BACK TO THE RESURRECTION OF THE VAMPIRE-OLIGARCH, GRIGORI USIPOV 1/17/13

SCENE: Vast underground chipped cinder-block chamber housing old Stalinist version of Doctor Franklin's Grand Armonica. (harmonic science apparatus). A few miraculously still working, ancient flickering fluorescent tubes bathe all in a weak, blue glow. Strange hybridized creatures gleefully watch from the shadows, as Doctor Benjamin Franklin (indefinitely preserved by his own arcane discoveries & sporting his signature, deep green Eagles sweatsuit) runs about like a crazed alchemist, controlling and fine tuning his huge device. [see previous posting for description]. Watch him race from pillar to post, white hair streaming behind, as he hums and whispers to himself.

A few other 'mortal' humans assist on the periphery. Two or three ape-human mixes (descendants of cruel, Stalinist experiments) shuffle through a door, but some of the assistants (with the aid of cattle prods) shew them away. 

The temporarily 'ghostly' vampire, Russian oligarch known as Grigori Usipov sublimates up through the old, worn, linoleum tiled floor, walks toward Doctor Franklin and stops.

GRIGORI USIPOV - How much longer?

DOCTOR FRANKLIN - Be patient. Be patient, my good man.
(he adjusts a toggle causing a heavy, resonant thrum to fill the room)

Two 'pin-heads' among the outlandish mixes toward the corners cackle maniacally and caper about, as hellish moans seep through the walls from other places within the complex.

DOCTOR FRANKLIN - TEST!!!

Assistants lead a chained human-ape thing (wearing a ridiculous pair of Speedos) into the chamber. It's obvious the creature is drugged and scared. They approach the apparatus. Doctor Franklin strokes it reassuringly.

Others carry in a long, glass-like sealed cylinder, containing an ethereal, imprisoned ghost. The ghost seems panicked. He's losing it. But the ape-man thing is beyond caring. And one hundred and forty heartbeats later the apfen -mensch is secured within a confining cage at one end of the apparatus, while the clear cylinder holding the terrified spirit gets locked into its own slot.

DOCTOR FRANKLIN - BEGIN!!

Assistants go into their dance, flipping switches, pushing toggles, donning goggles and snug, black, rubber aprons. They offer one to Doctor Franklin. He waves them away.

DOCTOR FRANKLIN - No, no, no, I like it. It tickles. 

Then it starts. The immense, heavy, crystal discs begin to rotate 'round the huge, brass-toned axle. Little by little the vast, deep tones start to coalesce into a song... 'The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down' ... and it plays and repeats and grows stronger and deeper and faster.

Off 'round the edges the strange altered humans grow wide eyed and silent, as the ape-man begins to scream and the ghost begins to moan.

Blinding arcs buzz and crackle from large electro-magnets mounted about the room. The tones shift and change. Now it's well known Aida aria Nessun Dorma with a sound that approaches angel-song.

Then we reach the crescendo and it stops...... The very air grows still.... Everyone waits....

Doctor Franklin hauls himself up some ladder-like, metal stairs, the better to examine the ape-thing. He pokes it. It's still. He waits a heartbeat or two and pokes it again. The ape-man stirs. It shudders and trembles. 

The DOCTOR gestures toward the large, glass-like cylinder and snaps his fingers, all the time keeping his eyes on the creature. Two assistants turn to inspect it. Condensation on the inner surface begins to clear. No ghost. It's empty!... They look toward the DOCTOR. He looks toward them, They nod.... He nods. The ape-man opens his eyes.

DOCTOR FRANKLIN - It's alive! He's alive!!

And he laughs in triumph, as the newly imprisoned spirit starts to babble (in Russian) and rant and scream.

The pin-heads clap and sing 'Happy Birthday.'

DOCTOR FRANKLIN - (in a loud voice) Bring in the haberdasher's assistant!..... (that means the Russian prisoner)

The temporarily homeless ghost-like spirit of Grigori Usipov seems pleased.....

One of the few remaining fluorescent lights crackles and goes dark.

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RESURRECTION??.... 1/16/13

A deep subliminal thrum filled the complex. The pin-heads laughed as they dipped their grimy fingers into sixty seven year old jars of irradiated mayonnaise, savoring each big, gloppy mouthful. I don't know who gave it to them. I don't know who opened it. But they gleefully huddled back in a corner, slurping up what looked like mummified lumps of melted elephants' teeth, as they watched Doctor Franklin work.

