Billy Kravitz' vampire wonderland: A VAMPIRE ROMANCE IN OLD TARANTO OR POSSIBLY BARI

Billy Kravitz' vampire wonderland: A VAMPIRE ROMANCE IN OLD TARANTO OR POSSIBLY BARI: The cozy, little bistro closed for the night and so the vampires returned to the street. It was two in the morning. The city was quiet. Som...

Quite difficult it is to blog with a ninety one year old and three months uncle in the house. He thinks computers are only for finding sales at supermarkets. Even the say-hello-to old-friends-and-cousins of FaceBook seems a disgraceful waste to him. He bends over me (nose dripping all the time) looking at weird-crazy-idiot nonsense he can't possibly understand...



It's very hard to blog under conditions like that. I don't know how those 'mommy blogs' do it with all them hair pulling, gurgling toddlers around. But at least the toddlers are charming. 



I will try to fashion a fresh post later tonight... before and after our SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE simultaneous tweet thing ... <~~~ You can click on it. And you're all invited to take part. Share you ORIGINAL humor and feedback. Just because Lorne didn't hire us (ANY of us) doesn't mean we can't hire ourselves... 



Til then, click on the 'Vampire Romance in Old Taranto...' thing up above and see a popular post from years ago.



But please try to join us for that SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE thing. We meet under the #SNL4fun banner. Please use that hashtag everytime you share material. Gathering under the same 'flag' gives us all much greater visibility.... Some weeks we almost TREND... Getting close... And that hashtag isn't minne or anyone else's... It belongs to ALL OF US and it helps all of us grow our sites. 



Take a chance. Get famous. Try it. 



Til then...



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STAND UP COFFINS THAT WALK IN THE DARK... 5/13/15

This is Edith, the Piney witchy-woman talking. The vampires are in a stupor. They get that way sometimes. Oh, they move around and say stuff and go outside and all, but nothing much happens. Plus, Jonathon gets all holy-roller when Pentecost approaches. Jews count the days, just like Advent, til the Great Assembly at Sinai. But I ain't talkin' 'bout that tonight. Jonathon does enough of that. I got a scary story to tell you. Not so much a story. this thing is real...

THE TALKING COFFINS OF THE PINES~~~

Nobody knows when it started. This is just a recount of an early episode.... One year winter came early. Not that there were blizzards. None of that. But the ground froze up and icy blasts cleansed the land. And them what know say night time come early... 'bout ten minutes before it rightly should, though nobody knows why. 

Mrs. Onger live deep in the pines. Ain't no road. Ain't no town. Ain't no nothin'. She got a cabin... a root cellar and a shed. Once had a dog, but dumb dog got a leg and a head ripped off one night and Mrs. Onger never did find out how or why. She buried what was left. 

Next night the snow comes. Not a lot, just enough to gild the dead, hard ground.  She make herself a squirrel meat supper with roasted chestnuts and all. Throws in a few cranberries. Everybody in The Pines got berries. Ain't no lights in that cabin, 'cept what come from the hearth. So she sits and she rocks and she reads from an old, thirty five year old Sears & Roebucks catalog. Knows it all by heart. Which oven makes the best chicken. What man-shorts provide the best support and what dog food ain't got too much pig lips in it. Then she piss in an old, crackled. porcelain pot and goes to bed. Bed in a little room toward the back. If she leave the door open a little bit of orange glow left in the hearth follows her into the sleepin' place.  She says some prayer and drifts off.

Now they got no 'hours' this far back in The Pines. Don't need 'em. Hardly got no 'years' either. But sometime later, front door start bangin' like something tryin' a get in. She bar the door every night, but still room for a little bangin'. Old woman go - What that!? Who there?!.... No answer... Few heartbeats later bangin' get louder... She think maybe it a bear, 'cause they got bear 'round there. Only ain't no bear noises. Then she hear a thud. One a the metal cleats holdin' up the thick wood bar come lose. Half a heartbeat later, bar crash down too. Old woman raise quilt up to her eyes and look. She can see it all (just barely) right through bedroom door. Look like an old grandfather clock or a skinny wardrobe tryin' a shoulder its way through the door. Finally door go BOOM and smash open, lettin' in a bit a moonlight. She see it not no grandfather clock or wardrobe breakin' in. It a coffin... an old, rough, standin' up, wood coffin... An' it comin' right at her. Scrape along floor a little. Then rest a little. Then scrape some more. Old lady whimper. She go - Save me! Save me! Save me!.... An' she a mostly nice old lady, so you know this ain't right.

