Good morning and Happy Hump Day! If it's Wednesday, then it must be time for more flash fiction from the Wednesday Briefers! We're a group of authors who bring you our finest flash fiction every week, 500 to 1000 words, inspired by one of our prompts.
Avram enjoys a brief respite, conversing with Andrei while Dracula is at rest below. See what is happening in this week's chapter of Dracula! Don't forget to visit the other Briefers and see what's up with them. Their links follow my tale! Enjoy!
“So you
are traveling to Vienna?” Andrei asked between hearty bites of bread and
cheese. He offered a hunk of the cheese to Avram as well, who accepted it,
appreciating its salty flavor.
“We are,”
Avram replied cautiously. He had no reason to think the smuggler would betray
their whereabouts. Not like he wasn’t aware of their destination anyway. He
knew what the next leg of their journey was and where his cousin would conveying
them from there. But Avram was concerned
that the man not possess any information that could potentially bring him
trouble. Maybe he was just being paranoid, but better he should err on the side
of caution than see an innocent person be hurt. Truth be told, he didn’t believe the villagers
would even have the desire to track them down, much less the extra resources. Why
would they bother? Out of sight, out of mind. Life would go on as usual for all
concerned. Not like he and Nico hadn’t left the village on its own before in
order to travel. The difference this time was the circumstances under which
they were leaving. Normally they would be scrounging for funds that would
enable the nobleman to continue his entitled lifestyle. This was that, but also
the need to distance themselves from the unfortunate situation and any possible
repercussions. The death of the blacksmith and his poor wife would be the topic
of gossip and speculation for some time to come, no doubt. By the time they returned, hopefully not so
much. The greatest uncertainty in the whole affair lay in not knowing how long
this self-imposed exile would last. He was trying not to think about that.
“What is
Vienna like? I have never been there myself. From what my cousin says, there
are many interesting things to see there.”
That was
probably true… if you had money. And weren’t Jewish. Antisemitism was far from
dead in the Habsburg empire, and Vienna was no exception. Although there did
seem to be some relief on the horizon, as more enlightened thinkers published
their philosophies. Writers such as Voltaire and Locke, Hobbes and Mary
Wollstonecraft, among others. He owned a few volumes of their works… or, rather
Nico did, although Avram was sure he never read them and only purchased them to
please Avram. Ironically, while Voltaire advocated freedom of religion, and
rejected the notion of the Jews as “Christ killers’, he was also antisemitic in
that he hated Jews for what he considered to be their innate, degraded
character. As Avram explained to Nico, he read Voltaire, despite that, because
he preferred to see all sides of an argument, and not make judgments without
obtaining sufficient information to do so.
“To be
honest, we don’t go out much. We stay with some people Dracula knows, and our
time is taken with them.” That was technically true, although far from telling
the entire story.
“He’s told
me there are many pretty ladies there. Ladies who will… well, you know… allow
you liberties.”
Avram
could have sworn Andrei was blushing. He and his brothers were still young, and
lived together, which made it easier to run their smuggling operations.
“I’ve
heard that too,” Avram agreed. Actually, he’d a number of those ladies where
they were going. They were called courtesans.
A rose
by any other name…
to be continued
No comments:
Post a Comment