Submitted by Parasol on Wed, 07/31/2002 - 11:14
Posted in
Race: Vampire
Sex: Female
Real Name: Parasol Willamen-Smyth
Nickname: Parasol
Birth Date and Place:Cira 1830 - Montgomery, Alabama
Group Affiliation: N/A yet. Beliefs lie with The Cult of Fascion, sorta, she will feed on reprehensible assholes.
Position: N/A
No special powers other than vampire strength and senses.
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Description
A cinnamon-skinned black woman, appears to be in her late-20s. Average height. Her hair is reddish-brown with flecks of gold and grey. It's very long, wild and unruly. Her eyes are green. Her features are a sharp and a strong mix of African and Caucasian. (Picture Beyonce [Destiny's Child] with about 20 more miles of hard road on her.)
History
Parasol is the daughter of Allen Willamen-Smyth, wealthy and powerful plantation owner in Montgomery, Alabama. Her mother was Carriage, a house slave. Her father, a dedicated bachelor, doted on his slave daughter, raising her with all the advantages of a white child. She lived in his house. He educated her himself, teaching her philosophy, American and European history, French, Spanish and Italian and as she grew, gave her charge of the plantation's accounts. He never let her associate with slaves other than those in the house, except for allowing Carriage to take her every Sunday to the church he let the slaves keep. Parasol flourished.
On her 25th birthday, he returned from a European buying and investment trip with a new slave Loxum, an African trained as a blacksmith and Darla and Angelus, a brother and sister that he met on the voyage home.
Although her mother had little to do with her upbringing and generally disapproved of the manner in which her daughter was raised, she still had a close relationship with Parasol. Carriage felt it important to impress upon Parasol that though she had advantages unheard of for slaves, she was a still a slave. Parasol listened, but didn't believe her father felt that way about her.
Naturally, the plantation's slaves didn't much care for Parasol. She didn't talk like them, nor did she endure what they did. They also didn't think she had quite the right concept of her place in the world. Yet each Sunday, in church, when Parasol would sing spirituals like an angel, their resentment would dissipate – a little.
Darla and Angelus monopolized her father's time. He slept all day and went out every night with them. He became short with Parasol and her mother and mean to the slaves. The plantation, previously as benign as a plantation could be, became besieged with cruelty. Parasol continued keeping the accounting for the plantation, and noticed that money was missing. Parasol suspected Darla and Angelus' influence.
Parasol fell deeply in love with Loxum at church and she became pregnant, which since he was never awake during the day, she managed to hide from her father for nearly 6 months. She stayed up one night until nearly dawn to wait for him to confront him about the books and to tell him of her pregnancy. Her father nearly beat her to death, demanding to know who the father was. Carriage told him about Loxum to save her daughter. Parasol noticed that Darla and Angelus watched the scene with icy eyes.
Her father strung Loxum between two trees flogging his back to shreds. Parasol looked on, horrified. He abruptly stopped just as the sun came up. Loxum didn’t survive the beating and Parasol was banished from the house and her father's life and sent to live in the quarter with the other slaves of the plantation.
Parasol gave birth to her daughter and named her Chinaka, a name Loxum had told her was his mother's and means "God Decides." As soon as Parasol’s daughter was born, her father sold Chinaka to slave traders from Virginia, spiriting her away in the dark. Parasol screamed the screams she had heard so often from other mothers losing their children into oblivion, while she had coolly entered the sale amount in the black column of the books. Parasol prayed to God, her God for the strength and wisdom to find a way out of the madness.
Though banished to live in the quarters, Parasol still took care of the books, no longer out of love but because she wanted to suss out a way to find her daughter. There was more money missing. There was livestock missing. Slaves had gone missing, presumed to have run North. Elysian Fields was losing money and Parasol’s father was rarely around during the day.
He took to stalking the plantation at night with Angelus and Darla. Parasol followed them one night and came upon them in a clearing, slaves and livestock strung up, cut and bleeding, draining blood. The three of them were drinking the blood, sometimes from the cuts, other times from tearing at their necks with their teeth. Angelus and Darla were kissing passionately under rivers of blood pouring from the mangled bodies above them. Parasol gave herself away when she saw that one of them was Carriage and her father’s face was buried in her neck, growling, grunting, rubbing against her mother and drinking her blood. Parasol screamed from her gut.
