The odd thing is that Dracula called me.
In the midst of a heavy strap-tightening struggle to more gainfully secure a frantic new specimen, and just as it was dawning on me that I was doing yet another of Igor’s assigned tasks, who should appear at my shoulder but Igor himself to tell me that Dracula was on line two. After assuring that Igor had a firm two handed grasp on the torso brace and also assisting an intern with unclogging an intestine bevel then directing the intern to help Igor, I took the call in the lunchroom.
Speaking with Dracula on the phone causes me to wonder: if Bram Stoker were alive today, and eavesdropping on our conversation, how many additional chapters might he suddenly feel compelled to write to reflect some drastic change in tone from those preceding parts of the Count's 'biography' concerning our present day contretemps with Detective Helsing, our common current nemesis. If not an implausible bloodline descendant of the Stoker book’s genteel Van Helsing than an accursed usurper of identity in some vile practice of self aggrandizement (for what strange purposed means to what non-incredulous law enforcement agency) is best left to the weighted scrutiny of perhaps not a biographer but an introspective composer of Victorian era science fiction? I then listen with suddenly sparked incredulity as the Count waxes in my ear his bemoanments of how long it might take me to scare Helsing back to Transylvania. He wants Helsing back?
The question hangs my sudden pause as I consider what reply other than a catalog of my efforts to that very end I have tried and succumbed failure to towards the result it seems now the both of us would prefer? He wants him back? I would offer to link the recorded video feed file of Helsing kept at bay atop the radiator in his room at the inn while a dozen of my rat size attack dachshunds with blazing eyes and lethal looking claws rend long swift menacing strokes in the inn's hardwood floor, but Dracula never took to computers and only recently deigned that the gatehouse of his castle could be electrified and a landline phone installed. Which is where I imagine he is placing this call to me from. I describe the scene with the dachsunds as far as I can without succumbing to the paroxysm of laughter I fell victim to upon my view of the original live feed, and I can hear the Count giggle at the description of the innkeeper’s wife, Frau Gruella Deichenstein, sweeping in (literally) and in two short deft broom swoops dispatching all eight of the miniaturized attack dachshunds. I clarify to the Count that the Frau is as vision-impaired as Igor and likely she surmised Helsing was cornered atop the radiator by mere rats. She acted so remarkably swiftly that the dachshunds could not have responded to her presence fast enough for her to realize that she may have risked considerable peril attempting to confront creatures that were of my handiwork. The villagers, with some long familiarity of the latter, generally regard my creatures as belonging to a ‘kill first, sup on remains progressively” pedigree so that a terror inspired protocol of precautionary fleeing is the deeply ingrained common response among the village populace when confronted with many (but not all) of my creations.
However - Dracula has phoned me, it seems, to inquire what my course of action might be to urge Helsing back to Transylvania. He wants Helsing back; this is contrary to what I would have expected to hear from him when it had been my very intent to drive Helsing there, guessing that Dracula had been glad to be rid if him and probably hadn’t given a second thought to where he might’ve gone, nor would likely be happy to see him return. Somehow he found out Helsing was here, in our village, which means that Dracula searched for where Helsing had gone?
Standing in the lunchroom I muse that Dracula, like me, is also an immortal being, and has been so for about 300 years longer than I have. As I pause waiting for him to say something I wonder - has the weight of this burden finally affected the Count into some profound realization of affection for Helsing, a perennial nemesis whose pursuit, like those of his ancestors, maybe now the Count sees as the only human constant in his life, a living counterpoint to the loneliness of his long immortality? Living forever, you watch any non-immortals you come into contact with eventually age and die, their bloom of life before you fades, then the long slow decay and eventual collapse to corporal dust. Dracula has seen or caused this to happen to Helsing’s ancestors, has it affected him finally that he chooses to instead embrace Helsing in some manner of profound irony, as if to punctuate by rough counterpoint the pitfalls of immortality? Or is he hinting to me in his roundabout fashion that I should imbue Helsing with my chimera protein so as to inflict upon Helsing the cruel first hand perspective of what unshiftable weight actually accompanies the attainment of mankind's ultimate mantle? He could just turn Helsing into a vampire himself, but likely against Helsing’s will. Or…does Helsing have no offspring to further the honorable centuries-long family heritage battle with the fearsome Count Dracula?
As if reading my mind, Dracula offhandedly remarks that one of his brides had been for some fifteen years waiting in a strange state of purposefully postponed undead-sexual frustration to ‘allay her needs’ upon the person of Helsing. But then Helsing left just two nights prior to her lustful fulfillment of inflicting her intentions upon her intended. With a balloon burst "poof" my modeled scenarios of the possible unseen intentions of Dracula disappear with realization that his bride (one of three, I believe) must’ve been subjecting herself to some serious tease issues. For fifteen years. Ah.. so at this moment Dracula now also has to deal with another sort of weight that...
He interrupts my slow realization asking me what I think I will try next.
