A collection of poetry and prose submitted to VO in 1996.

I can't write much at the moment, I'm still pretty messed up.

Shortly after my last entry, I was asked to head to Vancouver to look into a missing deliverer, Jack. Jack was a good friend of mine. I say was because all I was able to find of him was his head. Someone -- a vampire -- has left a message, a very clear one at that.

April 4, 1995 (The Fortean Times) - A man of 75, walking Jockel, his Dachshund, in Berlin on 4 April 1995, was attacked by a 43-year-old man who bit him on the neck, shouting "I am Dracula!" Passersby overpowered the attacker and handed him over to police. He said he had been drinking.

The victim went home and died an hour later from a heart attack.

Volume I consists of chapters 1-65; note that there is no actual chapter 41, 42, or 43 in the story. Chapter 40: The Popular Riot. -- Sir Francis Varney's Danger. -- The Suggestion and Its Results is followed by Chapter 44: Varney's Danger, and His Rescue. -- The Prisoner Again, and the Subterranean Vault.

Pricked by the thorn
from a dusky red rose.
Blood drips from my fingertips
and falls...
onto the rain-washed sidewalk.
Waiting for my lover
who will not return.
Waiting for my lover
who is in the arms of another.
My tears stain the rose
standing there in the rain.
Sorrow is my companion.
The rose falls to the ground
as a painful reminder
to a love that did not last.

Rhiannon
May 8, 2001