1. Take charge of your day
In every day, you have 24 hours to be dead. You don’t have 20, 22 or 28. You have 24. Your success in death, or life if you read this with a pulse, will depend on how you make use of those hours. Thankfully, you do not need sleep, which gives you a precious advantage over the living! Use this.
You would think the advantage inherent, but it is not. Tell me if this is familiar: You wake for breakfast and while sucking on the neck of a handy human servant, you reach around him her or it and grab the morning post. You begin to read each correspondence and cannot stop. Each and every letting you open contains a wealth of potential distractions. Increasingly, in this fast paced age of the 1840s, some vampires don’t even stop for a meal. They go right away to the post and open each letter.
Say you have a post from a vampire friend in the Azores, sharing what she has been devouring there, and including press clippings with amusing jokes and etchings. Ho ho, you think this is very cute; and so you have one of your human servants copy out the etching and you begin to mail it to all your other friends. Time ticks past. Meantime you open another post, and it is a letter from a friend. He is asking your practical advice about a debauchery planned a fortnight hence. This is an urgent matter, not because of you but because he wrote so late, and you of course know a great deal about the enjoyment and devouring of nubile virgins. So you take pen in hand, or dictate to a human slave. You share your wisdom in loving detail - how to demonstrate how you have entranced the maiden, what tricks to make her perform, how to unclothe her to greatest advantage depending on the configuration of the room and number of vampires present, how to share the meal, and of course, what to do about the old fart in the corner - for there is always some old vampire fart in the corner - who is telling everyone in what’s supposed to be a whisper but which of course he wants you to overhear, “Oh if this was MY debauchery this would be so much more fun…”
…And so you write or dictate on and on, and more time passes where you share knowledge and feel good, but do not do what is most important in your day.
Pretty soon it is noon, and you realize you have lost much of your day. You feel a surge of energy and begin to go forth, but the townspeople who are already drunken have already been claimed by other vampires, demons, mythological beasts, and policemen eager to get a good beating in early. Do not let this happen to you! Save correspondence for after your energy peaks in the morning, and weigh its importance in proportion to your pursuit of accomplishment.
2. Be Human
It is tempting, when enjoying the surge of preternatural power, to appear at your most frightening a good percent of the day. It’s what the ladies expect when you hold them in thrall, and it’s good for scaring away human men.
My advice on the matter is to get the beast in you out of your system, so that you may be disguised and blend more effectively with the mortal world to achieve your goals. I recommend finding a source of childhood torment, such as bully, or abusive professor, and unleashing your beast on them.
To me, it’s a choice. Do I want to wander around squandering beastly energy on this and that, a person I will never see again or someone I will eat within a few minutes anyway, or do I want to spend my energy on a person worthy of attention.
Then it’s a simple matter to appear human though relaxed constitution and the application of makeup and other tools. In the matter of unnaturaly large or shaped teeth, a large moustache may prove useful. For the lady, the moustache may be explained away by waving the arm daintily and exclaiming ‘Those were my circus strongman (or bearded lady) days, now long past behind me”
3. Remember what is at stake; Begin with the end in mind
If you must bite your human servant, remember that puncture wounds upon the neck, the refuge of the most tired of vampires, may cause consternation and comment. Better to begin with the end in mind; bite them up on what the French call ‘le deierre’ and surely no one will see unless their view is unauthorized, in which case you will have to kill them„ or perhaps authorized, in which case you will have to kill them.
4. . First Things First
It is important to remember as you choose to spend your time, that while it is most tempting to snatch the bedclothes off a roundly limbed virgin or slash the throat of an unworthy, the wise vampire invests time in activites that will pay off by giving him more time. Among the most useful of these is pleasant relations with his currently alive peers. Humans make better friends than they do enemies, as they can clutter a vampyre’s life with pursuits, tortures, stakes, etc.
5 Plan your meals for benefit of all
The wise vampyre will prepare to be hungry around creatures other than the human. I found as I recovered that I could slate my thirst upon bears, lions and tigers, and facilitated my physical presence such that I might be around these creatures. Sure, the blood of a virgin is more delectable, but consider how the removal of their clothing provides delay and nuisance.
My final meal was with a rather surprised gerbil named Peaches, and while the young child who owned Peaches was sad to lose a pet, she recovered her poise quickly when I pointed out I could have eaten her father, mother, or any of the the nice men that the family often presented her to to give her presents.
