Life after Life after (Pinesburg)

Life after Life after (Pinesburg);

Disclaimer: This story takes place at a time and location when racial prejudices were prominent and certain derogatory words, ideas and remarks were common.  No offense is intended and the story is fiction, based in the facts of the time and setting.  If anyone is offended, please accept my deepest apology.

The old aphorism that “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” Is certainly appropriate. But pick your time wisely.

TIME TO RECOVER:

In the dark and quiet, the two hardest things of my existence are dealing with my perverse hunger and emotions.  The girls are sound asleep; ‘Sleep’, sleep is a luxury my existence does not afford me.  My bedmate’s eyes flutter and she stirs as she dreams.  By an agreement that I reluctantly entered, every night we lay together the back of her garment completely undone, she presses her body tight to mine and she falls asleep thinking my thoughts and I hers.  Lifting the cover I see her supple and damaged skin in the dancing light of the fire, bringing the candle closer the abuses she sustained becomes more obvious.  She is so innocent and trusting, it would take no energy at all to crush and devour her frail existence.  But for a pledge made hundreds of years before, her destruction would have been a matter of fact occurrence.   

I slip from the bed, go to the porch and sit in that old rocker with a cup of the essence of life.  It’s dead quiet with no wind; the almost full moon is high in the sky and the disheveled snow glows in its pale light.  The wood is black in comparison to the pale snow.  When the girls recover enough from their ordeal we will need to leave this place.  For as long as they are near that town, they are in harms way.

Traveling in this world would be simple, but for my need to keep up appearances.  The weather, geography, oceans and obstacles of any kind are of no consequence, for I am an Eternal.  I find I must refrain from using my abilities, wear clothing, conform and not be out of place.  This baggage of emulating existence is the necessity of blending in with my prey, as a hunter dons his camouflage; so I move and dress as the humans.  I do as they do and pick my quarry, waiting for the opportunity to pounce. 

There was a time, three centuries past, when we hunted all, alone and in packs, indiscriminately.  We roamed the Great Russian plains, the Ukraine, India and the Arabian nations, where people could disappear without explanation and questions were never asked.  It was a debased existence where survival and debauchery were bedfellows.  We became everything we fought against when we lived; we fought against evil and we became evil.  We fought unbridled sexuality and womanizing and then became rapists and pillagers of humanity in an animal frenzy. 

Then during the early to mid sixteenth century came the Reformation.  Close to a hundred thousand humans and Eternals were destroyed in Witch-hunts that permeated the religious factions all over Europe.  It was then that our numbers dwindled to nary a hand full of older and wiser beings.  Those that could still reason and had not totally given up their intellect and humanity to the Lusts.  Many of the survivors voluntarily gave themselves to the wind fearing the loss of control and the remaining decided to abide by feeding only on the evil of the world and there was abundance there.

One at a time I lost contact with the few stragglers as we spread out over the expanding map of this planet.  Each creating a small clan of redeemable souls or existing alone, this has been my existence for three hundred years.  At times taking a partner, some last and some just cannot endure.

The early morning hours have passed; a dim morning light rises before me.  I find my cup is empty and I only have eight bottles left before I need to hunt again.  There is movement inside, the floorboards creek with their every step.  The front door swings open and one of the girls passes me and goes directly to the woodpile.  She is wearing my boots and cape with the hood up and the collar tight about her neck, her face is not visible and she does not notice me.

There are few logs left on the pile, beyond her I spy a stack of un-split cut tree trunks laying just inside the tree line, to the left of the shack.  I sit and watch as she gathers the remnants in her arms and turns to come back into the shack.  Looking up, the sight of me lounging in the altogether shocked her so badly, that she dropped everything and screamed. 

Instantly I am by her side picking up the dropped wood, she is breathing quickly and stands shaking like a leaf.  As I bend over and pick up a stick that fell close to her foot I see she is making water.

“I peed myself!”  Kit looks down at me, I am bent over before her.  “You scared the pee outta me!  Why don’t-cha put sum clo- close on!”  She is beginning to shiver uncontrollably, mostly from fear.

“You go inside!”  I ordered.  “You can’t get sick now!”

She went to take a step, her feet being too small; she walked out of my boots.  Now her bare feet are buried to mid calve in the icy snow and she is whimpering with the cold also.  Dropping the load of wood again, I gather her in my arms and carried her inside, meeting the other two at the door, they are gawking out through sleepy eyes.

As Margo often does, she opened her mouth again.  “Shi-at ain’t you fuckin freez-in, runnin around in the skinny?”  She always, with the rough and tough, smart mouth.

Later, after Wanda finish making breakfast and the girls ate, I make short work of splitting a cord of wood.  The girls bundled in warm cloths scarves and blankets lounge on the sun-drenched porch, watching me as an audience would.  If it were not for them and their needs I would not bother doing this.  A cord will be more than enough before we leave this place.

Once back in the cabin the two white girls lounged in the front room while Wanda busies herself in the back.  This is beginning to annoy me.  “You two every going to be productive around here?”  I think I put enough ire in my voice to wake them up.

Looking guilty Kit said. “We ain’t never bin taut ta cook n’ clean and stuff.”  Margo piped in with. “We be teached to fuck n’ suck n’ be pretty!”  She seemed proud of these accomplishments.

Angered at Margo’s attitude I flashed across the room appearing before them instantaneously.  I flare my nostrils and glare into their eyes, intentionally trying to scare them.  I took Margo and Kit by their necks, hold them both up so they need to support themselves on their tiptoes.    “That life is over for you two, you will now learn from Wanda.  You will cook and clean, be social and be civil.”  I let go of both of them and started slowly to walk towards the back room. “Or you can go back to the Oriole and what ever they have in mind for you.”  As I approach the fireplace there is a piece of broken mirror that gave me a glance at their expressions behind me.  The arrogance was gone and I read shock and submission in their look.

We enjoy the safety and seclusion of the small ram shackled farm.  In the first week, under Wanda’s supervision, the girls cleaned the place and made it habitable.  Wanda and the girls have begun to complain about me and my life style.

It’s been just six hundred years and I am not about to change my ways, the girls must become used to the way I exist. Clothing is only for the times when needed; I do not need to be clothed now!  In a day or two they became used to me moving about in the buff.  They still stare at my manhood whenever I am in the room.  In my time, I have seen that most men would not measure up next to me, so I understand their curiosity. 

They started setting a place for me at the table; I stopped that quickly, reminding them that don’t eat.  If I had not promised Wanda to let her into my mind, I would not lay with her at night either.  The closer the physical contact with our bodies the better she can read my feelings and thoughts.

Each night Wanda looked into my eyes, her mind pleading with me to change her.  She is determined to return and clean out every member of the Klan in that town.  In bright sun light Wanda could almost be considered Caucasian, she is slight in build, she is short just five feet and a well proportioned woman’s body.  Her face is in my opinion; beautiful with dark wide set clear brown eyes a small broad nose, clean complexion and dark, almost black thick hair. She rarely smiles, she has little reason to, but her teeth are not stained nor to my surprise broken as many, including Kit and Margo’s are.

At these times Darlene creeps out of that place in the back of my mind.  It was when I had a Villa in Rome and she was my hired housekeeper, not like today, she managed my servants and the house.  I knew she was attracted to me and I her.  She was a tall dark skinned Mediterranean, with long black hair.  Thirty years old when I turned her, she was also a prophetic that had discovered me as an Eternal.  It was at a time when I was in the throws of the Lust and attempted to evade her, but also in Carnal Lust at the same time.  She panicked and was to expose me, overcome by her beauty and sensitivity.  I did not want to destroy her, so I started the blood letting and taking, we tore at one another for over three weeks before she was changed.  When she realized what I had done to her she ran off.  It took a year of chasing her to bring her into the mindset of only destroying evil.  She had ravaged over four hundred good and bad souls in her initial rage before I was able to force her to bring her Lust under control.  That was a hundred and forty years ago.

Daylight is pouring into the front windows and the girls are stirring, I can hear pans clanging on the flat stove through the fireplace, the crackle of food being seared on the skillets.  Wanda rolls over and on her back.  She opens her eyes, squinting at me as I rest on my elbow looking down at her.  She touches my lips with two fingers and rolls out of bed. 

