THE SECRETS OF THE RUNES

No-one can now be sure of the origin of the Runic alphabet with which many of us will be at least vaguely familiar. The ‘stick like’ almost primitive looking symbols often appear in an article or a fantasy tale in magazines or novels, they seem to hold a fascination that lies deep within the consciousness of many of us.

So what about the history and meaning behind them?

Even the word ‘Rune’ provokes debate amongst scholars. In Old Norse, a ‘run’ was a secret, in Old German, it is connected with the ‘raunen’ to whisper, and in Welsh the word for a secret is ‘rhin’ or ‘rin’. By the Middle Ages to ‘roon’ a person meant to whisper in somebody’s ear. Little wonder the Runes have acquired a mystery all of their own.

We know the Norsemen used them, did they bring their carved stones with them on their frequent ‘visits to Britain? Or did the Celts have them first and was it the old inhabitants of Britain that gave them to the world? There is some evidence that the people of what is now Alpine Northern Italy read with the Runes and some antiquarians argue that the Etruscans or even the Ancient Greeks knew the meanings long before they were used in the Northernmost lands.

Certainly the Runes were used as an alphabet just as ours is today but the Shamen or wise men of the tribe or group knew they were central to the arts they practised. Anxious people would consult the old wisdoms and have the past and present explained and the future laid before them.

Runecasters will generally use 24 stones or possibly 25, the extra one being blank. I use the additional one and if it is selected I interpret this to mean that the querent has more opportunity than is normally the case to change, grow and take a new direction. The actual names for the stones vary depending on whether the Runecaster favours the Nordic, Germanic or Celtic variety but they are close enough in name and symbolic meaning for this to be a minor issue in the overall scheme of things.

Arranged in three groups or Aetts (clans or tribes), most of the Runic symbols are based on earthy, primeval concepts. The societies in which they were revered and central to the culture largely lived closer to nature than we can imagine. A crop failure was likely to mean starvation, life expectancy was far lower than in or westernised, sanitised world today.
The people who used the alphabet symbols were focused fiercely on a lifestyle that is beyond our real understanding. They had much more down to earth, basic attitudes towards life, death, sex, etc.

It is worth taking a detailed look at the Os rune, symbolising as it does the God Odin.

Odin was very far from the benevolent forgiving deity that we associate with the Christian religion. He is usually depicted as a somewhat scruffy looking old man, wearing a dark cloak and a soft felt cap, maybe dark blue in colour, pulled across his face to try to disguise the fact hat he has only one eye! Legend tells us he sacrificed the eye to the God Mimir to gain wisdom but he may also have hung in agony on the cosmic tree Ygddrasil to prove he was immortal. He had the power to change shape into any animal and roam the countryside in these guises. However, it is in his human form he more commonly appeared at crossroads to strike terror into the hearts of lonely travellers often accompanied by two ravens and a wolf. He could raise the dead, calm the winds and make his enemies go blind and deaf but it is his cunning and trickery which mark him out in history. He would offer ‘deals’ to mortals which usually meant the bargaining of their souls, indeed some believe the tales of mortals being tricked into selling their souls to the Devil may originate with Odin.

How this Rune is interpreted is a story in itself but as with every stone, the interpretation is dependent on the context in which it appears and set against the other Runes selected.

As A Runecaster of many years experience, I am of the opinion that it is the very primeval, ancient and basic nature of the runes that has allowed the art of casting to survive in our modern technologically obsessed world. Deep within us all, there is a feeling, a desire to explore our inner selves and perhaps a belief that only by drawing on our collective past can we can really hope to move forward to our real future.


As a modern day Runecaster, I explain to those that consult me that there is no ‘magic’ in the stones, the only magic is within all of us. The Runes work with the two way participation between caster and client, a joining together of hearts and minds. The process works because the societies that used the Runic alphabet were so much more in tune with life, the earth and the world beyond. Their animals and the elements were almost a part of them in a way that our modern, gadget and technologically obsessed world could never comprehend. I see the Runes as a bunch of keys that open the door to a real world, away of learning about life and self. We all habitually have our eyes closed but in the time we see the Runes and read their message our eyes open. The stones contain knowledge, truths, even secrets and casting Runes is the most dramatic, emotional and passionate experience for the reader and hopefully, some of that feeling envelops the one for whom the caster works.

All it takes is belief in yourself.

For more information on the art of Runecasting, please contact me on:

a.belojica@sky.com

WITCHES

Witchcraft in England, has an old, ancient history. Witchcraft is probably the oldest of all religions and was alive well before the Druids.

Long before the famed Salem Witch Trials, thousands upon thousands of men, women, and even children were being tortured and massacred throughout Europe. These horrible acts were even condoned by the churches. Towards the end of the thirteenth century witchcraft was proclaimed an act punishable by death. But death did not come easily to those accused.

But in the years prior to the thirteenth century, the witch was a respected member of the community; they were valued, not feared, since they helped ease pain and healed people and their animals. The fear factor came much later. Witches were feared because they could do things that the majority of other people could not do. For example, witches used hypnosis to make childbirth pain free. The Christian Church taught that such powers could only come from the Devil. Telepathy, faith healing, pre-cognition, clairvoyance, and astral-travelling was all part of witchcraft in the past, as was the knowledge of plants and healing herbs. In primitive times religion and magic were virtually the same. Priests were magicians and magicians were priests.


Those claiming to heal outside the context of the Church (faith healing through prayer) were thought to have obtained their skills from the Devil. In 1563, the Scottish Witchcraft Act said that even people, who consulted witches to cure their various maladies, were as guilty as those who practiced witchcraft. These patients were seen as supporting their cause. The witch was traditionally old, ugly, and female.

The Malleus Maleficarum (Latin for "The Hammer of Witches", or "Der Hexenhammer" in German) is a famous treatise on witches, written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer, an Inquisitor of the Catholic Church, and was first published in Germany in 1487.[3] Jacob Sprenger is also often attributed as an author, but some scholars now believe that he became associated with the Malleus Maleficarum largely as a result of Kramer's wish to lend his book as much official authority as possible.

The Malleus Maleficarum, was essentially a guidebook on what to look for in a witch and how to successfully kill them. France and Germany were especially known for their gruesome punishments.

The main purpose of the Malleus was to attempt to systematically refute arguments claiming that witchcraft does not exist, discredit those who expressed scepticism about its reality, to claim that witches were more often women than men, and to educate magistrates on the procedures that could find them out and convict them.


