The Vampire Count

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. One night, there was one candle. One candle, one flame, in one window, in one cabin with four walls and four windows, total. Three windows without candles and one window with one candle. When I left, after one sun had set and one moon had risen, it had been one cabin with four walls, one door, one roof, and four windows with no candles. One candle was added during my twelve thousand, four hundred and twenty-four step walk. Six thousand, one hundred and two steps out, and six thousand, three hundred and twenty-two steps back because I took the long way.

Ten long, rapid strides to one front door provided me with ten brief moments to hope that maybe, maybe, one huntress had not caught up with her prey. Ten wisps of hope fled from me like ten shadows fleeing from the light of one sun when I threw open the door.

One bag of rice had been spilled onto one dirt floor. Grains of rice, uncounted, lay in front of me. They were everywhere. For fifteen seconds, I railed against the counting. I railed against the one Rule of our kind that affected me most, the one Rule that had made seventy-five years of my frozen youth almost unbearable. One Rule that I could hardly stand, on two feet, against. Because, as one vampire told me, I had fed zero times, and that made me weak.

Fifteen seconds passed, and two hands and two knees were on the ground, my one nose in the grains. Counting up one pile of rice while counting down my remaining seconds of freedom. She waited until the counting had shackled my one mind before she shackled my two wrists. Forty-four grains counted, an excruciatingly unknown number of grains unaccounted for, when one strike to the back of one skull forced the vision in two eyes to go dark.

+++

Two eyes, wide and unblinking, staring at me. The two eyes of a predator watching her prey. Two eyes that understood that the remaining grains of rice were more instrumental to my imprisonment than one decorative shackle. Two nostrils, flared. Two lips in a grimace of disgust. All combined into one face that radiated hate for the one she had turned seventy-five years ago. The one who turned away from her, the one who traveled five hundred times across this country on two feet that had taken far too many steps.

“The counting was always too much for you, wasn’t it? With your weakness, and your absurd dedication to starving yourself, the Rules were always too much for you to handle. But the counting was always the worst.”

This was untrue, as there were at least two Rules that I had a better time with than most. I had walked in sunlight for thirty seconds and suffered minimal scarring, and I had forced myself across at least four rivers while running from her over the past seventy-four years. Regardless, zero words from me yielded one twitching predatory eye, and it took fewer than two seconds for me to accept that this would almost certainly end in violence.

“The counting affects me too, whelp. Do you know how long that took? Can you imagine the time, the attention required to catch you in that rice? I almost lost myself in it. But then,” two lips pulled back in a smile, presenting a little more than fourteen of thirty-two gruesome teeth, “I am well fed. The Rules don’t apply to me quite as much as they apply to you, do they? Now, are you willing to behave?”

Five seconds was all it took for her to lose patience with my silence. Her three footsteps were quick as lightning, and her one palm was thunder across my cheek.

Towering over me at almost six feet, she continued. “Ungrateful, rotten child!”

A second slap, four arias of pain swelling to a crescendo on my second cheek.

“Spoiled child, who has never appreciated what I provide! I found you, sickly, alone, and dying in an alley. I saved your life! And how do you repay me?” One breath that lasts an eternity. “By refusing to eat at my table. Leading me on this wild goose chase across the country! Seventy-four years, brat. Seventy-four years! But of course, you must know that better than I.”

She bent down and grabbed me under my chin, lifting me up more than five feet to her two eyes.

“Well, I have caught you, ungrateful one. You thought these forests, these mountains, this country would challenge me? Child, I have roamed these lands for thousands of years. By now, I am this country.”

She squeezed tighter, working her four fingers and one thumb into my jaw, forcing my mouth open. “I am the country, and my table is the land. And our food is those who live off of it.” I hit the ground in a series of four impacts. Two for my feet, one for my shoulder, one for my head. “Our food,” she pointed one finger, “is right over there.”

One body huddled in one corner of one cabin with four walls, four windows, one candle, and two vampires.

“It was certainly hard enough to find him. This...hovel...really is in the middle of nowhere.” Seventy-four years to find this place, two months spent here, and she was undoing it all in two evenings.

“This is how it’s going to go,” seven words that filled me with more dread than I had ever experienced, “I’m giving you a choice. Either eat at my table, and drink of this man’s blood, or I will drink him dry. You can save him, I only require that you taste. Otherwise, his life is forfeit.”

Two choices, become a monster or become a murderer. She turned her back to me and took one step.

“Another thing. Every time you refuse, I’ll find another meal to bring to the table. Younger, healthier, more alive, with each refusal. Eat at my table, or become a killer.”

One human cried in one corner. One vampire reveled in her triumph. One vampire descended into panic. One candle flickered out and died.

+++

A new candle was lit, and one man was on two knees in front of me. My two nostrils immediately picked up the scent of fresh blood, and hunger pangs ravaged me. One red line ran down from his elbow to the dirt floor, a drop falling every one half of one minute.

Three breaths in and three breaths out, rapidly, were barely keeping the hunger at bay. Keeping blood out of my mouth was one task I could manage, but could I maintain that fight with two, or even three, assaults on my attention? She could strike with one of two hands at any time, and I was keenly aware that one handful of rice in front of my two eyes could completely overwhelm my ability to focus.

Would the Rules, the Rules she forced on me by feeding me two cups of her tainted blood, cause me to break the one rule I had chosen for myself?

“It has been the better half of a century and I have grown, reasonably, impatient.” One voice behind the man that seemed, at first, bodiless. Soon, four limbs, one head, and one torso stepped into the light of one candle that had been relit. “What will it be?”