All three turned to regard her, their faces twisted in a way Parasol had never seen a human’s face do. Parasol had never known rage, even when Chinaka was torn from her out of spite, but this night she could hear the blood in her ears and tasted the copper from the blood all around her in her mouth. She knew she was no match for the three vampires around her and resigned herself to dying, but not without hurting at least one of them. She picked up the heaviest tree limb from around her, swinging it in an arc while they closed in around her. The limb, armed with a pronged branch, caught her father in his back and he just dissipated, bursting into dust from his skin inward to his bones.
Parasol stood transfixed, murmuring a prayer for God to protect her. She was reciting the Lord’s Prayer when Angelus took her neck, mocking her faith. When she felt that the next breath would be her last, Angelus unhinged from her neck and looked at her, asking her if she wanted to live. All Parasol could do was to ask God to forgive her, but yes – she wanted to live. She wanted to rid Elysian Fields of their pestilence. She wanted to find her daughter. She wanted.
Angelus grinned and tore his wrist open and stuck it in her mouth and she drank, feeling like warm honey was coursing through her. She no longer felt the heat of the night. She could hear everything around her for miles. The blood on the ground smelled like baking bread. She collapsed.
Angelus carried Parasol back to the house, putting her in her old room. She felt drained and just wanted to sleep. She watched as Angelus pulled the heavy drapes closed. Darla was fingering the toiletries on the vanity that used to be Parasol’s. They were both talking to her, telling her things, things she knew to be important, but she couldn’t understand. She was just dog tired and wanted to sleep and forget the images that were swirling around in her head; horrible yet compelling and attractive images. She tried to whisper a prayer but the words stuck in her throat. Angelus and Darla were laughing as they closed the bedroom door behind them.
Over the next few months, Parasol knew what her life – or more precisely – death would be like. Angelus and Darla were insinuating themselves more and more into the fabric of the plantation. They were holding onto her as they buried what was left of her mother on that warm Sunday night.
They showed her how to survive and although she didn’t like it, she did it, draining first the hands of the plantation, then slave traders, then the slave bounty hunters. Parasol promised them they would live if they told her if they had ever came across a child of about 3 named Chinaka, and then ate them anyway. Angelus and Darla made fun of her, but she got stronger, knowing what it took to survive, and never closed her eyes to Angelus and Darla.
Elysian Fields became pariah to all around Montgomery. Slaves started disappearing again, either from Angelus and Darla drinking them or because they were so frightened of being at Elysian Fields that facing the perils of the Underground Railroad was the safer route. Parasol, still keeping the books, watched the wealth of the plantation fritter away. She knew Elysian Fields could fall prey to those who thought her father gone. She was never around in the daylight to defend it.
Late one Sunday after the last service, Parasol slipped away from Angelus and Darla and walked down to the little church. She tried to mumble a prayer, but again the words stuck in her throat. She knew she was evil, a demon, but the thought of God knowing her predicament comforted her. As she put her foot on the step of the little church, a flush of fire went through her.
The congregation turned to look at her in the doorway gasping and shrunk from her; her face had changed. Parasol looked at her foot on the doorstep and started singing a song, carefully humming whenever the word God, Lord or Jesus occurred.
When she finished, her face had changed back and she said, “My father is dead. He killed my mother by drinking her blood. I am a vampire, no longer connected to the being I worshipped here with all of you. But I’m a smart woman, raised to think. No one knows my father is dead. Elysian Fields, my home, our home, is being drained like my mother – by Angelus and Darla. I want it back and I need your help. If you help me, I will make sure that you, your children and your children’s children are provided for all of their lives. I’ll give you your freedom and in turn your children’s.”
The congregation was silent.
“Now, you’d be doing me a favor by taking that cross hanging up there and driving it through my heart; that’ll release me. But if you do, what I want to give all of us will be lost. I propose that we impale Darla and Angelus instead. They killed my father. They killed my mother and they killed me. I propose we trade the devil for the witch.”
Her mother’s best friend, Dresser, finally stood up and said, “How can we believe the promise of a demon?”
