DRACULA (2020)

FAITH PASSAGE

WRITTEN BY ZARIUS

Sister Agatha Van Helsing had been truly tested by the universe; perhaps this was her penance for having as little faith in who put a lot of work into it.

Now, as she prepared for the final end aboard the cursed ship Demeter, her mind cast itself back to the most recent of pasts, the reward presented to her for her diligent service in the name of decency.

The embrace from Captain Soklov had come most unexpectedly, but perhaps she had been all too deliberately oblivious to the emotional ramifications of the great war they had waged together over the course of an evening, united against the prince of deceit Dracula.

Maybe it was her dismissal of men in general, or maybe she did not want to consider she wasn't so above their emotional needs as she had thought.

When the embrace came, she welcomed it. Refusing to return the gesture with a firmer hold from her, she instead opted to snuggle up against his lean shoulders, finding radiance in his bodily temperature, and just let him hold her firm a few moments longer. This was a sensation she figured she would never find in this world again

The grim reality of her plight meant she could not honour such a pleasant show of affection, not with the duty to come, and not in her present condition. She had been quite a resistant catch for the count, someone he had preyed upon and absorbed, cursing her physically with the mark of the Vampire, but had not entirely turned her soul, at least just yet.

It was that ever decreasing sense of soul that she searched inward for now, seeking a clear answer in her moments of solace to a million questions. All could be silenced with but one prayer asked and responded to.

Whether or not she could finally connect what was left of her spirit to that which had sent it to the Earth, and, more to the point, whether or not he would permit her to appreciate a gesture of love.

Love, after all, is as eternal as the undead.

To truly follow the path of the righteous spirit, does that mean forsaking all love except for those above us on Earth?

Commotion on board the ship, at a time where they should not be any trace of it, drove her to distraction and she followed the source of the noise to another cabin, neatly put together with a long soft bed.

She sat down on it, wondering if this was God's response, to lead her to a place of comfort, where she could come to a complete halt, and drift into eternity, letting the boat, and the evil it harboured, burn. Her body would be committed to the ocean; her spirit would be committed to the lord.

Would anyone be waiting for her on the other side?

Those were the thoughts that Soklov's warm and gentlemanly gesture had provoked in her.

She was a nun, but she was also a woman, proud to be both.

But besides that, she'd been the burden of cabin number 9. A suspect in a murder, a victim of a frame-up orchestrated by the nefarious count to draw attention away from his insidious blood hunt.

And yet Soklov went to bat for her, cared for her, did what he could to delay the decay that clung to her body, and fortified her.

She felt Soklov had done more than enough to God's service to qualify as her reward in some other life.

Perhaps the afterlife, and not one reserved for her fantasies, had a place in its plans for both of them.

He entered the cabin just as he began to take full precedence in Agatha's thoughts, knocking on the door politely.

"Going down with the ship" he said, his face conveying resignation to his fate, and a sense of definition about what role he continued to play, through to the final end.
"I learned a long time ago, that's the captain's job"

He held up a bottle of whisky.

"One for the road?" he offered.

Agatha, glad that it was not blood she would be drinking, chose to indulge this one last earthly pleasure and accepted this kind invitation.

Mere minutes later, the devil showed its hand just as everyone prepared to take comfort in the hands of God.

A final test was upon them.

The captain, mortally wounded by the thriving Count, pleaded with Agatha to delay the monster long enough to set off the explosive gunpowder she had been spreading across the lower decks, preparing to commit what she had assumed to be the last remnants of Dracula's evil to sea and fire.

She would go to the upper decks and oblige. She would play her final game, a pawn in God's grand plan, and she would see it to that a king would make way for a second queen, with a second wind both figuratively and literally as the chilling English breeze picked up around them.

The gambit paid off, she would die with her eyes fixated on the counts', eyes that reflected everything she could feel in her final moments.

Contempt overrided all other sensations for as long as they remain transfixed by one another's gaze. And yet, as soon as he fled towards the lower decks, the ship bursting and burning around him, seeking to seal himself in one of his remaining coffins, and as Agatha sank under the ocean, she permitted the elusive feeling of gratitude and understanding to that which she'd doubted for so long to spread across her now peaceful features.

She would pass into God's care, her final test complete, and she knew Soklov would be waiting for her. Each their own reward for confronting the supreme evil and becoming champions.

In mere hours, she had found the devil.

In mere minutes, she had found someone.

In mere seconds, she had found God.

In the immediate, she had found faith.

And she had found passage.

Amen.