Reading Savage's Hide and Drink Through Twilight

There's more here on Hide and Drink.

Hide and Drink

Edward Cullen Entering the Cafeteria

This is the moment the audience and Bella first see Edward Cullen in Twilight. 

For those who haven't seen the film or read the books,  this is prior to the scene in the biology lab where Edward imagines all the ways he is going to kill Bella and drink her blood. 

All this precedes the opening of Hide and Drink but it is not necessary for reading Hide and Drink, but does add to the horror. Hide and Drink is a fanfic based on Meyer's Twilight.

The resonances with H.P.Lovecraft are inescapable. In Meyer's Twilight Lovecraft is only on the periphery. In Hide and Drink Lovecraft breathes through it. In his book on Lovecraft, Houellebecq has given us a portrait that is loving, respectful and profound. And he has said about Lovecraft, How does he do it! And in fact you cannot know. Lovecraft is all seduction and there is really no way to produce his seductive horror without entering the Order of Seduction and leaving the Order of Production, mimicry,reproduction far behind. I have already said elsewhere that this is what Savage does in Hide and Drink.

Savage has created an Edward from his Double, the monster that emerges and is kept down in the  biology lab scene, but which takes precedence in Hide and Drink. Edward goes to Bella's house, attacks her, drinks from her and instead of draining her and killing her has the idea that if he keeps her he can go on drinking indefinitely until and unless he kills her on purpose or accidentally. So he abducts her and makes her his captive. 

I was taking her blood in gulps. I had to slow down or she would be dead in seconds.And when she dies, this blood will die with her.

There was no other blood like this. Once she was gone, it would no longer be within my grasp. But if I stopped now, she would heal. Her body would make more. The blood would replenish. I could drink again. The promise of more – it was the only incentive that could have caused me to stop.

My tongue slipped over the cut, sealing it. (H&D 1 Bite and Run) And here we have Baudrillard's Impossible Exchange.

He takes her to a remote cabin in Canada. He knows he has to ration her blood, so he decides on every three days. We feel the excessiveness of this and how it weakens her and our anxiety increases with hers. When the three days are up, and she has finished her last meal of the day:

Once she finished her final meal of the day and started to clean up, I decided I had waited long enough.

I inhaled deeply.

There was a difference in the scent from the day before, even if it was slight. It was a little darker, deeper, and more pungent. I watched it flow through the vein in her neck as she reached down into the sudsy water for another supper dish.

I stepped up behind her, my finger drawn there, to that spot just under her ear. I ran my finger along the bluish line and her body stiffened when I touched her.

"Its time," my voice came out in a hoarse whisper. Her breath caught in her throat. (3 Cry and Consume)

And so we enter into a rhythm. The days after he feeds he is more relaxed, he tries to make her comfortable, gets movies for them to watch, is considerate. Gradually his anxiety builds up as his need increases again. But the reader has entered her horror. We know the feeding time is coming again and we, as does Bella, anticipate it in fear. It is the waiting that permeates everything between them and us also. This is the skill Lovecraft has in his stories. Everything is quiet but completely apprehensive, the terror an awful presence. Worse because it is silent and invisible. We wait for Edward's words,

It's time.

Because this is when Death stands there in the room..                                                                                                              
I absolutely could not read this without thinking and feeling the whole time of Jaycee Dugard. Garrido, like Edward, is predictable. They both perseverate, repeat, and the horror of Jaycee feeling the rhythm of his need, knowing the time is approaching again, and being alone in the meantime as Bella is not, is to experience her feelings in an almost intolerable way. Savage has created a fiction that informs us with a knowing. It is worth far more than all the circulating information, fed us by the media, that we know about her captivity.

Edward takes her into the bedroom, restraining her for the drinking and then holds her and soothes her afterwards telling her how sorry he is over and over and over and he knows he will never stop. In Bella's despair she clings to him because there is no one else there for comfort as she sobs.

And it is so very erotic. The reviews often mention that fact and the reviewers feel perverted for feeling that way. So we enter DeSade's world I think. Because it really is incredibly erotic in the way it affects the reader.

For Savage's Hide and Drink Edward

The blood blossom flowers

At the fragile girl's throat

The vampire leans down

Holding her imprisoned supine form

His mouth open

His lips caressing

Silken skin suckling

Plumbing pulsing each precise

droplet

Throbbing into him

Drinking and calming his frenzy

Then his venom seals her wound.

Saving her for yet

Another day

Another night

Another time

Until...

The novel enters the long slow time of Proust, of primal time, of eating and waiting and sleeping and dreaming and nightmares. The outside world recedes and its demands dissolve. 

Kenzaburo Oe: Every time you stand at a crossroads of life and death, you have two universes in front of you...(A Personal Matter)

Oe on captivity and confinement in Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids: 

Nonetheless, for aliens like captured wild beasts to be safe before others watching them, it is best to lead the will-less existence of a stone, flower or tree:a purely observed existence. (22)

A dissertation of Marguerite Duras's work at the University of Helsinki:

Sirkka Knuuttila

Fictionalising Trauma

The Aesthetics of Marguerite Duras’s India Cycle

Hide and Drink: Reading Savage's Edward Through the Foucauldian Matrix of Power/Knowledge

 Savage's Edward in Hide and Drink begins with the Double, the monster in Meyer's Twilight, the one who sits in the classroom fantasizing about all the ways to kill Bella and drink her blood. He kidnaps her, takes her to a series of isolated apartments and places where he can hide her and drink her. After drinking she sobs and he holds her telling her how sorry he is over and over, holding her all night. He begins to unknowingly love her and takes her to Bella Island so they can be completely alone.

