A Very Dark Gothic Tale of Vampiric Love: I

Historien skal oppdateres hver mandag til 31. oktober.

Cornelius Reading isn't your average emo vampire. While he might not enjoy all sides of vampirism, he's never seen reason to mope about for all eternity. But one night he fell asleep. For nine years.


When waking up, he finds himself abandoned by his not-so faithful wives, plus the servant Igor. His castle, though an awesome castle, isn't that awesome when he has to live there alone. So he sets out to find a new wife. Easy-peasy. He just has to brush up on modern vampire lore to know how to act around humans. And that's where he goes wrong.

Vampire vs. Reality

Cornelius Reading was not used to dealing with humans. Not only was he a vampire, but he had also been asleep for the better part of the twenty-first century. It was only three weeks since he woke up, but despite this, he was assured the introduction to his new human bride would be successful.

He paced restlessly outside her lush room in his vast, gothic fortress. Occasionally he tugged at the old Victorian suit he had dug out for the occasion. It was impeccable of course, but deep down he thought he looked plain silly, not to mention desperately outdated. But it was a requirement. He had put down extensive research. Vampires were supposed to dress like this now. The interwebz said so, lulz.

On the other side of the dark gothic door, his bride-to-be was still sleeping. Or rather, he had to admit, she was still out cold after he had kidnapped her.

His three past wives had left him during his nine-year-long snooze and he needed someone around, for obvious reasons. Living along in the middle of nowhere, halfway up a snowy mountainside might be very vampire-like, but also beyond boring, and you could only read a limited number of books and spend so many hours at the computer before your mind would start inching ever so fast towards insanity.

A soft groan coming from the room made him jerk, and he straightened, ready to waltz in and romance her, just like in the books. He glanced towards the tall, gothic windows and saw an unclear reflection. He really wished he had a mirror so he could check his opera-style cloak. The damned thing wouldn't sit right on his shoulders. Hand at the door-know, he listened at the door and then relaxed again. She wasn't awake yet. It was easy to tell, by the slow beating of her heart.

The wait was excruciating. Though he had lived long enough to watch eras pass, the matter of love is hard on young, old and un-dead alike.

Just when he was about to barge in, sure the blow he had dealt her had been too powerful and harmed her beyond repair, her heart picked up its pace. Awake at last! If he had a beating heart it would have sent streams of adrenaline into his bloodstream. However, it didn't, but that didn't stop his excitement.

The girl stirred. His entrance would have to be timed with perfection. He checked his hair and entered the room, the black gothic cloak fluttering behind.

Her high-pitched scream startled him, however, and the black gothic cloak got caught between his feet. He stumbled and fell. The girl sat up in bed, staring wide-eyed down at the man lying sprawled on the black gothic stone floor. And, because it was so bleeding obvious, she was momentarily distracted by the black gothic bedding, the black gothic walls, the black gothic furniture and the black gothic curtains hanging in front of what she bet was black gothic windows.

Cornelius sat up, as dignified as possible, and the girl's attention returned to him. She seemed a little confused. "Are you okay, sir?" she asked.

The mighty vampire scrambled up, cheeks a little flushed, but pulled himself together. "Ov corse, mah bootyful!" he pronounced charmingly. Poor Casanova was unawares his carefully groomed hair was now in complete disarray.

The girl, whose name was Charlotte, raised an eyebrow and shifted uncomfortably when he sat down on the bed, moving like liquid when he extended a hand towards her.

"Okay," she laughed nervously. "You're starting to freak me out."

He had long, glassy nails. Weird, she thought. He was dressed very strange too. But she had a notion the cloak-man wasn't the only strange thing she had encountered all day.  She just couldn't remember what could be weirder, though.

"come wif me," the cloaked man said, and against her better judgement, Charlotte took his hand and slipped out from beneath the black gothic covers. He had a really weird accent. She thought to ask about it, but it disappeared among thousand other questions surging her mind. Who was he? What was this place? And most importantly, why was she here? Or rather how had she ended up in here? And she had the most terrible headache.

She realised she had seen the man somewhere before. It took just a moment for her mind and memory to catch up with her, and then she understood the full extent of the freakish situation. Cornelius was just close enough to receive a punch for all his hardship.

"You!" and she smacked him, "Psycho!" another smack, "Kidnapping!" smack, "Creep!"

"Get away from me!" she shrieked at last, and Cornelius, shell-shocked and hurting, got out of her reach as fast as inhumanly possible. It would be wise, he figured, to keep a polite distance until she was swooning over him. Now his hair looked even worse.

