1895 The Vampire by Paul De Kock review

This heart is a piece of wall art at the Victoria and Albert House

, 

Portland, OR

 Introducing The Vampire: A Story of Love and Passion,

 by Paul De Kock (1895)

A year ago I had the privilege of spending time in the British Library where they have one of the most fantastic collections of material in the world (in my opinion, mind you). While there I was allowed to read a variety of vampire themed material which is not yet readily available online, including those I've already posted about, and: The Vampire: A Story of Love and Passion, by Paul De Kock. Since one of my interests is in the use of the term vampire as a metaphor for people who suck the metaphoric life from others, reading this was ... cool.

It is indeed the story of "love and passion" as the author states, but in this case the passion of the lovers are closer to obsession, which allows for truly co-dependent, vampiric relationships.

The story begins with an illicit relationship between a male composer and his mistress. Now the mistress part was just fine back in those times, no one looked askance at the man having a mistress, in fact he stayed with her quite happily for many years. It was a relationship which didn't impede his musical output or his career. He had quiet evenings at home with her and all of his friends were quite fond of her as well. Then, enter the vampire.

The vampire took his time and attention away from his musical career which was a very bad thing as far as his friends were concerned. Eventually, the scorned long-term mistress came to his friends and asked for their aid in rescuing her lover from the evil clutches of the vampire. 

After much roundaboutation, the mistress decided that she was bored with the composer -- and he was running short of funds to keep her in style anyway. She moved on to another man and the composer went back to his mistress a broken man.

Was she a real vampire?

July 4: OR, Just Another Vampire Day (Part 2)

July 4: OR, Just Another Vampire Day

by Leslie Ormandy Copyright 2012 ALL rights reserved.

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This is part 2 of my Fourh of July vampire story. Scroll down a bit -- or hit this link: http://sweetgothvampires.blogspot.com/2014/06/july-4-or-just-another-vampire-day.html
-- to find part 1.

______    _______

Sarah looked up as the next firework exploded into the night sky. It was beautiful – apart from the deafening noise. The streamers of light cascaded down in several colors, forming a brief-lived flower. She felt his movement as he leaned forward and smelled the chemical as he dropped it into her soda, but kept her attention ostentatiously focused on the fireworks.

Allowing him to drug and rape her hadn’t really been her plan, but she could work with the scenario. After all, it did put them someplace private, and a van or dungy backroom was less likely to be disturbed than under dark bushes or behind a tree. She’d always been one to go with the flow.

“Wow, that was beautiful,” she said as she allowed her face to light up as she looked at the “father” figure sitting next to her. “Do they do this every year?”

But any lying answer he would have made was drowned out by the next explosive boom. Sarah pretended surprise and nudged her drink cup, making it look like it might spill.

Wilton was very quick to steady the shaking cup while she looked up at another flower design.

“I love the flower ones,” she told him, as she looked back at him and picked up her cup and lifted it to her lips.

She heard his quick inhalation as he watched expectantly, so as she turned her head to watch the next display, she took a long drink. As always, in these scenarios, she was grateful that she could drink liquids. It made it so much easier to fit in and lead the predator on.

Turning back to him a bit later and putting her hand to her head, she told him, “I’m not feeling so hot.”

“Why don’t you just lie down for a moment? I’ll keep an eye out for your brother’s truck, it’s a red Chevy, right?” he offered, knowing there was unlikely to be a brother looking for her.

“I guess that would be alright,” she said faintly. And with his eager help Sarah lay down next to him on the blanket, and after allowing her eyes to glaze and then drift closed, she waited as impatiently for the fireworks to finish and the surrounding crowd to begin dispersing as Wilton was waiting. Neither could make their next move until then.

Finally the last explosion brightened the night sky, and the crowd began hurriedly gathering belongings and joining the lines to the exit.

“Is she alright?” Sarah heard a wavery concerned voice ask.

“My daughter was up all last night coming home from college,” Wilton answered affably.

“Do you need help getting her to your car?” a male voice offered.

“No, It’s a nice night, and might as well let her catch a few winks here as wake her and sit in line waiting to get out. Traffic. Thanks for the offer, though. Have a pleasant night.”

She heard the kind man shout to a friend as the couple walked away.

Pretty soon, all was quiet; even the men doing the fireworks display and checking for sparks left, and Wilton and she were all that remained.

She murmured softly and let herself go deadweight as she was rolled up in the blanket and slung her over his shoulder.  She opened her eyes and covertly checked to make certain that indeed no one was around.

After a fair bit of jouncing and a whole lot of having to put up with her legs and butt being felt up, Wilton reached his van. Sarah smiled to herself. She had been fairly sure he’d be driving a van. Any old man who roofied a young woman was going to drive a van. Some sort of rule.

1820 "The Vampire: A Tragedy in 5 Acts"

The British Library holds treasure for individuals lucky enough to tread its halls. One of the treasures is the short five act play by John Dorset, "The Vampire: A Tragedy in 5 Acts." In short, in a true piece of Victorian scatter-shot, it blames everyone for their own lack of morals. 