6. It takes a village to raise a vampyre
This final principle, which seems counterintuitive - the urging of the value of community to the dead - was arrived at one day when I was sipping tea on the streets of a small city in Spain, B___, with a dear friend, who is still dead, so let us call him Mr M____
“Do tell me, how are you enjoying the vampyric life, Mr Serpente?” Mr M___ expostulated.
“It is hard to imagine how one could get tired of being surrounded by young women as their delicate rising curves quiver and their breaths grow faster and faster,” I commented. “Never having to sleep, having such energy as to accomplish supernatural activities beyond human understanding … why I am delighted, thank you for asking.”
At this point, we became aware of a commotion. The commotion first announced itself as a rumbling human noise that appeared to grow closer and closer, as if a town festival was coming closer to you on a parade street. We looked toward the end of the street, and saw a lone figure, clad in a black suit of no small cost, with a panicked look in his eye, running fullspeed around the corner. Within a few paces after him, the townspeople began to appear, screaming children, wailing woman, and angry men, shouting cries of “Down with the Vampyre,” “Kill the Vampyre” and tones of similar cadence.
They wielded a remarkable army of instruments in their hands, from scythes and old swords last seen in battle two centuries ago, to sticks and timber and frying pans and kitchen implements.
The vampyre made it past our table and cast a look with a demonic eye of panic, recognizing his kin, but too hurried even to shout for help, and whirled past us.
“That man is in trouble,” Mr M___ observed.
“He is in extra trouble since the street upon which we enjoy this paltry liquid in each other’s company is a dead end,” I orated.
The vampyre had quickly realized this fact, that there was no more pavement to pound on, and leaped into a window. Sadly, he had no way of knowing that the reason a building was able to be erected in the middle of a street is that the authority of the Church was behind it, or rather, encompassing it. He had arrived at the outer apartment of a rectory, used not for accommodation, but for the activity of the young nuns inside the convent nearby, in which in between long hours of prayer the women occupied themselves making crucifixes for sale to supplicant visitors and also peeling, harvesting the packing the most abundant crop of the local town, which was garlic, for sale as a valuable foodstuff.
After leaping into a room full of crucifixes and garlic, the vampyre, leaped out again in a loud wail. He landed on several villagers, and inches from a stake held out by a small boy, who dropped it in astonishment. This turn of events was unexpected to the crowd, who were beginning to batten down the door of the rectory, to the great puzzlement of a local minister who had offered to open it. Clearly the mob was in the mood for trouble, and it was in the middle of them that the vampyre landed.
“Well he is good for the stake,” commented Mr M__ with some small regret in his voice, as this fate is always lingering in every thought and conversation.
“We cannot sit idly by and let this happen,” I retorted. “I shall see if he may be assisted.”
“Surely you have lost your senses, not that you have any conventional ones being dead and all, but you have lost your preternatural senses,” Mr M___ counseled. “Even if you were not a vampyre, the crowd would not listen to reason and will surely tear you limb from limb. Look at the sufferings of the poor minister wherall….”
And indeed, the poor minister was clinging to the vampyre in an effort to protect him, and had already sustained two bruises to the head. The minister, while making out from the rantings of the mob that this man was a vampyre, was more fearful of what would happen next - the crowd, angry and pent up with rage, would stake the vampyre and then have nothing else to do, and would surely enter the Holy Complex and begin ravaging the virgin nuns.
‘Indeed, however, I am a strong believer in the principle, “It takes a village to raise a vampyre.” I shall illustrate this through my further actions,” I announced, and rose and used my skills to quickly, though not obtrusively, work my way to the front of the crowd and place myself next to the minister, the now unconscious vampyre, and their abusers.
Using the powerful tones granted to me in death, I shrieked “Our enemies must die! Our enemies must die! Flay them! Tear off their members and shove them into their mouths! Stake them upon fiery irons. Our enemies must die!”
My words were by far the most eloquent of those so far uttered in the adventure, and the crowd began to regard me with interest. Mr M___ was watching from the table, his jaw now so far lowered to the ground in puzzlement that rats could have climbed inside at their casual convenience.
