Jonathon loves the Solstice. He dresses carefully.. new underwear (he does) ... two white, long sleeved t-shirts... black wool socks... black jeans... crisp, meticulously pressed white shirt, topped with black rather form fitting, cashmere sweater, if the night was cold enough, or a fine, cream colored, wool muffler if it was not. On bitter nights he wore both. Then his tailored, quilted, black leather, three quarter length zippered coat. It looks like a medieval tunic. Indeed, he had one like it in his mortal days, but minus the zipper. The dapper night-lord, with only a bit of muffler showing up under his chin. And, of course the carefully crafted leather gloves, plus maybe a warm, knit hat, pulled on just right.
He studied his reflection in an antique cheval mirror. Sarah, finished arranging her own outfit... rather like his and said - This is it. From here on in they get shorter, the nights, I mean..... He struck a three-quarter pose and sighed... She asked - What are you doing tonight?..... Distributing alms. I always give alms tonight. See? - he answered and showed her a small, zipped leather case, resembling a Bible, filled with little, dark blue, velvet, drawstring sacks holding bright, shiny Krugerrands, each heavy coin fashioned from a full ounce of solid gold. Three or four to a sack meant every recipient hurried away with at least five thousand dollars.... He had about fourteen sacks..... Sarah didn't go with him. She went her own way. Vampire couples are like that. They come together to rest during the day. They couple. They bathe. They sleep. But panthers are an independent breed. Everyone knows that.
Jonathon left the townhouse and wandered through a night that was actually quite mild. He sought out the darkest streets... little byways, alleys really, for small trucks to make deliveries, or pick up refuse. You or I, provided we're mortal, would be blind in such places. There were few security lights. The doors, leading to commercial establishments and office buildings were thick, heavy, steel affairs, impossible to open from the outside. I think the fire department had special tools to get in, but no one else did. During business hours they opened from the inside and even then just to accept shipments or throw something into a dumpster.
Night was another thing. People crawled in with their blankets, their meager belongings and their hungers. Some want food and drift in early, the better to peruse the dumpsters. Not to many vermin. New generation dumpsters shut tight. People can get in (maybe two... the lids are heavy) dig around... find stuff... thrown out doughnuts from the staff room... food from the cafeteria (banks have the best). Sometimes they fight. Others snuggle under blankets and satisfy other needs.
Jonathon looks for certain types. His eyes are different. He can see in the dark. Everything looks gray... dark grays... charcoal grays... powdery blacks... no colors. Just enough contrast and demarcation to provide a bit of information. He studies the shapes till he finds a certain type... quiet... away from the others.... happy for a place to just curl up and sleep... Some are women. Some have children.
He'll walk by. They tense. He'll unzip his little, black case, take out a drawstring bag and toss in on the blankets. Hands crawl out to explore the strange, new thing. Gold has a 'feel.' There's a heft. You can almost taste it with your fingertips.
They hold it tight, snug, up under their chins. And in the first weak light of dawn, or almost dawn, they look at it. There's a little note folded into each sack, telling them where to go to sell the coins. Everything's arranged. Jonathon's 'familiars' know what to do.
Five or six thousand dollars, depending on the market, can do a lot...
Look, we were going to tell you more, but 3:30AM came up real fast. And whoever it is we got typing this tonight has to get some sleep. So think of this as part one. Tomorrow evening we'll do part two... hopefully early.
We're sorry, but the trash and recycling trucks come by and they make a real big racket.
We hope you understand...
