On to Better Things
by Joshua Daniel Cochran
Vasily Sautin lives a vampire life as well as one can, being a vampire and all. His latest place of residence is a narrow, unkempt street in Tucson, Arizona—a hot, unkempt city in the American Southwest that serves Vasily’s needs quite well. And at this point in his eight hundred year lifespan, his only needs are a sunny place where most people (or vampire hunters) wouldn’t dare look for him, and a trusty supply of dumb blood to keep him alive. Tucson provides his necessities so amply that Vasily has grown fat and lazy. It will ultimately prove his downfall, but before we get to that perhaps we should investigate this vampire in more classical fashion.
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Vasily Sautin was born in the year 1207 to a rough family of farmers in what is modern-day Azerbaijan. You see? He’s European. Anyway, at age seventeen, his family died one winter night when the temperature dropped forty degrees below zero, and everyone was killed by a vicious vampire attack. For some reason, the young Vasily was spared true death for a temporary one—most likely because he was young and good-looking, as all vampires must be. There is this strange homoeroticism that comes with being a vampire. No one really knows why, but there it is. Anyway, young Vasily thrashed through the night as life left his body and he became a vampire.
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While it is known that the transformation from human to vampire is painful, it usually isn’t as painful as the monthly curse that werewolves were known to endure. Their “Aunt Flo” was a real bitch. (And yes, there are no more werewolves in the world, having gone extinct in 1911.)
No. The transformation from young, handsome man to vampire is very much like suffering from the flu or pneumonia. You get sweaty and don’t feel so good, then thrash about in a delirium, foam a bit at the mouth, lose your bowels and other unnecessary bodily fluids (the gross part), then eventually awaken to a new life with a new, undead body and increased sensory perception.
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Verily, after Vasily came back to consciousness and cleaned himself, he swooned in his newfound senses. The smell of shit! He could distinguish each molecule of odor! The light! His vision able to see beyond things, through things, the very essence of things… and etc. Everything was very cool. Like he was on drugs or hallucinating. And he was. Hallucinating. He was sickened with a parasite, for God’s sake.
Vasily didn’t stay with his master for long, a reckless vampire who would die at the hands of angry gypsies not a month after his encounter with the Sautin family. However, for the first few days of being undead, it was useful for Vasily to have a mentor of sorts who could show him how to survive, what to do. They tromped through the countryside killing gypsies until they had an argument on the dirty condition of their prey. Vasily Sautin wanted nicer-smelling people who bathed. His master didn’t care. They parted ways.
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There are more than a few misconceptions about vampires. First of all, they love garlic. The smell drives them mad with lust. Who started the rumor that vampires are repelled by garlic? Who do you think?
Crosses and crucifixes don’t bother vampires a jot. This is mostly wishful thinking by Catholics. In fact, many vampires are practicing Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc.
While it is true vampires must avoid direct solar radiation, fluorescent lighting is not disturbing in the least, and many vampires enjoy walking around during the day in malls and shopping centers. Many are employed by such places. If a vampire wears the right clothing and hat and glasses and is cautious and diligent, he can go just about anywhere during the day without it being a big deal.
A wooden stake through the heart? Yep. . . a stake through the heart will also kill a normal person, a bear, a fish, etc. It’s a kill-shot for most anything. But a vampire doesn’t have to be killed with a wooden stake. It doesn’t have to be wooden or a stake—you can use a metal pole or a sword or a shard of glass or whathaveyou. Vampires can be chopped, stabbed, shot, hung, or killed in any wonderful manner devised by mankind. The wooden stake thing is probably a throwback to old gypsy tales about vampires. Who else would have these stakes but gypsies? They needed them for their tents and tarpaulins.
Vampires aren’t immortal. They can live a really, really long time, but they’re not immortal beings. That’s a stupid idea and very unrealistic.
Lastly, vampires do not sleep in coffins. They do not live in darkened mansions. Okay, so there might have been one or two with fetishes of some kind who might have once slept in a coffin, another who might have become a count or something, but most are regular, stupid people who happen to be nearly immortal and drink blood to survive.
