Sleeping like a baby,’ Snout interrupted her. ‘Don't expect me to show him to you.’

Agatha shrugged wordlessly.

They were silent for several minutes. Approaching the porthole, Agatha began to watch the swirling waves on the surface of Solaris. Snout smoked.

‘How long have you known him?’ asked Snout at last.

She smiled.

‘A hundred years. Or a hundred and twenty. What year is it now?’

‘Two thousand and thirty.’

‘So, one hundred and fifty-three.’

‘Was he always like this?’

‘Worse.’

There was silence again.

Snout went to the porthole.

‘Look,’ he pointed with a cigarette at a giant iridescent wave rising sixty kilometres away. ‘I thought,’ he paused for a moment, ‘I thought about you, Agatha. I thought you were like this wave. Useless, beautiful and just as fragile. I mean…’ He smiled sadly. ‘You understand.’

‘I understand.’

‘I've been on Solaris for six years. Longer than Sartorius.’ Snout took a short puff and looked at her. ‘I have been watching... him for six years. Therefore, when the ‘guests’ appeared... Agatha, you should not think…’ Snout stopped as if choosing his words. ‘Don't judge Sartorius,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘He's young and it's hard for him.’

Agatha nodded.

‘What do you want, Snout?’ She turned and looked at the pale scientist in the early morning light. His face was littered with thin shadows from the sunscreen.

Snout was silent for a long time.

‘Do you know anything about the Jonathan Harker Foundation?’

‘About the Harker Foundation?’ Agatha was amazed. She expected anything but the mention of that name, here on Solaris.

‘The Jonathan Harker Foundation was founded in 1899,’ Snout said, ‘by one Mina Murray and your brother, Tobias Van Helsing. They were engaged in research on vampires, had quite a ride. They were going to look for the place where Dracula disappeared. Apparently unsuccessful.’

Agatha spread her hands.

‘I had no idea…’

‘I found their archives.’ Snout put out his cigarette and lit a new one. ‘After I saw... After what happened between Dracula and Sartorius, I decided to gather information.’

She smiled and nodded silently. How familiar it all is.

‘Is it true that he can read minds?’ Snout spoke softly. ‘In the records of the foundation, this item is noted as remaining in doubt and requiring clarification.’

‘No,’ said Agatha. ‘No, not read... not exactly. But why are you asking?’ She raised her eyes and stared into Snout's haggard face. ‘I understand the Foundation scientists. But why do you need it?’

Snout chuckled and crushed the burning cigarette between his fingers.

‘Because I want to know where the ‘guests’ come from.’

***

‘And you went with him? Agatha, I told you –’

‘He didn't do anything to me! And he wasn't going to. Dracula, wait!’

Agatha hurried along the corridor behind Dracula who was rushing forward, miraculously managing to fit into the turns. When the doors of the wardroom parted in front of him, and Dracula burst inside, she gathered all her strength and rushed across.

And on time. Dracula was only a couple of feet away from grabbing the unsuspecting Snout by the throat.

‘He didn't do anything to me!’ she yelled again.

Dracula froze.

‘He needs help,’ Agatha said in a normal tone. ‘Please listen to him.’

Snout coughed over her shoulder. The sound was suspiciously similar to stifled laughter. Agatha took a deep breath and stepped aside.

‘I sincerely hope that both of you will act like adults,’ she said, sinking into the nearest chair and crossing her arms over her chest.

Snout and Dracula turned to her and nodded in unison.

Agatha reached over to the table next to the chair and pulled the teapot and cups on it towards her.

…

‘You want me to get into your head, but at the same time, you intend to hide your ‘guest’ from me?’ Curiosity sounded in Dracula's voice.

‘You yourself said that you do not read minds and even, in general, do not see everything. But the meaning of feelings and actions is available to you, you see fears, desires and dreams.’

Dracula was seated on a sofa in the centre of the wardroom, holding a clipboard on his lap with files from the Harker Foundation open. Snout settled himself in the chair next to him and leaned forward, almost looming over him.

‘It's always different,’ Dracula waved him off. ‘But let's say you're right. I still don't understand why –’

‘I think Mr Snout wants to make contact with his ‘guest’,’ Agatha interrupted unexpectedly. Ever since she'd been in Snout's cabin that morning, she'd never stopped thinking about their conversation, and that was the only reason why he might want Dracula to bite him. ‘And for this, you need to understand him better. And to understand him better –’

‘– you need to understand yourself,’ Dracula finished irritably. ‘Obviously. But what is it to me? I choose my victims very carefully,’ he said, gazing intently at Snout. ‘What can you offer me?’

‘As if others were offering you something!’ Agatha couldn't resist.

‘They were of interest to me,’ Dracula replied. ‘Shouldn't you know better?’

She waved her hand.

‘I thought you would get the idea right away.’ Agatha stood up and began pacing back and forth. ‘If we can find out how the ‘guests’ appear, if we can get them to talk –’

‘They don't communicate?’

‘Very little,’ said Snout. ‘They're not… they're not like Agatha,’ he continued. ‘None of them has addressed us directly in all this time – not my ‘guest’, not… whoever was there at Sartorius'. No matter how many there are,’ he added. ‘They’re kind of… just there. And they don't want to leave.’

‘That's interesting,’ said Dracula. ‘What else are they doing?’

‘And what do they don`t?’ said Agatha.

Snout looked at them, and on his face was desperation and inability to overcome himself.

‘Don't ask,’ he said. ‘Don't ask, Dracula. Take a look if you like.’

Very slowly, Dracula turned to Agatha and then nodded.

***

Agatha was quite sure they had thought of everything. When she and Dracula left the cabin the next night and went to the gym on one of the lower levels, there was nothing on the station to indicate that anyone else but them was awake at this hour. Even the rustling and footsteps in Sartorius' cabin stopped.

They agreed that Dracula would drink Snout's blood for no longer than three minutes – Dracula assured that this would be enough, and none of them wanted to risk stretching the session.

They had foreseen everything, except that Sartorius had insomnia and would want to pedal in the middle of the night, and all the automation of the station was tuned to the voices of the staff.

So when at half-past three the doors to the gym parted and Sartorius appeared, three things happened one after another: the lights went out, the fire alarm went off, and the floors of the room parted like a huge hatch, revealing a vast space below it.

…

‘Couldn’t you shout out something specific?’ Dracula asked wearily as he entered the wardroom. He had a towel in his hands, and instead of the usual black suit, he was wearing a bathrobe. ‘You yourself would have stayed safer.’

‘The floor in the thief trap is soft,’ Sartorius muttered. He was sitting on the sofa, holding a cup of tea, on which he warmed his trembling hands. ‘That`s your own fault,’ he snapped. ‘You should have warned me. What should I have thought?’

Indeed, Agatha admitted. She tried to see their small company from the side, through the eyes of Sartorius: an empty gym, twilight, an unconscious Snout lies on a leather mat in the corner, Dracula grabbed his throat, and Agatha sits next to them with a watch in her hands.

No wonder that taking a short look at this Sartorius yelled, ‘Help! Help!’.

The standard electronic security system, programmed to keep intruders out of the station, immediately extinguished the lights.

Alone with the vampire in the dark (he forgot about the presence of Agatha and Snout), Sartorius yelled even louder, this time, ‘Help! I knew it!’ and for some reason, ‘Fire!’.

The system responded instantly. Streams of water fell on Sartorius and Dracula, who had broken away from Snout and by that time was cursing either in English or in Romanian, but the shower did not sober the poor scientist at all.

Seeing a wet Dracula approaching him in the light of the fire alarms shining in the darkness, Sartorius cried out, ‘Killer!’. Then the hatch in the floor opened, and they all fell into a trap for thieves equipped at the station, as at all similar facilities, in case of outbreaks of aggression and madness among the crew, – after which Sartorius finally fell silent.

‘I should have silenced you forever,’ Dracula said with relish, throwing a hostile glance at Sartorius. ‘The world wouldn’t lose anything from this.’

Agatha looked at him reproachfully.

‘It's our own fault,’ she repeated Sartorius' words. ‘We should have told him.’ She turned to Snout and asked, ‘Mr Snout, how are you? Are you okay?’

Snout, who had been silent for the past five minutes, trying unsuccessfully to light a cigarette, nodded melancholy.

‘Did you understand?’ Sartorius grumbled. He turned to Dracula. ‘Did you understand anything?’

By the time Dracula, after they got out of the trap (when the password named by Sartorius turned out to be wrong for the third time, and the system blocked access, Dracula lost his temper and just punched through the door), returned from the bathroom, Agatha managed to tell Sartorius about their plan.

‘Nothing.’ Dracula shook his head. ‘I told you it's a new experience every time,’ he said, turning around and looking at Snout. ‘You are a strong man, Gordon. I don't know many people like that. But all I understood from your thoughts is that you are damn tired of them. And one more thing…’ Dracula paused and, going to the chair where Snout was sitting, looked down at him. Throwing aside the towel, Dracula crouched down in front of Snout. ‘I don't know who it is, Gordon,’ he said, looking into the scientist's eyes, ‘and if you didn't want to, I wouldn't look. But you love him very much. Don't resist it.’

Snout covered his face with his hands and sobbed.

***

Agatha first understood what Dracula felt when she appeared on Solaris when she woke up one morning in the Carpathian mountains. Lying on a short-haired carpet of dense grass, Agatha looked up at the bright blue sky, breathing in the juicy scent of lavender and thyme. Thinking at first that she was still asleep – or for some reason, Dracula decided to play a trick on her, and this is one of his opiate dreams, she turned her head to the right.

‘Couldn't you wait until I wake up?’

Stretched out on the grass beside her, Dracula, in light pyjama pants and a linen t-shirt, looked at Agatha attentively and anxiously.

‘It's not me.’

They got up and sat opposite each other. Everywhere, as far as the eye could see, stretched a green veil. Down the slope, leaving at an angle into the valley, rows of pyramidal firs and juniper bushes lined up. Lifting her head, Agatha saw swallows soaring high above the ground.

‘Carpatii Meridionali,’ Dracula said softly. ‘Romanian Alps,’ he added in response to her questioning look. ‘Below this slope flows the Argeș.’

Agatha jumped to her feet.

‘We –’

All of a sudden, everything disappeared. Green meadows, distant mountain peaks, the smell of the Carpathian spring. Agatha stood in Dracula's cabin on Solaris, looking down at Dracula as he sat on a reddish-brown mat that covered the plastic floor.

‘What was it?’ Agatha asked softly.

Dracula got up and went to the porthole, behind which, as before, splashed liquid gold.

‘New mail,’ he said, looking out the window.

In the next three days, the vision was repeated – only this time Agatha and Dracula were in the wardroom when a wrought iron lattice with a gate and a monastery courtyard grew in front of them.

‘No!’ Agatha groaned.

Dracula walked over to the grate and pulled it towards him.

"It`s locked,’ he said thoughtfully.

The yard was empty. The setting sun was reflected in the upper windows of the monastery. From somewhere in the distance, the barking of dogs could be heard.

She and Dracula stood at the very spot where a black wolf surrounded by bats appeared at the gates of the monastery more than a hundred years ago. Agatha thought it must be retribution. For both of them, and to each his own. But why such retribution? And why now?

The vision dissipated as quickly as the previous one, and like new ones after it. Now, wherever Agatha and Dracula went, wherever they were and whatever they did, at any moment they could find themselves on a Russian ship, in a small Dutch village, in a Turkish camp or a Transylvanian forest.

‘I have a feeling that he is sorting out some of his options,’ Agatha said when a week after the first incident they walked from the wardroom back to their cabin. ‘Like he’s looking for something… But what?’

Dracula shrugged wordlessly. He looked irritated, distracted and tired. Because of the recurring visions, he and Agatha hardly slept – it is difficult to fall asleep when you do not know where you will wake up and with what. After Agatha opened her eyes one morning and saw before her the severed head of a Turk in a turban, they agreed to sleep in turns. But no one could stop being awake for more than three or four hours.

Sartorius and Snout appeared occasionally, in the wardroom or on the telephone, just as exhausted and unhappy as before, if not more, and it was clear from the fragmentary phrases they threw out that they were being pursued by the same scourge.

‘I have read hundreds of records about the ocean,’ Agatha continued. ‘Most of the researchers agreed that the ocean has consciousness – may be so complex that it surpasses all our ideas about consciousness as such. But not a single work speaks of human forms, nor of such... visions. Unless this pilot... Burton. On the first expedition, he descended alone to the planet. Then he was ill for a long time. He talked about the gardens he met on Solaris, the endless earthly lakes, rivers and waterfalls, deserts and cities. But they thought he was crazy. Maybe we –’

The castle overturned on them sharply, overcastly, unexpectedly. Agatha and Dracula raised their heads in unison.

‘A crack in the head of the dragon above the stairs. Even it is there,’ said Dracula.

Agatha silently examined the gloomy stone pillar.

‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘Why is he doing all this?’

