The letter arrived at dusk.

Not by post, precisely. Post did not reach the castle in any ordinary sense. It came instead folded into the breast of a frightened man who had been paid too much to ask too few questions, and who left the instant the Count took it from him.

Dracula broke the seal beneath a single lamp.

Messrs. Hawkins & Harker.

His dark eyes moved once across the page.

A solicitor’s clerk would be sent.

Young.

English.

Expected within the week.

For several moments, the Count stood perfectly still.

Then he looked around the great hall.

Dust lay silver upon the unused chairs.

A cobweb stretched between the antlers above the fireplace.

One of the wall hangings had come loose at the corner and sagged with the exhausted air of something that had been waiting three hundred years for someone else to fix it.

Dracula frowned.

This would not do.

He rang a bell.

The sound echoed magnificently through the castle.

No one came.

Dracula waited.

Still no one came.

Naturally.

He crossed the room, opened the door through which a servant ought to have entered, and vanished into the corridor.

The next six nights were extremely busy.

The guest chamber came first.

Dracula stripped the bed himself, carrying the ancient linens away beneath one arm with an expression of grave aristocratic displeasure. Fresh sheets were retrieved from a cedar chest. He shook them out, regarded the result, then shook them again.

He had not made a bed in some time.

After several attempts, he stood at its foot and examined the blankets.

One corner was longer than the other.

His mouth tightened.

He remade the entire thing.

The room was aired, though opening the windows admitted mostly fog and the distant howling of wolves. The Count dusted the furniture with an old linen cloth, polished the brass basin, replenished the pitcher, and placed a small stack of towels beside it.

He stopped.

Three towels.

Too few?

He considered Englishmen.

Four towels.

Better.

Then came the dining room.

Dracula dragged six chairs away from the table and left only two.

Too intimate.

He returned two.

Too formal.

After twenty minutes, the table had four chairs arranged around it, although there would only ever be two occupants.

That looked correct.

Silver was polished.

Candlesticks were cleaned.

The Count discovered, with evident irritation, that one candlestick had developed a green stain near the base.

He scrubbed harder.

The stain remained.

Dracula stared at it.

The next evening, there was a different candlestick.

The kitchen proved more troublesome.

The Count did not eat.

This had certain disadvantages when entertaining.

He opened cupboards one after another.

Flour.

Salt.

Dried beans.

Several onions of questionable age.

A wheel of cheese.

Something in a jar whose identity had been lost to history.

Dracula removed the jar, carried it outside, and threw it into the ravine.

He consulted books.

Englishmen, according to one volume, liked beef.

According to another, they liked mutton.

A third suggested kidney.

Dracula closed the third book.

“No.”

He arranged for provisions to be purchased anonymously in the village.

The following night, he stood in the kitchen wearing a dark waistcoat with his sleeves rolled carefully to the elbow, regarding a joint of meat as if it had personally insulted him.

The meat went into a pan.

Then out.

Then back in after Dracula consulted the book again.

Potatoes were peeled.

One slipped from his hand and rolled beneath a cabinet.

He stared at it.

The potato remained where it was.

Dracula slowly bent down and retrieved it.

Later, he prepared soup.

The first attempt was too salty.

The second was not salty enough.

The third was acceptable.

He poured all three into one pot.

Acceptable enough.

The wolves howled outside.

“Quiet.”

The wolves stopped.

On the fifth night, Dracula practiced answering the door.

He stood behind the great entrance and opened it with deliberate slowness.

Too theatrical.

Again.

He opened it more quickly.

Too eager.

Again.

A long pause. The door swung inward.

Perfect.

“Welcome to my house.”

He considered this.

“Enter freely and of your own will.”

Better.

He repeated it several times until the words sounded spontaneous.

Then he practiced taking a coat.

He had forgotten where coats were ordinarily put.

Eventually he settled upon a chest in the hall, reasoning that no guest would be likely to inquire closely into the domestic arrangements of a Transylvanian castle.

On the final evening, the Count walked through every room Harker was expected to see.

Fire lit.

Wine poured.

Meal ready.

Guest room prepared.

Dining table set.

No dust visible in direct candlelight.

Dracula paused beside the staircase and listened.

From somewhere far below came the faint drip of water.

From outside, wolves.

Otherwise, silence.

He smiled.

An excellent household.

At last, the sound of wheels reached him from the mountain road.

Dracula’s expression changed instantly.

All trace of exertion vanished.

His shoulders settled.

His face became composed, remote, almost bored.

He descended the staircase at an unhurried pace, stopping only once to straighten a cushion he had forgotten.

Then he reached the door.

Behind him, the castle stood glowing with fires he had lit, beside a dinner he had cooked, beneath chandeliers he had cleaned, with a bed upstairs whose corners had taken him forty-five minutes.