<more next time>
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The cold has finally reached us. They say it still hasn't settled in for good, but we have it for a few evenings. Thin, brittle, candy coatings of ice reflect moonlight up from still rivers, really little more than misnamed streams. I like The Pines in winter. You've been here with me before. It's Edith, the housekeeper from the city. I come back for Christmas. It's only a ninety minute ride. They all come out here, Jonathon, Sarah, all of them. The Jersey Pine Barrens is a special place. Magic lives here. It always has. I sit on the porch and watch the ghosts. They trace through the trees like deer. Some nod. Some don't. Little more than eyes in the dark. Raccoons scurry right through them. The cold gives everything a different aura. It all looks so focused, even in the weak, silvery beams. But I see it in daylight. I had a child, you know, a daughter.... a perfect little thing. She was ten months old... a dumpling in every way. I gave her pudding... plain, vanilla pudding. It made her happy.... It was April and already warm. I washed the sheets and took out the spring testers (light quilts). Not that there wouldn't be cool nights. We'd use two testers then. But that day was blue and clear and bright. I could smell the 'river' and the grass and the soil. We lived away from the village, in a little clearing. Thirty feet from the porch was The Pines. If Jersey Devils dwelt there, they were our Jersey Devils, more friends then monsters. Those of you familiar with Horsey Skeezix understand. Such a dear little soul he is. But the world knows what the world knows, or rather what it wants to know. I put the baby in an old varnished, wicker basket, quite smooth and lined with layer after layer of soft-with-use faded, Turkish towels. Then I took her outside and laid her down on the grass, so I might hang out the wash, carefully draping a towel over one end to shade her from the sun. She gurgled and played with a rubber elephant. I still love that sound. When I was done I spread a coverlet next to the baby and laid down to rest. Her breath was so even and so fine. I didn't mean to fall asleep... but I did... Mister Edith was out clamming. We were all alone. The wind kicked up. It does that. Warm days often change. I felt the breeze and woke up. That's when I saw it. The basket was upended... towels all over the grass... her little rubber elephant..... We have big snapping turtles in that 'river.' I've seen them take apart a rabbit.... They say I was crazy for three weeks. Even then, I rarely spoke. But when you read about me in this tale... when you hear them refer to Edith, the housekeeper... Edith the Jersey Pines witchy-woman, please know that I too have a history. There are things that you don't know. Please excuse me for commandeering the screen, but we've shared the ride for more than five years and I thought it only right to tell you. If the voice I've used tonight sounds strange, blame the gravity of my tale... The details never leave me.... <more next time> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ click - THE AKOSHIC RECORDS ... to browse all episodes of Vampire Wonderland. click - WHERE WE MEET ... to join me on Twitter. please comment. thank you.
The vampire, Jonathon, speaks~~~ My first observation concerns not vampires, or night-folk, but the cinema. I see what they say. I watch television and go to the movies too. In fact, as a soul born to an elemental, simple time, movies are like magic to me. They are dreams made manifest. No, they are not 'like' magic. They ARE magic. I saw The Thief Of Baghdad... the silent Douglas Fairbanks version. And did they 'get' life in that culture right? No, not if you count every little detail. But to those not miserly in a cultural sense it beams with truth. I know. My Al-Andaluz homeland was like that. I can smell the almond trees and taste the marzipan. Even now after one thousand years as a life-eater, I can feel those things. I can hear the finger cymbals and castanets and the tinkling fountains of a hundred courtyards. But I digress..... I saw STAR WARS ... You can click on it if you like. I saw the first 'dream' in nineteen seventy seven. I heard the music and it took me back thirty seven years to a vast movie palace on Market Street... back to a warm, summer night... a time when artificially cooled air was only found in such places. I went in to escape the heat. And I heard a score that's been embroidered into the very fibers of my heart since then. It's my music. I listen to it all the time. It represents life and struggling and triumph. Listen to it. You'll see. It's haunting. They say the basic plot points, not to mention the score, actually influenced STAR WARS.... three friends.... two young men and a special young woman confront evil and power in a closed 'society.'