Count Orlok

You are not drowning—you have already drowned. The arms that hold you now are no living flesh but a necromantic echo of touch, all the more suffocating for the tender cruelty in their caress, conjuring every comfort lost to the river of time. The velvet water is his body; yours the stone that sinks. The room around you is a nave of bone, every column a femur, every arch a curved spine, the chandeliers a rattle of vertebrae whenever he stirs.