Cold wind blow in. Place freezin'. Twenty five heart beats later, walking-coffin right by her bed. She whisper - Please, Lord, I dreamin'... But voice from inside that strange dead box go - No you ain't... Not a loud voice. Jus' a little one. But that only make it worse..

Then, for a long time it jus' quiet. She think she hear breathin' inside, but that just her. Hard to say what coffin doin' 'cause it so dark. But she know it there... right by the bed. Smell grave dirt on it an' everything.

Little bit later, quilt act like it don't want a stay on bed and cover her no more... Something yankin' it off. Old lady, in a real quiet voice. go - No. No. No.... But whatever pullin' that quilt don't care, 'cause it on the floor.

That when the dead-box begin to groan. Not loud, but she can hear it. Sometime it sound like it laughin'...

Old lady jus' shiver... from fear... from cold... from everything... 

Keep prayin' that she die...

But this old lady not that lucky...

<more next time>

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THE VAMPIRE WATER CURE... 5/11/15

The vampirino, known as Jonathon tells truths---

You know how in the movies the bad guy has all the weapons? Like in gangster movies... the racketeers are all crazy and the honest storekeepers are helpless, quivering weaklings?... Well, it ain't always like that. 

Let me tell you a few stories. This happened back in the nineteen thirties. Protection rackets were real big. Bootlegging was over and drugs were just beginning. Extortion was a known thing... a proven money maker. So this low-life guy... everybody called him 'CuffLinks,' sets himself up in a nice, little protection thing. He wasn't a senior member, but he had friends... cousins... uncles... you name it. Candy stores... They gave him candy stores. Most owners wrote numbers or had punch boards or some kind of gambling going on... Easy marks... Couldn't go to the cops, so they paid.

Only one guy wasn't a numbers writer.... completely legit... When gorillas came by he tried to explain... Showed them the malted machine... the newsstand... how he made grilled cheese sandwiches and hot dogs... sold Nekko Wafers, Hershey Buds.... boxes of dusting powder you took to the hospital for 'get well' presents... Figured they'd understand... But they broke his little girl's nose on the way home from school... Grabbed her... Smashed her... and ran away. Old Mrs Lipskey say who did it, but she wouldn't say nothing. Her granddaughter had a nose too.

Guy offers fifteen dollars a week. And he's not trying to pull anything. That was it. He couldn't afford no more. So they crushed his right eyeball with a hot, metal spoon. Guy closed up. Went back to being a bundle boy on Vine Street. Worked for a men's suit outfit. Made sure the cutters had a steady supply of goods.... big, heavy stacks of fabric....Not easy. You trip near one a them cutting machines and BOOM! There goes a hand... and this was before they knew how to sew 'em back.

I knew him. Factory owner was a 'familiar' of mine. Fixed me up with suits in return for little blood vials. Wife had the St. Vitus Dance. I'd come up in the winter time before closing, when it was already dark. Sometimes we'd talk... me and the guy who had his right eye smashed in... Got to know his story.... One night I say - You want revenge?.... He goes - Why? How much it gonna cost me?..... I go - Nothing.... He says - You'd do this for me?.... I nod. I say - I hate who you hate. Well, you want it?... He nods too.

