PREFACE

Sometimes, it feels as though I have spent my whole life in captivity, or slavery, or under the control of another in some way. And there has been so much pain, and suffering, and fear. I shiver when I think of it. I have been taken to the limits in so many ways - so many different punishments, so much hurt - but, even as I have screamed and yelled that I could take no more, I have been filled with the urgency of my own pleasure. The pain itself brings something with it that is uncontrollable - its own delight, yes, but also the promise of joy so ultimate that beyond it there is nothing. It is this terrible need that stalks me. When I am being whipped or spanked, when my flesh is stinging from mistreatment, or I am gasping with the terror of being overfilled, or quenching my thirst with semen. When I am subjected to any of these things within me there is always a growing scent of pleasure. Yes, it’s like something I can smell - a perfume, an aroma that eventually overtakes me, sucks up my suffering, converts it into something beyond pain, and brings me to extremes of ecstasy that leave me gasping for breath in another world. Yes, it is exactly like that, it is as if I transcend all of this world and am transported to another. I am addicted to it and the means by which I can find it - addicted to this beautiful suffering because it is only when I suffer that my transcendence can be complete. Yes, suffering is my pathway to guaranteed pleasure. No matter how much I have suffered it has always led me to the heavenly delights. This has been both my downfall and my only desire; my descent into the horrors of suffering has always been accompanied by my ascent to rapture.

When finally I escaped from Father Dawson - the harshest and cruellest of my captors - I thought my life would change, that at last I could free myself of the need for pain. I thought that I could find pleasure like others, from simple satisfaction, contact, and excitement. But I was mistaken. Even from the dead he brought me almost unbearable torture and with it came again the excruciation of overwhelming joy. And this time there was another, more terrible legacy. His own evil spawned something worse even that his joy of the infliction of pain and suffering. He found that within me was the germ of a terrible bloodlust. I was unaffected by the infection within me but ingestion of my blood brought a horrifying change in others - each lost their human life in exchange for the dark consuming life of a vampire. My blood condemned them to an existence focused only on lusting for blood and flesh. And from me they also took my appetite for joy through pain. Their life, a combination of the pleasures of pain and joy with the insatiable need for the drinking of hot blood was what they owed to me.

The legacy of Father Dawson’s cruelty in his followers brought me into their fold - I too became infected with my own germ, but the sacrifice of another led me to be saved. But it was not a complete cure. I still carry the germ. I have delighted in the pleasures of blood myself and it will not leave me - the draw of it is too strong. Even though an antidote now runs in my veins, it is accompanied by a latent desire for the taste of blood of which I cannot rid myself. I can control it sometimes, but it is a battle. Whenever pain overtakes me, and my ecstasy erupts, so does the desire to sink my teeth into the flesh of another, the need to taste the hot ambrosia that runs within them, to drink it, to refresh myself with it, to nourish myself with it. No, I am not cured - the infection is only kept at bay, and barely at that.

And those that have been infected by my spore pursue me. They are a flock, a rabble of lost souls in need of a focus. In the absence of Father Dawson, they want to be close to their progenitor - and that is me. Their need is no respecter of my wishes. I do not know if I can escape them, but for my own safety I must try. Nor do I know if I can suppress my own needs - but for my own sanity that too I must try.

Syra Bond

Bratisalava

2009