A Danse Macabre
by Cynical Chaos
A/N: Because I have to much time on my hands, it's way too damn early in the morning, so late that I can't really call it night anymore, and cause Demons And Wizards is just such a great band.
Through human history, disaster has visited the whole of the species in one form or another with the Black Plague as the foremost remembered disease out of many that washed across the face of Europe. Though the disease itself has long laid dormant and nigh extinct since the late 1400's, the horrific memories of fields of dead and damned lying rotten in mass shallow graves, or worse, the scorched flesh stink of their ashes still remains indelibly etched into the memories of many. A less known fact is that man's nearly absurd fear of rats has much to do with that epoch of mortal time. Though many claim to hate rats, only a true suriphobe would run screaming from a single clean domesticated rat held securely in another's hand. Though many fears can be overcome in small distant doses, even those of the staunchest fortitude would be reduced to a quivering mass when overrun by a hundred rats. The irony is, however, that the rats or rodents of your choice wouldn't even have to be present for such a reaction to occur. The mere sound the claws scritching through walls would drive any man mad. This has less to do, I think, with the animals themselves and more with what they represent. After all, was not nearly half of Europe killed by such creatures? True, it was the diseases that they carried that claimed the majority of the lives, but when have great panicked masses of humanity ever stopped to rationally think anything out?
Many of today's scientists have claimed that men and women are pack animals with an instinctive need seek out others of their kind for, if nothing else, the sake of their sanity. These men and women of such simple narrow views have compared humans to other pack creatures such as wolves or horses, indeed, any creature that habitually travels in groups of more that two or three. The sad madness of this view is, aside from insulting a great many beasts who are otherwise quite noble, humans in groups of more that ten or twelve quickly lose their sense of self and begin to act as others of their herds for no other apparent reason than to blend in. A fear common to all sentient mortal beings is the utter dread of appearing different, of being an outcast or outsider. It is a fear, I note, that directly relates to a human's need to be with other humans.
However, to those who are reading my sad little treatises of bitter cynical rants driven half-deranged from boredom or whatever passes for such in this sad little prison of mine, to those who know me or have claimed so, here is my point (one that you should find most interesting, Director Hellsing) : The greatest strength of the True Undead, of the Strigoi, the Vrykoklas, of the demonic blood sucking homophages is not their strength, their speed , their command over the human mind. Their greatest strength is that those who truly rule the night are those few vampires who have taken the time to study humanity and all the fears of their prey. A herd will flee when a wolf attacks, but it is a trained, patient cattle dog, not some slavering howling lunatic, who can force and, ultimately, form the herd to his whim. The most powerful vampires are not the cruel overlords or warlords of dukes or princes that take what they please and damn what's left. The strongest, cruelest, most brilliant of my undead brethren are the accountants, the businessmen, the milkmen, the unnoticed faceless beings who can only be described by their duty. They are unassuming and invisible, and it is these out of all vampires who have attained the very thing that has tied us to humanity and acts as our greatest weakness: they have been completely taken into the heart of humanity. They do not pass as human, they do not act as humans, they do not use any manner of magic or sorcery to confound and befuddle the senses. Through patient effort, trial and error, through a brilliant use of their immortal lives, they can do as they please. Humans, to these few, cease to be prey and death and become instead as threatening and as nourishing as a precut, fully prepared steak. They fear no stake nor cross, for they are nobodies of no harm to anyone and it is they who control the very heartstrings of men. A silly little paper pusher who suddenly transforms into a squirming, writhing squeaking mess of disease ridden blood crazed rats? Who would survive such a sight unscathed? If you were to walk down an alley that has for ages uncounted acted as your shortcut to home and found it filled with a darkness so thick that it filled you throat and nostrils, whose walls and exits are suddenly so far away that distance no longer matters? A million silent deaths with eight legs and two too many pincers?
The simplest, basic fears of humanity have fallen into the hands of predators who have nothing but time.
A/N: Next is werewolves.