Hysterical Lit: Théâtre des Vampires

Transcript

Happy Halloween! I promised I'd be back because last time it felt like I kind of got a trick played on me. So I had to come back for my treat, you know? And I will be continuing my little journey with another excerpt from Anne Rice's interview with the vampire.

So, last time we looked into Louie's transformation. This time we're skipping forward to meet Armand. Well, that is if I make it through.

As usual, I have my trusty rabbit. It is fully charged. And I am on my stomach in my bed.

Oh god, I'm so pent up. Oh, it's been a day. What do I mean with this? Okay, well, I don't think this will be half as long as last week's audio.

For obvious reasons, but you know the drill. I'm going to try my best to read. But also, I really want to cum so badly.

Okay. On the couple that pressed past us into the packed lobby, where I could easily perceive that the crowd was all human, no vampires among them, not even this boy who admitted us finally into the press of conversation and damp wool and ladies' gloved fingers fumbling with felt-brimmed hats and wet curls. I pressed for the shadows in a feverish excitement.

We had fed earlier, only so that in the bustling street of this theater our skin would not be too white, our eyes too unclouded. And that taste of blood which I had not enjoyed left me all the more uneasy, but I had no time for it. This was no night for killing.

This was to be a night of revelations, no matter how it ended, I was certain. Yet here we stood with this all-too-human crowd, the doors opening now in the auditorium and a young boy pushing toward us, beckoning, pointing above the shoulders of the crowd to the stairs. Ours was a box, one of the best in the house, and if the blood had not dimmed my skin completely, nor made Claudia into a human child as she rode in my arms, this usher did not seem at all to notice it, nor to care.

In fact, he smiled all too readily as he drew back the curtain for us on two chairs before the brass rail. Would you put it past them to have human slaves? Claudia whispered.

But Lestat never trusted human slaves, I answered. I watched the seats fill, watched the marvelously-flowered hats navigating below me through the rows of soaked chairs. White shoulders gleamed in the deep curve of the balcony spreading out from us, diamonds glittered in the gaslight.

Remember, be sly for once, came Claudia's whisper from beneath her bowed, blonde head. You're too much of a gentleman. The lights were going out, first in the balcony and then along the walls of the main floor.

A nod of musicians had gathered in the pit below the stage, and at the foot of the long green velvet curtain the gas flickered, then brightened, and the audience receded as if enveloped by a grey cloud through which only the diamonds sparkled, on wrists, on throats, on fingers. And a hush descended like that grey cloud until all the sound was collected in one echoing, persistent cough, then silence, and the slow rhythmical melody of a wooden flute, which seemed to pick up the sharp metallic tink of the bells of the tambourine, winding them into a haunting melody that was medieval in sound. Then the strumming of strings that emphasized this tambourine, and the flute rose in that melody, singing of something melancholy, sad.

It had a charm to it, this music, and the whole audience seemed stilled and united by it, as if the music of that flute were a luminous ribbon unfurling slowly in the dark. Not even the rising curtain broke the silence, but the slightest sound. The lights brightened, and it seemed the stage was not the stage, but a thickly wooded place, the light glittering on the roughened tree trunks and the thick clusters of leaves beneath the arch of darkness above.

And through the trees could be seen what appeared the low stone bank of a river, and above that, beyond that, the glittering waters of the river itself, this whole three-dimensional world produced in painting upon a fine silk scrim that shivered only slightly in the faint draft. A sprinkling of applause greeted the illusion, gathering adherents from all parts of the auditorium until it reached its short crescendo and died away. A dark draped figure was moving on the stage from tree trunk to tree trunk so fast that as he stepped into the lights he seemed to appear magically in the center, one arm flashing out from his cloak to show a silver scythe and the other to hold a mask on a slender stick before the invisible face, a mask which showed the gleaming countenance of death, a painted skull.

There were gasps from the crowd, it was death standing before the audience, the scythe poised, death at the edge of a dark wood. Something in me was responding now as the audience responded, not in fear, but in some human way, to the magic of that fragile painted scythe. The mystery of the lighted world there, the world in which this figure moved in his billowing black cloak back and forth before the audience with the grace of a great panther drawing forth as it were those gasps, those sighs, those reverent murmurs.

And now, behind this figure, whose very gestures seemed to have a captivating power, like the rhythm of the music to which it moved, came other figures from the wings. First, an old woman, very stooped and bent, her gray hair like moss, her arm hanging down with the weight of a great basket of flowers, her shuttling steps scraped on the stage, and her head bobbed with the rhythm of the music and the darting steps of the grim reaper. Then she started back, as she laid eyes on him, and, slowly setting down her basket, made her hands into the attitude of prayer.

She was tired, her head leaned now on her hands as if in sleep, and she reached out for him, supplicating. But as he came towards her, he bent to look directly into her face, which was all shadows to us beneath her hair, and started back then, waving his hand as if to freshen the air. Laughter erupted uncertainly from the audience.

But as the old woman rose and took after death, the laughter took over. Music broke into a jig with her running, as round and round the stage the old woman pursued death, until he finally flattened himself into the dark of a tree trunk, bowing his masked face under his wing like a bird. And the old woman, lost, defeated, gathered up her basket as the music softened and slowed to her pace, and made her way off the stage.

I did not like it. I did not like the laughter. I could see the other figures moving in now, their music orchestrating their gestures.

And the old woman, lost, defeated, gathered up her basket, bowed her mask under her wing like a bird, and made her way off the stage. I did not like the laughter. I could see the other figures moving in now, their music orchestrating their gestures.

