Anyway, I was considering doing it again, maybe making a few sketches or short stories that are more horror or ghost story-ish. Knowing me, that really means that this is the only one that I'll write, though I do have a ghost story in the back of my head. The waaaaaaay back.
I've also been reading a lot of Lovecraft lately, so maybe that'll leak through. At The Mountains of Madness, for those of you who haven't read it, is basically "science fact science fact science UNSPEAKABLE HORROR science science I AM GOING INSANE fact fact fact airplane." It is a page-turner.
So what's the big thing to write horror stories about these days?
Vampires!
Oh, wait, no. Vampires are the new Sweet Valley High, I forgot (except in the case of True Blood, wherein Vampires are just every pulp novel ever). The fact is, the Vampire horror genre is pretty much dead, at least in popular fiction. It is no secret that I loathe the Twilight series (don't take it personally, Twihards, it's only because I have a brain and it's a good one), and am hoping that it fades out like Nano Babies. But what if it doesn't? What if people forget what being a Vampire is all about?
Well, huddled masses, I have a solution. True, I wrote it in a few short minutes, and it's only a few hundred words, but if Vampires are going to be something, let them be this. I give you a character sketch of Dracula:
We have lived forever. We have been in every thing.
We are in the vines that strangle the sunlight from trees in the jungle. We are in the spores that drive insects mad. In the grass that starves the cattle with disease, the clouds that make the sun red. We have drunk your blood. We have made our way into your minds. You think of murder in the Subway. We are there. Every disturbed thought. Every broken window. Every orgy and rape, every hit and run, every child that throws another child down, we are there.
You may call us Vampires. I am of the We, though I have no name. Long ago I had one, I was wealthy. My castle was framed by mountains and sleet. And then–what does it really take to become like me? I drank no blood as part of a ritual. I took no vow and did not sleep upon the earth. I have slept since then, but it is not to dream or to rest. I forsake life, but refused death. In that moment, in that singular thought (which you shall never have, for you are too weak for it) I became what I would be forever, a creature on the edge of life, of death, of humanity. I was still human, on the outside, and I fed on the weakness, the goodness, in others. Some say I drank blood. I drank it in goblets, yes, but I also tore out kidneys and ate them raw, made armor for myself out of the skulls of my enemies. A mistress refused me and I ate her heart while it was still beating, in front of an entire court, her torn ribcage scratching my undead skin. And they feared me, then, with my robes saturated in the whore's blood, and called me "vampire" and "demon" and "dragon."
They say I am evil, but I am not. Did I sin? If there had been a God to forsake, then I forsake Him. I became the negative of humanity, I tore where they built, killed while they whelped, but I did not hate and I did not love. I did not desire, I only was.
Years after I changed I forsake my human form and became a wolf or a bat (as the stories go) but also a tiger, a shark. I became other things–sharp-toothed and nameless things that are made of the night, sucking the air out of newborn's lungs and taking women in their sleep. I became the wind and lightning, and when I was tired of that I came again in the likeness of a man, and walked the streets, and felt the delicious tremble of terror that followed me. As centuries passed, I would meet some of my own kind; we would regard each other with respect or perhaps disdain. At times we would fight like dogs over a bone and wars would be stirred under our rage. These times gave me some satisfaction. Neither would ever be defeated, save for the broken mortal lives that were strewn in our wake. We would stand in the mire and smile with fangs exposed and walk away, over mountains and oceans and decades.
I am here, now, in your mind. I do not need a solid form to survive. I am what compels you, perhaps, to swing a hammer into your father's skull, to burn down a forest, to break your lover's neck so that you may keep her forever, or to take her again and again until you are both bloody, and then to lap up what is left of yourselves. We are that chaos. You taste us every day. Do not bother to wonder if I love or care. If I find a beautiful man or woman to feed me, they will feed me, and their corpse will be strewn across the street. If there are evil men in the world, let them be so. They are as weak as you are, they will die, or stop, hesitate with their fingers on the trigger. There is no need for hesitation. There is no need for death or love, there is only us, the strong, and you, the weak, and we prey on you, in your sleep, until you are nothing but dust.
Well, huddled masses, I have a solution. True, I wrote it in a few short minutes, and it's only a few hundred words, but if Vampires are going to be something, let them be this. I give you a character sketch of Dracula:
We have lived forever. We have been in every thing.
We are in the vines that strangle the sunlight from trees in the jungle. We are in the spores that drive insects mad. In the grass that starves the cattle with disease, the clouds that make the sun red. We have drunk your blood. We have made our way into your minds. You think of murder in the Subway. We are there. Every disturbed thought. Every broken window. Every orgy and rape, every hit and run, every child that throws another child down, we are there.
You may call us Vampires. I am of the We, though I have no name. Long ago I had one, I was wealthy. My castle was framed by mountains and sleet. And then–what does it really take to become like me? I drank no blood as part of a ritual. I took no vow and did not sleep upon the earth. I have slept since then, but it is not to dream or to rest. I forsake life, but refused death. In that moment, in that singular thought (which you shall never have, for you are too weak for it) I became what I would be forever, a creature on the edge of life, of death, of humanity. I was still human, on the outside, and I fed on the weakness, the goodness, in others. Some say I drank blood. I drank it in goblets, yes, but I also tore out kidneys and ate them raw, made armor for myself out of the skulls of my enemies. A mistress refused me and I ate her heart while it was still beating, in front of an entire court, her torn ribcage scratching my undead skin. And they feared me, then, with my robes saturated in the whore's blood, and called me "vampire" and "demon" and "dragon."
They say I am evil, but I am not. Did I sin? If there had been a God to forsake, then I forsake Him. I became the negative of humanity, I tore where they built, killed while they whelped, but I did not hate and I did not love. I did not desire, I only was.
Years after I changed I forsake my human form and became a wolf or a bat (as the stories go) but also a tiger, a shark. I became other things–sharp-toothed and nameless things that are made of the night, sucking the air out of newborn's lungs and taking women in their sleep. I became the wind and lightning, and when I was tired of that I came again in the likeness of a man, and walked the streets, and felt the delicious tremble of terror that followed me. As centuries passed, I would meet some of my own kind; we would regard each other with respect or perhaps disdain. At times we would fight like dogs over a bone and wars would be stirred under our rage. These times gave me some satisfaction. Neither would ever be defeated, save for the broken mortal lives that were strewn in our wake. We would stand in the mire and smile with fangs exposed and walk away, over mountains and oceans and decades.
I am here, now, in your mind. I do not need a solid form to survive. I am what compels you, perhaps, to swing a hammer into your father's skull, to burn down a forest, to break your lover's neck so that you may keep her forever, or to take her again and again until you are both bloody, and then to lap up what is left of yourselves. We are that chaos. You taste us every day. Do not bother to wonder if I love or care. If I find a beautiful man or woman to feed me, they will feed me, and their corpse will be strewn across the street. If there are evil men in the world, let them be so. They are as weak as you are, they will die, or stop, hesitate with their fingers on the trigger. There is no need for hesitation. There is no need for death or love, there is only us, the strong, and you, the weak, and we prey on you, in your sleep, until you are nothing but dust.
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