Dear Diary,

Purpose is an odd thing. I’ve felt it before, quite recently in fact, but the present necessity of inflicting it upon others has left it squirming at the forefront of my mind. Mary’s thralls, of course, feel their purpose is to obey her, and for the moments after I lean on them they feel the same about me. And then, there is the urge, the aching, gnawing urge, to indulge them in that. To take and take and take without thought, without concern, without regret. In some sense, that is my ‘purpose’.

Mary encourages this in me. She’s made a great big show of ‘allowing’ me use of her favorite, Caitlyn, as if that is her right to give, and as if she doesn’t retain ‘primary mistress’ status, as if Caitlyn was not asked independently, and as if I have not primarily been using Caitlyn to better understand how I can most effectively release my control over her..

Not… Using isn’t the right word. God, I sound like such a fucking pastiche even saying something like that. If Mary were here, she would mock me— She only does it more now that I’ve made it quite clear which of us is stronger, more capable of utter domination. Perhaps that's exactly what she wants.

Sometimes I convince myself that it is her purpose to learn from me, to seek from me that resistance which she is incapable of claiming for herself. I said it before… All the predatory tendencies need to go somewhere, Mary is capable of meaningful consent, and I’ll be literally damned if I allow these impulses to go anywhere near Caitlyn, or Natalie, or anyone else outside the right context.

Hm. Still not beating the ‘corruption arc’ allegations, I suppose, but I’ve hardly gone to the wall just yet. Caitlyn is only occasionally mine, and Natalie remains soundly asleep in her bed (I don’t stalk her, it’s just hard not to notice when I can smell her from across the building). These new… needs are being managed, and I am learning in ways which can still be of use to the wider world. My purpose.

…

Long ago, I replaced one purpose with another. My ‘mistress’ had died, and she had taken all that I was with her. I was hollow, more or less, without memory to guide me, slowly but surely squirming out of the padded cage she had left me in. My new purpose, then, was to rebuild. To use what little I had to deduce the rest. Little did I know then that I would live long enough to actually fulfill that purpose, and that it would only be the beginning.

All that is to say, it is time. Mary is here with me, and is ready to do it. I didn’t even have to force her, sexually or otherwise— Either she’s decided to be decent or she’s being ‘normal’ about all the thralls her begetter wiped blank. Either way, when I return, my freedom will be complete.

I was turned by a woman named Violet Russell-Gray. We can start there. I couldn’t recall this fact until just now, nor could I recall a second of my life before this fact was manifest. So, I have a lot to make sense of.

I was born in Brașov, indeed sometime in 1897. The exact date is unclear as ever, and I don’t really care about it, but I know for sure now why it was so difficult to research at the time— that is, I now remember the name which would’ve been on that particular birth certificate.

It’s… not the most pleasant. ‘Dead-names’ rarely are. But I am happy to remember it, because life is about more than what is pleasant. Case in point, I do not believe I was the happiest child—I was bullied in those ways only Brașov boys did, my attempts at romance were plagued by women who wanted from me something I was not, and my parents’ greatest contribution was in leaving me to my own devices most of the time—but that time was nevertheless one of development. And best of all, it eventually ended.

Then, there was Corina. My love. I can’t tell you how relieved I am to recall her smile, her eyes, the strange way she looked at me when we’d venture out into the mountains, the shape of her body. I also can’t articulate the extent to which my instinctive speculation on the taste of her blood is making me want to stake myself immediately. But disregarding that.

I think… our relationship was interesting. In the modern parlance, she was probably a lesbian. I certainly was, stunted as I was by various factors. But despite this, she was to be married off to one Bogdan Popescu, a man whose existence I seem to have never bothered to remember.

I remember why I didn’t care, at least, now: I never really talked to him. I only knew him for a few weeks following their betrothal before he took her on that fateful business trip to England. I assume he probably died after that—a tragedy, of course, but not the one which animated me to revenge.

Violet Russell-Gray was a woman of that unique pedigree which could only find its home in this late Victorian era of English history. I knew that much already from contemporary records, but all that is new only assures me of the fact. She lived in reaction to that world, in only the most bizarre ways, and she relentlessly fetishized my people (or, my people in addition to all the Germans and Hungarians living in Brașov, which she clearly believed to also be ‘my people’) in manners both sexual and not. I’m not even sure if she was in line with her peers… Whatever the reason, when I later demanded explanation, she claimed it was her admiration of our ‘backwards ways’ which drew her to move to Transylvania.

I’m getting ahead of myself. First, Corina returned from her trip. Bogdan was nowhere to be seen (I seriously don’t even remember noticing this fact at the time) and Corina hadn’t the foggiest who I was. And then she did, one day, for a few hours… but she spent those hours raving to me about how she’d found the ‘love of her life’, and how her soul had been ‘defiled’, and so on and so forth. Constantly drawing attention to the ‘sodomistic’ nature of that love, never quite managing to describe anything about its target.