The girls got along, but there were reservations in their daily discourse.  Wanda always seemed to separate herself from the other two, maybe because of the color difference or she seemed more mature than the other two.  Margo and Kit still had that fanciful childish lilt to their personalities and disrespect for authority. It took a few more days for the girls to overcome that racial barrier. 

It happened one afternoon and began when Kit and Margo started to talk about the men that they entertained in their short lives.  Each one jumping on the others stories saying they recognized an individual customer by what he liked to do and they laughed long and hard about the odd and obtuse requests they had to fulfill.  They spoke openly and joked about things some grown women wouldn’t even know about.  They said they were told to always smile and never, never say no to anything. 

Kit admitted she was eleven when she was first put to servicing a man’s needs and Margo was not much older.  All they knew, for four years, was what they saw happening around them in a brothel.  Then they were told that it was their turn and they considered it their right of passage into womanhood, accepting the only life they had seen around them. 

I listened from the other room through the opening in the fireplace.  Having gotten to know these young girls, some of what they were relating even made me cringe.

I could see how their experiences had hardened them, their callus posturing and gruff attitudes masking hidden young vulnerable souls, cloistered in hard shells. All this time Wanda is busy mending clothing, just quietly listening.  Then the conversation turned from the lighter kidding and superficial mechanics of the abuse to the abuse to their minds. 

They spoke about how when they became older they began to realize the difference between right and wrong, what was supposed to be moral and not.  That was when drinking became a way of life for them, another form of sanctuary for their minds, a place where nothing mattered, they weren’t doing those deeds, their bodies were. 

The laughter ended, they became serious and spoke of the things they were forced to do that were beyond their sensibilities and the acts that sickened them.  Boasting to each other about how they could hold their whisky and how much they drank.  Wanda continued to sit and listen quietly. 

The instructions to always smile and never saying no to a customer began to grind against their souls and their growing sense of right and wrong.  Margo ‘the rock’, related with tears in her eyes how one time she passed out drunk in the bar and awoke in one of the little beds, in the middle of an act with two men.  They both cried, and held one another when they spoke about the abortions they had to endure at the hands of a filthy drunken physician.

When Wanda heard them talking about the doctor she stopped what she was doing and stared at them, whimpering, with tears running down her cheeks.  Margo and Kit stopped talking and moved over beside her, they tried to comfort Wanda. 

Wanda began to explain what had happened here, in this shack, that night the men came with the white capes and hoods, the blazing cross in the front yard.  The abuse she and her family endured in that shack and the months after.  At the end of the hour they all held each other and they all cried as young girls should when put through the meat grinder that they were subjected to.  Abused sexually, physically and mentally at the hands of an indifferent towns people and the murderous minds of the Ku Klux Klan.  All of them, their innocents lost, will forever cling to one another and eventually their common bond will meld them together as real sisters.

Before we leave the farm the girls need to change their identities.  Kit and Margo decided to cut each other’s hair very short and played a game to select new names. As neither of them could read and lacked enough imagination, they were totally unsuccessful; they continued to argue over it, I left it unresolved for the time being. 

I told Wanda I wanted her new name to be Sara and she agreed, I helped her shave her head, as was the common look of the slaves of the day.  Unfortunately it did not work well for her, she didn’t look like a black woman with a baldhead.  She looked like a dark skinned white woman with a baldhead.  The large bump and bruise on the back of her head became an overly prominent dark spot and it was still very sensitive to the touch.  We decided that was a very bad idea and would let it grow out.  Still blind in one eye she says the vision of her other eye is coming back slowly every day, I have the unique ability to see through her eyes by standing behind her and gripping her head with both my hands, I place my forehead against the back of hers, close my eyes and have her clear her mind of all thoughts.  The first time we try this, I discover she can see in bright daylight but as though she is looking through a piece of unfinished window glass, a shaky image at best, in darkness all is shadows.

Two weeks were up and we finally were ready to leave.  That morning all the girls were amazed to see me show up fully clothed with boots and heavy coat, my head wrapped in a scarf. 

Four people and three horses required some slight of hand.  I rigged a crude sled that two of the girls could ride and attached it to the largest male paint of the three, also packed him with as many provisions as was possible.  I put Margo on the medium size filly along with more bags and I road the smallest of the three horses, as I bore no weight at all.  We would appear to be a gentleman, his two daughters and one slave slowly working there way east.  I knew we would leave tracks, especially due to that sled and that bothered me.  So for the first part of the trip we will stay inside the tree line and off the main roads, I needed to keep a close eye for any sign that some one was following.  Hopefully it would snow and cover everything over.

We have been on the path for four days, the weather has been threatening but we have been lucky with no snow.  Every night we make camp in the woods, making a lean to out of the available evergreens.  The girls watch me race about when I fabricate the shelters.  Another thing I normally would not need to do for myself.

Wanda is still nagging me to turn her.  We haven’t tested her vision in a few days; I find that now she can see more clearly in bright daylight but only in the center of her field.  Her night vision has also improved considerably.  Her wounds are well on their way to being healed.  Even though I have no need of sleep, every night I open a bedroll and lay down.  Every night, no matter how cold, she slips out of her shirt and into my bedding, pressing her bare back into me.  She wants to experience the black evil vale that drives me, that makes me an Eternal.  To prove to me that she is able to comprehend the power of what she will be getting into, the sacrifices she will endure and accept the consequences of that transformation.  I keep the blood lust at bay by supplementing it from my dwindling resources.  If I don’t find a donor, soon she will experience my full real pain and I am afraid she will not be able to handle it and break.

As we lay there together, she begins that rhythmic breathing of deep sleep.  I begin the nightly meander through my memories, the vast history of my past; my senses are always peaked at the quiet times, especially at night when I lack all other distractions.  I sense her pain and anguish, her deep and burning hatred and seething rage at the animals that ripped her family and life asunder.  As I look into her heart I see her sadness as she dreams, of how her father and brothers were hung in front of her eyes, how her mother was beaten, raped and tortured for no good reason but prejudice.  The death of her mother and sister at the hands of rapists and murderers, the pointless murder of her mother’s family caused by her escape from that town.  Her silent screams for revenge filled my mind every night. 

As we traveled I also had the opportunity to probe Margo and Kit’s history.  The original story they told me in town about coming from Pittsburgh was all a childish fabrication.  Both had met sexual abuse head on at a very early age.  They were born and brought up in a small town.  They were neighbors, one year a when a flood wiped out their homes and they became orphaned at about age eight, they ran from the foster home they were placed in and almost lost their lives while stowing away on a river barge.  The barge captain found them and tossed both over board into the river. 

Their luck or lack there of, put them close to the riverbank near the Pittsburgh Road and Pinesburg, the Constable picked them up and deposited them with the ladies of the Oriole Dance Hall.  The women of the Oriole raised them in those cubbyhole beds behind the bar; they grew up and were schooled in a circus of sexual perversion and debauchery.  When they were estimated to be eleven or so Eliot Samson picked the fruit off the vine and initiated them into the business.  The visions of that initiation gave my handling of the man’s end credence, not that I didn’t think he deserved it. They had been selling themselves a piece at a time ever since.  After that peek into their sorrowful lives I felt it my duty to protect them from now on.

It’s been a little over one hundred miles and a week since we left the farm.  The horses have become worn, trudging through the deep snow and back tracking every so often, they need down time to rejuvenate.  On the eighth day we come across a faded broken sign pointing to a path going north.  “Beaver Creek “ is not on any map, we turn our three horses up the narrow path.  In a few miles approach a small hamlet of five buildings on a pasture near a frozen lake.  A very small community of maybe thirty or forty inhabitants with no law, no strife and no Klan.  The General Store is the only business in town, no bars, no brothels and no bullies.  How this place escaped the unbridled mayhem of where we came from is beyond me.  . 

The girls and I are dressed are dressed down.  We left all of Kit and Margo’s fancy satins and taffeta’s behind, to keep away anyone that might be too inquisitive.  My problem during the cold of winter is my skin, in really cold weather it turns ashen gray, some people notice, some just ignore it.  We travel under the guise that I am to start a business in Philadelphia making clocks. 

As we approach the front of the General Store the sign came into view, “Gus Kraus & Son”.  Two men in white aprons and scarves step out on the low porch.  The younger man stands with his arms folded across his chest and the older of the two has a long salt and pepper beard, he says.  “Say there, are you lost.  We don’t get many strangers up here?”