The old reprobate hopped about, pulling levers and pushing toggles on the ancient control panel. Huge, thick, crystal discs began to turn. The Grand Armonica came to life, filling the underground cavernous chamber with a sound like angels moaning. Sometimes one of the surviving ape-human things peeked through the door. But Usipov's familiars squeamishly shewed them away (then quickly wiped their hands with sheet after sheet of drippy, chemically sweet, imported, Ukrainian Handi-Wipes). Franklin took a swig of some Cyrillic labeled clear liquor. He hoped it was liquor. He hoped it was vodka. Could have been one of them daily 'no scrub' shower sprays. Who knows? They taste like that too, you know.
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CUT! This is Billy, the one who channels the blog. I can't take staying up this late anymore. It gives me restless-leg-syndrome. My knee's bouncin' SO fast, pictures on the wall are vibrating. I wanna go upstairs, get in bed, read a page or two about pre-human, rat-like primates (it's a comedy), stick my ear buds in what hopefully turns out to be the right opening and listen to  the all-alien, all-bigfoot, all-mermaids who killed Kennedy radio call-in show.

So PLEASE understand as I say 'good night.' [the space between these brackets represents when I stumbled into the kitchen to scarf down the remnants of some cold deli meat. I think it's some new kind of turkey-pig cross breed. they can do that now.] Tomorrow we'll go back to what's going on in Russia. .... [he  gets up..turns off the television.. double checks the burglar alarms & cameras and all.. looks at himself in the mirror.. makes his action hero face.. turns off the light and pulls himself up the stairs...... then he runs down again to get a pack of AAA batteries for the little ear-bud radio, so he can hear about how a camera on Mars caught Elaine Stritch thumbin' her nose right at the lens. that Mars is a crazy place.]

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Vampire SPIRIT evicts SOUL and CLAIMS NEW BODY via a GRAND ARMONICA ... 1/15/13

They flew him in from Philadelphia. The vampire-oligarch's 'familiars' I mean. The plane landed at a rickety airport just west of the Urals and a small caravan of Land Rovers brought him in. Most of the Russian handlers spoke a bit of French. Doctor Franklin's, a little bit antiquated to begin with was rusty, but he managed to make himself known and trade a few bon mots. The 'ladies'... the 'ladies'... always the ladies. And a couple of them Natashas thought him the dearest old man they'd ever met. Oh, and he liked the vodka too. Jefferson liked it too. Had it brought into Old Philadelphia courtesy of Prince Potemkin, a court favorite of Catherine the Great. But Jefferson's dead. Been that way since eighteen twenty six and ain't showin' no signs of improvement. Franklin, on the other hand, still lives, due to carefully meted out doses of perfectly calibrated harmonics provided by his eighteenth century masterpiece... the Grand Armonica. A small scale model of that device is on exhibit in his old house in Philadelphia. Tourists think it's the real thing... Little do they know. But certain cognoscenti, ever since the first days of The Junto (his scientific, fraternal, society) have been privy to something else. They've seen and even worked on the real thing down in his vast complex under the Navy Yard. Some long time readers know this. But I'll provide a quick run down for those who don't.

THE GRAND ARMONICA ~~~>
A horizontal axis, forty feet long and eighteen inches wide. A rod wrought from a copper alloy similar to a brass/bronze mixture but fundamentally different. It rests on two massive triangular iron supports, each twenty feet high and eight feet wide. Arranged on this rod are thirty two huge, crystal discs, ranging in diameter from two feet to approximately twenty four feet. Each disc is fourteen point two inches thick. The smaller ones resemble massive 'wedding rings' more than discs. Powerful, somewhat steam-punk looking electro-magnets placed about the chamber interact with the mechanism via impressive, though essentially harmless, lightning bolt-like arcs. A long, narrow zinc tub... a bath filled with some sort of secret oil-water suspension runs beneath the discs, rising to a height just beneath the bronze-like axel so that each of them (the discs) pass completely through the mixture as they rotate. Controls are accessed via an organ-like console located by what would be the 'south pole' of the massive contraption. Each disc can be rotated independently, or in concert and at varying speeds. The chords, vibrations and harmonics produced are quite unique and capable of effecting matter in many strange and unusual ways.

