Dracula Essay

I was bathed in ecstasy and the agony of our last kiss.

“Will I see you again?”

“I will return to you, my love. Of that I promise,” he had whispered it fiercely in my ear in the afterglow of what could be our last lovemaking. We both knew what came with the light: His departure.

And now, as I pressed my gowned body against the cold steel of his chest plate, I pleaded for him to stay, willed him with my eyes and body and mouth to forget this hideous war. He would not, could not, he told me, and pleaded also for me to understand. I told him I would not, could not. We had been married only but a fortnight and he was leaving. Leaving me, leaving our home, leaving the life we had just started making. And why?

“Certain death,” I accused him with all the bitterness in my heart gushing out. “It’s certain death you’re asking for if you leave.” Tears streamed down my face, those ugly droplets of hatred, resentment, rage, and a love so deep it could murder me. “Stay with me. Just stay with me.” Sobs wracked my body so deeply that I could no longer bear the burden of standing. I held onto my departing warrior as if my weight could keep him with me. His smile was small against my forehead, a thin, cold curve against my skin. This man was my everything, and I might not ever know the brush of his moustache again…

“Elisabeta.” My name, so softly spoken, spilled across his lips as a hot breath upon my brow. “I must leave. You know this. It would kill me more than death, though, if I leave knowing you hate me. I am part of the royal bloodline. It is my duty to--”

“Fight for your country and your people.” I held every word he had ever spoken to me in my heart. These words of fighting had been spoken lately just as many times as his “I love you”s had been whispered. I was not ready, nor would I ever be, to let him go. I had no choice.

“I will only hate you if leave me in death.” I cupped his strong jaw in my palms and kissed him with everything that I had, everything that I was.

“It will not be our last,” he promised fiercely, his brows furrowed over the tops of serious eyes. “Of this I swear.” I luxuriated in the heat of his farewell kiss and watched him slip from my fingers and off to war.

I spent my time counting his time gone. I slept only to make my time here without him pass faster, but when I closed my eyes, I saw only his eyes, fiery and vicious as they reflected the death he was creating. Inside my nightmares, my love was there, plunging his sword into the hot gut of the enemy. I smiled that he did not let them die immediately, but that he let them suffer, suffer, until they walked through the gates of Hell to suffer for an eternity. They were the enemy, they were taking my husband from me, and if I had a sword and shield, I would extinguish their worthlessness with all of my rage.

As time passed slower and Vlad was gone longer, my nightmares became more vivid. My husband, my love, was becoming cold in my dreams. His hot passion for the kill was gone and in its place was calculation, agony, a bitter chill like I had never felt. In my mind I could see him laughing without mirth, screaming without pain, torturing without cause. I was beginning to feel remorse for the enemy, because I knew the men who came in contact with this man my husband had become had no chance of a Heaven or Hell. My soul no longer knew my husband’s, and it was then in the cold, waking hours of dawn that I knew Vlad-my love, my warrior, my husband-had been abandoned by Heaven and was lost from Hell.

I gushed my agony to the priest, screamed down the frigid stone walls around me. There was no hope, no light. The energy sobs cost took too much from my weak spirit. My Vlad was gone. I could no longer feel him in my dreams. When a flaming arrow sent an icy note to my window the next morning, I knew what it said without reading it. He was dead. Gone. Forever. Banished to a place where life could not reach him.

I am Catholic, and as a Catholic, I know that no sin can enter into Heaven. I also know that Satan would refuse my husband in the fiery depths of Hell, because not even the deepest layer there could house the soulless man the enemy had created. My bitterness and my hatred transformed my being into misery in its most basic form, and I cursed the existence of my mortal body. I wanted to be as dead as my husband so that our two banished souls could search eternally for a place we would never belong. So today, in this hour, I have made up my mind. I spent the last of my heart writing a letter onto thick, ugly paper.

Vlad, if you can read this, I want you to know that I am coming for you. You will be alone no longer. I will be with you, so that your laugh may reach your eyes again, and your screams of agony can be matched only with my own. I know without knowledge that something terrible has happened to you. Your soul, so once like my own, is now gone. They tell me you are dead. I cannot believe it. If by chance you are in Heaven, I am coming. If you are in Hell, I will refuse God to burn with you. If you are looking, I will find you, and if I do not find you, I will beg Satan to let me in so that I may be numb in the fire that will consume my being and give only my body some crude semblance of warmth. My love for you does not recognize depth, and the heart that once was only knows how to love you. I am not telling anyone what I am doing, for if they knew they would not understand, and if they understood, they would not wish to. I will not take poison, for poison takes time. I will not slit my wrists, because my heart can bleed no more. Instead, I will throw myself from the window that received that horrid arrow of your death and into the water that you loved so much when you were mine. The rush of the ocean breeze will pull and push against my skin, and the salt of the water will envelope my unloving body. I do not shy from the idea of pain, because the death of you has left me further than numb. The pain of my agony has been spent in my love for you. It is not off to death that I go, but off to you, my love.

Forever yours, always and eternally,

Elisabeta



And in the dark where my soul was searching, I heard his voice renouncing God, and heard angels cry out above me. I am now damned to earth, where I will search the centuries of time until I am reunited with my undead love once more…