A Vampire’s Treatise on Vampirism
A Vampire’s Treatise on Vampirism is a short story following the musings of a vampire inspired by books and media. He wonders if it is possible to survive ethically as a vampire. Could his hunting actually make the world better in the long term? You can learn more about A Vampire’s Treatise on Vampirism on Stories Across Borders.
It was night. It was always night when I was out and about. Granted, you could scarcely tell it was such from the brightness of the city lights. This particular segment of the urban sprawl I called home at the time was full of bright neon accompanied by a chorus of endless traffic nearby, booming music and drunken shouts of both merriment and outrage. This was where the so-called nightlife could be found. Such things only seemed to get more obnoxious as the decades wore on. I would blame my distaste on aging, but I had not done such a thing in a long time. For all intents and purposes, I have been in my mid-thirties for one hundred and forty-nine years at the time of writing this journal.
That, much like my tendency to only be out at night, is one of the trademark symptoms of vampirism. It is one of the few things humanity has correct about my kind. We do not age. We also burn in direct sunlight. Not immediately. We can withstand it for a while - how long depends on the vampire in question. Eventually it does lead to a painful and gruesome death. I decided long ago that I would avoid the daylight hours to the greatest extent of my ability. Running water, holy water, garlic, signs forbidding entry, wooden stakes and crosses however are all myths. Stories perpetuated by charlatans, con-artists, corrupt religious authority figures and people desperate to believe they are safe. Frankly, I am unsure as to why anyone ever believed holy water or crosses would work. Why would a Mayan or ancient Greek vampire fear the Christian god?
Of course, one thing that humankind can all agree on is that vampires are dangerous, bloodthirsty predators. We are stronger, faster and very hard to kill. We are possessed of a frenzied and fiendish, insatiable hunger for blood. They have that correct too.
That was why I was there on that rooftop, overlooking the grimy nightclub across the street from me. It was a building full of people with diminished senses, who would walk down back streets and alleyways in the darkness making themselves easy pickings. Places like that are ideal for all kinds of predators, vampires most deadly among them.
My hunger was ravenous. My body ached in an indescribably deep and painful way. Every part of my essence was screaming at me to feed. Par for the course for a vampire who has not drank human blood for a time. It is a suffering unlike anything someone who has not endured it could comprehend. That hunger drives away our sanity like a dog driving sheep. It is a struggle to remain cognizant and not to devolve into mindless beasts.
Many of us try to resist at first. In fact, I would wager that most of us resist our hunger for as long as we can at first. Becoming a vampire does not immediately alter our morals or our natural repulsion at the thought of ending a human life. I starved myself for over a month until the agony became too unbearable. I tried living in the wilderness and surviving on the blood of animals for longer. I found that took the edge off, but it was ultimately not what a vampire needs. In the end my hunger won. The pain was too unbearable. The screaming in my head was impossible to ignore. I went to the nearest town, walked into a small store and tore apart the handful of people within. I drained them dry. They were people with friends, families and histories and I ended them and stole their futures just to make my own misery stop. It sounds selfish and evil but the relief was so immediate and so great that I could not even bring myself to feel guilty about it. Ethics cease to be of importance very quickly when your drive to feed is that strong and the consequences for ignoring it so severe. Starve a man long enough and he will eventually eat his neighbour. It was not long until I scarcely thought about my victims at all. I took no joy in what I did, but it was simply how I had to live now. It was just the way of the world.
The strange thing is that while vampires do not age, we do learn. We do change. Even if our bodies remain eternally the same as when we were turned, our minds can grow. We also have a lot of free time being immortal beings who do not sleep and cannot leave the safety of our homes in the daylight. We watch many films, listen to a vast amount of music, take up many hobbies and read a great number of books. We do a lot of thinking. Sometimes the media we consume influences that thinking. Sometimes that thinking leads to change.
There are a lot of human stories exploring the idea of vampirism. Especially since we have long since faded into the realms of fiction in the collective human consciousness. I find these stories intriguing. Often they are quite comical. A lot of the time they make me deeply uncomfortable (there are some things I think I will just never understand). However, fairly often, writers come fairly close to an accurate representation of the vampiric existence.
