“To what?” I asked, now thoroughly roped in to the story.
“I thought seriously of becoming a priest. I was torn between the Franciscans and the Jesuits, and I was days away from making this decision when the vampire came into my life and changed my destiny forever.”
I glanced over to Samantha, who remained as still as a statue, eyes glued on Dracula.
“The vampire,” I repeated. “Who was he?”
“He told me that he was the original vampire – the first vampire - an offshoot of human evolution that came into being 2,000 years ago. He was in fact a person history has come to hate and abhor for two millennium.”
Dracula paused for a few seconds in what I am convinced is an arbitrary bump of drama.
“His name was Pontius Pilate. The man who sentenced Jesus Christ to die.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I am poleaxed, or as my three-year old niece would probably say, ‘malaffoo-ka-kalished.’
“No,” I say in disbelief. “You’re shitting me.”
“I wouldn’t do that, Dick, not at this stage of our relationship. I have deceived you enough as it is,” Dracula responded.
“Pontius Fucking Pilate. Unbelievable.”
“History of course is fairly certain how Pilate died, but because he had become a vampire, and was thus consigned to roam the Earth forever, he was able to arrange things where he simply disappeared. It’s not difficult to do – eliminate one’s own identity, create a new one as needed. In fact, it is a practical imperative to surviving through the ages in the world of Men.”
“How … how did Pilate become a vampire?”
“It was a reward from Satan,” Dracula sighs. “Or more accurately – a curse.”
“I’m sure you’re going to elaborate.”
“Certainly. Pontius Pilate was turned into a vampire by way of a bite from that species now come to be known as Desmodus rotundus. It was Lucifer who sent the beast on its deadly mission. Pilate told me he was attacked by the bat the day after Christ was crucified.”
“So he started drinking peoples’ blood from that point on,” I surmised in horror.
“On the contrary. Pilate was basically a humane man. You will recall how reluctant he was to execute Christ, and was forced into this decision by political pressures at the time. He did not understand initially what had happened to him. He did not, for instance, understand his craving for blood. He sated himself with the blood of animals, and told no one of his affliction.”
“But he did bite people, right?” Mirabelle suddenly peeped next to me. “That’s why vampires are thought of as so evil. They bite people and turn them into other vampires.”
Dracula sighs and smiles sadly at Mirabelle. “Alas, that physical mechanism that causes our hunger, could indeed be construed – and I believe is – evil. But like the nature of men in general, evil can be controlled, even suppressed. With considerable concerted effort, it can even be eradicated.”
“You’re saying that vampires aren’t bad news, really, they’re just misunderstood bloodsuckers?” I say neutrally, not really sure if I believe this argument for vampiric compassion.
“I am saying that the nature that compels us is evil. It is a curse from the devil. But it need not rule us. And in fact, I believe, within both Samantha and myself, that evil has been successfully quashed.”
“Uh-huh,” I say.
“Not so with the new super vampires of the here and now,” Dracula says. “They have given themselves over to their natures completely, and perhaps because of the biochemical complexities triggered in them by the Popov Phenomenon, they have little choice in the matter. But I digress. Mirabelle, you question the vampire’s reputation specifically.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Mirabelle shrugs, and offers me a small smile.
“It is true, that once we inflict our bite, our victims are then subject to vampiric transformation, or death, depending on the severity of the attack. If our hunger drives us to feed without abandon, transformation for the victim is one hundred percent. The results of resurrection are hideous – as you well know, Dick.”
“No shit.”
“On the other hand, with control and disciplined feeding, a vampire can create a companion vampire, one that retains complete function of mind, body and soul, and is not turned into an insane piece of unholy flesh, blindly and madly searching for a way to sate its insatiable hunger.”
“Dracula,” I say slowly. “You have killed human beings over the centuries, correct?”
Dracula looks at me without blinking. “Correct. I have done so, and each and every time I was possessed of the Hunger.”
