Dracula Lives 8: Conversation with Immortality

Dracula lives!

While it was extremely cold just a moment ago, the room I am now entering seemed much too warm. Maybe they should have just ventilated properly. The smell was terrible and reminded me of the fish market in Tripoli. So this is where Dracula lives, in his birthplace of Sighisoara. How young and how vulnerable he looks at over 500 years old. Is he smiling or fixating on the best place to bite my throat? The tin bucket speaks up:

"Your Bleached, dinner is here." By dinner he seems to mean me. How funny ! "Let's go to the dining room, Teflon!" So the metal bucket is called Teflon. Sparks of malicious determination flash in Dracula's eyes. So contrary to his voice, which is reminiscent of Paul Panzer. That makes it impossible for me to assess him. Is he a comedian or a sadist? At least, my speech center is working again.

With a flourish that I wouldn't have expected from the Count, we scurry through a kind of music room in which I think I recognize a piano. At least he has culture. At the same moment, a scantily clad vampire appears, perhaps a previous victim or his maid. She leads us into a dining room. Dracula theatrically takes his place, flanked by Teflon and the nameless lady. I take a seat opposite. The Count opens the conversation without further ado.

"Here we are! A spicy situation and an appeal to your intelligence to master it!"

Intelligence, I think for me, means making wrong decisions in life but doing the right thing afterwards. This isn't good.

"Don't give me those stupid calendar sayings! - Bring me blood wine!" Without a doubt, he can read minds. His voice truly sounds like Paul Panzer's and makes me smile. The nameless woman immediately pours blood wine into his glass. He toasts me and says: "I assume you don't want to try a glass. The barrels in our wine cellar are full of excellent blood reserves."

"This is disgusting, Whiteskin! Completely disgusting!" I dig out a head of garlic in my right trouser pocket. He waves it off and laughs with mock cheerfulness.

"Leave it! We too have developed further in the 500 years."

I stare at him questioningly, what fuels his arrogant superiority.

"We are immune.

"Immune."

"Exactly, resistant." He sips his glass again, staring steadily at me.

"How may I understand that?"

"Imbecile! Resistant! We can tolerate garlic, some of us are vegetarians, even a few vegans live among us. And daylight has lost its lethal effect on vampires, as long as it is not direct sunlight." He stands up and slowly walks around the table, directly towards me.

"But why don't Mr. Whiteskin just sit?"

"Fear?"

"Only rudimentary."

"But I smell it - your fear."

"In homeopathic doses."

He grins boldly. His fangs extend and retract automatically. Without a doubt, another show of force. They sparkle white like in a toothpaste commercial.

"You humans are so pathetic! Do you know that?" He smells my face like a dog.

"If I don't bite you, it'll only be because of that horrible aftershave."

"Someone already told me that at breakfast. I use the one from Weleda!"

"Horrible, it destroys everything human about you!"

I gather all my courage, I really have to turn the tables, I want information, I change the subject.

“Who do you have…”

...infiltrated?" Dracula is cunning. He's really reading my mind?

"Something like that, yeah."

"Many!" As if through a magnet, his glass of blood wine slides from the opposite side of the table directly into his thin hand. We're playing poker for information it seems.

I laboriously dig out my order from the UfO.

"So point 1, tax residency, we can forget, points 2 and 3 as well. The others are irrelevant except for one."

"All of this," he points to my document, "is irrelevant. We wrote this nonsense. Dictated by us personally, the V V*!"

"From this I conclude that the V V has also infiltrated the German federal government."

"That's right. We have field offices in Washington, Moscow, Beijing, Manila, Warsaw, Budapest, Brussels and so on and so forth!"

"I can imagine that. I've never had any doubts about Victor Orban. But about us?! In Berlin!"

"We vampires were a dying species. We should have been placed under species protection!" Dracula opened his eyes wide. The face of a madman.

"We vampires don't cut off the heads of babies out of religious delusion!" he now spoke very quietly, very close to my face. I can smell his blood wine. "So spare us your perfidious human morality!"

"But..."

"No! Please no BUTs!" he hisses. His pronunciation became wet.

"Your saliva is like balm on my skin, whiteskin!"

"The V V ensures the continued existence of our race! Do you understand? We were not the ones who processed corpses from the Nazi and Communist concentration camps into soap** and cement***! This perversion, only humans are capable of it!"

"You're not trying to tell me you're the better species, are you?

"Our nature is not contaminated by perverted religious or political ideology!"

I'm gasping for air. Bloodwine smells.

"Didn't they call her the Impaler? How many tortured Sir Whiteskin?"

"That was before my assimilation, stupid! We vampires bite you, suck you dry and you get immortality in return!"

"But I don't want to be immortal!"

"You stupid, simple-minded person. What do you know about immortality? You will never drink the delicious fresh blood of young panicked men and women. Blood," he takes a deep breath, "so thick, so pure. It tastes like fresh Transylvanian forest soil, with a hint of sweat in the finish, sweet, like the exhalations of young menstruating women."

"Sir Whiteskin, with all due respect, I'm afraid you're perverts!"

He waves her hand dismissively. “We have created a complete mess within the federal government.” Now he laughs loudly, laughs until rosé-red tears fall. "He posts extremely diligently on Finstergram and Zwitter, which is now called Iks!"