Two nights later, 'Little Cuff Links,' the skinny, loudmouth, bastid, face slashin' son of 'Big Cuff Links' gets snatched comin' out of some front stoop-fabulous, glitzed up, whorey dive in Atlantic City...not a casino place, (they had plenty of secret, hidey-hole casinos even back then) but a scary little joint hiding in the shadows right in the middle of Big Cuff Link's fiefdom. Who's gonna smack back there, right? I float down from a moonless sky right behind him, clasp one hand over his mouth, grab him with the other and rise up into the void. Little cockroach starts kickin' and thrashin'. I flip him... toss him up into the air and grab his ankle. Seeing the precariousness of his new position all that thrashing nonsense stops. Now he just gasps and sobs. I don't know who he thinks I am. I don't even care.

Then I float out, maybe two hundred feet above the waves. Wind picks up. He cries. He questions me, but I don't respond. Soon we can't even see the shore. A vampire such as I can travel quickly and when we are perhaps one hundred and fifty miles from land I descend. At first I planned to drop him. But this way it will take longer. I lower him down into the chill, water and disappear. He's alone... out at sea... and far from salvation.

One month later I visit the father and do the same to him.

You know any bastards?... Leave a comment. I'll find out.

Meant to tell you a few stories... Maybe another time.

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A REAL VAMPIRE WHO KNOWS Da Vinci SLIPS 'C' NOTES TO HOMELESS GUYS.. 5/8/15

I continue my monograph... It is I Jonathon, also known as Tomas. There is so much I have not told you. Images from past times float through my consciousness. I see Parma during the plague. I smell the catacombs of Rome. There was a man well known in The Hanseatic League who fashioned corpses into marionettes. The joints were broken to prevent the inevitable stiffening. The bodies sealed in lacquer to slow decay. Quite the rage, they were. Electors and Grafs and Ritters paid plenty for his macabre entertainments. Artisans dressed them in the manner of the Veneto. They danced and marched in promenade, as choirs of castrati sang bell canto. Since decomposition can only be forestalled so long, the puppet plays always featured death. Sometimes hands fell off... sometimes heads. But due to the strings, they hovered off to an off stage netherworld, as if borne by spastic angels. I liked those plays. Da Vinci liked them too.

Did I ever tell you he never died? I might have, back when this public confession, this 'blog' first started. I cannot remember. ... We were in France. I know that, at the court of one Charles or another. I hated them all. Like dressed up animals they were.... capricious demons arrayed in surface piety and morality. Faith was a joke. Religion existed not to make better people, but to forge stronger dynasties. And they knew not that I, a proclaimer of The Unity, was a Jew, though an, as you say 'paranormal' one. Had they known, I might, to this day, be sealed in molten lead... Well, it would have solidified, but it would have been molten to start..... Some still are.

But I speak of Leonardo. And if any soul was born to be 'vampire' he was. When he took sick ( a series of strokes, I'd call it) he asked me to save him. I'd prolonged his mortal life with small drinks of my restorative blood, but this was different. He wanted the 'long drink.' He wanted to become as I. Another of our company, a celebrated alchemist from The Khanate Of The Golden Horde, ( I once saw him fashion a beautiful, avian, automaton, that actually laid a viable egg) told me to do it... so I did.

Is Leonardo Da Vinci still with us today?... Yes.... That's all I can say... Well, maybe a little more.... And he is to The Old World what Doctor Franklin is to The New... That's it. Let him tell you. 

I walked through Comic Con earlier tonight. It's in town this week. Two kids thought I was supposed to be Jim Morrison's ghost. I told them to go to hell. They laughed. One was dressed as a girl Chewbacca ( a regular Chewbacca with enormous breasts).. The other was dressed as a substitute school teacher. You could tell by the big sweat stains under the arms. I made cool, head nods to all the vampires. Figured it was my duty. 

Can you imagine what my life is like? I 'know' Leonardo Da Vinci... and STILL the kid at the ShopRite judges me when I ask for change to play the scratch-off machine... Look, I told you vampires have appetites. I want to win something. I want to get something for free.

I want to go home. I want to go back to the townhouse, but Sarah makes me feel so guilty. She's making little blood vials to give to sick babies in intensive care units and I smell from 'those two God damned mole-whores.'..... That's what she said. Edith lit an aroma candle. You know where her loyalties lie.