“The Hunger?”
“It is a term applied to a vampire that has no control over its hunger. It is a time that manifests itself rarely, and cannot be contained – but it is during those times, that a vampire is at its most dangerous. It was at those times that I lost all sense of rational perspective, and occasionally killed and fed on human blood.”
Mirabelle and I say nothing.
Dracula lowers his head. “It has happened to me less than a dozen times, but it shames me greatly to recollect those moments of animal abandon. And it is, I fear, how the vampire myth, in part, became so famous in my home country of Romania Wallachia.”
“I think I get it. When the Hunger hit you – you went out and started putting the fangs to the general population.”
“Something like that,” Dracula nodded.
I am fascinated, my revulsion on the details of vampire behavior-management momentarily quelled.
Dracula puts down the glass of scotch he has been holding, and sits next to Samantha. He stares at me with eyes that are tinctured with tears.
“It was during a period of the Hunger that Pilate fed on me, though his strength of will was such that he could control that demonic urge to feed completely and with lethal finality. Thus, I became the thing I am today – a vampire, to be sure – but a thinking, feeling, cognizant being, able to differentiate between good and evil.”
“But you still kill people for their blood,” I say with what I recognize to be a tone of contempt and disgust.
“No.”
Dracula’s response surprises me. “No?”
“I do not feed on humans anymore. Nor does Samantha. You might call us addicts who maintain a kind of twelve step program, the end result being, we simply do not kill people.”
“But how do you survive?” Mirabelle asks in her soft lilt?
“Animals. Specifically, pigeons.”
I cannot believe what I’m hearing. “Pigeons?”
“There are enough of them around, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Pigeons?”
Dracula nods.
“You’re shitting me.”
“You keep saying that, Dick. No, I’m not shitting you. Ask yourself why you see so many pigeons in the city – but so few dead pigeons. Have you ever noticed the lack of pigeon corpses on the street?”
I put on my dead-pigeon-deficit thinking cap and ponder Dracula’s question. In fact, I have rarely seen a dead pigeon in Los Angeles. Once in a blue moon, maybe, one that is squashed by a car, once I found one torn apart by a cat – but aside from that…
“Pigeons,” I repeat again.
Dracula looks to Samantha, and takes her hand.
“Pigeons – and coconuts. Coconut milk has many constituents similar to pure blood plasma.[4] That … and we can feed on one another,” he says, smiling.
“What?” I say, the coconut statistic obliterated by the more astounding news of vampire co-parasitic survival practices.
“We vampires are able to sustain our daily existence by also feeding off one another. Incremental portions, of course, but the blood that flows in our respective bodies is sufficient to do the trick.”
“You suck each other?” Mirabelle asks. And the way she phrases it makes me inadvertently chuckle.
“Charmingly put,” Dracula says. “Yes … we do indeed suck one another. So, in add
ition to the pigeon dynamic, we are quite happy with not murdering helpless human beings to live. In fact, aside from the vicious and insane mutations that we’ve seen develop due to the Popov Phenomenon, most vampires live in this way.”
I stand, feeling a little drunk, staring at Dracula incredulously. All my senses are assaulted, my understanding of the vampire myth shorn to the bone (again, sorry for the mixed metaphor).
“Most vampires?”
“Well, Dick, I may possibly be the oldest vampires on the planet, but I’m not the only one. Samantha is only a century younger than myself, for example. There was an unofficial census taken in the vampire community about 50 years ago, and it is estimated that we number over a million worldwide.”
“There was – a census taken?”
“Yes.”
“But … a million vampires? This was way before the Popov thing, right?”
“Of course.”
“My god. A million blood drinkers,” I say, momentarily forgetting myself.
“We’re not that bad once you get to know us. We’re not a whole lot of fun at Sunday mass, but –”
“I don’t mean that. I mean … I mean that vampires are famous for killing and drinking human blood. That’s what they do. That’s the job description. Vampire. Fangs. Blood. Living Death. People killers.”
