The Prince of Darkness and the Bat

A Queer and Gothic Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, night fell, and with it, the stars descended, shattering like glass when they hit the mountains, lands, and the sea, leaving the Queendom in a darkness so thick that not even the vampires could see.

In the graveyard, whispers of confusion mingled with muffled gasps, broken only by the brave sound of a harp’s strings being plucked far down in the deepest of all the crypts. Out of that very crypt emerged the dashing Prince, carrying the harp in his left arm and the tune on his lips.

In his right hand flickered a candle, struggling bravely against the wind that tried to snuff it out. As all good things must, the candle persevered.

The Prince bravely strode on, his boots thumping up the stairs of the ancient mausoleum the Queendom used as a kind of market square whenever someone wanted to make a speech or get married, both of which happened on alternating Fridays, usually.

“I have chosen,” Prince Jacques announced. “Raise your eyes towards the horizon and see that the night is with us. The ancient prophecy that only the oldest of us witnessed when it left the Seer’s lips with her final breath has arrived. The ceremony must begin, for the world is ours for the taking.”

Darkness must fall for loving light to rise, as for a better future we all strive. Many times the light shall come and go,
and in the end, crimson rivers shall overtake the final foe.

All those with shadows in their hearts must die,
for the stars to return to their place up high.

A weapon that can hurt and bless shall be the key, seal it with a kiss.
The Queendom shall once more be free, when lovers find eternal bliss.

Whispers of agreement escaped out of scarlet-rimmed mouths, and the elated creatures of the night not in possession of a human mouth took up their own song in accordance.

Of course, every hero in a fairy tale needs an animal to accompany him on his quest of honour, that is a truth established eons before the words “once upon a time” were first written on parchment.

Out of the blanket of mist and fog emerged two flapping wings, fueled by a black heart beating to the rhythm of the cicadas. It carried with it the dampness of the swamps, that special scent that once it travels up your nostrils can never be erased from your memory, for it digs its claws into it. The bat quickly brushed the Prince’s shoulder, and just as quickly disappeared in the garden of capes that were standing guard. If you pay attention, you’ll notice that it will reappear soon enough.

The Prince’s hand was balled into a fist holding on tight to the candle. He raised it high, and hissed when the wax slowly dripped down his arms as if it wanted to melt into him, stopped only by the dark hairs that caught it like a parasol catching the rays of the sun.

The graveyard and all its surroundings were now dunked into a silence that was so hollow that only the sound of the shattered stars being blown on the cobbled pathways between the graves could be heard; they were crystals singing a lullaby to those hard times.

Amidst the near silence, all eyes were on Jacques.

Thump.

His raised fist crashed against his chest, knocking on the chambers of his rarely beating heart.

“Freedom!”, he announced, and dropped the candle. The dew on the grass gathered into an aquatic ball so that, in unison, stronger than on their own, the droplets could fulfill their mission in this story, which was to murder the flame, so that the last source of light faded away. As it should be. One must adhere to even the smallest details in prophecies.

Of course, that is not to say that there wasn’t a tiny flicker waiting to be ignited in the hearts of every vampire present. But no visible light outside, no.

“Alix, come with me.”

Jacques’ voice echoed through the graveyard, so that the vampires’ hearts lit up, and on the flames of their heart, they each lit a candle, so that a sea of lights illuminated the pathway for the young vampire with flaming locks traveling down from head to cape, and eyes of a colour that humans cannot see - it usually appears purple to those of us without any preternatural gifts.

“Are you certain, Prince?” Alix’s voice did not falter, and in it lay a burning desire for this to be true.

“Yes, Alix. Remember the prophecy. We shall no longer hide.”

An intermission is needed here before this part of the story ends and our heroes proceed. Take a few breaths with me while their lips touch and their tongues search for each other in order to seal their first promise in front of the vampires and us as a witness. They must embark on their mission for the Goddess of Equal Rights soon enough.

“Everyone, blow out your candles,” Jacques advised his followers.

When darkness had once more taken over, the two vampires traveled with the night wind, the certainty in their hearts of what must be done guiding them to their destination. Wings gently brushed against each other, and the tiny hairs of fur on them sent sharp shocks through the vampires’ whole beings. Something in them was stirring. Ready to come alive again.

On ultrasonic soundwaves, promises were exchanged. Promises of a night filled with passion when all of this was over - their feat would be accomplished soon.

Now, neither fairy tales nor prophecies are merely solarly – I always allow myself a weak attempt at lightening the mood – what I meant is, solely – about the heroes.

There is someone with a heart enwrapped in shadows, just like it was prophesied. No story can be woven out of bright fabrics only. Thus it was that in the corners of the quilt I created, there appeared the image of our villain.

He was the archetype of the evils in our midst, and had so much hatred in his heart that it has already spilled over into our world.

He had laid unjust claim on the vampire’s graveyard when he rose to power, a power he possessed because he was so blatantly, boringly normal, and pretentiously pious, all the men in town had been in favor of electing him to this position.

