Posts Tagged ‘demon’
Origins
Rajhym stood on top of Mt. Vijadt watching the people in the village below scurry about. He had been hiding for the past couple of hours, shirking his duties in the fields to do what he like to do best: people watch. Now, as it began to get dark, he decided to climb down the treacherous path to get home, where warm goat stew and cider would be waiting for him.
The journey down began as always with Rajhym using a small torch to light the precarious trail. It felt much the same under his feet as it had felt many times before, but after walking for at least forty-five minutes, he began to climb the mountain again. This was when he began to worry.
“I have taken a wrong turn,” he thought, “and now, I will surly die from exposure.”
When this crossed his mind, he sat down and started to cry for he had never been lost or alone in his fifteen years, and now, he was truly scared for he knew that Mt. Vijadt turned dangerous after dark and creatures roamed the paths that no one spoke the names of anymore. He remembered four years ago that his father had wandered into the mountains in search of his sister. Neither of them had returned, but he and his mother found a necklace of bloody teeth strung with his sister’s bloodied golden hair… and they knew that their family was dead and that they had suffered. After this, his mother had kept him close at all times… that was until his fourteenth birthday when he had to begin working.
He knew it was a risk to climb the mountain but did it anyway. Now, he wished that he hadn’t.
His tears continued.
“Ah, poor child,” came an ethereal voice just outside the torch’s ring of light. “Why are you sad?”
He wiped his eyes and replied, “I’m lost and find it impossible to find my way in the dark. If I have to stay here, I’m sure to be gotten by a creature of the mountain.”
“There, there,” answered the voice as a feminine arm came into the circle and its hand stroked his face. “I won’t let a creature of the mountain get you.”
As the he felt more at ease, Rajhym noticed the gnarled hand and the fingers that ended in talons. He gasped at the sight and started to run away.
“Now, where are you gong little Rajhym?” cooed the voice as steel-like grip clamped upon his shoulder. “Don’t you want never to be afraid again? Wouldn’t you like to haunt this mountain all of your waking moments, forever?”
“Let go. I need to make it home.” He struggled against the hand, but it was no use.”Help! Help! Help!”
“Poor little vagabond,” whispered the voice covering his mouth with another taloned hand. “I will make you strong. You shall be mine.”
A noxious breath blew across his torch, causing it go out. Rajhym was left in the dark with the creature. Slowly, his eyes adjusted, and he began to make out the outline of what looked like a nude woman with glowing eyes, looking at him hungrily as she continued to grip his arm.
“I shall kiss you and make it all better,” she said. “And none of the others will attempt to take you ever again.”
She stooped down closer and closer toward him until her toothless maw covered his tender face. He felt something like warm flesh in his mouth that he assumed was her tongue, but soon, he realized it was more like liquid energy flowing from her into him. He felt stronger as his limbs started to extend and claws began to grow from the tips of his fingers. Quickly, he felt more powerful than he had ever dreamed of becoming.
“And now it is finished, my child,” she creaked withdrawing from him. “My journey is done, but yours is just beginning.”
“What do you mean?” he questioned, recognizing a deeper, more raspy voice which frightened him.
“You are now one of the Draknar. An ancient race, very powerful of sorcerers that some worship as demons… and to a certain…*Ack, ack*” her coughing interrupted her speech. “…extent we are, I suppose.”
“What is this about your journey being done?” again the deep raspy voice came.
“I have endowed you with the eternal essence, the source of your power. But like a bee sting, once given the stinger must die.”
“So, you’re leaving me?” tears began to fill his eyes again.
“You’ll be okay, my child. But all things must come to an end, Ahsa. . .”
“You create me, and then. . .” the deep, raspy voice trailed off as he noticed the light leaving her eyes. He knelt beside her for a moment before her flesh started to flake away in the breeze.
The last thing to go were the eyes in which he saw his reflection. His eyes glowed with a cold fire from the depths of his now gaunt, cadaverous face. Jagged teeth replaced his once boyish smile. And a desire to inflict pain filled his heart because he lost everything as all Draknar do but gained so much more.
