The True Ordeal of Jonathan Harker

The first sense to return for Jonathan Harker was his sense of smell, and he almost wished it hadn't. His reawakening nostrils sucked in a detestable mixture of mildew, stale rodent droppings and a pungent rusting smell. That odor stew jabbed into his cloudy brain and caused his eyes to sputter open, his heavy eyelids fluttering reluctantly as they did so. While his unhappy nostrils were awash in sensation, his peering eyes saw little more than gloom and shadow.

Slowly, his blinking eyes focused, taking advantage of what little light entered the room. The majority of the weak light came from his left, but when he turned his head to find its source, his neck screamed, and a thousand pinpoints of white hot fire howled from the base of his skull to the middle of his back. Still, he forced his head to continue its rotation, his mind needing to see something in this foul smelling room.

The light came from a small window, at most two feet high by a foot across. This lone window sat sad and solitary about twenty-five feet above the reeking floor. The wall it inhabited was a good fifty or sixty feet in length and possibly equally as high. Clearly, the dim light entering that minuscule window was moonlight. It crept through the window as if, for some reason, afraid to pass through it into the room beyond.

Jonathan let out a teeth-gritting moan as he tried to sit up. Every muscle in his body seemed to ache, every bone seemed bruised to its marrow. Groaning, he managed to get himself up on one elbow, waiting a few seconds for the pain to subside before trying to move further. Propped shakily on that elbow, he realized that his vision was becoming accustomed to the darkness, and he could make out a few objects, though just barely. Several large casks, possibly wine casks or the like, lined the wall opposite the anemic little window. Beyond them, and slightly toward the center of the room, a huge stone archway joined two massive pillars, each of those in turn joined by smaller archways to the walls of the room. For all intents and purposes, it appeared that Jonathan was lying on the floor of an ancient stone cellar lined with wine casks.

The ringing in his ears slowly ceased its constant droning, to be replaced by more awful sounds. In the distance, somewhere beyond those barely visible archways, came the sounds of life, though apparently not pleasant life. The chittering and squealing of vermin confirmed the odor of droppings, and the straining moonlight shone brightly in tiny red eyes that darted about in the blackness beyond the archways.

Jonathan strained to rise, but about halfway to a sitting position blood surged and pounded in his head, an aching throb that made him nearly black out, and he slumped back down on his back, staring up at the ceiling he couldn't see. And as he lay there, trying weakly to recover, the memories flooded back.

His first memory was of strong fingers around his throat, lifting him in the air as if he weighed less than a thin sheet of parchment. The second memory was of his cut finger, and the thirsty animal that hungrily sucked the dribbling blood from it. Then the floodgates opened. Memory after memory raced into his reeling brain. The red, boiling eyes...the long fingernails that scratched his throat as the fingers squeezed...the foul metallic breath... the sharp pain in his neck as fangs sunk deep... being tossed down into this dungeon-like cellar as if he were but a child's doll... landing in pain, and sinking into oblivion.

Dracula...the lord of this house, the inhuman creature who'd lured him here for the purpose of purchasing a new home in England.... in actuality a new den of death from which to reach out and secure an entirely new, unlimited source of victims. And when the deal was done, Jonathan was but another meal for the Lord of the Undead, and his partially drained husk was discarded as impersonally as another man might empty the trash. And that's how he came to find himself in this dank, foul smelling cellar, with skulking rats for company.

But it wasn't the rats that frightened him. For now there came sounds of larger life, human life....or, rather, inhuman life. Centuries worth of dust began to swirl on the floor around him as a cold breeze blew at him from beyond the archways. Figures moved in the darkness, and three sets of shining red eyes hovered several feet above the smaller eyes of the skittering vermin below, the mice and rats fleeing whatever was now approaching.

Under that central archway, three figures slowly coalesced and solidified around those glowing eyes. First, a wispy white figure appeared, then two others on either side of it. Three women - or what had once been women - glided into view, heads bowed slightly, but eyes fixed intently on Jonathan. Their hands were clasped together in front of them, as if each was praying to their Lord and Master. They didn't seem to be walking, but rather floating toward Jonathan, and as they glided ever nearer, evil grins formed on their blood red lips, lips made all the more starkly crimson by the pale flesh of the faces surrounding them...and because of the flowing white wedding dresses billowing softly about each of them.