A frequent idea that comes up quite often is the idea of being an ethical vampire. A contact at a blood bank is a frequent trope. However, making such a contact is pretty much an impossibility and even if it was, I think people seem to forget what that blood is being stored for. If we take blood from a blood bank, we are depriving someone in a hospital in need of a transfusion of that blood. In theory, we are still responsible for human death in this scenario.
Surviving only off of wild animals also comes up somewhat often. As I mentioned, this is actually technically possible. But it only sustains us and takes the edge off of our hunger a little. It isn’t feasible in the long term and we will eventually cave and leave behind a scene like I did in that little store all that time ago.
Nonetheless, I became fascinated by human vampire stories and the concept of ethical vampirism. Despite the blood on my hands, I am not a bad person after all. I could not help but wonder if such a thing was actually possible. It was not in a vampire story where I found an intriguing idea though. It was in a series of stories about a more-or-less normal human being (depending on the version of the story. The televised adaptation was a touch more grounded). This human being just happened to be a serial killer.
An individual with a compulsive need to take human lives. That is not much different to a vampire. This killer had rules though. He would only murder someone who was themselves a murderer or a sufficiently evil criminal. I could not help but wonder if this honour code could be applied to vampirism. Which is what brought me to that rooftop, on that specific neon street across from that specific obnoxious night club.
I had been following the man for weeks. I had seen him in a bookstore of all places and noticed some behaviours that made me wonder if I had stumbled across a viable target. So I followed him. I stalked him. I learned about his life. I changed from an opportunistic hunter to an active one.
I delayed my feeding to the point that the pain was starting to become unbearable to make absolutely certain of his guilt. If I was going to undertake this experiment, I had to do so thoroughly and correctly to be sure it was viable. I admit, despite the pain, there was a strange satisfaction in the task. It was the first time in a long time I had felt purpose like that.
Once I was sure, I simply had to wait for the right moment. The moment didn’t take long to come. I followed him to the club. I watched and I waited. It was after midnight when he emerged. Inebriated, he stumbled past the fluorescent lights of the street and into a dark alleyway. It was a shortcut to where he had parked his car. I could add the intent to drive drunk to his list of crimes. At that point, I realised that by killing this man, I was quite possibly actually saving many more lives given the likelihood he would get into an accident on the road. If accident is even the right word when there is culpability in one’s intoxication. I was caught off guard by the little kick of happiness those thoughts provided.
He never made it out of the alley. I had been pursuing on the rooftops and jumped down behind him. He tried to wheel around in his shock but tripped over his own tangled feet. I caught him with one hand and slammed him into the wall. It was easy. We really are far stronger than human beings.
With slurred speech he hurled expletives at me. He kicked and struggled. I should have covered his mouth and got it over with quickly. But I was curious about him after everything I had seen.
When it became clear he could not overpower me, the fear kicked in. He shouted for help. He begged and he pleaded. I was surprised to find it made me smile. I do not think I had really smiled while on the hunt since World War II. It was hard not to take some joy in hunting Nazis. Honestly, this version of a more ethical vampirism should have occurred to me far sooner given that time period.
I asked him if his wife ever begged and pleaded with him like that. I knew she did. I knew his children did too. I asked him anyway just to see the look on his face. I found I wanted him to know why this was happening to him. I found I wanted to draw it out just a little bit longer. I am not a fool though, I knew his shouting had likely been heard. So I took that little bit of joy in my task and then sank my fangs into his neck. He kicked and gurgled and went silent. Like a leopard in a tree, I carried his corpse back up to the rooftops to finish feeding.
I must admit, it was the best meal I had ever had. He was not a killer, but I think he was an evil enough man to count. Of course, no experiment is complete with one test. I will continue to explore this idea of ethical vampirism. I will refine my methodology for finding prey and determine a clearer framework for determining acceptable targets. It might be a little early to say this, but I cannot help but wonder if by the end of developing this honour system I may end up finding a way for vampires to actually make the world a better place in the long term. It’s an interesting thought. It makes me happy to consider it. I have not been truly happy in a long time so, at the very least, perhaps an ethical approach to our late night hunts will be good for our psyches.
I look forward to seeing what results my next test produces.