The first law against witchcraft was laid down by King Henry VIII in 1542.

Two further laws, in 1563 and 1604, made a person liable to receive the death penalty for using witchcraft, charms or sorcery.
These laws came in quite handy since a charge of witchcraft was used against one of his wives, Ann Boleyn.

During the witch hunts' period, which lasted almost two centuries, 2000 people were accused in England and 1000 executed.

Most supposed witches were usually old women, and invariably poor. Any who were unfortunate enough to be 'crone-like', snaggle toothed, sunken cheeked and having a hairy lip were assumed to possess the 'Evil Eye'. If they also had a cat this was taken a proof, as witches always had a 'familiar', the cat being the most common.

In Essex alone, 317 women and 23 men were tried for witchcraft, and over 100 were hanged. Suffolk saw 68 executions.

This was largely the work of the notorious Matthew Hopkins, resident of Manningtree and the Witch-Finder General of Essex.

Hopkins began his career in 1644 by questioning one of his elderly neighbours, a one-legged woman named Elizabeth Clarke.

Under torture, she gave evidence leading him to another five witches.

The trial took place at Chelmsford. In all, 32 women were implicated and 28 were convicted.

Hopkins preferred tortures which shed no blood.

Sleep deprivation seems to have been the most popular form of torture, as it caused hallucination and was a very effective way of obtaining confessions, but he also employed the ‘pricking' method.

It was believed that if a person entered into a pact with the Devil, he kissed or bit them, leaving his mark on their body.

A mole or birthmark could be seen as a witch mark. Many witchfinders would stab at these marks and, if the accused did not bleed or no impression / indentation appeared on their skin, guilt had been established.

It has been suggested that Hopkins often used a spring-loaded knife, with retractable blade, to ensure conviction.


With the publication of Malleus Maleficarum all across Europe fingers began to fly.

Accusations were made, and the guilty party was often tortured and made to confess to witchcraft and evil deeds. No evidence was needed to convict. Europe became obsessed with ridding themselves of witches. Witch hunters popped up all throughout the Continent.

As the need to punish and kill witches grew, dozens and dozens of torture tools and methods were developed. One such item was the bootikens. These were boots that went from the person's ankles to knees. Wedges were hammered up the length of the boot into the person's leg, breaking and crushing bones as it went. Another tool used was called the Pear. It was a pear shaped apparatus that was often inserted into orifices. It was then expanded by way of a screw. It was often expanded enough until it tore and mangled which ever orifice it had been inserted in. Death would follow shortly, from either blood loss or infection. It was usually equipped with sharp spikes at the end so that a person could also be stabbed with it, usually in the neck. Another device known as Turcas was used to tear the fingernails out. This was followed by sticking pins or needles into the raw and exposed skin of the fingers.

Using red hot pincers against a witch's body was also a favourite. Often a pincer was used to tear off pieces of flesh and in some cases inserted into vaginas and rectums. Many times a person would be stripped naked, horse whipped, and then would have the pincers used on them. Women sometimes had their breasts torn off with hot pincers to further humiliate them.

Crushing a witch was often used both to kill and force a confession. The accused would be made to lie on the ground or a table and usually a board was placed on top of them. As they lay there being questioned, they would slowly place large rocks upon the board. They would add more and more until the person confessed and then, once having a confession, would add more until the person was no longer able to breathe. It was a slow and painful death.

A variation on crushing was stoning. Stoning allowed a mob of people to gather around the accused and pelt them with stones until the person was killed. Depending on the situation a person could be battered for minutes or hours before succumbing to death. Stonings were not always organized events, in some communities a mob would develop before the so-called witch could be tried.

Another method used to gain a confession was called the Strappado. In this case, the persons wrists were bound behind their back with a rope. The rope was then hoisted over a ceiling beam. The rope was pulled until the person was suspended in the air and then they were viciously dropped. This was repeated until the persons shoulders became dislocated.

From country to country, the methods varied. But no matter where you were, if you were accused, you were in for pain, humiliation, and ultimate suffering.

I'll be posting this to Frequently Felt in a day or so.

JUST GOOD FRIENDS?

Was there something sinister about Lewis Carroll's fixation with seven-year-old Alice Liddell? Not necessarily, says Katie Roiphe.

The Guardian, Monday 29 October 2001


It is true that the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, otherwise known as Lewis Carroll, author of the inimitable classics Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, liked little girls. Or, as he once wrote: "I am fond of children (except boys)." He took exquisite, melancholy photographs of little girls. He befriended little girls on trains, and beaches, and in the houses of friends. And one particular little girl, Alice Liddell, came to be his muse and great passion.

Unfortunately for Dodgson, the 21st century does not look kindly on a single man who is beguiled by seven-year-olds. Feminist critics have darkly suggested that Dodgson was a paedophile. They have condemned the beautiful photographs he took and objected to his objectification of the immature female body, and read all sorts of rapacious nonsense into the Alice books.

At the other extreme, many of Dodgson's defenders have protested too much. They have attempted to argue that he was utterly without feelings for little girls. One of his early biographers wrote, "There is no evidence that he felt or inspired any pangs of tender passion", when of course there was an abundance of evidence that he did. His defenders tend to portray him as a shy, stuttering bachelor with a fondness for children that may as well have been a fondness for stamps or porcelain puppies.

Is it possible that neither view of him is correct - that he was neither the child molester nor the pure, white-haired reverend? It is possible that our crude categories, our black and white views of romantic feeling, cannot contain someone like Dodgson. It is almost impossible for us to contemplate a man who falls in love with little girls without wanting to put him in prison. The subtleties, for those of us still mired in the paranoia’s of the 20th century, are hard to grasp. When one thinks of a paedophile, one thinks of a lustful, over-the-top, drooling Nabokov love, but that is not Lewis Carroll. His love was more delicate and tortured and elusive; his warmth, his strange, terrified passion, more intricate and complicated than anything encompassed by a single word.

Dodgson's affection for what he called his "child friends" was always mingled with a vague yearning. He wrote to one 10-year-old girl, "Extra thanks and kisses for the lock of hair. I have kissed it several times - for want of having you to kiss, you know, even hair is better than nothing." This is typical of his correspondence. He converted whatever his feelings were into the whimsical, quasi-romantic banter that eventually made its way into the Alice books. He wrote to one mother of a potential visit with her daughter, "And would it be de rigueur that there should be a third to dinner? Tête à tête is so much the nicest."
There was a romantic intensity to the friendships that Dodgson struck up with children, a hint of hunger, of never quite getting enough. This was especially true of his relationship with Alice. There was always a sense that he wanted more of her. And yet, can we really blame him for that - as long as he didn't act on his feelings? If he turned himself inside out, turned the world inside out with his powerful imagination, in order to avoid them?