In this manner will the unfortunate soul of the young Russian haberdasher's assistant, known as Ivan Stephanovich vacate his still living body so that the temporarily homeless shade of the oligarch-vampire, named Grigori Usipov can take possession.  Granted, conditions and facilities at the 'abandoned' Russian complex did not match what was under the Navy Yard in Philadelphia, but the outcome should still be quite successful. A soul manifests itself in our world as energy. And the Grand Armonica can certainly handle that. 

The few pin-head specimens still in residence, wandering about the endless, dark passageways (descendants of the original four) were giddy. They knew the device was being readied. Vibrations resonated through the very structure. And the small number of living ape-human mixes shuffling through the shadows vocalized incessantly, while the Greek chorus of ghosts simply floated about and watched.

Doctor Franklin liked the ghosts. He found them very urbane. And the spirit of Grigori Usipov, strictly speaking. was no ghost, for he had never ever really died. 

Soon all would be ready. The 'music' would commence. Til then they left the poor haberdasher's assistant alone. He sat in his small room on his not too soiled mattress, in darkness broken only by feeble candlelight and thin, almost tinny music from an old, barely functioning cassette player.... A CHORUS LINE I think it was.... I think they gave him some of the irradiated, canned food too

Achhh, he hummed pathetically....

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Billy Kravitz' vampire wonderland: The Book of Sarah..this is how it was in the beginning... more brutal... more visceral and dark... 1/14/13

Billy Kravitz' vampire wonderland: The Book of Sarah: This time it is Sarah. As you know, I culled my first victim last night. The experience changed me. I felt a cleansing energy pass through m... This is how it was in the early days, when Sarah was first created (she has yet to reach her true potential) and the simple, forlorn vampire known as 'Bob' was still alive. PLEASE just don't look at this. Click onto that 'Book of Sarah' phrase up at the top of this post. And scroll around when you get there. We got a good 'elf' post right after this one. Back in these nights, Little Bastid Annie was among us. Edith was called the Pow-Wow Woman... and 'Papa' (trapped in a clandestine pit in Rome) ventured out in spiritual form as 'The Shaky Hand Man.'

So let me say it again...PLEASE click on this and wander around. Go to NEWER POSTS and OLDER POSTS. Excavate a little. See who you can dig up... <o> <o>

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The Disembodied Spirit known as Iago Della Fortuna, Speaks... 1/13/14

Ciao, amici. I am he who was known as Iago Della Fortuna, late of Portofino and many other places on, or near the Italian and French Rivieras. Originally a Neapolitan impresario responsible for bringing grand opera to the Papal States, The Kingdom of The Two Sicilies and various Tuscan and Piedmontese princerinos to the north. My earthly nativity dates to sixteen ninety four, but one night on a pleasure barge just off Capri during Carnival I lay down with a noble vampirina ( Donna Livia de Lorenza, Baronessa Cortina) and for the next two hundred and eighty years lived the life of a carefree vampirino. Our Mediterranean milieu was quite the welcoming place back then. Which is strange considering the brutal fires of The Inquisition still burned throughout the land, but... that's how it was.

My operas, for I still functioned as an impresario, played Salzburg and Vienna and Torino, Milano, Napoli,  Prague... everywhere. And tiny droplets of the magic elixir that was my blood kept many a new castrato alive through the botched ministrations of wine addled surgeons. Quite the lover I was. A princess of Serbia (vassal to the Turks) threw herself under a huge military caisson over me. Such clothes I had... countless pairs of satin knee-britches... coats made in the ateliers of Venice... lace from Brussels... shoes from London and jewels smuggled out  from the Grand Seraglio itself. Life, or whatever it was that I had, was good. I fed on plump, nubile peasants from the hill country. Any age... Any shape...Any gender... Poxed or not... I didn't care. And when times were bad, their papas even sold them to me. Two ducats was the going price... about the same as veal. Don't feel sorry for them. Death came as a balm. And you do believe in The Afterlife, do you not? So they are well taken care of. 

I survived Napolioni Buonoparte. I believe they called him something different among the French... and Garabaldi... Austria-Hungary ... IL Duce and various sundry mafiosi. But last night I was destroyed. That is why I come to you as a disembodied spirit now. Tomorrow I narrate the demise of the poor, Muscovite prisoner and former haberdasher's assistant, Ivan Stephanovich (I think it is). But I thought you'd like to know a bit about me.

