Til að hleypa ljósinu inn verður þú að auðmýkja þig….before the grace of God go I 

Scandi Noir Vampire eyes (jmmuse chron)

I sit there with the schnapps looking out into the wintry forest and I 

    …. I think about the power of words 

   those things you tell yourself ….those things people say to you 

those words that haunt and repeat and I wonder over the effect of 

    saying much much less 

say less ….don’t say, don’t ever say too much out in the world as I worry about words — ones that hurt me 

so many words have hurt me so much and I find I prefer to let it go, I feel ready to give up this martyr haircoat, I’m ready to be free 

How Josef smoothed my mind before ….it did something to me within ….that place I forgot so long ago ….and so as I look out into the cold frozen Adirondack mountains it occurs to me about eternity and what it means as timelines 

My mother always used to say, “I have been here before,” whenever we visited Paris and the first time she ever saw it. She seemed to know streets and carried the way when we explored down them knowing already where they’d lead to. It is interesting how they say the “connection to the other realm” sense runs in families and usually mother to daughter the trait is passed. This is true in our family line among certain females usually the youngest daughter gets it but it shouldn’t surprise me that someone like me would finally find her soul mate only to find he is a vampire 

I can laugh about it now; isn’t that something? Maybe this means I am recovering from the shock …. I mean, all this time he has been a vampire —why should this change my opinion of him? I’m not that narrow minded. It was just the shock….you know—so weird, I just went into hyper vigilance mode; my go to reaction….but I’ve been already so close to him, it would be almost prejudice to not try and see his side 

I know that. Of course. It is just that it is unfair he never bothered to try harder to show me his real and true honest self 

that is what hurts because I never let people in but the little he got of me was more than anyone else got so —I really think I deserved more in return for sharing an honesty of self ….I feel so cheated ….and this is why I still struggle with looking at him ….facing him …. Like it was all such a lie and I feel played —and I resent that but no—I cannot say! —even though my emotions matter too, don’t they?

It is now that I hear the nearby chair bumped and look up expecting Josef —only it is Jörn 

It is a moment I am caught off guard when I see him— it is the frozen white of the mountains covered in snow; it is the way he is looking st me; it is the way he he stands there ….like a golden god in the moonlight, his Nordic raw boned face and those vampire blue eyes like kryptonite that can burn indelibly right through your soul….it was the dye of thst blue ….the woad ….mixed with indigo ….just right if done on the full moon with a goat’s urine….snd why do I remember that….? The dye came from his trades ….

I touch his shirt—the Lycra sticks to my hands as I stand up and face him and ….i am just caught up in him, lost in his eyes that are that otherworldly shade of unearthly glowing blue in the moonlight 

As I hold up my walls I feel him reach inside my thoughts….he is showing me ….some of the parts I lost ….

For a strange moment it is as if I am balanced between two realities …. a real kind of Einstein-Rosen bridge—I am almost suspended and hover over the precipice between all that is ‘normal’ and ….whatever this is; knowing a world of something considered supernatural; vampires —and they just blend among normal people all the time without people knowing it ….?

Without me knowing it….

But really? Really! I mean…. I had to know all the time, didn’t I— I remember thinking “he’s either Jack the Ripper or a vampire….”

Jörn suddenly laughs at me 

He laughs in that way that works like weird pagan magic and this time when he bends down to kiss me, I don’t stop him, because this time it is with all of my soul in that hut in his arms again—it is him, he did come back for me ….

Epocs & Schnapps lapse

….And maybe it is the schnapps

but I find myself thinking about someone from my early childhood….Annie  —and maybe it is this way on a much larger scale for all of them

                                                    like going down an Einstein-Rosen bridge through time

but as I sit there I am not thinking about vampires or what is even happening presently…. no I am somewhere else thinking about many years ago like a life time ago as a little girl and time is so strange 

People say Florida is not really the South as it’s all owned by the Yanks but considering one hundred years is just twenty years more than a lifespan. How much closer it brings the American Civil War into a present reality. Because the locals before the Yanks arrived had their roots already there and these were the ones New Yorker’s kids went to school with and were taught by; these were the locals who got hired as “maids” and “gardeners”. And who were these people and where did they learn all that from 

So….sitting there looking out the window watching for deer or coyote my thoughts drift to Annie and maybe it is the schnapps ….but inwardly I start to cry— only one tear escapes as I keep my eyes set upon the dense forest…. Why do I think of her, from a life time —it feels—ago. When it feels I’ve lived so many lifetimes in this one 

She was the one I would see first after school. She was the one who asked how school was. The one who always gave me the best advice and the one who saw the family charade for what it was but never uttered a word on it. And always I was called “Miss” by her before my name and she spoke with a very thick southern twang, the kind with the long drawn out drawl so a sentence could dangle you in suspense for sometimes awhile if she was ironing. For a very long time I never asked her why she did that; called me “Miss” before my name. Then one day I did. And she told me about her life and her family’s past on a slave plantation (in Georgia). She seemed old to me. Maybe she was. She had grown children. Her black lined face showed the years and her black hair, always neatly pinned, was coursed with gray. I still didn’t know why she said she called me “Miss” out of respect and I remember saying so because to me she was more like a mother ….

you go back to a point of reference within where you might have recalled a glimpse of comfort ….her hugs always made everything right and looking back I know she favored me and perhaps now I understand why….it was with her the day on the public bus when they pointed st me, the day my mother forgot to get me, the day my notorious father died it was; Annie brought me to her house for the one and only time I ever saw it….it was in the ghetto. I remember holding her hand in her kitchen as she called all my family’s emergency numbers

It makes me wonder about Jörn —that he should love me ….so faithfully through time ….how could I be so blind realizing 

Noir family matters

….but by the time Josef and I go inside, it seems the subject, for now, has reached a stopping point in which to pause 

So, we find Jörn in the kitchen leaning against the counter watching the electric kettle as it makes noise boiling water. His body language and expression is resigned. I don’t know why this disturbs me so

I’d hardly noticed him —so caught up in the terror of such a surreal awakening destroying my previous reality forever that I seem not to be at all in my temporal state of mind 

There are so many levels to sift through still and consider ….and being an analytical sort of person, I cannot rest until I have all aspects noted, labeled and categorized in my mental filing cabinet ….

He wears a deep dark blue Lycra long sleeved, that kind of blue that in the right light looks like a peacock’s feathers and then turns back to navy blue; it is the same color as his track suit running trousers that fit him like a second skin. For a silly moment I wonder over my previous thoughts of him as a stealth ninja; his obsessive need to go running and his well toned torso warrior muscles show right through his t-shirt. It makes me wish to know such silly things ….

as though giddy—

“Are you a berserker?” 

I don’t know why I asked him that

But then I start to laugh—it’s too ridiculous ….

“Get the schnapps,” Josef says quietly, I almost don’t hear and I know it doesn’t register 

I was expecting tea and sat down by the window where the square wood kitchen table is and turned to the window to absently search for deer or coyote but what was handed to me wasn’t tea at all and something more like what my grandmother threw back in the kitchen —peachy but more pretending to be but before I could complain it went directly to my head 

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