Friday, June 7, 2013

THE TATTOO MAN and THE VAMPIRE

He inhabited a tiny apartment, basically an efficiency... a drab 'motel' room...  a worn, chipped kitchenette and an old, odorous bathroom with noisy, rusty pipes. Even the roaches were depressed and definitely sub-par. And since their numbers were low, he mostly just let them be. I think they suffered from marital problems. 

In the past he was a painter. Primarily a realist with a rich veneer of surrealistic intent. His Rockwellian family dined on  humans, trussed up like turkeys and trimmed with all the fixin's. But 'grandmom' still looked just as proud. 

A gallery owner, with a trendy spot on Pine Street, promised to promote him and for a few months he did. Sold one canvas for eighteen hundred and fifty dollars. Sold two for fourteen hundred each. They were a set, nude ice dancers with the blades screwed deep into their flesh.

But the landlord had a son and a brother in New York, a weatherman on the local news. The son was an artist too (self-styled). And the Manhattan rain reporter had enough notoriety for all of them. So the realist-surrealist was banished to a niche by the toilet and six weeks later, he lost even that.

For nine months he ate store brand peanut butter and dry, cheap bread. Dinner was bubble-gum colored slices of watery ham and perhaps a salty can of soup, paid for by the proceeds of a hastily arranged sale (the family silver) along with twelve or thirteen pints of his own weak tired blood. 

One day, a skinny guy on the next slab, at the blood bank, I mean, told him he was a writer... gothic tales set amid the shadowy byways of Old Prague... an ancient crone with a hollow eye inhabited by a tiny spidery demon... and a plump, red burgher with long sharp, dirty nails. Together they prowled the night, pan searing thigh meat and whispering naughty songs. 

The writer needed an artist... an illustrator to make real the terror and feed the eyes. Thus they produced volumes. Well, in truth, just two.  Flesh Eaters of The Voltava, they were called. For that river is the centerpiece of this most atmospheric of Mittl-Europan municipalities. And in their books it ran dark with old, thick blood. 

Though something drove him mad, the illustrator, I mean. And he began to draw on people. Profits from the books enabled him to do so in a most clinical and sterile manner, but the outcome was loathsome just the same. 

I cannot tell you how it happened tonight. It's late and my lap-top has the jitters. I think it's possessed. So best let it rest. The vampire hasn't entered yet. But he'll appear next time.

Tonight he dances in the woods.... with sylvan nymphs and giggling moonbeams. Tillie thinks it all quite rare. But Jonathon (the vampire) wants her to have the experience... so she does.

Please come back tomorrow night for more.

Hasta la proxima... Su amigos del Mundo Vampirido...
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