Immortalized

My persistent nose-bleed forecasts the end. And yet, anyone who knows what I know, who has undergone the transition from blind subservience of life’s vicissitudes to the ownership of power over the brief experience of life on Earth, does not regard this inevitability as a moment to be feared. Suffice it to say, regarding this subiect—and please forgive my sudden transition into my native Romanian, for the ‘j’ sound in English in this word always grates my senses—I laugh at the notion of fading into the evanescence of memory.

Not because special dispensation has been endowed upon my person to control what is wholly in God’s domain—au contraire. I owe my everlasting presence in human history to one Mr. Stoker, a little man of no remarkable feature save a finely-groomed goatee and keen insight.

Yes… I misled Bram, but that was payback for his audacious invasion of my citadel despite the safeguards I had implemented—a labyrinth of tunnels with multiple dead-ends that would leave even the stoutest spelunker despairing. Though loath to admit it, even I, knowing full well the one path among the many options into my inner sanctum, have occasionally found myself suddenly lost in its convolution, particularly when allowing my mind to wander as I headed back after a night of feasting. And is it any wonder such meanderings occurred, reveling in the satiation provided me by my latest conquest’s blood, the sweet life-giving power that filled me? Anyone in similar circumstance might find himself likewise disoriented.

And yet, with no map and no experience navigating these tunnels of impossible and nearly-impassable routes, Mr. Stoker arrived unannounced, approaching me as though an old friend with familiarity of my personage. It was all I could do to hide my surprise and maintain composure when he emerged from the dancing shadows of torchlight illuminating my chamber.

I rose immediately, ready to strike down this interloper when I first heard his heartbeat from across the room, but he appeared to have no awareness of his precarious vulnerability as he continued his approach. Or, if he did, at least presented no outward indication of it.

“Count? Count Dracula?” His query lacked any hint of nervousness, as if I were just another ordinary person.

I smiled most fallaciously. “Indeed, I am,” I answered. “But I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Mister…?”

“Stoker. Bram Stoker.”

“Ah… yes. Well, Mister Bram Stoker, how may I be of service?” I asked, bowing slightly as cordiality demands, all the while focusing my exquisite hearing and refined olfactory on the rhythmic beating of his jugular, the faint smell of his blood.

And, of a sudden, his mien changed. “You will not utter my name!” he commanded. “I know who… what you are!” Even in the dim flicker of torchlight, I could see his face redden.

“Oh?” I asked, laughing inwardly while assuming an acquiescent tone. “And what might that be?”

“Coyness is most unbecoming,” he bellowed. “I have questions, and I want answers!” The redness in his cheeks had deepened to an irresistible crimson, one which would have, under other circumstances, coerced me soundlessly to attack him. And yet, the more bellicose he became, the more amusing I found him, but only because he severely underestimated my abilities, where I could bend him to my will with just a quick lunge, paralyzing him into total submission with just my stare. I believed him, at that moment, a less-than-intelligent specimen, but welcomed the distraction.

His next utterance, an assertion for which he had no corroboration, immediately changed my humor from fair to foul and changed the manner with which he’d be dealt. He’d need to be tortured in soul and spirit.

“I will answer, but first I shall ask,” I replied. “Why this vehement objection to my address of you, Bram Stoker?” My repetition of his name was deliberate, a ploy to keep him feeling defensive.

"Because,” he answered more calmly after taking a deep breath, “you and your cohorts… you’re parasitic. I’m not yet sure in what way, and I’m here to find out.”

I remember the sting of its annunciation—parasitic—a whetted sword slashing my viscera, the consummate degradation of my most cherished belief those of my ilk were far superior, inured to the ascendant folly of the uninitiated. With great effort, I repressed my desire to immediately attack him and have him learn firsthand how erroneous his declaration. So resolved, I then thought to cut him, a scratch upon his hand with my fingernail. Once connected by the scent of his blood, he could no more hide from me than Cain from God, but refrained again, finding the most exquisite and enduring punishment would be to amplify his trepidations.

For the next hour he posed what questions he had, while I answered with mendacities, spinning yarns about being undead—a term I delighted in and made up on the spot—about the effectiveness of garlic’s protection, of the sun’s ability to set those like me aflame by our venture into it, and my coup de gras, about immortality as long as we stayed in the shadows. His brown eyes greyed, color draining from his cheeks. His mouth shriveled at the thought, leaving him unable to speak for some long seconds. I knew our conversation was concluded then, knew by the dizzied way he stood and wobbled, moments before I led him out through the tunnels he had navigated. And I also knew, because of the embellishments I’d added, I had ripped any chance of pleasant dreams from him for the rest of his pitiful life.

What I didn’t know was that he planned to author a book.

I have read his book numerous times through the years, amused at his assertion that a wooden stake through vampiric hearts could wipe the scourge of my kind from the world of decency he fancied himself a part of. I suppose my success in his words, the notion of my kind roaming the Earth and victimizing the unsuspecting forever being more than he could accept. And so he drove a metaphoric stake between the reality of our conversation and his need to not live in hangdog panic.

He gained notoriety for his work, but I, delightedly, have been forever enshrined in more dark fantasies I’d ever dreamed possible, a chimera which measure seems destined never to fade. In essence, Bram assured my immortality. The shock of it would kill him if he weren’t already and long-ago dead.

But, nearing my end, I shall now dispel a part of the fiction I wove, revealing we do, in fact, after a time, decease. It is an ignoble end, the price we pay for having lived as parasites for untold years, falling prey to the very blood we consume for sustenance, the physical material left over once it’s extirpated, expulsing it from every orifice our bodies contain in a matter of agonizing hours. I shall become nothing more than a residuum of flesh submerged in a pool of grey, debilitated blood. And yet, I live on.