Authors: Romina Nicolaides
One morning, after several weeks of being in the Keep, I suddenly heard the sounds of a crowd in the distance. There was both elation and panic in the noise and though I could not see anything from where I was secured I could smell blood, a lot of it. There was the familiar clanging sound of metal and chains dragged along the ground but that was drowned out by the roar of the crowd. I stood up from my bench but couldn't make out much. Several of the slaves managed to break free and run down to join the commotion. The guards were alert and shouting warnings at the escapees but to no avail. Slaves were running amok and joining what must have been a large crowd at the base but as much as I struggled my chain would not allow me to see. What I did notice was that even though the uprising was large enough to overtake this place, considering how the Afflicted outnumbered the priests by about ten to one, none of the guards seemed particularly worried. Perhaps somewhere in their twisted belief system they thought God would stop the uprising in its tracks but I rejoiced at the fact that finally something was happening and that not everyone in this hell hole had given up. The smell of the blood excited me and I too wanted to break free and fight! I had visions of tracking down Father Eusebios and detaching his penis with my bare hands and making him eat it before I proceeded to drink him dry. The nun, I would simply drain of all her blood until she realized that all her blessed cruor was inside me and that the Almighty had done nothing at all to preserve her.
My fantasy was brought to an abrupt end, however, when the Keep was suddenly inundated by the whitest and purest light I had experienced in all my living years. It was as intense as a thousand midday suns. Instantly the horde noise was replaced by the synchronized agonizing shriek of all the slaves as the torrent of blinding light descended upon us and flooded the entire space leaving no nook or cranny in the dark. My eyes began to water and the pressure built up inside my ears so as to resemble the sound of massive waves crashing against a cliff during a thunderstorm. My blood felt like it was boiling within my veins and my hair stood on end while my fingernails felt as if they were being pulled out of their beds. My skin burned and my lips cracked like I had been left in the desert for days without water. My nose bled. Unable to help myself I fell to my knees and curled up into a ball wishing only for death as a release from this agony. The last thing I saw before I lost my senses was the junior priest at the entrance of the workhouse calmly tipping his head down with the hood of his robe pulled over his eyes to shield him from the light.
When I came to, I’d been released from my loom and instead I was attached to a heavy iron chain and made to stand in a line with my fellow slaves at the mouth of our workhouse cave. This particular section of the cave system resembled an amphitheater as it consisted of several levels of large, artificially carved chambers built in order to take advantage of the natural oval shape of the central clearing which included a courtyard lake. Within the lake was a small island where the head priest stood. In front of him stood a young Afflicted man with a silver rope round his neck held by a junior priest.
“If you have all recovered from your ordeal, I trust I have your attention!” He spoke loudly, but the cave enhanced the sound of his voice even further making it echo all over the hall. His voice was authoritative but it also trembled with rage.
“It would appear that some of your Keepers have failed to inform you of the futility of revolt. In fact they have failed to inform you of the futility of hope even and of entertaining thoughts of freedom. This is particularly disappointing as they have been here the longest and are amongst the most knowledgeable and trusted of you
creatures
.” He spat the word ‘creatures’ out as if it had been made of shit and soiling his tongue. “Due to this failure of theirs I have lost several work animals today and more importantly a few excellent priests, and am now being forced to waste my time clearing a few things up for you. The disks that you see around you and which abound in this complex are made of the purest form of silver. They have been hammered to a round perfection and polished to the finest most reflective surface they can be. They are part of a system of larger disks and magnifying glasses at the opening of this cave system which has been designed to use the slightest sunlight and direct it into the caves not just in its simple form, which many of you find painful and annoying, but enhancing it as much as possible in order to shine well beyond its regular capacity. The fact that it is reflected off silver disks gives it even further strength, turning it into the purest Godly light.” He raised his hands and closed his eyes relishing the sanctity of his words, purposely illuminated by a beam of light coming from a singular disk. “Were the Lightflood to last longer you would all have died from exposure, burns and shock! Be that as it may, the light was let in long enough to briefly stun you all so that you could be subdued.”
“The man who stands before me was called Alarck. He was once the leader of his tribe up north in the snow lands until the Devil claimed him as his own. He had been with us for one hundred and thirteen years and was considered one of the most obedient Keepers.” I wondered why the Head Priest was speaking in the past tense, but my query was soon answered when he took a short sword and proceeded to cut open Alarck’s gut from his groin to his neck spilling his entrails into the lake. Alarck only had enough time to look down at his open abdomen before the priest removed his head with one quick movement. The sight of the gore and the blood excited me and I bit my lips both in surprise but also satisfaction at this spectacle. The event was continued with the execution of several other Afflicted whom the priest delighted in impaling in highly imaginative ways. When their bodies finally lay in a large heap in front of him and the dark pool had turned an even darker and opaque red color he put down his sword, bowed his head and prayed. He then looked up at us, his face spattered with fine droplets of blood, and continued his speech.
“I believe that due to the fact that it has been many decades since our last uprising in here, some of you simply became complacent. I am now certain that your Keepers will do a better job of explaining the system to you and crush any minuscule feelings of hope you might still harbor. May your only thought of salvation be the fact that you are doing the Lord's work because freedom will NEVER be yours! Finally, as your punishment, for the following thirty days feeding will be suspended as prayers are held for the five lost priests. You will all be kept in your cells for that time.”
Thirty days?
I was stunned. I had never gone more than fifteen without some form of blood. Even when the Hunter had brought me in, he made sure to feed me from time to time so I would not perish.
We cannot survive thirty days without feeding. What are these people thinking?