Lick from my cheek the tear that is running down there, for it pains me to note that this archetype is still common in our time – remember, we have merely traveled to the past and will return safely to our time, after this story is over.

Thank you. Now, let’s take a closer look at our villain.

Portly waves of flesh entangled themselves in the arms of his throne, and parts of him quivered over them in waves. If the same thing had happened to his wife – mind you, he would never have allowed a woman to sit where he sat – he would have criticized this. Very likely, he would even have sent her to one of those places that hopelessly tried to heal women’s minds through physical treatment. What he did not know is that it is impossible to heal something that needs no healing, something that is merely different, but naturally healthy.

However, that was the way of men back then, and even the mists of time have been unable to change this so far. I will be there for the next generation of readers and for them, I shall rewrite this story, in the hopes of things having progressed.

Many generations back, Mayor Etienne, or Count Etienne, which is what he liked to call himself, was signing the death warrants of yet another pair of men who had been found out to be sodomizing.

If you don’t know what sodomy means, all you need to know about it is that for many men who are in love with another man, it is part of their private lives, and that private act unjustly used to be a crime. Nothing else, nothing to worry about for anyone else.

However, the mayor, who very likely secretly lusted for this secret passion too, enjoyed abusing his power. That was his way as a villain.

He did not respect women, and he did not like men who were with other men for he found that to be too effeminate. Generally, he did not like people who didn’t look and behave like him.

Why that is, I don’t know, for there was so much darkness in his heart that not even I can look past it, although once, when he thought I wasn’t watching, I caught him squeezing the fat deposits on his chest into his wife’s brassiere.

While the mayor was proudly devouring a steak, the juices flowing out of it whenever his rotten teeth bit into it, our vampires kept traveling onwards, for they needed to make one more stop before they arrived at the mayor’s residence. They needed their rings, and an item that was only hinted at in the prophecy as the union of love and pain.

In the midst of nighttime, the calls of songbirds looking for a mate brought the snowflakes dancing in the air to a halt for a moment, for even they wanted to take in the beauty of it before they became one with the others on the ground, those awaiting them to merge into something stronger together.

Their beauty, whether alone or as part of the blanket of snow covering the cobbled streets now, was matched only by those of the rubies sitting on the top of a pair of silver rings in the jeweler’s window, in a small box laid out with velvet of such a crimson color, I need not describe what it compares to.

Now gently touch the velvet yourself, dear reader. It will warm your cold fingers. It shall grow into a blanket for you to protect your shivering body. We are not there yet, at the end, the story isn’t over, and you are as much a part of it as the vampires, the bat, and the mayor.

“Happily ever after” is a long way to go for some, especially those deviating from the narratives that greedy men have stolen from nurturing mothers and grandmothers in order to make them forcefully fit their own worldview.

Stand close to me, and with me, look into that empty corner, see the two velvet capes appear and unfold. It is our vampires Jacques and Alix, they have arrived at their first destination.

But there is someone else nearby too, merely a side character. Just like every other side character, he has an important role, however.

Stay still – the jeweler is shy – and watch him emerge from the chamber attached to the store, still in his nightgown that he has wrapped around his body tightly.

“Are they ready?” Jacques’ eyes met the jeweler’s gaze that was scanning the fingertips of the two vampires who, for most men’s liking, were too close to touching, very much like needles drawn to a lodestone.

Upwards those eyes traveled, zoning in on the androgynous face of Alix before setting on Jacques.

“Swear your oath.”

Jacques did, and out of the pocket of his cape, he took the vial of crimson he had promised to the jeweler in return for those unsacred rings.

He crossed the few yards between them assuredly, and the jeweler shrunk back just in time before the skin on their faces met.

Dewdrops as those blooming on the morning glory filled the space between them, a common result when heat and coldness meet, such as that of the vampire’s skin of ice and the jeweler’s epidermis cleansing itself with sweat from what he thought might be a fever dream.

A quick gesture of gratitude broke the spell between them. Just a peck on the cheek. Stirring feelings in the jeweler he didn’t know were in him and making him aware that he was indeed wide awake.

Among gloved hands, the rings exchanged owners. They were handed to the vampire along with the most symmetrical rose he had seen in his long life. A gift, a symbol, and a token of hope at once.

Those other oaths the vampires had waited so long to swear will not have to wait much longer.

The prophecy was already being repeated around the world, glints of the belief in a better world to come soon turned into lightning bugs that showed Jacques and Alix the way to the final destination of their quest.

They took flight with kindled hearts.

With their path now laid out before them clear as a crystal, they quickly covered those few more miles before they arrived at the mayor’s residence and made true the promise they had both sworn to the vampire clan before they left.

In the meantime, the mayor had dozed off from the overconsumption of that liquid he liked to consider to be the blood of Christ. How could it be wrong to drink a bottle or two every night, if it meant you become more like Jesus Christ, he asked himself.