And the old woman, lost, defeated, gathered up her basket, bowed her mask under her wing like a bird, and made her way off the stage. I did not like the laughter. I could see the other figures moving in now, their music orchestrating their gestures.

And then this vampire, still holding the mask before his face, adopted marvelously the attitude of resting his weight against a painted silken tree, as if he were falling gently to sleep. The music twittered like birds, rippled like the flowing of the water, and the spotlight which encircled him in a yellow pool grew dim. All but fading away, and another spot pierced the screen, seeming to melt it all together.

To reveal a young woman, standing alone far upstage. She was majestically tall, and all but enshrined by a voluminous mane of golden blonde hair. I could feel the awe of the audience as she seemed to flounder in the spotlight, the dark forest rising on the perimeter so that she seemed to be lost in the trees.

And she was lost, and not a vampire. The soil on her mean blouse and skirt was not stage paint, and nothing had touched her perfect face, which gazed into the light now, as beautifully and finely chiseled as the face of a marble virgin, that hair her haloed veil. She could not see in the light, though all could see her, and the moan which escaped her lips as she floundered seemed to echo over the thin romantic singing of the flute, which was a tribute to that beauty.

The figure of death woke with a start in his pale spotlight, and turned to see her as the audience had seen her, and to throw up his free hand in tribute, in awe. The twitter of laughter died before it became real. She was too beautiful, her grey eyes too distressed, the performance too perfect, and then the skull mask was thrown suddenly into the wings, and death showed a beaming white face to the audience's hurried hands stroking his handsome black hair.

Straightening a waistcoat, brushing imaginary dust from his lapels, death in love, and clapping rose for the luminous countenance, the gleaming cheekbones, the weaking black eye, as if it were all a masterful illusion, when in fact it was merely and certainly the face of a vampire. The vampire who had accosted me in the Latin quarter, that leering, grinning vampire harshly illuminated by the yellow spot. My hand reached for Claudia's in the dark and pressed it tightly, but she sat still as if enwrapped.

The forest of the stage, through which that helpless mortal girl stared blindly towards the laughter, divided in two phantom halves, moving away from the centre, freeing the vampire to close in on her. And she, who had been advancing toward the footlights, saw him suddenly and came to a halt, making a moan like a child. Indeed, she was very like a child, though clearly a full-grown woman.

Only a slight wrinkling of the tender flesh around her eyes betrayed her age. Her breasts, though small, were beautifully shaped beneath her blouse, and her hips, though narrow, gave her long, dusty skirt a sharp, sensual angularity. As she moved back from the vampire, I saw the tears standing in her eyes like glass in the flicker of the lights, and I felt my spirit contract in fear for her and for longing.

And in longing, her beauty was heartbreaking. Behind her, a number of painted skulls suddenly moved against the blackness of figures that carried the masks invisible in their black clothes, except for free white hands that clasped the edge of a cape, the folds of a skirt. Vampire women were there, moving in with the men towards the victim, and now they all, one by one, thrust the masks away, so they fell in an artful pile of sticks like bones, the skulls grinning into the darkness above.

And there they stood, seven vampires, the women vampires three in number, their molded white breasts shining over the tight black bodices of their gowns. Their hard, luminescent faces staring with dark eyes beneath curls of black hair, starkly beautiful as they seemed to float close behind that florid human figure, yet pale and cold compared to that sparkling golden hair. That petal-pink skin, I could hear the breath of the audience, the halting, the soft sighs.

Oh my god. Where was I? I missed my place, I missed it.

Where was I? Was I? I had to flip on my back.

Okay. That circle of faces pressing closer and closer, and that leading figure, that gentleman death, turning to the audience, now with his hands crossed over his heart, his head built in longing to elicit their sympathy. Was she not irresistible, a murmur of accenting laughter, of sighs? But it was she who broke the magic silence.

I don't want to die, she whispered, her voice was like a bell. We are death, he answered her, and from around her came the whisper, death. She turned, tossing her hair so it became a veritable shower of gold, a rich and living thing, over the dust of her poor clothing.

Help me, she cried out softly, as if afraid even to raise her voice. I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't read anymore, I have to. ..

I have to come, oh, I have to come. Oh, oh my God, I'm close, I'm close. Oh my.

.. Oh my God, I'm so close, I'm so close. Oh my.

.. Oh yes, oh fuck, fuck, fuck, yes. Oh my God, yes, yes.

Oh my God, I'm so sensitive. Oh my God. Oh my God, fuck, I can't, oh shit, that was.

.. Oh my God, I feel so fucking good. I feel so fucking good.

Oh my God, fuck, fuck, I don't want to stop, but I have to. I don't want to stop, but I have to. Okay, okay, okay, fuck, fuck, okay.

Okay. That wasn't, that was a lot. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.

Okay, fuck, fuck. My whole body is pulsing. I feel like my heartbeat is just pulsing through every part of my body, my shoulders.

My ass, my ankles, I just. .. Fuck, fuck.

Okay. That was. ..

Oh my God. I'm still tingling. Oh fuck.

I could go to sleep right now. Oh. Wow.

If you enjoyed my feeble attempt to read this and you were genuinely like, oh, I liked hearing Faye read, well, good news, that's what I did for almost an entire year before I started doing this, so have fun playing around my profile. If you listened to the end, thank you. And don't worry, these might have been my first few audios and gone wild, but I'll be back, I'll be around.

Okay. Happy Halloween.