Electra’s dictionary/thoughts in the cold with a vampire

Should I feel ashamed that he does that to me…. that it happens in sleep …. there is intimacy which is not the same as what you think of usually as intimacy 

I suppose this is why I try to step out into the freezing cold — to free my mind from the confines of walls. Feeling boxed in within walls and mountains 

it is hard to think with Jörn so in my head. So…. I am thinking about beyond myself and what his need is to have me, if only while sleeping 

….always it was….he comes to me in dreams ….

    like a memory ….reaching through the subconscious ….and through time ….that horizon I chase so blindly …..walking ….behind him? wasn’t that the great shadow that was always there in front of me in those foggy, hazy, misty dreams…..mixed with the bats on the walls ….I remember the bats now as part as when those memories first started surfacing 

So he is reaching for ….Elan ….when he makes love to me ….he is making love to her ….it isn’t me….is it….or is it….?

I try to step out of myself. I try not to feel upset. I don’t understand my emotions ….lately….I just don’t make sense —everything in the lens just went surreal like one of those films from avant guard film class ….

But if her is me…. I am really her….that is—it explains the irrational nightmares of being lost ….of looking for something I cannot find but not knowing what it is ….then this means ….

I have been looking at all of this wrong ….the way Jörn masqueraded as the psychiatrist back in Chestertown back when he was on that case and there was something about Dr Rothschild —he had found something about me ….the case study she did —? I forget ….

I think ….i shut my eyes….the cold goes up my sleeves and I turn into the building to brace from the wind….

My face is in the wall as I think, huddled from the wind ….and even this strange action —triggers memories of the man with the vampire eyes and the hut….i recall the cold and the thought of the hides ….they were our source of warmth; I remember this—and the smell of the skins; the way it would sting your nose when the heat from the fire filled the hut inside. This I see and feel all at once as I shiver off the wind…. and right now, I find that I feel—I long so desperately for the hides and— the heat of our hut….it comes to me like ice water on my face, a sharp pain, like a stab in my heart—

Dracula magic? ….is he causing me to remember more?  —and I half expect to see him behind me when I hear someone approach 

But when I turn around I see Josef

His appearance at this moment throws me completely off guard —I half gasp 

“mitt kära barn, you look like you’re seeing a ghost! It’s just me, kära…. I just wanted to see if you are all right standing there as you are—you seem in some kind of a state, why don’t we go inside and have some tea? It’s quite cold even for a Viking!” And he chuckles at the last bit 

Because it seems inevitable we should confront I don’t object. I only stand there feeling confused. 

Of course I am imagining him at the dinner table with Elsa in the other long house behind this one….so I am imagining her serving from a big Steuben Crystal soup tureen some blood-red liquid for dinner….it makes me gag 

“We don’t do it like that,” Josef says to me

“Did you just read my mind?—do none of you guys have any ethics on mind privacy?”

“Kära, you are dealing with a very unusual matter here and I am only trying to be a supportive father figure, believe me, I have had years of experience and you have had little—let’s go inside and have some tea….” 

It would have taken a feather to force me to go, suddenly, I was glad of his appearing because hearing it not from Jörn might make better sense 

“It was Elsa’s fault….” Josef says as we walk along the heavily snowed walk to the house’s wide back deck where I left from, the garage is further past the deck towards the kitchen. The sliding glass door leads into the lounge living area 

“Hmmm?” I ask mildly as we walk, he is behind me

He tugs on the back of my coat so I stop and turn around to look at him

He looks at me with his frosty white brows and icy Nordic blue eyes with their curios twinkle; he waves his hands at himself and twirls his hands.

Still I have no idea. I look blankly at him. 

So he raises an index finger and apes the Hollywood version of a vampire sucking someone’s blood 

I stand glued to the spot. I don’t notice the cold. But I stare blankly.

“It was Elsa’s idea —all this….” he raises his brows at me, “how long can a husband be angry at his wife? A few centuries?”

Is he joking?

Is this like a gag joke he does and I’m missing the humor?

“Huh….” I think I said. Maybe it was a question. Or ….maybe it was my attempt to make my mind catch up with events 

“I ….feel I should tell you before we go inside,” Josef says

“Tell me what?”

“Jörn didn’t ….he was trying to save your life….Elan’s—“

“You knew Elan?”

“Of course!” Josef stares at me 

He stares at me ….in that way Jörn does when it is Elan he sees in me. It makes me feel upset. I don’t know why ….