That evening nobody came to me. The priests were holding an investigation into the uprising and everyone was under restricted movements, even the more senior scumbags. In the morning the familiar steps of my Keeper came to me. She was even more demoralized and defeated than usual. She did not have keys so she sat on the ground outside my cage.
“Aren’t they going to be looking for you?”
“Everyone is under restrictions remember?”
“How did you get out?”
“My lock is broken, but I pretend to fasten it and hand them the key every night.”
“Did you know about the revolt?”
“Of course I knew about it. All the Keepers knew about it. I tried to tell them it was a bad idea but nobody listened to me. I was around the last time they used the disks, Alarck wasn’t. I tried to explain their potency to him but he wouldn't believe me. He kept telling me that we’ve all put up with a little bit of sun and we’d be able to manage but I’ve seen our kind die because of those disks. The last revolt was much worse than this, back when the movement had fewer followers and thus fewer guards to control everyone with, they turned them on for four minutes. That was enough to exterminate one third of our workforce. People dropped dead all over the place. Strong, healthy and young Afflicted all crumbled like autumn leaves. Even the Order themselves had not calculated how powerful that single exposure had been. That event halted operations in here for months. You need a minimum amount of slaves to run the workshops and they unwittingly killed more than they could afford to. Production of Holy Order products dropped significantly to the point where we were only producing enough to clothe and feed them with little left over to continue with the lucrative business of selling holy cloth, or consecrated wine and beer which brings them so much money and power. For months they sent out their scouts desperately searching for more Afflicted but this proved harder than they had anticipated as most in the region had already been collected and brought here.”
“There really is no escape is there?”
“What have I been trying to tell you all this time? Do you think I particularly like it here? This place is impenetrable and inescapable.”
“Nothing is futile, I refuse to accept that!”
“If you were them wouldn’t you make it impossible for us to escape?”
“But I’m not! They’re deranged! I bet if other people found out this was happening they would stop them.”
“And then they’d kill us. The reason why this works so well is because we don’t exist, Theodora. The minute we change we are forced to live in secret and prey on society, as you well know. They have taken advantage of this weakness of ours and from their standpoint they are doing society a favor. No one will ever come for us, and if they do, it will be to exterminate us. We are a blight and a curse they cannot understand, hell, we barely understand ourselves! They have made themselves wealthy and powerful on our backs. No one questions them and I bet no one really knows what goes on down here. We’re nobody’s problem because by nature we are invisible.”
“So what happened after the last rebellion?”
“That was when they stumbled upon the idea of breeding us.” Shocked I turned to look at her in utter disbelief.
“Breeding? Like cattle?”
“There is nothing these people will stop at for their profit. When they could no longer find the amount of Afflicted they needed to run this place they decided that breeding was the best option. In fact, they deliberated over this for a long time and came to the conclusion that breeding would mean raising young slaves in the quantities they required and which would be molded to their way of thinking to be submissive and obedient and more controllable. It had seemed like the answer to all their problems and they wondered how they had not thought of this earlier.
That’s when the more carnal side of the doctrine came about. They could now freely indulge their licentiousness by doing it in the name of God and in the hope that they were begetting offspring with the Afflicted which would then serve the purposes of the Order. Then after several months of this failing to materialize they added another caveat to the dogma and labeled us demons, for only demons could not bear the children of priests. There is something about our condition which makes procreation nearly impossible for us and they found it out the hard way. Finally they came upon the idea that perhaps only demons could have the children of demons and they sequestered some of us in cells and let nature take its course. After several months some female slaves began to show signs of pregnancy and they were immediately moved into an incubation area with lighter duties and more frequent access to blood. Because they did not know how long the gestation period would be they treated them well and waited. It turned out that Afflicted pregnancies last several months and childbirth is particularly long, painful and often fatal.
When the first pregnant slaves gave birth, their babies were taken from them and delivered to the nuns who were to care for them and raise them according to what the priests had decreed. Instead of milk they nursed on blood and were closely watched for tangible proof that evil was born with them. Unfortunately quite early on, many began to die. Our offspring are extremely pale, frequently disfigured and some become very sickly. Those that survived grew quickly and began exhibiting hyper-enhanced senses like scent and vision. Though many were flawed and peculiar, enough survived to allow the priests to go ahead with their plan of creating their own pedigree of Afflicted and shape them in the way that they had always wanted.”
“Like Esteban,” I said remembering the ghost responsible for catching and bringing me in.
“Exactly,” she agreed. “As they grew they were housed in improved conditions in a separate section of the caves and treated well. They are not told the truth of their origins but instead they are made to believe they are fallen angels sent to earth to guide the paths of the weak and exterminate the enemies of Christ. They are led to think that the blood they are given is the most sacred there is, as they are too pure to drink anything else. As a result of this they even have their own delegation of Blood Mothers that only they can feed from. Their entire existence is based on a fragile web of dogma and lies, but there is no one to tell them the truth. Even the Blood Mothers don’t really know the truth lest they absorb it from their drinking impressions. Instead they are indoctrinated into thinking that becoming like us is what happens if they stray from the true path and use us as examples to avoid: evil, able bodied slaves that disobeyed the Lord and are now condemned to a near eternity of slavery. Their 'special’ constitutions are a sign that God sent them down as Hunter Angels but their bodies couldn’t take the shock of the physical change due to the purity of their souls. They are also told that if they were to disobey they would take true physical form, a long and painful conversion, and become like us and suffer. Their instruction is so successful that no Afflicted child has ever defected against the priests. They are an elite force created to hunt their own kind and they are unaware of their part in our suffering. The priests call them Ghosts and though they handle them with kid gloves, they too are closely watched for signs of awakening or rebellion. They’re the Order’s most valuable asset.”