'Vampire Envy'
by
Julia Bohanna

I

n the last couple of wearisome centuries, I have become extremely tired of my brother's various affectations. For a start, ages ago he changed his name by deed poll to Drackula when some fat, short-sighted fool remarked on his resemblance to the most famous vampire of them all. It had to be with a 'K' you understand; you don't mess with a brand name like Dracula unless you're a vamp who wants to be turned to dust by the Elvis of the underworld. So then, geared up with his pretentious moniker, he then wasted many a good hunting night sitting sewing red silk linings into a selection of our mother's black capes. If that sounds bad, you should have seen the state of him when he insisted upon dying his straggly hair with an ill-advised concoction of blackberry juice, bat's blood and alcohol. Then there's the pretentious coffin behaviour. It's a well kept secret that we vampires favour a little more comfort in our boxes, such as pillows, cushions or even a sneaky duck down duvet. After all, there is nothing better to induce a foul mood than rising from a lengthy daylight sleep with aching vertebrae. Still, he's a fashion victim of masochistic proportions, my brother. You open the lid and there he is on stark bare wood, with his arms folded across his chest like some joke corpse. Now, I just have to look at that cadaverous face and carved cheekbones that could cut through a dog's eyeballs, to realise that he is in fact becoming a caricature of himself.

Of course, I am forgetting my manners in this garrulous diatribe against my sibling. I have yet to introduce myself: I am the tragically neglected younger brother of this parody of the infamous bloody dark lord. Bernie's the name and I have yet to change it. Yes I know, Bernie lacks the deliciously clicking Eastern European syllables that tickle the tongue so dramatically when you say ' Drackula' correctly and is evidence too of our mother's appalling taste. My brother's name is Darren Joe; let's not fact that little gem. We surviving family members and a series of servants live in stereotypically gothic splendour in a skeleton of a castle in Transylvania that we picked up for a song. Secretly, I have always hated it. When my mother was alive, she was tight with the heating and minimalist about furniture. As darkness fell we sat at the only table, which was so long that you barely make yourself heard from top to tail without use of a megaphone. The sounds that bounced from those dingy, spider-encrusted walls were mostly some mismatched glasses replaced on that mahogany monstrosity or metal laid gratefully down on plates after another vomit-inducing meal produced by our scabby successions of chefs. We drained all the chefs eventually, which proved to be far more satisfying. Still, mealtimes were dullsville central without laughter or smiles; the only time we showed our teeth is when the moon swung into view and they elongated for the necessary feeding ahead.

'Off you go then,' my mother would say wearily, giving a yawn because it was time for her bed. 'My two boys'. She would kiss our foreheads indulgently and immediately Drackula would stalk upstairs to find a mirror. He had become addicted to applying more kohl to those chilled blue eyes than a geisha who has just spotted a coach load of tourists. I don't care enough to even brush my hair most days. I don't have his looks or his dubious charm; who is going to notice the smaller, squeakier version?

In those long, languid centuries during my mother's lifetime, we knew our fair share of complete boredom. When the twentieth century dawned, we could at least spend slow stretches delinquently hanging around those nice modern hospitals on blood donor evenings. All those boil in the bag treats hanging up in rooms were just asking to be hijacked. We brought our own straws in a parody of a riverside picnic and sat down by the water, swinging our bare legs into the water and snacking greedily on the viscous crimson liquid that gave us life. Sometimes Drackula brought a little stove and we warmed up the blood a little, to assist the glide from throat to gut. Occasionally a doctor would stroll into the hospital room where we were loading bags into a rucksack. Drackula was usually the lucky devil to get to sink his teeth into an excitedly throbbing vein. Fear is the best flavour. If it was a pretty female doctor, he finished alone. Sometimes he'd throw me a big hairy male one before he'd finished. Big deal.

My brother has always been a magnetic death trap to women. He feeds regularly on the comeliest, juiciest maidens in town whilst I content myself with the stringy less than virginal rejects. He makes strong and silent an art form. I at least take them out for a meal, talk about their lives and then offer them a cigarette to celebrate their honoured moment of erotic mutilation and ultimate death. To be honest, since becoming I have missed having sex the old-fashioned way. Vampires don't get erections and if anyone tells you different they are an either a liar or they have been trawling the pants of an impostor. True, we do get excited by the scent of blood and the intercourse, if you like, of the actual feed. Limp lymph-lovers, that's us.

