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AEEM reports, #1
Hiyee! So, yeah, who am I? Listen, S.V. Florian and the head honcho of Croatoan Books (He Who Must Not Be Named) have ruled that I must not be named here, either. It might inflict “spoilage” on readers of Chaos and Old Night. They still want me to write something about vampires, though — as long as it doesn’t, again, “spoil” anything in the book. Jeez.
Anyway, they’re allowing me to use the initials — AEMM — of my Christian names, i.e., the names used at my baptism in Mainz, the old city in the Rhineland, in December 1631. (Spoilage! Spoilage! Too much biographical detail! We’ll see whether that part gets cut.)
Since I turned, in 1659, I’ve used a bunch of other names, the way we all do as the years and decades and centuries go by. You’ll see some of those names if you read the book.
For this first installment of my profound observations, I’ve managed to come up with four simply riveting topics.
• This is something you may be wondering about: Where are we? The blurb for the book says, “Real vampires prefer cities,” and so we do! We’re sociable types, really. Urbane, you might say! (Most of us.) And we tend to congregate only in the really big metro areas. In the United States, that means that we have actual, formal chapters of the Circle of Second Life in most metros with at least
3 million people. (Maybe I’ll talk about chapters elsewhere in the world in a future installment.)But also, there’s a chapter in one U.S. metro that only has about
1.3 million people. Guess what it is ...Right! New Orleans! You just knew there had to be a vampire chapter in spooky ol’ NOLA, right?
Fun fact (really fun for us, in fact): New Orleans is the U.S. capital — probably the world capital — of “sanguinarianism,” i.e., the cult of blood-drinking by non-vamps. That partly explains why you find a group of us lurking there. (Enough said?)Weird fact: Drinking human blood is a felony under Louisiana law! Of all places — Louisiana!
• Where aren’t we? There are no vampires I know of in the Far North, at least not at or above the Arctic Circle. It’s not just that we prefer big cities. And we’re not too troubled by the “Midnight Sun” thing during the summer. No, it’s the lack of sun during the winter solstice! We are able to sleep only when the sun is up. You see the problem.If I don’t get any rest for a couple of days, I get really cranky. And extra-thirsty. Just speaking for myself, here.
I have an old Russian friend who lived in St. Petersburg (Russia, not Florida!) for many years (before the commie era), and she always headed south when the darkest part of winter loomed.
• This topic is related to the one above, and that’s the vampire movie from 2007, “30 Days of Night,” starring Josh Hartnett and Melissa George. It’s set in a fictionalized Barrow, Alaska, where there’s supposed to be, ta daaa, 30 days of night during the winter. Now, you’ve got to see the flick if you’re a vampire-movie maven. It’s exciting. But, you’re probably ahead of me already. How many days could the invading vamps be expected to function at all without sleep?!
Two other things. First, these vamps are way beyond cranky and thirsty. They’re eeeevil, which I realize they have to be if the story’s going to work. But most of us real vamps do find it tiresome to see our people depicted as murderous, out-of-control villains most of the time. (I am aware that there are exceptions in the world of books and movies, more now than there used to be, in fact. Fine. I want to see even more.)
The second other thing is that the vamps in “30 Days” are awfully smelly-looking. I wonder when the last time was that any of them took a bath or put on clean clothing. I wouldn’t touch ’em with a ten-foot stake! (Ha ha. I’m so funny.)
• Now that I’ve segued into the possibly disgusting, here to wind up with is something that’s touched on in the book but not a lot: Solid Food. If we eat solid food, we pay the price. We don’t digest food or, er, excrete it (sorry), so we have to purge it. I.e., vomit. It’s gross and seems to take forever. But, see, you’ve got to get all of it up and out. You need to use quarts or liters, whatever, of water! I usually have to go through the process at least three times. You do not want anything to sit in your stomach and rot. That leads to some titanically bad breath. And tuba-level burping. It’s not conducive to the hot babe image. (Which, yes, I do cultivate.)
As we age, we lose the taste for food, and that’s happened with me, but every year I do have to attend three or four business banquets, benefit dinners, etc. It’s necessary to support my public image as an ordinary human and businesswoman. And people have to see me eating something so I don’t come across as weird.
Most young vamps still like food, but after a few nasty aftermaths they learn to restrain themselves.
Water: This isn’t mentioned in the book, but we can drink water in limited quantities without having to purge. In other words, we can absorb it. Slowly. It’s not nutritious, but it can help keep us lubricated, I guess.Upcoming, maybe: I’ve finally gotten around to watching “Midnight Mass” on Netflix. Whoa! If Florian and the ultra-strict publisher guy let me, I’ll probably comment on it a little in a forthcoming installment, but I will have to be careful! And I have trouble being careful!Other non-bloody bevvies: We have to purge them, but if they’re thin like booze and soft drinks, it’s no problem.
Blood: Surely I don’t have to discuss that! (Better not, anyway. There’s a lot about it in the novel.)
’Kay! That’s it for this one, friendly new friends. I’ll be back with carefully censored new topics sooner or later.
Still evading the stake after all these years,
“AEMM”
Like all other installments in this series, this is a work of fiction, based on characters in the novel Chaos and Old Night.
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