“Hello, our horses are exhausted and we need a place to rest for a few days.”  I speak through my scarf, so they don’t realize I am not exhaling the same vapor when I speak as living people do.  “Is there any place available. I am very willing to pay.”

The two men look at one another in deep thought for a moment.  Then the older one says. “Hemmings?”  The younger man shakes his head in agreement.  He turns to me and says.  “You could try about a quarter mile up the road.”  He pointed north.  “The mans name is Harold Hemmings, he lives by himself at the north end of the lake.  I know he has an empty barn, a new empty barn, we don’t know much about him but he seems a nice enough fella, he should take you in.”  He eyed the girls.  Wanda was bundled against the cold and she didn’t show her face.

“Thank you for the information, we are going to Philadelphia for work, their mother died last year and I promised her to put them in school.” 

“Would you want to come in and warm yourself by our stove for a spell, we have warm food and drink?”  He seemed to be very kind and I sensed no subterfuge in his manner or mind.  I look at the girls and then back at the old man.

“Girls how do you feel about a little bite to eat?”  Being worldly, they caught on right away and graciously acknowledge that they would appreciate a respite from the cold.  Margo dismounts and helps Kit off the back of the sled.  I looked down at Wanda, “Sir would you mind if I brought my servant in also?”  Expecting them to bar her from the establishment.

“We got no differences here, Indian, Negro or China-man; all are welcome in this house.”  The young man opened the door and pointed inside.

We all filed in to a very large busy space that was filled with the bins of dry goods and rolls of textiles, bright colors, practically anything a person would want and there must have been a rich aroma about the room, I caught a glimpse of Kit walking by me with her face up and she was inhaling deeply through her nose with a pleasant smile on her lips.

“My name’s Isaac, mighty fine store!” We are following the two men to the rear where there are a number of chairs circling a pot bellied stove and a medium size bucket of coal.  An older heavyset Indian woman is stirring a pot of what must be a wet stew or meat soup on top of the stove.  Her eyes strain to look at each of us as we approached, when I came in full view, her eyes locked on me and she stops stirring.  As I came around the stove and stand beside her I address her with a greeting “Sken-no” and complimented her stew.

Her eyes narrow  “It is soup, not stew, soup!”

When we started this trek I foresaw that I would be forced into eating to keep my identity true.  To keep the subterfuge going I wear a coat that I had specially made, it is equipped with two, long and narrow, watertight leather pockets that are sewn in the lining and open up at each lapel.  It was a trick learned a century ago for whenever I am put in a position where I must eat, I can easily evacuate with no one being the wiser. 

The girls eat quietly.  I learned that the old man was Dutch and had settled here thirty years ago.  His wife had passed on five years before; he and his son run the store.  They catered to the locals and there are plenty of trappers and hunters living in the surrounding hills to keep them busy.  They have a re-supply wagon come through every six months; the next one is do through in four months.  “...they come out of Pinesburg...”  Kit and Margo looked at one another, and then put their heads down facing their laps.  “You folks ever been there, understand it’s a pretty big and a bad place ta be!”

The road that we were on came right through Pinesburg, in that town it is Main Street. “Yep I saw it, but I didn’t find it a fit place for the girls so we didn’t stop, just passed through.”

“Don’t blame ya. Young man from a spread just south of here; Michaels is his name, you musta passed it on the way up.”  The old man re-lit his pipe with a stick he lit from the stove.  “He spent a couple a nights there and said it’s the devils own playground down there and they have n’ order of the Klan in there that has the town tied up.”  He shook his head in disgust.    He looked out one of the windows and then at the big clock ticking on the wall.  “It’s four, you still got about an hours trip up to Harold’s, it will be dark when ya’ get there.”

The girls got up quickly, Wanda also arose, but cautiously.  She did not really knowing how to act as a servant.  Her life to that point was as daughter in a mixed race family and a sexual plaything in a sadistic world of murderers, rapists and deviants.  I started to reach in my pocket for a hand full of dollar coins.  “Thanks again for your kind hospitality, how much do I ow…”  The old man put his hand up.

“Our pleasure Mr. Ah Isaac?”  He had caught me, I wasn’t thinking.

“Wilson.  Isaac Wilson.”  I thought quickly.  “This is Harriet and Mary, my servant Sara Hargrove is a freed slave from Virginia.”  Fabrications are away of life with me, picking identities out of the air.  In this case I had created a problem, neither of the girls knew which on one was supposed to be which. This was confusing to Gus also for he extended his hand to the girls and said “Mary?”  Both girls grinned and extended their hands at the same time.  Embarrassed Kit quickly withdrew hers.  Margo gripped his hand and shook it.

“My name is Harriet.” And Kit then put her hand forward.  This is very awkward, my supposed daughters didn’t know there own names. 

Outside we remount and finish saying goodbye.  As we are leaving the pasture and entering the tree line I look over my shoulder.  “Remember Kit is Harriet and Margo, you’re Mary.  Sara, what’s your last name?”

“Hargrove mass’a Isaac.”  She joked, it was the first giggle I got out of her since I met her in that torture chamber of an attic.

The light is waning when I spot the faint glimmer from Harold’s cabin.  A big one-room log cabin set in a cut down clearing beside an outcropping of slate and hill face.  Through the woods to the south we can just make out the frozen lake.  In summer it would not be visible through the foliage.  Behind the house is a half buried barn, two opposing field stone walls with a roof over the top, earth had been pushed up against the outside of each wall almost to the roof. 

We stop in front of the cabin and I called out.  “Hello, Mr. Hemmings, Hello.  Is anyone home?”  I dismount and stand holding the reins of my mount.

I can see a shadow move against the light inside. The man that opens the door is old, he has broad shoulders, is tall and carries two rifles, both cradled in his left arm.  I watched his eyes scan looking at the two girls on the sled and then Mary and then me.  “Yes sir, may I help ya?”

“I really hope so sir, my name is Isaac Wilson and these are my daughters and servant, a free woman!  Gus, down at the General store, suggested we come up here.  If you would be so kind, we require shelter for a couple of days…”  I sensed distrust in his nature.  “I am willing to pay?”

Again he looked us all over.  “How mush you willin to put down?” He sounded drunk.

“Would five dollars in Gold be too little, sir?”

“Fiver ya say?”  He put his free hand behind his ear.

I remove the coin from one of my outer pockets and walked my horse up next to the man.  Reaching over, I put it in his outstretched hand.  Taking it, he quickly took a closer look at it and then bit it.  “Ya’ can stay in the barn, how long ya’ say?”

“Three nights the most, do you want more?”

He looks at the girls and back at me, “No that be enough, could yer nigger servant help me straiten up ma digs tomorra?”

Knowing this was how most people spoke, I didn’t take offense, even if Sara did.  “Sara is her name and I am sure she will do a fine job for you.”

“Sara, which a’ you is her?”  He squinted into the darkness.

Wanda stood up and stepped off the sled into the wet snow.

“Howdy Sara, thank ya, don’t need it too clean, juss’ homie.”  He turned and walked back into the doorway adding, “Girl you be here bright n’ early hear me?” and kicked the door shut behind him.

We moved our ragged troop around and dismounted.  I released the big male of his load and brought him in first, while the girls unloaded the other two.  There are eight stalls in the back of the barn with mules occupying two.  Sara stoked the two coal stoves with more fuel.  After bedding down the horses and opening our bedding up in the hay loft, all three girls went into the cabin and asked if Harold wanted them of prepare him a meal.  He was very happy to accept.  After emptying my trick pockets, I joined them.  Wanda supervised the preparations of the meal, Harold looked at her amazed.  “The Nigger’s given the orders?” 

“It’s a game they play, each night on the road one of them rolls a dice and one becomes the master and the other two the servant.”  He seemed to be satisfied by that answer.  “When the girls are in school, Sara will take care of me.”

As we settle in for the night, Margo and Kit look over at Wanda removing her cloths and slipping into the bedding with me.  Every evening they would watch, finally Margo couldn’t keep her self quiet,  “Do ya’ fuck her every night?  I thaut your big thang was ded?” 

“No not at all MARY.”  I emphasized her new name.  “We have a special bond.  We can feel each others feelings.  Sort of like mind reading?  You ever learn about that?”

“That mystical shit, ya I heard of it.”  She laid back down.  Harriet still was on one elbow.