Eventually, the time did come for her ‘love’ to meet me. At the theatre, I was presented with a strange English woman who chose to introduce herself by staring menacingly at no one in particular before hissing some vague platitudes about death and hell in her remarkably terrible attempt at Romanian. Distinctly ‘rizz-less’, as a child might say, and yet the words had something deeply corrupting behind them.

I recognized it in time—I had heard the story of Dracula somewhere or other, and it wasn’t as if vampires were a new species, anyway—so I retreated without hesitation. Miraculously, I managed to actually get away.

But I never saw Corina again.

A new piece of information: I did not instantly seek revenge. No, it seems that first I sought to just… move on, to ignore what had happened. I suppose this was my nature at the time… one of cowardice, anxiety, and vapid agreeableness. That took a long time to change, frankly, even after my freedom.

Back then, though, it only took a month before I couldn't handle the emptiness anymore, the quiet, the cold. I was comfortable enough, but my love was being manipulated, used, made to forget all that she wanted, all that she stood for, all that she was to me. I remember the day I snapped, now… I was helping out at the church, and I saw my peers praying, devoted utterly to God. Far from sparking some holy fire inside me, though, it mostly just reminded me of Corina, of how she’d been acting in those last days. Corina, who had always been one of the few people in my life broadly uninterested in faith, who had always cared more for people than for gods. Corina, now nothing but a vessel of that lamentable aristocrat who dared place herself above all we had ever known.

It gets me a bit hot under the collar even now. Or… cold, I suppose… but the point is, I decided then and there that I could tolerate no further appeasement. With nothing but a few cloves of garlic, a stake carved from a fencepost, and the cross I then kept ‘round my neck, I set out to free my love from her clutches.

The remainder is… still difficult to parse. I can confirm my long-held suspicion that she resided in Castle Bran, I suppose, but that was obvious enough given where I woke up and the persistent rumors of vampires in that place. Besides that, though, we quickly enter the period where having too few memories is no longer the problem.

Obviously I was defeated by her, but I remember her draining me instantly, and I remember her convincing me to come willingly, and I remember her dying by my hand but taking me anyway, and I remember all sorts of other recountings, but I have no idea which is true. And after that, it's all just a complete mess. Every memory conflicts with at least one other, and none of them feel any more real.

It makes sense… my reality was utterly shaped by her for those years, a fact which she leaned into quite desperately. Some days I lived an ordinary life at my home, believing Corina had never existed; other days, I was a blank, obedient thing incapable of forming memories at all; other days, I remembered everything clearly but was powerless to resist; I remember most days simultaneously as at least two of those. I was gaslit beyond any mind’s ability to make sense of, human or otherwise.

At least I can now say with certainty that it must have started when I was around 18 or 19, as I remember being an adult but I am certain the Romanian Army hadn’t invaded Brașov yet. Come to think of it, I have no idea what role Violet might have played in the residency of the Romanian royalty after the war… but I also don’t honestly care, and I’m no historian, either. Maybe Dr. Rednam would have something to say, I’ll have to let them know the next time I get the chance. Assuming they can safely meet with me in person, of course…

Well, in any case, Violet died in 1931 when she tripped and fell on an especially pointy fence, and the rest is history. In the haze of memory, I think I can confirm the assumption I’d had regarding the state of my body afterwards… with everything I now remember about this woman, and all the things she claimed about the ‘confused sexual roles’ of ‘my people’, it is easy to believe that she would have gone so far as to phone up Magnus Hirschfeld or whoever else such that I might’ve been ‘debased’ further. It may have even been my idea… I have a couple memories to that effect, now. A nice thought, really— Perhaps this body is even more true to myself than Cheryl or I could’ve ever known.

But whatever. As I say, the rest is history: I left for the US in search of someplace which didn’t feel like a sort of endless memory hell to exist in, I drifted from place to place searching for freedom, I had my little decades-long back-and-forth regarding my endocrine needs, I found new purpose in my work, and now, that purpose has finally, after all this time, led me back here.

When I lay it all out like that, the blood lust feels like a pittance. I have remained stalwart for over a hundred years now, and I will remain so for well over a hundred more. There is much to be done before my purpose is fulfilled; one day, I will see it all done. I will see murky waters finally clear, I will see Mary at last free to question what was done to her, I will see a world where what happened to Corina, to myself, to Mary, and indeed even to Violet, can never happen again. This is my promise, a promise to a stifled Brașovean farmer who I have finally had the chance to meet.

…It's a big promise. We’ll see if I can live up to it, Diary. One day.

Sincerely,

Luminita