Ghosts and Demons and Such
So, I’m not going to try to slice it any other way…I do believe in the “otherside”…I believe that people “see dead people” and that spirits do walk the Earth…however, don’t get me wrong. I don’t place stock in just anyone when they say that they’ve had interactions with the unknown because let’s face it…just like UFO’s and Bigfoot and Nessy, people make up ghostly/demonly encounters all the time. I mean look at the so-called “Spirit Photography” from the late 19th Century. People took pictures over the already exposed film and passed it off as saying that the “spirits” of their loved ones were in the pictures. Now, this was nothing but camera trickery…
I have also read several books on the spiritual mediums and others of that time that practiced chicanery to fool the unsuspecting commoners into believing in the beyond. As a person, I believe that there are people out there who can contact the other side…whether you believe or not, the majority of people believe in some sort of core component that exists within us. Something that will go on after our impending deaths.
I’ve seen and heard a little too much to completely rule out the idea that we are alone on the physical plane with purely physical beings…this brings me to why I even write about this…tonight I was watching the movie Paranormal Activity and it spurred me to thinking. Why do people poke bears? Now this can be taken in the terms of the spiritual (as I will be discussing it) or the physical.
In the movie, one of the main characters Micah is filming the occurences that happen at his home. In the movie, we find out that his wife is haunted by something that the spiritual sensitive guy thinks is a demon. After finding this out, the guy continues to poke at whatever this thing is…I mean seriously after they found out the thing was a demon (if you consider the movie in the realm of possibilities because it is pitched as a true story) I would have been like…Damn and a few other choice words…then, I would have been searching for someone to deal with the thing…
However, this guy continues to anger the thing by playing with a Ouija Board and keeping on with the filming (which it seems not to like)…at one point, the “thing” breaks a picture of the couple and scratches his face in the picture, pretty much putting a hit out on him…to me, it just seems like after all the shit goes down that the guy would have had better sense than to keep on keeping on…
The same goes for anything else whether it be spirit or not…DON’T POKE THE BEAR…unless you’re willing to lose an arm, a leg, or a life….
My Vampire Rant from professorbeej.com
I love good vampire books and lore. The stuff that you can truly respect. And you have to take the idea of the vampire back to the mindset of when the idea originated. It was an illogical response to the idea of bodies rotting in the earth…their blotted forms and flushed appearance became the basis for the myth, and the fact that people also associated them with plagues and diseases of the time.
In my mind, a vampire also doesn’t go bump in the night in my head. Vampires tend to be more eloquent beings living among the humans but not being part of them. They also represent all the bad aspects of humanity just exemplified. If you take Dracula for instance, he has all the desires and drives of any man; however, his drives take a more perilous front seat than many men because he has the power to go forward and nothing that can hold him back (save garlic, holy relics, stake through the heart). A reading of him could be paralleled to any tyrranical dictator that has been or will be.
While vampires can symbolize rape, they also represent the dawn of plague and darkness upon the land. During the course of human history, a lot of the time that plagues and turmoil of that nature arose, one could find it giving rise to the mythos of the vampire because they were considered the bringers of death. In the older ideal of the vampire, the vampire was a more personal creature going back to slowly take away their family, friends, and town folk to the darkness that is their death. For me, they represent the death that they inevitably cause because no matter how careful a vampire is in fiction or the movies they will eventually take a life. However, I do agree that they are also a perfect metaphor for rape because they do “penetrate” their victims and take their innocence away.
While I will admit that you are right about the vampire stories written from the “human” perspective, I will have to say that you need to read some vampire lit from the perspective of the vampire. Anne Rice does a brilliant job of this. She writes from the idea that the vampire is just a human who happens to have immortality, other special powers, and has to live off blood. Her vampires are just exceptionally flawed humans. They are set in their ways and have trouble changing with the times just like many of our older generation. They have loves, can’t stand to be around each other for extended periods of time, hate who created them, and eventually come back to this dark parent at some point with love leading the way.
I think that vampires are scarier too. We each have our own personal “vampires” that we deal with on a daily basis. They are anything that steals a bit of our spirit, of our soul, of our life blood. Religious cults also equate to religion because they have to “baptise” the new comers to their order with their own blood (anybody reminded of Christianity…everything is covered by Jesus’s blood). They also remind me of the cold, calculated evil of any dictator or religious fanatic that has sprung up in the last several hundred years like Vlad Dracul who is still celebrated as a hero in Transylvania, although we look on him as a mass murderer and altogether unsavory individual.
I don’t know. Vampires hold a fascination for me that no zombie ever could. I think it’s because they hold their individuality after “death” and still have to choose their own path or be left in the dust (no pun intended). They have infinite possibilities. I hate that the drivel that comes out of the mainstream has reduced this creature to a sparkling, love-sick wuss instead of the scary mofos they are…