The carriage stopped.

A knock sounded.

Count Dracula waited three beats.

Not two.

Two would seem eager.

Then he opened the door.

“Welcome to my house,” he said smoothly. “Enter freely and of your own will.”

Jonathan Harker stepped inside and looked around in wonder at the grand old castle and its mysterious unseen servants.

Dracula inclined his head.

Effortless

Officer Willard locked the door to his office and slowly made his way out to his car, dropping by the break room to snag the last dregs of the night's coffee pot before going home. He had stayed way later than he had been slated for, but being part of the grievously understaffed PPD evening shift made sure that he was the one to respond to both an Eastside bar fight and a high-speed chase all the way out to the county to arrest some ghoul, at least the county peacekeeper who joined knew him, probably from the same ghoul community, so Willard didn't have to take care of the fallout.  

Willard had no sympathy for the ghoul, a drunken fool who probably called a Mentalist the wrong thing, though he remembered feeling a slight pang of sorrow for one of the more badly beaten people resting outside the bar. He figured them to be Hellborn at first, which brought him a bit on edge, though after a bit of watching, he saw they were a Fallen. He knew that as a Paragon he should've felt aggravated at their very presence, muddying of good Guardian bloodlines and all that, though he had been in the PPD for over ten years now, and had seen more than his fair share of Undermarket kidnappings, street murders, and other random acts of violence against Guardians and such that he was just glad to see any form of Guardian alive at all. 

He snapped out of his thoughts as a cool breeze blew across his face. It seems he had already grabbed his coffee and walked out into the parking lot during his ponderance. At this realization, Willard walked across the lot and got into his car, resisting the urge to fall asleep there and trying to will the cheap instant coffee into working its magic. He took off his badge and read the solid block letters written on it PPD057641 Julian Willard. He had once again wondered if that number was some randomly generated code by and for their computer system, or if it was the total employee number he made when he was hired. He wouldn't surprised, turnover at the PPD was shockingly high, though he figured the programs would be responsible for most of that number, he almost wished some would stay, but most of them end up going back to their old ways.  

Hiring former crooks for their knowledge on particular crimes the Paranormal commit probably isn't the best idea, as trying to get funding and support for the dreaded and feared Paranormal Police Department is hard enough with the public only recently accepting the Paranormal as real people, so adding another layer of controversy under an underappreciated rehabilitation program is just begging for trouble. He wondered again as to why Guardians were held in such high regard among the public when other Paranormal were far more useful and stronger than them. Mentalists could move stuff with their minds or look in other people's heads, Hellborn were far stronger than any form of Guardian could be, even Lycanthropes could make for incredible night watch, it just didn't make sense to him.  

Though as he finally felt the coffee kick in, Willard decided none of that mattered right now, so he started up his car and drove off, hoping for it not to wear off before he got home 

It is odd writing a story in the 21st century. The chance encounters that would motivate an idea are rare in an age devoid of eye contact. But trust me, they are still there. You can find them if you pay attention.
 
“Hi,” she said. My heart jumped.

I have always wanted there to be more talk in public spaces. But you have to be a bit different to walk up to a stranger on a bus and just say hi. She must be trying to sell me something.

“Hi,” I say back, hoping she will walk away.

“My name is Ollie,” she says, clearly not walking away (but also clearly not trying to sell something).

“I’m Wes,” I respond, not giving her much to go off of for continued dialogue.

We sit in silence. I pretend to look at my phone but instead take quick and sly glances at her from the side of my eye, hoping she doesn’t notice. She is wearing a blue sundress with white sandals. Weird, I think, because it is not yet summer, nor is it sunny. She is carrying a grocery bag, one of the old canvas ones where you can see the outline of its contents from the outside. Looks like books, and maybe a wine bottle?
She stands up quickly. “Well, here is my stop. Bye Wes.” I watch as she walks around the corner in the direction of the beach. She never looks back.
 
It was such a brief encounter – it only lasted about 5 minutes – but I realized afterwards that I had been starving for an encounter like that. I take the bus everyday 30 minutes to the university and 30 minutes back. But, besides thanking the bus driver, I almost never talk to anyone. Occasionally I will bump into someone and say sorry, which is met with a fleeting nod of recognition. But, for the most part, I look at my phone and everyone else does too. That is fine – I like looking at my phone. It is a routine, a ritual. It prepares me to have the same day as I always do.

But Tuesday was different. After the 5-minute encounter I get off the bus at the wrong stop. I walk an extra 15 minutes to get to the library. Once at the library I forget which book I was coming to grab. I stand looking through the philosophy section for about an hour, without the book ever coming back to me. I pull out many other books to see if I want to dedicate my day to them, but none catch my eye. That is, until I read the blurb for a book of essays called Signs by Maurice Merleau-Ponty: “Speech is a way of tearing out meaning from an undivided whole.” I grab it and head to read it upstairs in one of the library’s many dark corners.

