Matthew J Gleason

Belief in Monsters

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I first met the Count on a small and staticky television screen in my boyhood home.The memory is hazy now as if that long ago static has itself nested in my mind. I don’t recall if it was Bela or Christopher I first laid eyes on. Regardless it was God and God’s name was Dracula. He was beyond perfection. He was beyond “he”. He was the great thing which laid at the heart of lust and death and the very idea of power.  When my father informed me the film and character were merely fiction I wept until snot came pouring from my nostrils and I could no longer speak.  Now I know that nothing is “merely fiction”. No lie once believed is entirely untrue. I believed in monsters or that monster at least.

 

It was years later that I found myself reading the novel for the first time. I was never gifted with great vocabulary or intelligence. At first I struggled with the words. In time however the text captivated me as deeply as that first glance of Dracula’s eyes. An amalgamation of literature and filmic influence molded a living Dracula within my teenage brain.  As puberty hit in full force my obsession only grew deeper. When Duncan Regehr’s Count said “bitch” I throbbed for him. I wanted to be his bitch. Yes I did! Years passed and the desire to be with and to serve the Count did not fade. My identity became subsumed by the Renfield character. I had to live my dream. I had to serve him in any way I could. Still I grew up and the dream mostly died.

 

I don’t know what made my twenty seventh year the tipping point but I could go one no longer without the Count. It only took a few weeks to construct the body. It started almost absentmindedly with me sticking chicken bones together with bits of mashed up flys and fat spiders. I then introduced the mangled bodies of several local stray cats. Eventually it began to more than slightly resemble a headless human corpse lying in my bathtub. The absence of a head for my love was a bit disturbing. I  wanted to kiss him and slide my tongue across his sharp dagger-like fangs.

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I first saw my master’s true  face in a crowd of people. It shone like a star in the darkest pit of hell. I was at the supermarket. We both were. I was examining fresh produce. The other man held two near identical cans of tomato sauce. He seemed to be making a price comparison. His face was perfect. It had this  ageless ancient quality to it. He was pale. He looked strong and elegant like he was expertly carved from stone. His hair was slick and black as it was meant to be. He even had a short black beard and mustache. This I knew was the face of Count Dracula.

 

I refuse to delude myself in regards to my own intelligence. I am not some great thinker. Still I knew I had to make a plan. I approached the man with my master’s face calmly and politely. I introduced myself as R.M. Renfield.  He said “Hi there… I’m Gary. Can I help you with something?” I paused for a moment before saying. “Oh yes. I’m filming an independent movie and would just love it if you would star in it.” He looked uncomfortable and backed away as if planning to ignore me. “It pays 500 a day!” I blurted out so as to keep his interest. The man flashed his human teeth in a wide smile and said “Should have lead with that. I’ve lost some hours at work. I can’t promise I’ll be the best actor you ever saw in your life but I’ll show up for your money.” I explained to him that the character he would be playing was Dracula. He lit up at this thinking it a fun idea. He even mentioned that he could bring his own costume from Halloween two years before. I gave Gary my home address and told him to come by the  next evening so we could discuss the script. Then we parted ways. I hunched the rest of my shopping trip so as to not display the erection which had sprouted in my jeans.

 

I didn’t sleep that night. When he arrived the next day I started by suggesting we have a drink while discussing the script. I poured him a whisky on the rocks with a special secret ingredient then excused myself to the restroom. When I came back several minutes later he was snoring hunched over in this seat. I dragged the limp yet animate body to the bath where the chicken bone and mashed up cat monstrosity lay in its state of perfect death.  I removed a bulky butcher’s knife from the waistband of my gray sweatpants. The man began to stir. My hands almost of their own volition bashed his skull  into the sink until he went still again. It took more effort to get the head off than  I had expected but after three good chops the body fell away. I kissed his blood spattered lips as a halfhearted apology then placed the head atop the body I had constructed for it. 

 

   Getting a hold of real magic isn’t that hard if you know where to look. The internet is mostly for porn but there are more than a few grimoires floating around. I only ever bothered to memorize a few spells and I hardly understood what any of them were supposed to do but I chanted them then with the faithful reverence of any devout cultist. I gave the all of my belief in and my love for Dracula to that small series of moments alone with the sculpture of flesh and bone. It worked. There was a shifting of the space around me and my master went from being a fictional construct to standing there in the bath. He was dressed in all the appropriate Transylvanian finery. He was whole and without any sign of rotting cat flesh or greasy chicken bones. He was glorious. Dracula stood before me and I was afraid as well as in love. I fell to my knees. I kissed his ring. “Obey me in all things.” were the first words this real Dracula spoke to me. “Yes Master.” I responded as if reciting an ancient prayer.  He beckoned me forward and sank his sharp fangs into the flesh of my weak mortal arm.  The feeding session was brief but more intimate than any experience I’d known before.And so the new reality had begun. 