( he wanders off to slip hundred dollar bills into pockets of sleeping homeless guys. that always makes him feel good... and he whistles the theme from THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY... I don't know what that represents, but it's what he does... these are real people. I have no control over them)...

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A GUILTY VAMPIRE SHARES TALES ... 5/7/15

I had a vision.... was supposed to 'cull' a rather nasty piece of work... Dealt drugs. Ran sex parlors masquerading as less blatant massage parlors staffed with pathetic, Thai and Cambodian sex slaves. Cornflakes and tuna fish... Cornflakes and tuna fish... That's all he feeds them, cornflakes and tuna fish. And they think it's gold. Sure they get milk for the cereal and mayonnaise for the tuna... sometimes a loaf of dollar white bread from the ShopRite, but that doesn't make it gold.

Well, tonight he died. But I waited til he strong armed a guy out of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars and a Maserati... Then I killed him. Figured I'd feed the kitty. Does that make me bad? I freed the sex slaves. Gave each one twenty five hundred dollars. Figured they could fly home. Only (for them) home was even worse than here. So I don't know where they went. Probably Atlantic City.

Yo, sex slaves, you just got liberated! What are you gonna do next!?..... We go 'Lantic City!...... Only in America. Actually, I don't think they even spoke English.....

The guy had a nice watch. Took that too. You know, besides the townhouse, we support the elferinas and elferinos too, plus a few people you don't know about. 

I don't want to go home. Sarah knows about Sylvia and Aura. I know how she'll be. She'll act like it's not important... just 'stimulation'... nothing to do with her and I... But she makes me feel so guilty. why would she even notice what I do with mortals? They're all going to be dead soon anyway. Like clouds, they are. Here one moment and gone the next. Even their bones decay. Naturally occurring preserved skeletons are rare. Most coffins, even the metal ones, oxidize and disappear after sixty years... surviving bone fragments go soon after. There's your mortals. That's what happens to mortals. Why would she even notice?.... But she does. Oh, God, why do I do this?

Maybe I'll stay at The University of Pennsylvania Museum. They know me there. Management hates me from the big Luna versus Sarah cat fight a few years back. Mummy dust flew like confetti. Another romantic fiasco that was. But the watchmen like me. I'll tell them stories... point out ghosts... sublimate through walls for them... sing bawdy Dutch tavern songs... Take my mind off things. 

Still, not a bad haul. Maybe she'll like the Maserati? Baylah can arrange a sale if she doesn't. You see Maserati coming and going down the shore..

Oh look... There's that shoe store I like. Excuse me while I sublimate inside and pick up a pair of black, leather ankle boots. Don't worry. I'll leave money....

Buenos noches, amigos.....

(with that, the trim 'young' vampirino, known as Jonathon, or Tomas, melts through the old, bronze doorway and disappears into the shop... Bienvenido a filadelfia after midnight... And remember... We only pretend that it's fiction...)

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VAMPIRE JONATHON LOVES THIS SONG FOR OBVIOUS REASONS - ( 5/5/15 ) OneRepublic - Love Runs Out

This is one of 'my' nights. No one talks but me. Jonathon ben Macabi, a.k.a. Tomas de Macabea takes the reins tonight. And I am quite the accomplished 'horseman.' I had a white stallion, presented to my father by the Caliph himself. Bokar we named him...'Day Break' and we flew over the hills of Al Andalus like ginn. We owned other mounts. Our stables were large. But he was the prince, descended from a line going back to Damascus in what you call 'the seventh century.' We fed him special grain imported from Sicily, strains going back to the days of  old Roman latifundia. I miss him. His progeny survive as Lippazaners, though he, himself, was pure Arabian.



I digress. You see, vampires know many appetites. I hunger for many things. And after a fashion. I shall be true to Sarah. She is my 'vampirina.' There shall be no other. But I may know other mortal playthings. Indeed, I am with two now. I believe you know them, as they were mentioned last time we met. Sylvia and Aura... I am with the mole-king's daughters, deep beneath the streets of Center City in their kingdom of never used, dark and dusty subway tunnels. 



