Category Archives: Violet Welles

Episode 800: Sitting in a Tree

July 1969, Violet Welles, , , , , ,

“Maybe nobody took it! Maybe wherever it is — it wants to be there!”

When Aristede reaches the rendezvous point, his supervillain boss is already waiting for him.

“Why are you late, Aristede?” Victor grumbles. “You know that waiting always makes me fretful.”

This is something of an understatement. When Aristede admits that he doesn’t have the magical artifact he was sent for, Victor lashes out, smacking him across the face three times. “You are stupid! And incompetent! And clumsy!”

Aristede cowers, and makes excuses. Quentin was supposed to bring Aristede the Legendary Hand of Count Petofi in exchange for a cure for lycanthropy, but Quentin said that he lost it.

Victor thunders, “And you believed him?”

“Yes!” Aristede squeaks, as his boss pulls him close and glares at him. “Well, there’s no reason for him not to give me the Hand!”

“Yes, there is,” Victor sighs. “He has a brain in his head — something which you, who have nothing behind that lovely face of yours, can not possibly understand.”

So… hold on. Did he just say that Aristede is lovely?

Continue reading Episode 800: Sitting in a Tree →

Episode 792: Dances with Wolves

July 1969, Violet Welles, , , , , ,

“I would laugh, if there was any laughing left in me!”

Quentin Collins returns to the Old House on the Collins estate, empty-handed in several senses of the word. Earlier in the evening, he went to his friend Evan’s house to retrieve the legendary Hand of Count Petofi, a magical artifact that may have the power to release him from a terrible curse. But he returns without it, and his gypsy friend Magda is crushed. She was the one who put the terrible curse on him in the first place, but they’ve made peace with each other, and now they’re bonded together in a way that only two people who wear too much makeup can be.

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Episode 791: Sign the Paper

July 1969, Violet Welles, , , ,

“No, Judith — you’re not mad, you’re just… burdened.”

Reverend Trask is comforting his distressed wife. “Now, Evan here has a paper that will lift a great deal of that burden from you, as soon as you sign it.”

But Judith is too upset to focus. “I can’t read anything right now!”

“There’s no need to read it, Judith,” her husband explains. “Just sign it.”

She says that she needs to talk to her brother Edward first, but the Reverend and his lawyer-accomplice shake their heads. Edward, they say, is dead. He’s not, actually — at least, he looked okay, the last time I saw him — but Trask and Evan seem pretty sure about it.

“Why can’t I remember?” Judith cries. “What’s happening? Everything is going to pieces, I want it to stop!”

“Judith, it will stop,” Trask says, “when you sign the paper.”

“Sign the paper,” Evan agrees.

Judith turns to look at Trask’s dead wife Minerva, who’s just sitting there, glaring at her with undisguised loathing.

“She keeps staring at me,” Judith mutters. “She’s watching me, and waiting. What is she waiting for?”

Trask insists, “Judith, sign the paper. That is the only way I can make you stop seeing this phantom that doesn’t exist!” He picks up the pen, and puts it into her hand. “Sign the paper, Judith. Sign the paper!”

Now, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but I’m starting to get the feeling that they want Judith to sign the paper. This has all the earmarks of being one of those sign-the-paper parties.

Continue reading Episode 791: Sign the Paper →

Episode 778: Pocket Full of Kryptonite

June 1969, Violet Welles, , , ,

“Why not bring back a strange, powerful hand to solve all our problems?”

It always starts with a box.

But this time, it’s important. At least, that’s what people tell themselves, just before they pop the lock and open the lid. This time, the wolf is at the door, the bad guy is getting away, the emperor refuses to surrender. I have no choice, they say. It’s really important.

And when they say it’s important, what they mean is I’m important. As in, more important than whoever gets hurt. I am important enough to flip this switch, to drop this bomb, to use this power which no one should wield. I am more important than you, and here’s the proof: this hell I’m unleashing.

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Episode 777: All Points

June 1969, Violet Welles, ,

“I know what the evil force wants you to do next.”

March 6, 1897. Evening.
Village of Collinsport, docks.

Sophie Baker — white female, mid 30s. Discovered in storage area behind the Blue Whale. Severe wounds to the neck, drained of blood. Dead, but still super drunk somehow. Eyes had a haunted look, as if they had stared into a subterranean chasm that would destroy us all. Officers advised to be on the lookout for a metaphor for the lust and greed that drives the exploitation of the lower classes.

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Episode 776: Blood Sports

June 1969, Violet Welles, , ,

“If we only knew what these three bullets meant.”

“Miss Collins,” Rachel says, eyeing the loaded heater in her former employer’s hand, “you must put the gun down. You’ve got to realize!” And then: Ka-POW! It turns out she doesn’t got to, after all.

So we start the week off with a bang, and it’s going to get messier from here. This is a particularly dangerous time to be a Dark Shadows character; we had two murders last week, and there’s going to be three this week, including the governess who just got fired ten seconds ago. Soap operas don’t usually have a weekly body count like this, except for General Hospital, obviously, where they have a dedicated budget for ammunitions.

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Episode 769: Crazy Ex-Boyfriend

June 1969, Violet Welles,

“I will not let him, nor what he knows, step in the way of what I must do.”

Oh, I know what I have to do! And I’m doing it, right now! I’m doing just what she says! Laura! Yes! She told me to give this letter to you! Now, you have to read it very carefully! Very, very carefully! Because it’s about — Barnabas Collins!

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Episode 768: Number One with a Bullet

June 1969, Violet Welles, , , , , ,

“I can’t take my mind off this bullet.”

Yesterday, somebody found a silver bullet outside Collinwood, and now Quentin’s taking it super personally. As a Werewolf-American, naturally he’s sensitive to displays of lycanphobic sentiment. Trying to explain that anybody could be killed by a silver bullet is not at all reassuring.

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Episode 767: Elegy for David C

June 1969, Violet Welles, , , , , , , , , ,

“David Collins is nobody that exists.”

Back in ’97, Samuel Taylor Coleridge awoke with a splitting headache and a magnificent idea. Grabbing a pen and ink, his hands shaking with inspiration, he scribbled the first words of his masterpiece.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
David Collins is dead!

“That can’t be right,” Coleridge frowned, and scratched out the last four words, passing them along to the next available dreamer.

And so the crossed wires uncrossed, and the message wound its way from 1797 to 1897, whispering itself into Jamison Collins’ receptive ear.

But just imagine: if that mixed message had been traveling in the other direction, young Jamison could have become one of the great poets of his time.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

This is what Jamison got instead.

Continue reading Episode 767: Elegy for David C →