“She gotta be naked when ya does it?”  I ignored her remark and settled in.

Two days ago I drained the last bottle, I could feel the emptiness in the pit of my stomach, it wasn’t food I craved.  I picked up the blanket and looked upon her body and felt something I hadn’t felt in a very long time.  It was coming back. The two lusts, one carnal and the other blood were returning together.  On the trail she slept with her pants on tonight she was nude.  The longer I looked, the stronger my desire.  In our nightly psychic exchanges we had no choice but to become personally linked.  We thought each other’s thoughts, exchanged each other’s feelings there was nothing at this point we didn’t know about one another.  My thoughts swung back to Darlene, we too had been psychically linked. 

She noticed my hesitancy at cuddling up as we did every night and rolled over to see what was wrong.  Our eyes met and she immediately knew…She pressed her hips back against my manhood and knew.  “You are in heat for me!”

She had been forcibly penetrated many times in the months that she was held prisoner. A number of times she had felt doubly ashamed because her body betrayed her.  She felt her body responded to the assaults in a way that made her feel pleasure.  When they came, they came in numbers, three and four.  Taking turns with her sister and herself.  She found that when she did not react, when she lay there and quietly took the abuse, it made them angry and that was when the beatings started.  The knife cuts and the burning with those cigars.  They needed to terrorize, make the little girls be afraid of them, to scream and cry. 

She didn’t see me in the light of hurting her.  Again she pushed her hips back so her buttocks were tight against the thickening.  She reached back and pulled my hand around and put it against her breast.  I lay down tight against her and we communicated and exchanged out deepest feelings.  Without a word being spoken, we spoke, the clarity of our discourse was unmistakable.  Now my carnal arousal overcame my lust for blood for the first time in over forty years.  She had never been brought to full sexual pleasure before.  She was always penetrated by those who wanted only to instill pain and terror, I found it difficult to bring myself to do this to her.  In her mind she was calling to me to show her, now besides making her an Eternal, she wanted to be a woman first. 

There was no longer a child in front of me; her childhood lay in the ashes beside her sister’s body on that blood stained floor, she was an adult with an adult mind screaming for me to take her. I moved very slowly, tantalizing her senses a little at a time.  Running my fingers all over her body from the supple skin on her neck, to her breasts, down the curvature of her ribs to her flat stomach and belly, over her pubic mound to her open thighs and back up again. 

I am now erect and hard as stone.  She is such a small frame, so delicate a flower; I fear that I will tear her, harm her forever.

Measuring even the slightest increase in her arousal by the thrusts of the hips and the convulsive movements in her stomach muscles.  She finally twisted about and almost leaped upon me.  She had this happen to her so many times without her consent, now it is her turn to take the man on her terms.  It had been so long since the last time this happened that it was like the first for me.

Our lovemaking went on for half the night, I didn’t care if the other girls watched or said anything, and neither did Wanda.  Some time in the middle of the night Kit went to one corner of the loft to relieve herself and looked over at us as she walked back, I happened to be laying on my side.  “You of all da people, why’d ya’ do it.  If ya’ want’d a piece, why didn’t ya’ pick one a’ us?”

Wanda leaped up and hugged Kit,  “No. No baby, I wanted it, he showed me what it’s like when it’s good.”  She was wearing nothing and her breath left wisps of vapor as she spoke.  “You couldn’t hear us but we talked all about it before.  I told him to.”  Wanda began to shake a little in the cold.  I got up and threw a blanket over the two of them as they stood and held each other. 

Kit and Wanda cried, held each other and laughed a little.  Margo woke up in the middle of the commotion.  I lay back down and listened to the two girls talk.  Margo walked over and looked down at me.  Staring at my manhood that was still up and hard.  “Son-o-bich, that’s animal.  Ain’t neverseen a cock that big.”  Leave it to Margo to clarify the obvious.

I saw this was getting out of hand, “Ladies let’s get some sleep, we need to rest and get ready for the next leg of the trip.”  I pulled the cover over myself to break their gaze and only exacerbated the situation with the resulting lump in the blanket. 

Margo wise cracked with “Now looky that, a tent!”  They all broke out into open laughter.  Wanda dropped down beside me and brought her blanket over mine.  This is the first time she did not attempt to read my mind in weeks. 

The other two laid down together for warmth. 

In the morning Harold opened the barn doors and walked through to the back to the stalls.  He opened one of the bins and shoveled feed into a bucket then moved over and poured it into the feeding trough for his mules.  Then busied himself loading the trough with hay. 
He shouted up into the loft.  “You people gittin up, yo want me ta feed yer animals?”

I quickly put a shirt on and stuck my head out over the rail  “No.  Thank you, we can take care of it, but thank you anyway.”

“Ain’t no trouble, I’m here, the bins open, Just do the same tomorrow mornin’” He went about doing the task and then started up the ladder to the loft. 

I scurried about to make the sleeping spaces proper, I being the fastest had it complete by the time he reached to top of the ladder.  Wanda was still under the covers by herself at the opposite end of the loft, but her cloths were mixed in with the bedding I had set up for myself.  She gave me a panicked, grim look.  “Say Harold, how does it look out there?  The weather any better?”  Wanda pulled her head under the covers.

I quickly reminded myself to always refer to the girls under their new names, even think in those terms.

“Looks like you ain’t goin’ nowhere fur a while.  There’s a big blow comin down from them mountains.”  He looked over at the lump under the blanks, Mary and Harriet were partially dressed and holding blankets about them.  “She gittin up soon, I want some o’ her cookin.”

“She was coming down with a cold last night, she should be up and ready to go in a little while. “

Harold started to walk down towards Sara, there are a number of pitchforks in the rafters, he grabbed one down and continued to walk towards her.  He was half way to her, I was on the verge to do something when he turned to the pile of hay to his right and pitch it down into the waiting bin just below.  When he was finished he carefully put the implement back in the rafters and started down the ladder.  “Hope she gets better, how bout sendin one o’ yer daughters in instead.”

“Mary, Harriet, get dressed and please make Mr. Hemmings and us little breakfast.  Harold, they will be in, in a jiffy.”  He added some more hay for our horses and then closed the barn door after him. 

The girls did as they were asked and Wanda and I sat for a long time.  She cried, she smiled; she apologized for egging me on.  She kept touching me as she spoke, my hands my face and she hugged me a number of times.  “He will be back, you must get dressed and act normally.”

She had that pleading look in her big brown eyes again.  “I still want to be as you.  You call yourself Eternal.  I sensed you are ancient, I feel hundreds of years, how many years are you?” 

“I come from a period you could not imagine.”  I did not know how to explain.  “A time when noblemen wore armor and road armored horses, with the spear, bow and sword as the only weapons.”  I let that sink in for a bit, then said. “Over six hundred years.”

She smiled, kissed me on the cheek, “No silly, how old were you, you know, before?”

“Thirty-seven,” I began to explain in detail my history to her.  I included everything, all the conquests, the women, my prior debased existence and the Reformation.  It took well over an hour.  She placed her hand down on the still bulging and moving lump in my trousers.

“You will need to do something about that before you see the man again, ”She jumped up and began to dress in front of me.  “I need my breakfast and ta clean da massas house.” She joked, she is now happier than she has ever been.

SARA: A DIFFERENT VIEWPOINT.
===========================

The path between the barn and his cabin is lined with pieces of lumber and planked like a boardwalk.  Hemmings put it down every year, it made the short trip a little easier.  Isaac led the way; I followed as close as I could without slipping off the icy boards.

“Isaac, please, I don’t think I can…”  I was in that hellhole, Hemmings calls his home, last night and had a hard time keeping my food down.  Except for the two days the Klan had me in a privy pit, this man’s house wasn’t much better.  Now he wants me to clean it?

“I’ll have the girls help.”  His voice is so deep and assuring.

“The place makes me sick, it stinks. The aroma is so bad I can’t keep my food down.”  He stopped short, I almost walked into him.

I could clearly read his thoughts, ‘Of all my senses, aroma, the sense of smell never fully came back.  I can see that its in shambles, but don’t realize how bad it smelled.’  He touched my forehead.  I tried to think of what it was like.  He didn’t understand at first, then he had an awakening he acquired my odorous experience in his mind.  I chuckled at the face he made. 