Dracula turned to her, smiled.

‘Why did he make you?’

‘He doesn’t –’ Agatha herself did not expect that she would flare up so furiously.

‘I know, I know,’ Dracula approached, reached out to her, embracing her. ‘I understand,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m just afraid too.’

The distant footsteps of Sartorius were heard.

The castle subsided as if it had been washed away by a wave.

‘He's investigating us. Dissecting,’ Sartorius' voice is trembling, but not from fear or doubt – it is always like that. ‘Keeps like rats in a box. Gives hallucinations... Devil planet…’

Looking back, Agatha saw how briefly, as if from an electric shock, Sartorius' narrow shoulders twitched. He walked past them, muttering something under his breath, unintelligible.

‘Like rats in a box…’ Dracula laughed. Turning Agatha to him, he took her face in his hands, forcing her to raise her head. ‘What should we do? What should we do, Agatha?’ asked.

‘We need to talk to Snaut and Sartorius. Enough of our omissions,’ Agatha straightened up. ‘We need to see their ‘guests’.’

She pulled away decisively from Dracula and moved in the direction of the staff cabins.

***

Three weeks after the first appearance, the visions stopped. Suddenly and for no reason. Just one morning, waking up, Agatha, looking at her watch, realized that she had slept all night, deeply and calmly. Reaching for Dracula, who was lying next to her, she woke him up. It turned out that he, too, tired from long days of fragmentary and infrequent rest, passed out right during the shift. Alarmed, they got up and walked around the station, ready for more unpleasant surprises. But everything was fine – as far as it could be in such a situation.

Snout and Sartorius, despite Agatha's heated persuasion, never agreed to show them the ‘guests’, each sat in his own room, occasionally going out to the kitchen of the wardroom or to the grocery store. In these brief encounters, Dracula and Agatha noticed that the scientists no longer seemed to be as exhausted and depressed as they used to be. Snout had gained weight and rejuvenated, his hair, previously constantly upraised and dirty, became clean and neatly combed. And Sartorius changed his eternal dirty-grey dressing gown for a light sweater and linen trousers.

The mood at the station was still unsettling. But the oppressive pain and burning uncertainty are gone.

On the twenty-ninth day after the appearance of the visions, while Agatha and Dracula were sitting in the wardroom, the door suddenly opened and Snout entered, holding the hand of a boy of about six years old.

He was tall for his age, dressed in late-twentieth-century jeans, a printed t-shirt, and a sweatshirt. The boy's blond hair was combed neatly back.

Agatha and Dracula looked at each other and stood up. Walking unsteadily across the distance separating them, Snout stopped in front of them.

‘Meet Jason,’ he said, squeezing the child's hand tightly. ‘Jason, say good afternoon.’

‘Good afternoon,’ the boy said politely. His face was confident and calm – not a shadow of fear or anxiety was reflected on it.

‘Hello,’ Agatha said, waking from a stupor first. ‘My name is Agatha Van Helsing,’ she said, leaning over and holding out her hand to the boy.

‘Jason Snout.’ The boy shook her hand and turned to Dracula. ‘Who are you?’

Dracula looked at Agatha, then at Snout, and smiled.

‘Hey. I am Count Dracula,’ he said.

‘I read about you,’ the boy narrowed his eyes. ‘It was written about you in the materials of the Harker Foundation. You are a vampire? Do you have fangs?’

‘Excuse me,’ Snout blushed, ‘he devours all the books that come to hand. And you can't hide anything from him…’

‘It's all right,’ Dracula laughed. He turned to Jason. ‘Yes, I have fangs.’

‘Great!’ admired the boy. ‘Can I –’

‘Jason,’ Snout interrupted. ‘Count Dracula, Miss Van Helsing and I need to talk. Can you leave us?’ he swallowed. ‘Not for long.’

The boy nodded and, turning around, ran away somewhere towards the kitchen.

There was complete silence for several minutes.

‘Who is this?’ Agatha finally decided to ask.

‘My son,’ said Snout. And looked at Dracula. ‘He died ten years ago.’

Dracula nodded silently.

‘I thought…’ Snout stuttered and shook his head. ‘How far can you run from this? We've already tried everything, and I –’

‘You did the right thing, Mr Snout,’ Agatha began, but then the doors opened again, and a tall, beautiful black woman, dressed in a flowery summer dress, entered. Silent Sartorius trailed behind her.

‘Oh, hi!’ seeing Dracula, Agatha and Snout, the woman exclaimed. ‘Wow, how many guests! Darling, why didn't you warn me?’ She turned to Sartorius. ‘Okay, I'll think of something. I hope there’s some in the kitchen –’ she said, and immediately interrupted herself. ‘Well, what a fool I am!’ Approaching the new acquaintances standing in the same place, she extended her hand to Agatha. ‘Letitia.’

Agatha gave her name. Then it was Snout and Dracula's turn, and when everyone was introduced, Letitia turned to Sartorius and, singing, ‘Now I have to do some cooking. Don't be bored, dear!’ disappeared into the kitchen.

‘Sartorius, I didn't expect that from you,’ Dracula said, his eyes following the motley skirt disappearing behind the kitchen counter.

Sartorius just waved his hand.

‘You were right,’ he said. ‘You were right from the start, and I acted like a fool. It is clear that we can't get away from them.’

From the kitchen came Letitia's cheerful singing.

‘She was my first love,’ Sartorius said in a low voice, though no one had asked him about her. ‘I was in my last year. We met at the theatre. Letitia was an actress. Brilliant imitator. You,’ he chuckled, ‘you must have heard… voices. We were supposed to get married when –’

Letitia leaned out of the kitchen and, after asking Sartorius where the spices were, disappeared again, blowing him a kiss.

‘She was killed by a drunken robber two weeks before the wedding,’ Sartorius said. ‘The police said he most likely intended to rape her. Her… dress was torn. The detective said that's why she had a head wound. He... that man... got caught. He claimed that he did not want her to die. He just miscalculated the blow.’

‘I think we all need a drink,’ Dracula said in the ensuing absolute silence.

Twenty minutes later, they were sitting on the couch, sipping amazing coffee from tiny cups and eating the last of the lasagna that Letitia had managed to make from the convenience foods found in the kitchen. Dracula refused both the first and the second, but Letizia was surprisingly not offended, either due to Dracula's charm or her own generous and kind nature.

Like everyone else except Snout, Letitia saw Jason for the first time – and immediately undertook to patronize him. After dinner, she declared that the child needed healthy sleep, and she and the boy went to Sartorius' cabin.

‘You can't take her away from him now,’ Sartorius said with a faint smile. Agatha put a hand on his shoulder.

There was silence.

‘How could we avoid them?’ said Sartorius suddenly. It was evident that this question had been tormenting him for a very long time. ‘Why did we reject them for so long?’

‘You were frightened,’ Dracula said, ‘this is natural.’

‘You weren't,’ Snout shook his head.

Dracula smiled.

‘Yes. But not because I'm braver than you. It's just that, unlike you, I'm used to seeing the dead rising from the coffins.’

Agatha rolled her eyes, but Snout and Sartorius burst out laughing.

‘Well,’ Sartorius said after a short pause. ‘You got to know them. They saw you. Has it brought us even one iota closer to understanding what is happening?’

Dracula twirled his fork thoughtfully. He put it on a plate and took it again. He didn't need a fork, but little things like that always fascinated him.

‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘You see, Sartorius.’ He trailed off as if trying to catch an important thought. ‘I also had a wife and a child. They died five hundred years ago in Transylvania during another war with the Turks. And they didn't come back. Didn't I love them?’

In the silence that followed again, the sound of a fork tapping on a plate could be heard.

‘I had a mother and a father, and a beloved brother Radu, whom my own boyars buried alive,’ Dracula continued, ‘they are not here either.’

‘What does that have –’ began Sartorius.

‘He means that guilt has nothing to do with it,’ Agatha said quietly.

Snout and Sartorius stared at her in bewilderment.

‘Snout,’ Agatha said in surprise. ‘You've read the materials of the Harker Foundation. It should have said what happened to me.’

‘They say you are missing.’

She smiled.

‘You can put it this way.’

‘Guilt has nothing to do with it,’ drawled Sartorius. ‘I do not understand. But then what is it?’

Dracula shuddered as if awakening from a dream.

‘I have an idea,’ he said. He suddenly turned to Snout. ‘Gordon, how did your child die?’

For a few moments, Snout was silent, as if he could not bring himself to speak. Dracula watched him attentively, without hurrying or repeating the question.

‘I... I don't know,’ Snout finally choked out. ‘I was not at home. I left for work. There was a lot of work in the laboratory... I returned after midnight. And my wife... She said she was only distracted for a minute... And when she entered his room, he was already dead.’

‘I thought so,’ Dracula shook his head. He caught the questioning look of Agatha, the intense and sharp look of Sartorius. ‘All these people,’ he said, ‘Jason, Letitia, and Agatha are not just people we love. Not just those who were chosen against all odds – Jason was an unwanted child – Snout, am I right?’

‘My parents were against my marriage to Letitia,’ Sartorius whispered in amazement. Snout was really hard to watch.

‘And Sister Agatha was a nun,’ Dracula finished. ‘We chose them,’ he repeated, ‘regardless of the will of others, of who we and they were, and even of common sense itself. And then they died. Someone – because of our fault, or so we thought,’ he trailed off ‘someone – because of someone else`s. And Solaris…’ Dracula turned and looked at Agatha. ‘Apparently, he returns what we asked for a return. Even unconsciously, even without knowing what exactly we are asking. Without knowing to whom addressing, we saw them at night in dreams. And Solaris just heard us. Because there, in our dreams, we chose them again.’

For a while they were silent.

‘And yet… are they real?’ Sartorius asked timidly, casting a brief glance at Agatha.

Dracula shrugged.

‘I have been trying for years to create a living thing from a dead one. And failed.’ He turned to Agatha. ‘You know, I couldn't understand why. They have always been either weak or insane. Johnny is the only one who turned out to be different. But he left me.’ Dracula smiled. ‘And I think I guessed what was wrong then and what has changed now. It was never about him. Or you. It's always been me. Only me. So,’ he looked back at Sartorius, ‘I think yes, they are real. Just as real as we are.’

The melodic sound that followed his words made everyone flinch. Excusing, Snout took out his phone from his pocket. Pressing the call accept button, he hurried out.

With a soft hiss, light filters rose outside the window.

‘I've been thinking a lot about what's going on here…’ Agatha began. ‘All the time that I'm here, I have a strange feeling –’

‘Not only you,’ Dracula chuckled.

‘That's not what I'm talking about,’ Agatha said angrily. ‘I wanted to say –’

The door opened and Snout stepped in.

He was pale and again looked like he had been tortured for several days in a row.

Crossing the room, Snout flopped into an armchair and searched his pockets for cigarettes.

Taking out a cigarette from a crumpled half-empty pack, he was able to light it on the third try. He sat silently for a few moments, absentmindedly exhaling cigarette smoke.

‘What's happened?’ Agatha spoke softly. She felt as if the sound of her voice, the sound of any question, would break the crystal membrane that seemed to cover Snout from head to toe.

Snout looked up at her.

‘Project Solaris is being phased out,’ he said. ‘Receipts of equipment and funds stop from next week. The station will be destroyed in a month, starting from this day.’

***

‘Frank, what did you find out?’ Dracula stood, leaning over a small monitor turned on on the table. Matte golden light filled the cabin.

Renfield's worried face loomed on the screen.

‘There is very little information. And all – in closed sources,’ his stammering voice sounded from the speaker. Renfield adjusted his glasses. ‘Funding… procuring for the research of Solaris was cut to a minimum five years ago. I mean government funding.’

‘Americans?’ Dracula clarified.

‘Under the auspices of the UN. The conquest of space, a new path to the stars... You understand it was an important... image project.’

Dracula nodded curtly.

‘Farther.’

‘Solaris was discovered in 2020 quite by accident. An error in the navigation program of the unmanned module. The planet was studied – for a long time and unsuccessfully –’

‘I know.’

Renfield swallowed nervously.

‘The current situation is extremely strange. State money stopped flowing to Solaris… in 2026,’ he said, consulting some papers in front of him. ‘Neither the United Nations nor NASA was interested in it anymore. According to their documents, the station has been empty for many years. Up until last week, funds came to the accounts from a private company. Unofficially,’ he trailed off.

‘They decided to try to squeeze something else out of it and sold the license to a travel agency,’ said Agatha, who knew this story from Dracula, coming up from behind him.

‘That's right.’ Renfield glanced at Agatha and adjusted his glasses again. ‘The idea of turning Solaris into... uh... an object of space tourism seemed to be a win-win –’

‘But it didn’t work,’ Dracula remembered the only ‘review’ about being on the planet that he had read on Earth.

Renfield nodded.

‘Judging by the documents, the company... did not plan mass tours at all. This would require serious investments, and the journey itself would be too expensive for customers. Most likely, the company ended up using Solaris to evade taxes. And when everything was revealed…’

There was silence.

