Vampires: The Recent Undead (60 page)

In case you missed it from the above, Kilpatrick—among other things—has written quite a number of vampire stories. In “Vampires Anonymous” she manages to bring the archetype right up to date while still referencing its grand traditions.

Vampire Anonymous

Mortals! Enter freely and of your own free will!

All may post in the section marked

VICTIMS

with absolutely no assurance that

your post will ever receive a written response!

To post on this site:

VICTIMS
will only be accepted once personal info is submitted:

Name: ________________________________________________

Address: _______________________________________________

Phone number: _______________________________________

Email Address: ________________________________________

Age: _____ Internet Name: _____________________________

Gender (not optional): M / F

VICTIMS:

Hey man, cool site so far! Cool images. Well, cool fangs, anyway. Looking forward to some chillin’ words ’o wisdom from the great Undead!”

Your Boi Georgie

I find the idea of a new vampire blog intoxicating. I just hope you don’t resort to the mundane clichés so many pseudo vampires do. In darkness . . . 
Lucrezia

Am SOOOOO lovin’ this! Hozit feel ded? LUV 2 B U! xxooxx—
Lisa

Not too many blogs have a chat function for the general public. WTG!

Your Boi Georgie

This is the stupidest blog I’ve ever seen. Fuck off!
Nightmare on Elm

I’ve yearned to be a vampire. And now you’re here! I can tell just from the visuals that my dreams are coming true!
Dark Angel

Nightmare on Elm, you obviously don’t possess the sensibilities for this blog. Perhaps U should go elsewhere for entertainment. Maybe there’s a Freddie blog somewhere.
Lucrezia

Screw U bimbo!”
Nightmare on Elm

Vampires Anonymous rule! Bitchin’!
Your Boi Georgie

Testament #1

Those perusing this site will surely wonder if you exist. Out there. In here. You do not wonder where is
here
, meaning this cyber world. It is a place for hiding, a realm of disguises, the realm of the Giaour. Or, as your contemporary Edgar Allan would have put it, a veritable “Masque of the Red Death” virtual ball. Hence no Facebook or My Space but a unique invention where you remain anonymous and yet your VICTIMS reveal all! After all, one who dwells in the land between Heaven and Earth cannot remain surreptitious when forced to expose details, and this is, after all, your blog!

But OTOH, you must reluctantly acknowledge that the world of phosphors isn’t exactly foreign terrain. Anyone in doubt can read the poem “Darkness.” Reality is a fine weave of the senses, is it not? The five mundane senses, and that elusive sixth. You can frolic in any of those arenas, yet most often you are relegated to what is not seen, heard, felt, touched or tasted. You are the intangible. Others know you exist, but may not admit it. For lack of a better word—which they likely find unpronounceable—they call you
The Vampyre
.

Enough tedious philosophizing. In this, your first blog entry, you must cater to the VICTIMS, who are—your tongue-firmly-in-your-cheek—dying to learn something of you. Here it is, a tidbit. A veritable bloody morsel, gouged from your beatless heart and offered on this microchip plate: You were born in 1788, just five years before the French Revolution, not that you are French, nor have you ever been revolting, as it were, at least not to your own mind. Mileage varies as they say. Some may beg to differ.

There! A British-ism has crept into that previous paragraph, betraying your ancestry. You are not ashamed of your past. Why should you be? All creatures born must adjust to their circumstances, or die. But sometimes they die anyway, when circumstances prove unnatural or, if the VICTIMS prefer, supernatural. Die and revive. As did you. Fate is a bitch.

But you were birthed during the long and diseased reign of the vegetarian king George III, who suffered porphyria. Anyone who has found this blog is a true vampyre, or a wanna be, and in either situation knows about the “vampire disease.” For the uninitiated:

The Symptoms: sensitivity to sunlight, receding gums (all the better for the fangs to show!), bloody urine, etc. etc. Oh, and the incessant talking. They say George 3 once chatted non-stop for fifty-eight hours! Half the time reciting “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” and other assorted poems. But enough of this tedious medical trivia. You are not an encyclopedia. Anyone desiring to know the symptoms of porphyria can bloody well go look them up!

You met George 3 in his dotage. George, with whom you shared a first name. It wasn’t long after the turn of the 19th century, years before your “official” death, but not before your death to life as it is generally understood. The monarch, then in his eighties, had been exiled to Windsor Castle where he was more or less left to his own devices. He’d gone both blind and deaf. The first night as you entered the castle at his invitation, it was clear to you that no one looked after the old bastard. Indeed, his eldest son had already been named Regent, anticipating the ancient one’s demise. George had gone quite bonkers. He mistook you first for the wind, then a ghostly friend. Only the insane seem to notice the presence of your kind. Isn’t it peculiar that the lucid tend to rationalize cold drafts, fleeting shades, barely heard whispers, while those who have lost their marbles see more clearly the shadows? The insane and the bards of this world, and perhaps visual artists, but you digress.

Poor George had stopped shaving for quite some time and sported a scraggly, wiry beard that brushed the middle of his chest, about heart level. Sleepless, he wandered the dank castle halls garbed in a regally purple dressing gown with his Garter star pinned to his chest. You did not believe he knew that his wife Charlotte had died, but then he did not seem to have a clue that his own demise was eminent. At your hands.