I looked around for whoever was the most influential in the crowd. Invariably, that was going to be the most gossipy woman in the community, for it is they who have the power to make or break reputation. I noticed a woman with more warts on her fact than God has placed sheep upon the earth, studying me with the intensity of a gossip and scold.
“Death to our enemies!” she shouted as I held her with my vampyric eye.
The crowd, if left to their own devices, would have assumed the enemies were the minister and vampyre, and later, the virgin nuns, who had to be enemies worthy of deflowering for some reason or other best known to God. But I studied the lady, made assumptions, and shouted “Your enemies. How many women have judged you behind your back? How many men have failed to acknowledge your beauty!”
This completely puzzled the crowd and the woman. But there was no doubt where the dialogue would go; it would go to my advantage. I had asked her about herself, and if there’s any subject safe for conversation or ranting with anyone, it is the subject of themselves.
“Well,” she observed “Quite a few, now that you mention it.”
“A horrible death to them all,” I shrieked, and I grabbed the vampyre by the suit’s lapel. I shouted in his face “you must slaughter that woman’s enemies! Kill them all! Suck the marrow slowly of the men’s bones, and show the women the power of your Satanic majesty..” - I pointed to his trousers - “… and have your wicked way with them as they die slowly and horribly. Death to our enemies!”
The men, having small minds, began shouting “Death to our enemies!” Certain of the women, who I knew already to be the vampyre’s future allies, studied his trousers with great interest as to what might be the exact measured nature of a Satanic majesty in their dull lives. The elder gossip, who I had singled out from the crowd, was clearly measuring how this vampyre might help her avenge the many slights she had suffered over the years from countless people she gossiped about.
“Who is your worst enemy? Who has hurt you the most and caused your delicate beauties to tremble?” I shouted at the woman as the vampyre, a bit slow to catch on, studied me as the scientist studies the lunatic.
I had chosen well, for had I picked the wrong woman, the next act could have been devisive. She briefly shook the locks on her head, which held there much like mud holds to the boots of a man. She being the chief gossip of the town, pointed to a man who was hated by all “S______ there! He has said many foul things of me and the other ladies! He is a g___ a____ f_____ s______ of a s_______ with a b______ upon his v_______,” she shrieked.
I pulled the vampyre toward me, thankful that a glint of recognition was in his eye. “Kill our enemy,” I shrieked, pointing to the man.
The poor villager she had named dropped the small timber he was holding in vast puzzlement, and looked around in complete confusion as to what had just happened. The other men of the town would normally had rushed to defend him, but they would have been insane to do so now. Most stepped away.
I whispered to the vampyre’s ear, softly since his hearing, like mine, was beyond human knowing, “Make it gory and good and you’ll earn a fine living killing enemies for these people!”
The dead one shook his head and quickly leaped from me and atop the villager, turned him upside down and proceeded to clamp his mouth upon the man’s manhood as he bit savagely and began to suck. The villager’s face, hanging between the vampyre’s legs, turned red as the blood that soon trickled down from his manhood, and his screams were enough to peel moss from the cobblestones.
The lonely old gossip woman shrieked with great joy to see herself avenged. She bounced up and down, causing a small motion of the earth, and the other townspeople, just happy to see violence, cheered as the vampyre proceeded to kill the shrieking individual despite his protests.
“This vampyre can help you kill all your enemies!” I offered. “Even the people in the other towns who so vex you with claims their town is better.”
The eyes of several men gleamed with joy. There would be something in this for them as well! As it was, I knew nothing of this locale, planning only to say here briefly to visit Mr M___, and discuss his coming debauchery, but in every town, there are influential people who are angry at people in another town.
The minister just stood there, opening and closing his mouth like a fish. On the one hand, he knew he should stop this, but on the other hand, the crowd seemed less directed on debauching the young virgins who he had already promised to the bishop on St. Swivens’ Day.
I clapped the minister on the back, said “Well done,” in hopes he would cling to the phrase as some sort of man-to-man redemption for his actions, and returned to my table. My tea had grown cold, but since my taste at the time was only for blood, i did not mind and sipped.
“Well that was extraordinary,” Mr M___ owned.
“That vampyre will have all the friends he wants who will help him, as long as he hurts their enemies,” I commented. “Too many vampyres hide and do not take advantage of what they can offer a Christian community. It takes a village to raise a vampyre!”