If I sound bitter, I must apologise. Can you imagine what it is like to live for several centuries in the shadow of your older, more successful brother? The minor celebrity status of a Dracula look alike went to his head, especially as he could silence a room and even make other vampires, who are usually pretty combatitive, bow and hiss with deference when he came into the room. If only they could have seen the real Drackula, the one painting his toenails 'Luscious Ebony' at midnight, or vigorously picking his nose with a deliberately lengthy nail. I don't mean a shy, desultory and absent-minded dig; I mean a positive excavation up to the second knuckle, producing bogeys as big as frogspawn. Oh and sharing a cold crypt with him is as dull and irritating as death itself. He has swished his cape dramatically so many times that he's blown all the dust out of the place. He also obsessively cleans his teeth and regularly holds mirrors at the back of his head to check for hair loss. When the new whitening toothpastes recently came on the market, we ram raided a pharmacy and stole their entire stock. It's not exactly a macho hoard.

'Blood does stain, if you let it,' he loves to grumble, throwing another toothbrush over his shoulder for some poor minion to pick up. The man even sleeps with his face plastered in the newest anti-ageing face cream. If anyone ever finds him, they will think it's a ghost, not a vampire. It's lucky that the Master Dracula has always worn his hair straight and never gone for a new look; otherwise I suspect my Drackula might resort to curlers. The man is a pain in the neck, if you pardon the pun. All these years, I have had no one to tell. My victims didn't want to hear gripes and complaints; they can barely conceal their disappointment that I am the one about to kill them. I have to face facts: I am undistinguishable from any bog-standard working vampire. Look at my brother's eyelashes. No one deserves the length, that impossible kink and deep glossy colour. Mascara helps of course but he's invested in a waterproof one since than embarrassing incident in a rainy graveyard, where a victim laughed so hard at the panda pawing at her neck that Drackula fled without a feed.

Talking of ending lives, our mother's was really quite neat. She never wanted to become one of us, although she obviously knew and accepted what we were. She pleaded for us, after a slow, cold and arthritis-inducing winter in the castle, to send her to the grave. I was indignant that she only wanted Drackula to feed upon her. Good old Bernie had to hold her hand and I wasn't even allowed a little nibble of her wrist, just to satisfy the pangs. It was his eyes she looked into when she passed away. It was me who had the arduous task of taking her body to the cemetery and burying her. Drac claimed that he needed a draughty tower in which to meditate. I know for a fact that he wanted a cigarette and a read of the latest Style magazine that he's filched from some poor girl's handbag.

So here I am, in a spidery house treated little better than a servant. Visiting vampires virtually hang their capes on me, expect me the pass them tissues to wipe sodden lips after a massacre. They hang on my brother's every word like bats in a cave. I am doomed to spend the rest of my life literally in the shadows. Well, here's the news…I am determined to live my own life and have my own adventures…

Yesterday, I murdered a dentist. Perhaps cruelly though, I made him think that he might live, as he trembled at my feet. It was a small price to pay, to gold plate my teeth. Of course, I upheld the vampire protocol: threatened his family blah blah. I only wanted the front two plated, to give me that unique gangster rapper image that would give me distinction.

Today though it's Sunday and I have made up my mind to leave. My brother is watching Big Brother, trying to decide which of the loathsome inmates has the most inviting neck. It's been a slow day, with boredom as our main companion. Television has been every vampire's worst enemy, keeping the population on comfortable sofas when they should be out drifting through misty moorlands, screaming out into the ether. It's rare to find a drifting screamer these days; the environmentalists are unpolluting that gloriously smoggy smokescreen that conveniently clouded so many of our victims. Now a vampire has to work hard for his daily blood, although you'd be hard pressed to believe it if you judged by my brother's example. Women fall to him like ripe apples from a rotten tree. Perhaps if they saw him in a facemask and a pair of Kermit the Frog slippers, they might look elsewhere. Still, behind the privacy of our castle, he nibbles on a desiccated rat and lolls decadently in a loose-fitting pair of red silk pyjamas. Why is it that beautiful people can look attractive even with a shrivelled rodent pressed to their lips?

Tonight though is the night. While Drac is watching a group of people play cards for three hours, I have packed two suitcases and a treasured picture of our dear late mother. I'm loathe to think that the lipstick smudges emblazoned on her likeness are my brother's but know too well his particular brand of Cherry Cheer All Day Gloss. I will only be too glad when I have fled this castle, metaphorical tail between my legs. This is the time when Bernie the Undistinguished becomes Bernie the Slayer, Bernie the Stud or at least, Bernie the Stand Alone. I will tell no-one of my celebrity connections, depend on no favours and leave behind the pity in people's eyes when they look at me and imagine my tall, gothic sibling standing in my place, making all in his shadow shudder.