He was not alone in his obsession. The era seemed to breed a certain type of neurasthenic man who had a well-developed and intellectually complicated disdain for overt physicality and who found himself drawn to pre-teens.

Take John Ruskin. He also fell under the spell of an Alice, among other young girls he encountered. One particular street urchin whom he glimpsed in Italy made a big impression on him. It is one of the paradoxes of Victorian culture that the sentimentality, the frilly, sugar-sweet view of the child often coexisted with darker sexual urges; that they fed each other, and the squeamishness about sex led to a perverse attraction to anything innocent and pure. Children were safe, and in their safety, certain thoughts - dirty, sensual thoughts - were allowed to flourish.

It is almost impossible to claim that Dodgson was drawn to little girls on a purely spiritual plane. His deep aesthetic appreciation of their physical presence was too conspicuous. He wrote to Gertrude Thomson, an artist who sketched girlish fairies and nymphs, "I confess I do not admire naked boys in pictures. They always seem... to need clothes, whereas one hardly sees why the lovely forms of girls should ever be covered up."

It's clear, then, that Dodgson had a submerged erotic fascination with the nubile female form. But what to make of it? What if he did love children, and in that love was a sexual element? What if he admired the bodies of little girls and never touched one? There is no doubt that he was tormented by what he called "the inclinations of my sinful heart". Even his mathematical writings were marked by his struggle. In the introduction to Curiosa Mathematica, Part II, he wrote that fixing one's mind on mathematics as one lay in bed could ward off "unholy thoughts, which torture with their hateful presence, the fancy that would fain be pure". Strong language for a book about trigonometry.

The picture we get of is of a man afraid of his own dreams, struggling for command over himself. In one of his most charming analyses, the biographer Morton Cohen actually charted Dodgson's moments of greatest torment and insomnia in his diaries and found that they correlated to the days on which he saw Alice.

But Dodgson's response to any heightened agitation he felt with children was this: he sat with Alice in a boat gliding along the glittering river and made up stories, the more outlandish the better. His feelings rhymed and punned themselves into expression. He chatted her up with the manic energy of Wonderland. His frustration, his alienation, blossomed into the caterpillar at the hookah and Humpty Dumpty and the Mad Hatter. He channelled his devotion into a wild and lovely literary universe; his imagination so dangerous and inflamed, it fled the real world. He called the Alice books a "love-gift". And because this love is unrequited, because it is impossible, ethereal, because he cannot allow himself to fully feel it, there is a hint of sadness. As he puts it, "a shadow of a sigh" trembles through the story.

To me, there is a nobility in a self-restraint so forceful that it spews out stuttering tortoises and talking chess pieces rather than focus on the matter at hand. There is something touching about a man who fights the hardest fight in the world: his own desire.

You can feel the loneliness on the page. You can the feel the longing in the photographs. You can witness the self-contempt in his diaries. How can one not feel sympathy for a man who writes in his diary, "I pray to God to give me a new heart", but is stuck, in spite of his astonishing powers of invention, his brilliance, his immortal wit, with the one he has.

He had impure thoughts, yes. What matters, in the end, is what he did with them.


Katie Roiphe's novel about Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell, “Still She Haunts Me”, is published by Review, RRP £10.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Still-She-Haunts-Katie-Roiphe/dp/0747265585


I shall be posting this essay to Frequently Felt in a day or so.

SYPHILIS AND THE VICTORIANS

For a man in Victorian times there were two kinds of women: 'nice' women of your own class, whom you married; and prostitutes or women of easy virtue, whom you went to bed with. Victorian society looked indulgently on men who sowed their wild oats. For respectable women it was a different story: they were expected to be virgins when they married. This meant that, to gain sexual experience, men would resort to prostitutes. Unfortunately, with prostitutes came the threat of a sexually transmitted or venereal disease, such as syphilis or gonorrhoea.

As well as being painful and deeply embarrassing, venereal disease, if untreated, could lead to sterility, impotence, madness and eventually death. Penicillin would not be discovered until the 1920s and would not be available as a medicine until the Second World War. In the 19th century, the main treatment was mercury, in the form of calomel, ointments, steam baths, pills, and other concoctions. It was crude, painful and largely ineffective, as well as having side-effects such as tooth loss, kidney damage, anaemia, mouth, throat, and skin ulcerations; neurological damage; and death.


Research into an effective treatment for syphilis was controversial because of the perception that a widely available cure would increase “immoral” behaviour.

In Victorian days the official line on sex was that it was solely for the purpose of producing children. It wasn't supposed to be fun. So, however tolerant the Victorians may have been in practice of men having sexual adventures, venereal disease was, in some quarters, regarded as God's punishment - the wages of sin.


This is one reason for the flourishing trade in virgins - for those upper class men who could afford them. They were not necessarily paedophiles; but were protecting themselves by having sex with a woman who had never had sex before. She could not be infected with these diseases.

There was another, more chilling reason, why virgins were so highly prized. It was believed that sex with a virgin could actually cure a man who was infected with syphilis.

By the middle of the 19th century the authorities were increasingly worried about the high incidence of venereal disease among soldiers and sailors. For this reason the Contagious Disease Acts of 1864, 1866 and 1869 were passed. They allowed known prostitutes working in garrison towns or naval bases to be examined, often brutally. If they were found to be infected they could be imprisoned in state institutions.


Women were assumed to be the source of infection and the Acts were deigned exclusively to protect men. The men themselves were not examined, so that there was every chance of a client passing a disease on to a prostitute, rather than the other way around.

However, Victorian society was not concerned about prostitutes who were infected with incurable diseases by their clients. It was the danger of men passing on venereal disease to their wives and families that caused anxiety and moral outrage.


Moral reformers such as Josephine Butler campaigned against the Contagious Disease Acts. They claimed that they were sexually discriminating in that they laid all the blame for 'immorality' on women. The Acts were finally repealed in 1886.

Syphilis first appeared in Europe in the 1500s. But by the Victorian era, it was rampant. Thousands endured paralysis, blindness and insanity from the infection before finally dying.


