Wednesday, September 14, 2016

THE MONSTER REMEMBERS



Bathory was all too real. She was a mass murderer and sexual sadist with absolute power. Her life reads like a very dark horror story. What I have done in my novel is have her raised from the dead to become a vampire. After all, she was a natural for it. This excerpt is of her recalling her living life:

"Sometimes I’d see a girl younger and fairer than another, and I’d want her whipped and tortured, either by me or Darvulia. “Are you pleased now, my lady?” I’d sigh more often than not and say I was bored.

“I will make you happy!” she’d cry out. Always eager to do my bidding, she’d show me new punishments, each more painful and sadistic than the last. When she said a demon had disclosed to her the secret of immortality and beauty, I was beside myself with joy. When she told me it was to bathe in young maids’ blood, I was horrorstruck.

Could it be true, I wondered? I asked her this question. In order to test it, she grabbed a girl and slit her cheek open. “I will rub some blood on your face...!” This she did. “There now! Behold!” she said.

I looked into my mirror and saw how much more radiant my skin looked. “Think how you will look if you bathe in it!” That was how it all started. Those baths of blood! Yes, Anton. It was done! Girls were chained above my bath and sliced open—their bodies soon drained. When the tub was full enough, I’d climb in.

“Luxuriate in the blood of youth. It will go into you and change everything!” It did! I felt so different. I actually tingled; somehow, all the care and worry of the past left me—making me feel as though I had been turned into a goddess! The baths would have to continue. More girls would be bled and I didn’t care.

What difference did it make if there were fewer peasants in the world, I reasoned? I was the goddess of my own world. Do you know what it is like to have absolute power? To have no one dare to refuse an order. Not that I needed that. I had willing accomplices, perhaps more evil than I! This darkest of periods encouraged every perversion one could think of and blood was at the center or it. Blood and pain and sex..."



5 stars - "A blood-soaked rendition of the fictional life of a real-life multiple murderer, history's 'Countess Dracula'"


"Her best work!"

"Solid Gothic fiction from Gill!"





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