While there there is a plot twist in which Bella almost bleeds to death and Edward must rush her to the hospital with the help of Emmett. It is at this point halfway through the story the reader enters the Foucauldian grid of power/knowledge/capital. The hospital.  And Edward becomes caught in this web just as Bel Ami, Nina in Black Swan, Lily Bart in House of Mirth, Eric Packer, and ourselves. "She's lost so much blood. I have to get her to a hospital. I have to get her to Fiji. Please…" I looked up into his darkened eyes. "Please help me!"

The doctors see the scars on her wrists and neck where Edward has been drinking.

"She's had a transfusion and she's going to be just fine," the doctor said. "But I want to hold her for seventy-two hours for a psychiatric evaluation."

"That's not necessary," I said, shaking my head.

"I believe it is."

With this exchange Edward is stonewalled by the bureaucracy. At Bella's bedside he is inconsolable at what he has done to her and promises he will find a way to stop drinking her blood. His words are overheard and the nurse plans to report him. So he plots to kill her:

"I understand your desire to approach the authorities given the exchange you witnessed." I moved up close, my hand reaching out and stroking down her neck. I felt her pulse against my fingers and swallowed venom back down my throat. "But you misunderstood. Regardless, I can't take the chance that you will go to the authorities. I can't take any chances with Bella. So, I must apologize for what I have to do. There just isn't any other way to protect what is mine."

Bella is interrogated by the therapist and backed into a corner. She does not want to tell the truth, afraid of what Edward will do or perhaps because she has grown to care for him or both. The authorities begin to threaten him as they correctly suspect he has been abusing her and she is afraid to reveal this to them. 

"It's all right, Edward." Bella sat up straight and I helped her fix the pillow behind her back. "They aren't going to let me out of here until they go through all their little procedures, so it's better to just go with it and get it over with. I have a feeling she isn't going to be easy to convince, though."
"We won't have to convince her," I replied.

As if to prove my day truly could get worse, Ms. Spencer and the doctor from the first night decided to walk in as Bella was throwing me out. Two men who could have been orderlies, but were obviously chosen for their physical prowess, accompanied them.

The grid is tightening, closing in on Edward, leaving him struggling like an insect in a web that will only result in an act of violence. But Emmett has been pursuing alternative ways of dealing with the power/knowledge matrix, a more effective and standard way, an alternative threatening power coupled with money.

I growled, but then I heard his mind recount a conversation with a local attorney who was on one of Jasper's personal "lists," and also a personal friend of the hospital administrator. They were close, personal friends, apparently. Close enough for their wives to have had the opportunity to catch them being particularly close. The scandal would ruin both men.

Then they begin to intimidate Bella to force her to sign an affidavit so they can take her to a shelter and arrest Edward.  

"So you let us do our jobs." He pushed the paper and a pen towards her. "Sign here."

"No."

"Listen," he said. The second officer moved to the other side of Bella's bed, effectively crowding her. I felt a growl rising from my chest. "We understand these things. Doctor Sans and Ms. Spencer are going to take care of you. They will take you to a shelter and help you in whatever way they can. But first you have to help me. Now sign this."

"Just sign it, Bella," Sophia moved up next to the officer. Bella wrapped her arms around her own shoulders. "Then this will all be over."

"Yes," Doctor Sans agreed. She also moved up closer to the side of the bed. "He can't hurt you anymore.

And then more power enters into the equation to oppose this part of the matrix of power/knowledge, because it also is within the matrix, the administrator of the hospital.

I hope we aren't too late.

"That's enough, Doctor Sans," the tall dark haired man said as he approached. I recognized him as the hospital administrator from the night Bella was admitted. I thought I may have thrown a tantrum at him about having Bella's room changed. "Harassing the Masens is not in your best interests."

"Mr. Delai," Doctor Sans started, "I hardly think..."

"I said that's enough," he repeated. He made his way over to Officer Baravilalas. "Officer...?"

"Baravilalas."

They shook hands tentatively.

"I am Manasa Delai, the administrator of this hospital. I'm afraid there has been a misunderstanding here."

"As I said," Manasa repeated. "A misunderstanding. Mr. Masen is not responsible for his wife's injuries, and she will be discharged to his care as soon as possible."

"What are you talking about?" The doctor's face began to turn crimson. "She is my patient and I decide..."

"No, she is not," Manasa scowled at her. "She is a patient in my hospital and you will stop harassing her and her husband. If you don't, you will find yourself unable to practice medicine before the week is out. Clear?"

As perfect a fictionalized account of the Foucaudian grid of power/knowledge that often leads to a frustration turning into violence as you are likely to find. Other descriptions I have posted:

Bel Ami: here and here
Black Swan
Eric Packer in Cosmopolis and also here