The Sainted Confessor, Part 13

This is undoubtedly the worst of the torture and agony. If you're faint of heart, I suggest you do not read.

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Steps came in the dark and Faust felt the panic begin to rise in him until the Angel sank down into his body as she was wont to do. A kind of peace followed, so Faust waited and listened to Cadmus as he crawled upon the bed and set to changing the bulbs. The room was suddenly and shockingly awash in bright light again, and there stood Cadmus on the bed, looking down at Faust, that almost-smug expression on his face.

“No more keening, now, young man. I only bought enough bulbs for two more sessions with you and I shall be very displeased to have to expose myself to herds again just because you couldn’t keep yourself under control. Screaming is fine. I expect that and welcome the sound. Moaning, gibbering, shouting – all well and good. But no more Vampiric keening or I’ll give you something about which to truly keen. Are we clear, Confessor Faust?”

Faust just stared at Cadmus, his cerulean eyes exuding an unusually peaceful reproach compared to how Cadmus had left the Vampire. Cadmus cocked his head at his young captive, then shrugged before jumping easily to the floor.

He reached around the back of the side table, then he turned back to Faust. In his wan, spidery hands Cadmus held a mask that looked as though it were made of a kind of Plaster of Paris. One of Faust’s artist friends would have been able to tell him in happier days. Like every knife and like the chalice, Cadmus held the mask out to Faust in a ritual of presentation. “Do you see this mask?”

Faust slowly blinked his eyes in weary acknowledgment.

“Since we’ve spent our Summer together having such a lovely time in one another’s company,” Cadmus said, he voice imitating someone being sarcastic or ironic…or maybe both. “I was reminded by your poor example that it was time for me to remake myself. We need to do it every few decades and, as far as I can tell, you haven’t done it since you were transformed. Your idiosyncratic inflections and outmoded slang, not to mention your moth-eaten thrift-store Chaplinesque fashion choices, scream that something is amiss with you. Now…you may be Out, as they say these days about anyone who has had, by necessity, to remained cloaked to society, and people may accept you for who and…what you are, but not all of us care to take that route, especially someone like me. So your failing to redefine yourself reminded me that it has been way too long since I did so myself. This mask is the key to my doing so and you, my little sacrificial lamb, are going to help me baptize it and me into my new life.”

( the baptismal font and the face of god )

The Sainted Confessor, Part 14 and Fin

 

 

 

“What has happened to you?

The clear, clipped accent of Cadmus awoke Faust, who opened his mosaic eyes and breathed the air as a mortal for the first time in decades. He had forgotten how truly wonderful it was to walk the Earth in uncertainty and hope, wondering if your life would be snuffed out at any moment, yet carrying on with a force of Will surely driven by that Divine Spark that dwelt within everyone, if you could only find it.

“Me?” the man said, his voice drenched with mockery. “Me?”

“You…you are different.” Cadmus bent down and inhaled Faust’s breath, then backed away in a kind of disgust. “How can this be? You are…human.”

“Mortation?” the young moppet offered, smiling merrily.

“Mortation is a myth. It cannot be achieved…You are what you are.”

“Yet here I am, you bat-clad Abomination. Here I am.”

Cadmus frowned, his vast black eyes studying the healed and naked form on the ruined bed before him. Faust was mortal again. The Blood, if given to him in any quantity would kill him and a sip would only serve to addict him to the chalice. Cadmus could not vivisect the youngling without killing him. The boy was of no use to him. He looked down at the chalice of Blood, taken from another child running wild and free in the streets of Brooklyn. He’d brought it to fortify the Vampire before ripping into him again and bathing in the agony and Blood.

How had he done it? How had he achieved the impossible? Mortation…no Vampire had ever achieved mortation. It was a myth brought about by rumours and scattered prophecies said to be found in the Augury of Gideon. It was all rubbish to Cadmus, who believed nothing but the reality before him.

But that reality right now was a Vampire turned mortal.

“How did you do it, Faust?”

“Don’t call me Faust, Cadmus. I am Kallum again. After all these years, I am Kallum.”

“How did you do it?”

“I…had…faith.” Kallum said slowly, deliberately, and with not a small about of contempt for Cadmus.

( incorruptible )

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A note about Faust's mortal name: being of pale blue Scottish blood myself, I have a certain fondness for All Things Scottish. Early on in the story, it was pretty much determined in my mind that Faust would be of mortal Scottish descent, thanks to his secondary anchor James McAvoy. At first the name was just Kal, but I changed it Kallum, because the name is the Scottish variant of the name Calum:

Variant spelling of Calum, the Scottish Gaelic form of the Late Latin personal name Columba ‘dove’. This was popular among early Christians because the dove was a symbol of gentleness, purity, peace, and the Holy Spirit. St Columba was one of the most influential of all the early Celtic saints. He was born in Donegal in 521 into a noble family, and was trained for the priesthood from early in life. He founded monastery schools at Durrow, Derry, and Kells, and then, in 563, sailed with twelve companions to Scotland, to convert the people there to Christianity. He established a monastery on the island of Iona, and from there converted the Pictish and Irish inhabitants of Scotland. He died in 597 and was buried at Downpatrick. The name has recently enjoyed considerable popularity throughout the English-speaking world.

His last name, McCreary, is a nod to the extremely talented composer, Bear McCreary, who is prone to wearing a Triquetra pendant he picked up at the Highland games in Washington State.

So that's just to say that, over the course of this composition, Faust became an amalgamation of souls and heritage, not to mention a vessel into which I poured a good bit of my own soul. I guess what I'm saying is that he's become like Cadmus Pariah, indefinable in a way and, therefore, a sentient being unto himself.

And, no, we haven't seen the last of Kallum McCreary.

Writer's Block: Cyberstalking

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No, because they are all dead.

Amazing Grace in Cherokee

Talitha MacKenzie, one of the greatest singers and vocal acrobats of our time, has recorded "Amazing Grace" in Cherokee. It is now my mission to learn it, because it's my mission to learn as many of her songs as possible, even though I pale horribly in comparison to her. Listen to this and see if you don't get chicken pimples.

The Cliffs of Insanitweets

( random mutterings of the mentally unstable )