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Back to Vasily. . .
After living throughout Europe and having many lives (imagine a montage here of Vasily living through the plague, the renaissance, the crusades, the industrial revolution, fighting in various wars, killing various people dressed in period costume, etc., etc., up until modern times and Vasily—a bit paunchy and gray-lipped with too much life—on a plane, dressed in a crumpled pale blue suit, with dark muttonchops along his cheeks, looking out the window at the passing clouds), Vasily ended up in the border city of Tucson, Arizona. A hot place. Very sunny. The light! So much sunshine year-round. The open desert of struggling trees and cacti was the last place one would ever think of looking for a vampire. Or so he thought. . .
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You see, ever since the first vampire walked the earth (a result of wild genetic mutation, basically parasitic in nature, thus the “infection” of others like some kind of disease) there have been the sorts of people who like to hate things, and these mean people hunt and kill vampires because they’re evil. But vampires aren’t evil. Sure, there are evil vampires, just like there are evil people. But there are also vampires who like to garden, who enjoy the companionship of a little poodle or Chihuahua (dogs aren’t necessarily afraid of them either). Actually, most vampires are like most people—tedious, pedestrian, boring as hell, and biding their time on the earth until they die, all with the developed sentience of a gerbil.
So these “vampire hunters” travel the world dressed in all manner of strange clothing—robes and capes and exotic trousers—and usually speak with some sort of accent. The British, such grand hunters and destroyers throughout their wonderful history, are the best and most natural vampire hunters. The worst vampire hunter ever, in case you’d like to know, was a Swede who lived in the 1800s. Never killed a one, and only wounded three. Go figure.
The reason this is being brought up, obviously, is because our dear and beloved Vasily—a nice enough guy but no real charmer—is about to be killed by the world’s leading and most unknowingly famous vampire hunter; Sir Edmund Mandrake.
This guy, this Mandrake guy, is a real sonofabitch. He’s killed vamps (that’s what he calls them—vamps) on every continent, in most every country. He’s very good. He has only one assistant, a young and beautiful brunette woman composed of legs and breasts and hips and lips. And Sir Mandrake can be thanked for having rid the planet of most every vampire. . . by most counts, there might only be two, maybe three left in the entire world. But sir Mandrake thinks otherwise. And he would know, because he’s killed so damn many. He thinks there is only one left, and it took him nearly two years to find him in the dusty, desert city. Vasily is his next target, the last target. The last vampire on the earth.
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There has been much speculation over the years. Why aren’t there more vampires? They seem to be superior to humans in most every way—what with their enhanced senses and sexy, blemish-free skin, the increase in strength and remarkable life expectancy. But again, vampires are human first, disease-ridden creatures second. They don’t get smarter when they become vampires. Think about it. Vampires are usually good looking, and we all know that good looking people are generally dumber than average because beauty is a strong social currency. And how many intelligent people would put themselves in a situation where the slightest possibility of becoming the victim of a vampire is present? Not very many. No. Most vampires are actually kind of dunderheaded. They get childish in their long lives too, like baby boomers. It’s sad really. . . all that potential. At their peak in the late 1700s, there were approximately sixty-eight vampires in the world. Their numbers have been on the decline despite public intervention that started in the 1800s. And even now; there has lately been a rise of ridiculous people and preteens who dress up like vampires or pretend that they’re vampires and other such nonsense. It’s embarrassing and sad.
But once Vasily is dead? Perhaps the only good thing that will come out of a world without vampires is that once Vasily is gone, these idiots are sure to go. Right? And the lame, stupid stories about vampires in young adult novels, or adult novels, or films. . . they’ll all go away. Right?
Let us all pray to whatever god conveniently at hand and wish that it is so. May Vasily’s death bring an end to all things vampire. Let his story be the last.
