July 4; OR Just another Vampire Day

July 4; OR Just another Vampire Day

Copyright Althea Infante 2011

copyright Leslie Ormandy 2011 ALL rights reserved

I thought I might share this since at this point, I have no plans for continuing it. It is going to appear in  segments through 4 July. I hope you enjoy it. 

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The explosion of sound filled the night sky with pops of light in a wonderful strobe effect. Sarah loved the explosion; it screened the sound of men’s screams. No need to find a sound-proof room or lure them to a deserted field in the middle of nowhere. She could kill them close to where they had hunted her when they thought her just a helpless runaway whom they could easily use and turn out. The advantage of never looking her age; looking sixteen and “innocent” forever.

The Greyhound pulled into the downtown terminal at 10:00 PM. It was late, but that was actually alright with her since it meant she easily blended in with the riders bustling around waiting for the driver to unload their bags. She waited until the passengers began moving toward the exit with their waiting friends and families, waited until the bus driver slammed the baggage hatch closed before she moved into a patch of streetlight and let the light pick her out. She looked lost and helpless and friendless in her really distressed jeans, too tight Goth inspired tee, tatty graying hooded cardigan, and heavy duty goth makeup.

Sarah had him picked out long before he came up to her. She was bait. After all the long years, she knew how to catch her meal.

“Are you waiting for someone?” He had asked as he appeared out of the darkness over by the car park. He’d also been waiting for the driver to leave so he could see if there was any fresh meat washing up that night.

“My brother is supposed to be picking me up,” she told him, making it obvious though her expression and body language that she was lying as she pulled her threadbare sweater tighter around her shoulder so that her breasts stood out. She needed to set the hook well, make it clear that she was hungry.

“This isn’t a safe place for a young lady to wait alone. Can I buy you a soda or something at the picnic across the way while you wait? You should be able to see him from there. We won’t go far.” Wilton knew it was safe to offer; in this crowd, who would remember him, and no one would tip that he wasn’t from this town.

She put her most trusting face on as she agreed, nervously twisting the escaping strand of hair, “I guess that would be all right.”

“I’m Wilton Courtney,” he informed her, slipping his arm around her shoulder to lead her across to the field. “My daughter was supposed to be arriving home from college on that bus, but I guess she’s been delayed.”

“I’m Sarah,” and Sarah hesitated just the right length of time to indicate she was making up the last name, “Hart.”

 Wilton kept up a line of friendly patter as he bought her the promised soda and a hotdog. He wanted to appear friendly, but fatherly, to keep her on the hook. He was practically salivating as he looked obliquely at her slim body displayed in the goth clothing. It wouldn’t do to let her slip the hook. It had been two months since he’d found a suitable runaway to play with.

“My blanket is set over there,” he told her, gesturing over to the far corner of the field. “You can still see the bus station, but you can watch the fireworks also.”

Sarah let the line of patter wash over her as she let him lead her to his blanket. She let him see nervousness as she sat down on the blanket pulling her knees up to her chest and balancing the plate atop them. She checked the now vacant bus station, the people around her who barely noted the arrival of the two strangers in their midst, and the preparations for the next burst of fireworks to be sure no one was watching.

She took a bite of the hotdog, then turned her head and spat it out into her crumpled napkin – just like she done with broccoli as a child, then pretended to take a sip from her soda cup.

He watched her with hidden interest, waiting for her to turn away long enough for him to slip the roffie into her soda. Then he would sit though the rest of the firework display and carry his sleeping “daughter” to the waiting van. From there, he would driver her to his warehouse where he could have some fun with her before selling her overseas thoroughly broken in. 

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More of this story will appear throughout the month. 

Metaphoric Reality

Oregon Lottery Poster 2014

Sucking blood from a stone?

Over the past several years I have been musing upon the usage of metaphors. They inundate our daily life: rain = sorrow, a rose = love, a wedding ring = eternal love, and yes, I could continue for a very long time; I possess a (economically useless) Masters in English Literature. The question for the day is if the constant, longstanding use of a metaphor -- such as that of a blood-sucking vampire -- as a stand-in for a regular Jane/Joe human behaving in a way which denudes the impacted "victim"-- somehow waters down the original word / idea / entity.

The secondary question would be, if the word "vampire" as metaphor does indeed water down the idea/word/entity, why would it matter? Science tells us, empirically, that real undead, revivified, returned to life vampires do not exist.

Certainly a wide field of literature and media play with this willful assumption of disbelief. Most notably (if my memory serves), Bram Stoker had Helsing argue in Dracula that the most effective way to hide ones existence was to make people believe you are fiction. I do not think he took it the concept far enough. Far to say one is hiding ones existence is still to posit that one exists.

 I have thought, for a fair length of time as I've worked on the idea of vampire as a metaphor, that the best way to hide ones existence it to water it down, to make the very idea of ones existence so used as an everyday noun/verb that it no longer refers to anything specific. The noun "vampire" becomes synonymous with any person sucking the life -- economically, physically, or emotionally -- from another person. 