In the midst of a heavy strap-tightening struggle to more gainfully secure a frantic new specimen, and just as it was dawning on me that I was doing yet another of Igor’s assigned tasks, who should appear at my shoulder but Igor himself to tell me that Dracula was on line two. After assuring that Igor had a firm two handed grasp on the torso brace and also assisting an intern with unclogging an intestine bevel then directing the intern to help Igor, I took the call in the lunchroom.
Speaking with Dracula on the phone causes me to wonder: if Bram Stoker were alive today, and eavesdropping on our conversation, how many additional chapters might he suddenly feel compelled to write to reflect some drastic change in tone from those preceding parts of the Count's 'biography' concerning our present day contretemps with Detective Helsing, our common current nemesis. If not an implausible bloodline descendant of the Stoker book’s genteel Van Helsing than an accursed usurper of identity in some vile practice of self aggrandizement (for what strange purposed means to what non-incredulous law enforcement agency) is best left to the weighted scrutiny of perhaps not a biographer but an introspective composer of Victorian era science fiction? I then listen with suddenly sparked incredulity as the Count waxes in my ear his bemoanments of how long it might take me to scare Helsing back to Transylvania. He wants Helsing back?
The question hangs my sudden pause as I consider what reply other than a catalog of my efforts to that very end I have tried and succumbed failure to towards the result it seems now the both of us would prefer? He wants him back? I would offer to link the recorded video feed file of Helsing kept at bay atop the radiator in his room at the inn while a dozen of my rat size attack dachshunds with blazing eyes and lethal looking claws rend long swift menacing strokes in the inn's hardwood floor, but Dracula never took to computers and only recently deigned that the gatehouse of his castle could be electrified and a landline phone installed. Which is where I imagine he is placing this call to me from. I describe the scene with the dachsunds as far as I can without succumbing to the paroxysm of laughter I fell victim to upon my view of the original live feed, and I can hear the Count giggle at the description of the innkeeper’s wife, Frau Gruella Deichenstein, sweeping in (literally) and in two short deft broom swoops dispatching all eight of the miniaturized attack dachshunds. I clarify to the Count that the Frau is as vision-impaired as Igor and likely she surmised Helsing was cornered atop the radiator by mere rats. She acted so remarkably swiftly that the dachshunds could not have responded to her presence fast enough for her to realize that she may have risked considerable peril attempting to confront creatures that were of my handiwork. The villagers, with some long familiarity of the latter, generally regard my creatures as belonging to a ‘kill first, sup on remains progressively” pedigree so that a terror inspired protocol of precautionary fleeing is the deeply ingrained common response among the village populace when confronted with many (but not all) of my creations.
However - Dracula has phoned me, it seems, to inquire what my course of action might be to urge Helsing back to Transylvania. He wants Helsing back; this is contrary to what I would have expected to hear from him when it had been my very intent to drive Helsing there, guessing that Dracula had been glad to be rid if him and probably hadn’t given a second thought to where he might’ve gone, nor would likely be happy to see him return. Somehow he found out Helsing was here, in our village, which means that Dracula searched for where Helsing had gone?
Standing in the lunchroom I muse that Dracula, like me, is also an immortal being, and has been so for about 300 years longer than I have. As I pause waiting for him to say something I wonder - has the weight of this burden finally affected the Count into some profound realization of affection for Helsing, a perennial nemesis whose pursuit, like those of his ancestors, maybe now the Count sees as the only human constant in his life, a living counterpoint to the loneliness of his long immortality? Living forever, you watch any non-immortals you come into contact with eventually age and die, their bloom of life before you fades, then the long slow decay and eventual collapse to corporal dust. Dracula has seen or caused this to happen to Helsing’s ancestors, has it affected him finally that he chooses to instead embrace Helsing in some manner of profound irony, as if to punctuate by rough counterpoint the pitfalls of immortality? Or is he hinting to me in his roundabout fashion that I should imbue Helsing with my chimera protein so as to inflict upon Helsing the cruel first hand perspective of what unshiftable weight actually accompanies the attainment of mankind's ultimate mantle? He could just turn Helsing into a vampire himself, but likely against Helsing’s will. Or…does Helsing have no offspring to further the honorable centuries-long family heritage battle with the fearsome Count Dracula?
As if reading my mind, Dracula offhandedly remarks that one of his brides had been for some fifteen years waiting in a strange state of purposefully postponed undead-sexual frustration to ‘allay her needs’ upon the person of Helsing. But then Helsing left just two nights prior to her lustful fulfillment of inflicting her intentions upon her intended. With a balloon burst "poof" my modeled scenarios of the possible unseen intentions of Dracula disappear with realization that his bride (one of three, I believe) must’ve been subjecting herself to some serious tease issues. For fifteen years. Ah.. so at this moment Dracula now also has to deal with another sort of weight that...
He interrupts my slow realization asking me what I think I will try next.