A hiss came from the creature in the center. "At last, he awakens," it said, the grin barely able to conceal the lusting tongue.

"Yesssss...," the figure to the left concurred, "and hear how his blood pulses. Apparently, our Lord and Master has treated us to his leavings."

The form on the right added, "Are you both as famished as I? Leavings or not, I crave the taste of blood, the yielding of soft flesh. I am hungry."

"I'm sure we are easily as hungry as you are," center replied, but then looked Jonathan up and down and added, "but I hunger for much more than blood, my sisters."

Their laughter was unholy, and not unlike the squealing of the rats. The creature on the right laughed so hard she had to put a red-clawed hand up to her mouth, but she squealed and snorted loudly nonetheless. All three continued their ghostly advance on the weakened and battered Mr. Harker.

When they'd come to within a few yards of Jonathan, their eerie gliding stopped. They glared down at him, each inspecting him as if he were a side of beef to be prepared for the cooking pot. Despite his still being fully clothed, they eyed him up and down, one devouring his legs with her evil eyes, another licking her lips as she ogled his neck and shoulders, the third looking squarely between his legs. It was this last that made Jonathan most uneasy.

The undead who'd been hungrily eyeing his neck and shoulders sucked in a huge lungful of air and hissed out words that were unnaturally stretched out and elongated as if she were saying them in her sleep.

"Meat," it said, "by what name do they call you?"

Taking umbrage at being called "meat", Jonathan nonetheless had the good sense to keep his opinions to himself. Even if he were completely uninjured, he'd have been hard pressed to fight off one of these undead things, let alone all three. This, if nothing else, he'd learned from his encounter with Dracula. If these blood-lusting women had even a tenth of the strength of their master, any one of them could easily snap him like a dried twig. His only hope lay in playing along, and praying for an opening to escape.

"Meat!" the creature snarled, eyes blazing, "I asked you a question! By what name are you called?"

Wide eyed and perspiring greatly, Jonathan answered, "Jonathan, ma'am....Jonathan Harker."

"Well, Jonathan...to us you're meat...food...sustenance....life. I trust you understand what you've gotten yourself into now, don't you?" The other two creatures giggled, faces partially hidden by clawed fingers.

"Yes," Jonathan offered, "you're all vampires."

"Ooooh," said the creature that had snorted her laughter earlier, "such clever food. I can't wait to taste him now."

"I, as well," said the vampiress in the center, "but this meat has much more than blood to offer, I think. I hunger for more than his blood flowing down my throat. I trust my sisters understand what I mean?"

Again their cackling squeals filled the cavernous cellar, the unnerving sound echoing eerily from wall to wall and into the darkness beyond the archways.

"But, let us not be impolite," the beast on the left said, "let us introduce ourselves to this poor man. It's the least we can do before we drain the life from him."

"Well said," the center creature replied, "let's tell our food exactly who it is who shall be taking his blood, and other bodily fluids, from him." She bent at the knees in an exaggerated curtsy, one hand on her waist, the other flowing gently out to her side. "I, my little plaything, am Marlena, first bride of the Master."

"And I," the snorter said, "am Lizette, second bride of Dracula."

"And I," smiled the last, "am Consuela, Lord Dracula's third...and favorite...bride." The other two pale faces instantly snapped around to face her, hissing and spitting, eyes feral and dangerous. Consuela hissed back, eyes ablaze, fangs and claws bared. The three hunched over catlike and confronted one another, for the moment ignoring Jonathan, continuing to snarl and glare menacingly at each other. It was a tenuous moment, and came within a heartbeat of savage battle, which Jonathan hoped for as his moment to escape. But, the three undead brides got their rivalries under control at last and slowly straightened themselves from their attack postures. In unison, all three heads snapped back to glare at Jonathan. Still agitated, all three hissed at him, eyes smoldering. He cringed, thinking he was surely dead, and braced for the penetration of three pairs of dripping fangs. Noticing his preparedness to die, it was Marlena who laughed and spoke first.

"Oh, no, my tender morsel....you'll not die so quickly. We are hungry, yes....but we wish to play with you first. We will give you sweet torments and exhausting pleasures to take with you to the grave. Surely, you don't want to die right away?"

