Post by patmeister on Mar 25, 2010 21:02:07 GMT -5
Code:
;;Edward J. Holliday;;
Is Entering Sins of Impunity
Is Entering Sins of Impunity
It’s All About You
Behind the Puppet Master
::NAME::[/blockquote]
Patrick
::AGE:
Way over 21
::GENDER::
Guy
::RP EXPERIENCE::
13 years
::CONTACTING YOU::
email or pm
::ACTIVITY::
I'm an addict, so a lot of writing. Mountain Time.
::THE PUPPETS::
Just Edward Holliday, so far.
The Identification Tag
Character Basics
::ALIAS::
Edward. Sometimes god.
::NAME::
Edward J. Holliday
::GENDER::
Male
::ORIENTATION::
Pansexual
::REAL AGE::
211
::PHYSICAL AGE::
30
::SPECIES::
Vampire
::SIRE::
Kalfou -- and it's a very interesting rumor, too.
::RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION::
Catholic & Voodoo
::WEALTH::
Nothing that doesn't fall through his fingers like sand.
::JOB::
Edward pilfers from his victims.
Where Your Abilities Fall
The Character Talents
::STRENGTHS::
1. Abnormal physical strength and agility
2. The ability to see abnormally well in the dark
3. Mindspeak
::SUMMARY::
In some circles they call Mindspeak entertaining the devil's temptation. You don't want Edward Holliday inside your head, for once lodged deeply into a human being's cerebral crinkles, it is near impossible to get him out. The devil doesn't always appear with cloven hooves and horns upon his head. Sometimes he has the face of an angel and the ability to worm himself into your good graces. It is hard to say no to him; harder to tear yourself out from his under thumb once pinned and enslaved. If you cannot live for Edward Holliday, then you will most certainly die for him.
::WEAKNESSES::
1. Sunlight
2. The last of his progeny
3. Pretty black Voodoo mambos (witches)
::SUMMARY::
His cold, dead heart doesn't beat. No uncontrollable, telltale pitter patter. And yet lust has buried itself so deeply, so thoroughly for the female practitioners of an ancient religion that spans more than two widespread continents. The mixture so volatile it is like dousing a fire with gasoline. But a true weakness of his, nonetheless, for he is drawn much like a moth to flame in the danse macabre. Danse Calinda. The dance of desire has never been more twisted, nor more perverted.
The More Human Side of Things
Human Appearance
::HAIR::[/size]
Dark brown and somewhat long
::EYES::
They vary between green and light brown
::HEIGHT::
6'2"
::WEIGHT::
140lbs -- a bit thin, yes.
:MARKS::
Edward has a few tattoos, nothing spectacular or distinguishing
::SKIN TONE::
Pale as a gothic sheet.
::BODY TYPE::
Extremely thin.
::CLOTHES::
They vary, he steals those from his victims, too.
::SUMMARY::
He is both ignoble and a stunning vision, irregardless of his choice in clothing. For in this rare instance, the clothes do not make the man. He'll steal yours if they fit. He'll steal your heart and soul, and your mind, too.. if you come too close. He is tall. His gauntness only adds that much more to the illusion of grandieur. There is a ghostly timbre to his voice. It is subtle and never raised in ire. Edward Holliday is from the old antebellum south, yet there is a slight accent upon his tongue which you will recognize immediately once he dips into his first, spoken language -- that of Cajun French.
Personality is Everything
How They Might Act
::LIKES::[/size]
1. Soft, pretty people, and without any sort of gender bias
2. Cigarettes
3. Voodoo
::DISLIKES::
1. There is scant little he has an aversion to, save for the obvious..
2. Sunlight
3. Wooden stakes
::FLAWS::
1. Come on now, he's perfect in every way.
2. Narcissitic
3. Sociopathic -- he is extraordinarily devious in the manipulation of others
::BLESSINGS::
1. He has a soft spot -- somewhere. It is not easily discovered, however
2. Edward may even be capable of lenience, once in a blue moon
3. Everything is a game. Even death there is humor.
::SUMMARY::
Edward Holliday is cruel, though such cruelties are not indicative of vampirism. His cruelty is inborn. Innately part of his inner being, one might say his sadism rivals that of the infamous Marquis de Sade. And yet like any true sadist, he is an entirely charming beast. Both alluring and captivating, often with little more than a single glance.