‘Did you find out whether it is possible to stop conservation?’

That was the name of the official notice that arrived in Snout's mailbox fifteen minutes after the phone call. ‘Conservation with subsequent liquidation as soon as possible.’

‘I'm afraid not, dark lord. Can't be stopped, I mean,’ Renfield added hastily. ‘Of course, I found out everything.’

Dracula nodded slowly.

‘Money?’ he asked distantly.

‘I’m looking for opportunities, but there aren’t many,’ the lawyer shook his head. He sighed. ‘From NASA's point of view, the station is just a pile of expensive metal and plastic. Every next day of its stay in orbit –’

‘I understand you, Frank,’ Dracula interrupted him. He glanced briefly at Agatha, then at Renfield; the poor man looked completely miserable. His whole appearance suggested that he was eager to help, but didn't know how to do it. ‘I'll call you later.’

He touched the icon on the screen and the lawyer's face disappeared.

…

‘We'll have to come up with something for these –’

‘What, twenty-eight days? How do you imagine –’

‘There must be a way out –’

‘Perhaps, Renfield –’

Agatha sat on the sofa in the wardroom and watched the arguing men. In another part of the room, Letitia and Jason sat on comfortable poufs. It looks like they were putting together a puzzle. As they spoke quietly, they laughed, completely engrossed in their work and each other.

Glancing at the woman and child with an absent-minded gaze, Agatha slightly envied their serenity.

From the moment the plans to destroy the station became known, Letitia and Jason were the only ones who remained calm.

Nothing was hidden from them. Sartorius and Snout, who had already gone through too much, simply did not find the strength in themselves. Agatha understood them. Hiding, whispering and lying – now to the ‘guests’ – smiling, strainingly chatting about trifles, was unbearable. However, whether because they were unable to recognize the danger, or because they believed them undividedly, Letitia and Jason not only did not reproach the scientists for anything but seemed to be firmly convinced that everything was fine.

If only she could be so sure, Agatha thought wearily.

Dracula was beside himself with rage. After his attempts to solve the case with the help of money, negotiations, behind-the-scenes intrigues, hidden threats and again – money, failed one after another, for several days Agatha was seriously afraid that he would rush to Earth, find the owners of a travel company and kill them all.

But with all the hyperjumps and transfers, the journey would take at least a week. And Dracula didn't want to waste a second.

‘Technically,’ he said, sitting down on the couch next to Agatha, ‘smuggling three illegals onto the planet shouldn't be too difficult.’ He looked at Snout, who sat at the table next to the overflowing ashtray. ‘How many life pods are there at the station?’

‘Enough,’ Sartorius interrupted. He and Snout exchanged grim looks. ‘Are you not listening? Neutrino forms,’ he paused, ‘are unstable. The farther they are from... the source, the weaker the connection between the particles becomes.’ Sartorius moved away from the glass case, on which he leaned all the time of their stormy conversation. ‘There's no guarantee we'll get them alive,’ he finished bluntly.

Agatha imagined what it was like to disintegrate into atoms. Flash and instantly disappear. The solar wind, is that what Sartorius said then?

She got up and began pacing the wardroom. It always helped her to think. The tense silence behind her went on and on until Dracula finally said:

‘If we can't take them out of here, then we're staying. I'm staying,’ he corrected himself. ‘You can do as you please.’

The exclamations of the two scientists that followed his words were filled with such indignation that Agatha smiled involuntarily. Wow, it's only been five months.

‘We can't leave our loved ones here,’ Sartorius's voice came to her. ‘And we can't leave with them.’ Sartorius was silent for a while. ‘What is left for us?’

Slowly, Agatha approached the central porthole, which completely replaced the eastern wall. She raised her hand and touched the glass. For a few moments, she stared at the glowing gold outline of her own fingers.

‘For us, there`s left to stay,’ she said.

Turning around, she looked at the astonished men staring at her. Letitia and Jason lifted their heads from the puzzle and looked at her curiously.

‘Solaris is uninhabitable,’ Sartorius broke the silence. ‘Poisonous atmosphere, no fertile soil, ninety-eight percent of the land is covered by a plasma ocean.’

‘The planet's orbit is stable enough not to be pulled by its own sun and to keep the ocean in its homeostasis. But judging by the geology, Solaris hasn't had any living organisms on it in the last hundred thousand years,’ Snout said.

‘Living organisms,’ Agatha was still smiling. She turned to Dracula. ‘Precisely.’

Closing his eyes, Dracula straightened up and tilted his head slightly back. Agatha was all too familiar with that expression. She patiently waited.

‘But why do you think?..’ he whispered under his breath.

Snout and Sartorius looked at them blankly.

‘What –’ Snout began.

‘As soon as I saw it,’ Agatha said, pointing out the window. ‘The very first moment you showed me. Ocean, dreams, visions, thoughts. And golden light. I have never seen so much light.’

Dracula stood up and approached her.

‘Agatha Van Helsing, I have not been afraid of either the cross or the sun for a long time,’ he said; returned her smile. ‘I'm not even afraid to die. But your search for God scares me.’

Agatha looked at him calmly and directly.

‘So support me,’ she said.

He didn't answer. He came very close, hesitated, took her hands in his.

‘Definitely,’ he breathed. ‘Have me, please.’

…

‘Dracula, do you understand what you are going to do?’ Sartorius' voice was anxious and patient. It seemed, that he decided they were crazy, thought Agatha. He is afraid that he treated them cruelly. This hurts him more than how many times he managed to abuse himself on Solaris. ‘You can’t go down to the planet. Solaris will kill you.’

‘Sartorius,’ Agatha said softly. ‘Dracula is a vampire. It's impossible to kill him. Don`t you remember, you tried it yourself,’ she could not resist.

Sartorius blushed.

‘To destroy the undead – a creature that died at the hands of a vampire after having been drunk to the bottom,’ Agatha continued, ‘is possible only if you drive an aspen stake into its heart. And no more. Don't ask why,’ she added.

‘I don't need to breathe,’ Dracula said. ‘And I doubt the plasma can harm me in any way. At the very least, I'll lie down on Transylvanian soil.’

Doubt crossed Sartorius' face.

Cheered up, Snout lit a cigarette.

“And what about you, Agatha?’ he asked, dragging on.

‘Solaris made my body,’ she said simply. ‘I need food and drink, and air because he... designed me and adapted me to the conditions of the station.’ She looked at Dracula. ‘But initially, the matter and energy that make up my body are the same that make up his own one.’

‘That might work,’ Snout had to admit. ‘Okay, you will go down and stay alive. But for what?’

Agatha laughed.

‘Isn't it clear? We are here because he complied with your request,’ seeing that everyone except Dracula looked puzzled, she said. ‘Yours, Sartorius, yours, Snaut, and Dracula. It's so simple I couldn't believe it.’ Agatha shrugged. ‘It's always like that with me.’

Dracula looked at her with burning tenderness.

‘Ask and it will be given to you,’ Agatha quoted. ‘Here on Solaris, we have seen that this is true. But if so, then another statement is true too.’

‘Knock and it will be opened to you,’* Dracula said.

‘Yes.’

‘Negotiations?’ Sartorius leaned back in his chair. ‘Okay, but about what?’

‘Not negotiations, but a request,’ Dracula looked at Agatha. ‘Or, rather, the answer.’

‘All this time,’ now Agatha’s tone sounded patient, ‘all this time Solaris was doing exactly what you came here for,’ she smiled. ‘What people went into space for. For the sake of which they made pilgrimages at all times.’

‘He offered us a contact,’ Dracula said and spread his hands as if marvelling at both his own stupidity and the dullness of his friends. ‘Not ultimatums, not threats, not a manifesto and not a show of force. None of what I thought at first. Contact.’

‘He sent us to you and he created visions from our past lives for many days,’ Agatha said softly. ‘It is obvious that he is able to form absolutely any environment. Didn't he make it clear?’

Snout and Sartorius looked at them dumbfounded. Sartorius cleared his throat in embarrassment.

‘It can not be. And do you think he will… accept us?’ he asked in a squeaky whisper.

Dracula chuckled.

‘I think it's high time we asked for this.’

***

The station Solaris was destroyed on October fifteenth, two thousand and thirty, at twenty o'clock GMT. Renfield learned about it from the morning news. The message was not distinguished by either importance or, accordingly, urgency. A few words before the weather forecast. Technological progress is changeable, but the news is eternal, Renfield thought and went to the office.

The next five weeks passed in a blur. Renfield went to work, got new clients, settled old ones, went through three inheritances and two divorces, and by mid-March woke up at home with a vial of antidepressants in his hand.

After a moment's thought, Renfield went into the kitchen, threw the antidepressants into the wastebasket, opened the cupboard and poured himself some wine.

He shouldn't have felt guilty. He knew it for sure. He well remembered how Dracula during their last communication session, having ordered to stop the operation to save the station, after a pause, added:

‘I understand how it looks, Frank. I won't say it's not what you think. But before everything happens, you need to know that you have nothing to blame yourself for.’

Renfield drained his glass in one gulp and filled it again to the brim. He is used to obeying his master. He gave him his word to be by his side always, on the first day they met. Rising abruptly from his chair, he put down his glass.

Without turning on the light, he went into the room, fell on the bed and fell asleep.

The dream was leaving slowly, like an old pain. Dracula never drank his blood, but Renfield somehow felt like it must feel that way. Dracula's name creaked like the broken door in his head. Renfield looked up and froze.

One of the walls of his bedroom has disappeared completely. In its place was a view of a lush green garden with stone-paved paths, untrimmed bushes and colourful flower beds. Higher trees surrounded the garden like a bowl, their tops rushing to the dazzling blue sky.

I'm sleeping, Renfield calmed down. He pulled the blanket over himself and began to look with curiosity at the nearest rose, foxglove and lavender bushes. Their intoxicating aroma instantly filled the room. Renfield sneezed.

‘…Snout wants violets and crocuses. I despaired of convincing him.’

‘What is your problem with violets?’

The voices came from behind a hedge that crossed the part of the garden that Renfield could see on the right. He had heard a female one only once or twice in his life, but a male...

They came out from behind a wall of branches and leaves so suddenly that Renfield jumped.

‘Frank,’ Dracula laughed. He looked exactly the same as Renfield remembered him – tall, sharply mocking and... alive. Looking at the woman, then back at Renfield, he entered the bedroom.

‘Dark lord, you are dead,’ Renfield said accusingly. Perspiration broke out on his forehead; he nervously crumpled the blanket in his hands.

‘The station is dead,’ Dracula said. He turned, sending a smile to the woman. She nodded and, after another glance at Renfield, disappeared from sight. ‘It's not so easy to explain,’ he said as he approached.

‘You could have tried,’ Renfield said.

‘I could, and probably should have,’ Dracula did not argue. ‘Consider it a sign of cowardice. Hopefully the last one,’ he added with a sigh.

‘It's a pity you're only a dream,’ Renfield said bitterly. ‘But at least you left with her.’

There was a pause.

‘I left with her,’ Dracula said slowly. ‘And it was wonderful. The best thing that happened to me.’

He looked back, and following his gaze, Renfield saw that the blue sky above the crowns of lindens and chestnuts was turning into a golden glow as if the liquid fire was burning above them in the distance.

‘Dark lord,’ Renfield choked involuntarily, leaning forward.

Dracula looked at him with a smile that Renfield had never seen on him. Which Renfield didn't even think he was capable of.

With deafening clarity, Renfield realized it was real. Not a dream, not a fantasy, not an alcoholic delirium. Ordinary truth – like, apparently, everything on Solaris. He swallowed in shock.

‘But… dark lord… Dark lord, will you… come back?’ he murmured, beside himself.

Dracula smiled again and moved towards the garden. From there, voices could be heard – male and female. The voice of a teenage boy sounded in unison and argued with them. At the site of the missing wall, Dracula paused for a moment.

‘See you, Frank,’ he said. ‘Keep it in order.’

* 'Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.' Matthew 7:7

#dracula #dracula bbc #bbc dracula #count dracula #agatha van helsing #dragatha #fanfic

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thecaffeinebookwarrior · 4 years

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Monster of the Week: A Writer’s Guide to Vampires!

The Basics: Vampires From Around the World

Almost every culture has its vampires, and they go way beyond Dracula and Nosferatu.

There are obviously too many to include in one post, so here are a few especially unique vamps to get you inspired and interested in learning more!

The Penanggalan, Malaysia - Literally meaning ‘to detach,’ the Penanggalan is an exclusively (apparently) female creature.

By day, she masquerades as a normal woman (and let’s be real, don’t we all.) But by night, her head detaches from her body and floats around, entrails hanging like tentacles -- which they nightmarishly use to entangle their victims -- and preys on pregnant woman and babies. Lovely.

Creepily, the Penanggalan gravitates towards day jobs such as midwifery, so she can get closer to her prospective prey.

