Dear Diary,
I was out looking for blood.
Just as I was about to go in for the seduction and take my dinner to a quiet spot she asked me, “Who did you vote for?”
“What?” I asked not understanding her question.
“You’re fucking gorgeous and so cute I can hardly believe it, but I can’t take you home if you voted for Trump,” she said.
“Where I come from there is no vote,” I said. I did not tell her that I was king and in charge of the life and death of every single citizen in my kingdom. It did not seem to be, what do they say, neither here nor there. I looked into her lovely brown eyes. “I am not yet a citizen here. Tonight, let us forget the overload of news that gives us all headaches and heart aches, and makes our blood go cold, and concentrate on just you…” I paused and brushed her cheek with my lips. “And me.”
After I drained her of about a half pint of blood I made her forget she ever met me. If I see her again we can do the dance all over again.
Upon arriving home I found my love Gillian and my friend Randolpho sipping wine and playing cards.
I asked them a question. “Do you vote?”
“Of course we do,” said Randolpho. “We might be Vampires but we pay taxes like everyone else.”
I considered what he said. Since I was the King of Vampires I did not pay taxes. Now I do. How different my existence is now.
~ Vlad
Dear Diary,
After being locked in a crypt for three hundred years I am still marveling at the modern world.
Vampires of my class have always kept clean to keep the smell of death off of us. However it was not the standard of clean that is today. I like this new clean. They call it personal hygiene.
When I was Vampire King dozens of women would wash the linens of my castle in large boiling pots. My own clothing was washed by a select staff of women with a light touch for my fine fabrics. Now I do it all myself with my machines at home. Gillian and I do what is called binge-watching-Netflix while we fold our clothing. I open a bottle of wine. It is relaxing. My clothing is not as complicated as it used to be.
I remember one time when I traveled to the castle of Michael Dark Lord of the Southern Vampires. His home was filthy. It smelled of death and decay.
I said, “Michael, why are you so filthy?”
He said, “To remember that we are not alive or dead.”
I said, “That is a stupid answer. You will get maggots growing under your arms.” I scanned the room full of his gaunt and dirty followers. “No wonder your Vampires are starving. They smell so horrible that people can smell they before they see them. It is pathetic that your meals run from you in advance. Your Vampire’s stench is even making me sick. No self-respecting Vampire should smell like a rotting corpse.”
Michael looked confused and angry. “So my Vampire army should smell like a botanical garden?”
“It wouldn’t hurt,” I told him. “You would attract more willing food sources.”
When I left Michael Dark Lord of the Southern Vampires I stopped in an inn and asked for a bath to be drawn. My golden blonde hair had turned a greasy ashen gray after spending time in the putrid atmosphere of Michael’s castle.
A week later Vampire Hunters had wiped out the entire lot of Michael Dark Lord of the Southern Vampires. Their Vampire heads were put on poles and their hearts cut out and sold to oddity seekers. The castle was covered in vomit from the Vampire Hunters who had become ill at the vile smell. How embarrassing and unfortunate to be remembered to be the Dark Lord of Vomit.
This is a cautionary tale for any Vampire. If you smell like death you will be death.
~ Vlad
Dear Diary,
I have been thinking of those three hundred years in which I was locked in a crypt. I missed the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries. I missed the birth of this strange and confusing modern world.
To catch up I read a great deal. My friend Randolpho told me of a man named John Waters. It was John Waters who said, “If you go home with somebody, and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ’em!”
As I sat reading into the morning, the blinds drawn against the raising sun, my cats settled in my lap. The coyote Jane curled her skinny gray coyote body at my feet. Gillian, my love, was asleep upstairs in my bed. I was tempted to join my love, but I had to finish the last chapters of the book.
The book was about a man who studied the sea. He walked among the tide pools. He was educated but the men and woman who loved him were among the lowest of the people of his world. They had no common sense or learning, or money, yet their hearts were large. The last pages were about music and love and animals and science, and of the human heart.
Even now
I know that I have savoured the hot taste of life
Lifting green cups and gold at the great feast.
Just for a small and a forgotten time
I have had full in my eyes from off my girl
The whitest pouring of eternal light.
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. And the white rats scampered and scrambled in their cages. And behind the glass the rattlesnakes lay still and stared into space with their dusty, frowning eyes.
I was born the same year as Geoffrey Chaucer. Over the centuries I have appreciated his legacy, and that of the ancient masters and classics of previous centuries. Yet, it is the modern words that speak to me and touch the very shadow of my soul. These words that are written now speak not just to the scholars, or the kings, but to all. They speak to the quite times when one has cats in his lap, and a canine creature curled at his feet, and the woman he loves upstairs in his bed. They are stories that touch even the coldest Vampire heart.
I must now sleep. There is wedding planning to start tomorrow night. So I’ve been told from the woman in my bed.
~ Vlad
This has been the 37th installment of Vlad’s Vampire Diary. To start from the beginning CLICK HERE.
