I need no one. 'Papa' tells me that. He says it all the time. I can sublimate. I can transcend time. I am a nearly immortal being, should I chose to go that way. So far, I've made that choice every night.... So far.... I leave the townhouse and walk. Maybe it's because I was not much older than the elferinos when I came over, but I understand them. I can live like them, camping out in unused tombs, catacombs and mausoleums.. Though their lairs are not bare, but rather thick with the toys and gadgets of every generation. Marianne (the elferina) and Roland, her male counterpart, even share a blog. 'Night Tales' they call it. It's posted in an old Walloon dialect, but similar enough to French. People translate it. Are there mistakes? Of course. Who cares? It's all in the sound. It's all in the rhythm.
I have come to hate people... which does not mean I don't also love them. I see their potential. They just fall so short. I patrol the city. Vampires, at least the decent ones, are night watchmen. We 'clean up' and leave the place secure. People purposely stuff the toilets in fast food joints. I stop in for hot tea. I know. I see. They laugh. They cackle. They think it's funny. Some commit acts of petty vandalism all over town. Well, I commit acts of petty vandalism on them. Do I kill them? No, not the vandals. They are too petty for that. But a 'fuck' finger bent backwards and broken over the back of a hand provides a certain lesson. Sometimes I do both 'fuck' fingers. They shriek and scream like children. I go - OK, ok, here is five thousand dollars. Go have it fixed. But I make sure to smile, show the sharp, little cunning fangs and take a tiny drink. That scares them even more. Their friends tear down the street, knees and elbows flying, as soon as I show up. All for one and one for all doesn't hold up much in the real world...
Ah, the streets are rich with prey. The holidays brings them out. I wonder if some of them are even aware the whole thing has a spiritual component. Actually, I do not wonder. I know.
I stroll down to South Street, block after block of restaurants, trendy bars, boutiques, dance clubs and (how you say it?) ha - ha places... clubs where they make funny. All with 'bee lights'... tiny 'bee lights'.... a symbol of the holiday season in this era. I wait on a little bench hidden in the shadows of a tiny, park-like space. Twenty and thirty-somethings race by, laughing with their friends. All a bit tipsy. Three 'toughs' loiter in the recessed doorway of a house ware shop across the street, watching with hungry, envious eyes. Like wolves they are, searching for one a bit less 'masculine,' or how they perceive that quality. A singular victim is best, especially when there are three of them. I quickly pass through their minds. Such basic, violent things. One sucks a beer... Ah, but they are friends of The Lord. Their religious jewelry attests to that. They blinded a young man in one eye and he still has trouble speaking due to a cerebral injury. I find the memory of it within the skull of the wiry one to the right. They play. They simply play too much. That is all it is.... So say their friends and cousins.... But, you see, they also play too much....An addiction to 'play' is endemic in certain districts. A few are serving time for it.
Let me see how playful they can be.... I stand up, leave the shadows, cross over and make eye contact with the leader, always with the leader. Then I feign interest in his form... a glance here... a glance there. He remains motionless, but does not look away. I answer with a barely perceptible nod, sniff and make my way down a narrow, little side street. The old parts of Philadelphia have no shortage of such thoroughfares. The 'Sharks' rise up and follow. I hear the beer bottle smash upon the pavement... I turn. There's not much light here, but more than enough for me. They stand there. I hear mumbled insults. It's like a script... Well, I know my part... How easy it is to fake fear... The leader hauls back and lands one right on the jaw... A lesser 'mark' would have crumpled right then and there, but I don't move. It takes a lot to best a vampire.... I smile. They see the fangs. I don't know if there was enough light for that, or if I radiate it. Some things are still a mystery, but flashing the fangs... ooh, it's so much fun! Do I do it too much?