“A lot of myth mixed with fact, true,” Dracula says softly. “Vampires are a different form of life in this world, a different species. But to say that we are all homicidal is like saying all human beings are serial killers. It’s simply inaccurate, and in fact, aside from the Starving issue in our lives, we’re quite peaceful.”
I stare, flummoxed.
“Furthermore, we are able to function on a limited basis during the day, though it is uncomfortable. The mutations, like the Grand Master tonight, however, can only operate at night. Sunlight would kill them. But again – they are pure evil, no doubt about it, while we are … something less than that.” Samantha finally chimes in, silent up to now.
“Then why do so many cultures throughout the world, down through the centuries, portray vampires as evil, bloodsucking monsters that live in coffins and exist to prey off of humans?” I ask, trying to find a way to expose Dracula in some way … though I’m not sure how … or why.
“Are there not myths and legends of space aliens? Flying saucers? Twirling wheels of fire that fly? Big Foot? The Abominable Snowman? Ghosts?”
“But ghosts are real, Mr. Dracula,” Mirabelle counters.
“They were not real until the Popov event. In fact, the Popov scenario changed the planetary dynamic completely,” Dracula says with a cool clinical detachment. “In other words, young lady, you should not exist. You should have passed on at death.”
I am pacing now, thinking, shaking my head in wonder.
“Peaceful vampires,” I repeat. “I’ll be goddamned.”
I turn to Samantha. “I suppose your story is equally sentimental.” My sarcasm is ill-concealed.
She smiles - that smile that tells me one day she would have no objection to a frenzied tussle in the old coffin velvet with me.
“Actually, my story is not sentimental whatsoever, if that’s how you choose to characterize Dracula’s background.”
“Okay, sorry. How did you become a vampire? Someone famous like Marie Antoinette fanged you?”
She smiles again, and something inside me melts. I want Samantha, I realize, bad, and dirty, and … now.
“No. When I was bitten, I was eighteen years old, as I appear now.”
“You do look very young,” I admitted.
“For someone close to six hundred years old, I consider that a compliment. Thank you, Dick.”
“Okay, go on.”
“It was Dracula who fed on me during the Hunger. I was eighteen years old, and ensconced in Our Lady of The Holy Trinity, about 70 miles outside of Venice, Italy. I was a young nun, happy in my service to God, incapable of error or regret, untouched by grief, and still a stranger to despair.”
“Very touching,” I say, and I mean it.
“I was a virgin.”
I wait, and my mouth drops open as Samantha speaks again.
“I was a virgin back in 1552, and I am still one today.”
* * *
I smile, and find this genuinely amusing.
“Okay, now you’re putting me on.”
“No, Dick. I am still a virgin. I have never known a man. At least, sexually.”
I am mystified. “But … the Master Vampire said he could reproduce like human beings. Is that a lie?”
“No, it is the truth. Vampires, contrary to the dark ramblings of myth, and Hollywood, are wholly capable of biological reproduction,” Dracula speaks up again. “And many of us are quite fond of sex. And there are those who have no use for it any longer, like myself.”
I have no interest in Dracula’s sexual ambivalence. My focus again shifts to Samantha, an amazingly beautiful woman who continues to exponentially captivate my heart and loins simultaneously.
I realize I am sputtering again. “But … you don’t look … I mean, you don’t seem like … it’s just that –“
“Are you implying I look like a little slut, Dick? Is there an absence of virtue in my demeanor, or manner of speech? Do I look like a whore?”
I shut up, and then realize she’s messing with me. She laughs softly, and it is a beautiful laugh. I smile, and fuck me gently with a blunt power-tool, but I believe I’m blushing.
“No,” I stammer in my best wussy. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you seem so … worldly.”
“I am worldly,” Samantha says, still smiling. “Worldly, but not prone to frequent acts of fornication.”
