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Amy (Amelia, AEMM, whatever) reports, #4
The usual apologies, friends! Some of you probably thought some crazed vamp-slayer caught me and staked me or something. (Ha. Not gonna happen.)
Let’s get right into it.
Vampires vs. zombies. To begin with, we exist and zombies do not! Now, I really don’t know how many people put vamps and zombies in the same category, but if anyone does, it’s insane. Look, we speak fluently (usually in a bunch of languages), and we think (more or less normally), we bathe regularly, and we also dress a helluva lot better than the zoms I’ve seen in shows. (I get criticized for sometimes dressing a little too casually, but that’s different.)
Also, we don’t go crazy at the sight or smell of blood. (Not without provocation. I’ll get to that.) One of my favorite vampire novels is Fred Saberhagen’s The Dracula Tape (Tom Doherty Associates, Inc., 1975), which records the Count’s revisionist version of the events in Bram Stoker’s book. He’s telling some skeptical (and fearful) breathers about the time when Jonathan Harker, his guest, cut himself shaving in Dracula’s presence. Dracula says:
According to Harker’s journal, which is unforgettable to me and from which I quote verbatim, my “eyes blazed with a sort of demoniac fury” as soon as I saw his blood, and I “suddenly made a grab” at his throat.Saberhagen gets it right. In “The Return of the Living Dead” (1985) the zombies can talk, and they run around demanding, “Live braaaains!” We do not run around demanding, “Live bloood!”Now I ask you — you enjoy a good rare beefsteak, perhaps? Naturally. Now, suppose you stroll into the dining room where a guest of yours is finishing his lunch, and observe a morsel of meat left on his plate. Does the sight make your eyes blaze with demoniac fury?
Hemophile that I am known to be (in the true sense of the word), it is not true that the mere sight of blood under any and all circumstances is enough to trip me into a paroxysm of lust for the good red stuff.
Also, we have a moral sense. (Well, the vast majority of us do.) We’re not angels, but we’re not demons, either. We’re somewhere in between. Like other people.
The provocation exception. There are times when some of us do lose control because something (or someone) has severely provoked us, and we fall into what we call the Red Haze, Red Mist, or Red Dance. Usually we have to be pretty thirsty to start out with. The result is most often messy, and fatal to someone, as I can testify since I’ve unfortunately succumbed to the Haze half a dozen times in my 364 years in the life. But I know vamps, including some old ones, who deny ever experiencing it.
Vampire balls. (Dances, OK?) These are events intended for breathers who are interested in the whole vampire mythos. You’ll find such balls in cities across the country on or around Halloween, the most famous of which is in New Orleans. That’s the one where you’ll find the most real vamps — I try to go every year — but you’ll also find some of us if your city has both a ball and a vampire chapter. Now, I say “find,” but of course we don’t “out” ourselves, and we strongly discourage any of our breather friends who attend from spilling the beans! If you attend, you might look for attractive, young-seeming folks who are not in costume ... circulating through the crowd ... studying possible donors? (Look but don’t confront, would be my advice.)
A few of us — lovable wackos — do show up in costume. Very tricky, right?
If the vampire ball in your town is actually on Halloween, chances are none of us will be there. In cities where we have a chapter, we always throw our own party that night. (Which includes dancing. I’m definitely an excellent dancer.) Naturally, it’s a secret affair. We invite only a selected few of our breather friends.
Possibly amusing detail: At the party in my city, we always play the traditional bobbing-for-apples game. But our “sonar” and our freedom from having to breathe raise the fun to a whole different level.
We also play pin-the-tail-on-the-werewolf.
Tattooes and piercings. Only an unmentored vamp would ever seek out either of those things, and I’ve never heard of anyone actually doing it. Exception: years ago one of the people from The Night (our newsletter) tried to get a tattoo (from a trusted breather who was a tattoo artist), just to see what would happen. What happened was, the tattoo ink emerged from her skin within seconds of being injected (is that the right word?). As for piercings, nose rings, and the like, I’ll extrapolate from what happens when we’re shot, and say that our body will quickly expel the foreign object.
We are mostly decorated only by our beauty. Though a good fashion sense naturally helps. (I’m so conceited.)
The Hitchhiker Game. A reader asked about this, which I mention — but never explain — in Chaos and Old Night. The implication is sinister, and I have to admit, that’s an accurate implication. As you might guess, the game has to do with soliciting a ride and then turning the tables in a drastic manner if the driver turns out to be a bad guy.
It’s a nocturnal game, of course. In the U.S., I’m guessing that it could be the origin of the urban legend about the Lady in White.
Anyhow, the game itself is pretty clunky. A little impractical. I.e., the score is usually lower than a typical soccer score.
First, you’ve got to find a suitable road — when I played it, we chose one without a huge amount of traffic where some abductions or attempted abductions had occurred or where murder victims had been found nearby. A road where the cops were warning people not to hitchhike — ideally, a road associated with a serial killer. Depending on where you live in this country (I’ve only ever played the game here in the U.S.), it can be hard to identify such a road. (My friend and I found a couple of them when we lived in New York.)
Typically, you’ll have two players in two cars. One starts off as a lookout, posted on the road several miles behind you, preferably in a rest area or some other place just off the road where she can see cop cars passing without drawing attention to herself. (We have awesome eyesight including night vision that puts owls to shame, if you didn’t know.) The other player parks on the shoulder of the road a few miles ahead, blinkers on, hood up. The lookout stays in touch by cell phone (or CB radio in olden times), warning of cops and generally reporting on traffic.
The active player looks helpless and thumbs for a ride when a prospect looms.
At some point the two players trade places.
Well, you get the picture. I never actually scored, and I soon got bored with the thing. The friend I played with claims to have scored twice — and according to the media, a couple drivers did mysteriously vanish — but I was never sure she didn’t cheat. (I’m hoping she doesn’t read this.)
The High Editorial Sheriffs hereabouts tell me I over-indulge in parentheses. (Not gonna change.)
Anyhow, that’s enough for this time. I encourage you to submit questions and comments. The more questions and comments I get, the more frequently I’ll post something!
Amy
March 26, 2024
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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