... A bit like Luke and Han and Leyah. You don't need space craft to reach the stars. So see the new Space Opera. Absorb STAR WARS. Enjoy... But if you're just a little bit curious, look up an earlier film. Look up KINGS ROW on You Tube. Listen to the various 'takes' on the music. I think the whole film is up there too.... Black and white. Beautifully shot.... I have a copy here at the town house. I listen to it on cold, winter nights... all snug under two afghans... dim light from a small lamp... and there on the screen, the silvery perfection of long ago. Imagery means a lot to a vampire. Can you visualize the films we'd have if they could record my memories? Remember, I sat in the Globe Theater... two rows from Good Queen Bess to be exact. I heard bards sing in Old Provencal and American Indian poets in noble long houses not far from the outskirts of baby Philadelphia. How fast the city rose. Penn brought the blue print... the first planned city since Roman times... not counting the vast metropolises of MesoAmerica. All of brick it was. London had just burned and it's New World offspring never did. I was there. They had fire eaters and sword swallowers on Head House Square... street performers of every type... faces whitened... eyes smudged with kohl... red lips .... yellow teeth.... Please forgive me. I could not resist. Vampires notice teeth and until recently, you mortals really had some specimens. Look, I talk about all this to distract myself. Soon I'll leave here, enter a black, chauffeur driven car ( the driver a 'familiar,' naturally) go to a little street in the Northern Liberties and park 'round the corner from a small apartment house. Then I'll sublimate up to the third floor bedroom of a young man... a self-centered, more or less uncaring, evil young man, (you met him a few nights ago) scoop him up, blankets and all (vampire breath is a soporific... he'll sleep through the whole thing)... and sublimate back down to the waiting car. My 'aura' is more than adequate to carry him along with me. We'll drive in through a little known gate. Laurel Hill Cemetery is large, a medieval fiefdom in its own right. Then wind our way to a forgotten quarter of old, moldering, family crypts. Most haven't been opened since Victoria's son was on the throne ... sealed time capsules of physical corruption and unending darkness. That's where he'll wake up. The young man, I mean. And he'll have no idea where he is, or how he got there.... alone amidst the horror of sharp, shattered bones and desiccated, splintery coffins. In former times they heaved them in like cordwood. Imagine waking up on a razor sharp bed of ancient, broken bones. Might as well be shattered glass... wearing your underwear, wrapped in your blankets..... No, not wrapped in your blankets. I'm not going to let him keep his blankets. That would be too comforting. He'd just curl up in a cocoon and die. People do that. They just 'stop.' They curl up in one place and don't eat and don't drink. They just breath and think, or simply entertain thoughts, till they die. Well, I don't want him to die. I'll wait till he sleeps. Maybe not the first time he drifts off. Maybe the second. Maybe the third. Sometimes I can read minds. I can feel every jot and tittle. Even when I can't, I feel the high points. I'll know. I'll wait till he sleeps. When he does sleep it'll be from pure exhaustion. I don't think he's the curl up and die type. He'll fight. He'll search. He'll feel through the darkness. He'll bleed. He'll cry. Not that it will do him any good. Then I'll sublimate in, take him out and return him to his bed. If he's picked up an infection or two, a few drops of my blood will fix that. He'll wake up with a note, written on a scrap of ancient parchment, on the side table listing his sins... the bone dust of the grave still upon him. A Scrooge for our time. I am a ghost. Not really, but I can be. Now permit me to end this conversation. I must prepare for tonight's performance... an invisible role, but a pivotal one none the less. Be careful what sees you while you sleep... Be careful who watches in the dark... None are safe.... Every 'thing' is everywhere... But you who browse the paranormal archives already know that. <more next time> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ click on - THE ETERNAL EGG ... to see all Vampire Wonderland episodes. click on - OUR TIMELINES MEET TO FORM A NODE ... to join me and by extension, everyone else too. please leave comments. thank you.
I have nuffink to say. Well, I do, but not a lot, just a short commentary before I retire for a sleep period.
Some say it seems our universe is geared for life. We now know water is abundant and found in many places, as are Earth sized planets.
We talk about technological advancement. Most breakthroughs are mere gadgetry, like the device we're both using now. Although ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE could 'evolve' into something very like an alien life form sometime soon... or relatively soon.
Humanity SHOULD work towards mega-speed space vehicles, expanded lifespans and disease-free bodies.
Imagine..... We don't get sick... We have credible transport that can get us almost everywhere and we have the time to do it.