Before his death and subsequent turning, he was the quintessential addict, rotting his life away on lethal Absinthe and laudanum cocktails. His was a world on the cutting edge between Victorianism and spiritual nihilism through Voodoo in the deep south territory of Louisiana, city of New Orleans. He was once quite fond of spoiled, aristocratic social debutantes as well as the black slave girls they owned.. frequenting their beds in both worlds. A true chameleon in any circle, he has not changed one iota over the last two centuries. Eward is quite fond of pornography -- especially the kind found moving across the faded silver screens of rundown adult theatres.
Checking Out the Background
Historical Stuff
::FAMILY MEMBERS::[/size]
Father was James Holliday. Mother was Chatte la Marchand.
No living ancestors or immediate family. He is however, survived by the last two of nine generations of daughters -- Marie and her daughter, Bijou.
::BIRTH PLACE::
New Orleans, Louisiana
::CHILDHOOD:
A very vivid memory:
Turning a corner on the Avenue Esplanade-Rue Bourbon intersection, a woman dressed in imported European fineries, replete with a fair bonnet and white gloves, gasped softly as she pressed one white-gloved hand to her mouth. The man on whose arm she'd been clinging, moved her round to his opposite side.. and away from the culprit of her start, staring briefly down at it before lifting his nose in the air and escorting her right on past. Moments later he whispered an apology to her, though his whisper seemed to carry right on the warm Gulf breeze.
"I am sorry you had to see that, Louisa. The streets of this city are filled with sinners and filthy tramps. But God has sent me back here to clean up New Orleans and cast Satan back into hell where he belongs."
He'd whispered it with such a driving conviction that the woman -- his wife, from the looks of it -- calmed herself with a little smile and clung ever tighter to his arm. And neither one of them ever looked back.
"Mon petit garçon, vous comportez," Chatte la Marchand whispered as she knelt down there upon the sidewalk before a small, six year old boy to fix his shirt collar and smooth his hair back with her fingers before kissing him on the cheek.
Chatte was dressed in a rag of a dress that looked like it had been a hand-me-down from a slave, so thread bare that the sunlight had shown right through it, exposing her legs and torso through the wisp of faded fabric. Too, she'd been barefooted. But for the boy, who'd been her pride and joy, she managed a smile before ruffling his hair up all over again.. only to rise up and take his hand before leading him off to wherever it was she'd been headed that particular day.
"Est-il mon père, maman?" the boy asked, glancing back over a shoulder at the pair who were by now.. almost down to the end of the block.
"Oui," Chatte said, refusing to glance back as her son had done, but held her chin up high in the sunlight, and never once showed even a hint of emotion on her tightly clenched features.
::TRANSFORMATION::
A very ugly backlash from a bit of powerful hoodoo gone awry. Not the pretty Hollywood, bite-me bite-you romances.
::PREY::
Edward is a ritual murderer in the classic sense. Death is an artform. Does Jeffrey Dahmer ring a bell?
::FANG POWER::
His bite is paralyzingly, extraordinarily painful. It is a bite, afterall. Oh but the power lies in his kiss.
::TURNING OTHERS::
Edward will never create another vampire. Why would anyone want to tip the delicate balance on the foodchain by creating competition, afterall?
::HISTORY::
Born in New Orleans on the Eve of Saint John in the Year 1799, the illegitimate son of a prominent Pentecostal preacher father - James Holliday, and an unschooled Cajun mother - Chatte la Marchand. They say he ushered in the spirit of the new millenium at least two years before the infamous Marie Laveau was born.
