Last time we spoke I was all into those underwater, marine vampires and all. You know how I get.... So many stories to tell. So many lifetimes. What I see every day, when I focus on mortals, is like a 33 and a third RPM (if you know that technology) played at 78 RPM... all sped up... and I sit and I watch... Most times I'm used to it, but my reality differs from yours. My dreams are so vivid. I wonder if they are, in fact, dreams. I am in Ottoman Byzantium. I am in my beloved, Old Al Andalus. I speak the Latin-Gothic-Arabic-Hebrew patois that became Spanish. My coach proceeds through Restoration London. I am almost martyred in medieval Provencal. I run through the night with Leni-Lenapi shamans, howling like wolves at the rising of the moon ... I study scripture in a tenth century Cordoban academy..... I am Tomas de Macabea. I am Jonathon ben Macabi, falling through time as a stone falls through water.
They say the linear progression of time is just an illusion. Everything is everywhere and every time is now. The totality of all creation is an intricate, multi-faceted chord. I can say these things and I can imagine them after a fashion, but even a miraculous being has limitations. So I insert myself into your mortal template and live according to your rules. It makes life so much less complicated.
I know of Sarah's meeting with that human male. Let her have her dalliance. I have them too. It means more to her than it does to me. She's only been night-folk for maybe five or six years. She still wears the watch and earrings she bought as a mortal. I ask her why? Now she has much better things. Though deep down inside, I understand. We are sentimental souls after all. You hear how I recall days and nights gone by. You know.
I watch the news. I follow the media. I know all about Harvey Weinstein. He is not unique. Men have abused women since the beginning. Look to the chimpanzee and you'll know the truth. My own surviving mortal line began with such an act. Are vampires different?.... I don't know.... Ask my mole-folk odalisques. Ask Aura and Sylvia.... I think if you search Vampire Wonderland by Billy Kravitz Aura and Sylvia something will turn up. If you search Vampire Wonderland by Billy Kravitz and add almost ANY word something turns up. I suppose people will be finding bits and pieces of our tale in the digital world for years and years and years, if not centuries. That, in itself, is a type of immortality. Billy's name is attached to the story, but regulars know the truth...
Now I go to attend our elferino and elferina friends, the pubescent vampires, who due to their natural hormonal strength at the time of transformation exhibit some strange, elfin traits... slightly pointed ears... large luminous eyes.. finely drawn jaws and chins... and the ability to truly fly, not the sublimation that looks like flight the rest of us do, but something else, truly wondrous and magical.... So I'm off to dance with Marianne and Roland and Albion and Celeste, amongst the mossy, monuments and tombs of Laurel Hill Cemetery.... a very real, old necropolis, thick with trees and bushes. Samhain (Sal-Wen) the Celtic New Year approaches and that foursome, originally from Brittany and other places on the southern shore of the English Channel are devotees of the Druids, at least partially, mingled with the teachings of the church.... Such exotic beings, even in our world.... A lot of you know that, but some don't.....
Come back tomorrow night, to dance beneath the stars, in shadows chill and deep... Hear secrets that you'll keep. And maybe feel the bite-like kiss, if you're amongst those drawn to this.
<more next time>
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Did you think I'd stay in the shadows forever? Did you think I was just the quiet one, content to save the mortals with tiny drams of my blood. How of-a-type you are. Oh, I keep silent, but I see things. You boring smelly things with your sebum stuffed pores are so alike, hypnotized by 'dominant' posers. Come on. What do you think I did in that book shop before all this? ... CLOSE YOUR MOUTHS! I read books. I sold them and I read them. .. The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew... A Tree Grows In Brooklyn... Everybody Who Hates Me Should Die... Little Women... Kings Row... Never Tickle A Stranger On The Bus... non-fiction too... Rabbits Are Lemurs With No Brains... Two Weeks In The Death Of A Corpse... How To Retrieve D.N.A. From Used Tampons And Adult Diapers... The How And Why Book Of Pimples Boils And Carbuncles For Children... and Everything Happens For A Reason So Embrace Your Outer Ugly..... God, this 'vampire memory.' I recall everything.
And now I'm 'cheating' on Jonathon with my mortal lover, Howard..... Baylah set it up. She said - By the time we get bored they're either finished or dead..... (stares up into space) But I enjoy Howard. Baylah's mortal boyfriend knows him from the seashore. I think they both sued the same floor refinisher.... What's it been... five years... six years and I already think like a vampire...(thinks for a moment) Maybe that's a good thing.... Won't have to buy anti-wrinkle cream, or get big chunky dinner rings to camouflage my arthritic knuckles....
We know all your tricks... how you 'deal' with aging, I mean. The skin balms that don't work... but you all pretend they do.... The gym memberships... the cartoony lacquered fingernails... the temporarily paralyzed and puffed up faces... Few look younger. They look played around with... and not always for the better... Men do the same things... Less paint... More posturing... fake tans... more lies..... When I was still mortal, I didn't see things as clearly as I do now. That might have been a good thing.