"You better have an explanation for his," Charlotte threatened, voice cracking. "You... you psycho emo wannabe - I mean it! I'm capable of hurting you."

Cornelius didn't doubt her. He had, after all, swooped in on her when she was on her way home from karate.

"u don't haff to fear me," he started, dusting off his cloak. Charlotte's attack had left it looking sadly unstylish. He threw it off himself and started apologising to the startled girl.

"i'm vry srry, but it wuz necesary 2 kidnap u bcuz... be-because..." He silenced, realising he didn't really know why vampires had to steal their brides away from their normal lives before the romancing could begin. Kidnapping was a bit unromantic, he had to admit. "Well, I'm actually not sure," he finished.

Charlotte stared. He didn't have an accent, he was... he...

"Are you speaking... chatspeak?" she inquired, slowly overcoming her fear and starting to question the man's sanity instead. While he had surprised her when entering - he sent the door flying into the wall, which was why she had given a girly shriek she never would admit was hers, by the way - he had followed his entrance with stumbling in his own cloak in addition to being dressed up quite ridiculously. And now he was speaking lolcat. Maybe this was a really weird vivid dream.

Cornelius realised he had let his accent slip. "its laik dat in da storiiies, lol."

"Okay," said Charlotte. Her kidnapper was batshit insane. No surprise there, she thought, taking everything with exceptional calm. Maybe she was in shock. Yeah, that made sense. In shock, in a dream.

"everytin iz liek in da stories," said Cornelius, gesturing around the room. Charlotte looked at the black gothic bedding, the black gothic walls, the black gothic furniture and the black gothic curtains hanging in front of what was black gothic windows, and then back to him. Cornelius frowned. The girl wasn't responding like she was supposed to. Something was wrong. She should have been dazzled by now. Was the bedding not gothic enough?

His bride-to-be sat down on the bed again. "Stories?"

"Yes!" Cornelius exclaimed, seizing the opportunity to distract her from the disastrous introduction. "Come," I'll show you!"

He walked slowly out of the room, waiting for her to follow. Charlotte rose and followed him. Until now she hadn't realised she was wearing a black gothic nightgown in some silky material. She had left karate wearing her own clothes, which meant that the creep had changed her. She checked. Her underwear was still on. She postponed roundhousing him into next week and hurried after him to find out what stories he was talking about.

"The stories are on the interwebz, you know," Cornelius said, trying to strike up a conversation while they walked through the dark hallways of his lonely castle. He had shed the lolspeak, seeing as the girl didn't seem to like it. Charlotte, however, was too flabbergasted to speak. They were in an actual castle, the real old thing. At first she had thought it was a film set.

Needless to say, she was surprised to find a computer in the impossibly large library. The books were dusty and old. Cornelius was probably as old as them, she thought. On the way over he had smiled at her, and she had of course noticed his fangs. When she realised he didn't look like he was going to sink them into her neck - which he assured her he wouldn't do, as he was deadly allergic to her blood type - she stopped freaking out and threatening to hit him again.

Cornelius logged on and showed her the stories. Charlotte only needed to skim through a few pages before she was even more confused than ever.

"Lemme get this straight," she said. "You're a vampire."

Cornelius nodded.

"You have been asleep, like half my life, and you're way older than me - which kinda makes you a paedophile, no offense... And, and you're basing your view of reality on badly written vampire fics you found online?"

"Yes," Cornelius said. "But I've read books too, not only stories."

"And you kidnapped me in hopes I would fall in love with me and be your eternal wife?"

"Something along those lines."

"Only an idiot would fall in love with someone who had kidnapped them," Charlotte stated firmly. "You smashed me over the head, you moron. That blow could have killed me, don't you know anything about human- What are you doing?"

Her comment about idiots and kidnappers had made Cornelius light up. He fixed his hair. "You're completely right. You will only befriend me if you are very, very stupid," he murmured, all sexy again.

Charlotte looked away, too embarrassed on his behalf to watch. "Yeah, I agree. Let's not be friends. I'll be off, then!"

Cornelius frowned when she rose and strode away from him. He decided to follow.

"And you, should know," he continued. "Your blood... sings to me, my lamb. There is nothing I would rather do than kill you and drink you dry, so you should really go!"

Charlotte halted at the library doors, unsure of where they had come from. The corridors looked all the same. "Weren't you allergic to my blood-type?"