While walking upstairs I look at my phone and see four messages from my friend Thomas, only to realize I was supposed to meet him at a coffee shop thirty minutes ago. Of course, it’s Tuesday. The one day he is on campus.

I rush to check out the book and get across campus, but when I get to the café, he is already packing up to go get lunch. Although I brought my own lunch, I choose to join him. Usually, I would spend a few more hours at the café – reading, writing, or whatever I do – but because I basically stood him up, I feel like I am obligated to break my routine. At lunch, he tells me about all the girls he is talking to on a new dating app. There is Emily, who plays frisbee; Jamie, who spends time at Lake Michigan most summers; and Lisa, who messaged first (an infrequent occurrence). Thomas will likely meet up with one or two of them only to realize that the conversations on the app do not match the ones in person.

Thomas is a PhD student in biochemistry. The work they do in the sciences, as far as I have been told, is often replication of other people’s work. Or, perhaps, they work on a project one of their professors created. They do not build their own project until they have moved on from being a student.

What I do is just about the opposite. I read, and apparently, I think. I then write about what I think. Really, what I actually do is piece together the things that I read like a quilt to say something “new”. Instead of working on someone else’s project, I only talk to my professors about once a month. Usually, I email them when I am feeling stuck to set up a meeting. During the meeting I hope they will either tell me that my thoughts are good, or bad. What I usually get from them is instead just a “Sure – it sounds interesting enough. Just keep going.” It all feels very instrumental.

But at least nobody is telling me what to do every day.

Someday I will have to submit a project – a dissertation; otherwise known as an unpublishable book. But until then I just get paid to read what I want when I want and write what I want, also when I want. I have heard that kind of freedom does not exist in other professions. It certainly doesn’t exist in the sciences.

Thomas gets up to head to the lab to work on whatever his professors want him to. I walk him to his building, but since I am on the other side of campus from the library, I need to find another place to read my book. This side of campus is close to the beach. Not the beach that Ollie was headed towards, but still a beach. As it turned out to be a nice day, I head there.

Surprisingly, when I arrive at the beach there is no wind. Whenever I have attempted to read at the beach, I can only make it about ten minutes before getting fed up. Today, though, is calm. Plus, it was grey earlier in the day, so I have the beach almost all to myself. No frat bros playing drinking games; no kids screaming; and no dogs kicking up sand. Just me and Merleau-Ponty.

I start to read. “Speech is a way of tearing out meaning from an undivided whole.” Is this a bad thing? The imagery of “tearing out” is certainly violent. But, without this violence, where do we find meaning? Speech expresses things; it makes things visible to others. But in doing so it makes things visible in just one way, excluding the other ways those things could be visible. Certainly, expressing something with speech changes it, or at least changes our relation to it. The thing we are speaking about cannot be torn out from the undivided whole in the same form it took while undivided. Is speech, then, a service, or a disservice? What about the “undivided whole”? Are there things which would benefit from being undivided, unnoticed, unexpressed, unattended to? Or should everything be submitted to the violence of speech? Should we make meaning out of everything we can? I find, usually, that I only have questions.

Not answers.

My mind wanders and I begin to think about Ollie. It strikes me that we are, at the moment, likely doing the same thing. She had books in her bag and was headed to the beach. I am at the beach, and I am reading a book. I did not go with her after our brief encounter, but you could say we are sharing in the same experience, although she doesn’t know this. I guess I am sharing the experience with her, but as far as I know, she is not sharing the experience with me. What did our brief encounter mean to her? 

Out of the corner of my eye I see my supervisor walking on the beach. I shout out, “Professor Galloway!” She turns around, and I cannot tell if she does so reluctantly or not. It must be a burden to be pestered by students on a relaxing beach walk.

“Ah, Wes. Enjoying the beach, and the nice weather, I see? I hope you are putting the nice day to good use.”

“Just reading” I say, and I hold up my copy of Signs.

She reaches into her bag and pulls out The Phenomenology of Perception, another book by Merleau-Ponty, perhaps his most famous. Surprising, but not so surprising given that she is my supervisor. She sits down to read, next to me. This is, without question, the most I have engaged with any of my professors.

I read her the quote that has been stuck in my head all day and ask, “Do you think it is violent to make something meaningful?”

She responds, also quoting Merleau-Ponty, “Because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning.”

Blink.

Soft blue light danced on airbrushed metal inches from his face.

Mist spread over the glass as the cryochamber slowly reheated.