Edward Holliday spent his life in the Bayou, wallowing in poverty and in clandestine Voodoo gatherings late at night, where he was inducted into the religion by a woman of color.. a slave.. a lover. The conjuring of the Loa, meant to curtail evil and direct it away to enemies, backfired when a particularly malevolent Entity named Kalfou seemed drawn to Edward, and strangely resistant to the Snake Bite as well as many a potent gris-gris. He killed his lover in the midst of a frenzied voudon ceremonial dance. Legend says he cut out her heart and ate it, much to the chagrin and terror of a congregation of slaves who'd been convening secretly to hold forbidden Voodoo ceremonies in the Brickyard. To quell their horror, a small lynch mob of white men dragged Edward Holliday to the edge of the woods near the Bayou and hanged him by the neck. He was buried face down in a shallow grave.
Without precautions.
It was what the voudon laymen had discussed amongst themselves in secret whispers upon being sent to the slave barracks shortly after being forced to hollow out a shallow grave in the earth at the edge of Josiah Avondale's sugar plantation.
With Epiphany Proudfoot, they had taken precautions. After carving the unborn child from the dead woman's belly (against the voudon council's better judgment), her body had been carefully dismembered and each piece offered separately into the bonfire.
Edward Holliday had been dragged out to the nearby woods by a Louisiana lynch mob, and hanged by the neck until dead. His crime: Voluntary slaughter of another man's slave without monetary means for recompense. As far as the Sheriff and his posse of white men were concerned, the world was much better off without the existence of a philandering, penniless derelict quite well-known for living a life incorrigibly strung out on lethal Absinthe and Laudanum cocktails.
He had been dropped where he landed in a shallow grave, and hastily buried. This powerful Bokor; this worker of evil and black magick. To the voudon laymen, he was now more dangerous dead than he had ever been while alive.
Without precautions.
On St. John's eve in the year 1829, the Bokor - Edward Holliday died.
And was born again.☼ ☼ ☼
As much as Bette Stanwyck might have stuck out like a sore thumb in a backless hospital gown while clawing at her assailant, she nevertheless vanished into the night.. a mere step above a Jane Doe with her misspelled name and a grainy video image that had captured her waving goodbye. No doubt when the night staff of Chartres Pontchartrain Behavioral Health Center reached the side exit that led out to the alley dumpsters, they would be duty bound to call 9-1-1.. and report both the murder of Johnny the Custodian, as well as the alleged kidnapping of one Bettie St. Wick.
Edward kept the young woman on the run, cutting through alleyways and low trafficked side streets until he reached Rue Dumaine and North Rampart. It was precisely the location of the old Congo Square. It was also once the location of the Brickyard, the old hot bed of forbidden, late night Voodoo ceremonies. And the vampire Edward Holliday might not have recognized it at all -- underneath all the bright lights and crowds milling about outside on the streets surrounding what appeared to be a park enclosing the city's historical monuments -- save for the faint pulsating ç'est le congo of bygone ghosts that drew him right to the very heart and soul epicenter of New Orleans' spiritual pulse.
The park itself closed nightly at sundown, repudiated to be a very dangerous place after dark. But it was precisely where Edward forced Bette to go, not stopping until they reached an early nineteenth century whitewashed building that more resembled a cemetery sepulcher than a masonic temple. Behind it, the Rabassa de Pouilly Creole house of plaçage, which overlooked the Congo Square. Edward put his fist through one of the rear windows, forcing Bette to crawl right in before him over the broken glass.
Down and down into the cellar which seemed to have been neglected over the decades, for it was filled with undisturbed little dunes of dust and thick cobwebs which formed wispy networks between broken crates and debris, he led her to the furthest corner away from a little wooden staircase so rickety with wood rot, it seemed as if the slightest weight would make it combust into sawdust and splinters. And there he pushed her backward onto one of the empty crates, as he leaned against one opposite her and lit a cigarette in the dark. Behind it's glowing orange ember and grey cloud of smoke, Edward Holliday stared good and long at Bette.