Yes, before the unsettling thought enters any mortal heads, you want to make it perfectly clear that back then you still retained vestiges of human emotion and felt sorry for perhaps the kindest, most fair-minded of British monarchs. In your lifetime no one would have called you selfless. In fact, your reputation was the opposite. Still, due no doubt to
Hours of Idleness
, you helped George to his end as a generous if yet selfish act. To this day, you still remember the texture of his parchment skin, and the sour taste of his thin blood, the coppery element common in human vitae all but missing from the liquid weakly spurting from his aorta, replaced by something more acrid. His skinny chicken neck and the prolapsed veins and arteries proved difficult to work with and, back in the day, you found this not esthetically pleasing. Still, these aspects of George to the third power did not prove insurmountable, but the process of piercing him became extended. Oddly, his rummy eyes found yours as you moved in close to bite him. He smiled with his eyes and his lips and murmured something endearing which you’ve forgotten, though you do recall that he whispered Sarah, a reference no doubt to the lovely Lady Sarah Lennox of whom George was enamored in his youth—before his mother bollixed that romance.

Never mind
The Dream
. Sentiment be damned. Your dagger-sharp incisors sliced through the emaciated flesh to allow what blood he possessed to trickle like hot treacle between your eager lips, quenching the dire thirst which has since become perpetual, that drives your every waking moment.
When We Two Parted
and it was done and his corpse lay crumpled on the floor at your feet, you, who sported the title Lord, who loved and was loved by many including your sister, you who enjoyed early fame if not fortune in the realm of realms literature, you came to a startling discovery: blue blood is not nearly as satisfying as red blood. It was at that moment that you decided you would, once your death had been staged in Greece, move to America.

VICTIMS:

This old one is soooo amazing! I really want to meet YOU.
Lucrezia

Y R so real, VA! Keep the stories commin’ xxooxx—
Lisa

Man, there’s like SO many people on here now. Get a life, folks!
Nightmare

Why don’t YOU get a life, Nightmare!
Lucrezia

I’m new here. I’m not sure what’s going on.
Harry Lewis

Well, Harry Lewis, you’ve hit the pit of hell where all these morons are talking about vampires. Get out before the stake swings in your direction!
Nightmare

Welcome, Harry. You are fortunate to be here and we are fortunate to meet you. We are in the presence of an Old One who has lived many centuries and shares with us his dark history. George Gordon Byron.
Dark Angel

Lord Byron? The poet? Impressive.
Harry Lewis

Yeah, right!
Nightmare

I’ve waited one entire month for another entry. Please, kind vampire sir, the esteemed Lord Byron, bestow upon us another tale!
Lucrezia

How come you talk like you’re in some Anne Rice book?
Nightmare

Where’s Your Boy Georgie? He hasn’t posted lately.
Dark Angel

No idea. xxooxx—
Lisa

People come, people go. Only those of us with deeper sensibilities remain.
Dark Angel

Like you, airhead?
Nightmare

Honestly, I don’t know why you’re still here! You think its all crap, so just go somewhere else.
Lucrezia

Hey, I’m hangin’ to see just how stupid you people can get!
Nightmare

Testament #2

You observe that your list of VICTIMS has grown. Furiously they post between your monthly entries, when
la luna
fills, when you fill. Let them speak with one another! You have no need to respond. That is not your concern, although you will miss Your Boi Georgie who seems to have . . . vanished.
Arrivederci, bello!

Still, what a strange phenomenon, human beings desperate to befriend a
vampiro
. And after centuries on this Earth, you thought you’d seen it all!

If you are nuovo, you have arrived at
Vampire Anonymous
, where the undead speak and the living listen. Come one, come all! Enter freely, but enter at your own risk (especially you, lovely Lucrezia.)

All have been warned! What more can you do?

One VICTIM in particular you find intriguing, at least the photo—those long dark tresses, eyes obsidian almonds accentuated by black kohl from the Orient, lips as red as virgin blood, skin corpse white.
Si
, Lucrezia, you are a look-alike for she for whom you are named. An homage to the Renaissance beauty Valencian Borgia, famous for her poison rings. Do you own a poison ring? What type of poison does it contain? Would you let me touch your ring, taste your poison?

Ha! Lucrezia Borgia. Her beauty was renowned. Her lips red passion, her breasts fruits for your lips . . . You remember her well. How could you not remember your sister?

Back then, you carried the mortal name of Cesare, bequeathed by your despotic “padre,” Pope Alexander VI. Yes, at that time,
Papa
equated with
King
, and this office incorporated a different meaning than it does today. At least you believe so. Be that as it may, ultimately, you were forced to kill your father, an all too common action. Then. Now. Oedipus Rules!

You were fortunate to have been born
vampiro
and did not need to suffer the transition to this eternal existence. Naturally, you were a beautiful child who grew tall and handsome, dark wavy locks swirling down to your shoulders, hypnotic black almond eyes that lured everyone—hair and eyes like your sister’s, like the lovely VICTIM Lucrezia.

Your parentage remained somewhat obscure, at least on the paternal side. But full of ambition, you were destined for
grandi cose
. At the tender age of fifteen, you were appointed Bishop of Pamplona, and at eighteen Cardinal. Of course, you were more or less forced to resign that last post, becoming the first Cardinal in history to do so. This, at the “request” of your father, who needed you to head the military when your oh-so-beloved brother Giovanni met his untimely end. An end that involved your teeth at his throat!

Leaving the church for a more mundane if volatile profession had its perks. For a brief time you employed Leonardo da Vinci as an architect and engineer, although that didn’t last long. You found the artist, like all artists, annoyingly arrogant. His blood, though, contained a certain heady quality, like a
vino
grown with fat antique Sicilian grapes.