It happened like this. I lay on my bier in a dark, deep chamber far beneath my stronghold, just outside of Rome. You can see the castle-like mansione from the ruins of la Via Appia, off among the trees and isolated monuments. How I loved it there.

But as I dozed 'it' found me. Some force... some thing... some entity in the guise of a huge, repulsive fly took shape within my resting place. It scurried 'cross the polished stone floor, stepped up to the ledge and hopped onto my bed, pinning me with a hot, dense, crushing force. I saw the large, glass-like reflective eyes... the monstrous 'face'... the lancet tipped proboscis and the blue-black loathsome carapace.... fairy wings it had, but every other part screamed nightmare. And the loud electric buzz of its abdomen 'gainst my body made me retch. The fly just lapped it up. Then it thrust the hellish proboscis down my throat, flooding me with acid til even the bones dissolved. I couldn't scream. And in my present ghostly form still taste it.

Tomorrow the Russian prisoner has his own ordeal. Please know that I will be there to relate it.

Death is not easy...

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IVAN STEPANOVICH, the Russian Prisoner, contemplates his fate... 1/11/14

He sat alone in a small space they set up for him. How they did it, I don't know. Ghosts cannot easily influence physical matter. Perhaps there are others like the pin-head? Russians can be so secretive.  The space was once an office. Not a big one. No commisar, or anything like that. Probably some timid little clerk. The current tenant, the prisoner from Moscow, had an old, canvas mattress, worn but not too soiled. a pillow, some blankets and a box of candles meant to be used during storms. Even in a rather advanced (for its time) experimental center such as this, regular electrical service so far from the capital, or any other sizable town was questionable at best.

And he heard no sound at all, save for occasional trips to the food room with his spectral jailer, Usipov. He asked if he might take a can or two of beans, or Vienna sausage back to his place, but the temporary ghost said 'no,' so that was it. There was an old, institutional, chamber pot, straight out of Dostoyevsky or Chekov, once white, but now tinged with gray due to a fine network of spidery cracks. Someone emptied it while he slept. It had to be while he slept. He never saw them. He tried to wake up. He tried to hear whomever it was, but detection was futile.

There were twelve candles left in the box. Each burned four hours. Maybe three days worth. Unless 'they' gave him another box, it would probably end then. So he sat on the mattress with his back to the wall watching the shadows dance. 

Thirty four years old he was, born as the old system died, a foundling left at an orphanage. Usually mothers wrote a note, some scrap pinned to the swaddling, but in his case there was nothing. The matrons named him Ivan. One out of seven male Muscovites bore that name. so statistically they stood a chance. Stepanovich came from a popular footballer. Once the necessary forms were filled out there were no further questions. He grew to be a quiet child. Never disobeyed. Rarely (if ever) fought with the others. Always said his prayers. Always cleaned his place. So grateful for the small tokens given him for Christmas and his birthday (a matron picked that date). Colorful, cardboard picture books, a rubber sponge ball, gloves, things like that.

He thought about the walks through the district. How regimented they were. Poor, little soldiers. People called them 'the boys from the baby gulag.' Once he lost his blue, woolen cap. Like a military cap it was. They beat him for that. Some older boys, not from the orphanage grabbed it and ran away, but that didn't make a difference. 

When he was sixteen they put him out. He walked the streets for three days and nights til a man and his wife gave him a job in their haberdashery sweeping the floor and folding and re-folding the shirts and sweaters. The man and his wife kept a sweet, rich brick of halvah under a little glass, bell jar in the back. Sometimes they gave him some. Best thing was they let him sleep in the storeroom on a little folding cot he won at a carnival and raise sleek, undulating eels in the restroom sink. Luckily the patrons didn't seem to mind. And the small, Sterno stove he cooked the eels on was easily folded up and stored away. Life was good. He liked thinking about the old days, though soon he grew sleepy and drifted off. And the candle at the bottom of his old, empty pineapple juice can was the only light in the whole, vast, long forgotten complex.

Ninety minutes later, while he was dreaming (apparently the forces controlling this place understood the nature of R.E.M. sleep) a stooped, shuffling, half human, half bonobo hybrid quietly came in to empty the chamber pot. When it was gone, the temporary ghost (but rightfully a vampire) known as Grigori Usipov sublimated through the wall to study his future physical form. 

Harmonics would do the trick. Powerful, almost musical, vibrations would break the bond between spirit and flesh, allowing the vampire, oligarch to move in. And whether the former orphan-haberdasher's assistant survived in any form was quite immaterial.