When I entered the cabin, following Isaac through the door, the girls had smiles on their faces.  How they could keep smiling in that stink was beyond me.  Harold sat on a wide bench next to a rough, unfinished table in filthy long johns and dirty bare feet. They had been flirting with Harold, and he was enjoying the whole thing.  Mary looked over at me with a glint in her eye.  I knew she thought we had made love again.  I shook my head no.

Harold reached out with one hand and beckoned me over to be in front of him.  “So Sara, you don’t haveta do any cleanen if ya’ sick girl.”  Mary and Harriet stood behind him, out of his sight and mockingly held their noses.  When I stood over him I realized, he was the source of the smell.  He looked up; I could feel his eyes run up and down my body as if he was examining a piece of meat.  “It’s more comfee in here, you gonna bunk in here wit me tonight honey!” He put his hand out to touch my leg, I stepped back.

“Mr. Hemmings, she is a free woman.  It is up to her. She can sleep where she wishes!”  Isaac spoke in a very stern voice; he was sending Harold a cautionary message.

“Then she sleeps here by me!” He smiled showing his brown and broken teeth.

“Mr. Hemmings, I do not wish to sleep in your cabin, I will sleep with my family in the barn thank you!”  I stopped the silly slave accent and made myself as clear as I could.  Mary and Harriet shrunk away to the back wall.

“She’s a Nigger woman, she does as she’s told!”  Harold stood up; took one step and was within six inches of me, he is a tall man a full head taller than me with very broad shoulders.  I knew what he wanted, I had seen that same look in so many men before and I always knew the outcome  He extended his hand to my chest and I slapped it away, he tried again and I slapped his face.  “I don’t need no uppity niggers, ya’ needs some teachen ’.”  He quickly moved his left hand up and had me by my throat; his fingers almost completely encircled my neck.  His right hand came up with a knife from the table and he sliced my shirt completely open.  Both movements happened together almost instantly, I grabbed his wrist with my left hand and tore at his fingers with my right trying to wrestle free.  Dropping the knife to the floor he began to fondle me.  “Son bich you got some nice tits bitch.”  I felt my feet almost leave the floor; the feeling of being hung again gripped me.  I closed my eyes. 

Then as fast as it started, his grip relaxed.  Instantaneously I was free and I dropped to my knees.  There was a loud crash, the door was open and the cold air was rushing in.  Harold and Isaac were gone, simply disappeared.  Harriet had her hand over her mouth, Mary let out a short truncated scream.  Both of them had a look of terror on their faces as they held one another. 

Even that night, in the attic, when Isaac saved me, I didn’t know how he had defeated all those men in such a short time, I only saw the aftermath of his deeds. 

On my knees, on that cabin floor, I was trying to wrap my mind around everything that just occurred.  I was still holding that wrist, but it wasn’t attached to an arm?  The fingers loosely lay about my neck.  I threw the inanimate limb to the floor, I felt something warm and wet all over my face and chest, I looked around and there was blood everywhere, I was covered with it. I was not afraid, more so, I was amazed and in wonderment, it was Isaac, what did he do? 

“SARA!”  I heard my new name being called from outside.  The girls were crying and came around the chair and table to help me up, the girls assisted me to the door.  There was blood all over the inside of the cabin walls; the planks of the porch were wet with it.  The scene was nightmarish, Isaac stood over Harold’s partially dismembered body, and he had just dropped the head near the shoulder.

“You have been begging me to make you an Eternal, to know what it’s like to be in Blood Lust.”  He opened his arms to emphasize the presentation.  “Well here it is, this is what you will come to do.”  The snow soaked in blood, the broken and dismembered body.  His warning did not go unheeded, but I still wanted to be transformed.

Harriet and Mary were crying and getting sick, they ran off to the barn, as bad as it was I stood my ground. “Yes, I still do.” I yelled over to him.  I knelt down and blotted some of the blood up on the palms of my hands, I held them up showing them to him and then wiped the blood off on my forehead and cheeks, I stripped away my torn shirt and I kept scooping the blood up and wiping it on my body.  He stood there watching me. 

“You have made me a real woman this day,” I blotted up more blood and cupped my hand.  I accumulated a shallow pool of the liquid in my palm and I drank it.  Then refilling my palm, I walked over to him and presented my offering.  His mouth and shirt were drenched in Hemming’s blood.  “Take it, drink from me,”  I pressed my naked breast against him.  “Do what you need to do, I put my fait in your hands, “ His steely cold eyes looked down on me, his mind still enraged by what he had been forced to do. 

As I held him tight to me I sensed and visualized in my mind all the actions he had just performed.  Fresh in his, the visions are crisp and clear, burning into his and my memory.  I saw Harold holding me up, my eyes closed, my mouth open and my tongue extended as he choked me.  Somehow Isaac was there beside us, I saw him break Harold’s right arm and at the same time bite through his left forearm, the blood spattering all over me.  I can’t imagine how fast he was moving but the door simply disappeared and I saw them in the snow, I saw him drive his face into the man’s neck and then all red.  I have never been this close to him!

In a guttural, hoarse rage that shook me to my core.  “I will do as you wish, but be forewarned that we will never be the same together, and for eternity all that you knew will never be the same again.”  He gathered me up in his arms and carried me back to the barn.  He climbed the ladder to the loft and laid me down on the bedding we shared last night.  The girls were hiding up there; they both were holding pitchforks defensively. 

In that same guttural commanding voice. “Move your things into the cabin and stay there, do not come near the barn until we return!”  They dropped their weapons and quickly threw their things down to the barn floor.  Harriet looked at me with a sad face “Will you be ok?”  I acknowledged her with a shake of my head and I tried to smile.  It only took a few minutes and without saying another word they were gone.

“Stay here!”  He stood over me for a moment, looking at me not saying a word.  Then in a flash he was gone, one moment he was there and then a blur disappearing into nothingness.  A few minutes later he returned and started to bridle the big paint with the sled.  After opening the barn all the way he walked the horse out dragging the sled behind and closed the door.  It only took a few more minutes and he returned again cleaned as if he had just left his bath.

He started to dress. “I will need to explain this to the town’s people, I will tell them we found him torn apart by wolves when we arrived.” I watched him leap to the barn floor.  “When I come back we will proceed with your transformation.  But, please think about what you just witnessed this morning, what you saw when you looked through my eyes.  That will become your way of life when I give you your wish.”

Isaac disappeared for the rest of the day; it was becoming dark when the door opened again and he road the paint into the barn.  I had slept curled up in the blankets in front of one of the coal stoves.  The rush of cold air immediately woke me.  I watched as he dismounted and unshackled the mount from the sled. 

“They believed me, they said this happens quite often up here.”  Isaac took the mount into one of the stalls and removed the bridle.  When he turned to me sitting up beside the stove, wrapped in that blanket. He took a deep breath.  “You still have your mind made up?”

“With all my heart, except for you I have nothing left.  I once led a normal life with my family, there is no more family.  With all that I have been through, I know I will never be able to lead a normal life again.”  I stood up, the blanket fell away and I start up the ladder to the loft.  Dutifully I move over to the bedding we had shared the night before.  I lay there in the dim light; it is cold, I closed my eyes and waited for, I don’t know what. 

Then he was there, without a sound, his magnificent body unclothed, standing over me.    Nervous, not knowing what was about to happen to me, but convinced that this is what I need to do.  His voice was soft, calm and composed.  “I will make it as easy as I can.”  He lay down beside me and began to caress me and to kiss me.  His fingers worked the fastenings of my clothing and in a short time my clothing lay on the floor beside us.

The air in the barn was freezing cold; the three small coal stoves were too small to heat the entire barn.  I rolled over on top of him; I could feel all the muscles of his body were tense and bulging.  I started to kiss his cold lips.  I felt his erection was large and hard as stone between my thighs.  He lifting me off and put me beside him on my back, as if I were a rag doll.
He began to caress my body as he had done last night, his hands were and always are cold but he was very gentle with me and he had no problem in arousing me.  As he kissed and caressed me, his temperature became less of a problem.  I didn’t know if he was warming up or it was my intense arousal that blinded me.  I kept running my hands over his body and feeling his perfection.  When he began to kiss the flat of my belly, his tongue darting at my nipples to my navel.  His fingers working my labia and clitoris; I think his body was drawing heat from mine.  I opened my thighs and he moved his face to my mound of pubic hair, my body is now fully aroused, his tongue is probing that secret place, his hands slowly moving up and down my body.  I hold his head, his face in my most private place.  With every movement of his tongue my passion burns hotter.  My movements become erratic and convulsive. 

