Everything has its origin.
Hundreds of years ago in the country of Hungary, a young girl found herself in a tight fit. A foreigner from another country orphaned at an immature age, she snuck her way onto a ship heading for this new land. She got in through the goods shipped for Hungary. She hid in a box of rice and remained in the box until the ship officially made land at the docks. As the box was getting lifted out, one of the crew members noted how the box felt lighter.
"Sir, do you feel that there is something peculiar about this box?" a crewmate asked another.
"This is just a box of rice, nothing more, nothing less."
The girl kept herself deathly quiet. She was able to breathe through the small holes in the top of the box. The two men inquired more on the now lightweight box until they were informed that the nobles were waiting impatiently for their deliveries. Lest they faced spending a night evolving to weeks in their "torture chamber," they had better forget their complaints on the box and go. The girl was tossed here and there around the empty box. She felt herself getting picked up and tossed onto the back of a carriage.
With a whipping of the rope and the horses' neighs, she was off.
The journey was long and bitter. The post-digested rice within the young girl's stomach sloshed around, compelling her to almost vomit up the contents of her bowels. There were a few pitstops on the way. While the men were distracted, the girl quietly abandoned the box to steal crumbs of food and to relieve herself. There was a time when she was so blocked up from the non-nutritious food, she almost missed the carriage's exit. Sleeping inside of the box was bothersome and discomforting, but to her, she thought it was better than sleeping in the dead of winter in alleyways with hardly anything to cover her for warmth.
The time for the permanent delivery came short of 1 PM in the evening. Sunlight peaked into the minuscule holes, tickling the young girl's eyes. During one of their pitstops, the girl had collected a small knife and tentatively carved a hole through the box around a time the traders were distracted. The sights fascinated her. In front of her was a castle. It was one of the Gothic build popular at the time and unspeakably massive. It had a long history behind it: before its remodeling, it had a horseshoe shape and a Romanesque style. The men stopped at the entrance of the castle and began unloading their massive hauls.
"About time you had gotten here" a feminine voiced rang out with a clear hint of malice.
The men gulped nervously and placed the packages in front of the woman. Their fingers flailed around from the anxiety, but they started to open each one. One box contained silk. Another one contained tea that was shipped in from one of the neighboring countries. The last one was the box of rice. The men wrapped their fingers around the lid of the box, pulling on it slowly. The girl reacted immediately firmly holding onto the bottom.
"What is this!?" one of the crewmates yelled. He and his partner wrestled with the lid, but the girl refused to allow the box lid to budge. They both situated themselves on opposite ends of the box and gave it one, bold heave-ho. The girl was forced out of the box, landing on her face. The men and the noblewoman stood there in surprise.
"You!" the second crewmate yelled, "you ate her rice, hadn't you!?" He took hold of the girl's black hair, bending her neck backward. She writhed from his grip.
"No, no, please, sir," the girl begged, "I was just so hungry!"
The noblewoman held her hand up, alarming the men. She gave them a deadly glance as toxic as the worse of known poisons; worse than any cyanide. They shivered and released the girl. The girl was frightened by the noblewoman as well. But when the woman made a motioning gesture for her to get at her right hand, she obeyed her order wordlessly.
"I relieve both of you from your duties."
She sent them away back on horseback. She gazed at the young girl, eyeballing her curiously. The young girl felt violated by the noblewoman, even if she was simply observing her. After what felt like endless sessions of quietly interrogating her, a half-smile formed on the woman's face. "You must have come from such a far land," she finally said. Some of her servants walked into the room, and she ordered them to stage a grand feast.
"Do you have a name, if I may inquire of you?" she asked again.
"My Mom named me Rose after her favorite flower," the girl said. She was being directed into the dining room by the servants.
"Delighted to meet you, Rose," the woman said, "you must be starving after such a long journey." She sat Rose at the foot of the dining table. Huge slabs of meat were flopped down in front of the young girl alongside large vegetables like potatoes and beets. Rose found herself salivating at the mouth. "Well, eat up; I'm more than happy to have you in the family."
The woman identified herself as the countess Elizabeth Bathory and throughout a few months, she raised Rose alongside her other children. Rose found herself playing along with her stepsiblings in the courts of the Čachtice Castle and growing to enjoy the good life. Oftentimes, she saw Elizabeth send for peasant women to attend her massive feasts or to become employees at her castle. But for the faintest of reasons, Rose never saw these women again. Dozens of young virgin women would be invited to the castle with the promise of employment that they hoped to use to provide for their families. And yet, Rose never saw them during the day nor did Bathory's staff ever acknowledge that they were missing, Hundreds of women couldn't have just vanished overnight? Could they?
It lasted for about a year until Bathory decided to fill Rose in on her secrets. Rose was around 12 at the time. She was fondly looking out of a window at the water across when Bathory entered the room. Rose's eyes lit up.
"You're saying that there's a secret room that you wanted to show me?"
Bathory nodded. "I believe that you are ready for it."