I do feel a little guilty that I have taken his luggage. Still, if you had the choice between battered, greasy and past its' prime, compared to silk-lined and Victorian antique leather, with a glorious patina and the store's credentials pronounced in scrolled gilded writing on the front, I am sure the guilt might fade as fast as the gilt would shine. What does a Vampire pack for an escape? Clothes can be stolen from victims and their dwellings, money likewise. I pack some of my own clothes for comfort and for added spite, rifle through Drackula's for good measure. Amidst the rustle of impeccably ironed black silk and theatrical splendour, there's' a red crimson shirt that appeals, one that will be perfect camouflage for spills and stains, if you know what I mean. One black shirt I consider but then decide that the ruffles would make me look like a 1970's nightclub owner. I remember the 70s and believe me, it is not a decade of which I took pleasant memories. Drackula was mighty popular back then, probably due to his very uncanny resemblance to John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. The fact that vampires rarely dance did not detract from the knock-on effect. He posed, they swooned and then he fed, throwing aside the less than perfect specimens for his absurdly grateful brother.

The television has been turned to nearly full capacity, for my half deaf sibling who has played too much Eminem on his stolen mini CD disc player. His hearing is almost shot but even that seems to enhance his mystique. He now ignores even more people than he did before, increasing his reputation for being cool. Drackula is the main man, the dude. Is it any wonder why I want to stand on my own two feet?

Still, he doesn't hear the flatulent stairs and the Hammer House of Horror sound effect door. Then I'm across the moat with the merest plop of a few snapping crocodiles. I'm sure that those roguish reptiles would have mustered more of a fearsome display for him indoors. I get the distinct feeling that those hard-nosed scavengers think: 'Oh it's only Bernie. Why bother?' Even the bats flutter apathetically above my head, snapping at flies before they head off for an upside-down kip. I look back once to see the safe light that's soft within the castle, warm and buttery in the moonlight. What's to stop me turning back and unloading now, making cup of Earl Grey and sitting cosily with my brother, forgetting about wanting to achieve independence? I sniff but draw the line at yanking out an embroidered handkerchief that I know to be in the pocket of the jacket I'm wearing. How absurd it is to be seeking independence whilst still wearing some of my brother's clothes? I vow to rid myself of this amateur dramatic wardrobe at first kill.

I have been walking for a couple of hours when a car pulls up against the dusty road and a squeaky window winds down. It's a woman, blond by moonlight and not entirely unattractive. Perhaps I should be flattered but I know that it is my harmless personae that gives her the nerve to approach a complete stranger. I do not stride: I stumble. I've actually lost my contact lens and the clumsy glasses I usually wear would give me the look of an academic. Whoever heard of a bookish vampire?

'What happened to you?' she says cheerfully enough, looking at my suitcase and my tired face.

'Had an argument with my mate, ' I say, trying to mirror the good humour. 'He chucked me out'.

She laughs and it's throaty, a serious aphrodisiac for a hungry vampire. I imagine a sweet, milky neck with those throbbing veins that smell of salt and life, ripe for incisors. I feel a tremble in my nether regions and before I know it, I am climbing into the passenger seat. She has a little yapping dog in the rear, a minor inconvenience. My biggest problem is going to be how to feed without having a dog sink its teeth into its mistress' murderer. I also curse my luck that driving instructors have always refused to come out at night. If I kill her, I will have to drive the vehicle and I have only ever studied the theory. Have you ever been tested on The Highway Code by someone like Drackula? He grows bored and distracted on the second page. He cannot understand the effort of turning a wheel or stabbing at a brake. There are vampires that will drive him to the ends of the earth or even women that he likes seeing in perky little chauffeur's caps for a few miles before he pulls over to feast.

She is mighty fruity, this lady. She swears a great deal and laughs more, tipping up her chin to reveal a very, very long neck. Size matters. Don't let any vampire tell you otherwise.

I do kill her, after distracting her about an imaginary noise I hear chuddering in the engine. She stops to frown and peer under the bonnet and then I pounce. She is stronger that I am used to but if I had waited to see her swoon from the power of my charisma, she would be seventy years older and toothless. It's at that vulnerable moment, when I have her slumped over the cooling car and my teeth unsheathed for the strike, that I hear the trill of The Magic Roundabout. It is our mobile phone, used only for emergency, stashed in the inner pocket of my suitcase. I regret two things instantly: bringing the damn thing and letting Drackula choose the ring tone.

A still warm and devilishly inviting woman lies before me but yet I am trapped by the guilt that it might be Drackula in need. What if hunters have broken into the castle and have him pinned in to the bell tower, quivering with fright and the fear of the stake gliding through his heart, turning him to dust?. Or perhaps there had been a fire and the electrical cabling had shorted and he is even now, burning to a crisp.

I take a deep breath and answer. It is Drackula and he's yawning. I can hear the television on in background. Have I gone out for takeaway? When will I be home? He does sounds a little whiney, a little needy. Perhaps tonight was not the best night to leave him on his own. Maybe a little preparation might be in order. He needs me now.

I haul the bulky blond takeaway home, satisfied that for tonight, I am Bernie the Provider and that there'll be another night where I can triumph in my own right. You just watch.



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(c) Julia Bohanna, All Rights Reserved
 

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