The Manananggal, Philippines - Much like the Penanggalan, the Manananggal has an unfortunate habit of detaching parts of her body to fly around. Described as an “ugly, hideous woman” (mood), the Manananggal can detatch her whole-ass torso to fly around like a bat.

Like the Penanggalan, she preys on pregnant woman and unborn babies, with, creepily, her incredibly long tongue. Some, however, prefer to seduce and prey on men -- preferable, to be honest -- in which case they appear young and beautiful.

The Upir, Eastern Europe - Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian, Romanian, and Czech cultures all have mythos around this abnormally bloodthirsty vampire. Not only do upirs drink the blood of their victims, but they bath and sleep in it. They eat the flesh of their victims as well, and are especially partial to the heart. In a uniquely sadistic detail, the Upir is thought to consume the children of a family and then the parents.

The Alukah, Judaism - Literally meaning “horse-leach,” the Alukah is one of the earliest vampires, originating in the Bible.

A fixture of Jewish folklore, and sometimes described as a demon or witch, the Alukah is unique in the fact that she is not undead but a living, shapeshifting being (according to the description in Sefer Hasidim.)

She can fly by unfurling her long hair.

The Brahmaparusha, India - This nightmarishly extra vampire will drink the drained blood of its victims from a skull (which it carries around at all times), before noshing on their brains and wearing their intestines as necklaces and crowns. Worst of all, this vampire has an unusually ravenous appetite, and consumes several victims per night.

The Callicantzaros, Greece - In Greece, children born between Christmas and Twelfth Night were thought to be bad luck (?) and susceptible to vampirism. The Callicantzaros was considered to be egregiously unpleasant, equipped with devilish talons with which to tear victims to shreds. Their first victims, post-transformation, were supposed to be their own siblings.

Unfortunately, this led to a degree of mistreatment and hostility towards children born during this period, as parents watched for signs of their progeny’s prospective vampirism. In order to ensure that they didn’t become Callicantzaros, the children’s feet were dangled above a fire, like a reverse Achilles.

Vampire weaknesses:

Garlic - This one’s not just particular to Western mythos. Southeast and far Eastern vamps like the Manananggal are also vulnerable to garlic.

Salt - The Manananggal is vulnerable to salt, as are vampires from most cultures in which salt is considered holy or purifying.

Silver - A holy metal. The origin of the “vampires can’t see themselves in mirrors” myth is because it used to be a component in mirror-making.

Vinegar - Again with the Manananggal.

Daggers/stakes/sharp objects - Especially through the vampire’s heart. In many cultures, burning the heart is also advisable. Be careful, though: sometimes, staking an upir will only bring them back to life stronger.

Dismemberment and fire - Most vamps are susceptible to this, including the Penanggalan. The only sure way to kill an upir is to decapitate them and burn the remains.

Counting - Much like the Count of Sesame Street, vamps can’t resist counting things. If you scatter some small, countable objects on the ground, the vampire will have to stop and count each one.

The tails of stingrays - in the case of the Manananggal.

Sunlight - Obviously. Though not universal, this pops up in vampire mythology around the world, including the Manananggal.

Detachment - when the Penanggalan and Manananggal detach their heads and torsos, their discarded torsos and lower bodies are vulnerable. In the case of the Manananggal, sprinkling the discarded legs with garlic and salt. The Mananggal will not be able to return to its lower body, and will perish with the rising sun.

Starvation - The Alukah can be starved if she’s prevented from eating for long enough.

Stupidity - In the case of the Penanggalan. If you turn the Penanggalan’s body upside down, she’ll re-attach backwards. I’m not sure what the purpose of this is, except the exhilaration of punking a vampire and making them walk around on their hands all day like a jackass.

Protection:

Thorns around windows - Thorns will keep the Penanggalan from harassing you or your unborn children.

Strings of garlic - Just make sure SOME IDIOT doesn’t take them down (RIP Lucy from Dracula.)

Pots of uncooked rice, ash, or salt - Repellent to the Manananggal.

Running away and hiding - Basically the only method of recourse against the Brahmaparasha.

Eating bread infused with an upir’s blood - Sounds kinky, to be honest.

Stay on sacred ground - I.e. graveyards and churches. Just be sure you’re not trying to avoid the kind of vampire that dwells in graveyards if you go for the latter.

Holy water, crucifixes, silver, et cetera - Anything sacred or holy. Varies based on culture.

Imbibing the ash of a supposed vampire’s burnt heart - I’m not even going to joke about this one, since people actually did this during the vampire scare of New England (my homeland.) I learned about it from a book about local vampire encounters at the Newport Public Library at age twelve, and it scarred me.

Dangle your baby above a fire - Actually, no, PLEASE don’t do that. But that’s what seventeenth century Greeks did to prevent their kids from turning into Callicantzaros.

Age of consent laws - Specifically for Edward from Twilight.

Don’t get a welcoming mat - Counts as inviting them in. Duh.

Ways to Become A Vampire:*

*Ask your doctor if becoming a vampire is right for you.

Biting - Obviously. Though if you read Dracula and early accounts of vampirism, it was more of a slowly progressing illness than a sudden transformation.

Reject Christianity - In the case of upirs. More specifically, the church buried non-believers outside of graveyards, leading them to rise as servants of the Devil. Honestly, I feel like the church kind of brought that on themselves.

Be born between Christmas and Twelfth Night - At least if you’re in seventeenth century Greece.

Be influenced by the Devil while dying - Another version of the Upir origin.

Be a demon possessing a corpse - One prospective explanation for the Brahmaparusha.

Making a pact to obtain eternal youth and beauty that involves not eating meat for 40 days and then breaking it like some kind of an IDIOT - One version of the Penanggalan origin myth. I shouldn’t judge, my self-control isn’t great either.

Get startled by a man while meditating in a bath and jerk your head so hard that it flies off and at the interloper in fury - Another prospective version of the Pennangalan origin. Relatable, honestly.

Be so bitter and jealous of couples that you go on an insane killing spree of pregnant woman and get publicly executed by being ripped in two - The Pennangalan, again. She makes the Kardashians look tame.

Chanting an incantation, anointing yourself with oil, and purchasing a black chick - In the case of the Manananggal. The black chick reportedly lives inside the Manananggal, eating its innards while also acting as its life source. Honestly, after all the drama of the Penanggalan’s origins, this seems reasonable.

Other Sources

Video Essays:

The Power of the Vampire Myth - A superb sociological dive into the cultural significance of vampires. From the post WWI antisemitism of Nosferatu to their ability to subvert the Hays Code, vampires tend to reflect the shadows of every society.

Dracula: A Brief History of Eternity

CREEPIEST Vampire Legends from Around the World

Vampires: Folklore, Fantasy, and Fact

How did Dracula become the world’s most famous vampire?

Vlad the Impaler: The Real Life Dracula

Influential Vampire Fiction:*

*That I’ve read/seen so far.

Dracula - Duh. The greatest adaptation of which is, obviously, Dracula: Dead and Loving it.

Nosferatu - It’s good to be aware of its antisemetic overtones, but it’s still revolutionary at evoking dread.

Varney the Vampire - A penny dreadful series that helped popularize vampires in Victorian England. It gets bonus points for sounding like a children’s show.

Camilla - The ORIGINAL lesbian vampire, predating Dracula by decades. Became an adorable webseries and movie, which I recommend even more than the original novel.

‘Salem’s Lot - Serves as a study of what makes vampires scary in the modern era.

Underworld - Aside from serving as a badass alternative in the Twilight era, it merits inclusion exclusively for causing my Sapphic awakening at age twelve.

What We Do In the Shadows - Has a unique understanding of the cultural significance of vampires, and why they appeal to societal misfits. Also has vampire “children” who eat p*dophiles.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove - The titular story is one of the most unique interpretations of vampires that I’ve seen in the modern era. Beautiful language that evokes a powerful emotional response.

Twilight - Exclusively because it gave us Rosemary clocking shop in a wedding gown. And the baseball scene.

Nonfiction:

The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters

From Demons to Dracula: The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth

Vampires and Vampirism: Legends from Around the World

New Orleans Vampires: History and Legend

Mummies, Cannibals, and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine

A History of Vampires in New England

Happy Halloween, and happy writing, everybody!

#creature feature #halloween #halloween 2020 #vampires #mythology #writing resources #writing advice #legends #folklore #gifs for ts

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vasiliquemort · 3 years

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Hello dear writer/artist/wonderful human being,

Tumblr just showed me one of your posts and I realised that I never told you how amazed I am by your prose both in the game and on your blog (I feel simply calling it writing doesn‘t cut it). How you put your thoughts, emotions and atmosphere into descriptions and dialogue is absolutely stunning to me and feels ‘artsy‘ to me in the best possible way. I love this particular very inner-workings/stream of consciousness (?) based storytelling (I‘m not a literature expert, it‘s just how I would describe it). It made me fall absolutely in love with your characters while also being in awe/slightly intimidated of/by them - which I think works very well with the atmosphere you‘re creating, especially in scenes with Charet (which is again supported by the music and your amazing art).

I can‘t wait to play more of it someday (and until then I‘m just gonna replay it over and over again) and hope you feel appreciated by this <3

Have a lovely day ~

...

Thank you so much.

Your messages left me speechless - and it is very difficult for me to describe, with all the possible colors of the language, how much they inspired and brought me into a state of delight for a long time, helping to work on new, more complex projects long before I had the courage to write this response text.

And I yearned and suffered from the fact that I could not think of something worthy that could show at least a part of my gratitude and admiration for your softness and feelings, and I would like my answer to seem complicated and interesting this time, since I would never want to leave you empty-handed. Yesterday morning, a very strange, special and inherently distant insight came to me - and I hasten to share with you everything that came to my mind, and I hope that you will like it more uwu

The difficulty was also that I am not so much fond of fiction in the traditional concept - my pace of life is restless and changeable, and, as a rule, I have enough patience and perseverance only for poetry and short stories, guided to a greater extent by a sense of aesthetics and associations (because yes, my writing style is a stream of consciousness and you completely hit the mark - I can't write in any other way, except relying on feelings and impressions * --- *) than a serious approach to the plot and idea. Apart from literature (and any other sources), which would be too hackneyed and understandable in its fame, it seemed to me that there were very few things that could interest and impress you, but now I want to think that I was wrong.

The list that I have sketched consists of writers and poets, who are united by the main thing - the fact that they are equally representatives of the same culture with me, and their feelings and aesthetics, colorfulness and sense of language were with me from the beginning of my early years and formed my idea of the world and about the art of writing in general. In other matters, I do not think that the writing style and elements of history and culture will be simple and understandable - I myself have not always felt attraction and warm feelings towards them, but this is something that, I hope, can turn out to be completely new and fresh, not like anything you have experienced before experience, yet close in spirit to what I am myself trying to portray.

Starts from lighter comedies and flamboyant plays and ends in dark fantasy and heavy historical drama. The first of them are very short and read in one gulp - the last are longer, but with a reasonable volume of novels, so they can keep you busy, yet not bored;)

1. "Forest Song" by Lesia Ukrainka. This is a play written in a bright and lively language - but this is a great start if you want to read something light and airy, yet with elements of dark fantasy and Slavic folklore. The combination a little strange at first glance, - this a romantic fairy-tale play that tells about Mavka (a forest nymph), who was in love with a young human man. "Forest Song" is easy to perceive as a poetic fairy tale, but it also has a dark and tragic ending, and raises the theme of human existence in nature and the world in itself - their struggle between feelings, inspiration, brightness of perception and down-to-earthness of life, simple and understandable needs . This play prompted me to think about Margot - as the personification of these worlds and worries, but much darker, heavier and more mysterious, far from human nature.

2. "The Night Before Christmas" by Nikolai Gogol - a writer who has always been the most important and favorite for me, with a rich and varied language which I tried to copy and imitate most of my school years. "Night before Christmas" is included in the collection "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka", which are equally small masterpieces, but it was "Night" that was a vivid and memorable experience, with such a close aesthetics of a small settlement, a heavy blizzard, creaking snow, and devils, prowling in such a mysterious darkness. This is a comedy with idealized romance - and based on it, both films were made and plays are staged, and it tells about the hopelessly in love with beautiful Oksana blacksmith Vakula, who with a cunning mind captured the devil and forced him to help Vakula in courtship. The story is very down-to-earth and light, but with elements of everyday life and culture of the Ukrainian hinterland, which can either turn out to be an interesting experience or push you away to your liking. There are Christian rituals, and descriptions of everyday life, and witches, and folk beliefs, elements of mundane comedy, the historicity of that era and many bright and partly gloomy aesthetics. This part of the culture is closely related to my thoughts and ideas about Margot, as well as about other characters and travelers from the continent (I was also inspired by the Romanian, Georgian, Mongolian and Tatar cultures equally *---*)

3. "Taras Bulba" by the same Gogol is a historical tragedy, difficult and complex, but with strong artistic elements - with a powerful feeling of a gloomy, dark era, characters in which many real and legendary persons were combined, and although they speak of it as romantic nationalism, I have never perceived it in this way (and I do not advise anyone, given the fact that you can find similar elements in almost every name in this literature). It tells about the Zaporozhye Cossack and his two sons, about the times of long wars and dark ages, and it will be a bright and exciting experience for someone far from this culture - it vividly and richly displays the life and psychology of a country that has long ceased to exist.