In every day, you have 24 hours to be dead. You don’t have 20, 22 or 28. You have 24. Your success in death, or life if you read this with a pulse, will depend on how you make use of those hours. Thankfully, you do not need sleep, which gives you a precious advantage over the living! Use this.
You would think the advantage inherent, but it is not. Tell me if this is familiar: You wake for breakfast and while sucking on the neck of a handy human servant, you reach around him her or it and grab the morning post. You begin to read each correspondence and cannot stop. Each and every letting you open contains a wealth of potential distractions. Increasingly, in this fast paced age of the 1840s, some vampires don’t even stop for a meal. They go right away to the post and open each letter.
Say you have a post from a vampire friend in the Azores, sharing what she has been devouring there, and including press clippings with amusing jokes and etchings. Ho ho, you think this is very cute; and so you have one of your human servants copy out the etching and you begin to mail it to all your other friends. Time ticks past. Meantime you open another post, and it is a letter from a friend. He is asking your practical advice about a debauchery planned a fortnight hence. This is an urgent matter, not because of you but because he wrote so late, and you of course know a great deal about the enjoyment and devouring of nubile virgins. So you take pen in hand, or dictate to a human slave. You share your wisdom in loving detail - how to demonstrate how you have entranced the maiden, what tricks to make her perform, how to unclothe her to greatest advantage depending on the configuration of the room and number of vampires present, how to share the meal, and of course, what to do about the old fart in the corner - for there is always some old vampire fart in the corner - who is telling everyone in what’s supposed to be a whisper but which of course he wants you to overhear, “Oh if this was MY debauchery this would be so much more fun…”
…And so you write or dictate on and on, and more time passes where you share knowledge and feel good, but do not do what is most important in your day.
Pretty soon it is noon, and you realize you have lost much of your day. You feel a surge of energy and begin to go forth, but the townspeople who are already drunken have already been claimed by other vampires, demons, mythological beasts, and policemen eager to get a good beating in early. Do not let this happen to you! Save correspondence for after your energy peaks in the morning, and weigh its importance in proportion to your pursuit of accomplishment.
2. Be Human
It is tempting, when enjoying the surge of preternatural power, to appear at your most frightening a good percent of the day. It’s what the ladies expect when you hold them in thrall, and it’s good for scaring away human men.
My advice on the matter is to get the beast in you out of your system, so that you may be disguised and blend more effectively with the mortal world to achieve your goals. I recommend finding a source of childhood torment, such as bully, or abusive professor, and unleashing your beast on them.
To me, it’s a choice. Do I want to wander around squandering beastly energy on this and that, a person I will never see again or someone I will eat within a few minutes anyway, or do I want to spend my energy on a person worthy of attention.
Then it’s a simple matter to appear human though relaxed constitution and the application of makeup and other tools. In the matter of unnaturaly large or shaped teeth, a large moustache may prove useful. For the lady, the moustache may be explained away by waving the arm daintily and exclaiming ‘Those were my circus strongman (or bearded lady) days, now long past behind me”
3. Remember what is at stake; Begin with the end in mind
If you must bite your human servant, remember that puncture wounds upon the neck, the refuge of the most tired of vampires, may cause consternation and comment. Better to begin with the end in mind; bite them up on what the French call ‘le deierre’ and surely no one will see unless their view is unauthorized, in which case you will have to kill them„ or perhaps authorized, in which case you will have to kill them.
4. . First Things First
It is important to remember as you choose to spend your time, that while it is most tempting to snatch the bedclothes off a roundly limbed virgin or slash the throat of an unworthy, the wise vampire invests time in activites that will pay off by giving him more time. Among the most useful of these is pleasant relations with his currently alive peers. Humans make better friends than they do enemies, as they can clutter a vampyre’s life with pursuits, tortures, stakes, etc.
5 Plan your meals for benefit of all
The wise vampyre will prepare to be hungry around creatures other than the human. I found as I recovered that I could slate my thirst upon bears, lions and tigers, and facilitated my physical presence such that I might be around these creatures. Sure, the blood of a virgin is more delectable, but consider how the removal of their clothing provides delay and nuisance.
My final meal was with a rather surprised gerbil named Peaches, and while the young child who owned Peaches was sad to lose a pet, she recovered her poise quickly when I pointed out I could have eaten her father, mother, or any of the the nice men that the family often presented her to to give her presents.
