PFC Episode 25: Trapped

Lady Loretta tells the terrifying tale of the Ancient Vampire Titus Maximus Valarie, an auger and bird lover who built a hut along a wetland that disappeared during the Cape Ann Earthquake. Trapped under the earth and unable to die, Titus's only option is to   reach for freedom.

For more information or to ask Lady Loretta a question: please visit https://www.elizabethguizzetti.com/paperflowerconsortium or send her a message on the Patreon. July's topic Stop summoning Demons!

Written and Performed by Elizabeth Guizzetti

Music:

Opening and Closing music: Loretta's Theme by Evan Witt. Learn More at www.wittynotes.com

Transcript

Opening: 
Vampires of the PFC 25 – Trapped

 Recording by Loretta Fabron Onfoy former lady of the Kingdome of France current Historian and Librarian of the PFC. 

Chapter Introduction

Last month, I spoke about a vampire who more or less contently lived in a cave for 200 years. So much quality of existence comes from freedom.

There is not alot of introduction in this one, only tonight’s story is about a different cave and an existence without freedom. I will call this story trapped, because it also answers another reason to join a coven is If you go missing the coven will notice. If you go missing as a rogue vampire, you just go missing. 

 I will say this tale is about an ancient and whenever we talk about ancients we must skip a lot. 

Chapter: Titus Maximus Valarius loves birds: 

Titus Maximus Valarius was made a vampire in Ancient Rome.  Born the fourth son, he worked as an augur of ancient Rome. An augur is a type of oracle who interprets omens derived from the observation of birds –their motions, migrations, long flights, cries, etc.  Titus loved and still loves birds. In fact, he was changed so he might be like a bird as back then vampires were considered to be one with birds. With money and a good family, he had a happy enough existence in Rome. I will not speak of his existence after the fall of the Roman empire tonight, for I will be filling it in later in another lesson when I speak of his named first born, However, he escaped the witch burnings by funding a ship to America.  

He made it across the Atlantic during the mid 17th century without fail by eating salted meat and rats. In fact, because the ship was free from rats most of the sailors had a pleasant crossing with less illnesses than commonly seen in the six-week crossing. 

Life in the new colony was difficult and he existed primarily outside it. Titus left the colony before anyone realized he was a vampire. He did not fear the Native Americans in the area. Indeed, most were friendly towards the new settlers. He was a man of his time and he did make a trade in skin, that is he married an indigenous girl so he might settle in part of the indigenous people’s land– I will not call her a woman because she was a teenager. He told the indigenous people he wanted to grow wheat, but that was a lie. 

The ground was too soft and salty to grow wheat, which was fine with Titus as of course, he did 

not eat wheat. He did not want to fish the Atlantic. He just wanted to exist. 

What he truly liked about the land was the animals and bird colonies. He began to document the birds near the colony.

There were other people who left the colony, who did not want the regimented society of the colony, some returned to England. Some lived beside the indigenous, intermarried them. But that history too goes beyond the story I am telling tonight. 

Titus built himself and his wife a saltbox house with a loft for storage near a natural spring. It was a small timber-framed cabin, the lower level acted as the existence space. She was younger than the women he kept in Europe and he insisted on what is known in the Catholic church as a Josephite marriage. I do not know if they were happy. Within a year, she returned to her people. She likely remarried. He did not know or care. He had come to America to be a naturalist. His wife simply didn't interest him. Sadly, she was a means to an end which was settling near the spring. 

Occasionally people stopped by his cabin to use the spring, but otherwise the indigenous people left him alone and the colony also left him alone. Perhaps they thought the cabin was deserted, perhaps they forgot about him all together as he slowly wrote what he called his Maximus Opus: The Documentation of the American Bird. 

And then the Cape Ann earthquake took place on November 18, 1755, at approximately 4:30 AM local time. Its epicenter is believed to have been offshore, approximately 24 miles east.

This quake was well document. Sailors on a ship more than 200 miles offshore felt the quake, and mistook it at first for their ship running aground. Future President of the United States John Adams, then staying at his father's house in Braintree, Massachusetts, was awakened by the quake, which impressed him so much that he wrote is his diary the quake "continued near four minutes" and that "[t]he house seemed to rock and reel and crack as if it would fall in ruins about us." 

The region suffered several aftershocks. 

While there were no known deaths, many buildings were destroyed. Many residents of Boston and the surrounding areas attributed the quake to God, and it occasioned a brief increase in religious fervor in the city. However it is this point which interests us tonight, my beloveds, observers also reported that several springs dried up, new ones were created, and cracks appeared in the ground.  

And this is how Titus disappeared to all who may have been acquainted with him. 

