Catching Casanova

Giacomo Casanova (1725 – 1798). Ish.

Picture the scene. It’s the mid-eighteenth century. We’re in Italy; Venice, actually. The Carnival is coming to its close. Noble folk (and lesser-noble for that matter!) are all partying like it’s 1999.

All are dressed in elaborate clothing, wearing stunning full masks, some with head-dresses made out of the grandest of feathers; others wearing the finest Venetian wigs and hair-pieces and/or top quality silks.

Couples are dancing to their hearts content, inside grand palaces and out. The streets are full with revellers who have spilled out from various venues.

The atmosphere is jubilant.

Today is Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras… the final day of Carnival.

Only it’s not today. It’s the mid-eighteenth century, don’t forget.

One of those revellers, revelling away is Giacomo Casanova, that Casanova. The one with the reputation. This is a few years before he meets Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and quite a few years after he was treated for nosebleeds by a witch.

Apparently, the treatment didn’t work for some reason, but Casanova was fascinated by the whole process and this ‘dark’ side, so to speak.

The mid-eighteenth century. Full of gothic splendour. Fancy dress. Masks. An ideal time for another creature of the dark to emerge: vampyrs.

The walkways are lit by torches and candles, but shadows are everywhere. Doorways are in shadow… alleyways are in shadow… steps are in shadow. Also in the shadows are the odd reveller or two, including our very own Casanova and his ‘friend’, Maria Constanza.

He’d just met Maria, and they were getting on like a house on fire. Throughout his travels, and his ample research, Casanova had never met such an endearing and hypnotising woman. Granted, he couldn’t see her face due to the full mask she was wearing, but there was something about her eyes that bore into his very soul.

She seemed very keen on him. She held onto him tightly, pulling him back when he tried to leave, or slamming his body against the wall and pressing hers against his to prevent him going.

He knew that he shouldn’t be there, but she had this strange power over him.

He felt dizzy. Mesmerised. Completely out of control. Something he wasn’t used to. Had she intoxicated him? Whatever. She was about to remove her mask, and he was finally going to get his reward.

Maria lifted the mask and revealed her face. The eyes were the same; hypnotic. The face was not what he expected. Pale. Drawn. Blood-red lips beneath a sharp pointed nose. Ravaged.

She looked at him squarely in his eyes.

“You’re mine.” She said, with a hint of either expectant laughter or absolute hunger. Her lips parted, and Casanova noticed the sharpest of fangs protrude from beneath her top lip.

“Don’t fight it,” Maria said, “Let me make you whole.”

“Thanks for the offer,” Casanova said as he pulled the stopper out of a small glass bottle he’d had hidden inside his jacket. He splashed the contents into Maria’s face, who recoiled, screaming… steaming. “You almost had me then, but you don’t travel around the world like I do without picking up a thing or two.

“Holy water. An excellent way to keep you vampyrs at bay!”

Maria clutched at her face and when she looked up Casanova had vanished into the night. The shadows now even more full with revellers. The party now in full swing and Casanova nowhere in sight.