He flinched. Before he could turn and run, I was off and in less than a heartbeat had 'sublimated' right through his body. When I pass through solid walls... bricks or stone... it doesn't matter, I come out the other side, yet the wall remains. Living flesh, including the skeleton, is something else. The energized atoms and molecules of my body shred the living tissue like a knife. But you know that. It's a 'thing' with us.. A moment later the erstwhile 'Riff' rained down on the asphalt like warm, fatty soup... even the bones and eyeballs. Before the other two could disappear back to their grandmoms' basements (they all live in their grandmoms' basements) one lost two thirds of a leg and the other an arm and a little bit of a shoulder... All clothing made from natural materials shreds to fibers and blows away. Synthetic fabrics remain whole and intact, though completely gummed up with the resulting viscous residue. Blends are just a holy mess. Imagine explaining that scene to the cops. Metal survives, but melts...Ooh, rats swarmed out to finish the other two. Oozing human fluids are quite the rodent attractant. Mixed with the right poisons it will (someday) make somebody rich.... that is if they arrange for a good supply of human body fluids. Planning is everything.
Ah, The Holidays.... Fun and games for all... Santa may or may not know if you've been good or bad... but I do...
Now let me get my tea....
(With that our trim, dapper vampirino walks off. After a few steps we see a pulse move through his body vaporizing any bits of filth. His wavy black hair is clean and glossy. His black jeans and black fitted leather jacket are too. And the trim black leather bootkins?... Really, do you have to ask?)
<hasta la proxima, as our scion of Old Al Andalus would say>
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Jonathon speaks ~ Vampires remember so much. I saw barges filled with screaming and praying French Protestants towed out to the center of the Seine and purposely sunk. Few knew how to swim in those days. Boys might splash around near the river banks, but they sometimes drowned too. Families cried, but that was it. Eight children per hovel was the norm. They'd soon be replaced. What you call cruel, history calls normal. Such was life five hundred years ago. The Reformation changed nothing. And you are still like that today. Everyone cries - FREEDOM! JUSTICE! EQUALITY!... but ask for some and see what you get. I watch the scandals on TV. This one abused that one. So and so attacks children. That one is a boor. It's all of a piece. Society does not care. And 'society' is you. We endure something similar here at the townhouse. Billy worries about this blog. He used to post almost every day and a few weeks ago expected to go back to that pattern. But the rules of the game are hard and unjust. Not that we don't have many views. We do. Yet without some small favors from exalted individuals the real door remains closed. Quiet, polite souls wait for chances and chances never come. In many instances they are not earned. They are dispensed. Every industry is guilty. Favors are saved for 'important people,' or the off spring of important people... or their human sex toys. I see it on the television. Hopeful young talents meekly tap on the door, begging to be seen... And they are told - We will toss a few coins your way... in return for some diversion. You know, tits for tat... Some give in and sneak inside. Others play along and are ruined. A few run and are ignored. Billy asks for microscopic little nods from names you all see on line. Maybe just a retweet, or a mention, but they never come... even from they who beg such as him for retweets and mentions for their projects. No, wait. They do not beg. They announce. Their name is enough. The support is automatic. I feel bad for him. Billy, I mean. He thinks we night-folk hunger for fame, but he does. I could walk into ANY media outlet and they'd put me on the air right away. Perhaps they'd shoot some video first, but I'd be seen. Remember the success Marianne, our own special elferina had with her subscription series? My God, every Society Hill dowager with her flat, Ana Wintour hair cut, coughed up ten thousand dollars so that they and their liver spotted husbands might plant themselves on early twentieth century Queen Anne reproductions in Mrs. Gottrocks salon and hear her tale.... Google Marianne In Britches by Billy Kravitz (we let him take credit for everything, another Shakespeare, so to speak) if you're unfamiliar with that. You'll find a way in..... Everybody wats to find a way in. Such is life... or such it will be, until you all change it. Kafka got it right.... The universe does not care. God might, but everything else doesn't. Now permit me to take my leave. The dawn comes up and I must retire. Billy will stop typing and fall asleep. He knows not it is I who manipulate his hands.... The epistle will go forth... I hope you read it and maybe pass it on. signed ~ Tomas de Macabea, or Jonathon ben Macabi..... What do I care? <endure your day... more to come> click THE PORTAL ... to see more Vampire Wonderland and perhaps hit the 'subscribe' button? click HOLA! ... to join me on Twitter. thank you... comments very welcome.
