Note: what follows is a badly told version of that classic vampire tale by Bram Stoker. Anyone who is squeamish about such stories might want to skip the writing and head down to the comments. -FG
I sat in the living room on a couch I normally avoid. It’s Freddie’s sleeping couch and one we usually keep covered with sheets because...well, because it’s Freddie’s sleeping couch. He sheds a lot for a short-hair. But it was a windy, warm evening and I felt like hanging out somewhere new. So I moved the sheets from one side of the couch and settled there, book in my hand, cold drink on a coaster in front of me.
Freddie jumped up next to me and sat, staring.
“What?” I asked, opening the novel.
“This is my spot,” he said.
I shook my head. “You like to sleep here, but it doesn’t belong to you.”
“But I sleep here,” he said. “In the afternoons I sleep here.”
“Uh-huh,” I said absently.
“So it’s mine.”
I looked up at him. “It’s a big couch and you are too little to take up the whole thing. Just share for once.”
He looked around. “But this is my spot.”
I sighed. “Just sleep here and ignore me.”
He looked around again. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “I guess I can do that.” He didn’t move.
I looked back at my book.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“It’s a book.”
“Why are you looking at it?” he asked.
“Because I’m reading it.” I looked over at him. “At least, I’m trying to.”
“Tell me about it,” he demanded.
I rubbed my temple. “I thought you were going to sleep,” I said.
“You’re on my napping couch,” he pointed out. “The least you can do is entertain me while you’re here.”
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"You aren’t going to leave me alone, are you?” I asked.
“No. It’s my couch.”
I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Ok,” I said. “It’s a book that I re-read every now and then, usually in October.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s good and appropriate for the time of year.” The wind howled outside as if in agreement.
“Tell me.”
“Um, well, let’s see. It starts with a man named Jonathan who is sent by his employer to a far away place to get the business of a Count who lives there. This man is looking to buy some real estate in London.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. So that the story can take place there, I guess?”
“Ok. Go on.”
“So when he gets there, this man is very nice at first, but soon Jonathan begins to suspect that there is something strange about him. There are no mirrors in the castle where he lives and the villagers are very frightened of him.”
“Is he a duck?” Freddie asked, his ears flattening.
I looked over at him sharply. “No, don’t worry — there’s no ducks in this story.”
“Good,” he said, quietly.
“So Jonathan helps the Count with his business, but soon discovers that he is a prisoner there. The Count will not allow him to leave. So he plots his escape and misses his fiancée, Mina.
“Meanwhile, as the Count makes his way to London on a ship making it the worst voyage those sailors every had, Mina is spending time with her friend Lucy. Lucy is a very beautiful woman and she has three suitors — “
“What’s suitors?”
“Um, men who want to marry her. Anyway one of her suitors is a doctor...”
“...and one is a cowboy...”
“...and one is a Lord...”
“...and Lucy decides to marry the Lord. But just as she’s planning her wedding she starts to get sick. So the doctor brings in a colleague to help...”
“And this colleague, Van Helsing, determines that she is anemic and quickly has the three men give her some blood — “
“Why blood?”
“Because she doesn’t have enough.”
He thought about it. “This is a weird story,” he said.
“It’s a classic!” I said. “Anyhoo, Lucy keeps getting sick every night. So Van Helsing strings up garlic all over the place, but in the morning it’s removed and she’s sick again. They keep giving her blood, trying to keep her alive but eventually she dies.”
Freddie crouched down. “I don’t like this story,” he said.
I reached over to pet him. “Do you want me to stop?” I asked.
“No!”
“OK. So,” I flipped through the book aimlessly trying to remember how it went. I knew I was missing some stuff. “Oh!” I said, remembering. “Then there’s Renfield!”
“Is he a duck?” Freddie squeaked.
‘No, there’s no ducks. He’s an inmate at the asylum and he likes to feed small creatures to bigger creatures and then eventually eat them himself.”
“What kind of creatures?”
“Flies and spiders — “
“I eat flies and spiders,” he pointed out.
I ignored that. “Because he’s kind of sensitive to it, he senses the arrival of the Count and it makes him even more agitated. He wants to serve the Count, but he’s stuck in the asylum.”
I leaned forward to take a quick drink. “So where was I? Oh! Lucy! Next there’s a bunch of newspaper clippings about children going missing or being attacked. So Van Helsing, the Suitors, and Mina figure out that she’s been...changed.”
He just stared at me.
“She’s a vampire now,” I said, spelling it out for him.
“What’s a vampire?”
“It’s — “
“...but with blood.”
He frowned. “What’s wrong with drinking blood?” he asked.
“What?” I said, giving an uncomfortable laugh.
“If you didn’t feed me from those cans, I’d have to catch my own food.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“And there would be some blood,” he pointed out, slowly and carefully as if I were a child.
“Oh! This is different.”
“How…?”
“It. It just is! Do you want me to go on?”
“Sure.”
I had to think for a moment. It had actually been a long time since I’d read the book and I wasn’t sure if I was getting it mixed up with the movie. Did they meet Dracula before he got all bitey on Mina? I couldn’t remember. I was quickly losing the thread of the story. “Well, at some point Jonathan escaped the castle and made his way back to civilization. The people he ended up with contacted Mina and she came and got him.” I thought for a second. Was that just the movie? “I think. Either way, he ended up back in London and was there when the Count bit Mina.”
“He bit her?!” he shouted.
“Yes, but she was kind of ok — she got some of his blood and started to change into a vampire, but she had a bunch of people who cared about her to help her kill the vampire so she didn’t have to be like Lucy.”
“They decided to take the fight to the Count to save Mina. So they boarded a train and made there way back to the castle. Dracula was like — “
“So they did.” I could tell Freddie was nervous so I decided to bring the story to a quick close “And then they lived happily ever after.” I thought about it. “Well, most of them did.”
“That’s it?” he asked.
“I left some stuff out and forgot about some stuff, but basically. There’s lots of vampire stories that came later, but this was the original.” Was that right? No, not really, I decided. “Well, the original novel, anyway. Vampire stories existed before Bram Stoker mistranslated an old Romanian word and turned it into a story.”
“So the Count was a vampire?”
“He was, like, the King Vampire,” I said. “He could turn into a bat!”
“Bats are pretty cute, though,” I said. “So I’m not sure that’s a great choice for a fearsome creature of the night. Have you ever seen one eat a grape?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You show me that a lot.”
“Well, they are cute.”
“He should turn into a duck,” Freddie said, darkly.
“Oh yeah?” I asked, laughing. “Humans aren’t very scared of ducks,” I explained.
“They should be,” he said.
“Poor Freddie,” I said, rubbing between his ears. “This wasn’t too scary, was it?”
“No,” he said between purrs, clearly enjoying my attention. “There weren’t any ducks.”
Happy Caturday, Peeps! I wanted to keep the Halloween spirit going this week, so I did something a little different. I hope you enjoyed that. If it was too much, I’m sorry. The memes are funny, though, right? *nervous laugh*