Epiphany Proudfoot should have lived there as a plaçée, one hundred and eighty years ago. But she was not so lucky in love.
"Je veux que votre sang, Bette," Edward replied to her poignant question - demanding to know what the fuck he wanted, and with a slight grin upon his maw as he fully intended to make a ritual game of taking it from her. He dropped his cigarette to the cool brick floor of the cellar, interspersed with it's many dirt-filled cracks where the old sealing grout had long since disintegrated.. and he pushed from the crate he'd been leaning against.
This way and that he moved, circling around her until the concentric rings grew smaller and smaller, a ravenous carnivore closing in upon the wounded prey.. his movements rather slow and beguiling.
"Ssshhhh." Pressing one thin finger to his lips, he leaned down close from where he'd stopped right behind the frightened girl, and whispered to her.
"Do you hear it? The batterie.. ge-rouge. Listen."
Edward slowly curled his hands right around the girl's head from behind, stretching his fingers to cover over her eyes. If there were any rhythmic drums beating in cadent tympani, they were much too far away to have been audibly distinguished. He either heard his ghosts.. or.. more likely.. the florid pounding of Bette's heart.
☼...
She was a beautiful girl. Simply stunning. Any man would have fancied her, though she'd easily have her choice of most any white man with enough financial clout to make a semi-honest woman out of her. It was what Cécile wanted most of all for her.. to be one of those fancy plaçée girls of the Société de Cordon Bleu.
"He no good. He broke down. No money."
But alas her argument was always the same and had gone on for years, falling upon deaf ears. Only near the end did Cécile's pleas grow more rash. It was as if she sensed a bad moon rising. Something irrevocably evil in the shifting gulf winds.
"T'row da' bebé in da' canal, 'Piff-nie. I he'p you do it. Bokor bebé be cursed. Bad ounga follow him an' bebé, too. You see it come," she warned, shaking a finger at the girl.
"Mama, he in love wit' me. Only me." And in the girl's eyes, the man was easily enough forgiven his many sins because he did love her.. and only her. She was certain of it. Edward Holliday had that certain look in his eyes; that certain j'ne ç'est pas. It was in his hands and in his kiss, and most certainly in the way he'd taken her in bed. Someday.. yes, someday.. Epiphany Proudfoot would be a freed woman of color and class within the New Orleans society...☼
Why, she had asked. Why.. her blood?
When Bette curled her fingers 'round his wrist, Edward's hands slipped slowly downward from where they'd served to blind her eyes. Though the gesture had been an unnecessary one, due to the fact that it was quite dark down in that Creole House root cellar. Dark.. save for the cigarette ember that still glowed upon the broken stone flooring.
As his hands slipped downward, they settled cold and light around the base of her throat at her collar bone, where he could feel the warm twitch of her pulse none too far above her heart. And as he pulled her slightly backward against him, he let his cold fingers of his left hand stretch downward under the rounded neckline of her flimsy hospital gown.
"Why.. not?" he whispered. Yes.. why not?
☼...
Edward left many of his own personal possessions -- few of which held any sort of monetary value -- stashed away scattered within the slaves' barracks where Epiphany Proudfoot shared a cot with her mother, Cécile Proudfoot on the frequent occasions when Edward stayed away for days at a time, strung out on Absinthe and laudanum.
It was near the end of Epiphany's eighth month of pregnancy when Cécile began to snatch away little bits of this and that, a button from his shirt, a ground out cigarette butt, and not the least of which had been a lock of the man's hair while he slept one night. These items, along with a few dried leaves, twigs and a bit of dirt were carefully sewn into a small, cloth bag which she bade Epiphany to wear.. for good luck, she insisted.. despite her belief that the baby would be born under its father's curse. The lock of hair had been dipped in blood and hidden away for safekeeping.