Titus was awake, writing during the first quake. He was frightened, but had been through earthquakes before. His house seemed sturdy enough. It was during one of the aftershocks, water suddenly shifted and came up through his floorboards. His house immediately sank. Within minutes, his house was submerged. He climbed up to the loft and out the window and saw the sun one last time. Then his house sunk deeper into the ground. He tried to climb onto the roof and find something to grab hold to, but the trees were too far/ He got to the edge of the sink hole at one point, but the fetid mud was too slick to hang on and the exposed white roots of grasses were too slender to hold his weight. 

Chapter Titus disappears

Worse, the sinking house caused suction. Pulled down by the torrent, he followed his cabin down into the icy muck and deeper into blackness. 

His ears popped with the cold water. His head felt like it would collapse from the pressure. 

Muddy water slid into his mouth, his nose. And as other vampires have suffered, Titus suffered the pain of vocal chord spasms followed by drowning. But of course, he could not die. 

Vampires can see well in the dark, but we need some light to see and the black water was filled with debris and he could not see anything.

The current struck him with small wreckage. At least one log which hit his arm, breaking it so steering was impossible for what seemed like at eternity. 

Lungs full, half frozen, and exhausted he moved until he found a solid surface. And he tried to dig himself out. His nails broke. Liquid followed his bleeding fingers and toes. He fell asleep and when he was awake, kept digging. Without food, he grew weaker. Inch by inch he gained and lost ground. He prayed to every God and Goddess that he knew and begged for assistance. 

He finally got above the water table, but the thick abrasive dirt sucked at his clothes, slowly moldering through the fabric. As the fabric disintegrated, it sloughed his skin raw. Dirt fell into his mouth. His nose filled with dirt. His eye ducts burned with irritation. Every breath he inhaled dirt and dust. The pressure also compacted his chest not allowing him to breathe.

Drowning in water was terrible, but drowning in dirt and pebbles was worse. 

Stygian mud, dirt, worms, shrews, and other small animals entered his body and moved through his digestive system, but the smaller animals followed the dirt into his lungs, kidneys. But inches were gained with this digestion. The pain of passing the impurities from his digestive tract was agony, but the pain of passing the kidney’s and urinary tract were much worse. Each time the pressure of his kidneys forced impurities through his urinary tract, he vomited in pain, most often reswallowing whatever foul, putrid thing he had regurgitated. 

At some point, he came to something hard. Something he could not eat without shattering his teeth. He slowly shifted himself around the beastly rocky structure. Not knowing if he was moving up or down was panic-inducing. Not knowing if the beastly structure would ever end was worse. He feared he was lost under tomb of granite, but as all there was to do was dig and sleep, he dug and slept. Day after day, night after night. Time lost all meaning. There was only one word with meaning and that word was survival. 

When he found soft earth again, he rejoiced in the small victory and kept digging.

Then it was, his fingers felt air. He pressed around and found small round objects. He pulled his hand back. He could not see, so he felt them. He was sure he found a King Fisher’s tunnel. From his work and observations, he knew he was probably a body length from the surface, perhaps two body lengths at most. Though it was muffled with his ears filled with mud, he was sure, he heard the ratching cry turned into a scream as the King Fisher’s tunnel filled with a human size form. A sharp pain went through his hand as a sharp beak pecked him. He kept moving. He did not even fear the sun any longer. His bloody hand was suddenly on fire. Titus would later regret the destruction of the nest, but at that moment, all he could do was reach for freedom. He felt the warm arm. He kept reaching until he was free. 

He began to weep, snot and tears clearing his eyes. His sight was blurry as his lenses were scratched and even cleaned it would take him days to regain his sight. 

Now forgive me for being indelicate, and if you have a weak stomach please skip ahead for a minute or so.’

His skin burned in the afternoon air, but his distended body was mostly covered in mud and it was late enough in the day that he survived the burning. Taking some cover in the shaded side of the river bed, he gargled with the river water. The grit moved from his mouth. He gargled again, slowly making air space. He gargled until he began to retch. Once his body coughed up the dirt in his lungs and vomited and moved the filth from his system. It would take weeks to fully free him self, but within a night, he was breathing air again. 

Without money or even clothing, he did not know where he would go. He had no idea of the year or the mortal society he might have found himself in. He feared people, but he feared being closed in more. 

He lay in the shade of trees, roots twisted around him, but he could not take cover, he feared cover. He feared the earth. He had no home.  He heard a low growl of some beast he had never heard before. He hid beside his tree, trembling, but it left him be. 

As his ears cleared of mud and his sight cleared, he heard the growl again and saw the ship without a sail, but several paddles propelling it - A steam driven engine.

This is how we know, he was at least under the ground for five decades. He would also soon learn he was still in Massachusetts and though society had move forward somewhat, judicial cruelty was still well known. 