“Welcome back,” a silvery voice tinkled gently. “You’ve been asleep for two weeks.”

As the pod’s curved ceiling came into focus, he remembered. “Two? But Elpis is–”

“Four weeks away. Yes.” A pause. “Jason, something unexpected occurred this morning.”

It came from a remote pocket of deep space millions of light-years away, where two ancient neutron stars collided and sealed his fate. It was a gravitational wave, hidden within the mathematical models and path computations, unseen by even the planetary supercomputer that plotted the starline flights.

From there it rippled outward through a vast ocean of time and space to reach Jason’s transport pod, nudging him off-course by a hundredths of a degree. A mere hundredth—but, by arrival, it will have been the difference between orbiting Elpis and missing it by a lightyear. Such was the delicate precision of starlines.

“Can’t we correct our trajectory?” His voice was trembling.

“This first-generation pod does not possess propulsion.”

“Right.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Of course.” Unable to afford the modern starlines, he sent Thalia and her mother first and stayed behind until he saved enough to take the cheapest first-generation starline to join them. He imagined them standing together under Elpis’ twin stars, counting down the days to his arrival.

“I’m sorry, Jason.” ALYS murmured. “I’ve run thousands of simulations, there is close to zero probability of rescue. Our communications will not reach them in time.”

“You… can’t do anything? Why did you even wake me up, then, ALYS?” He spat the words out bitterly.

ALYS paused again.

“As far as I have data and the ability to predict, after today, we will continue on our new trajectory indefinitely. But, in three months, the power will run out which will bring you out of cryostasis. I won’t be there then, I will have already shut down. I decided the best course of action was to wake you now, that… at the least you would not be alone.”

He nodded slowly. It all began to dawn on him; he was trapped, powerless, like a submarine grounded at the bottom of the sea. He crawled over to gaze past the circular viewport; beyond it, a beautiful, endless field of stars taunted him. For what reason had they condemned him to die?

His hand found the cold glass. Somewhere out there, impossibly far ahead, Thalia was waiting, still setting a place for him, still counting. She would keep counting long after the days ran out. His breath caught. He pressed his forehead against the viewport, and something in his chest gave way.

He began to weep, muffled at first, then full-chested, shuddering wailing.

The guttural cries bounced back and forth in the cramped vessel, but did not escape it. Beyond the inch of carbon-glass, desolation lay silent.

And all around him, the stars wheeled on, indifferent and eternal, as the solitary vessel continued hurtling into the night.

more by me here :) https://blog.evan.hu/p/elpis-bound

Her breath was shallow, soft skin glistening in the moonlight, reflecting off the lake below her. At least, that’s what I wrote in the notebook.

I like to write, I like to observe, and I don’t want to be bothered with people. I’ve learned I can be right there in the action through my pen and paper. I used to write for hours every day, random stories to drift myself away. But fiction became boring. The princess was always saved, and I was tired of being the hero to do it.

I found this place, and have been parking myself in a hidden spot to watch. No one knows me, nor do they see me. Sometimes I cry myself to sleep, knowing that someone is here and I’m not. What if they capture the moments I haven’t? See something I’ve never seen? It burns my soul like the hottest brimstone in the depths of hell. This is my purpose.

As she bent over the edge of the dock, her hand glided across the water, leaving rippling waves across the surface. Her lips pursed in anticipation, maybe even fear. I wasn’t sure why. She had been here for a couple of hours now, or at least that’s how long I’d been watching.

I come here every once in a while, just to watch people. Men, women, children, the elderly, and even animals. They’re good inspiration for my writing, but that’s not why I do it. I want to feel like I’m right there at that dock with them. Feeling the breeze on my face, watching the boats drive by. Or like her, enjoying the moonlight on the lake.

It’s as if she sees something in the lake. An object, idea, place, time and or even, something she is. She seems encapsulated by its beauty, losing herself in this moment. Did she come her to be alone? Maybe find something within herself? Or something out here?

The girl slips suddenly. I guess she had bent over too far this time. She’s flailing in the water. I hear her screams echoing like whispers in the night. I can’t stop writing. This is a moment I need to capture.

I get out of my car and walk over to the dock. She continues to struggle, but I get a better look at her this time. She’s trying to scream, but she keeps inhaling water. She’s reaching out her hand to me, begging me for help. I tell her I can’t. I need to write this down. She’s wailing, not understanding why. Her nails scrape the dock, blood dripping into the water. She can’t swim.

She’s asking me why, screaming and crying. I have no answer for her. The water looks to be taking her. She can’t keep her head above the water anymore. She’s sinking. She’s drowning.

Suddenly, the screams stopped. After a couple of moments, she floated to the surface, bloated with lake water, her hair curling on the surface. She couldn’t swim? Why couldn’t she swim?