4. "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" by Mikhailo Kotsyubinsky is a dark historical story, written under the strong impression of the gloomy and mysterious culture of the Hutsuls - the Ukrainian culture of highlanders and old pagans, and the story, at first similar to a much heavier and darker version of Romeo and Juliet, smoothly flows into dark fantasy. It contains the complex psychological baggage of the hero, and a colorful description of such a strange and distant culture, the history of blood feuds and marital betrayal, and the dark forces of a crushing and dangerous nature dominating the earth.

Oh, and also, perhaps, if you have an interest in poetry - I have two big names, Ivan Franko and Taras Shevchenko. The first is a bright romantic of Galicia, with deep sensuality and passion, the second is the father of Ukrainian literature, a poet and artist, the son of a difficult and dark era with art to match him.

...

So..

Thank you so much again.

I adore you with all my heart, and of course you can take as many hugs as you want;зз

#ask #secunda #wonderful people #love them #ukrainian #slavic #poetry #fiction #writing #gothic #dark fantasy

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mne-bolno · 3 years

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it's been so long since I last wrote smth abt erasmus diary so I'll try to sum up the last two weeks in a post (at least as far as I remember):

mon 18/10 - thu 4/11

• i made a move to the greek guy i like but he dumped me. i apologised the next day and now we're fine but i still find him super cute and funny and wish he liked me back

• i hooked up again with the spanish guy and ended up to his room but at the end he dumped me cause i told him i've never had sex before. it's sad cause i really liked him and had fun with him but nvm

• my belarusian crush started liking my ukrainian neighbour and tbh it really hurts because the other ukrainian girl said that it was obvious that he had a crush on me at first and now idk if it's my fault and what i did wrong and why im not good enough again. and also, he is like my dream boy since i was 16 and at some point i really believed we could have smth. also, his behaviour shows that he still has a little crush on me? idk i just wish i could speak better russian because i think that if we had better communication it would have worked out

• we celebrated an italian's guy birthday at the dorm and it was super fun

• i found in the club a really cute guy which i had seen in the mall and in uni so i decided to make a move and talked to a girl from his company. well, the guy never liked me back (again) but the girl is super pretty and super nice, she kept me in their company all night, she was motivating me to dance with her friend (cause im so shy and i dont like dancing) and she was asking me all the time if i feel comfortable with them. and she drinks way more than me, like she drunk a whole glass of straight vodka and she just told me: don't worry, im polish, i drink like that since i was 14. and we got 5 people into one toilet for her to pee, like we turned the other way and started singing, well the other guys in fact they were singing smth polish, but then i asked them to sing dzins by dawid podsiadlo and it was super nice cause when i was listening to this song last january id never imagine that id sing it with five drunk polish guys in a toilet. and the girl told me to tect her some time and go out to drink together ♥

• me and my protugese friend got drunk in a party and we called our crushes. both got dumped with the phrase ''okay, i'll call you back''. they still havent called us

• met a polish guy in the club, like at first we had intense eye contact and both were like ''come on, talk to me'' but nobody made a move. and it was funny because i was dancing with some turkish guys and they saw what was happening and they were also gesturing to the guy to come and talk to me??? but he never did, so i was like fuck it (and also super drunk) so i went and we started talking and in fact he was really nice?? and then we went outside and talked with his friends as well, they were all nice, they play futsal and we were talking abt football. anyway, i dont really think i'll ever speak with the guy again but it was fun

• i slept in the same room with my belarusian crush. so sad we were in seperate beds, but still it was so nice and intimate cause we were talking until 5am and we also had fairy-lights. he told me he is a nice guy but he wants to seem bad and i told him i do the same thing. and then he told me he knows that i drink too much because im sad and i try to find happiness through alcohol. i told him it is true. again, i wish we could speak the same language and speak more :'(

• i got sick and my belarusian crush brought me hot tea in a cup that his ex gifted him with photos of them together. it was such a nice and cute gesture and the thing with the cup was so hilarious. also, his ukrainian ''girlfriend'' (well, it's my friend too) gave me vitamines and she's so helping and nice. i wish we didnt want the same boy cause i love her but i feel kinda awkward around her

• most of the italians went to krakow last weekend and i was kinda alone so i was going to the greek guys' room to sit and chat and tbh they were much more friendly than the first days. they even asked me to paint their faces for halloween. i have so much fun with them but they never search for my company and i feel kinda silly and like a burden because it's always me that wants to hang around with them

#i think that's all #from tomorrow i'll try to write everyday like i did #erasmus diary

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lydia-yougowith-stiles · 5 years

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My Top Ships of 2019!

My favorite time of the year is back yet again! This year I had to expand my top ships to 15!!! I know, but 12 just wasn’t enough. Making this list I didn’t realize how many new shows I started watching in 2019 and how many of my favorites came to their conclusions. They were some pretty great picks that brought about some of my favorite ships. Hope to see them develop more in 2020!

15. Poldark: Ross and Demelza

While I did not overly love the last season of Poldark and had many episodes culminate on the DVR, I have to put Ross and Demelza on this list. Their overall relationship is one of the strongest parts of the show and I do like where they ended up at its conclusion. They rely so much on each other and Ross left Demelza in charge of so much at home as he went to London, which many other husbands at this time would not have done. They experienced much with each other over the last five seasons to get them to this point. The first season will forever be my favorite because of watching their early development and having Ross notice his love for Demelza and how he needed her over Elizabeth. They said this a couple of times in the show, but without Demelza in his life we wouldn’t have the show. It was beautiful to watch the love they had for each other grow. I definitely see myself going back and watching this show from the beginning in the near future. I’ll probably just skip a couple episodes here and there.

14. The Walking Dead: Jesus and Aaron

This ship is so bittersweet because the show did not give it enough time to develop and it could have been amazing. I know Tom Payne was leaving the show to pursue another project. Bingeing the show allows for a few spoilers to come here and there so i knew Jesus would be dying. BUT I did not expect for it to happen like that! It was so sudden that it took a couple of minutes to sink in. I really wish he could have stuck around longer not only for his personal character development, but for him and Aaron. This was another spoiler that I remember encountering and I honestly thought that meant the two would have had more screen time. It was not enough! They would have been great. The few scenes we had between them, while not enough, were beautiful and that is why they are on this list. Aaron describing the amount of loved ones he’s lost and including Eric and Jesus right after each other show how important Jesus was to him. If only we could have gotten more.

13. Pandora: Jax and Xander

The CW’s summer show Pandora seriously needs more love. This Sci-Fi show might have felt jolting at times (and by this I mean that there were times where I felt like I missed an episode because a lot of time had passed or they referenced something we hadn’t been introduced to), but despite this I still really looked forward to it every week. I am SOOO HAPPY it got picked up for a second season. Can’t wait to see where the story is headed as it left us on a great cliffhanger at the end of season one. Jax had several love interests this season (as did many of the characters) and while I liked her with several of them (as I seem to be doing with more entries to follow on this list), I was always drawn back to her and Xander. So, I was very excited to see their relationship get explored more in the second half of the season. It contains some of my favorite tropes like a forbidden match, hate/love banter and keeping secrets from one another. The episode they pretended to be a couple really sealed the deal for me as they started to come to terms with their true feelings. What I liked about their relationship was that they weren’t always the center of the plot, but certain lines that were said reminded you of their interests for one another. With the expected drama for season two, it should be interested to see where their romantic story line is headed.

12. Stranger Things: Nancy and Jonathan

Stranger Things was an early binge for me at the start of the year. Immediately I felt that Nancy and Jonathan needed to be together-even while she ended season 1 with Steve, which I will still never understand. (I love Steve. Don’t get me wrong, but it just didn’t feel right. Plus, I feel like he really grew as a character without her. But that’s for another post.) I always love how Nancy and Jonathan got paired up in their own story line before joining everyone else at the conclusion of the season. Their personalities compliment each other well and they can see each other’s true self. Their off-screen relationship is extremely evident in their chemistry on screen. After seeing the end of season 3 and how they will be separated I can only hope it is not for good as these two are meant for each other.

11. Jane the Virgin: Jane and Michael

The age old question: Team Michael or Team Rafael? Up until moments of season 4, I was Team Michael all the way. Another show that I came in as a binge-watcher at the earlier parts of 2019 I knew a lot of spoilers (or let’s say some of the MAJOR spoilers involving Michael). As a telenovela, there was always a lot of back and forth who Jane would pick. Again, as I came into the show later, I knew she’d be with Michael, but I still felt on my toes watching. (This show was so great and I’m so upset the final season aired this year.) Michael was my favorite because of the history he and Jane had. They cared so much for each other and supported one another. I think I was also more Team Michael at first because I enjoyed his personality. However, despite all of this I was not a fan of his return as Jason. I feel like they were pulling straws at what to do for plot-lines and decided to bring him back for the final season. I felt we were in a good place with Jane and Raf and didn’t need it. Michael was a major part of Jane’s life, but she had moved into a different part of her life. I know when I watch this show back I will still be Team Michael in the early seasons. It’s sad his character was lost so early, but I did really like how they adapted the show without him.

10. Derry Girls: James and Erin

Would this list be complete if I didn’t include a pairing that is not an official couple (...yet) that have not alluded to any romantic feelings, expect for me reading too much into things? No it wouldn’t be. :) DERRY GIRLS is one of my TOP shows of 2019 and I am so happy that we were not graced with one season, but TWO this past year! I am still mad that there are only six half hour episodes per season when there should be more! And I’m also upset that season 3 (which could be their final season) has not started filming yet. But while I complain about all of that (because I love this show so much), I’m crossing my fingers for James and Erin. The wee English lad is often shown standing (or sitting) very close to Erin and early on I felt the two would be adorable together. In season one she hopes he won’t sleep with an Ukrainian and in season two James decides to not go to a Doctor Who convention in order to take Erin to the prom. Tell me this isn’t building up to something more. While watching season one I couldn’t find any fan postings about them and then once season two aired I found a bunch. I love watching a ship grow!

9. Legacies: Hope and Josie

Last year when I made my Top Ships of 2018 it was too early to pick which my favorite ships for Legacies were. They were so many options and honestly I still feel like I ship many people together and wouldn’t be overly upset if one became canon over another. As season one progressed I became more and more team Hosie (or Hope and Josie). Then I discovered the large fan-base for the two of them and fell more in love with them. There were many moments in season one that strengthened the fact the two would be great together: the moment above, the dream episode with Lizzie when she experiences different realities if Hope never came to the school, etc-there are some key moments between Hope and Josie that showed they would work and have feelings for one another. This season, Josie was experiencing a lot at the Salvatore School making her not my favorite character as she often is. She seemed to make up with Hope, but now that Landon has chosen Hope I am unsure what will happen to their relationship/friendship. However, this season Hope did let it slip that she once had a crush on Josie too. I really feel like Julie Plec might give us some Hosie in upcoming seasons. Personally, they feel like an endgame relationship that we will have to wait a long time for (each will get involved with other people-you know how these shows are.) But I’m here for anything that comes my way.

8. Legacies: Hope and Rafael

Another Legacies ship-What a Shock! :) It was very hard for me to pick which one to go first, but ultimately I picked Hope and Rafael because of this season. When Hope came back and no one remembered her I could have sworn that Rafael’s werewolf state would have been immune to Malivore’s power and he would have remembered Hope as she took the spell off of him. While this did not happen, we did get some cute scenes between them. I like how he immediately still liked her even though he didn’t remember their past. I like how he looked for her at the dance and hung out with her afterwards. Of course, it was super ironic when Landon wanted to be his wingman, but it was nice seeing Rafael happy as he’s not often. Then once the truth was uncovered he went back to avoiding Hope. This is a relationship that I am surprised they are already exploring. As I mentioned with Hosie, Hope and Rafael felt like a potential relationship, but that would be developed more later-not already in the first season. I am very surprised how many love triangles are already emerging and it’s only season two, which begs the question how long Hope and Landon will stay together? You know you have a good show on your hands when you can ship so many people together and be happy with multiple pairings and alternatives. (Although I would prefer Hope with either Josie or Raf over Landon for sure.)

7. The Walking Dead: Rick and Michonne

Aww, another ship with a devastating ending. Seems to be a common thread with some of these. Rick and Michonne were two people that complimented each other nicely throughout the earlier seasons and just made sense when they officially became a couple. They had similar personalities and were like a little family living in Alexandria before they actually became a family. Rick had a few different flames before Michonne, but none were as right for him as she was. Watching the past one and a half seasons without him on the show feels different, and I really miss seeing the two of them lead Alexandria. Michonne, Judith and RJ are keeping him alive, but it isn’t the same as seeing him there. Despite all of this remorse, I really did enjoy seeing them together on the show and I think it came at the perfect time. They had a bond, but were able to act on something more once they reached more stability. I know Danai Gurira wants to leave Walking Dead soon. I just hope there’s a way she can see Rick before she does.

6. Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Jake and Amy

Last year I got to be introduced to Jake and Amy and watch their relationship develop from “hating” each other to something more. Now in the latest season as the show moved to NBC I got to see more of them as they took their honeymoon and Jake stood up to Amy’s parents. While it feels like a very long time ago that I watched this season (and I am very happy to see it is all available on demand so I can catch up before the new episodes), I can remember really enjoying the episodes and this couple even more. I know I’ve said this before, but I really enjoy the kind of ships that don’t always have to be around each other, but you hear them talk about each other or state something that remind you that they are a couple. Those often feel like the realest ones to me. I honestly think Jake and Amy can go down as one of my favorite ships of all time. (That’s BIG I know.) I am so excited that we are going to get more seasons of Brooklyn Nine Nine because it is what they (and we) deserve.

5. Single Parents: Will and Angie

A slow burn that feels like it might be coming to confession time.... That’s just an inference from reading next week’s episode description. A classic plot device: people assume they are together and they have to “pretend to be a couple.” We ALWAYS know how these story-lines end up. Will and Angie have always had a connection since season one. They were the two that I thought would be together, so it was a bit of a shock when Douglas and Poppy became the first ones in a couple. (Although I really enjoy the two of them as well.) I don’t see the show pairing up two of their major couples at the same time, so while I don’t want Douglas and Poppy to break up I REALLY WANT WILL AND ANGIE TOGETHER. This season they have become best of friends; as they often call each other. Almost like they are rubbing it in our faces! Before the mid-season break there were quite a few moments alluding to something more happening between the two of them. I mean Will’s girlfriend called out Angie during Thanksgiving. I think that might have caused some realization for Angie. I have a strong feeling Graham’s dad is going to come back into the picture and ruin things. Either way you know I’ll be watching this Wednesday and hoping for something monumental to happen!

4. Jane the Virgin: Jane and Rafael

I know it’s SHOCKING! As someone who was so Team Michael at the start I have placed Jane and Rafael so far up on this list. Well, after Michael’s death and watching the two of them get so close before becoming romantically involved again made me grow to really enjoy them together. I really love the fact that they were endgame. I seriously got worried there when Jason came back into the picture, which made me not a huge fan of the first half of this last season. Luckily, the second half of the season was fantastic as Jane won back Rafael and they officially became husband and wife. The more I write about this show the more I want to add it to my ‘Want to watch again list.’ I feel it will be different because now I know what’s to come, but I can still enjoy all the great moments.

3. The 100: Bellamy and Clarke

Yes, I’m just about as shocked as you are (again) that Bellarke is not my number one pick this year (yet again). But I have to keep you on your toes and I don’t want to seem too predictable. I had to evaluate these last couple very closely. If you are on this page you know of my LOVE for Bellamy and Clarke. Number One Bellarke fan, right here. So every season that Jason Rothenberg gives us a little more I am a happy girl. As a Bellarke fan you train yourself for this. Well, this season, despite Bellamy still being in a relationship with Echo, we got several monumental Bellarke moments. From Bellamy recognizing that Clarke was still alive and helping take down Josephine, the CPR scene, more head and the heart talk (I’m dead btw) and more and more hugs. With only one season left I am praying to the gods that we will have them become endgame. This will be our last chance and you cannot tell me that everything we witnessed in this last season was PLATONIC! I’m sorry, but no. These two are meant for each other. Their love is so strong, that Eliza and Bob got married in real life. (Which can we just say how I still have moments where I’m like did this happen???) Such a good year for them. Cannot wait for the last season.

2. iZombie: Liv and Major

I called it! I hoped these two would be endgame, but as the final season progressed I was getting more and more worried. Liv and Major would have scenes together, but they were strictly business. I could always feel like something was still between them, but we were running out of time and didn’t know how they would conclude it all. Well, I am extremely happy that not only did they wind up together, but they are in a place where they can have a family and be together forever. I know I haven’t spoken about this couple much, but I have always liked the characters together on the show. While their time romantically together was pretty short overall, their characters drastically changed from season one episode one. There were times when I liked their new love interests, but I always hoped they would wind up together. Happy to see this ending.

AND NUMBER ONE GOES TO........

1. Anne with an E: Anne and Gilbert

Shirbert for the win!!! While season three has just been released on Netflix, I have seen MANY spoilers thanks to YouTube for the third (and sadly final) season. Could I have avoided them? Of course I could have, but I didn’t have the will power. I only watched a couple, but they were some big moments between these two. As a fan of the books and other adaptations of the beloved classic I knew Anne and Gilbert were meant to be even with all the back and forth/will they won’t between them. Just like any good movie or show, just knowing the outcome doesn’t make it true and they extended this slow burn nicely. I cannot wait to watch the full third season on Netflix this month and experience all the romance again. These two are meant for each other and I am just upset that we won’t be able to see more of their story.

Shirbert forever!

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anastpaul · 6 years

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Today,17 July is also the Memorial of Blessed Pavol Peter Gojdic “The Man with a Heart of Gold”(pronunciation Goydich) O.S.B.M. (1888-1960) Martyr, Monk, Teacher, Basilian Bishop, Apostle of Charity, Eucharistic and Marian devotee. Born on 17 July 1888 at Ruské Peklany, PreSov, Slovak Republic as Peter Gojdic and died on 17 July 1960 in the prison hospital at Leopoldov, Hlohovec, Slovak Republic of illness and maltreatment received in prison. (O.S.B.M. The Order of Saint Basil the Great (Latin: Ordo Sancti Basilii Magni) also known as the Basilian Order of Saint Josaphat is a monastic religious order of the Greek Catholic Churches that is present in many countries and that has its Mother House in Rome (Santi Sergio e Bacco degli Ucraini). The order received approbation on 20 August 1631 and was based at the Holy Trinity monastery in Vilnius. Its monks, brothers and priests work primarily with Ukrainian Catholics and are also present in other Greek-Catholic churches in central and eastern Europe.

Pavol Gojdič was born on 17 July 1888 at Ruské Pekľany near Prešov, into the family of the Greek-Catholic priest Štefan Gojdič; his mother’s name was Anna Gerberyová. He received the name of Peter in baptism. Obeying God’s call to the priesthood he began his study of theology at Prešov, immediately after school. Since he obtained excellent results, he was sent a year later to continue his studies in Budapest. Here too he tried to lead a profoundly spiritual life. While still a seminarian, he was directed by his spiritual director on these lines: “Life is not difficult, but it is a serious matter”– words that were to guide him throughout his life. Having finished his studies on 27 August 1911 he was ordained priest at Prešov by Bishop Dr Ján Valyi. After his ordination he worked for a short period as assistant parish priest with his father. After a year he was appointed prefect of the eparchial seminary and at the same time taught religion in a higher secondary school. Later he was put in charge of protocol and the archives in the diocesan curia. He was also entrusted with the spiritual care of the faithful in Sabinov as assistant parish priest. In 1919 he became director of the episcopal office.

To everyone’s surprise on 20 July 1922 he joined the Order of St Basil the Great at Černecia Hora near Mukačevo, where, taking the habit on 27 January 1923 he took the name Pavol. He took this decision as a sign of modesty, humility and a desire to lead an ascetic life in order to better serve God. But God willed otherwise and had ordered him to a higher office as bishop. On 14 September 1926 he was nominated Apostolic administrator of the eparchy of Prešov. During his installation as Apostolic Administrator he announced the programme of his apostolate: “With the help of God I want to be a father to orphans, a support for the poor and consoler to the afflicted”.

The first official act of Pavol Gojdič in his office as newly appointed administrator of the eparchy of Prešov was to address a pastoral letter on the occasion of the 1100st anniversary of the birth of St Cyril, apostle of the Slavs. Thus he began his activity in the spirit of the apostle of the Slavs, always faithful to Rome, as they were. He was a Slav and was very fond of his oriental rite.

A short time later, on 7 March 1927 he was nominated bishop with the title of Harpaš (Church of Harpaš – in Asia Minor). The episcopal consecration took place in the basilica of San Clemente, Rome, on 25 March 1927, the feast of the Annunciation of Our Lady. After his episcopal ordination he visited the basilica of St Peter in Rome, where he prayed on the tomb of the Apostle. On 29 March 1927, together with Bishop Nyaradi, he was received in a private audience by the Holy Father Pius XI. The pope gave Bishop Pavol a gold cross saying: “This cross is only a faint symbol of the heavy crosses that God will send you, my son, in your work as bishop”.

For his episcopal programme he chose as a motto the following words: “God is love, let us love Him!” As bishop he was engaged in the promotion of spiritual life of both clergy and faithful. He insisted on the proper celebration of the liturgy and of church feasts. He erected new parishes, for instance, in Prague, Bratislava, Levoča and elsewhere. Thanks to his hard work the orphanage at Prešov was built and entrusted to the local sisters. His activity in the scholastic field was outstanding, as is proved by the foundation of the Greek-Catholic school in Prešov in the year 1936. He supported also the teaching academy, the seminary, colleges etc. He was interested in every aspect of spiritual reading, which resulted in the launching of the review Blahovistnik (Messenger of the Gospel), Da prijdet carstvije Tvoje (Thy Kingdom Come) and various prayers etc., published by the PETRA publishing house. For his kindness, caring and charitable relationship with the people he was described as “the man with a heart of gold”.

An important characteristic of the bishop was also his strong affection for the Eucharistic Saviour, which he continually strengthened through his visits to the Blessed Eucharist in the chapel at his residence. Another characteristic, not less evident, of his spiritual life, was his devotion to the Sacred Heart. Already as a Seminarian in Budapest he had consecrated himself to the Sacred Heart and this he confirmed every morning with the words “All the prayers, sacrifices and crosses, I offer, in reparation for the sins of the whole world!”. One must not forget that the bishop had great devotion to the Mother of God and as as a Marian devotee held in his residential chapel a picture of the Virgin of Klokočov, in front of which he prayed every day and to whose protection he entrusted himself and the whole eparchy.

On 13 April 1939 he was appointed apostolic administrator in Slovakia of the Apostolic Administration of Mukačevo. In the difficult situation of the Slovak State he became a “thorn in the flesh” for the representatives of the government of the time and so offered his resignation from the post – in fact the Holy Father refused his resignation but also made him residential bishop of Prešov. And so on 8 August 1940 he was solemnly enthroned at Prešov and then on 15 January 1946 confirmed in his jurisdiction over the Greek-Catholics in the whole of Czecho-Slovakia.

The progress in religious and spiritual life in the eparchy that followed the personal example and fervour of Bishop Pavol was interrupted by the events of war and especially with the coming to power of the communists in 1948. Their ideological programme made itself felt above all against the Greek-Catholic Church. Bishop Gojdič resisted any initiative to submit the Greek-Catholics to Russian orthodoxy assisted by the communist party and the power of the State, even though he knew he was risking persecution and arrest, maybe even death. Gradually he was isolated from the clergy and the faithful.

Even though put under severe pressure to renounce the Catholic faith and break unity with the Pope, he refused every attractive offer and exclaimed: “I am already 62 and sacrifice all my goods and residence but I will not deny my faith in any way because I want to save my soul. Do not even speak to me.”

During the sad event of Sobor of Prešov, 28 April 1950, when the State outlawed the Greek-Catholic Church and forbade her activity, Bishop Pavol Gojdič was arrested and interned. Thus began his via crucis in many prisons of what was Czecho-Slovakia, which ended with his death. In the days from the 11 to the 15 of January 1951 in a trial set up against the so called high treason Bishops (Vojtaššák, Buzalka, and Gojdič) he was given a life sentence; fined two hundred thousand crowns and deprived of all his civic rights. Transfers from one prison to another followed. Blessed Pavol suffered physical and psychological punishments, humiliations; he was forced to do the most difficult and degrading jobs. However, he never complained and never asked to be relieved. He made use of every available time to pray and celebrated the sacred liturgy in secret. Following the amnesty in 1953, given by State President A. Zapotocký, his life sentence was changed to 25 years detention. He was then 66 and his state of health deteriorated continuously. Yet all further requests for amnesty were refused.

Bishop Pavol Gojdič could only leave prison at the cost of his faithfulness to the Church and to the Holy Father. Various offers were made to him, as is proved by an event that he himself recounts: In the prison of Ruzyň he was received in an office, where he had been brought from his cell, by a high official in uniform. They informed him that from that office he could go straight to Prešov, on condition that he was willing to become patriarch of the Ortodox church in Czecho-Slovakia. The bishop refused this offer excusing himself and explaining that this would be a very grave sin against God, a betrayal of the Holy Father, of his conscience and of his faithful, most of whom were then suffering persecution.