Syphilis in the Victorian era was known to be an infectious disease that entered the body through a minute cut or small wound. The primary impact of the disease would be a lesion or a sore at the initial “site of inoculation.” Six to eight weeks later, a secondary eruption would flare up, generally first pink in colour and eventually copper. In this second stage of syphilis, symptoms such as depression and chilling in the joints and limbs would often occur and within weeks or years disappear spontaneously. In its tertiary stage, syphilis affected the brain, liver, lungs, and muscle. This disease was most often spread through sexual contact but it also spread congenitally, where mothers would infect the infants in their womb.


As I write, syphilis cases are rising. Some hospitals in major British cities report that they are now treating hundreds of patients a year, compared to none at all just a few years ago. In the past two years, there have been outbreaks in Manchester and London through unprotected sex.

The SYPHILIS AND THE VICTORIANS blog post has been compiled using sources from the Web. It is almost 7 years since I first posted this, it is still relevant today.

LES DEMOISELLES D'AVIGNON

The five women stare at you, glare at you from the canvas. They are naked; all prostitutes from Avignon, a street in Barcelona famed for its brothel. Pablo Picasso painted this deconstruction of reality in 1909. The eight foot square painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon now hangs in New York's Museum of Modern Art.

When French writer Guillaume Apollonaire introduced Picasso to the French artist Georges Braque in 1907, little did he realize that he was uniting two people to give birth to one of the most revolutionary styles of art that came to be known as cubism. The French artist Paul Cezanne of the post-impressionist era was an inspiring influence on both Picasso and Braque in developing cubism. ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’, the famous Picasso painting of 1907 was a prelude to the development of cubism.

But why cubism? It’s weird isn’t it? What’s it for? Picasso had the talent to paint beautifully; conventionally. What is the point of this disturbing picture? This fractured image of five ugly, naked women? Perhaps Picasso is delving for a greater truth, than had so far been expressed by Art. Life isn’t always pretty, especially when you bring sex into it. Those rough primal urges, that have nothing to do with making love, but everything to do with fucking.

In cubist artworks, objects are broken up, analysed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form—instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. Often the surfaces intersect at seemingly random angles, removing a coherent sense of depth. The background and object planes interpenetrate one another to create the shallow ambiguous space, one of cubism's distinct characteristics. Picasso leaves only enough signs of the real world to supply a tension between the subject of the painting and the viewer. In this painting the figures are contorted by cubism. Cubism smashes through protocol, forcing the viewer to “look” in a different way.

But what then, does Picasso want the viewer to think about these five women? Is he saying something about women in general, or these women in particular?

In the preparatory studies, the figure at the left was a sailor entering a brothel. Picasso, wanting no anecdotal detail to interfere with the sheer impact of the work, decided to eliminate it in the final painting. The only remaining allusion to the brothel lies in the title.

Look directly at Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and speculate on its meaning. You can't. You never get as far as deciding it is a painting of five women, let alone concluding that they're prostitutes, or that it reflects male fears, or reach for any of the slick ways we customarily turn images into words. In order to interpret it, you must look away, or unfocus your eyes. Actually looking at the picture means moving constantly from one facet to another; it never lets you settle on one resolved perception. Most of all, this is a painting about looking. The five women look at you, with a fierce, antagonistic, demonic glare. They are difficult, scary, mad. Their glare is menacing; their bodies angular and disjointed. Picasso abandons perspective in favour of a flat, two-dimensional picture plane.

Five pink women are entangled in silver and blue draperies. Two of them stand with arms raised to flaunt their breasts, staring at you out of huge black eyes. The other three are masked: one in a fleshy brown wooden simulacrum of a face as she stands in profile at the left of the picture; the two at the right in African masks, one of them intruding from behind the jagged cloth while the other squats among fabric diamonds. On a plate, there is a collection of blatantly meaningful fruit: a scything blade of melon with testicular grapes, an apple and a pear. This is a painting of nudes in which there is scarcely a curve to be seen - elbows sharp as knives, hips and waists geometrical silhouettes, triangle breasts.

The painting is square to the eye (in reality there are a few centimetres more to its height than its width), which makes you to attend to space and symmetry. Or rather, the squareness puts you on your mettle, to look at this perpetual motion machine that never loses its vitality.

Picasso drew his first designs for what became Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in the winter of 1906-07. He developed his ideas intensively, in a programme of conscious planning that resembled the great academic projects of Leonardo or Géricault, before finally painting his 8ft square canvas in the early summer. With that painting, the nature of reality was altered as profoundly as it would be by the physics of Picasso's contemporary, Albert Einstein.

Culturally, the 20th century began in 1907. Consider the dates of other works of high modernism. In music, Schoenberg's Erwartung was composed in 1909 and Stravinsky began The Rite of Spring in 1910. James Joyce didn't get started on Ulysses until 1914, by which time Picasso was into the final stages of cubism

At the time of its first exhibition in 1916, the painting was deemed immoral. The art critic André Salmon (1881–1969) gave it its current name; Picasso had always referred to it as Le Bordel (The Brothel).

The women confront you, perhaps daring you to judge them. Maybe their unhinged anguish is resonant, with the first time you were caught looking at something that was deeply private.


I'm going to be posting this essay on M.Christian's excellent blog; Frequently Felt

T.E.N. by Alex Severn

Alex Severn sent me this great story, about female submission -- Enjoy!






“So let me get this straight then. Your top, number one fantasy is to be the sex slave of a man, to be his possession, to let him chain you up, whip you, and then throw him to his mates so they can enjoy you as well?”


“That’s not how it is and you know it.”


“Well tell me where I’m wrong then."


“Look. I do get turned on by the submissive bit, I want a man who is so gorgeous and so dominant that I want him to take me and I do fancy being in his power. He might seem to be in control but I want to feel that he is so obsessed with me that he has to have me and…well okay, he’s so crazy about me that he wants to share me with other men, to let them see what he’s got and how sexy I can be. I’m tired of the sex games we all play, all the conventions and routines. I want raw physical pleasure, I want to drive a man wild with lust and feel that lust myself. And yes, I have a thing about pain, if a man excites me enough, I want him to get a bit rough, the pain and the pleasure…they mingle somehow, oh God Dawn I don’t know why you got me started on this…”


“Because we’ve been friends for 20 years, and because we’re both pissed. Look, if you want this to happen, you can use one of those sex mags,with the adverts they have you can get anything. Ask for a dominant man who wants to chain you up, put the details in, they’ll be queuing up for you. Or better still, look through some ads yourself..."