"Oh, right."

"Seriously, where are you getting this crap from?"

Cornelius sighed and fished a paperback copy of 'Twilight' out from an inside pocket of his Victorian vest. "It isn't perfect, I know... didn't have time to get glitter," he muttered, reading the blurb with a frown. Charlotte tried her best not to laugh out loud, imagining him voluntarily covering up in sparkles. Luckily, the vampire didn't notice, and if he had he would probably have mistaken the suppressed laughter for involuntarily spasms.

Realising this didn't work either, he thought for a moment. There must be some way to this young girl's heart! If Dracula and every other vampire from Rome to New Orleans could do it, so could Cornelius Reading!

"Do you like music, miss, um... What is your name?"

"Charlotte," said Charlotte.

"Beautiful," Cornelius said and introduced himself. Charlotte thought his name wasn't very vampire-ish, but didn't comment on it. "So do you like music, Charlotte?" he asked again.

"I, um, I guess I do," she said. "Why?"

"Then let me serenade you!" he exclaimed, and before Charlotte could say no thanks, I'd rather just get out of here and, you know, escape this wacko that kidnapped me earlier today, he started singing. Way. Off. Key.

"Follow me, come feel the night! Let the darkness... la-la-la ...salvation..."

For the rest of the verse Charlotte stared in wide-eyed horror. And then he modulated to falsetto.

"Cooome with meee, come seeeiiize the niiight! Now's the tiiime for some inpiraaation...!"

He must, somehow, have mistaken the stunned silence for appreciation, because he started humming what must have been the interlude, and danced, like a very intoxicated tap-dancer, waving his arms around, still holding the book. Then he got hold of an air-guitar.

Charlotte's mouth was slightly ajar. The tiny part of her brain that wasn't shocked into silence by the spectacle before her, desperately tried to figure out whether she was to laugh or cry. Her eyebrows were slowly inching towards her hairline.

He drew breath, as to start singing again, and Charlotte almost pounced on him.

"I changed my mind!" she yelled in despair.

Cornelius stopped mid-twirl and only regained his balance after flailing. "But you said-"

"What I meant is that I only like African tribal chants."

"Oh, well... as you wish," he stuttered, more confused than ever. "Maybe the dancing was a bit too much," he admitted.

Charlotte gave a nervous laugh. No amount of therapy could ever make it okay.

The vampire racked his brain. He didnt' know any African tribal chants, but there had to be something he hadn't tried yet. He decided to make a final attempt, and went down on one knee before her. Charlotte backed away before he could even ask.

"No!" she said firmly.

"Oh," he said. "Well, I sort of saw that coming."

This was strange. The girl, whose name had escaped him, was definitely not in love with him, and he had tried to make her swoon over him any way possible. Cornelius glared at the pocket book in his hands. None of the other vampires had problems like these.

"Nothing of this makes sense!" he said at last, throwing his arms up in defeat.

"Right you are," Charlotte agreed.

"You were supposed to fall in love with me!" Cornelius exclaimed. "The books, the stories, the musical - I've tried everything, but so far this has been a farce from one end to another!"

Strange as it was, Charlotte felt a prick of guilt. "Your, um, eyes are cool, though."

Her attempt at cheering him up didn't work as he only sighed heavily. "They are contacts," he said, removing a red lens to reveal brown eyes. Plain brown eyes - not golden topaz, not deliciously hot Belgian chocolate orbs. Plain brown eyes. "They really irritate my eyes."

"Oh," Charlotte said. "Well, your real eyes are nice too."

"Thanks, that's really nice." He hesitated. "What was your name again?"

"Charlotte," said Charlotte icily.

"Beautiful name," he repeated. "So there is no chance you will stay with me? You don't need to be my wife, I just want someone to talk to, the castle just gets so awfully boring."

"Certainly not," she scoffed and started walking back towards the room she woke up in. At least she hoped she was. "You better have kept my clothes!" she hollered back at the centuries older vampire, just before turning a corner.

Cornelius swallowed and thought against telling her she was going in the wrong direction. During the last thirty minutes or so he had learnt to fear this young maiden's anger. And he had presumed his wife would never want to wear those mundane clothes ever again, so he threw them away the moment she was changed into the black gothic nightgown. In other words, he was - to use a modern phrase - fucked.

Confused, he tossed his copy of Twilight aside and kipped down in one of the library's cosy chairs. Dating was so much easier in the 1600's.

Next part this way.