Even in the most difficult situation he abandoned himself to the will of God, as can be seen from these words of his: “I do not really know whether it is a gain to exchange the crown of martyrdom with two or three years of life in freedom. But I leave the good Lord to decide”. On the occasion of his 70° birthday even the Holy Father Pius XII sent him a telegram in prison. In it he assured him he would not forget his heroic son. For the bishop this was one of his best days of his life.

A great desire of Blessed Pavol was to die comforted by the sacraments on his birthday. Both desires were fulfilled.

Father Alojz Vrána was transferred to the room of the prison hospital of Leopoldov (Slovakia), where the Bishop passed his last days and could hear his confession. The chalice of suffering of Blessed Pavol was about to overflow. An eye-witness of the last moments of his life was his fellow prisoner – the nurse František Ondruška, who has given a unique testimony. He confirmed that the desire of the bishop had been fulfilled – he died on 17 July 1960 that is on the day of his 72nd birthday. He died in the hospital of the prison of Leopoldov as a result of illness resulting from the ill treatment he had suffered. He was buried without ceremony in the prison cemetery in a nameless tomb, with the prison number 681.

As a result of the easing of the political situation in Czecho-Slovakia in 1968, the state autorities after many delays gave permission for exhuming the mortal remains of Blessed Pavol. This happened in the cemetery of Leopoldov on 29 October 1968 and was followed by the transfer of the remains to Prešov. By a decision of the authorities set up after the soviet occupation, these were transferred to the crypt of Greek-Catholic Cathedral of St John the Baptist in Prešov. From 15 May 1990 they are to be found in a sarcofagus in the chapel of the cathedral.

Bishop Pavol Gojdič was legally rehabilitated on 27 September 1990. Subsequently he was decorated posthumously with the Order of T G Masaryk – II class, and with the Cross of Pribina – 1st class.

The Holy Father, St John Paul II during his historic visit in Slovakia, while visiting Prešov, prayed at the tomb of this bishop-martyr in the chapel of the cathedral. He Beatified him on 4 November 2001.

(via Saint of the Day - 17 July - Blessed Pavol Peter Gojdic (1888-1960) Martyr - "The Man with a Heart of Gold")

#blpavolgoydich #july17blpavolgoydicmartyr #catholic #catholicism

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viertfm · 3 years

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About “there are enemies of Russia all around” by N. Marcovich

Accidentally saw a piece of a BBC program, usually I never ever watch TV.

I was surprised to see how the conflict between the Russians and the Ukrainians was shown. They showed both, yes. Ukrainian refugees spoke about having had to leave everything behind. A girl was crying and repeating: “I hate them, you know, I hate them.” I cried along with her. I can't picture what a grief was on her face.

Then they showed fled Russians. "I can't go back", said a man, "I have already written for 15 years worth in prison". And a girl was sitting on a bench shed with the sunlight wearing a hood, speaking with a dead expression on her face: "Here we come. Trying to live. The sun is shining and I want to forget about everything and smile sometimes but I can't. I feel like I don't have a right to smile ever in my life". I can't picture what a grief was on her face.

I can't forget those girls' faces. Ruined destinies. I'm thinking of them and I want to remember this forever. And about those who brought this grief. I'm writing this and I’m crying.

I only wanted to tell you that BBC while taking an obviously known side in the conflict is showing the situation from different points, not like Ukrainians are heroes and Russians are all evil. This was a report full of compassion to both sides.

And no, I haven't ever faced russophobia. I heard about only one case of discrimination which means they exist but there are only few, most people understand everything right. And in fact it's illegal, you can go to court and you're likely to win.

I'm not identified with the state Russia and I'm being supported. A neighbour brought flowers to my friend Masha and told her: "I know how bad you feel right now". And also a Ukrainian girl from a first year group in my Drama school came to the kitchen during a break just to tell me she doesn't hate me. I can't stop hugging her, she's tearing my heart apart.

Now I understand a bit how a German girl from my group feels when I'm telling my jewish black-humour jokes or telling about the Holocaust. We discussed it with her, yes, it's true, quite a few generations of Germans take responsibility for the WWII and even younger people remember about it. This is our destiny now as well. I don't tell these jokes anymore though. And the German girl hugs me too. There's so much grief and so much love around.

And everything is both black and white (you either justify the war or you don't) and full of shades at the same time. But one thing is certain - the Ukrainians are heroes. I won't get tired saying that. And now I'm writing a post about why Ukraine chose Europe not Russia. If there are questions about Europe, do ask, I'll take them into account.

Original (Russian): https://www.facebook.com/natasha.marcovich/posts/5100271326705524

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alliluyevas · 6 years

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related to your thesis discussion: how involved was nina kukharchuk with the party? i mean, krupskaya helped make the revolution... (i've genuinely never even heard of nina :''()

First of all, thank you so much for this extremely Up My Alley ask, I am glad to spread the good news and also infodump on my unsuspecting followers.

So, Nina was born into a Ukrainian peasant family but was able to get a good secondary education at a girls’ boarding school in Odessa because of the intervention of a bishop who noticed her as a promising student. After she graduated high school, she joined the Communist Party in 1920 and was initially posted with a Red Army regiment. After the fighting over a territory in Ukraine (which was very hotly contested) was over, the Army would occupy it and Nina would talk to the local people about communism and the opportunities that would be available to them through the new Soviet state—education, being able to feed their families better, etc. She was basically supposed to back up the Red Army with a friendly female face and get Ukrainian peasants psyched up about the USSR. Apparently she was very good at this, which I find very believable, because she came from a similar background as them, was really idealistic and passionate about her cause, and she was also young, cute, and not at all intimidating.

After the Civil War was over and Soviet power was established, Nina started teaching at a Communist Party adult-education school, educating workers and peasants about Marxist ideology and trying to transform them into good Soviet citizens and potential active members of the Party. This is where she met her husband, who was one of her students. At first, she and Khrushchev actually did quite similar work, because they were both active Communist Party organizers in Ukraine, although she also continued teaching.

In 1927, Khrushchev became the head of organization for the Kiev branch of the Communist Party, which is the point at which his career started to progress beyond hers. This is pretty typical for the period, because while women were very active in the base of the Party, more important positions were predominantly occupied by men. They also had their first child together in 1927, a little girl named Nadya, who sadly died when she was three months old. I don’t know the cause of death, but it was obviously very upsetting for them. In 1929, they had Rada, their second daughter and first surviving. They also moved to Moscow so Khrushchev could study at the Industrial Academy there. Nina continued working after having her first two children, and once they arrived in Moscow she became head of education and propaganda for a big electrical factory.

(Funny story: Nina used both her surnames interchangeably after she married—she often went by Nina Khrushcheva in terms of personal stuff or in the context of things related to her husband, but she used Nina Kukharchuk professionally. One time, someone called their apartment in Moscow and she answered with “hello, Comrade Kukharchuk speaking” and the person on the phone asked what she was doing in Comrade Khrushchev’s apartment! She had to be like “I’m his wife. This is also my apartment” hhhhh)

Back to the action. In 1935, Nina had another child, Sergei. There was a pretty big gap in between Rada and Sergei, which I’m assuming was intentional because they were getting established in Moscow and both of them were very busy with work. After Sergei was born, Nina stopped working. There are a variety of reasons for this, both personal and political. First of all, she seems to have felt like she missed out on a lot of Rada’s baby years because she was so busy and didn’t want to do that with future children. Secondly, 1935 was also the year her husband became first secretary of the Moscow Communist Party, so Nina was now the wife of someone who was quite important and had attracted Stalin’s attention. In the upper echelons of the Party hierarchy, there seems to have been more pressure for women to stay home, partially because their families were privileged enough that they didn’t have to, and partially because Stalin was threatened by assertive, independent women and expressed disapproval. Aside from external pressure, as Khrushchev became more important, they seem to have decided (and I do think this was a joint decision, rather than him pushing her) that he needed more constant emotional support and advice from his wife.

While there were definitely some sexist attitudes at play here (men have the important career, women take charge at home), I don’t think it would be fair to condemn him too harshly for this, because you have to consider the context. Ordinarily, if some guy was all “because of my important political career, I need my wife to take care of me”, I’d roll my eyes and talk about men expecting emotional labor from their female partners and wanting to have their hands held. But in the case of someone whose important political career was situated in the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, I’m inclined to acknowledge that he genuinely needed a lot of emotional support.

Being high-ranking in Stalin’s government brought a lot of power and a lot of privilege, but it also brought an incredibly stressful day-to-day working environment with lots of petty infighting, and, more importantly, a significant and very real threat of eventual execution. This was a very dangerous world they were getting into, and it could be very isolating. A lot of Kremlin families of the era seemed to…regress into the home, sort of, and their immediate family became very important because sometimes it probably felt like they couldn’t trust anyone else. The Khrushchev family wasn’t as vocal about the effects of being part of Stalin’s inner circle, but to give some idea of the situation, I’m going to draw from the Mikoyans.

Anastas Mikoyan, obviously, was a close friend and staunch ally of Khrushchev. He had been close to Stalin longer, since the early 1920s, but by the time the purges started he also had cause to worry. He and his wife, Ashken, had discussed what they would do in the event suspicion fell on him, and he had decided that he would shoot himself rather than be arrested and charged as an enemy of the state, because he would inevitably be executed anyway and he thought things would be better for his wife and children if he killed himself before that could happen. Thankfully, it never came to this, but living with that fear must have been excruciating. Ashken Mikoyan used to wait up for her husband every night, sometimes until four or five in the morning if he’d been up late meeting with Stalin, so she could be reassured that he was okay and so she could be there for him when he got home. Ashken apparently felt like the most important thing she could do for her husband and her family was provide a safe, emotionally supportive place for him to come home to. I wouldn’t be surprised if Nina felt the same way. Like Ashken, she was probably extremely aware of the danger her husband was in, as well as the fact that often wives and children would be imprisoned or even executed as well if the head of the family was purged. Both Nina and Nikita seem to have made a lot of effort to protect their children from this fear—both Rada and Sergei remember that their parents never discussed politics or their father’s work in front of them.

In this environment, I can see why staying home would be more appealing than it might have been earlier in Nina’s life. While she clearly loved her work and found it fulfilling, it was also time-consuming and stressful, and as she had more children to take care of and her family had to live under a more or less constant threat of violence, it makes sense she apparently felt like her work had to go.

Sorry, this turned into more about the complicated and horrifying family dynamics and mentality of the Communist elite under Stalin and less about Nina’s work with the Party, but she did have a very active career for 15 years, which she then chose to leave for reasons I think are very understandable. I do think it’s kind of sad, though, that in her early years she dedicated so much of her time and energy and spirit to the Party and the state and then she had to leave that behind in part because of this climate of fear that had completely overtaken the Party and the state because of Stalin.

This doesn’t even get into Nina’s position once Khrushchev became premier/general secretary, partially because I’m still learning about that period and partially because this is already long as hell. In summary, she took on a much more public role than she had in the previous period, but it was different to when she’d been so actively involved in political organization in her early career when she and her husband had both been starting out.

#OBNOXIOUS HISTORY NERD ON MAIN IM SORRY #this is mostly drawn from kremlin wives but also the taubman bio of khrushchev but also various mikoyan sources #my soviet history posts

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Who Do Republicans Think The Whistleblower Is

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/who-do-republicans-think-the-whistleblower-is/

Who Do Republicans Think The Whistleblower Is

Opinion: At Hearing Republicans Sink To New Lows In Trying To Expose Whistleblower

Do voters want the whistleblower to testify?

At Tuesday mornings hearing of the House Intelligence Committee, ranking Republican Devin Nunes appeared to attempt to get information that would lead to the exposure of the whistleblower whose complaint touched off the impeachment inquiry.

It was a disturbing moment in a set of hearings that have featured many of them, and it showed just how determined Republicans are to get that persons name out into the public so they can initiate a campaign against them and distract the publics attention from the substance of the impeachment inquiry.

It came during the questioning of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, one of many officials in the Trump administration who was shocked and appalled by President Trumps fateful call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Unlike others, Vindman was one of those listening in on the call.

Nunes asked Vindman whom he spoke to about the call; Vindman listed a number of officials with a need to know, including George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state in charge of Europe and Eurasia. He also mentioned an individual in the intelligence community, without giving a name.

Identifying the whistleblower and then releasing his or her name publicly has become something of an obsession for Republicans, though their explanations for precisely why they want to do this run from the incoherent to the absurd. And its important to understand why this would be so dangerous.

Trump Says He Wants To Box Biden On 9/11

Washington The House Intelligence Committee and lawyers for the whistleblower who filed a complaint about President Donald Trump’s conduct are discussing extreme measures to protect the individual’s identity amid growing concerns about his or her safety, according to several sources familiar with the process.

Other Agencies Protect Identities

In both the Securities and Exchange Commission and IRS;whistleblower programs, which can feature multimillion dollar awards, the agencies scrupulously protect whistleblowers identities.

