Leather BoundBy Kabuki January 2003 Spoilers: MW1 The vampires themseleves belong to Madame Rice, but the poetry, artwork, and the concept are my own. This was inspired by the life and work of Emily Dickinson. Bon appetite!
____________________________________ A few lines I shall set down to paper, trying to find permanence in the physical for the abstractions of my mind. I tell my fathers that by setting these things down, I shall make my thoughts immortal and unchanging as we are, capturing the essence that I may look upon them forever and know the exact meaning of what I wrote. Lestat has no interest in such pursuits, but Louis seems sad when he lowers himself to my line of sight and tells me that such ideas are futile. The mind, he says, changes even when the words do not. “What you write tonight will never be the same, for tomorrow you will read the words a little differently.” When I asked him if there was any way to capture my words and make them immortal, he simply shook his head. I like to remember this particular image of him because it gives me some comfort. Louis’ wisdom was never betrayed by his appearance, and though often I dismissed him as a sentimentalist fool, I was drawn to the words he spoke now and then which hinted at multiple meanings and innuendos beneath the veneer of such simple phrases. He told me once that if he had learned anything by being a vampire, it was that language was a poor excuse for the myriad thoughts within the mind. He pitied my attempt to chronicle my thoughts because he too had attempted just such a design in his youth before I was born. The journals, he said, had been burnt when he realized that a greater snare was needed for capturing the precise nuances of emotive thought than simple writing. It was years later that I noticed the careful inclination of his words and the way he said that the books had been burnt. I understood but never acknowledged my comprehension to poor Louis. Things were so much easier for him if he thought me oblivious to the constant cruelties of our maker -- It was obvious that Louis had not disposed of such private papers by choice. But even with such words of consternation I could not help but dawdle now and then with my paper and pen, scrawling little phrases and paragraphs in the attempt to express in a few lines what I saw and felt. Eventually my lines turned to conscious poetry, and as I moved from one experience to the next, I took down my thoughts in a manner which would come as close as possible to evoking the proper feeling. I looked upon a tiny room And saw instead a little tomb Not big enough for men, you see But just the perfect size for me. Within a few years I had amassed a handful of descriptive paragraphs in addition to nearly fifty poems. I had been showing them to Louis from the beginning, soaking up his praise with the self-admiration of the young and reveling in the attention he lavished upon me for them. We began to exchange a few poems and bits of prose back and forth, dreaming of perhaps publishing but knowing all the while that, being unnatural as we were, we didn’t dare. Our styles differed greatly, but the difference made us even more interested in each others work. I showed Louis a great deal of my poetry, but as I grew older and more aware of the voluminous weight within the scant words of a simple poem, I became selective of what I showed and what I reserved for my own eyes. Louis had purchased for me a leather-bound journal in which to collect my poems, and I did indeed make use of it much to his delight; but those poems I found too private to show were written on the finest paper I could afford on my allowances and sewn with careful reverence into packets. These packets were kept in a locked strongbox beneath a floorboard of my bedroom where I reasoned my fathers would not stumble across them. Glassy-eyed china head Hair trimmed from some lady dead Painted mouth into a bow Their gaze is dead, their wits are slow. But hands are tiny and so pale Delicate and frail . . . It was in this place that I found Lestat a few years later, cross-legged and so engaged in the act of reading that he was left oblivious to the sound of my unmistakable footsteps coming up the outside walk and then up the stairway. When I spied him, I made a sound like a small squeak and flung myself at him, tearing the packet from his white hands with a violence I’d never known myself to possess. He stared at me with wide eyes, a sort of shame creeping over his face as I screamed at him to get out of my room and leave me be. “But Claudia, they’re very good. You should be proud of them!” I flailed at him and, though I could do no harm, he backed from my bedchamber and left me to my weeping. I hated him in that instant, and though he had complimented my work as had Louis, I felt that the latter had been given the blessing of my permission to read and critique. Lestat had rudely entered my room with the intent of poking about and finding something with which to amuse himself. I was disgusted, but I was also ashamed. Those had been the carefully hidden pieces, and not even Louis had known of them. To think that Lestat with his crude outlook on life experience and literature had been the first to chance upon my most private poems was unthinkable. It was an hour or so later when my tears were dry and my fury was not so keen that there came a soft rap upon my door. I turned, glaring at the indifferent wood in the hopes of searing whichever father stood upon the other side with a medusa stare. “Go away.” The soft voice of Louis floated from behind the door with the intended effect of cool water upon my rage. “Claudia, please come out. Lestat and I are most distressed.” Then the voice of Lestat followed, the interjection grating upon my nerves. “ Yes, petite, Louis and I have had a long and detailed discussion --” “What were you doing in my room, Father?” Her voice held no warmth, no emotion. I knew from experience that cool indifference was the best method of bending Lestat to my desires. His presence had caught me off guard, but was not entirely unexpected. “I was searching for you, of course.” The hesitancy in his voice was enough to make me smile. I would not allow myself to be troubled by the incident, for it was only poetry after all and Lestat was not one to amuse himself with such a use of words for long; but I would still make Lestat feel sorry for what he had done. I enjoyed holding sway over the both of them, though after Lestat died and Louis and I fled to Europe I found myself caring less and less for the thrill of dominance in such situations. Of course I left my room then and accepted the apology of both fathers. They both seemed guilty, though each showed his guilt in a different way. While Louis seemed full of pity Lestat seemed to harbor a silent shame. He was quiet for several nights after, and when I caught his gaze out of the corner of my eye, I had the impression he was mulling some new perspective over in his mind. I was afraid that the poetry had affected him somehow, that he had perceived my loneliness and despair; but as the time passed I saw no change in his behavior toward me and my fears lessened. When my rage crested years later in blood and betrayal, I consoled myself with the knowledge that he had indeed been forewarned. Had he been capable of reading the poems more closely he would have known what was sure to come. His pride and ignorance was, I reasoned, his own undoing in more ways than one. I was never an accomplished poet, but I could at least convey the abstractions of my thoughts. Sculpted fathers careful words Immaculate in silks and furs While I, in satin bonnet and lace, Cannot look them in the face. Round and round we go again -- I am trapped in what has been Peering curious at Today, Yet never move too far. The World shifts and moves, We pass through unmov’d And cold begins to cree **************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape. http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489
