"I don't see people..." said the girl thoughtfully, and slowly she walked from one side of the padded cell to the other. For a long time she stood there, in front of the window, her head framed by tooth-like sawed-off bars. "Not the way you think of seeing them, anyway," she said at last. "For me, the image includes brainpower, thoughtfulness, and most of all..." She stopped for a moment, then looked at the woman, her lips moving slightly in a private, and to some extent cruel, smile.
"Intelligence," she finished.
She moved her hand in a cultured gesture toward the recorder in the hands of the young woman. "Is that on?" she asked. "I want to tell my whole story."
"I am the Vampire Morgendorffer. My hair is darkly auburn, shoulder-length and wavy. My manner is well-thought-out and deliberate, as is my speech. My skin is a pale, delicate peach. My clothes consist of a black pleated skirt, a green jacket, and a dark orange tee shirt. My boots are black, steel toed, and have been known to break bones when needed. My eyes are a dark, midnight black colour.
"My eyes. It is my eyes that have made me the creature I am today. They weren't always black. Two hundred years ago I had normal brown eyes. I was a plain child, born to wealthy parents who didn't care for me, and who foisted me off to whatever willing relative would take me. I was never in one place long.
"Having reached nearly the age that I appear to be now, I eventually went to work as a hired laborer on a farm. What I found there was little better than slavery. Picking worms off tobacco leaves, the hot sun at my back, the other slaves hating me for my wages, pitiful as they were. The one thing I remember being glad of was the lack of whiplashes; the many cruelties inflicted upon the slaves by the plantation owner sickened me.
"For years I toiled under the hellish sun at the plantation, until I saved enough to try my luck elsewhere. I packed my few belongings into a small rucksack and set off to parts unknown.
"I eventually found work as a miner at a coal mine, working for a wily little man named Armand. I soon gained a reputation for being a hard worker. Ironically, they then made me overseer, effectively eliminating me from the labor pool. Little else happened during this period, except for the changing of my eye color from brown to black. I know not what may have caused it; perhaps some unknown chemical in the coal. Who can say?
"Conditions in the mine were gruesome and before long the owner found us striking. When he refused to meet our demands, we overran his estate, imprisoning him and his wife and children in a cellar. My job was to guard them, but to my amazement, the longer I was nearby them, the more lethargic and passive they became. When they did speak, it was of things of no consequence, such as the weather, or current fashions.
"What amazed me even more, however, was the sudden strength that flowed into me! My blood surged through my veins, and I suddenly knew all the secrets of the universe; how far to the next star, what the process of evaporation was, how many licks to the center of a Tootsie Pop. Adrenaline went through my system and I heard the songs of the ancients in my cells. How pathetically inadequate my strung-together adjectives are to describe it! Nothing, no bit of knowledge, no occult trivia, was hidden from me.
"Questioning the prisoners, I found the sorry state of their minds, and realized that it was from their intelligence that my strength came. Their minds atrophied in my presence, while I -- I grew smarter! I knew then that I was indeed a vampire, but a vampire of a different orientation. Not mere blood was my sustenance, but thoughts! For thoughts are the blood of the brain, and my eyes absorbed them as if reading the pages of a book.
"After leaving the coal mine, I contrived to keep my nature a secret. Though some may have expected me to shun mankind from my nature, I laugh at them. What power--what intelligence!--was at hand, and mine for the taking. The collective knowledge of the world, served to me on a silver platter! Nay, I could not resist such an offer.
"I eventually joined this family you see me with now, altering their memories to make them think I had always been with them. The girl, Quinn, had plenty of raw intelligence, but the amount she used was so infinitesimal that I was able to continually feed on her without anyone noticing, least of all herself. The parents seemed much too busy to notice anything...unusual...about their daughters. It was the perfect set-up.
"At first we lived in a town called Highland. I struck up an acquaintance with the two local idiots, whose sophomoric behaviors provided me with entertainment even as I fed upon their vast quantities of unused brainpower. It did not take long for my appetites to grow more exotic, however, and I subtly influenced my adopted parents to move to another town.
