Friday, July 12, 2013

THE NEWLY MINTED VAMPIRE SLAVES ARRIVE IN ROME... 7/11/13

They let us out of the leaden conveyance in a small courtyard just off an opulent aula somewhere on The Palatine. That hill, site of many magnificent domiciles, gave it's name to them. Thus were 'palaces' born. This one belonged to the second son of a newly created senator, flush from grain money made from vast latifundia (plantations) in Sicily. And he was desperate to play politics... Roman style. 

We wore harnesses 'round our chests, shoulders and necks made from thin, leaden threads woven together to form tapes, or belts. Now I know how lead effects us. We can't sublimate through it, so we couldn't escape. I suppose we could have run through the streets, dragging our captors like so many hooked fish. But none of us knew the extent of our strength. And the Dalmatian was almost insane. 

Can you imagine what it's like to shed your skin (and not just the outer layers) locked in a sealed, pitch dark coach-like, cube shaped wagon bouncing along the roads of Italia? And three of use went through that. The floor was slick with grease and sticky, little gobbets of fat from the inner surface of our hides. 

I'm told the majordomo of this fine house (himself a slave) retrieved them for use as decorative cushions and sandal straps, after being properly tanned in the leather stink pots of a benighted town, just outside the walls, in Latium. My face adorns a statue of Hermes in The Tivoli. My nether parts were rigidly stuffed and presented to a niece by marriage of the emperor himself. Let me tell you, even then, in my naive state, I still got around.

But we were not to stay in that place. The second son dabbled in rare commodities, such as mahogany, ivory and vampire bodyguards. Soon we'd have our Roman debut, festooned with torques and diadems. Wild barbarians were all the rage and due to the success of the empire, rarer every day. Yet artifice is all in The Eternal City. The show is everything... and we but humble players...

I fetched a good price, I did.....

And I'll tell you more tomorrow...
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