On the Eve of Saint John that Epiphany Proudfoot had danced her last ever ritual dance of the voudou, Cécile Proudfoot cast her curious hoodoo inside a white chalk vever outline there in the empty lot that once used to be The Brickyard. Her intention the opposite of a love spell, for she wanted her daughter's eyes to be opened wide concerning the truth about Edward Holliday -- he was an incorrigible, good-for-nothing, penniless scoundrel who would only wind up abandoning her daughter and unborn baby in the end.
When the drumbeats signaled the beginning, all the congregating slaves, and even a good handful of freed black souls had begun their frenzied, hypnotic dervishes.. and there was Edward Holliday in their midst, stripped down to his waist amongst the sweaty throng of bodies and dancing right along with them. The drum rhythms were raw. Primeval like a heartbeat that coursed along through the ground beneath the stamp of a bare foot, the twist of a hip, and every other torrid contortion. Edward was the first to go down upon hands and knees, convulsing violently under the weight of the mounting loa. He drooled slightly. He gouged his fingernails into the dirt and stone.
"Ouatchman la yé yé tombé la dans; Yé fé gran' déga dans léquirie la."
"It comin', Piff-nie. You be seein' who da' real mon be, 'neath'a d'em jolis yeux." Cécile whispered over the candle flame and small, makeshift altar in the midst of the circle of dancers, and in between their loud, sing-song chants . "Bad Bokor."
"Ala maite la geole li trouvé si drole, Li dit, moin aussi, mo fé bal ici." ...☼
As Edward Holliday stood there with the flat of his cold hand spread wide over the young woman's warm breast, beneath which her heartbeat pounded strong, he closed his eyes and grinned to himself in the dark. And as he slid his other hand upward a bit higher on Bette's throat, he kept her head pinned back firmly against his hip while nudging her chin upward. After a moment when he had opened his eyes again, he peered down into the young woman's face below by the scant moonlight streaming down the cellar stairwell from the broken window in the house above, and he whispered to her.
"Ils viennent. Bientôt. Ils viennent pour danser. I can hear their drums."
☼...
Kalfou. He was a little different than all the rest. A little more frightening. A little more commanding. The hypnotic drum rhythms suddenly broke apart into sheer chaos and terror, as several of the sweaty dancers fell backward upon each other pell mell.. desperately trying to put distance between themselves and that white man, Edward Holliday, while feebly clasping their hands over their mouths lest they inadvertently invoke the miscreant loa's wrath upon themselves in a curse.
For there upon the ground lay Epiphany Proudfoot, eyes wide open, body twitching in ghoulish shock in the aftermath of having her chest ripped open by the tang of steel.. and her heart literally gouged out and savagely eaten right before her eyes...☼
Edward had sunk his teeth right down into the girl's neck for a second time, opening the same wounds as before after peeling away the bandage covering. He took from her again, possessed under the constant, repetitive charivari.. only to lay deep scratches across her soft flesh where he had gouged with a rake of his fingernails. It was as if.. he were about to dig Bette Stanwyck's beating heart right out of her chest.
Entranced or not, the vampire's senses were razor sharp. It seemed a common theme in him, no? For as an intruder, one of the city's many drunk and homeless derelicts moved along the dark cellar floor in those precious last minutes before the new day's dawn, Bette was dropped to the ground and once more left to whatever fate claimed her.. though fortunately for her, with her heart still intact and buried inside her lovely warm breast.
Edward Holliday simply vanished. Perhaps less like a ghost than a cockroach. Consumed by shadow and crevasse.
Your Own Mad Skills
How Good Are You?
::CODE WORD::[/size]
'the CATS pajamas'
::APPLICATION STATUS::
Complete
::RP EXAMPLE::
Having been banished by forces that worked against him for nearly two centuries, Edward Holliday was never more thrilled to have found his way back into New Orleans at long last. Thrilled down to his cold, dead heart. A cold, dead heart that had mysteriously stirred after one hell of a shocker wallop had laid the man out earlier that night in the dark halls of one of New Orleans' many mental health facilities.