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So we now find our Vasily safe at home in his Tucson condominium. He prefers this lifestyle, as opposed to owning his own home, because he doesn’t like doing yard work. Vasily has always been a lazy, sedentary vampire, and has grown to enjoy television and the internet and video games and other mindless distractions of this current time. It helps him to forget the boredom of existence. For the last thirty-two years, he has been holed up in this desert town, working a variety of jobs from electrician to yoga instructor to his current position as manager at the Orange Julius in the Tucson Mall.
But today is his day off, this last day on earth. As he sits slumped on his couch, working through a tough level of Call of Duty, little does he know that the great shadow of Sir Edmund Mandrake—dressed in Arab sirwal pants, a green silk shirt and cream-colored linen jacket with his lovely and voluptuous assistant at his side—this shadow is about to fall across Vasily’s humdrum existence.
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The world is a record of death. Things come and go, like the dinosaurs or Rush Limbaugh. And vampires too must pass, like us all and everything. They had a good run—stomped firmly on the terra and affected our literatures and imaginations—but their time has come.
In a world without vampires, humanity will have to turn our tired gaze back to reality, to the metaphorical, but much more prolific, bloodsuckers amongst us. While this might be tedious to some, if we concentrate on the real villains instead of preoccupying ourselves with delusions of grandeur—an idolized image of the vampire, such a poor and pathetic creature after all—we might actually come to make a difference in the world, make it a better place for all, etc.
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Okay, let’s get this over with, shall we?
There is Vasily in his condo, overweight and ponderous. Long gone are the muttenchops—he now sports a sharp goatee and keeps the hair spiked upon his head with product. He smells like some kind of horrid body spray. His neck bloats above his collar, spilling over it in excess and bloodfat. The blinds are drawn in his livingroom—sparsely furnished with only a brown couch and an entertainment center—and he sits in the dark playing his video game. The particular level he’s on is quite difficult. He’s been playing for twelve hours and he’s stumped with the current mission, having to start over again and again.
But he’s used to that. Starting over. How many times had he run from one life to another? Assuming a different identity in a different place, one after another for some eight hundred years?
Vasily’s character dies again. He lets the controller sag in his hand and sighs.
Outside his condo’s front door, Sir Mandrake steadies himself and gives his assistant a grim expression. It’s incredibly hot today, and the air shimmers with heat. He wipes the sweat from his brow, clenches his jaw, says a silent prayer, and kicks in the door with all the strength and conviction of a enraged mammoth back from extinction and out for revenge.
Vasily is shocked and turns at the noise. His mouth drops open upon seeing the enormous Mandrake in his exotic clothing with the light of afternoon blaring in behind him, the sexy assistant at his side. He notices a wild gleam in the maniacal British eyes, a wooden stake held high in the position of thrust and stabbing.
(I failed to mention that Sir Mandrake is old school.)
Anyway, before Vasily even has the chance to speak, Mandrake comes up to the bloated vamp, stands over him and utters a nonsensical phrase that sounds like Latin, and thrusts the stake into Vasily’s fattened ribcage with great force.
Vasily cries out. Something like, “Oh! I am slain!”
Sir Mandrake pounds the remaining wooden stake into the now-dead vamp and wipes off the gore of spurted blood from his hands and face. He smiles a mouthful of crooked and yellowed teeth at the sexy assistant, who herself has a few sexy droplets of blood on her face, an arc of dripping red across her thigh.
“Right, then,” he says.
Vasily’s dead and bloated face, the face of an ordinary and dumb human, stares up at the vampire hunter and he shivers in the presence of what he perceives to be evil but is really only death. He looks again at his assistant, the blood on her thigh, the last vampire blood in the entire world. The end of his meaning. The end of the great Sir Edmund Mandrake.
But better yet, this is the end of all stupid vampire stories. There can never be another, unless it is just fantasy and balderdash, chum to the dumb.
Anyway, Sir Mandrake feels a wash of regret and relief pass through him and then finds his voice, finds his reason. He brings his gaze up to the gray eyes of his assistant, but only after passing over her other curves.
“Cup of tea, dear?”
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