Laughing hideously, Consuela added, "Yes, meat....we like to play with our food."

LIzette merely covered her mouth with a pale hand and laughed into it.

Marlena advanced first, crouched in a stalking position. Consuela and Lizette got down on their hands and knees, advancing on Jonathan that way, their tongues licking their slavering lips. Jonathan looked from one to the other, his body aching and vulnerable...and it was at that instant that he realized there was never going to be even the remotest chance for escape....

As Marlena stalked menacingly toward him, Jonathan again cringed. His face became as ashen as the three unholy brides. His senses became heightened, and he could hear their tattered bridal gowns dragging on the dirty floor, dust billowing up in clouds around them. Lizette and Consuela crawled like hunting panthers on either side of him, smiling hideously and licking their lips. His ears caught every panting breath as if their evil mouths were already alongside his face. And from all three of those fanged mouths came a low growl.....rising from the pits of their blackened souls.

It was Consuela who reached Jonathan first, a sudden lunge ending with her clawed fingers grasping his ankle tightly. He jumped and gasped at the cold touch. Consuela laughed. "Mmmm..," she grinned, "pretty meat is jumpy."

While his eyes were focused on the salivating Consuela, another clawed hand grasped his other ankle, causing Jonathan's head to quickly swivel in that direction, eyes bulging. The rotation of his head was so sharp and quick that Jonathan thought he heard a cracking sound in his neck...but he felt no pain, so the thought was immediately dismissed. His reeling mind needed to concentrate on the danger at hand, for fanged death was but a heartbeat away.

"You're right, my sister," hissed Lizette, "the meat is jumpy. But, oh, how delicious that quickly beating heart sounds."

So intent was Jonathan on the claws on his ankles, and the leering, fanged faces of Lizette and Consuela, that Marlena was momentarily forgotten. That didn't last long. For, one second Marlena was standing at his feet, and the next instant her hot, panting, metallic breath was bathing his frightened face. His head swiveled once again, stopping with his bulging eyes pointed directly ahead. There, not six inches from his face, were the roiling red eyes of Malena, hunched over, straddling his chest, her strong hands already finding the back of his neck and lifting him toward her panting mouth.

"You pay much too much attention to my sisters, meat," Marlena's red-lipped mouth said, "And I feel so neglected." Her sarcastic grin turned into a pout as she pulled his face and neck closer to it. "I don't like being ignored, meat. Being ignored hurts me so....and makes me angry. You won't ignore me again, will you, meat?" By now, Marlena was holding Jonathan off the floor, his bruised buttocks hovering several inches above the filthy stone. Only his ankles and heels still made contact with the floor, the long, taloned fingers of Consuela and Lizette anchoring them there. Marlena brought Jonathan's face near hers, so that the tip of his nose all but brushed against the tip of her own. Sweat dribbled down his face, and Marlena watched one drop glide slowly from his forehead down to his cheek, where it veered toward the back of his jaw and continued down to his neck.

"How sweet of you, little Jonathan-meat. You even find a way of showing me where to take the life from you. That's so accommodating of you." The deep, hollow sound of those threatening words hadn't even completely faded before Marlena's grinning face disappeared from view. Sharp, hot pain seared his neck. His eyes grew wide with horror as the burning seemed to spread in an ever-widening circle over his leaking jugular. He could feel each of Marlena's sucks as a pulling sensation on his neck, and her hideous tongue licked as she sucked.

His head was already beginning to swim when similar sensations occurred on each of his wrists. Lizette and Consuela were likewise feasting on his life's blood. With each burning, sucking sensation Jonathan's mind grew more hazy. It seemed as if his brain itself was actually becoming cold, the inside of his draining head chilling with each suck and lap at his neck and wrists. His eyes focused on the tiny little window way up high on the wall, the moonlight sneaking fearfully through it. He felt weak...tired. He knew he was dying, and tried in what moments he had left to make his peace with his Maker. Then, with a long, slow sigh, what little light there was in this hellish cellar, slowly disappeared. The shadows that had been held tenuously at bay, slowly crept up to, and over him....and all became darkness.