Is it painful, this harmonic separation of the spirit and the flesh?

Well, I'm told it's torture......

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The ETHEREAL SCIENCE OF HARMONICS ... 1/9/13

You know, I believe they once had a fairly decent art collection in this place. Hundreds of pieces scooped up when Stalin split Eastern Europe with the Germans. Stuff from Krakow and Breslau and Bratislava too, if I'm not mistaken. Now The Red Army did not reach all those places, at least not then. Not in the early days of the war. But the party had agents and things sort of slip-slided their way over the border. Some was still here until 'the fall,' of The Soviet Union, I mean. Though when the Lenin statues started to come down the place became a grab bag. I have some pieces in my palace on the Neva. Pushkin's ghost is there, not permanently. He's not in residence. Don't get me wrong. But he does come by from time to time. (and the temporary ghost whispered to himself) God, I miss that place. 

Then he retreated into silence, but his eyes continued to study the unfortunate prisoner's form. There are storerooms filled with irradiated food in this complex. Big cans sealed in the nineteen forties. The temporary ghost vampire named Grigori Usipov knows where they are. And he knew the prisoner was hungry, so he spoke..... There's a can opener in the desk. Right here. Top drawer. In the middle. Come take it - he said.... Then he stood up and moved aside so the prisoner would have room. The helpless mortal did as he was told and he hefted the large implement in his hand. It had a mother of pearl handle with some type of printing or writing on it.... a souvenir from a 'People's Resort' on the Black Sea.
W-what is this? What is it? - he said...... The strange being, locked in spirit form said nothing. He simply moved toward the doorway and gestured for the mortal to follow. So lit by the feeble light escaping from the Russian 'ghost' thing's form, they hurried through the endless corridors to the food room. For the next two hours the hungry scared mortal ate. I can't vouch for the flavor of the feast, for much of it was basically steamed and that steaming took place more than sixty five years ago, but the radiation did it's trick and it was more or less germ free. Pressed duck he had and scalloped potatoes and Vienna Sausage plus some disgusting, wet, noodle pudding concoction that looked like it came from King Tutankhamun's kitchen. But he ate it.  And for six or seven 'days' they returned to that place. There were cans of pineapple juice too and some type of wafer that approximated crisp toast.

The Grigori Usipov thing knew of a gym too and he exercised the current tenant of his future body so he'd get a good one. The basic form was already half decent to begin with. They had these kettle dumbbell things. Like bowling balls with handles. And the trapped mortal learned to swing them around like a dancer. But considering where he was and who controlled him, what choice did he have? You know Hansel in the cage and the Witch? Well.... then you know what I mean. And all this happened in the dark, lit by the subtle light wafting off the ghosts.... A strange, mundane horror and deep inside, the mortal knew it. Sometimes the pin-head thing came to watch, but I think he (she... it?) only really came for the pineapple juice. 

One night (look, due to the sealed up windows it was always night in that place) the sleek and improved mortal said - You had them take me. You had them capture me and bring me here...... And then he couldn't say anymore..... Usipov continued - And you want to know how it ends?....... The mortal just looked..... His captor went on - You won't die. No oblivion. Don't worry about that. But it will be 'different.'.... Then he held out a robe. The mortal took it and put it on. The temporary ghostly, vampire oligarch thing led the way back to a gerrymandered living space strewn with old vinyl sofa cushions and a solar powered/hand cranked radio-cassette player. Needless to say, the 'solar' part was out of the question. So the mortal sat down bathed in weak, silvery ghost-light, snapped in his favorite cassette, an old, well worn version of Brigadoon (there wasn't much of a collection to begin with) and cranked it up, filling the place with a poignant song of a magical, faraway world. Then he lay down and sobbed, as the strange jailer quietly spoke of 'harmonics' and the wonderful things it could do.

Please forgive me for stopping now. This disembodied spirit narrator planned to tell you more. And if you are curious, I am not one of the important spirit narrators. I am not Mister Never-You-Mind, or Johannon, or Zebulon (remember him?). I am not the little polio victim in the cellar of the townhouse. I am just 'me.' And that wilkravitz, or 'Billy' mortal who channels this is sleepy.....

Let him rest. Next time you'll hear more.

Oh, if you like, google Brigadoon on You Tube. You might enjoy it.

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