Parasol countered sadly, “You can’t. I don’t know how this demon inside me works. I have thoughts and feelings that horrify me, and yet I like them. I am in this church and I smell your blood and it smells so good. I can’t even mention G-G-G, His name. But as I stand here, right now, my promise is one I will keep. You can run North, but you’ll get rich here.
“I can see you’re not convinced, nor should you be. I will start the moves to get rid of Angelus and Darla. If you wish to join me, be in the clearing behind the pond tomorrow midnight, and we will all be free. Oh, and bring weapons. You can kill me then if you want.”
Parasol removed her smoking foot from the step of the church and set off for the house. If she could have prayed, she would that they would join her tomorrow night. It would be either death or freedom for her, not unlike the lot of a slave.
*How fitting that the moon is full,* Parasol thought as she, Angelus and Darla walked to the clearing. She had dressed up completely this evening, her skirts were swishing on the road. She could smell the vanilla she had put behind her ears. Angelus looked at her the way he looked at Darla. Darla was none too pleased. Parasol felt her power and didn’t care.
She told Angelus and Darla that the plantation would be theirs. They were white and could deal with people who wouldn’t deal with Parasol. Parasol suggested they sell the plantation, the slaves, take all the money left in the bank and go to Europe, where a woman of Parasol’s color was an attraction. And they could course through Europe living as they wished. Parasol expressed the desire to be part of their little family. They liked the idea, especially Angelus who regarded Parasol with admiration at her plan.
Parasol told her that she had a surprise for them, in the clearing. They would be pleased and sated and should follow her.
As they reached the clearing where her mother had died and she had killed her father, she turned to Angelus and Darla. She said the surprise is that she wanted to be free. Parasol said she wanted to live forever if not in His light, then certainly in His presence if only from afar. The slaves of Elysian Fields came out of the trees armed with crosses and stakes and shovels and manacles. Angelus and Darla looked, for the first time that Parasol could know, afraid.
The slaves set upon Angelus and Darla, stabbing with the stakes, but the vampires were too fast and strong for the slaves. On the slaves side was numbers. For each that Darla or Angeles killed, four more were upon them. Parasol, being held by Dresser with a stake to her heart, watched from the sidelines as Darla and Angelus were losing. The vampires ran for their lives. Parasol called after them to never return to Elysian Fields. And it was done.
Dresser took the stake from Parasol’s heart and told her that she was prepared to set her free. Parasol said, “I’ll never be free. But I promise you that you will.”
Parasol spent the next few years building up Elysian Fields. She never told those she dealt with that her father was dead. Elysian Fields made everyone in Montgomery richer, though no one really believed that her father was alive. Parasol learned that wealth could make people believe the unbelievable and accept the unacceptable.
She drank only cow or pig’s blood and the occasional slave trader or Klansman. These last feedings gave her an indescribable joy in killing.
With the help of the slave telegraph, the telling of stories between slaves on plantations, she found her daughter, Chinaka. She brought her and the slaves who had been raising her to Elysian Fields. She gave each of the slaves their papers. The slaves all stayed for the money that Parasol gave out each month and because she kept her promise. Parasol suggested that they tell no one and each dig a deep hole and put the money there until they were emancipated – which would have to happen eventually.
Her daughter grew old and died, as did her granddaughter and great granddaughter and great great granddaughter. Parasol was a satellite around each of them, sometimes in their lives, sometimes not. Because she knew how to run a business, Parasol prospered through the years, keeping businesses through the ages. She came to Los Angeles with her progeny, fittingly named Chinaka, an artist, to run her gallery.
Powers/Abilities/Stuff
The love of God is still in her flesh, though she still can't utter his name. She's relatively pragmatic about not being in God's presence. It only tortures her occasionally but when it does, it's profound and has repercussive effects.
She's extremely stylish for whatever historical age she is in; she could accessorize a burlap sack. But she's no sissy. When times call for down 'n' dirty clothes, she's got 'em. She has a beautiful singing voice.
Her prize possession is her 1962 bright red Ford Galaxie Sunliner, 352 FE Big Block with an FMX Three Speed Automatic, power steering, power brakes, a blast to drive.