6. It takes a village to raise a vampyre
This final principle, which seems counterintuitive - the urging of the value of community to the dead - was arrived at one day when I was sipping tea on the streets of a small city in Spain, B___, with a dear friend, who is still dead, so let us call him Mr M____
“Do tell me, how are you enjoying the vampyric life, Mr Serpente?” Mr M___ expostulated.
“It is hard to imagine how one could get tired of being surrounded by young women as their delicate rising curves quiver and their breaths grow faster and faster,” I commented. “Never having to sleep, having such energy as to accomplish supernatural activities beyond human understanding … why I am delighted, thank you for asking.”
At this point, we became aware of a commotion. The commotion first announced itself as a rumbling human noise that appeared to grow closer and closer, as if a town festival was coming closer to you on a parade street. We looked toward the end of the street, and saw a lone figure, clad in a black suit of no small cost, with a panicked look in his eye, running fullspeed around the corner. Within a few paces after him, the townspeople began to appear, screaming children, wailing woman, and angry men, shouting cries of “Down with the Vampyre,” “Kill the Vampyre” and tones of similar cadence.
They wielded a remarkable army of instruments in their hands, from scythes and old swords last seen in battle two centuries ago, to sticks and timber and frying pans and kitchen implements.
The vampyre made it past our table and cast a look with a demonic eye of panic, recognizing his kin, but too hurried even to shout for help, and whirled past us.
“That man is in trouble,” Mr M___ observed.
“He is in extra trouble since the street upon which we enjoy this paltry liquid in each other’s company is a dead end,” I orated.
The vampyre had quickly realized this fact, that there was no more pavement to pound on, and leaped into a window. Sadly, he had no way of knowing that the reason a building was able to be erected in the middle of a street is that the authority of the Church was behind it, or rather, encompassing it. He had arrived at the outer apartment of a rectory, used not for accommodation, but for the activity of the young nuns inside the convent nearby, in which in between long hours of prayer the women occupied themselves making crucifixes for sale to supplicant visitors and also peeling, harvesting the packing the most abundant crop of the local town, which was garlic, for sale as a valuable foodstuff.
After leaping into a room full of crucifixes and garlic, the vampyre, leaped out again in a loud wail. He landed on several villagers, and inches from a stake held out by a small boy, who dropped it in astonishment. This turn of events was unexpected to the crowd, who were beginning to batten down the door of the rectory, to the great puzzlement of a local minister who had offered to open it. Clearly the mob was in the mood for trouble, and it was in the middle of them that the vampyre landed.
“Well he is good for the stake,” commented Mr M__ with some small regret in his voice, as this fate is always lingering in every thought and conversation.
“We cannot sit idly by and let this happen,” I retorted. “I shall see if he may be assisted.”
“Surely you have lost your senses, not that you have any conventional ones being dead and all, but you have lost your preternatural senses,” Mr M___ counseled. “Even if you were not a vampyre, the crowd would not listen to reason and will surely tear you limb from limb. Look at the sufferings of the poor minister wherall….”
And indeed, the poor minister was clinging to the vampyre in an effort to protect him, and had already sustained two bruises to the head. The minister, while making out from the rantings of the mob that this man was a vampyre, was more fearful of what would happen next - the crowd, angry and pent up with rage, would stake the vampyre and then have nothing else to do, and would surely enter the Holy Complex and begin ravaging the virgin nuns.
‘Indeed, however, I am a strong believer in the principle, “It takes a village to raise a vampyre.” I shall illustrate this through my further actions,” I announced, and rose and used my skills to quickly, though not obtrusively, work my way to the front of the crowd and place myself next to the minister, the now unconscious vampyre, and their abusers.
Using the powerful tones granted to me in death, I shrieked “Our enemies must die! Our enemies must die! Flay them! Tear off their members and shove them into their mouths! Stake them upon fiery irons. Our enemies must die!”
My words were by far the most eloquent of those so far uttered in the adventure, and the crowd began to regard me with interest. Mr M___ was watching from the table, his jaw now so far lowered to the ground in puzzlement that rats could have climbed inside at their casual convenience.