The advert had been simple enough but something about the directness of it had made her choose his box number. So he wanted a woman to trust him enough to obey his desires, to explore her own fantasies. Nothing would happen unless it was what they both wanted..."

When she met him, he was physically attractive, sounded a bit posh...


She felt no fear agreeing to go to his home, which he described as ‘the middle of nowhere, been in my family for generations'. With most men it would have sounded flashy, arrogant even but it seemed natural with him, with his oh so cultured, relaxed voice.


The drinks poured, the small chat was beginning to drag when he came straight to the point, and it was almost as if he had decided on a specific time to start the real evening off.


“Would you like to see my room now. My fantasy room, I mean?”


Well she hadn’t come here to drink wine and talk about the weather, had she?


Aside from the huge size of what she had assumed would be a little living room, Vanessa was disappointed with what met her gaze. Bare brick walls, a couple of solid oak beams a few inches from the ceiling, no actual furniture just a sort of alcove which, as she peered round the side of it contained a small table. Oliver gently took her hand and led her to examine the items on the top of it.


He picked up what looked like a wide leather belt with silver studs indented the length of it. Vanessa saw a long thick linked chain with an ugly looking hook at one end and her heart started to beat a little faster when she saw the handcuffs and watched as he put down the chain and picked up the cuffs.


“I told you I wanted to dominate a woman, that I wanted my own willing slave but that’s the key to all of this. Nothing happens unless you want it to. Nothing without it being in your wish list as well. I want to make sure we both enjoy this, but at any time, and I mean any time you want this to stop, it stops. And so you’re absolutely clear on this, we’ll have a password. If you say it, we stop whatever we’re doing and you can leave, never to see me again. The password is, This Ends Now, or, T.E.N. for short. Ten, what could be simpler, one syllable to give you full control over everything. You happy with that, Vanessa?”


He’d obviously thought it all out and the thought that he must have played these games with other women gave her, to her astonishment, a pang of jealousy but he was waiting for her answer, and her silent nod was all he needed.


“Undress for me please”.


Her black dress was short enough and light enough to discard easily and as it revealed her matching underwear she felt a wave of pleasure to see his eyes hungrily take her body in. She slipped off her bra and watched him enjoy how hard her nipples had already become and as she pulled off her knickers she was thrilled to see him almost lick his lips at the sigh of her freshly shaved pussy. It was good to see the bulge in his trousers too.


“You’re perfect, fabulous, let me take your hands please."


Vanessa held out her hands and let Oliver raise them above her head. He was a good six inches taller than her and she felt him click the cuffs shut around her wrists but it took a few seconds longer to realise that he had cuffed her to one of the oak beams that she had noticed before. As she realised that she was now helpless, another shiver went through her body. Would he take any notice of the password, but then, did she want to use it?


Oliver inched closer to her body and he took her left nipple in his fingers and squeezed it, gently at first and then applied more pressure. Vanessa became more aroused and both nipples stiffened even more.


“Close your eyes please, just for a second."

It was more like thirty seconds before anything happened but then she felt the hard shaft of a man press against her bum. She heard Oliver’s voice again and knew he was in front of her.


“You can open your eyes now."

She saw Oliver had stripped for her and she was very impressed with what met her eyes. She had imagined this darkly handsome man naked when she first saw him and she wasn’t disappointed. He didn’t have the bulging, unnatural looking look of a body builder but his stomach was flat and taut. As he came nearer the beads of sweat starting to form on the impressive, almost completely hairless chest her heart began to beat faster, even though she knew she could still be in real danger.


She wished she could take his already impressive erection in her hands and make him even bigger but she was still helplessly cuffed, arms above her head. As she admired his powerful leg muscles he turned away from her. As he turned back to face her, he held in his hands a long, willowy but strong looking cane.


He moved closer to her again until his cock was inches away from her and ran the tip of the cane over both of her nipples in turn. There was no way of preventing them responding to the touch, being stimulated in that area had always turned her on quickly and the unreal situation made no difference to that. A slight movement on her left made her turn her head and she realised she had almost forgotten that there was a man behind her as well.


Oliver was tasty but this man, also naked and fully aroused was the sort to give any woman fantasies. Thick blonde hair, pale blue eyes, powerful muscular torso, he was so well endowed she was almost glad of the support of the handcuffs or she would have buckled under the pressure of her excited body.


Whoever blondie was he seemed to know his part in all his without any prompting from Oliver. Moving around until he was directly in front of her, he began to stroke her between her thighs. Vanessa could feel a pulse of pleasure running through her and when her fantasy man took her head in his huge hands, surprisingly gently and kissed her full on her lips, it was as if nothing else mattered but what was going to happen between them. As he broke away from her, she felt his fingers play around the edge of her increasingly damp lips, almost but not quite parting them. Her mouth fell open again and just as she began to writhe with excitement, desperately wishing she had her hands free so she could touch him, she felt a sharp, biting pain as the cane flailed against her back.


Vanessa gasped as the pain intensified briefly and then began to subside. Oliver was standing a little to the blonde’s left, looking delighted at her reactions. He was tapping the cane against his palm, with a smile full of charm. Blondie’s probing fingers were starting to explore her more urgently, but it was the sight of his cock, only inches away from entering her that was driving Vanessa wild. She was imagining only too vividly the way he might feel inside her, the way she would explode with desire and break into a thousand fragments, each one a tiny slice of pleasure. Then Oliver hit her again, harder this time and she did a double movement, a shiver of excitement thanks to the blonde man and a tensing of her muscles because of the burning sensation on her back.


Oliver moved very close to her and whispered in her right ear.


“You haven’t been introduced, Vanessa. This is Alan. A very good friend of mine and he seems to be getting to know you quite well. He isn’t much of a talker, but he has other attributes. Nothing will happen unless you choose it, Vanessa. Alan is very anxious to give you what you want most of all but so am I. The pain and the pleasure are the same emotion you see."


He shot a glance at the other man who took his ever hardening shaft in his hand and brought the tip of it to rest, so very gently against Vanessa’s now wide open lips.

“Was there something you wanted to say perhaps? A word, a syllable?”


The look of total confidence, arrogance almost made her spit the word at him just to see his disappointment but Alan easing his huge cock around her wet opening and the thought that he would take it away was too much to bear. Silently, she shook her head.


