This is my first fiction story ever. I’m so excited! (◕ᴗ◕✿)
Once upon a Time, Dracula was looking for a way to reinvent himself. Throughout the ages, he had been many things: poet, warrior, scientist, physician. Star of a popular anime series. He had been a successful businessman, but times were different, now. Before, you could earn success simply by being the one person strong enough to provide goods to the people who wanted them. They didn’t even have to be that good. Now, you couldn’t get along without fucking people. Honest work was highly frowned upon. Now, you had to make up shit just to stay afloat. And so he would. And so he would.
The thought of celebrity had crossed his mind. Starting a war with humanity seemed obviously to be largely pointless: as it was, they were likely to kill each other before anything he did had much of an effect. Sleeping a hundred years or more, and then waking up, he had seen the world start to accelerate. Now, the world had passed Dracula by. To the point where no one was even afraid of him. He, like other mythological creatures, had been relegated to the realm of fantasy. They called them ‘monsters’; and everyone was enthralled with the idea of them.
That was unacceptable.
That had to change.
Celebrity was far too dangerous, and far too pointless. There was no point in being admired. For starters, even if they believed him, he would no longer be the one that they had feared for so long. They thought him and his friends a fiction.
But there was something that interested him.
He knew what scared people.
Well, he thought he knew.
Killing off human beings was not enough. Torturing them, also, was largely ineffective. The cruelest thing he could do would be to keep them in a state of perpetual suspense: to hold their souls in the tight grip of a fear that would not, could not, should never be abated.
The only problem was, the old monsters didn’t work anymore.
So he’d have to find more.
The days were long. For days on end, Dracula brought people in, looking for the newest and greatest monsters he could find.
The last three began to wear on him.
The first of the three came in. Dracula asked the same question, as he had been for the past 30 days: “what is the monstrous thing that you do?”
And the human replied, “I suck on the penises of little babies.”
… now, Dracula had been alive for a long time. A very long time. And though he had once stuck sharpened sticks up other people’s asses, and put them on his lawn, as a display of his displeasure— overall, nothing shocked him. At some point, like Kars floating derelict through outer space, there was a part of his brain that stopped thinking.
This time, however, he stopped. And the shock from what he had heard, restarted that part of his brain.
“I’m sorry, what?” Dracula said, involuntarily.
“I also rape them, sometimes,” the human said. Adding, “if that helps.”
“No it doesn’t,” Dracula said, still shocked. “Get out.”
The second candidate came in. The human was silent. Dracula asked the same question.
“What is the monstrous thing that you do?”
The man replied, “you know, sometimes, I rape women—”
Dracula glared at the human with the sort of intensity that Superman could only dream of. His eyes bore a hole through the man’s face, straight through to the back of his skull. Metaphorically, of course. The human was so shocked, that he stopped talking. And there was silence.
“What did you just say?” Dracula asked, slowly, meticulously, knowing fully well what was said.
The human slowly began to speak again. “well, when I’m eating human flesh, you know, the women aren’t alive, so it really doesn’t matter—”
“Go,” Dracula said, pointing out of his office.
The third human came in. He reached out to shake Dracula’s hand. A bad sign, to be sure. These are all humans, Dracula thought. They’re all just human. The end of his patience was at hand. His experiment would come to an end, a failure.
And then, the human spoke.
“Hi,” the man said, smiling without a care in the world, as he shook Dracula’s hand. “I kill children,” he said, the expression in his face never changing. “Huh? What do you think of that?” the human asked. “Am I a good fit?”
“For a monster?”
When the human left, Dracula shut his door, walked back to his desk, sat down in his chair, and with his head in both his white, undead hands, he cried.
“I don’t understand, Sharon,” Dracula spoke to his secretary, standing at her desk as she packed her things. The experiment was over.
“I tried.” Dracula pleaded, to no one, gesturing to the same. “I tried. And I never found anything resembling what I wanted.” Certainly, he had found terrible human beings— but they were only human. They were just people. They weren’t monsters. They didn’t shapeshift and turn into beasts; there was no one made out of the constituent parts of others. And even when there were, they called that ‘transplant surgery’, now. He didn’t even find people altered by fel experiments, or changed irrevocably by dark magicks. All he found were people.
And somehow, they were worse.
Every century he awoke, things seemed to get better. And so, they became worse. The humans had no fear of what he was— no recollection, beyond what they’d crafted for themselves, mere toys in his visage. Every single monster that he knew of? The people loved them now. They were fascinated by them. It was revolting.
“The humans aren’t afraid of us, anymore,” he rasped, to Sharon. “Not because we’re not scary, but because they simply don’t know any better.”
“If people knew who I was— I would have women, lining up, at the gate— around the block— to get a bite on their neck.” He harrumphed. “But I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. The— the things that should scare them, they delight in it, now.”
“Have you seen them, Sharon?” he asked her. “Once, men, they feared the bite of the wolf. Now, they have conventions, everywhere, where they delight in dressing like them—“
“And the zombies! Oh, how they once feared them. Then, they were all the rage! Now, people barely even think of them anymore.” He said, looking down, wondering. “How can you forget something that wants to eat your flesh.”
“You know— I know what scares them. And I don’t want to be that. Because— it’s a torture, it’s torture. They’re not afraid of vampires anymore: they fear usury, slavery, helplessness, disease— just being alone. I can kill for a purpose— but, that?” he said. “That’s evil.”
“I know,” Sharon said, standing up straight, her arms full with the cardboard box with the contents of her desk. The Clock Tower struck midnight; the ghouls and miscellaneous flying things of the castle took that as the cue to get the zoomies, and the screeching started as they pranced around, jumping from spire to spire, relentlessly, without a care in all the world. They would do this on the hour, every hour, until the first finger of sunlight hit the tallest tower’s spire. When the birds would start singing, at 4:26 in the fucking morning. “I know.”
“At least, when there’s a man who’s been turned into a beast against his own will, one can argue that his desires, his will, certainly, must not fully be his own. But, these people— they hurt each other, fully knowing the pain that they inflict.”
“How can I possibly scare them when they’re already so afraid of each other?”
For a moment, the bottom fell out of the carriage that was Dracula’s heart. A bitter and defeated hopelessness crept across his limbs, growing from his chest.
Fora long while, there was silence. Sharon said nothing. Then, thinking, Sharon put down her box, and walked closer to him.
“Tell you what,” Sharon said, with a glint in her eye. A perverted desire. The expectation of delight. She bared her neck, offering it to him.
“Would it make you feel better if you bit me?” she said, a hint of longing in her voice.
Dracula sighed.
God damn it.