"I'm afraid I don't understand, Mr. Count."

"Apparently he has no iks! Dracula looks at the other two soulless beings in disbelief.

"Really now?"

"I explain to you that you also understand this: We are occupying Germany."

"?"

"All top performers in your country are being systematically sucked out..."

"...are you from the FDP?" That has to be Paul Panzer or Torsten Sträter.

"With citizen's money we are making people lazy. With the extra free time they are becoming more and more stupid through your omnipresent media. They lie exhausted on filthy sofas, gradually get fat from fast food and allow themselves to be sucked dry without resistance." Dracula smiles at me.

"Fattening people can't be healthy. So that's what you mean by shambles!" How perfidious! Isn't our unemployment minister called Heil? I further ask:

“Almost too beautiful for you to believe. Has there never been a systemic error in your system of controlled infiltration of governments?"

"Only a few." he now answers meekly.

Now I have it! His arrogance crumbles.

"Please? Can Sir Whiteskin explain that too?"

"Admittedly. There are a few vampires who are out of control, evading any control by the V V. Let's put it this way: A few old men are out of control in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and America at the moment! Tedemocrats and Tictators alike!"

"I assume his name in America is Donald. In Russia..."

"...just be quiet!" he interrupts thin-skinned. "Every superior model of existence also has a few small weaknesses."

"IS that so? Then the balance of perversion between humans and vampires is balanced. Does that mean, conversely, that these manipulated people, these out-of-control dispots, are immortal?"

"You underestimate our possibilities, human. They have been neutralized and are no longer vampires. They simply do not correspond to our statutes!"

"Neutralizing is ambiguous in the human thought structure, especially in politics. In other words, the tyrants are alive! What do you mean by neutralizing?"

Dracula shows me a photo:

NSV, also known as Neutralization Station for Vampires.

"This is a car wash. What next?"

"It's not just a boring car wash, stupid!!! We have modified the technology and can use it if necessary."

"That means?"

"Vampires who violate the V V statutes are neutralized here. This is a neutralization station for vampires, also called NSV. They lose their immortality."

My goodness, I think on the verge of fainting, I've wandered into a political thriller!!! That's not true, tell me that's not true.

"That's the only reason you're here, human! It was our colleague's wish. Germany plays a key role in correcting our misfortunes!"

I don't collapse, but instead I laugh stupidly, on the verge of losing my mind.

"You already know the results of the current PISA study, yes? The state of the Bundeswehr, the bureaucratization madness, the radical left-wing expropriation fantasies, the right-wing radical pied pipers, the empty-headed producers of politicians! Yes? Tell me that you know about it! What could I, a Traveler, do about it? WHAT?

I lose my composure, grab Dracula by the collar, shake his bleached, smelly body. He has dandruff. I regain my senses and straighten out his disheveled shirt. I laugh manically. The Count turns to Teflon and the nameless woman.

"What idiot did this hopeless labor minister send us? We should fire him and let him receive citizen's benefit!" Now it's the Count who stares in disbelief. Then:

"You're here to report it!" he hisses at me.

"So you don't want to assimilate me?"

"God forbid! You smell so bad with your eco-choking Weleda aftershave! Even a cockroach wouldn't nibble on you!"

Which God does he mean?

"You should report about it! Write everything down in your travel diary! Before you get back to Germany! Did you understand that?"

"Why before my return trip?"

"Because you'll be neutralized as soon as you land again!"

"Ha! I don't want to die yet!"

"I can reassure you! Your memories of what happened to you here in Romania will be neutralized. Like with MIB." He probably means the film with Will Smith. The nameless one interrupts our dialogue and says:

"Darling, we can explain it to him here. He'll forget everything anyway."

"Correct!"

He shows me another photo.

**** Vampire high tech.

"We use thought neutralizers in hotels, airports, train stations, judiciary, authorities. You only remember what we allow."

I've always suspected that about the authorities, the thing about thought neutralizers. An ingenious system.

“Why do you think the construction of the Berlin airport took so long to complete?”

I just shrug my shoulders. Stare around.

“The neutralizers. The commissioning was too early, confusing the engineers and technicians.”

I suddenly understood: “Like Stuttgart 21.”

"That's right, boy." Dracula turns to Teflon, waving his right hand. “Bring that smelly fellow back.

You're letting me go?! With everything I've learned now?"

"Go ahead! Publish your knowledge. Everything is going according to plan. You've lost your chance at immortality. But here's another souvenir for you!" Dracula hands me an envelope with the two photos he showed me shortly before.

"Let's go, Hilde!"

Dracula called the Nameless Hilde. Like Paul Panzer!

For some reason I can't open the envelope.

"That's only possible," he calls over his shoulder as he walks, "after you return to Old Germany!"

I'm relieved that he's leaving and swear my eternal loyalty to Weleda's aftershave. But his voice is really cute.

Teflon takes me back to Bucharest at breakneck speed, past the Catedrala Patriarhala, to the former caravanserai, with the gigantic restaurant Hanu Lui Manug, where our group can enjoy their farewell dinner this evening.

*V V is the political organ of the United Vampires, based in Bucharest.

** Nazi Germany processed people murdered in concentration camps into soap in Romania.

*** Under communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu, murdered political prisoners were turned into cement.

**** Photo: Tobias Rehbein, Pixabay