Jonathon knows about Howard. He doesn't say anything about it. I certainly don't. It's like mortals don't count. Oh, Baylah has something very real with hers. And he idolizes her. I think gambling has a lot to do with it. They play black jack, usually at The Borgata, or Caesar's every night. She loves the beachfront house a few miles downbeach too. Even went so far as to hire a girl who looks like her so the neighbors can see her out and about in daylight.... having omelets for breakfast... buying flowers... giving little finger waves to people as she power walks along the beach or the impossibly well manicured streets. I think Baylah's mortal has sex with her too. At night she sits in a shuttered den watching HGTV.... I'm learning that other night-folk have mortal, daytime doubles too.... Some doubles wear special sunglasses with tiny cameras in them, so the actual vampire, deep in their darkened chamber, can 'live' the experience via their laptops. Digital sunlight has no effect. Avatars, like from that blue cat people movie.
And now I wait in a little coffee shop a couple blocks down from our townhouse. Howard drives a black Lincoln SUV. He's very conventional and reliable. We go to movies and stylish vodka bars across the river in the Jersey suburbs. Nobody knows us there. It's safer than Center City... There's a place, a house, but I can't tell you about that.
I hate how the media paints us. Don't you ever get tired of that?
Now let me finish my tea. We can tolerate broth-like, 'clear' liquids and this blend is rather enjoyable.....
With that the vampirina, Sarah, looks away, as we retreat from the coffee shop and move down the street...
j What more can I tell you of violence? How many ways are there to destroy mortal or life-eater flesh? We have described all manner of death. People seem to like that. Most of what appears here is and always has been true. But occasionally and only occasionally I tell you lies, not because I want to. Because you want me to. This time I speak with veracity. This time, he who you know as Jonathon ben Macabi, or Tomas de Macabea details actual realities and events. You've heard how vampires walk through the deep, dark, oceanic abyss. We cross the cold and silent seafloor and climb mountains never privy to the sun. Some stay down there for years and years and years and years, drawing periodic blood gifts from the great and lesser whales. Thus we passed between continents in ages passed, before men first built ships. Some still travel that way. Others have reached their destination and stay there, down beneath the sea. They speak to the whales and understand the minds of forever hidden strains of wise, all knowing octopi and other cephalopods. Vampires need not breathe. You know that. He who makes the universe (the job is never done) quickens us according to His will. Confuse them not with Merfolk. Our kind have no cetacean flanks or tails. But some of our kind have filled this subterranean niche for eons. We climbed up onto the beaches of Atlantis and in Lantima, the language of that realm, whispered secrets to the priests and priestesses in the Temple of El. We've seen the doomed from the Titanic rain down. So I must ask ---- Do you really think that creatures such as we are only lurid horror villains? Look, as I've said (and we're both aware) there's a whole industry based on that. Believe their lies, if you like. We don't control you mortals. We just guide you. Now I go out to enjoy the last hours of a cool, autumn evening. Damp, too, just the way I like it. If you know me, nod. I'll nod back. Look for the tall, trim vampirino with the vaguely Spanish features. Some know me by my long, lose, glossy black hair. Some by my well made, black bootkins, close tailored jeans, white shirt and rather form fitting leather jacket. Save the shirt, all dark as midnight. Others know my kiss, or my bite. I don't kill everyone. I wander museums, haunting the dim, shadowy galleries. You see, I remember when Giotto painted that and knew the nobleman who wore that armor. I met enamoradas under cloisters much like those.... I remember and it comforts me..... Then just before the dawn, I walk back to the townhouse and hide. Do I sleep?... On and off.... There are those who know how to contact me on line. Some leave comments here. A few know my secret place.
Hasta la proxima, mis amigos... Hasta la proxima...
(with that, he exits, as the great clock, atop Philadelphia's City Hall Tower... much higher and wider than Big Ben.... chimes six). click TIME ... to see more Vampire Wonderland. click SHARE ... to join me on Twitter. thank you.
We've met these two. Jonathon and Sarah came across them during a vampire pilgrimage, deep within the Carpathian Mountains. The old continent of Europe has many nooks and crannies. Some hide forgotten clans of Neanderthals. You know them as trolls and ogres. Others shelter various witch hybrids and shadow people. Who knows what else.
I suppose since night-folk had to make a conscious decision to emigrate and come to the New World, we have less noxious, animalistic types here. Compulsive, visceral specimens tend to stay where they are, rarely moving on till chased by a shrieking, murderous peasantry.... Lorenzo and Kadeema are noxious vampires. A condition usually caused by a hard, vampiric 'birth.' Maybe they were buried too deep, or the soil was excessively heavy and clay-like. Escaping the grave is horrific... Being trapped, or almost trapped is maddening in a very real, dark and damaging way. Some never heal.... Some never escape. God knows how many conscious souls lie bound within the earth.