 

The first few weeks of this new life were relatively uneventful. I stayed in with him as much as I could. He’d cradle me in his strong arms and kiss and bite at me as he pleased while we streamed What We Do in the Shadows.  With time however my blood became not enough to sate my master’s appetite and actions had to be taken.   I am not ashamed of what  I’ve done. A vampire has its place in the food chain just as a tiger does. There is no shame in feeding tigers. Except zookeepers don’t usually have to lure girl scouts in with promises of buying their cookies. Zookeepers don’t have to scrub human blood out of a Persian rug.

 

I wish it was the killing that broke my love’s hold on me. It wasn’t that at all. You see I’d just gone to lunch with my mother. We hadn’t seen each other in months.She had started to worry. We went to Olive Garden. I mostly just munched on a couple breadsticks. I had filled up on cockroaches already. I liked to eat them to consume their lifeforce. My mother asked me “Are you seeing anyone?” in that grating passively pushy way that characterized much of what she said. For once I didn’t lie to her or avoid the question. I told her I had a boyfriend and that we lived together. I hadn’t even told her I was gay before but I just came right out and said that. That’s how much I loved him and believed in us. I was a fucking idiot. 

 

  I came back to our place. It smelled of death and more suspiciously of perfume. I found him in my bedroom nude save his shadow black cape. There was moaning. He wasn’t alone. There were two women with him. Even I could tell that they were divinely beautiful. They had long dark curls and aquiline noses and bodies like Aphrodite. They looked to be twins. My boyfriend the Count was alternating between sipping from the neck of one and slurping from the other’s massive tits. He had a ravenous hunger and a lust in his eyes which I was enraged to find unfamiliar to me. I slammed the door shut and retired to the sofa to watch Netflix and cry. I expected him to follow after and console me but he did not. 

 

An hour or two later I was beginning to drift into an uneasy sleep on the sofa. A cool hand touched my cheek. I looked up and it was one of the women. She was nude save for one of my t-shirts. It hung loose on here reminding me of just how fat I was. It bore the image of Bela Lugosi’s face photoshopped onto a ripped man riding a horse shirtless. I had always really liked that shirt and now seeing it on her I wanted to scream. She smiled at me revealing prominent vampire fangs. He had turned her. “The Master would like to see you now.” She was speaking with a thick Transylvanian accent because of course she fucking was. She gripped my arm tightly. She led me to my bedroom as if I didn’t know where it was. 

 

Dracula lay sprawled out on the bed looking like a bloated tick. The other girl’s head was beside his hairy lap. He fingered and fidgeted at the hole which should have connected a throat. The woman’s body lay crumpled and broken in the corner. “There you are my good friend and servant Renfield! I see you have met the bride.” he said with an almost drunk sounding joyful tone. I nodded, unable to look him in the eye. There was no fighting this. I may have created him in this body but Dracula had made me what I was. I could not fight back.I was weak before I was anything else. He explained that he would acquire more brides and that I would have to bring an even greater amount of blood in to feed them. He specified that babies would be preferred. If I wanted you to think better of me maybe I’d imply that I began plotting against my vampiric creation right then. I did not. 

 

It took about six more months for me to break. The Count had acquired three more gorgeous brides. The five of them seemed to do nothing but kill humans and fuck. Except none of the fucking ever involved me as more than a spectator. I learned how to make a magic circle from my blood and piss by reading Wikipedia. I drew the ancient Babylonian symbols on my kitchen table.I made them as exact as possible. This was during the afternoon so the vampires would not interfere. When the circle looked just perfect I grabbed a big yellow phone book I had never before had cause to  use. I placed it squarely in the center of the magic circle and chanted a series of sounds that while not any particular language communicated the spirit of my rage.I flipped through the phone book nine times before I found the number for Professor Abraham Van Helsing. I had willed the number and if the universe would comply, the person into existence. I dialed the digits and hoped. It rang twice before an old sounding man with a Dutch accent answered. I explained my situation and he said without a hint of skepticism. “What is the address? When would you like us there?” 

 

Now I’m out of the apartment while an intrepid group of vampire hunters seek to destroy my true love and his brides. I’m sitting in my car in a McDonald’s parking lot eating a soft serve vanilla  cone. I can barely taste the sugar. Everything is pain. The sun is going down and I know in my heart that Dracula has already been vanquished. My phone rings. I grab it from the passenger seat. The caller ID reads Van Helsing. I put it to my ear. A masculine voice greets me in a thick Transylvanian accent. “Mr. Renfield, you're going to need to move out. This isn’t working for either of us. I’m breaking up with you.” Hearing that was worse than any stake through the heart.

 

Matthew J Gleason is a writer of weird/speculative fiction originally from West Virginia and currently residing in Iowa. Their books Strange Phenomena: Volume 1 and Strange Phenomena: Volume 2 are available for purchase on Amazon. Outside of writing they enjoy chess and acquiring tattooed skin. Bienvenue à la Danse, Matthew.

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