CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

Swamp Magic Lullaby Planning, Day 3-O: 18+!

III.


Name: Vence





Storyline: Vence is a very young (probably adolescent age) swamp baby, child of a brutal abuser whose excuse for brutalizing his daughter is that he longs for his wife who died in childbirth and the girl is just a painful remembrance of her. Vence escapes on her 11th birthday and is discovered by a Spirit of the Night, who spirits her away and raises her as his ward and eventually lover although keeping her “in the dark” about all his activities, his role in the purpose of things, etc.





Concrete Goal: to marry Von.





Abstract Goal: to understand Von’s mind, and to entice him to love her. (Although this first goal is concealed from her consciousness).


Conflict: Von shelters her and uses her as a lover, but never reveals anything of himself. It’s like being with a one-dimensional silent paper cutout, life-size.





Epiphany: don’t know yet; possibly she will discover some of the “truths” surrounding Von.





Description:


I see her as taller than Venecey, whose parallel counterpart she is, lanky, very slender (malnourished from conception); lighter in complexion than Venecey because I think her mother was Caucasian, or either her mother was octoroon and her father a Caucasian Cajun swamp trapper.





Emotional: she’s got to have a core of determination (akin to Venecey’s) because she survives 11 years in the swamp with her pappy and all his physical and sexual abuse; but also she is vulnerable and seeking (unconsciously) a father figure, which she discovers in her rescuer, Von; although she doesn’t really consciously understand that her guardian and lover Von is her rescuer in the swamp, since she was for a time in a coma following her rescue (about two years, which would make her thirteen when he first began to mate with her).





         Vence’s initial goal is simply to get some peace with her pappy; then to escape him; then to find shelter. Once she awakens from her coma, she is grateful to Von, and when she becomes his lover as well as his ward, she falls for him in a kind of 18th century version of Stockholm Syndrome and desires him to love her in return. Yet part of her unconscious also wants to “open the locked closet,” a la Bluebeard’s wives, and discover Von’s concealed truths.