I look up at Josef as I feel this but I feel him in my thoughts and something strange occurs; like a wrinkle smoothed out, if a thought could have a wrinkle —he smoothed it. And the correct lens dropped into view 

“Adelsö….” Josef whispers to me 

I knew when he said the word that it was a place. And as he said the word a vision came to me. I saw the hallways and the tables and knew—he was there ….he was one of the judges on the island…. It was before arriving at the other place —they were there ….they were all there, even Andres and Hanna….

I feel so dizzy, I lose my balance and fall into the side of the house, but then I lean against it for support as I look back up at Josef 

“How was it her idea—what did he think he was doing?”

“He—you must understand, it was a bad time for him— he’s never recovered, kara….he was willing to do anything to—to—bring you back….he himself was a walking corpse ….”

“Are you saying Elsa knows black magic?”

Josef actually laughs when I say this. It’s a laugh not intended, like the surprise of what I said caused his laugh unchecked 

“She’d love you to think so,” he amends

He walks beside me and then leans against the wall too next to me,

“she knew of a woman ….we were pagan in those days….there are a lot of myths about our gods and there are a lot of things that have been hidden from what modern people may think of as Common Knowledge. And that’s the way the rest of us like it to stay but….thats for another time…. There was a ritual—it required all of us, or so Elsa said ….i don’t ever think she wanted to resurrect you but back then, we didn’t know it couldn’t be done. Elsa knew. So she duped us—he kept the body frozen ….the ‘witch’ I guess you’d call her today….she came to the ….it was a structure, a small building where the welding was done, where he lived in that clan’s settlement as their welder ….they were not a good people but at Adelsö it was decided that was where the terms from a —a past blood feud it was —we—they sent him there, it was Hovgården….”

Integrating the dictionary/Electra’s dictionary

I have not thought of the day I had to call 911 emergency 

    he’d had his hands around my throat in a rage and I was terrified —the weeks of his lows were exhausting ….Chris…. he couldn’t face it —and I had to stop carrying him because he was killing me —the people arrived …..the drama out on our street. Everyone saw. I went with him. I slept there the week on the floor 

As empaths we absorb so much of others emotions when we feel them 

we take it on— it isn’t a choice but a burden or gift yet not something one turns off 

Unless induced and I guess that is why the need for escapism was ever the choice 

The crumbs I left behind ….it’s a riddle that nobody has ever solved 

but I’ve left all my clues in the legend 

After the years —looking back…. I couldn’t have escaped my husband without their intervention ….the doctors ….the forced treatment —to get him out of my head; he was a sickness and I was trapped in his bipolar cycles always ….the angel of mercy ….but nobody is for me —

but then there is Jörn 

Electra writes; dear electra/Electra’s dictionary

Tonight I feel like Cathy having lost her soul and wandering blindly through the mists 

it feels sometimes as if he has sucked out the whole soul of me ….not just an emotional vampire then ….he has become so much a part of me even with the interruptions of what tends to happen with us 

I am exhausted ….I do not know where I end and he begins and I never noticed it happen; the integration was ….so subtle ….he wove into my worlds and into my thoughts 

He says to me,

“How can I be emotionally dangerous to you when I have watched far worse with the way you’ve let Bran walk all over you!”

It was like he spat it at me. 

It stunned me. 

It made me think ….if he can infiltrate minds—but feel what they feel too …. How long has he been empath-ing me with his Dracula powers? 

While it violates the very meaning of privacy—of the mind ….to know he has invaded mine for so long….how much of my secrets does he know…. 

Yet he stands there looking at me in that way ….like it isn’t me —but it is me….they are things that happened to me —I know their references and their impacts on my timeline 

How does he know how Bran —?

….how dare he! ….how could he? 

Only ….he has searched 

     centuries ….? 

Searched centuries …. Only to find someone you’ve been looking for through lifetimes but —he never dies ….it is forever for him to wait but then to know it is fleeting anyway 

What do you say ….how to amend …. how to insinuate yourself into a stranger’s life that ….you knew when she lived as someone else ….

I wonder it must be hard to watch me live my life and ….he could never come near me —to say who he is ….

so I think of this too only now once the rage is now spent out of me 

But how do you lay this on a person who’s mortal and expect instant —instant what exactly ….what is his end game plan in this anyway ….somehow I don’t think there is one for him exactly 

Electra’s dictionary/legends are given by permission

It is like we are suspended 

     in some separate reality …. that is not the world —or not Earth 

The frozen sky and the northern hemisphere cloaked in their own frozen reality and separate piece…. but these mountains may be physical for the barriers they serve but beyond that, they do not contain me

I have been somewhere else. Far away. Somewhere far far away 

It is awhile until I realize I am awake. I seem to have been watching the sky from the angle of my head as my vision is turned to the window. Watching a sky. A sky I don’t see. So where am I looking? Where am I?

