Story - memoirs of a Hungarian vampire

“Eat, boy, then get up,” he told me, forcing a bottle of congealing blood to my lips. I refused to swallow it and let the blood flow down my face. He cursed me and threw the empty bottle at the wall. The red stain remains there, I think, to this day.

I sat up slowly and stared passively at him. He looked so unimportant and ignorant raving like a lunatic in my cell. In my cell. I launched myself at him, with a shard of glass in my hand. I had not intended that he should give me such a fine weapon, but I had been taught that one must never ignore chance. He was so stunned he never even cried out. I slashed his throat and his hands and his wrists and his face and his chest. I let him fall to the floor and I realised that he was the second doctor who had died in my service. I had not intended to kill him. Nor had I intended to drink the blood from his wounds, or eat the flesh from his bones. But I did. Because I was starving and very thirsty. I was sitting by his body, his blood all over my face and my night-shirt, with my teeth in his liver when a maid found me. She screamed and thus brought every man and woman in servitude to my door. I was dragged away and tied to my chair as they pulled the body out of the room.

I heard my mother sobbing in the corridor outside but although I called to her she continued to cry and never entered my cell. My father did not even come to me; he ignored the incident completely. I wanted to go to my poor mother and explain why I attacked him, but I could not move. My hands were bound behind the chair, my ankles were tied to the chair legs and rope was wrapped around me securing me to the seat. To prevent me from biting anyone, a dog’s leather muzzle was fastened around my head. The chair was facing the wall joining the wall in which the door was set. I sat quite alone and sad in my cell, hearing the commotion outside, until at last my tutor came to the doorway, shaking his head in despair.

“Why, Feodor?” he murmured, “I can understand your rebelling against him, but killing the man? The priests will call you demon for that.”

I turned my head to face him and beckoned him nearer with a free finger. I watched him edging towards my chair, and I realised that he too was afraid of me. “I could not go on,” I told him, but he just shook his head. He reminded me that a new doctor would be appointed and that I may not like him either. I merely replied that no one could be as cruel as my previous doctor. He left me, apparently angry, and once again I was alone.

I remained undisturbed for several hours, still bound and becoming cold for lack of movement, and I was beginning to get stiff and hungry again. I thought I had been forgotten until at last I heard footsteps in the corridor. I heard the person come closer, their boots falling heavily on the stone, but I did not turn to them. It was best for them not to see my face. The footsteps stopped, and I heard a slow intake of breath as though whomever it was about to speak. But he did not. I knew he must be right outside the door, and was probably looking at me so I deliberately sat straight and proud in my chair. At last I heard his voice and it shocked me to learn that “he” was a she. The woman’s voice was soft and gentle, but she sounded sad. She called my name so that I turned to face her. She was tall and slender with her dark hair pulled into a tight bun at the back of her head. She wore a sombre black dress with an apron over it made of some sort of leathery material. In the pocket of her apron, there were many metal instruments and a few bottles. She said my name again.

“Yes, ma’am?” I replied, and I seem to remember I spoke rather haughtily, considering my position. “Can I help you?” I asked.

“I have been sent to see you, Master Feodor,” she answered.

“Come in,” I commanded, and turned away from her. She entered and sat down in Stanna’s old chair, my tutor’s chair, opposite me. “What do you want?”

“I am a doctor,” she told me, “I have been sent to replace your former physician, whom I believe, you killed.”