I'm thinking about that right now... Well, obviously I am, or I wouldn't have typed that.
Also, if you don't have tix or relatives or connections to get you into STAR WARS - FIRST FRIDAY, explore my accessible space opus instead. Google Vampire Wonderland by Billy Kravitz... but before you click, add EL RANCHO TEXACO..... That should get you in. Then scroll forward or backward, depending on how you like to travel through time.
In addition, I think you can click on - browse.feedreader.com/c/Billy_Kravitz_vampire_wonderland ... again. It was screwed up for a while, but the aliens have fixed it and now its all right. It'll take you into The Archives.... a limitless storehouse of all kinds of stuff.
And, as always, if you click on THIS ... you go POW! straight to Twitter.
Please comment. Thanks to the best people on line.
OK... this is a little aside. I think some of you know the Vampire Wonderland blog is an outgrowth and a nebulous expansion of my PHILADELPHIA AFTER DARK screenplay. The script, needless to say is tighter and more coherent. The characters are a bit different too. Tomas/Jonathon is just plain Thomas, the overlooked second son of a Scots peer, who one snowy evening, while strolling the deserted midnight, frosty deck of an 1880's ocean liner, sees a light in a porthole, stops to peek in and enters a world he never knew existed.
I love that scene.. a silent, silvery night... snow powdered deck chairs... complete solitude (well... almost) .... arcane secrets in a mysterious cabin.
And then they disembark... a nighttime docking.... the crowded, teeming, Gilded Age port of Philadelphia.... First Class exits to be whisked away in black, mirror finished, silver trimmed broughams.
A bewildered Thomas sits between the mystical 'Kahn' an Indian aristocrat and a mysterious woman, as they leave the docklands and enter the cobbled, gas lit streets of the city.
THE TOWNHOUSE - a bit heavier and more imperious than the one in the blog. ( maybe due to the times?) ... overseen by a formal dwarf.
DAWN APPROACHES - A clueless Thomas, already translated on the ship, needs a place to sleep. Until something suitable can be arranged, he spends the daylight shut in a large, black, medieval iron maiden (spikes removed)...
When he exits his uncomfortable refuge, the Khan is gone and the body of the dwarf hangs from a noose, slowly turning, just beyond his iron 'capsule.'
And then it begins.....
Sarah, his consort, is still Sarah. She still owns the dim, snug, atmospheric jewel box of a book shop - PHILADELPHIA AFTER DARK.
The Khan 'dead'.... survives as a spirit narrator... a muse of sorts.
And they meet an enemy... a self-styled monk, sent out by the fifteen hundred year old Brotherhood of Saint Shamus of Castle Mara.
The elferinos and elferinas are still there, though a bit more tragic than in the blog. The 'cherubs' are there too.
Sarah has drama with the OLD WOMAN, Thomas' long-time housekeeper who resents her presence.
They meet an ally in ROLAND, another vampire, deeply religious... a night-folk 'saint' if you will.
Other characters swirl about in a complicated love story among the undead and nearly undead. Two characters that I like are vampire brothers, employed as night watchmen by the nightmarish MUTTER MUSEUM of MEDICAL ODDITIES (it really exists)...
A few other blog stalwarts dance through too.
Death scenes to die for. I can't help but imagine what Broadway can do with material like this...thus the inspirational song from Doctor Zhivago up above.
That's it... our look at Philadelphia After Dark, or Vampire Wonderland... haven't decided yet... I think P.A.D. wins out.
Trouble is script only exists in hard copies. I don't know if I even know how to translate it to disc, or PC or whatever it is. But I got enough copies to go around.... THAT you probably already suspected.
Please listen to the song... It's a real good one. And if you have any favorite projects of your own, PLEASE share... COMMENT about them... People will see and I'll mention them on Twitter too.
