Plad Dracul, Incompetent Vampire

by Alan Meiss, ameiss@indiana.edu
On silent, leathery wings I glide above moondrenched treetops, riding the midnight winds. Night creatures fall mute and withdraw at my passing, touched by the fear and dread I cast upon the land like a wake. I soar over the dwellings of the humanity from which I am cast out, scanning with jealous, feral eyes the amber lights of their homes, scattered over the sleeping land like embers of a dying fire. One home at the edge of the village below draws me, and I drop silently towards a window left open to catch the autumn breeze.

I glide through the gently waving curtains of your bedroom, and the sharp shadow I cast on the wall in the full moonlight twists and writhes as I assume manlike form. I part my cloak to reveal a contorted, ashen countenance, my blood red eyes spying your sleeping form in the nearby bed. I quiver with longing for the life essense I sense flowing within you, and glide soundlessly across the room. My lipless maw parts, and great canine fangs appear, dripping with bile. You shift slightly in your sleep, a frown drifting over your face, and turning reveal your neck, a soft unblemished expanse of skin, bluish grey in the pale light. I loom over your bedside, drawing closer, leaning towards your flesh with mouth agape like a serpent striking in slow motion, and

"EeeeeuhYUUUURP"

Damn! Damn the barbecue! My resonant belch rouses you from slumber, and I am discovered. You scream and recoil, grabbing a shoe by the bedside and whacking me in the groin. I stumble backward, my cloak wrapping about me, causing me to fall face first onto the clock radio on the night stand, which begins blaring "You Shook Me All Night Long" at a painful volume. Leaping back I tread painfully on one of your young son's discarded Lego blocks, and hop in agony across the room. Your husband, now roused by the commotion, grabs a fire extinguisher from the hallway and proceeds to coat me with a blinding spray of foam. With a daunting stream of profanity you smack me over the head with a coat rack, driving me towards the window. I tumble out, flailing and cursing, and plummet onto the rosebush in the garden below, where I squeal like a stuck pig. As distant sirens grow nearer, I at last free myself and limp into the night whence I came.

Yes, my prey, you can run, and you can hide, and I will probably never find you, for I am Plad, Plad Dracul...

...Incompetent Vampire!