“Alan just needs to be asked, begged perhaps before he will please you. But if you beg him to take you, you must beg me to carry on too. Or of course, you can put your clothes on, let me call you a taxi and think about what you have missed out on."

Right on cue, Alan inched forward and, as the tip of his cock explored more of the wetness of her bloated, swollen pussy, he bent his head forward and began biting, none too gently on her nipples which were now as brittle and sensitive as glass. Vanessa had never felt so aroused, she felt she would melt if he carried on but then, presumably at a signal from Oliver, his ‘friend’ stopped biting and moved his cock just out of reach of her lips. Any rules, any logical thought processes vanished instantly. Vanessa was on fire and she had to have him inside her, had to feel that thick, wide rod driving into her and just then, nothing else mattered.


She was starving and only he could satisfy her appetite. She was a desert, dry and searing hot, only he could cool her, could make the rain of her own body sweep over her.


“No, no, don’t stop, take me now, I want to feel you inside me."


It was as if she heard someone else’s voice speak out, she was losing control rapidly. She felt the slightest touch of the cane on her back and as she saw the lustful look in the pale eyes of the man she felt more physically attracted to him than any man she had ever been near she shouted, screamed out;


“Hit me, beat me, anything you want to do, do it, just let me feel him again."


Needing no second invitation, Alan moved his hands so he could cup her buttocks in them and then, proving his physique wasn’t just for show, lifted Vanessa off the floor as he drove into her saturated lips. The pain of being beaten seemed to be simultaneous to the undiluted ecstasy of his thrusting driving shaft and Vanessa, almost as a reflex now, began shouting, begging for more. The angle at which he had driven inside her made her feel light headed, delirious with joy, she clamped her lips around his girth and threw herself backwards as far as the position of her body and the restraint of her arms would allow. As she arched backwards, Oliver changed his area of attack and Vanessa felt two stinging blows across her bum but this only heightened her pleasure, it was as if this forced her to bury herself deeper into her fantasy . The pain and the pleasure merged together, Vanessa felt every inch of her body was on fire, she was as desperate to feel the sting of the cane as she was to feel his primitive thrusts opening and probing her deeper and deeper.


Nothing this good could last forever and Vanessa knew even this man would reach his climax soon but she had to come when he did, the thought of feeling him soften and wither whilst he was still inside her, whilst she was still sliding her lips up and down the length of him was too terrible to contemplate. She needn’t have worried as she felt her orgasm shudder through every bit of her body when Alan drove deeper inside her, deeper than any man had ever reached. As the electric current sizzled from her breasts to her crotch, she saw herself, as if in a dream, look back at Oliver and silently plead with him to thrash her even more. She was desperate to feel the stinging agony of the cane on her flesh which felt as it were on fire now. Not even his look of victory could change how good it had felt to have Alan inside her and she almost came to another orgasm as he thrashed down with the cane three, maybe four times. Her skin burned and ached with pleasure before Vanessa felt her legs being released and she slumped, almost drunkenly, only held up by the handcuffs above her head.


It was something she hardly dare admit even to herself. The pain of the cane on her back and her bum had felt almost exquisite, she had been, by the end, ready to do anything to feel the burning tingle on her skin. Giving over control of her body like that to a man, well, maybe, but to two men was something she had never experienced before and she knew the feelings aroused in her were very complex. She belonged to Oliver, her body was his to use and share with any other man he wanted to. She had never fantasised about a threesome before let alone this but the conversation she had had with Dawn came back to her. She had wanted to be a man’s slave, a plaything, to be helpless but in control, to win and lose. And this was what this evening had been all about.


But then she realised, the night was still young.


Oliver was speaking again.


“Remember, anytime you say, any time you want, this stops and you get dressed and go home. This is your night as well as ours."


She knew her silence was agreement, all three of them did, and she had no intention of breaking that silence. The word she could use to go back to a civilised world was a million miles away from her mouth.


Alan reached up and uncuffed her and she flexed her arms gingerly, allowing some feeling to flow back into them.


“On your knees, now and open your mouth."


As Vanessa did so, Oliver fed his hard length into it and Vanessa clamped her lips shut, taking him in as deep as she could, licking and sucking. She felt his pleasure and then she felt him reach down and take her hand in his and guide it onto the still erect cock of Alan giving Vanessa the chance to close her fingers around it, and start to massage him, hard and relentlessly. She had never felt a man as hard or as big as he was. His cock tasted strong and musky but clean and fresh too.


“ Alan wants to take you now, from behind”, Oliver said smoothly and Vanessa wasn’t about to complain as she was spun round so that he was behind her whilst she was still on all fours. She tilted herself forward, opened her legs wider with her bum pointing upwards and she felt his huge rock hard length pushing into the lips that were waiting just for that. As he thrust deeper into her gaping opening, she became aware of voices and began to realise she had an audience now. She half turned her head in alarm but Oliver grabbed her long black hair and in that smooth polished accent said;


“Surely you don’t mind a few other friends joining us for the evening?” and somehow, terrified Alan would stop pumping into her, she stayed silent. She was his property now after all.


Becoming more aware of the audience and their excitement which was now very audible, Vanessa’s face was burning scarlet at the thought of the porn show she was starring in but no negative feelings could overcome the pleasure she was getting as Alan thrust deeper inside her, his rhythm taking him almost out of her every second thrust which only heightened her lust for him. Vanessa’s weeping hot wet lips circled his hardness, clinging to him as if nothing else mattered. And then, it hit her that, great though being used like this was, having a live audience, knowing that every man in that room would have screwed her if she snapped her fingers made it so much better, made her so much hornier. She eased herself further backwards and made her body fit in with the thrusts which were ever more powerful. Still pushing into her, he abruptly sat back and pulled her with him. Vanessa was initially furious that he should disturb the fabulous position they had found together but it was only momentary as she stretched out her legs and, still with her back to him, straddled him and began to almost bounce up an down on his cock, giving him the chance to take her tits in both hands and fondle and manipulate them as she did so. Wondering how much more energy she had got left Vanessa felt on the point of collapse. Then, she found she had Oliver’s deliciously tempting swollen cock in front of her and no power on earth could have stopped her taking it inside her mouth and sucking, licking, almost biting him, enjoying his groans of pleasure. It was a scene from a thousand porn films but Vanessa was intoxicated by everything she felt, she was being explored from behind by a man who made the ‘size doesn’t matter’ mantra a joke whilst a man who had orchestrated all of this was bursting inside her mouth, it was satisfaction beyond her wildest fantasies. As they all collapsed, Vanessa almost fell over the splayed out legs of the other two as her juices cascaded from between her thighs.