Birds flew over him. He cried over the King Fisher. 

Stumbling in his nakedness, he was too weak to hunt, he found a gentle cow. As he crept closer, she did not move as she was used to being handled. He bit into her shoulder and took a sip. She mooed and kicked him off her. The blood energized him. He moved on to the next cow. Only taking a little at a time. While it did not make his supernatural, he did grow slightly stronger and in better health. 

Beliving he was alone, he tried to steal clothes from a line. He took a whack on the head from the tithing man. As he had no money to pay the fine for drunkenness, he was pilloried to sober up. He got a few more strikes during his stay. Once on the back of the knees which made his legs buckle. His back began to smoke on the first day, but a goodly woman took pity on him and covered him with an old cloak and gave him sips of clam broth. 

“Do you know me?” he croaked.

“You are one of God’s creatures.” Was all she said in reply.

He would learn from another man pilloried for drunkeness beside him that she was the jailer's grown daughter. She was gentle and kind. And the jailer was not a bad man either - just a man with a job to do. 

Titus ignored the other man. 

I would love to tell you this was the beginning of a romance and that Titus was a changed man, but this is not that type of story. She gave him soup because she pitied him. He took it because he was starving. He stewed in the stocks, growing angrier as bits of bare skin burned.

The jailor released him from his humiliation and allowed him to keep the cloak. 

The first thing Titus did was creep to the tithing man’s house where he slept beside his wife. His vampire powers gone, he knew he was taking a risk. 

Titus did not harm the woman, instead he dressed in the thithing man's best clothes. He found the money he had collected, but had not yet turned in. Then he cautiously pulled the snoring man out of bed, then just outside of the cottage. He took his blood to the point of death. 

Then Titus started walking west. There is no happy ending. We are vampires, we don’t end. 

Now as Titus existed for thousands of years and refers to this time as a bit of misfortune, but in fact suffers from Post Traumatic Nightmares and Panic Attacks. He still loves birds as he feels it was the birds who have saved him. And he did write his opus and we have a copy in our library. Please be careful with it as the images are hand colored.  

I say if you don’t want to be trapped for centuries, get to know your neighbors. Ensure there is someone who will check on you if they don’t see you for a few weeks. And now a word from our sponsor. MyT Clothier

Chapter: A word from MYT Clothier

Vampires, Do you dislike ripped denim, thin fabrics, and how well made modern clothing is covered in labels? MYT Clothier creates handmade custom clothing in assessible styles for all body types from all eras—including this one! We use the best quality handwoven silk embroidery from China, Damask from France and Italian Embroidery and Leathers and other fine fabrics.  And if you wish to look like you stepped out of time or even reality with fantastical designs, we can make that happen too. 

And werewolf friends, we have a wide variety of double woven stretchy materials for those quick transformations. If the cloth tears when you transform, we’ll fix or replace the garment for free! 

At MYT Clothier, quality is our style. Call for a fitting tonight. 

Chapter: Q and A:

Strangely all my initiates are sitting in quiet concern about this night's lesson. I think we may have some people who leave the program, but I did have an earlier question from Initiate Lynn. She asked recently: I heard a new type of music called Goth Wave or Dark Wave where some of the musicians pretended to be vampires. How do vampires feel about “vampire” muscians and cosplayers?

Darling Lynn, We feel nothing about vampire cosplayers, musicians, and anyone else who finds the beauty in the romantic Baroque and Victorian fashions and architecture.  Humans who follow their bliss do not affect us in the slightest. 

Besides, during the reign of Louis the 14th and the 15th Pascaline and I were vampire singers pretending to be human and I’ve already admitted how we seduced Kings and dukes and the occasional duchess for the good of our family. Now that time in our existences is over, but I will not pretend we did not enjoy the thrill of our intrigues. Now this is an assumption on my part, but because they are so deep into their aesthetic, these musicians probably would find vampires pretty dull and would not like hanging out with us. So delight, cosplayers, Yolo and all that. 

 Closing Credits.

 The Paper Flower Consortium Podcast was written and performed by Elizabeth Guizzetti. You can learn more about her books, including the books featuring vampires in the same universe, by going to www.Elizabethguizzetti.com.
 VO: If you have questions or comments for Lady Loretta, please contact her at info@paperflowerconsortium.com or through the Paper Flower Consortium Patreon. And check out upcoming topics there or at the website.

 If you love this podcast, like and share this episode. Please consider donating either onetime or through the Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/paperflowerconsortium

 The amazing intro and outro music was written by Evan Witt and you can learn more about his music at www.wittynotes.com.

Thanks for listening 

(Copyright by Elizabeth Guizzetti)