“The hardest part ….” I suddenly hear Jörn say, along with the sound of his motion of him as he reaches to draw back a ringlock of my hair as it covers my face, “was watching your pain in this life,” he says now 

But I am still staring at the cold gray sky outside the glass of the window; his words don’t fully register 

I shut my eyes ….how long has he been there?  I feel him in my head ….and the warmth of him next to me

“Finding out how you grew up, about your abuse at home,” he whispers this into my ear and moves his hand to rest on the other side of me so his arm is draped across my waist—but I try and resist this, and push against his too familiar half embrace and turn my back to him. I turn my face into the mattress and cover my ears with my hands 

I don’t want to hear this. His sympathy? About something I never think about? How dare he! What an insult 

“I have to tell you,” he says taking hold of me and turning me round 

“I don’t want to hear this!” I look right at him

“I have to tell you!” he shouts at me

“Why?!” I shout back

“Because somebody should!”

But he’s only made me angry,

“nice wake up—and why is it only when it’s scheduled by you that the timing is always right to invade me? I certainly have a million questions but one of them is not should I give you cart blanche to my emotions. You are emotionally dangerous to me, and you have no rights to my thoughts unless I give you permission and you need to earn that first!”

I shout all this in one long tirade, sitting up and then leaping off the bed

But when I’m done the outcry leaves me dizzy ….I sit down at the foot of the bed 

I slowly look at him,

“how young was I before you realized who Elan was in this life?”

“I told you —we—I ….didnt put a face to it—you—until that case of Willem’s”

“Wasn’t that a bullshit story? How does Willem actually fit into all this —‘cause….you said it was your first case together, wasn’t that the story you told me?”

Jörn clears his throat. He walks to the window on the other side of the room and looks out. After awhile he lets out a heavy sigh 

“There’s no way to explain without telling you the whole story and ….I’m not sure you’re ready for all of it,” he looks at me from across the room 

After awhile he paces across the room, first to the door and then to the closet and then back to the window he started at. He does this a few times. 

 

views from the mountain 

Electra’s dictionary; living/time

I think about Elan and the connection to that her in me. The feel of the motion in my hips when I am walking ….it is like that horizon has never left me…. I am always chasing it ….searching for it ….trying to find my way back to it 

And outside it is ….

Yet another snow storm and I am lost in my thoughts. 

I pace the rooms all day and forget to eat ….reading the same sentence in a Room With a View 600 times …. 

Because I try to be centered—find the normal within ….within this mad mad world ….it just gets wackier out there so whatever ….the Chi inside is mine to claim 

Jörn has left me space 

    ….the times in the night he visits me when I’m sleeping I think are dreams as it is happening ….he does this on purpose ….you see? it is the elephant in the room I’m pretending isn’t there ….by hiding myself away upstairs as he does —Dracula things? whatever he does ….what does he do? hunts….? 

But it is clearly a gift he has honed. I just never realized how good at it he is. It’s a mental thing but it’s not because he can do it even if I’m asleep. He enters my dreams. I don’t really think it’s ethical. This is what makes me kind of annoyed with him 

but ….like I say, he is very good at what he does ….and I also think a part of it is something far deeper —it is as though he is waking her up —no….he is waking up that part that was her within me that I forgot and —how can I be angry at him if ….he is trying to find me again as Elan —while selfish perhaps, it seems almost the opposite; a shocking deeper level of ….

This is why I choose time to myself ….we have not even spoken beyond a perfunctory and polite Goodmorning over coffee and, pass the lingonberry jam which could be any time of day…. it’s a blur lately, the intensity of the impact I continue to reel in ….

And if I were to be frank with myself, would I truthfully say I never suspected he was a vampire? I totally blindsided myself 

It was that whole ….emotion ….he gave me —I felt a knowing of him ….of him from another level of me —and I ached for him —it was immediate ….that wasn’t his Dracula magic; it was the surprise moment the first time I ever saw him but I pretended it wasn’t there. But I knew it was. There was a pull. It was as if a powerful magnet was drawing me before I even looked up, but he wasn’t yet looking at me ….before we got into the elevator —the day with Gerald, we were talking on the way heading by the mailboxes in the lobby ….he had the cello and was turned toward the street still as he came in through the apartment building’s glass doors 

What was it? It was something so familiar —the silhouette of him—it was the way he carried himself ….the cello case ….the set of his Viking shoulders and the glint of gold in his hair as the sun caught it in its light ….that was what it was; like stupefied for a moment —and if I were to consider this now, I guess ….there was the sense, how could that be? But no—as if—Elan thought it

how could that —him ….still be?