He raised himself, positioning his body between my now wide-open legs, but he is as light as a feather.  His face is in my vagina and his hands are all over me cupping my breasts, gently pinching my nipples, I drive my hips into his face and his tongue never stops.  A sensation of static shocks ripple over my body, from my thighs to my stomach with every stroke of his tongue.  I can hear my own voice as if some one else is moaning with every one of his movements.  Raising himself he is now on top of me and working his large member into me a little at a time, my mind is racing trying to comprehend all my new feelings.  I raise my legs and lock my heels in the small of his back.  My body responds by lubricating his large cold member, inviting and accepting its intrusion.  Then he is in me, he starts to stroke slowly and shallow, gradually working himself deeper and faster.  I hear my breath rasping with every thrust I am driving myself into him, as he me.  His fingers are entwined in mine, palm to palm, my arms stretched strait up over my head…. I feel my muscles tighten around him, I am exploding with ecstasy, and my legs fall lifeless flat on the floor on either side of his thrusting body, all my muscles tensed and wanting. 

I feel his bite, but the pain is inconsequential compared to the immense pleasure I am experiencing, I just never want him to stop.  Then nothing.  I must have fainted. 

My consciousness reverts to when I was ten, the day we arrived at the farm.  Everything was in bloom.  Mom and dad up in the seat of the buckboard, Cassandra next to me behind them, we are facing to the rear, our older boys riding the horses that are tied to the back of the wagon. 

I dream of the night mom had us bathing in that big tin tub.  Marcus and Edwin snuck in and were watching, sis screamed that the boys were looking at us.  Dad came in and spanked Edwin, Marcus ran outside and didn’t come back until the following morning.

The day we went into town together and the men scoffed at us and called my dad names.  They threatened us and I didn’t know why, they started to touch Cassandra and me, dad pulled his rifle out and fired a shot into the ground.  The men backed off but I will never forget the anger and fire in their eyes. 

I remember waking up to see that cross burning in front of the house, the gunshots and the door being broken in.

They came wearing all white and hoods, two men started to beat my brothers when they got up to resist; Cassandra and I just sat in our night cloths as dad and mom rushed into the room.  They both were knocked to the floor.

I remembered when they dragged us outside in the yard, the men had ripped our cloths, mom held us so tight.  I watched as they marched my dad and Marcus and Edwin out on the porch naked, with ropes around their necks and their arms tied to their waists.  I watched as they snaked the ropes through the rafters and slowly pulled them tighter, and tighter until their feet did not reach the floorboards anymore.  They began to make those horrible sounds, and they kicked their feet trying to touch the ground. 

I didn’t feel them rip the shredded night dress from me, I ignored them probing me and except for one knife like pain in my groin I was unaware of the first man that assaulted me.  I just kept watching my dad and brothers kick and twist at the ends of those ropes. Their feet were free and they kicked for such a long time.

Now the dreams are over, I awake hungry and yearning drink, my thirst is overwhelming.  Isaac is still thrusting into me; my body is still responding and yearning for something.  I, for no other reason but blind instinct satisfy my thirst at my master’s pool.  I drink until I think him to be dry and then present myself to him as a gift, he takes from me again and … again and again until I blackout once more. 

A LONG TIME PASSES!

Its dark, I am hungry, I can only think of his immense erection inside me, my need for Isaac grinds in my loins.  I want him by me, I want him in me, and I know there will be no warmth.  Throwing the blanket to one side, even being nude, I don’t feel the cold.  Looking down, I’m still covered in blood from head to toe, but it seems to be more than last night. 

I look for my cloths but they are missing.  The blankets and floor all around our bedding is caked in dried blood.  I threw one of the two blankets to the barn floor and climb down the ladder.  I didn’t feel cold and the idea that it should be freezing never came across my mind.  The barn door begins to open; the bright sun suddenly illuminates the space and hurts my eyes.  I run for the blanket and don’t believe how fast I got to it, wrapping myself I turn to see Isaac’s silhouette came in, the sun streaming in behind him until he closes the doors again, he is carrying a cup and a couple of the bottles I often saw him drink from.  “How do you feel?”

“Not good!’  I really need you.

He smiles at me.  “That will come!  Beside wanting me, how do you feel?”

I dropped the blanket and walked over to him, nude and unashamed.  He is tall, much taller than most, he ripples with muscle.  After the crude introduction to sex that I had received from that town, I never thought I could do what I am doing.  I put both my hands on his chest and try and feel all of him, caress every curve and niche, he is flaccid and I attempt to arouse him. “I want you!”  I drop to my knees and take his penis in both hands.  The men of the Klan forced me to do this, but now it will be to my pleasure to make him hard. 

“I said that will come later, are you thirsty?”

No matter what I do he remains limp, he bends over and raises me to my feet.

“You need to cleans yourself.” I let go and stepped back, looking at myself again, the blood is dry, the thick-pooled areas are hardened and stiff.  “You’ve been like that for three weeks, some of it wore off during the Passion and on the blankets.” 

“Three weeks?” I looked at him in shock as he explained what had occurred between us, how he fed from me until I could give no more and breathed no more and my heart beats no more, that infinite moment between life and death.  At the moment when my soul was about to leave my inanimate body that the transformation takes place. 

He explained how I struck at him in blind lust and I engorged myself of him.  How we fed on each other in the throws of passion and Blood Lust for hours that first night, that now my wish had been granted.  I am now an Eternal.  Then he added that at that time my Lust had changed from Blood to unbridled erotic passion for the next three weeks.

All I could say again was. “Three Weeks!”  No wonder he doesn’t react to me. 

He sat me down and spent an hour or so explaining all the nuisances of my new condition, my vulnerabilities and speed.  My increased sensitivities in hearing, sight and telepathy and how they can come and go; also how in some Eternal’s, their Passion wanes as does his at this time.  How my Blood Lust will come upon me at any time and to control it, that I was bound by the oath he took three hundred years before.  He explained about the wine bottles, how he drained Hemmings into them before bring his body into town.

In my mind I scream to him that I still need you; my loins ached to have you on and in me.  “Can we go and make love?  Please!”

His penis is still flaccid and he does not show the same desire he had last… I mean three weeks ago.  I will never be able to understand how I lost three weeks of my life, especially doing what he said we did all day and night.

“I can still read your thoughts, you may not remember but sex is the only thing you had on your mind for those three weeks.  Your appetite was insatiable!”  He reopened the door and took me by my hand and dragged me outside.  The snow is fresh and about two feet deeper than it was; I felt ridicules walking without clothing through snow that was so deep, I it brush against my crotch as we walked, left an impression of my bottom with every step I took.  I stood waist deep in snow and was in wonderment at why I wasn’t freezing.  The girls were on the porch and watching us.  There was a large fire in front of the cabin, he pointed at a pool of melted water beside the fire,  “We Bath!”

As Isaac and I scrubbed the dried blood from one another, I noticed that our complexion began to change to an ashen gray.  “It is a natural thing in cold weather, your skin will fade back to a bloodless white when you warm up a little.”  The more we cleaned each other with the cold water the more gray showed.  When we were finished he led me up to the porch where the two girls were still standing.  I could only read a look of fear on their faces.  Isaac and I led the way into the cabin; the girls reluctantly followed and closed the door behind them.  There is a roaring fire and the place has been cleaned, I smell nothing, they did a very good job.  I go over to the fireplace and try and feel its warmth, but I feel nothing.  Isaac comes up behind me and takes one of my hands; he holds it tight entwining his fingers in mine,  “Have no fear, you will feel nothing.  There will be no permanent damage!”  And he thrusts both our hands into the flames.

“Isaac, what are…”  I felt no pain; our flesh began to darken, the flames lapped up around our hands.  There was a flare up, our hands were on fire, the skin bubbled up into blisters, I still felt no pain.  He released my hand and I pulled it out.  The skin on both our hands was loose and ready to fall away, I still felt nothing. “Why…?”

“There is no other way to explain this.  Never fear damage, remember, the only two wounds that will harm and end your existence are a penetration of your heart or removal of your pretty little head.” 

