In a small apartment near the Hospital Salpetriere in Paris, the doctor is surprised by the soft sounding of his door knocker. It is a polite knock, not timid, but no louder than it needs to be to attract his attention. He has no scheduled patients, and he approaches the door with curiosity, wondering who is calling so long past the dinner hour on such a snowy night.
On the stoop waits a man alone. He wears a thin cape, leather gloves, no hat, seeming impervious to the cold. His eyes are black, rimmed round with lashes to thick it almost looks as if someone has drawn circles around them with Egyptian kohl. His hair hangs in a long, thick plait down his back, his boots are a dark, butter-soft leather, laced up to his knees. His German is flawless, his glance both hopeful and cautious.

[This message has been edited by debhoag (edited December 15, 2007).]

"On the stoop waits a man alone." --A nice style of English which, together with the long, patiently observant sentences around, contributes to establishing the period setting.

"no hat, seeming impervious" I don't know the grammatical reason why, but I feel that "seeming" should be either "and seems" or "seemingly". (Or maybe this is a US/Brit English thing.)

"with lashes to thick" >> so thick?

The idea of Dracula visiting Freud for help is wild!

Edit: to answer some of your other questions:

Yes, it does interest me because I know the patient is Dracula (I think most people will be able to make the leap from Dragul to Dracula). And having read the other opening, I like this one better. There's a crisp quality to it, not as chaotic as the other opening, and it allows a cleaner entry, I think, since it's easier to engage with.

Long time no speak! I love this opening. I think the ideas are very interesting, here. Of course, butter-soft leather shoes would be very vaginal in the Freudian schema. Which is probably appropriate, since Dracula is considered a symbol of transgressive sexuality in literary theory.

Send it my way when you´re ready ;-)

quote:

---

One can read Playboy?

---

Since I don't have my back issues of said magazine to hand, I Googled Cinderella and fur and discovered there's a whole debate out there about the glass--or perhaps fur--slippers, e.g.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002886.html

Is it time to return this thread to the buttery leather shoes now? ... I think one can see that quality of leather without having to touch it. A man of Freud's worldliness would surely have been able to discern it.

Yup.

Beautifully crafted! Excellent flow! Your words are like butter soft leather!

Agree about the boots 'looking' butter soft though, and the discomfort of present tense stuff, but hey, but fun is fun.

The doc is Freud? Rock on, he wouldn't have been up to his eyeballs yet in weird victorian hysteria stuff, and if you did your homework, this Psych major would LOVE to read it even more!

Absolutely! Love to! Send it on, and I'll dust off my analytical couch and have a read!

Yippee!
(I've been 6 whole days without anything decent to read so I'm a little excited.)

He was, however, one of my flatmates back in College. One year my Mom sent me a stuffed Freud head, and when you squeezed it, he would say in a German accent, “Tell me about your Mother”, “Very interesting”, and “That’ll be $300 dollars, please”.

He taught me so much.

He was an integral member of our household until one of my roomates, in a fit of rage, removed his batteries. And one day, when I went to replace them, he was gone.