I looked around for whoever was the most influential in the crowd. Invariably, that was going to be the most gossipy woman in the community, for it is they who have the power to make or break reputation. I noticed a woman with more warts on her fact than God has placed sheep upon the earth, studying me with the intensity of a gossip and scold.
“Death to our enemies!” she shouted as I held her with my vampyric eye.
The crowd, if left to their own devices, would have assumed the enemies were the minister and vampyre, and later, the virgin nuns, who had to be enemies worthy of deflowering for some reason or other best known to God. But I studied the lady, made assumptions, and shouted “Your enemies. How many women have judged you behind your back? How many men have failed to acknowledge your beauty!”
This completely puzzled the crowd and the woman. But there was no doubt where the dialogue would go; it would go to my advantage. I had asked her about herself, and if there’s any subject safe for conversation or ranting with anyone, it is the subject of themselves.
“Well,” she observed “Quite a few, now that you mention it.”
“A horrible death to them all,” I shrieked, and I grabbed the vampyre by the suit’s lapel. I shouted in his face “you must slaughter that woman’s enemies! Kill them all! Suck the marrow slowly of the men’s bones, and show the women the power of your Satanic majesty..” - I pointed to his trousers - “… and have your wicked way with them as they die slowly and horribly. Death to our enemies!”
The men, having small minds, began shouting “Death to our enemies!” Certain of the women, who I knew already to be the vampyre’s future allies, studied his trousers with great interest as to what might be the exact measured nature of a Satanic majesty in their dull lives. The elder gossip, who I had singled out from the crowd, was clearly measuring how this vampyre might help her avenge the many slights she had suffered over the years from countless people she gossiped about.
“Who is your worst enemy? Who has hurt you the most and caused your delicate beauties to tremble?” I shouted at the woman as the vampyre, a bit slow to catch on, studied me as the scientist studies the lunatic.
I had chosen well, for had I picked the wrong woman, the next act could have been devisive. She briefly shook the locks on her head, which held there much like mud holds to the boots of a man. She being the chief gossip of the town, pointed to a man who was hated by all “S______ there! He has said many foul things of me and the other ladies! He is a g___ a____ f_____ s______ of a s_______ with a b______ upon his v_______,” she shrieked.
I pulled the vampyre toward me, thankful that a glint of recognition was in his eye. “Kill our enemy,” I shrieked, pointing to the man.
The poor villager she had named dropped the small timber he was holding in vast puzzlement, and looked around in complete confusion as to what had just happened. The other men of the town would normally had rushed to defend him, but they would have been insane to do so now. Most stepped away.
I whispered to the vampyre’s ear, softly since his hearing, like mine, was beyond human knowing, “Make it gory and good and you’ll earn a fine living killing enemies for these people!”
The dead one shook his head and quickly leaped from me and atop the villager, turned him upside down and proceeded to clamp his mouth upon the man’s manhood as he bit savagely and began to suck. The villager’s face, hanging between the vampyre’s legs, turned red as the blood that soon trickled down from his manhood, and his screams were enough to peel moss from the cobblestones.
The lonely old gossip woman shrieked with great joy to see herself avenged. She bounced up and down, causing a small motion of the earth, and the other townspeople, just happy to see violence, cheered as the vampyre proceeded to kill the shrieking individual despite his protests.
“This vampyre can help you kill all your enemies!” I offered. “Even the people in the other towns who so vex you with claims their town is better.”
The eyes of several men gleamed with joy. There would be something in this for them as well! As it was, I knew nothing of this locale, planning only to say here briefly to visit Mr M___, and discuss his coming debauchery, but in every town, there are influential people who are angry at people in another town.
The minister just stood there, opening and closing his mouth like a fish. On the one hand, he knew he should stop this, but on the other hand, the crowd seemed less directed on debauching the young virgins who he had already promised to the bishop on St. Swivens’ Day.
I clapped the minister on the back, said “Well done,” in hopes he would cling to the phrase as some sort of man-to-man redemption for his actions, and returned to my table. My tea had grown cold, but since my taste at the time was only for blood, i did not mind and sipped.
“Well that was extraordinary,” Mr M___ owned.
“That vampyre will have all the friends he wants who will help him, as long as he hurts their enemies,” I commented. “Too many vampyres hide and do not take advantage of what they can offer a Christian community. It takes a village to raise a vampyre!”
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