“Watch, you don’t need to touch the wound, just watch it!”  Mary walked over to me with a pan of water and soap.  “It will be ok Mary, you can put that away!”  I sat on the same stool that Harold sat at last; it was dry but still stained with his blood.  Harriet came to sit beside me and covered me with a clean blanket.  She and I watched in amazement as the swelling went down and the skin began to return to a pale brown, I am whiter than I was before?  The process only took a few minutes. 

As we sat together I felt a need come over me.  My sense of smell came and went, when I could, it was intense and now it was almost gone.  It wasn’t a Lust for sex; I turned my head to look at Harriet, her attention was still on my hand.  My point of view was her left profile; it was as if I could see beneath her skin, the dark rich blood vessels, pulsating, beckoned me.  I nuzzled her cheek she responded by putting her arms around me, I moved my lips to her neck, the sudden aroma of blood was overwhelmingly the one thought crushing my intellect was to feed, I felt dizzy, I tasted blood!

“SARA, sit over here.”  As quickly as the feeling overcame me, Isaac had moved me away from Harriet and to a spot outside on the porch.  He has his arms around my waist because I am trying to return to Harriet.  “You just had your first Blood Lust.  If I had not stopped you, part of Harriet would be there in one of those bottles.”  He pointed at a dozen dark bottles propped up against the cabin wall.  “And the rest of her in that fire out front.” He poured the liquid into the cup and offered it to me; I had seen him sipping it many times, now it was my turn.

As I brought the cup to my lips that same rush came over me, I tried not to drink it all down, just to sip it as he does.  I blinked and it was all gone!  That desire subsided but my need for him became insatiable, we sat there for a long while.  I am losing my self-control; it’s being strained to my limits.  “You have transformed people before, is it always like this?”

“First question is yes, I have done many!  And no, everyone is different.  Some lose all feeling, control and sense of right; they need to be destroyed immediately.  Others can live for weeks without feeding and then the largest number are like you.  Passionate, intelligent and with a little training you will obtain the self control.” 

“If I had taken Harriet would you have destroyed me?”  He ignored the question; he did not want to utter the answer out loud.

“Go inside and spend time with the girls.  I will watch you, but you need to learn to be with humans and live with the Blood Lust and not act on it.”

Mary and Harriet were sitting on the bed at the far left wall.  They both stood up when I cam into the room, still did not speak, just those big eyes and stern faces.  “Are my cloths anywhere, or do I try and be human without looking human?”  Actually I was becoming Isaac, cloths no longer mattered to me.

They slowly began to move towards me Harriet had put a scarf around her neck.  Mary was the first.  “Is you ok, did it hurt?  What was it like honey?”  I knew how I should have felt, I would have fallen into her arms and cried, but there was none of that now.  I saw them and the room as a different world entirely, and I felt the first pangs of loneliness. 

“No.  No, it didn’t hurt, it happened as…”  My mind swiftly flashed to that moment when he was atop me and thrust himself into me.  I remembered wrapping my legs about him and locking my heels together, thrusting my hips at that massive organ.  I felt my stomach muscles tense my hips jog involuntarily at the thought of it.  Then I finished my thought.  “ we made love.  I blacked out, fainted, I guess just as he, did what he did,” I began to laugh in a awkward stupid way.  “What ever happened, I am not aware of how.  But no, it did not hurt.”

Harriet came forward holding a shirt and pants, timid and skittish.  I saw a small spatter of red on her neck above the scarf.  “Did I do that, did I hurt you?”  Now I felt bad.  She put the cloths on the bench beside me and carefully pulled the scarf down off her long neck exposing two long and deep scratches, still bleeding.  “Oh Harriet, I am so sorry.”  I went to touch her cheek and neck; she pulled the scarf back up and backed away.

“Girls, if she seems to drift off in your company, into a daydream, slap her, yell out her name as loud as you can.”  He stood between them; he put his arms around both their shoulders and walked them over to me.  “I want all of you to hug and get to know one another again.  Sara is not alive as you two are and she has some new powers you might want to know about.”  He brought the girls closer.  “Hug her, do not be afraid.  She is learning to be human again and needs you two close to her to help her.”

As they came closer Harriet first noticed,  “She’s not hurt any more?”

I looked down again at some of the bruises and burns that I had.  The skin was clear again.  I looked up at Isaac puzzled while both the girls walked around me and examined me all over.  “Any wounds you had, that would have healed over time healed right away, the first night.  The only scars you have, are the ones you had, and they will remain with you for the rest of eternity.”  He turned around and showed off his momentous, that we all had seen before.  “These are six hundred years old.

I looked longingly at Isaac, he still was not capable and I needed him so badly.

He looked back in my eyes and touched my forehead; ‘He would help me’ was his thought.  He pulled both the girls to one side and whispered in their ears, at first they looked at him shocked and surprised, then they giggled looking at me with mirth in their eyes.  At first they looked a little shocked then giddy with smiles on their lips.

The two of them turned and came over beside me.  I had just finished putting on my shirt and was about ready to step into the trousers.  I looked up, “What did you tell…” Harriet began to unbutton my shirt and Mary took the trousers away.  , “them?” 

Again I stood unclothed before them, and they both started to kiss me, it did not take much to fully ignite that flame of passion in my loins.  My need for their blood was very strong but now I knew what I needed to avoid, the smell of blood, the urge to feed.  They started to laugh as they lifted me and carried me to the bed. They were quite surprised at how little I weighed. 

I never knew the girls could do what they did, they learn well how to quell their desires in those rooms at the Oriole.  At the end of two more weeks my Passion was subdued and I had my Blood Lust under complete control.  During that time Isaac did the cooking, tended the fire and the animals.  They taught me things I did not know about my body and theirs, I learned to satisfy them as they satisfied me and we bonded into a strong sisterhood.  The girls learned to take turns as I never slept and easily tired them both out. 

I felt bad for him; he still was compassionate and kind but his ability to lust and his drive toward women was dead.  At times he would sit and watch as we were screaming in ecstasy, twisting and contorted on that hard bed but he did not stir.  I easily tired the girls out many times, I never slept and always had the need, at times he would approach and help while the girls slept.  Even if he gained no pleasure from me, I engorged on his ability to fulfill my carnal needs.

Toward the end of my passion, Harriet spoke to me one evening after a rather strenuous session, asking what was going to happen to her and Mary when the spring thaw came and we would move on.  I told her not to worry, Isaac would take care of all of us.  I looked over, he was sitting on the other side of the room looking out of the window at the clear sky and bright moon, and he looked over and smiled at us. 

“But I don’t know nothin’ but this.”  She held her small breasts. “What we do with these, sell our bodies and steal money.”    I was lying on my side and she was sitting at the edge of the bed, I was running my fingers up and down her bare back.  Even in the dim candlelight and with only one eye I could see tears streaming down her cheeks.

I sat up and put my arms around her, knowing that I was not providing warmth, just a little loving support.  She was thinking of suicide, the thought came through clear and ugly.  “You will not do that Harriet!  No matter how helpless you feel, you will not do that!”

“You kin read my mind?” 

“We’re sisters girl.  Yes I can read you like a book!”  I forced her body flat on the bed, her legs still off the edge.  “How about we go back and take care of that town. Clean it up. How about you learn from me…”

“First you kin read books, I cain’t read at-all’ and second, I don’t have the courage or strangth to do what you did.  Become a whatever he is? 

“You can learn to read, it’s easy.  And it don’t take courage to be an Eternal!”  I leaned over and whispered in her ear as quiet as I could.  “Besides, you don’t need to be like Isaac and me!” 

Her head snapped around.  “I don’t wanna be dead.  You know yer dead don’t’cha’?”

I think it’s time to change the subject. “Ok. Ok, Tell ya what, tomorrow we start with the ‘A,B,Cs’ and start to teach you and Mary how to read and write?”  She smiled at me.  “Harriet you mentioned that a doctor came and aborted you when you became pregnant.”

“Yea, but we didn’t like him, he was always drunk.  He used this long piece o’wire.  Mary bled sum’tin terrible the second time. Then she never got pregs again.”  She started to toy with my pubic hair, twirling her finger around in it, tracing small circles.  “I never got pregs.  I had a lotta men, we all go in the back, n’ they git their way and I got my fifty cent, but I neva got prego.”  She continued twisting the hair in small points.  I could feel a stirring deep inside.

