What I write, invisible

Or mostly so

Poetry

Prose

Diatribes

Sex

Unseen, unread

These truths

Ephemeral monuments

Fading fast

Disappearing

Fragments in time

Glimpses of me

Lost

#poetry #writing

The door hissed closed, slowly muffling Sasha's retreating footsteps. Ferdinand breathed a sigh of relief as a quiet stillness fell over the library. It wasn't that he disliked Sasha's energetic means of communicating her feelings, it's just that she had been especially expressive since Olivia's disappearance. He frowned slightly as he recalled Sasha's panic when she came rushing back to the library, hoping Olivia might have miraculously turned up there despite her never having been inside their building, let alone knowing where it was. He was troubled by the sudden vanishing of this human woman who Sasha had grown so close to and what it might mean.

Ferdinand took advantage of being alone to walk slowly around the basement space while continuing to gather his thoughts. As he walked, he took in all of the noises that seeped into his solitude – the low hum of the air conditioning system that kept everything at an appropriately cool temperate for long term preservation of the paper under his care. The soft cooing of the pigeons that insisted on making their ridiculous excuses for a nest in a small nook created by one of the few windows that looked out onto the street at the level of passing pedestrians' feet. The heels of a rushed office worker clicked by followed by the rumble of an overly stuffed wheelie case.

Moving past the working area where he and Sasha spent most of their time, Ferdinand rested his hand on one of the many handles that opened the metres of shelving around the edge of the room. Slowly and gently, so to not disturb its contents too much, he turned a handle to open up a set of shelving. Shapes on each shelf slowly appeared out of the darkness until they coalesced into identifiable objects – books. These shelves held thousands of volumes of varying sizes ranging from ancient vellum-bound tomes through to a more familiar battered fake leather notebooks, the sort of which could be easily purchased from any stationery shop at an average train station in London. The section that Ferdinand had opened contained some of the first items he had added to the library, his first collections. Smiling, he ran his fingers lightly along the spines, awakening old memories that came to him as long lost friends.

He found himself transported back in time. He was younger and warm blood flowed in his veins. He was not yet a vampire. He strode purposefully through 15th century Valencia, dodging various market stall vendors and other tradespeople seeking to acquire new work. He had heard a rumour that a wonderous new machine had arrived from Germany, one that could allow him to make a tidy sum of money if he were able to make the right connections. Ferdinand quickly found what he was looking for as he slipped under a small stone archway that led to a bookseller's shop. He found it filled with a small crowd of men from across Valencia's diverse community, ranging from market sellers through to some members of the nobility. They were all eagerly looking at a large wooden object that sat in the centre of the room.

A slight clinking of metal reached Ferdinand's ears as he saw a small boy add the last few metal letters to a vast arrangement of text. Another man was preparing a rich black liquid on two strange items that were made up of leather tied around a cupped handle. The man gently applied what Ferdinand realised was ink across all of the letters before lowering a large sheet of pristine paper. Sliding the now joined items under a piece of wood at the centre of the large framed machine, he gripped a long handle and pulled it from right to left, lowering the wood to press the paper and metal letters together.

The man paused for a moment, beads of sweat appearing on his upper lip. The gathered crowd held their breath as he then reversed his previous action, pushing the handle from left to right to raise the wooden block and release the paper from its grip. With slightly shaking hands, he slowly lifted the paper from the metal letters and with a small sigh of relief, turned it to show his rapt audience. Everyone exhaled and applauded – printed upon the surface of the paper were the first lines of the Bible. Each letter was crisp, the ink clear and rich, and the potential for printing books at scale became immediately apparent.

Over the next few years, Ferdinand built a reputation for himself as someone who could source the most unusual and prestigious titles from some of the hardest to access printing presses. He soon found himself in a rare position of being able to turn down work, only selecting the highest paying and most well-connected clients who wished to use his skills to build their personal library. An individual's library was the height of fashion and allowed for those with the money and status to flaunt their positions of privilege through metres of exquisitely bound texts from around the world.

Ferdinand had found the whole venture quite laughable initially – taking vast sums from overly fed men for what he could only see as scraps of paper stuffed into some sort of animal hide binding. But, as he developed his expertise in identifying the most sought after items, he started to gain an appreciation for the knowledge held within. While he certainly wasn't making enough money to build his own collection, he was able to pay a few coin for unbound texts which hadn't come out correctly due to a printing error or the ink not being mixed correctly. Within these pages, he read new philosophies and ideas from centuries past that he had never been exposed to before despite his extensive years at sea, visiting new lands and new peoples.

Things continued well for some years until Ferdinand was hired by a noble who was willing to pay him more than he had ever been paid in his still relatively short life. His task was to select and acquire an entirely new library for the grand estate that this nobleman was building in the south of France. Eager to expand his operations across several European countries, Ferdinand leapt at the opportunity. It would be the last time he used his own free will as a human being.

He completed the task to his usual high standard but the noble wasn't satisfied. While he had no complaints about the work, he had become possessive over Ferdinand and his resourcefulness. When Ferdinand proposed leaving his employ and heading back to Spain to take on new work, the noble became enraged. His guards seized Ferdinand and dragged him down into the bowels of the newly constructed mansion to a disturbingly purpose built dungeon. There Ferdinand was shackled to the wall for what felt like an eternity. A few days without food or water had reduced what had been a bright and healthy man with glowing tanned skin and a sparkle in his eye, to a drawn and gaunt spectre that wheezed at his captor when the noble descended to view the efficiency of his new construction.

“I will make it so that you are never free again.”

Those words whispered across the cell, drifting from locked door to Ferdinand’s ears which had, up until that point, been ringing from starvation and the emerging insanity from being kept in dark isolation. Those words haunted Ferdinand and continued to do so even now. The shiver than ran down Ferdinand's spine was a fresh now as it was then. It was at that moment that Ferdinand da Costa ceased to be, at least in the human world. He hadn't quite understood what had happened until one of the noble's serving men explained it to him.

He was now a vampire and bound to the noble for the rest of his days. He was his sire after all and he couldn't deny him anything that he wanted. Ferdinand was consumed with hatred towards the noble, as well as a profound sense of loss for the life he could have had. But now, he was bound to an eternity of servitude and pain. Despite the noble having wrested absolute control over him, he refused to allow Ferdinand to do anything except sit in squalor in his dungeon. Ferdinand had known enough cruel men over his human years to know what this was – dominance, pure and simple. The noble wished to exert his privilege over Ferdinand and had effectively captured him as another item to add to his extensive personal collection.

However, the noble had underestimated Ferdinand's tenacity and desire for survival. He would not be some specimen pressed between the pages of a book. He would be free.

#writing #VampLibs