We like the dark, my kind. It’s just as well, because no sliver of light chinks its way into this forsaken place. I have only the damp walls and the chittering rats as muses for my senses. Even the wardens provide little interaction; my meals are pushed through the hatch once a day. I eat my thin soup to the sound of hurried footsteps retreating up the corridor, and then nothing. The guards’ unease is not surprising. They can sense something about me. What they feel they cannot say, but it is there nonetheless.
Their inarticulacy is unsurprising. I do not conform to their preconceptions of how a vampire might act. I don’t hover menacingly like Christopher Lee and I’m certainly not involved in a nauseating love triangle with a werewolf. I have neither fangs nor superhuman strength, and my interactions with garlic and mirrors are likely as unremarkable as yours.
There is one uncomfortable fact which still holds true to the legends – we must feed. You can keep your bodily fluids, though. Your blood tastes exactly the same in my mouth as it does in yours – claggy and retch-inducing. Perhaps we used to indulge in such base pursuits. I don’t remember. I do know that we have evolved to survive on something much more nourishing – emotion.
I once took succour from joy, the more widespread and bounteous the better. I fed upon your emotional by-products; a cry of joy as a baby is born, a belly-laugh at a joke down the pub. Not so sinister, is it? Of course, these were merely aperitifs, barely enough to tamp down an appetite. My main source of nourishment came from sporting meets, music recitals, that sort of thing. Ah, the swell of the crowd, the noise, the sweat, the passion…being part of a throng like that could sustain me for months. With every roar, every surge, I could feel strength pushing through my veins.
Greed was my downfall of course. Soon, jousts and hunts were not enough. The joy wasn’t…feral enough for me. Real emotion, unbridled joy, that’s hard to come by. Hope became my drug of choice. The storming of the Bastille, Gandhi’s march, Mandela’s liberation, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Times Square during the moon landings…I was there for all of them. A lot of nourishment to be had, but also a lot of unrest. I suppose it was only a matter of time before my presence was deemed suspicious.
My cover was sprung at the Arab Spring. I guess some intelligence service somewhere had me at one too many rebellions for their liking. The soldiers described me as a usurper of the peace as they led me away. I’m still not sure what that means other than I’ll not be leaving this hole again. At first I thought I’d starve. Cut off from hope, joy, excitement. What was down here for me? Surely I would wither.
Not so. It transpires that living underneath the living streets simply requires an adjustment of the palette. It’s not cries of revolution that titillate me now, but rather the moans of my fellow prisoners. I lay here in the dirt and bask in their whimpers and dream-prompted mumblings. Thin fare, to be sure, but I’m learning to savour smaller portions.
Matthew Richardson is a writer of short stories. His work has featured in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Near to the Knuckle, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, and Shooter magazine. He is an absentee member of the Glasgow Writers Group, a PhD student at the University of Dundee, a lucky husband, and a proud father.
Not necessarily in that order
Matthew Richardson 
Brilliantly vivid story! Snarky vampires are a great twist to read about 🙂
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Thanks Tom. The last thing the literary landscape needs is another vampire story, but I thought this was maybe sufficiently atypical enough to sneak through the gates!
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*sparkles in sunlight* *stares moodily into glass of wine*
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I’ll be up in front of the Vampire Literary Conventions Monitoring Board for not including aspects like these 😄
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What a great twist on the tired vampire lore. This is really an impressive piece of work. What lead to the arrest though? My idea of an emotion-sucking vampire is one who would feed off of close friends and family, like a personal demon but who can’t be defeated because of how insidious he is, lurking in the shadows of the dark corners of your mind but not conspicuous enough to be obviously apparent. This is just my two cents though, it doesn’t diminish from the fresh ideas in this piece. I would love to read more from you.
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Thanks for your feedback. Very much appreciated! He was arrested for nothing specific, just got the wind up the authorities by being near too many tumultuous events!
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“Hope became my drug of choice.” That’s a line I can mainline ;))))
p.s. I love vampires, was a huge fan of Anne Rice’s “interview” series. I also got addicted to the first episodes of True Blood on Netflix, back in the day, but then it turned way way way too dark and twisted for my taste. Loved Stephanie Meyer’s series, regardless of what folks say about it being simple or saccharine, to me it was good clean vampire fun, and great reading for teens compared to some of the awfulness out there. Also it was perfect to read in a second language, for the exact reason that it was written plainly and simply.
I like how your vampire is quite droll, with his nonchalant palate adjustment, along with his ability to eat thin soup, and that he no longer sucks blood but only emotions… he sounds quite human all in all…but is it an evolution or a devolution I wonder… ;))
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Cheers Nadine. I was reticent about adding my own vampire yarn to an already-impressive collection. My wife loves Meyer too. Do you find a lot of books don’t translate well? Being a single-language dilettante, I sometimes think that some colloquial books (Trainspotting etc) just would work in other languages.
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Well tbh I’ve only read “light-read” books in French, for the sole reason of improving my French, and anything heavy would have felt like too much “work” :)) When I was learning Spanish my friend gave me the original Spanish version of Like Water for Chocolate and I just couldn’t do it… I had to look up nearly every word and it was too tedious for my laziness to overcome.. .although in English it was spectacularly beautiful enough. Good translation is an art isn’t it… I do think the film Trainspotting could be creatively replicated in French, though would require a native-French linguistic virtuoso to replicate the dialect in context, taking a specific French slang maybe even tinged with argot… hmm I love your question, feels like it needs a dive down the rabbit hole… neat, there is this: http://civilianglobal.com/arts/trainspotting-in-translation-irvine-welsh-twenty-years-of-trainspotting-in-french/
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a weird and wonderful tale; the title is superb
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Cheers John!
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It seem like a real vampire that has risen,have been following up on vampire tales but I don’t get the idea of their taste for blood and their way of existence since they appear to be extraordinary beings.
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Agreed. Thanks for taking the time to read!
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