Having left his most recent haunt in the cellar of one of the historical creole cottages enclosed within Armstrong Park, Edward had skulked off in those pre-dawn minutes and vanished. Vanished right down into one of the old subterranean storm drains that criss-crossed the city underground, to hide away from the daylight along with the rest of the nocturnal vermin. Though he never strayed from the city's French Quarter.. in particular, none too far from where Marie Proudfoot was currently isolated. One might say he had a thing for the woman, despite her poor prognosis.
"Alouette, gentille Alouette. Alouette, je te plumerai. Je te plumerai la tête. Je te plumerai la tête. Et la tête. Et la tête."
The haunting little melody carried through the crumbling concrete cylinders, unending for hours upon hours.. it's repetitive lyrics ghoulish in their sing-song nursery rhyme fashion. Perhaps if she listened very hard.. perhaps if she had been leaning over her bathroom sink with her ear cocked just a certain way.. the sound of it down deep in the drains might have risen up to her. But who could tell for sure. Poor Marie had been strapped to her bed in restraints the last he'd seen her.
"Alouette, gentille Alouette. Alouette, je te plumerai. Je te plumerai la bec. Je te plumerai la bec. Et la bec. Et la bec."
Edward smiled to himself in the darkness. For at the moment, his thoughts were upon.. the other black woman. The younger one.
"Alouette, gentille Alouette. Alouette, je te plumerai. Je te plumerai le cou. Je te plumerai le cou. Et le cou. Et le cou."
Restricted into the darker bowels of the city during the daylight, Edward did not seem at all to mind wiling away the hours right underneath the Chartres Pontchartrain Behavioral Health Center; right underneath Marie Proudfoot's assigned room where he had taken to drawing crude figures on the concrete pipe walls in his own filthy blood. Blood he'd stolen from some hapless victim on the street somewhere between Armstrong Park and a storm water drain. Blood that instantly turned foul and fetid once ingested.
"Marie?" Edward's voice rang out several minutes after his endless monotony of song had fallen silent. "Je sais que vous êtes là."
After an hour or so, he had surrounded himself by vever markings, as if he were conjuring up some sort of a Voodoo curse. And afterward, he pressed both palms to the floor there, steeped in rainwater and a residual sewage sludge leftover from the aftermath of a severe hurricane in years past. Edward crawled along the belly of the decaying pipe, and after a long bout of silence, he spoke out again.
"Evangeline lied to you, Marie. She lied and lied. But I forgive you, Marie."
Stopping less than fifty feet from where he'd begun, Edward stretched out along the floor of the drain pipe and laid himself flat upon his back. And once again he began to sing.
"Quelle est cette odeur agréable, Qui ravit tous nos sens?
S’exhale t’il rien de semblable, Au milieu des fleurs du printemps?
Quelle est cette odeur agréable, Qui ravit tous nos sens?"
On and on for hours, the vampire will give the poor woman no reprieve at all from his hauntings. She is already a broken soul. He means to finish only what her own nature has started.
"Mais quelle éclatante lumière, Dans la nuit vient frapper nos yeux.
L’astre de jour, dans sa carrière, Futil jamais si radieux!
Mais quelle éclatante lumière, Dans la nuit vient frapper nos yeux."
Edward's silences came and went like clockwork, as if he sensed Marie were not alone from time to time. But he never budged an inch from his spot.. and only resumed his monotonous singing and rhetoric whenever the staff members finally left the patient to her lonesome.
He had every intention of sneaking back into her room in the dead of night, once the sun went down and once all the hustle and bustle of a busy hospital died down under the blanket of chemical sedation.
How eerily reminiscent of the distant past on those rare nights when Edward Holliday had come crawling into the slaves' barracks on the Avondale sugar plantation, wasted on Absinthe and laudanum.. only to fuck Epiphany's mother right next to her sleeping daughter, merely to appease her disapproving scowl. The older woman had little recourse but to keep her mouth shut and accept his uses.. being naught but a mere slave. But never once did the white man known as Edward Holliday appease her. If anything.. he only added to the list of grievances she bore in silence against him.