"My 'mother', Helen, found a job in another town called Lawndale, and it was there we moved to next. What a banquet awaited me there! What a fertile ground for feeding upon! What an eternal feast! My first day at the high school, I found the average usage of brainpower among the students close to zero. So many people with unused intelligence, all mine for the taking! I knew then that I had found a place I could stay for years.
"The teachers found me a relief from the other students. I nearly always knew the answer, and they often called upon me, thinking me a lifesaver, one of the few students with potential. Little did they know that the source of their problems was what they considered the solution! All these teenagers, with potential that they simply didn't use, became what they were originally by choice: airheads, fashists, people of shallow values and intelligence. I feel no pity for any of them; they chose their path, fools that they are, and I simply made them stick to it.
"After being strengthened by my diet, I began to believe that Jane Lane suspected me. I had long regarded her enviously and felt her magnetic attraction. For although raw brainpower can be taken without being missed, it has not the succulent flavor of refined, trained intelligence. It was knowledge of this sort that I had absorbed from that first family, so long ago; and time had but whetted my appetite for it again.
"At any rate, I thought to nip Jane's suspicions in the bud and one day told her flat-out I would like to have her for dinner at my house. Her parents being the neglectful sort, who often forgot to leave food in the refrigerator, she gratefully agreed. That night we sat at my table, ingesting microwaved lasagna and enduring the inane chatter of my 'sister'. I spent the time admiring the graceful, premeditated movements of my guest, and admiring the fine build of her hands and mouth. She had many thoughts to share, and I intended to fully take advantage of the pleasures both her mind and body could give me, sucking both dry in an ecstasy that little could compete with.
"By dinner's end I had maneuvered my prey into my padded cell, on the pretense that I had some poetry to show her. Being receptive to art of any sort, my guest willingly agreed, and it was while discussing a particular poem that I told her to look into my eyes.
"Her sultry blue orbs locked with my black ones, and I awaited the rush of power that heralded the beginning of the draining, leaving her empty and me strong--when to my astonishment I discovered that I was the one being sucked dry! There was a warm smell of calitas rising up in the air; my head grew heavy and my sight grew dim; and it seemed I heard an eagle singing. I felt a distant pressure and realized it was Jane gripping my shoulders. 'I'm dying,' I shouted. 'Dying. You!' I accused. 'You are...like me!'
"'More so,' she replied. 'For I could suck the brain of Albert Einstein and still have appetite for Newton. I am a mind- vampire, Morgendorffer, and draining thoughts is my nature, even more so than yours because of my vastly greater age. You are raw and untrained. Oh, you are smart enough for the rest of the people in this town, but you must become craftier. You must be taught.'
"From then on we were constant companions and confederates in crime. Jane was my teacher, my mentor, and an ever-ready energizer. She confided to me that she had been born a mind-vampire, and had learned to hone her talent through many hard centuries. In retrospect, Jane's existence as a vampire should have been obvious to me from the start; she was one of the few in this place with any intelligence at all, not to mention the vastness of knowledge accumulated over the centuries.
"Jane taught me how to drain the minds of people so subtly and thoroughly that were aliens to land in this town tomorrow, not a one of the residents would pay any heed to it unless they came wearing the latest fashions. They have all become subverted by popular images, and will follow whatever the television provides for them.
"There is really very little left to tell. The biography of one such as myself is bound to be somewhat bereft of plot. What counts is the baroqueness of prose and details of dress, architecture, and faux French poseur sensibility. With a healthy dollop of double-entendre homoeroticism for those of confused orientation, naturally. Besides, were I to tell you the entire tale, what profit could I reap from future installments?
"But I note that your recorder is about to reach the end of the tape, and that you, yourself, seem to be fading fast. I can only surmise that listening to a tale such as mine, and even the effort to remain absorbed by such an artificial and contrived atmosphere of gothic aspiration, is nothing less than...draining."