The preface, from the Examiner, states:

"There are vampires who waste the heart and happiness of those they are connected with, vampires of avarice, vampires of spleen, vampires of debauchery, vampires in all the shapes of selfishness and domestic tyranny. What is the seducer and abandon-er of a trusting young girl but a vampire not sufficiently alive to his own cruelty? What is a husband who marries for money, and then tramples on his wife but a Vampire? What is the "poisonous bosom snake of Milton but a female vampire, wearing a man's heart out by holding him without loving him?"

The author has set the play in the "obscurity" of the Egyptian annals" during the 10th C.  And in many, many ways it is a Romeo and Juliette retelling, with the faithless Abdella (Romeo character)  playing the part of the immoral vampire because he loves (seduces) a young innocent gal (Astarte) and abandons her for the power and authority of the Alexandrian queen (Nouroyan). Unlike Romeo and Juliet, Nouroyan is quite attracted to the invading Persian, Abdella, and when she agrees to the betrothal, she has no idea whatsoever that he is already affianced to Astarte.

In a very classic tragedy ending, all the main characters are dead at the end, either killed by conspirators seeking the throne for themselves, or killed by a sea-god upset with the unethical behavior of the protagonists. 

Note that I am pretty sure the London audience would have loved this play due to its bow to morality even while it allowed partially dressed actors to parade across the state. And again, the embracing metaphor of the vampire as anyone who places their own needs above those of society writ-large allows for a wide brush to paint pretty much anyone.

"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.

Dine and Dash

Ken is sporting a whole new look these days, a full length vampire cape and his signature shorts while he waits for Barbie to wake up for their late night bite at the local drive in. The menu features lots of fresh food and the main feature is Silence of the Lambs.

Vampire Metaphor: A Rose by Any Other Name

Does a rose by any name smell as sweet? Does saying someone is a vampire mean he is a bloodsucking parasite, or that he sparkles romantically? Arguably this is the problem with any metaphor; it is a shoddy method to communicate meaning since the reader has no idea which is meant by the context in which the metaphor is placed.It is amorphous.

Darkness falls and the banker strolls from the office where he has labored since sunrise. His car lies deep in the underground garage along with the cars of all his office-mates. He is elated from his busy day of trading futures, having made lots of money. His predatory urges have been wakened, and instead of going home, he turns his car towards the clubs where he can find a desperate woman for who will fall for his line of patter. He can get off and walk off.

The apartment complex was, shall we say euphemistically, a fixer-upper complex with some terrace fences clearly needing replacing, and a roof with odd patches of darkness where the moss seemed to have taken over and grown unhealthy under overhanging tree branches. Walking into the unit the woman could smell odd aromas underlying the fresh paint smell and the smell of the newly laid, inappropriately tannish, carpet. Even with all the lights turned on, and there were damned few of them, the place was dim; as though the apartment was attempting to hid its issues from the casual viewer. The woman knew that if she was no longer a casual viewer the issues would become all to clear, and she would have to live with them. But her credit wasn't stellar and the rent, though high, was about standard for the area, and this owner didn't require the expensive background checks or high deposit so many others did.

She was a knock-out. She was an eleven on the scale of one-to-ten. Her little black dress lived up to its name as it clung to her curves, displaying them quite clearly even while saying, "understated." And she, quite clearly, was out of place in this run-down, workingman's pub.
     The men sitting at the bar looked, hell, they gaped and slavered, but they gave her a wide space. The men and women sitting at the tables in their jean and flannels, 'nice' outfits and chinos, whispered among themselves as they kept glancing at her, asking each other, in quite tones, "What is THAT doing HERE?" or some variant thereof. But again, for all their looking and whispering, they just looked and whispered.
     The bartender who had mixed her gin fizz made casual conversation with the men at the bar, watching attentively for her beaconing gesture while giving an appearance of drying the already dry glasses with his bar rag. "She paid with a fifty, and gave me a twenty tip!" he whispered importantly, understand that, for a change, he was the most important person in the bar; he was the only person in the bar she'd spoken to.
      There was a collective intake of breath when the woman swung her bar-stool so that she could look at her audience -- for they had become her audience in all the ways that matter. Many had only seen her figure since her face was turned toward the bar, and she was two stools over from where the bar's back-mirror would have given her reflection. They moved her up to twelve status. Every man, and a few of the women, wondered even more if she were blond all over, since blue eyes indicated her blond hair was natural.  
     She sipped her drink and then smiled. Her very white teeth reflected in the dim light.

The waif stood in the shadows looking very waif-like; small gamine face with a few smudges and huge eyes, jeans and oversize open button-down shirt. Yet her huge eyes had a hint of the predator within them if one looked very closely; she was used to fending for herself. Some kind man or woman would soon come along and want to 'save' her.

Although Josh tried hard to vary his routine, travel to school by a different route every day, and make damn certain they were random; the last leg of the trip required walking down the main street to the only open door of the building, and every few days Trevor would waylay him.
    
Metaphor. Vampire. Predators. Prey.

Leslie Ormandy