The crowd of watchers cheered and began to chatter excitedly A sensation of power swept over Vanessa. Who was the slave, was she, the star of the filthiest show in town? Or were these men, panting with desire and lust, they would be dreaming about her body tonight, praying they had been with her, feeling her, letting her touch them? Although the mixture of voices were coming to her from the other side of the room and she couldn’t see anybody, she just knew she was the only woman there and that heightened her sense of being special in this theatre of pleasure.


Vanessa was so weakened and her muscles were still twitching that she barely registered that Oliver was fastening the chain around her waist. Then, as she was jerked violently towards the crowd, she looked down at it, even as her mind was spinning, Vanessa saw clearly that the belt was effectively a dog collar and as he led her, dragged her, on tottering feet towards the audience, the symbolic enslavement, the clear message that she was Oliver’s creature swept over her.


“Anything you want to say to me, Vanessa? Any little word?”


For once she found her voice.


“Don’t stop, this is my show too. You haven’t fucked me yet, you can take me any way you want...”

Oliver grinned at her and, grabbing her long black hair, whispered in her ear;


“On all fours, facing your adoring public, Alan wants to punish you now."

The words sent a pulse of electricity coursing right through her, the thought of the silent dream man using her for his own pleasure, making her beg for mercy was almost too exciting to contemplate. As she dropped onto her kneeling position, she risked a glance over her shoulder and was rewarded by the sight of Alan advancing towards her and as he did so he was flexing a black, savage looking whip. Vanessa gulped hard. The cane was painful but arousing, but that whip…. A man as powerful as Alan could really use that, she could be bruised and sore all over her body, she could be flinching and writhing by the time he had finished with her. One word, that was all it would take to top him, all she had to do to get dressed and go home.


She found her voice.


“Hit me properly, please , please whip me. I want to feel it now."


Almost in slow motion she saw the instrument flail across her bum cheeks, and as she gasped in pain, she turned again to see his cock jutting skywards, he seemed even more aroused than before.


“Turn and face the other way, woman."


Oliver’s voice was a command and she obeyed instantly, praying for the sharp pain and thrill of Alan’s whip again and she wasn’t disappointed. Her mind was whirling. She was aching with the stinging sensation of the blows as they rained down, now on her back, once, twice and even harder the third time. Her skin was throbbing violently as she heard the cheers of the men assembled in front of her. Alan paused and, leaning over, began to fondle her nipple gently with his left hand, stroking, coaxing, but Vanessa wanted more.


“Don’t be so bloody gentle, squeeze me, I want to feel your hands on me.”


And Alan got the message, she almost winced as he twisted and pulled on her diamond hard nipple, but as he eased his body forward so he could grip her nipples even harder, she felt his rock hard length knock against her leg and Vanessa gasped with the sensation of how good it felt for her. Then, as if he could read her mind he brought his right hand between her legs and as her velvet slit was so open and wet, was able to put three fingers inside her massaging her soaking mound of pleasure. Her clit was hugely bloated and Vanessa’s head was spinning even faster, as so many emotions surged through her but she heard herself say to her master;

“Don’t be so easy on me, whip me more, please more.”


He didn’t disappoint her, as, with another couple of thrashes with the whip from one hand, he manipulated and roughly played with her saturated lips from behind her, and she reached out her own hand push his fingers deeper inside making her feel she had no more juice to surrender to him.


Stopping the beating abruptly, he gestured to her to rise but she was so wet between her legs by now she could hardly walk so he had to almost drag her to the front group of the men, a couple of whom began to run their hands all over her tits usually shouting out something filthy as they did so. Alan handed the chain to the man nearest to him and Vanessa found herself falling helplessly as he yanked her further into the group of cheering men. She was on her knees again now and when the nearest man undid his trousers and beckoned her to give him what he wanted, she didn’t even look at Alan or Oliver but just knelt before this stranger and took him fully into her mouth, massaging his tight balls between her fingers. He may not have been Alan’s size but her head was still on fire and her whole body was seething with the most primitive, unrestrained thrill she could ever have imagined. She wouldn’t be stopped now, she wanted the taste, the sensation of a man’s excitement in her throat and only when she felt him surging, exploding, did she let him go, licking her lips as she did so. Vanessa felt the touch of fingers probing between her legs again and knew they belonged to Oliver. She had never been so wide open and soaked in her life and, still feeling light headed with a power and a pain she had never thought possible, she lifted her head and surveyed her audience. She grabbed the nearest man, no longer caring what he was like or how he aroused her and kissed him on the lips, wrapping both her arms around his neck. Still revelling in the roars of the men, Vanessa beckoned him onto his knees, she knew nobody in the room would disobey her now, and then she pushed him as roughly as she could, onto his back. Squatting beside him, she tore off his trousers and shorts, revealing his increasingly swollen dick. Then, pausing only to glance at the excited faces all around her, she threw her body onto him, clamping his cock between her open moist lips. Placing her hands on his chest, Vanessa rocked backwards and forwards, taking him further inside her and arching her back further away from him, drawing him deeper, demanding with her body that he grow bigger and firmer. To her acute disappointment, he came quickly, so she writhed a little more and then as she slid off him, she put her foot on his chest and with an almost contemptuous gesture, turned away from him. She felt the pressure of the chain being yanked before she saw Oliver had control of her again, and although she couldn’t catch what he had said it was met with boos and disappointment by the crowd.


Clearly, her show was over and the final physical stimulus for her was two vicious slaps, one across her face, the other across her bum delivered by her captor with the cane.


Oliver dragged her, still reeling and exhausted until she was in front of a full length mirror she hadn’t noticed before and as he pulled her around full circle like a puppet, she saw the red wheals and marks all over her back and her bum, and the beginnings of huge bruises start to form. Crazily, this only turned her on all the more, what was happening to her?


As she sat back, exhausted but still sizzling with arousal she heard a familiar voice just behind her.


“Well, you can’t say this was a boring evening, can you, Vanessa?”


Dawn was smiling wickedly at her.


“What the hell...”


“Sorry to deceive you like this but what are friends for? Oliver and I have been friends for ages and I just knew he’d be right for you. I knew the way we worded the advert would work. Mind you, I haven’t seen Alan before, you are a lucky girl, aren’t you?”