I remember him, I can still visualize that old man, he had very shaky hands, that so called doctor did the same thing to me.  I remember, they had my mom, sister, another white girl and me shackled in a small shed behind one of the stables.  I didn’t know the white girl.  He came with four other men and that big fat one.  One at a time they held each of us down and put that wire in.  He worked it around and around; the pain was excruciation, blood all over the place.  Then the men came more often, one night ten dragged me out of the shack and almost tore me in two.  The white girl died, she just lay there and the blood just kept on coming out till she bled to death. 

I came back to reality with Harriet laying on her side and starting to tuck her tongue into that precious spot.  In a matter of minutes we were both on our sides my face in her business and hers in mine.  We were arousing each other at the same time in the same way, a technique I learned from my sisters.

Harriet fell sound asleep and I ambled over to Isaac.  “What’s on your mind?”

“I overheard your conversation with Harriet.  I don’t know if she or Mary are material to be transformed.  I do not want to make the mistake I had done a number of times before and create something that we will need to hunt down and destroy.”

He poured me a cup of our special brew and he poured one for himself.  We listened to the slow and shallow breathing of the two girls as we looked out the window at the barren winter landscape.  “If you are able to teach them to read and write.  Expand their minds a bit.”  We both took a sip, I no longer chug it down like I did the first cup.  “I will give you until spring, the first buds on the trees and the first sign of green grass.  We’ll see.”

I leaned over and kissed him on his cheek, I ran one finger down over his giant manhood.  “The damn thing is still dead.”  I exhaled sharply feeling him penetrate me with two of his large fingers.


“I don’t need that ‘Damn Thing’…”  He pushed me off my seat so that I was bent over in front of him looking out of the window.  “…to satisfy you.  Now what did that damn doctor look like?”  As we listened to them snore, he scratched my itch.

Isaac continued to satisfy my need until daylight.  Both girls got up and started to make breakfast.  Isaac and I sat by the window on a wide bench watching the girl’s activity.  Isaac passed a thought to me that made me laugh out loud.

Mary turned around holding a bread knife and Harriet turn with a fork.  Mary said “What’s da joke, we all look stupid or sum’tin?”

“No Mary, Isaac just made an observation of all of us.  We are tying to be and look human and here we are all stark naked, this really is not normal!”  I laughed a little harder, the girls looked at one another.  The just turned and continued to make breakfast.

Over the next six weeks I taught the girls their ABC’s, Isaac went back to the general store and purchased some reading material, chalk boards and chalk.  My daddy taught my mother and my momma taught me.  These two white girls, who have become my sisters, are now learning from me.  The one thing they seemed to know was simple adding and subtracting, they knew money.

Isaac still insists on roaming around in the altogether, but the girls and I got properly dressed every morning now.  I try to keep it interesting and making it fun for them.  I’m beginning to feel like their mother.  They are catching on quickly and I’m finding that at times they are teaching each other behind my back.  They are also changing their way of speech, their southern twang is becoming softer and less pronounce, they still have a little problem pronouncing words and forming sentences.

One day Isaac went into the barn, came out fully dressed, leading the big paint.  He had a large leather bound book, which was wrapped in a thick leather case then wrapped again in a thick piece of cloth.  Hand written over the years on heavy brown parchment was his history. 

“I started this four hundred years ago and have kept it with me ever since.”  He opened it to the last four empty pages in the volume, then thumbed back one page. 

The title in bold script was “DARLENE”.  Her date of birth was entered 1670, this was followed by the date Isaac met her 1698, and then the entry indicated her death and transformation 1699.  The last entry was in a different hand, it wasn’t her smooth scroll but a little harsh and erratic, more masculine, it simply said END 1799.  He was looking over our shoulders at the entry with a grim look on his face.  “I am going down to see Gus and purchase supplies today.  Sara, think about what name you want to put here.”

While he was gone the three of us poured over the volume.  Half the hand written script was in languages other than English.  The oldest entries were in a hand that could barely be deciphered do to deterioration of the paper and ink. 

I sat back and thought, I need to pick a name!  Something unique to me, to my family, something no one but I could understand.  Then it struck me.  When I was five and my sister Cassandra was born I had a problem saying her name.  The resulting pronunciation was comical, causing my mom and dad to laugh long and hard.  I can still picture them in bed together with Cassandra lying between them.

When he came back and unloaded the horse, he brought a small wood box in and placed it near the fire, he opened it to expose ink and a quill.  “Sara, did you pick a name?”

“Yes I have, but there are only four empty pages, what will you do when the book is full?

“I will follow in the steps of all the Eternals that I called my contemporaries, lay my being to the wind and let the almighty decide my fate.”  When the ink was warm enough he loaded the quill and handed it to me. “Make your mark!”

Just under Darlene’s entry, I tried to emulate her hand, in big bold strokes. “KIKI
Born – August 1825, Saved from Pinesburg – December 1839, and Died – January 1840 Ended – __.“ 

Harriet spoke up. “When do we go back and finish those BASTARDS?”

Isaac closed the book and began to wrap it.  “You know your sisters will die if we bring them back there!”  He latched the leather fastenings, laid it down on the table and folded it into a large piece of swayed and ending the process with a larger cloth covering.  He placed one hand against my cheek; his thoughts were clear in my mind, ‘you do not use these innocents as you would a military conscript.’ We look into each other’s eyes, the girls have become used to seeing us sit and hold one another and know we are conversing.

‘I have spoken with them and they are in agreement, they are willing to give their lives to this,’

‘I never had any intention to transform them, it is not an easy process and takes weeks, weeks we do not have, if you really want to go back there!  Our supply of blood is almost depleted.’

‘I still want to go back, but deep in my heart I no longer have that same urgency.’ I started to speak my thoughts. “I think about my family, my uncles and aunts, my little cousins….”

“And, the flame you felt no longer burns the same does it?”  His voice was soft and consoling.

‘I feel I will betray them by not going back,’ I must have been moving my lips, Harriet and Mary came to my side.

Mary put her finger to my lips.  “Sara, you did help us, with the spell’n and all, you been better to us then we was to you.  Kit n’ me, I mean Harriet want to help.”

I kissed her finger and held her hand, “No Mary, now that I know what has happened to me, I cannot ask that of you.  You don’t know what it means.  It’s not something you just wish on and then wish off.”  I pulled her head to my chest and pressed her ear tight against my cold body. “Do you hear a heart beat?  Do you feel my warm body?  I cannot tell you about my passion or my blood lust, remember when I tore into Harriet’s neck, because I don’t.  My lust for her blood was so strong that I did not know what I was doing when I hurt her!”

Mary did not pull away; she wrapped her arms around me with her head flat against my chest.  Harriet came over also and wrapped her arms around the two of us.  Almost in unison I could hear their thoughts, the two of them asking me to let them help. 

“Don’t you know, if you take this path you will both be dead?  There is no coming back, what you saw Isaac do to Harry you will also do and then you will do it again and again.”   

Isaac put his large hands over the backs of the two girls heads and projected an image and a feeling.  Something I used to feel every night when I slept with him, something that is always in the back of my mind.  The feeling is that familiar yearning for blood but the image is different, I see me splayed out in front of his eyes my neck torn open the skin of my chest torn, my breasts torn apart and the cold dead stare in my lifeless eyes.  My head is beginning to spin, the dizziness, I can feel the Lust grow.

“Do you see that picture girls, that will be you if you insist on going through with your wish!”  Isaac kept projecting the feeling and the image.  I began to feel the blood lust come over me and had to break the contact, I ran from the room and into the woods.  I ran right into two bears, my blood lust was more than they could handle.  Isaac and the girls stood on the porch watching, the girls were no longer shocked at the sight of that much blood.  Human blood, bear blood, there is a difference but not enough to matter.  I replenished our reserves.

Within three weeks we were all Eternals, Isaac taught me the secrets of the transformation.  I transformed Harriet and Isaac did Mary.  My passion never quite went away and the three of us were able to arouse Isaac for those three weeks, which made Mary very happy.

Isaac brought out the book again, Mary kept her name and so did Harriet, they were proud to record themselves in their own hand directly below my entry.

One of the last nights we spent at Harry Hemming’s place, we were all sitting on the porch, all looking out into the dark wood, not one of us will ever sleep again.  Isaac quietly spoke.  “My dears, remember these words and think upon them long and hard. ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold.’ We must plan and pick our time wisely”.

END