The Vampire Lestat

Too much pain to be reinvoked. It was like taking pictures from the attic, cleaning away the dust and finding the colors still vibrant. And the pictures should have been portraits of dead ancestors and they were pictures of us.

And I had always loved him, hadn’t I, no matter what happened, and how strong could love grow if you had eternity to nourish it, and it took only these few moments in time to renew its momentum, its heat?

Even our memories can fail us. He was proof of that, delicate and blinding as a laser as he came closer, all the old images blown away like dust.

Yet memory plays its tricks.

I think I laughed a little. I couldn’t keep it clear in my mind that Louis wasn’t burnt up. But it was really wonderful that Louis still lived. It was wonderful that there existed still that handsome face, that poignant expression, that tender and faintly imploring voice. My beautiful Louis surviving, instead of dead and gone with Claudia and Nick.

I had Claudia’s bloody yellow dress in my hands.

And then the descent into that hideous cellar full of ugly copies of the bloodiest paintings of Goya and Brueghel and Bosch.

all the Renaissance curls clipped away

If there was not meaning, at least there was the luster of congruence, the stunning repetition of the same old theme.

And the god dies. And the god rises. But this time no one is redeemed.

But then, I never have listened to anyone, really