It's difficult being furious with someone when you‘ve just had the best night of your life, and Dawn’s instincts really had been perfect after all.


THE END

VAMPIRES

Slowly, slowly, the beacon fire smouldered. In 1897, Bram Stoker struck the first spark when he published his horror novel “Dracula”. The kindling had been stacked up for centuries, in the form of mythologies, rumours and stories; those creepy tales whispered about Vampires. Creatures of the night; the undead, seeking you out, to sink their fangs into your tender jugular and drink your blood; draining you. The stories go back thousands of years. Now, in 2010, the beacons have crossed oceans; the fires flame fiercely, proclaiming that the old stories are still being told and new tales are being written.



Stoker could have had no idea, that his short novel would precipitate a whole genre of writing that would hold sway on our collective imagination for decades.


Although Stoker did not invent the vampire, the novel's influence on the popularity of vampires has been singularly responsible for many theatrical, film and television interpretations throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.


From the beginning of history, vampire-like spirits and beings have been recorded. The Akhkharu were blood-sucking demons, written about back in the time of Sumer. We’re talking about 5,000 years BC. The ancient Chinese wrote about "hopping corpses" which would go around and consume a victim’s life essence (commonly known as chi). Even ancient Egyptian lore had a story where the goddess Sakhmet was consumed with bloodlust. From the earliest of times, vampire like beings have been prominent in folklore from several different cultures.


The most well-known versions of vampire myth are those of the Slavic and Romanian cultures, which, due to their proximity, are similar. And it is from Eastern Europe, that Stoker’s Count Dracula originates.

There are several reasons that a person may become a vampire, such as unnatural death, birth defects, or conception on certain days. Romanian legend gave rise to the belief that being bitten by a vampire would doom one to become a vampire after death. Both Slavic and Romanian myths hold the belief that, with the advent of a vampire, there would be deaths of livestock and family members of the vampire. The favoured way to kill a vampire in these two myths is by driving a stake through the heart, decapitation, and if necessary, dismemberment. Slavic and Romanian vampire myths have given rise to the most popular world-view of vampires.


But what’s the fascination? Why the endless retelling of this old story? Are we playing with danger from the safety of fiction? The horror of vampires is very real; I should know. I spent my adolescence terrified of them; especially Dracula. I invented bizarre little rituals to ward him off and keep me safe. Positioning on my left side as I lay in my bed, was paramount -- as was a convoluted prayer; a mantra that I would recite over and over again. Sleep would be a long time coming.


The success of “Dracula” spawned a distinctive vampire genre. The vampire is such a dominant figure in the horror genre that literary historian Susan Sellers places the current vampire myth in the "comparative safety of nightmare fantasy".


We relinquish control to the vampire. He swirls his cloak around his victim and bites. His teeth penetrate us. It’s a reconstructed image of the sexual act; in fact actual copulation seems tame, compared with what the vampire can do. The victim has no control over his ghastly lover. The victim flirts with death.


But it’s not just the Count we have to fear. He is scary, but his entourage of female vampires more so. Female vampires are predatory and take their pleasure where they will. Women who take control of the sex act itself. Victorian men -- beware! The ideal Victorian woman was chaste, innocent, a good mother. She definitely wasn’t sexually aggressive; a huntress.


The three beautiful vampires, Jonathan Harker, Stoker’s narrator, encounters in Dracula’s castle, are both his dream and his nightmare—indeed, they embody both the dream and the nightmare of the Victorian male imagination in general. The sisters represent what the Victorian ideal stipulates women should not be—voluptuous and sexually aggressive—thus making their beauty both a promise of sexual fulfilment and a curse. These women offer Harker more sexual gratification in two paragraphs than his fiancée Mina does during the course of the entire novel. However, this sexual proficiency threatens to undermine the foundations of a male-dominated society by compromising men’s ability to reason and maintain control. For this reason, the sexually aggressive women in the novel must be destroyed.


In a passage highly charged with erotic symbolism, Jonathan Harker, writes in his journal;


“I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck -- she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight, the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and I could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one's flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer, nearer. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in languorous ecstasy and waited, waited with beating heart.”


The vampire lover is erotica personified. You relinquish control; you do nothing, other than give yourself up to the seduction.

Janine Ashbless suggests; “We don't fantasise about controlling vampires - we fantasise about how we have NO control over them. They are stand-ins for Death itself.”

Stoker’s narrator, flirts with the promise of an intercourse so erotic, that he will give up his life.


Later in the novel, Count Dracula has made his way to England, and sets about possessing the upper-middle class Lucy.


Once infected by Dracula, Lucy becomes sexually overt and aggressive, and is portrayed as a monster and a social outcast. She feeds on children making her the maternal antithesis as well as a child molester. In order to rectify Lucy’s condition she is sexually overpowered by her fiancée, Holmwood; the scene is witnessed by Jonathan Harker and Van Helsing. Holmwood penetrates her to death with a stake through the chest, a staking which is openly sexual in interpretation;


“the thing in the coffin writhed; and a hideous, blood-curdling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam.........He (Holmwood) looked like a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper”


The killing of Lucy is a sort of legitimised gang rape, legitimised because the Victorian balance of sexual penetration from the female domain is back in its accepted station within the male domain.


The reasons for our fear of, and fascination with vampires change with the times we live in. To Stoker’s contemporaries, Count Dracula posed many threats to Victorian social, moral and political values: he changes virtuous women into beasts with ravenous sexual appetites; he is a foreigner who invades England and threatens English superiority; he is the embodiment of evil that can only be destroyed by reasserting the beliefs of traditional Christianity in an increasingly sceptical and secular age; he represents the fear of regression, a reversal of evolution, a return to our more primal animal state.


Think of the wealth of literature, film and television dramas that we wouldn’t have, if Bram Stoker hadn’t written “Dracula.”


Perhaps they leave you cold -- I love them! I’m over my teenage angst about them. There’d be no exotic Lestat, from Ann Rice. No Hammer house of Horror. No vampires with a conscience; M.Christian wouldn’t have written his vampire novel; “Running Dry.” Neither would Janine Ashbless have written; "The Blood of the Martyrs" All wonderful stuff; my favourite writers digging around in my agonised psyche.


And then there’s those TV shows; “Buffy,” “True Blood,” “The Vampire Diaries.” A blood letting, tinged with magic. I lose myself in a world, of exotic, erotic fantasy. A strange world of death and immortality. Stories that speak to us once again of an ancient, horrid rite and fear.