Jonathan's head cleared in a blast of pain. It throbbed and ached, but he was not dead. Unless, of course, he was on his way to Heaven or Hell and was given the questionable blessing of being able to view the trip. But, as his head lolled painfully from side to side, he realized that even Hell might be preferred to the reality slowly morphing into view.

He had the sensation of floating, as he watched wine kegs slowly drifting by. They looked distantly familiar. Then he looked up to see huge archways gliding by overhead. They, too, stirred memories. Slowly, painfully, memory returned. His body was somehow traveling through that same musty cellar, toward the darkened area beyond the archways, where tiny feral eyes had fled from larger, more sinister ones in a hazy time that seemed centuries ago.

But, to Jonathan's surprise, the memories were not completely accurate. The vast expanse beyond the archways was anything but dark. Bright flames flickered and danced from wall torches and squatting braziers. The walls glowed orange and yellow over the gray-green of stone and mold. Darkness had been banished.

The sensation of floating began to reorganize and edit itself in his slowly clearing mind. He wasn't floating at all. Strong, tight grips on his upper arms and calves helped him sort this information out. And his unclouding eyes focusing on tattered, moldy wedding gowns to his right and left further aided this revelation. He was being carried, as effortlessly as if he were but a twig. He got the impression that the fiends carrying him could easily toss him about the room whenever they wished...and his thoughts drifted back to the powerful Dracula, and how he'd thrown him down foul smelling steps into darkness as if he were lighter even than the briefcase in which he'd carried the deed to Carfax Abbey.

Suddenly, Marlena loomed up before him, leering down at him. Beyond her, drapes of red silk cascaded from tarnished golden rings on the wall, looping from ring to ring. At the far ends of the loops of silk, still more silk flowed softly downward from their own rings, but to where Jonathan couldn't see. To his still murky mind, it all looked so sensual, so regally Victorian, like the boudoir of royalty.

"Ahh....our Jonathan meat has survived after all," came the softly growled words from Marlena. "That is good. We have so many, more pleasurable, torments for you to endure. It would be a shame if you died before we could take more from you than blood." Consuela and Lizette hissed hideous laughter.

The flowing silk and the leering Marlena disappeared quickly from view as Jonathan was rotated in a half circle by LIzette and Consuela. His eyes were briefly treated to the view of the cask room of the cellar, the room in which he'd been dumped by Dracula and then served as a meal for his brides. The room was dark now in contrast to this brightly flame-lit room, and not much could be seen, only a bright spot of light where the anemic little window still sat alone on the great expanse of wall, muted moonlight filtering through it.

Suddenly, Jonathan really was floating..or rather flying. Consuela and Lizette tossed him as effortlessly as he'd imagined earlier, his head flying swiftly in the direction of the flowing folds of silk. The sensation was brief, as he landed with a muffled "whump" on some type of soft, yielding surface. As he hit that surface, more of the red silk material flew up around him, surrounding his body. It quickly came to rest all about him, some of it flowing gently over his body, cradling various parts of him in its soft, red embrace.

As he looked around himself and realized the surface he'd landed on was a huge mattress covered in masses of red silk, Jonathan's mind finally relinquished its desperate hold on denial and was forced to accept that there was more horror to come. Dracula's unholy harem wanted a plaything of their own...and he was it. As they'd said earlier, his blood wasn't the only fluid these demons were interested in.

With a shudder, Jonathan saw that which he dreaded....the three vampiric brides at the foot of the huge, silk-laden mattress, each one leering and needy. Slowly, they removed their decaying gowns and let them drop to the floor. No dust rose to meet them as they fell, and a quick glance about showed Jonathan why. The floor in this room was actually free of dirt and dust....in about a thirty or forty foot radius around the bed. The overly fat rodents with their gleaming red eyes would not cross that line between clean and filthy flooring, as if knowing that crossing that border would mean a painful and grisly end to their existence.

Jonathan's eyes went back to the immediate threat. Marlena, Consuela and LIzette stood naked at the foot of the mattress, which Jonathan now knew was to be a bed for twisted carnal pleasuring of the dead. He shuddered to think of the horrible tastes these undead women might have....what sick needs they would be thrusting upon him. But in spite of his loathing of what these women had become, his eyes betrayed him. They eagerly... yes, eagerly... scanned from bride to bride, taking in their nakedness, cataloguing and rating each and every well rounded curve.