“By choice, I assume.”
“Completely. I have yet to meet anyone who I would want to do the Nasty with. I believe that’s how, among other phrases, screwing is referred to these days, yes?”
“Uh, yep. That’s certainly one way of putting it.” I believe I am falling in love with Samantha, and I turn to Mirabelle, who stares at me with what I swear is a touch of jealousy and hurt.
Samantha continues with her saga of how Dracula found her in a field one twilight, near her church, and consumed with that strange and horrific affliction to all vampires known as the Hunger, took her mortal life by feeding on her. He had used restraint, and thus, she became a full-fledged, ass-kicking, red-hot smoking, vampire-babe who, by the way, could also fuck but chose not to for the most fundamental and touchingly romantic of reasons, that being ….
… she had yet to fall in love.
Samantha went on to say that she and Dracula had become friends, and she thus was invited to be his traveling companion through the ages. He taught her how to feed on animals only, how to instill terror in the hearts of pigeons everywhere, and how best to disappear from the world of men during those periods of the Hunger stranglehold. She was versed in no less than twenty languages, but that she would need to brush up on her Eskimo Inuit, if push came to shove. She had disciplined herself to learn every Martial Arts technique in existence, as well becoming proficient in any number of weapons warfare and personal combat.
She could also play the piano, she said, as well as Mozart, and her violin virtuosity was right up there with Itzhak Perlman and Isaac Stern, yet could not surpass her cello accomplishments, which she stated (modestly) were on par with those talents of Yo-Yo Ma.
I was, of course, wondering, pig that I am, if she believed herself to be a super-charged fuck-bunny in the making, given the fact that she’d never, as she put it, Done The Nasty, and that she must certainly be the horniest virgin on the planet. Or so I dared hope, so I dared dream.
She smiles at me again.
“Dracula also taught me how to read minds,” she said.
My own libidinous smile evaporates.
“Oh.”
“It’s a vampire talent,” Samantha says.
“Uh-huh.”
“But I try not to invade an individual’s priv
acy.”
“Is that a fact.”
“But I do find the term fuck-bunny amusing,” she says, and her smile broadens.
Shit. Busted like a Tai hooker trying to fake a blowjob.
“I do, in fact, have … urges, Dick. I simply have not as yet acted upon them. My vows with my church were very specific about the rules of chastity – and celibacy. It is difficult to disengage myself from that early discipline. You do understand, don’t you?”
“Oh … sure. Of course,” I nod. I suddenly ask myself what my therapist Dr. Simonhoffer would make of my discussion with Samantha, and my base desire for her, concomitant thereto.
Then, for just a moment, another thought strikes me, more germane to the whole vampire thing in general.
“Dracula. Samantha. I want to back up a bit, and ask you about the crosses, and garlic. You mentioned that you two fear those, as do the Popov vampires and werewolves?”
“Yes, Dick. As I said before, we cannot stand to be near these things. They are an anathema to all vampires, and werewolves.”
“But you’re good vampires,” I say. “I’m puzzled, you see.”
“The question of our moral rectitude being somewhat unequivocal in terms of the power of these things over us.”
“Yes … I guess so,” I say. “It just seems that if you are people who deliberately eschew murder, why would you thus be affected adversely by icons associated with goodness? I’m having trouble with that.”
“You almost wonder if God is playing fair with us, right, Dick?”
“You could say that, yes.”
“It’s a good question, Dick. Remember, the genesis of the vampire began with Pontius Pilate. It is a curse from the Dark One, and of course, he is enemies with the power of light, and the Christ. Thus, we are all subject to, by our very evil origins, the terrors inherent to crucifixes, garlic, mirrors, running water and holy ground – all things affixed to vampiric existence that are deadly and intolerable to us on every level.”
“So even if, you like believed and loved Jesus, it wouldn’t matter, the cross would still freak you out?”
Monster Vice Page 13