Many think ghosts frequent graveyards. Well, they don't. Oh, a few come by every now and then to inhale the perfume of their spiritual remains. But the flesh goes quick and the bones not long after. It's true. I've watched from the midnight shadows as bodies were exhumed. Families move graves for various reasons. Maybe they want all the aunts and uncles to be together. There are many circumstances. Sometimes strangers dig up old forgotten resting places to make way for buildings. But when they get down to the proper depth there's often nothing there. If they sift through the soil there might be a small, shard of bone, or perhaps a tooth, but maybe not. After forty years little is left. Wooden caskets go fast. Even metal ones rust and crumble. It's not that the bodies and their shelters are destroyed. They are just taken back and repurposed.
This 'raising of the dead' happens at night, lest some quiet, somber visitor might see it. So what they do when there's nothing left is careful lift out a measure of soil equal to the dimensions of a coffin, from the place where that coffin would have been. Then they pack in into a box and take it to the new 'eternal' resting spot for reburial. They fill in the dirt and great grand uncle moves in among the rest of the family, at least in a more or less physical form. Spirits never come back to see that. You see, our spiritual essence, our soul, does not see itself as a nebulous, bodiless thing. They have a new body. They have a spirit body and they're already united with more people than you can imagine.
But I came to the old lanes of Laurel Hill that night to be with the elferinos and elferinas, the young pubescent humans brought over into our world when they were just a few years younger than I was when it happened to me. In case you don't know, or have forgotten, I was eighteen. These enchanted beings were maybe twelve, or thirteen, or fourteen... a few might have been fourteen, or fifteen, or sixteen, but not this group.
I need their company from time to time. They have so much energy and so much enthusiasm. Such wide eyed gamin creatures they are..... Marianne, Roland, Albion and Celeste.... They rest in many places, but a certain neo-classical private mausoleum on a narrow winding footpath, deep within the trees is their favorite place. The heavy, old, verdigris door never opens. They just sublimate through the concrete, faux stone walls.... And everything runs on batteries... the small, hand held video games, their old cell phones (there's a pile of them), plus an assortment of other gadgets too. When night-folk sublimate we can take inanimate and animate (like mortals) things through with us, if our auras are strong enough and if we hold them tight against our bodies. I think their auras enable the digital devices to pick up signals through the thick walls. God knows if Laurel Hill has WiFi. Perhaps visitors stay on their devices when communing with Great Grandmother Helene, or Uncle Gus? Maybe they all expect calls?
I sit there, leaning against the wall. Blankets and quilts are all about... weak gray-white light from camp lanterns made to look like small lamps banish a bit of darkness. They communicate telepathically. The small space fairly hums. They lie on the quilts, knees bent, legs crossed in the air, rapidly talking to digital friends who are completely oblivious to their true natures... Look, do you know who you talk to, especially during the wee hours?... Even I once spent night after night debating philosophy with a gentleman who turned out to be a successful hit man.. How'd I find out?... I had a 'vision' (you know that's how my type of vampire identify our victims) and when I got there, the voice and the speech rhythms gave him away. I never spoke. He never knew. His thirty four thousand dollar watch and equally price man's diamond ring went right into our coffers. Oh, there was four thousand dollars in his wallet. We got that two. Needless to say, responsible, long established vampires rarely fall short of funds. But my 'familiars' in finance take care of that. And long time friends know how often we recycle. Many a struggling soul desperate for help gets it from us.
Before dawn I'll zip across the rooftops with my eternally juvenile friends... And when I'm with them, I feel that way too. I need that. It's time for a new adventure and they energize me....
Jonathon ben Macabi a.k.a. Tomas de Macabea , or visa versa, is back..... And I am not old... Eighteen years forever... Who wouldn't want that?
<more next time and hopefully back to our very frequent postings>
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.
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