Now our two were buried the same night, in a remote wooded, damp corner of Wallachia. Each had an opened Bible placed over their face. Each lay upon a hard, jagged bed of faith symbols. That's what they did to suspected night-folk in those parts... Oh, some had their bottom jaw hacked out. The town butcher did it, thus mercifully killing the innocent and assuring them a place in the world to come.
Before we go on, allow me to clarify something. There is little room for movement in the grave. Think of the casket as an individual cigar case. The human remains are prepared and positioned. Survivors take a look... and then the heavy lid comes down, leaving perhaps two fingers worth of space between the nose and the interior surface. Should the occupant wake up, repositioning, or movement of any kind is futile. Stories of blood stains and frantic scratches on the inside of the lid are fiction. No one turns over. In the case of Lorenzo and Kadeema, they also had those thick Bibles resting on their faces, not to mention the sharp, pointy bed of religious charms under them.... And something else... the dirt packed down upon a coffin weighs more than one thousand pounds. The lids usually crack and cave in. Even the metal lids buckle. Exhumed bodies, for any reason, often have shattered faces. Corpses don't care. The soul's long gone. Newly made vampires, with all the left over fears of mortality are another story, for they're conscious through it all. They scream and shriek and rail like babbling fools in hell... Kadeema did.... She was a tavern girl, you know... and one night in a blizzard she slipped and cracked her head upon the icy cobbles of the town....and she lay there in the storm, half way between this world and the next. The rats never came to taste the feast. That's how cold a Wallachian winter can be.... But in the doorway to a small, shabby handful of flats crouched a 'noxious' vampire silently washing the blood from his face with handfuls of sleet and snow. He inhaled the rich, dense scent of the almost dead 'she meat' laying before him... thought for a moment then crept over. Noxious types are often gluttons, so he tore off her scarf and ripped into her throat. She barely moaned.... He pulled back from the font and thought for a moment, as the blood dripped down from his chin onto her smooth. white skin. Then he quietly chucked a bit before soundlessly dragging her into an alley...
True death never claimed her, but the dark burden did. Kadeema was a vampire now...
We'll witness her ordeal... Lorenzo's too, next time....
Ah, how the nights grow long. Autumnal Equinox is almost upon us. Night folk revere that event. September twenty first is special to them, for after that date, the night overtakes the day and the pain of spring and summer temporarily ends.
A rich culture they have. The night-folk, I mean...
A whole other world...
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In fiction we read about vampires who shun their mortal faith, replacing it with bleak distortions. In real life few actually do that. Most cling to their creed and desperately try to make sense of it all. We pray for divine understanding. We pray for acceptance and forgiveness, just like mortals do... And we search for 'reasons.' Why do we kill? Who do we kill? What purpose does it serve?
You know me. You know what I believe and what other life-eaters with other faith histories believe too. We 'cull' the wicked and help the worthy live... Not the Shepherd, but the sheepdog... That's what we say. I hope it's real. I think it is. I believe it is. What else can I do? And this time of year, with the advent of Rosh Hashana (literally head or start of the year) I, along with many mortals, attend midnight penance services for forty days, culminating in the great spiritual rebirth on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). The penance services always start at midnight, or perhaps a few hours later... for it's always darkest before the dawn. A perfect liturgy for vampires. I take advantage of it as often as I can. Some see me, sitting in the back, at an old Sephardic (Rite of Spain) synagogue in Society Hill, the ancient, red brick, Center City district in Philadelphia. There are little brass, rectangular frames, each holds the name of a family, mounted on the back of every pew. Mine says 'de Macabea.' That's my Spanish name. I represent a long line. From time to time I hear of a mortal kinsman. That makes me feel good. Life goes on in all its forms.
As the forty days go on, things begin to change in the sanctuary. The rabbi, cantor and choir wear white robes. The sacred Biblical scrolls in the Ark are dressed in new, white sleeves. Some congregants now dress in the symbolically new and pure color too. For it is not just the 'next' year that is coming, but a 'new' year that is coming. In Ezekiel 36:26 it says - I will create in you a new heart and a new spirit. Many feel that in a most personal and visceral way, especially those who know they receive those things via grace and not, strictly speaking, in return for their own thoughts or actions.
Why does this promise happen yearly? Why is it an annual renewal? Because God never forgets. A promise is a promise. A covenant is a covenant. And that's what I, Tomas de Macabea, or Jonathon ben Macabi, take your pick, experience at this time of year.... I'm sure other life-eaters with other faith histories experience similar things according to their own spiritual calendar.
I know sometimes we fudge a little and post blood drenched tales of death and horror, because according to the numbers that's what readers like. But this isn't fiction and sometimes (most times) the truth comes through.
Vampires are not all monsters. We're just people with a very particular collection of issues.
I hope you understand that.
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