For example, the SEC program permits whistleblowers to submit their information anonymously. Over the 10 years of the program, SEC attorneys have told us many times that targets of the resulting investigations are not informed of;the existence of a whistleblower,;let alone the person’s identity. The IRS provides similar assurances of confidentiality.;

The protections that shield the Ukraine whistleblower from disclosure wisely mirror these corporate whistleblower protections.

The reason for such policies is self-evident. Whistleblowers point people to critical facts being hidden. But they sometimes provide information about misconduct of which they have little or no direct knowledge. The whistleblower may provide a witness directory but not be a witness. In that case, the governments case will generally not depend on the whistleblowers credibility, but on the credibility of witnesses with firsthand knowledge and evidence.

Safeguarding an identity:Trump has no right to confront the whistleblower who triggered an impeachment inquiry

If the opinion of congressional lawyers prevails, we may never know who blew the whistle. And that is exactly how it should be. The whistleblowers service is done. It is up to the witnesses;now.

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Some Gop Senators Buck President Trump Rand Paul On Calls To Release Whistleblower’s Identity

Republicans and Democrats were quick to defend the whistleblower.

White House officials skip their scheduled testimony in impeachment inquiry

Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are coming to the defense of the whistleblower at the center of the impeachment inquiry after President Donald Trump and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., called for the individuals identity to be revealed.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, on Monday said in response to Trump’s comments that it was up to the whistleblower to decide whether or not to come forward.

“That’s strictly up to the whistleblower,” Grassley told reporters.

“All I want to do is make sure the law is followed,” Grassley said, when asked by reporters if the president’s comments were appropriate. “A person like me that has advocated for whistleblowers for a long period of time — including this whistleblower — I want maximum protection for whistleblowers.”

Long-standing whistleblower laws protect the identities of government employees who come forward with accusations of wrongdoing within the government. The whistleblower’s lawyers have said that revealing their client’s name could threaten their client’s personal safety and that there have already been death threats made against the individual.

ABC News is not reporting on the whistleblower’s identity. All that is publicly known of the whistleblower is that he or she is a member of the intelligence community.

Republicans were quick to denounce Paul’s charge.

Freedom Of Association Protects The Identities Of Whistleblowers Acting Collectively To Expose Wrongdoing

In addition to the right of whistleblower confidentiality enshrined in the Inspector General Act,;the First Amendment right of association is a compelling justification to bar outing a whistleblower or compelling a whistleblower to out other whistleblowers.

About three decades ago, the Government Accountability Project , a non-partisan organization that defends whistleblowers, received a subpoena from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission concerning GAPs representation of whistleblowers disclosing safety concerns about the South Texas Project, a nuclear plant nearing completion southwest of Houston. ;GAP provided information about their clients safety concerns but omitted the informants names and other identifying information on the basis that compelled disclosure of their identities would undermine GAPs ability to assist whistleblowers in presenting safety concerns to the NRC and the public.

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Republicans Echo Trump In Suggesting Whistleblower Complaint Is Politically Motivated

Republicans responded with a collective shrug to explosive news that an intelligence official had lodged a complaint with the inspector general about President Trumps communications with a foreign leader, the latest example of GOP lawmakers falling in line.

Rank-and-file Republicans on Friday repeatedly dodged questions about a whistleblower allegation that a promise Trump made to a foreign leader jeopardized national security. Some even went so far as to dismiss the complaint as politically motivated even though they hadnt seen the full details of the allegation.

Its not like we havent seen this movie before: Democrats come out, theyre all spun up, Adam Schiff makes all kinds of statements, and then when the facts come out, whoa, different story! said Trump-ally Rep. Jim Jordan , the top Republican on the House Oversight and Reform Committee. He compared the latest allegations to claims that Trump worked with Russia to win in 2016. This seems to be the same kind of deal.

The GOPs nonchalance even extended to the decision by acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire not to share the complaint with Congress, though the law says explicitly that national security matters deemed urgent should be shared with intelligence committees on Capitol Hill.

A few Republicans did express concerns as details emerged, but they were reluctant to criticize the president or even suggest Trump had done anything wrong.

Will The Whistleblower Testify

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, who chairs the U.S. House of Representatives intelligence committee, has said it is likely the whistleblower wont testify in person, citing security concerns.

However, on Sunday, Zaid said his client would answer questions directly from Republican members in writing, under oath and penalty of perjury in a bid to stem escalating efforts to reveal the persons identity.

READ MORE: White House learned of CIA whistleblower soon after complaint filed but how?

In a tweet, Zaid said being a whistleblower is not a partisan job, nor is impeachment an objective.

That is not our role, he wrote, adding that Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, a ranking member of the House intelligence committee, had been notified of the offer.

Lebo, though, says he doesnt think it is necessary for the whistleblower to come forward and testify.

Pretty much all the aspects of the story that the whistleblower first brought to our attention have gone in front of congressional committees and have been corroborated by witnesses, he said.

With files from the Associated Press

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Gop Senator On Whistleblower Complaint: ‘there’s Obviously Lots That’s Very Troubling There’

Donald TrumpFormer Sen. Heller to run for Nevada governorOvernight Defense & National Security Milley becomes lightning rodJoint Chiefs Chairman Milley becomes lightning rod on rightMORE and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky contained lots thats very troubling, warning his GOP colleagues not to dismiss it.

Republicans ought not to be rushing to circle the wagons to say theres no there there when theres obviously lots thats very troubling there, Sasse said after reviewing the complaint, according to an NBC News reporter. The administration ought not be attacking the whistleblower as some talking points suggest they plan to do.

However, Sasse also castigated the media and House Democrats, who have announced an impeachment inquiry based on the whistleblower complaint, saying, Democrats ought not to be using the word impeach before they have the whistleblower complaint or before they read any of the transcript.

SASSE also says The administration ought not be attacking the whistleblower as some talking points suggest they plan to do.Heres more of s full Response:

Frank Thorp V

The media humbly should not pretend that this story is about something thats going to be resolved in the next two hours, he added. Done right with lots of deliberation, this is going to take a lot of time, but theres obviously some really troubling things here.

They’re Already Running The All

WE WANT THE WHISTLEBLOWER: Republicans DEMAND Testimony at Impeachment Hearing

More than two and a half years into the Trump presidency, Republicans have a tried and true strategy when it comes to dealing with whistleblowers or any other witnesses who threaten to expose the president and his administration’s corrupt or unethical behavior. Following the president’s lead, they do everything in their power to discredit the individual and destroy his or her reputation, questioning the subject’s honesty and integrity, portraying her as a politically-motivated opportunist, and digging up whatever kind of dirt they can true or not to sully the person’s name. After tarring and feathering the witness or whistleblower in question, they move on to the press and the journalists who reported the story, fulminating against the “fake news” media and the dishonest reporters who would do anything to bring down the president. Finally, if things really look bad, they point to a vast “deep state” conspiracy to undermine and ruin President Trump, who has spent the past three years fighting off baseless smears and treacherous attacks from people within his own government.

The whistleblower report has now been provided to the congressional intelligence committees and, according to Schiff, the whistleblower has asked to testify and could do so as early as this week. One can only hope that he or she is prepared for the mudslinging vitriol and intimidation tactics that Republicans are getting ready to deploy.

Read Also: Did The Democrats And Republicans Switch

Trump Impeachment Inquiry: Three Republican Claims Fact

BBC News

President Trump and his Republican supporters are fighting hard to control the narrative of the ongoing impeachment hearings, hitting back with their own allegations against Democrats and the whistleblower at the origin of the affair.

They’re also questioning the actions of Ukrainian politicians, as well as pushing for greater scrutiny of allegations that Joe Biden and his son Hunter were up to no good in Ukraine.

Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the committee holding the impeachment hearings, made three specific claims in his opening statement on Tuesday.

So what are these allegations and how valid are they?

Why Are Republicans Hell

By David Morgan,

6 Min Read

WASHINGTON – An aggressive push by President Donald Trumps Republican allies to unmask an anonymous whistleblower who ignited the impeachment inquiry could help shore up voter support for Trump, as Congress enters a critical new phase of televised hearings, party officials and strategists say.

The whistleblower, a U.S. intelligence official who complained about Trumps July 25 telephone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has in recent days increasingly become a target of noisy attacks by Trump, his allies in Congress and the conservative media, all of whom have pushed for the whistleblower to be named.

Trump has suggested the whistleblower committed treason.

Lawyers for the whistleblower have refused to disclose their clients identity and have expressed fears for the persons safety. They say Trump is violating federal laws.

Let me be clear: should any harm befall any suspected named whistleblower or their family, the blame will rest squarely with your client, whistleblower lawyer Andrew Bakaj said in a Nov. 7 cease-and-desist letter to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.

Democratic lawmakers say they no longer need to hear from the whistleblower to make their case that Trump abused his office for personal political gain. The president has denied any wrongdoing and accused his opponents of a witch hunt.

It fits in the larger narrative that this has been a partisan effort from the beginning, the official said.

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Key Takeaway #: The Partisan Fight Over Whistleblowing That Took Place In And Around The Impeachment Of President Trump Has Not Caused A Partisan Split On Whistleblower Protection For Federal Employeesregardless Of Party Voters Overwhelmingly Agree That Federal Employees Who Blow The Whistle On Government Misconduct Should Have Stronger Legal Protections Against Retaliation

In this question, respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with this statement: There should be stronger legal protections from harm for whistleblowers who are federal employees who report fraud in government programs.

In every region of the United States, voters support federal employee whistleblower protections. The survey shows that whistleblower protection has a bipartisan, multi-faceted coalition of supporters who believe that civil servants who risk their careers to report fraud and other misconduct should be protected.

House Republicans Want To Subpoena The Whistleblower

According to The Hill, it looks like we need to prepare for a Category 5 idiot wind howling in from the House Republicans.

Republicans intend to subpoena the government whistleblower to testify in the Houses impeachment investigation into President Trumps dealings with Ukraine, according to Rep. Jim Jordan .

The effort is not likely to bear fruit, as Democrats have rejected the idea of outing the anonymous figure, citing safety concerns, and they have veto power over any GOP subpoena requests for witness testimony.

But Trump and his Republican allies in the Capitol have made the whistleblower a central part of their defense, casting doubts about the figures political motivations, even as they readily acknowledge they dont know the persons identity.

Donald Trump Jr. has already named the person the Republicans suspect of being the original whistleblower and RealClearPolitics published an article explaining their suspicions. House Republican staffers have used his name in private depositions in an effort to get his or her name in the public record. And I suppose this is the person they would have to subpoena since I dont think you can subpoena someone unless you can name them.

That the American public has to be subjected to this crime against reason could form its own article of impeachment.

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Gop Senators Attack Whistleblower’s Credibility

Republican senators scrambling to protect President Trump

GOP lawmakers are asserting the whistleblower did not have firsthand knowledge of the actions detailed in the complaint and question whether the person had a political agenda.

It doesnt come from a person with personal knowledge. Its like I heard these people say this, and now Im reporting it. I think that is pretty bizarre, said Sen. John CornynJohn Cornyn‘New normal’: GOP signals big headaches for Biden after midtermsEmbassy says US can’t guarantee safe passage to Kabul airportDemocrats take first step toward .5T spending planMORE .

Secondly, after a certain point, it doesnt just allege facts, it really is kind of a dossier or political diatribe, so I think there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical. Having said that, we are in the process of talking to the director of national intelligence and the inspector general.

Chuck GrassleyLobbying worldRural community foundations support the ACE Act you should tooCotton to stump for Iowa GOP candidate amid 2024 speculationMORE , who has had a reputation for protecting whistleblowers, said the one at the center of the Trump impeachment inquiry didnt necessarily deserve protections.

If they are not really a whistleblower, they dont get the protection, he said.

I think the whistleblower did the right thing, Maguire told the House Intelligence Committee.

I want to know who was the person that went to the whistleblower, he said.

The Washington Post: Schiffs Claim That The Whistleblower Has A Statutory Right To Anonymity

Note: this article, featuring our National Security Analyst Irvin McCullough, was originally published here.

Schiffs Claim That The Whistleblower Has a Statutory Right to Anonymity

I am concerned about a bad-faith effort to out a whistleblower who has a statutory right to remain anonymous.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff ,;in a closed-door deposition of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, Oct. 29, 2019

The whistleblower has a right to anonymity. There are public reports that the life of the whistleblower has been threatened. We do not want this committee used, or this testimony used, to try to exact political retribution against the whistleblower.

The whistleblower has the right, a statutory right, to anonymity. These proceedings will not be used to out the whistleblower.

Schiff, in a public hearing with Vindman, Nov. 19, 2019

Does the whistleblower who filed a complaint about President Trump have a statutory right to remain anonymous, as Schiff claims?

Its not a right spelled out in any statute. But national security experts warn that disclosing the whistleblowers identity could expose him to danger and retribution, and chill whistleblowing in general.

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