They are behaving "vampirically" (adverb describing a verb). And if any Joe/Jane can be a metaphoric vampire; pouf goes any concept whatsoever that these fictional beings might actually share the earth with us for we are all, at one time or another, vampires ourselves.

I will pause to reassure anyone who happens upon this post -- I am not positing the existence of the real creature. Nor do I discount it. I am just noting that one function of a cliche is to water down the power of the idea being cliched. Let's look at an almost useless, but very societally meaningful, cliche: The dark and stormy night. Does the rendering of the concept into an overused, almost meaningless cliche actually water down, make less valid -- less real -- the torrential downpour pushed by high winds that the cliche represents?I do suggest that the overuse of the metaphor is rendering it a cliche with a check-list attached, and that the overuse of the metaphor waters down the original in our collective consciousness. We humanize our concept of the vampire, taming them in our minds, and then use it as a pejorative name for each other.

What do you think? Does overuse of a metaphor water down the reality of the vampire?

"The Haunted Place" Poe

(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow 

Shall dawn upon him desolate!)

And round about his home

 the glory

That blushed and bloomed,

Is but dim-

remembered 

story

Of the old time entombed.

-- Edgar Allan Poe, "The Haunted Palace." 

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust" - - and for most of us (apart from those of the vampiric persuasion), only dim memories of names and times reflected in sepia images remain. 

Vampire Hunter pt. 2

Lone Star Pioneer Cemetery, Portland, Oregon.

Part one is the last post:

It was seriously eerie, and I could almost hear the shrouded ghosts tittering as I stood with a bull’s-eye on my chest, heart dead center of it waiting to be tapped.

Then I realized that the sounds I had heard could possibly be caused by the breeze rustling the overhanging leaves and branches against the windows of the more economically up-scale mausoleums. Or perhaps the noise was simply a neighborhood cat chasing its prey through the bushes lining the pathway. It did not have to be caused by the stealthy opening of the metal gates by the vampire said to sleep in the nearby crypt.

I wished I was elsewhere with a reasonable job, but how many positions could an English major minoring in photography fill? And I wished I was outside a nightclub in a well lit area trying for a picture of one of the sparkling, vegetarian sort. Damn vampire, as metaphor, boss anyway. He had it in for me, and this assignment really showed it. “It would serve him right if I got bit and came back as a vampire,” I muttered under my breath, sotto-voice, not wanting to make too much noise, but wanting something recognizably human to break up the silence.

“Five more minutes, and I’m out of here,” I muttered a bit more loudly, then cringed as a crow perched among the moss nearby spoke to me. I would swear it murmured “nevermore,” but that was probably my overly active imagination.

My cell phone found its way into my hand, path beaten from long use, and I checked my Twitter account hoping for an update. But it was all promo by the big biz who saw Twitter as a purely marketing tool.

I was by now really uncomfortable, sincerely regretting the double shot venti latte I’d had since there were no public restrooms in the cemetery, even had I been willing to leave my post to find one.

Then I saw something emerging from the crypt across the aisle from me. There were two; no one had mentioned that there would be two! And boy-oh-boy they weren’t sparkly. They barely looked human. They weren’t the sort my boss would plaster across the front page; too creepy.

And then I realized they were looking at me…

I had only the presence of mind to snap one quick photo as I fled, hoping they would not give chase, hoping I could run faster than them. Hoping to see one more dawn. To live.

copyright Leslie Ormandy, all rights reserved.

Vampire Hunter pt. 1

I crept into the cemetery after dark through a narrow opening between the fence and the bushes. It was creepy, but my rent was due and my landlord was not too fond of people of my persuasion; vampire photographers.

I stumbled over the rough ground past tombstones which glowed pale under the strobe of the moonlight filtering though the threatening clouds. It was a bad night to be entering such a place, but I'd heard rumors through the Twitterverse that vampires frequented this particular mausoleum. And if they were there, I needed to immortalize them in digital to pay my rent. The tabloids paid well for "authentic" vampire pictures, even if the vampire was not the hunky sort.

The skull partially buried in mulch but still managing to grin at me gave me pause; and I wondered if this was the right profession for me. But in my biz, it was produce or perish, right? So I crept on as stealthily as possible between the decaying gravestones while trying to find my location on the little map of the cemetery the kind lady at the desk had given me that morning. I kicked myself now for not having taken the time to figure out the right spot in daylight, but the map had made it look deceptively easy.

I almost died when I heard the eerie moaning sound of squeaking metal. I froze in place unwilling to alert any listeners to my presence, even while knowing that if it were the vampire I sought, my heart-beat would be a loud pounding bass drum in the otherwise deserted area.

Tune in again for the next segment.later this week.. (copyright Leslie Ormandy)