However, his slumber was not meant to last until the morning light, for he was woken by three sharp knocks on his door that punctured the illusion of power he indulged in in his dreams.

Before he could lift himself from between the chair’s arms to angrily stride to the door to scold his wife for bothering him while he was attending to business, as he liked to pretend, the door was broken down.

He did not even have time to unglue his lips that had stuck together from the drool caused by one dream he’d never confess to anyone.

Thump.

Two figures emerged from the shadows. A man and… another man? Or was it a woman? Or both at once?

The mayor’s thoughts raced back and forth, unable to come to a conclusion. The only thing our villain despised more than what he perceived to be weakness, such as the display of emotions, was encountering something he couldn’t explain.

He did not even notice the way the beings seemed to float gently above the ground like clouds traveling across the night sky. He subconsciously explained that to himself as a trick of the light – or absence of it – but that other issue… No, that bothered him to his deepest core.

“What in…?”

The words caught in his throat, too many hateful thoughts had entangled themselves in each other in his airways. They had rendered him unable to exclaim what he wanted. That does not matter to us, however. Nothing he had ever said in his pitiful life was worth hearing.

The shadows were drawing closer now, and one of the vampires raised his hand in the air while holding that of the second vampire with his other.

Quickly, the second vampire mirrored the movements of the first.

Did this foreshadow what was about to happen to the mayor?

I believe so, dear reader. Acts of resistance have power, and now, Jacques and Alix were bracing themselves for the greatest act of defiance they could think of.

Bravely, they faced the prying eyes of other readers I have taken on this journey, those who judged them and agreed with the mayor.

Still, they stood tall, and their embrace became a shield on which those gazes bounced off like bees falling after their sting.

Unapologetically true to themselves they were indeed, like all those heroes and heroines in fairy tales that fight against the oppression of others.

Thus it came to be that Jacques and Alix gazed into the stars they saw in each other’s eyes while the gasps of the mayor faded into the background, slowly, until they entered oblivion.

Yes, the time was now.

It was not merely the wish to fulfill their destiny and hold true to the oath they had sworn already. Neither was it the blaze in their hearts when they thought about the one they were about to swear to each other after they completed their quest.

Their manoeuvre was fueled by something stronger than destiny.

It was a feeling that is unknown to the hearts of many men – one erupting like a volcano that had lain dormant for too long, with pure love, as pure and simple as a butterfly being carried by the morning breeze.

There was no hatred for the mayor anymore now, for he did not matter. His story would be over soon, concluded before theirs even truly began.

Reflecting each other like dark waters following the movements of the moon, Jacques and Alix licked their luscious lips to ensure that their fangs were out.

They drew closer to each other, and inhaled each other’s breaths.

Their kiss lingered into eternity.

The taste of each other’s tongues drove them onwards on their mission, and the mayor’s heart ceased to beat.

No physical interference was needed.

From long, slow beats, very much like that of a harp, his heartbeat adapted the rhythm of a staccato. Ultimately, the shadows surrounding it could not restrain it anymore.

It shattered through his chest.

Left behind was a hole that filled with the mayor’s flesh, blood, and sinew, gaping like the hungry maw of a wolf never to be filled.

The heart simply lay there, next to the mayor, like a stone washed ashore by a river of hope.

The entwined hands of Jacques and Alix reached into the hole and tore at its ends, widening it, and emptying it like a child greedily gutting a pumpkin for Samhain.

What they saw was an onyx gulf so dark, it threatened to consume even the light of their love.

But they persevered, and the embers burning inside of them turned into a roaring inferno. They were close enough to the end of their mission to glimpse the final page of this chapter.

Alix held the tenebrous piece the mayor’s body had yielded with the hand that was not holding that of Jacques, and Jacques drew on the power of all those believing in the two vampires. Charged with this power, he pierced the cold, stone-like object with the thorns of the rose.

The heart broke into a gazillion shards that tried to assemble, but merely managed to weaken each other when they clashed against in each other in a struggle for dominion.

Hands melted into each other and took up the rose once more. Jacques and Alix dipped it into the mayor’s cavity and in Stygian ink, they signed the verdict on his ashen skin.

Their smiles widened, for dinner had been served.

When their lips found each other once more, shreds of skin still hung from their teeth, but they refused to let what little remained of the patriarchy stop them. They would get to that later.

Some say that their kiss never ended, and that the stars never ceased to rise.

That their fragments still adjust and convene, even today, long after the vampires arrived back at the graveyard.

There, the other vampires had lit up every candle that had ever been put on their graves, and the lightning bugs pulled at the strings of the harp to play the Moonlight Sonata.

To this, Jacques and Alix committed their eternal lives to each other.

Their oath was sealed not only by the teeth breaking through the layers of the skin on their necks. No, it was also sealed by the knowledge that they were blessed.

And thus concludes this fairy tale. Thank you for traveling with me.

Be safe in the knowledge that forevermore, our vampires will fight for equality, and spend their eternal lives together, happily, immortally, ever after, in the Queendom of Equality.