Sometimes people ask Jonathon things. He sees them on the old mellow cobbled streets. They wave, exchange greetings and smile. Vampires often develop a presence in their immediate neighborhood. Do they know he's a vampire? Well, word gets around, but nobody makes a big thing out of it. Like in the nineteen twenties, when a cleaning woman saw Mrs. Tuttle lay an egg... and not any egg. This one had a beautiful opalescent shell, like an Easter decoration, or something a giantess might wear as an earring. They say the cook fried it up with savory sausage and onions and served it to Mr. Tuttle for breakfast. He pronounced it rich, full bodied and delicious. The cook curtseyed, farted and said - Thank you.... Mrs. Tuttle giggled like a ticklish, little Kewpie doll. Mr. Tuttle died on his way to work, as pink, frothy, spume gushed up from his jelly belly, exploded from his mouth, soaked his brown tweet suit and puddled around his feet, till the platform on the Broad Street subway line grew so slick he fell down and rolled off the polished, cement deck, right onto the electrified third line, treating all sleepy commuters in attendance to a track level light show of white sparks and acrid smoke.
Neighborhood matrons discretely approached Mrs. Tuttle, petitioning her for the home grown breakfast food so their husbands might enjoy the same experience. Cooks talk you know. In a few months, Mrs. Tuttle had a nice little nest egg, if I may use that term. And when Christmas time rolled round that year, she pulled up stakes and ran off with a Tango dancer from Detroit.
But we're talking about Jonathon. He gets requests too. A teary-eyed, young thing in a clingy cashmere sweater knocked on the door one evening, as they were watching Wheel Of Fortune. Edith, the Piney Witchy-Woman housekeeper let her in. She looked around apprehensively. After all, how many people have an acknowledged vampire for a neighbor? In a quiet, self-conscious voice the girl said - May I speak to Mister Jonathon?... Few knew his family names.... Edith led her into the den adjacent to the kitchen, where the vampire was watching his show. Jonathon raised his well formed Spanish head, smiled pleasantly (believe me, he knew the effect) and said - Tell me, Nora, (her name) how may I be of service?..... The teary eyed Miss said - It's Carl, my intended..... You want me to kill him? - asked Jonathon..... No - said the girl. Nothing like that. I want you to bite off some of his fingers..... Jonathon looked puzzled... The girl continued - I remember when the little girl, I remember when Annie used to be with you. She told everyone. Most people thought she was a psycho, but some knew the truth. Look, maybe she was both. We knew she was a vampire and we knew she bit off fingers, so I was hoping you did something like that too.....
Toes, dear, toes. Annie bit off toes, not fingers. She was peculiar that way - said Jonathon..... And you don't? - sniffed the girl.... Well, not as a rule - he said. Why do you ask? What has kissy-boy done?.... She sighed and just sat there. Edith got her a cold drink. She sipped a little and went on - He's cheating on me. We're engaged and he's cheating on me. He pretends he's going into a little book shop. But the book shop has a back entrance into the lobby of a small apartment building. The coffee shop on the other side of the lobby does too. ...Do I know who she is? ... Not exactly. I've seen her. The doorman told me who she was. I gave him a hundred dollars...... Then why not give him more and ask him to do the deed? - said Jonathon..... Because he'll get caught - said the young bride to be..... Jonathon thought for a few heartbeats and whispered - Because you'll get caught?..... She nodded - But you won't...
The vampire sipped his chilled vodka (Edith always hovers about serving something), looked her in the eye and said - Give me a little time to think about it....
May I tell you something else? - said the not yet bride.... The preternatural figure nodded..... He already has his medical doctor's degree. My 'intended' I mean. But he's not yet cleared to be an ob/gyn. He's still training. They see patients through a clinic at the hospital..... And? - said the vampire..... In a barely audible voice she said - The girl from the apartment building was one of them.
He sniffed and sighed.
Housekeeper Edith said - Oh, dear....
But then Antiques Roadshow came on. Jonathon said nothing. Edith patted the girls shoulders and whispered - Shhh, let him think....
<more next time>
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to see more episodes of our extensive, on going saga, GOOGLE Vampire Wonderland by Billy Kravitz... but before you click, ad a word... ANY WORD... then click... see where it takes you. Everything is everywhere. What choices do you make?
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