Bathory

by Candace Adams

Madame Bathory was a demon. A nightmare. A story told throughout the years to ensure the obedience of children refusing their bedtimes. She was a monster who masqueraded as human, bathing in the blood of the innocent to keep her disguise until the righteous trapped her within the walls of her own castle... a sentence passed for crimes she felt no remorse for. Bathory was gone. A bad memory. It's funny how memories can resurface. And so I did. Waking in the rubble of my castle prison, I found all had changed. All but the hunger. I was free to begin again. To feed. A lifetime of roaming to sate my appetites. And where better to begin anew, but in the city that never sleeps? Only this time, I'm the warden of this concrete prison and beneath these concrete monoliths of sin and vice, I will rule again.