She took her down into the basement; a rusted lock was firmly placed on the door, forbidding entrance into it from anyone other than Bathory. She moved her hair back and drew out a key from a necklace. She held the key in front of Rose's face. It was a golden instrument. Bathory inserted the key into the keyhole of the lock and turned it clockwise. A small click emitted, and the room droned open. A putrid smell leaped out of the room assaulting Rose's nostrils. Bathory smiled. "Welcome to my personal playhouse."
Inside the room, several of the peasant women that were promised jobs were hanging from chains. Multiple women were strung up, getting vivisected with their guts and entrails being exposed. One such woman was a 16-year-old whose lower intestines were wrapped around a spinning wheel. Attached was a crank that from the slightest push, the woman's entrails would be ripped out painfully and as slowly as Mrs. Bathory pleased.
Other women had the skin of their backs ripped off because of nail-laced whips. The crudely placed nails glistened in the sunlight from the remnants of blood that did not dry. The faces of 10 women were grotesquely removed along with other segments of their bodies. Rose looked at Bathory with closer inspection. A tinge of red was on her bottom lip.
"Rose," Bathory began, "what if I were to tell you that there was a way to live forever?"
Live forever? Everything felt like a dream sequence from here on out. The women were moaning in pain, with some strange vapor rising out of their mouths. Bathory walked over to one of the women. Seeing that she had a wound on her arm, Bathory knelt and pushed the wound in. The woman screamed again in pain. More ghostly vapor flowed from her mouth. Bathory hungrily lapped up the substance as the woman's eyes illuminated. The woman's cries gradually faded before she crumbled down into a bloodied heap.
"This, Rose, is the secret to long life."
Rose was intimidated at first, but she was also intrigued by the whole notion of living forever. Bathory beckoned her to lie down on the floor while she walked across the room with a jar in hand. It also contained that gaseous substance. She got on top of Rose and opened the jar.
"You see, Rose," she said turning the jar counterclockwise, "I delight myself in torturing these women because my society devalues them making it easier for me to spirit them away and indulge in my sinful habits. When one of my servants got her accursed blood on my hand, the blood reverted my aging body. From that day onward, I devoted myself to achieving eternal beauty."
She tipped the jar onto Rose's lips. "These women had this strange mental power when I killed them. I found myself accidentally ingesting the vapor and my body felt alive. To my knowledge, no one else made this life-altering discovery, and I proudly call it 'steam.' "
Rose breathed in the steam. The pain was excruciating as she felt her body contorting between the past and the present. She felt younger while she was still mentally 12. Lady Bathory was right: she felt invigorated. "Repeat after me, Rose," Bathory said. She recited some cryptic words apparently; she came up with on the spot:
"Lodsam hanti, we are the chosen ones. Cahanna risone hanti, we are the fortunate ones. Sabbatha hanti, sabbatha hanti, sabbatha hanti. We are the True Knot, and we endure. What is tied may never be untied."
And then it was over. Bathory removed herself from Rose allowing her to regain composure. As they exited the room of horrors, Bathory grabbed hold of Rose's arm and leaned her close to her face to meet her at eye level. "I want you to succeed me, Rose, but I will inform you that if you as much as to share what I have done with anyone else, I will not only call you a liar, but I will condemn you to the same pain and torment those women downstairs have faced at my hands. Understand?"
Rose gulped and nodded fervently at her demand. She and Bathory spent years luring women into the torture room and killing them in ways indescribable. There was one that was like Rose in that she was also an orphan who was strapped to the spinning wheel.
"Please, let me go," the orphan sobbed, "I just want to live."
Rose looked at the woman in observation. She knew what it was like to be alone and having to rummage for scraps. It was something that she would dear not to even consider reliving that nightmare. And yet, Rose slashed her throat with a brandished knife. The blood gushed out like a geyser. Fresh blood spewed in her face. Rose licked the blood around her lips. "Cherry," she thought.
While most of her assisting Bathory was largely under the threat of death, Rose found herself enraptured by the idea of living long and eating well. Soon, she found herself being elevated above mankind, much like in Bathory's case. It remained that way until one eventful day.
Rose was in the town when news got out about Bathory's actions. She had gotten lazy with her murders and in her hunger, she targeted noblewomen. In 1611, Bathory was found guilty of over 80 murders yet escaped execution by getting locked away in a room of her own castle. Rose had vanished during the sentencing, remaining gone for three years. Bathory was slipping away because of her deprival of steam. Food was still being served to her, but nevertheless, her dreams of eternal life were botched.
Sitting in her empty room, Bathory's eyes grew heavy and she began to drift off to sleep. A clicking stirred her awake. The door opens, she saw her adopted daughter Rose standing there. At first, she was relieved. "I've been waiting for so long, Rose," Bathory exclaimed, "free me and together we will rule all."
Rose shook her head. "Sorry, but I have better ideas for you."
A scream sent the guards running up the stairs. When they got there, they saw Bathory as a pile of dust. Rose had since vanished back into thin air.