We tarry in a ruined water closet ( some stops had them back then ) on an old tiled floor, complete with drain, under a thin trickle from a leaky water pipe. It's cool down here, far away from the unusual, early May warmth. We bathe each other with large, natural sponges... an old passtime of ours. And I give them deep, langorous 'cat baths.' as only a vampire can. How flattering the orange candlelight. Like creatures from The Satyricon we are. ... I lapse into a low, barely audible growl. Vampirinos can do that... and they purr back... My two, mortal 'jugetes.'.... My 'toys.' .... Silver and Gold.... Sylvia and Aura.



Every large city has mole-folk. People find their way down into these dark, secret places for many reasons. Some never return to the surface, subsisting on fair of another kind. And in every metropolis vampires make common cause with them. 



Shhh.... They bathe me now. I feel each soft, brush, kiss and tickle as only a life-eater can.



So permit me my ease.



Come back tomorrow... The Vampire Wonderland will be here.



Now leave us to our pleasures.



Summer nights are short enough.



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DISEMBODIED SPIRITS SAY IT'S GONNA BE THAT KIND OF SUMMER .. 5/3/15

Jonathon hates May. The nights are too short... not enough dark time. Most vampires feel the same way... It's not just the taking of lives, or the blood. They need black, starry skies and big cheesy moons. Everything stands still in the wintertime. Everything is calm. He can walk for hours. No one bothers him. He can sit on a bench, staring up at a light in some apartment and lose himself in a Zen-like trance. 

Summer is different. True night, at least to vampire eyes, comes so late and dawn is even worse. Baylah knows. She feels it too. That's why she likes the shore. Moonlight on the waves seems to magnify everything.... a short night, but a perfect one.

Jonathon disappears into the tunnels... the deep ones, far below the subways, where the mole-folk live. Sarah knows. He swears he doesn't 'couple' with Aura or Sylvia, the mole-king's daughters. He used to, but lately he hasn't. No more long, slow sponge baths in candlelit, ruined restrooms ( the deep, deep tunnels are remnants of never used subway lines). They share a hookah. They talk. They wander through pitch dark, maze-like passageways. Once in a while he brings down a captive, a bad soul destined for 'culling.' The mole-folk love watching vampires feed. Spotty illumination from scattered cans of Sterno adds just the right touch. The victim mumbles. They tremble. Some run. He catches them. The crowd cheers. Then all grow silent, as he drinks up the life.

Nights feel longer down there. Jonathon likes that.

Sarah sits back at the townhouse with Annie, listening to the ramblings of her sly, old, wizened, mortal grandfather. He still goes on about the public-leg-shaving girls of Old Berlin. Edith makes 'crazy' circles 'round her ear with her index finger. But who knows? Old and semi senile he may be. Still, he does have money. God knows what he's seen. 

Sarah gives him a few drops of her blood as a restorative. He quiets down and stares at the cold, dark fireplace.... Edith goes - Hey, old man, you want a smoked turkey breast sandwich?.... He shrugs ... She makes him one and serves it on a genuine nineteen forty nine Russell Wright dish. Vampires have stuff like that. Baylah says she's got the thigh bone of noted, ancient Judean princess, Salome. Who knows? Maybe she does?

I know you've been reading about an 'alternate' Earth ruled by heartless, demonic aliens... and you might read about them again. We got more disembodied, spirit narrators floating around this place than Carter's got liver pills. (you know what that means?) And each one's got a story to push. What? You think only 'live' people want to direct?

You know where Jonathon is? He's walking home... Might not get there for a few more hours, but he's on his way. There's a lot of kids on the street this time of year. I don't know. They never sleep. No, they do sleep... from 7AM to 3PM. Jonathon 'haunts' them. Lets them see him do strange things, like sublimate through a bus stop shelter, or levitate up into the sky til he disappears. They scream... They run... New urban legends are born.

I got a feeling it's gonna be that kind of summer.....

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