I had no idea how I was going to save myself, let alone myself and one other. Three rapid breaths in and three rapid breaths out became four as stress began to take over. One life was at stake. Was the pride of one undying life worth it? I sensed that I had less than two minutes to make any number of moves, but all I could focus on were three beads of sweat trailing down my back. All I could grasp with eight fingers and two thumbs were my ceremonial shackles. All I could do was take four rapid breaths in and four rapid breaths out.

“Well?”

The man made three noises that sounded like sobs. If he tried to make an appeal to her, my two ears could not hear it over my third inhale and exhale.

One man was about to die, and I thought the three individuals in the one cabin all knew it.

He drew two lines, one vertical and one horizontal, in the dirt. One cross, drawn in the dirt, to fend off one vampire, or two. Two lips began to whisper "Hail Mary". In my experience, prayer had saved zero lives. I doubted the three lines he managed to utter would save his one.

She laughed twice and took four steps towards the man.

“I met a priest who tried to keep me at bay with a cross,” two swipes of her foot erased one holy symbol from one dirt floor, “a real cross.” Her four fingers and one thumb gripped many dark hairs, and she pulled up a man who should have at least thirty years of life left in him. Soon he would have zero.

“Please,” I heard him say, fewer than ten seconds left in his life, “please. I have a family. A wife and daughter.”

“You know what I think?” She bore two fangs after she asked this one question, ignoring the content of his plea. “I think he lacked conviction.” With that, a little more than one gallon of blood was consumed in under two and one half minutes.

“The meal’s family must have hidden when I retrieved it. No matter, I’ll find his daughter, and we can try again tomorrow evening.”

+++

One man was dead, and his passing forced a conclusion upon me. There were only two possible outcomes: I escape, or I die. I would not live as a murderer, especially as the murderer of an innocent child. I had accepted that the man’s death was beyond me but, if I remained in the cabin for nine more hours, night would fall, and another victim would be claimed. In that event, one good slam was sure to crack my skull into at least two pieces and splatter my brains onto the wooden wall. With this in mind, I also concluded that one outcome was clearly superior to the other.

The night's events left me with one other conclusion, as well. I considered the remaining two members of the broken family, a mother and daughter. Broken, yes, but still one family. A father, a mother, and a daughter were one family. A mother and a daughter were still one family, in mourning.

Five words make one sentence. Four walls, one roof, one door, and one dirt floor make one cabin. One wick, one pillar of wax, and one flame make one source of light. Seven links make one shackle. Two wrists, and an unknown number of uncounted grains of rice, make one prisoner. Four limbs, one head, and one torso make one body. Two eyes and two fangs make one threat.

Several Rules, including one compulsion to count and one weakness to sunlight, combine to form a punishment for a crime that is almost never willfully committed. These Rules affected two vampires in one cabin, though they affected the vampires to varying degrees.

Different pieces and parts combine to form one whole, and one whole is made of different pieces and parts.

I made one plan. I decided to break down one whole into pieces and parts, and combine other pieces and parts into one whole.

I waited until there were fewer than ten minutes before day break, and I made my way to the threshold of the cabin. I stopped just short of the forty-four grains of counted rice, the uncounted rice already pulling at my mind.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Six words in the form of one incredulous question.

“I have never been stronger than you but, on good days, I am seven steps faster. And if I separate the Rules into their constituent pieces, you'll find I really only struggle with the one counting Rule. With the sun rising in less than three minutes, I suspect those seven steps will put a greater distance between us than you imagine.” I raised my two eyes to her predatory gaze. “As you have pointed out, I have fed zero times, but I don’t need the blood. I have one thing that will keep me ahead, that will keep me safe from you.”

“And what’s that?”

Struggling to keep enumeration out of my response, I replied, “conviction.”

I thanked the dead man in my head, and offered one silent prayer to the preacher whose faith had failed him, though I suspect my seven words did not reach two divine ears.

I turned my back to her and kept my eyes on the forty-four grains I had already counted.

Combining disparate pieces, I said aloud, “There are two piles of rice here,” and, with everything accounted for, I took one step into the burning, scorching sunlight. Into pain and freedom.

+++

Strictly speaking, it is unclear how long a vampire can last in sunlight, though my experience indicates that fifteen minutes represents one possible upper limit. To count how many times I was burned was impossible, as it all felt like one, infinite searing. But, those fifteen minutes got me to a cave that was well off any beaten path. I used two rocks as a hammer and anvil to remove my symbolic shackles and tried to maintain consciousness until the sunlight was obscured by a cloud. Once I was able, I furthered my distance from her and the cabin.

One hundred years have passed since the day I escaped into sunlight. One hundred years since she last caught up to me, and I realized recently that she has been out of my life far longer than she was ever in it. I do not know if my one victory over those few nights demoralized her, or if she simply lost my trail, and I do not care. One hundred years of peace is not something I wish to challenge.

I have spent this one century learning and growing, improving the techniques of combining and dividing disparate parts in order to make the counting more…tenable. It is still difficult, but I am getting better. On good days, I can make one statement in three without enumeration. On bad days, the other Rules affect me almost as badly as the one counting Rule, and I am forced to avoid rivers, garlic, crosses, and the sun.

I have consumed zero ounces of blood in the one hundred and eighty-nine years of my life. One vampire told me that I was weak for it, but fifteen minutes in sunlight showed me that I am strong. Seven nights out of the week, I tell myself that I could escape her again, if I had to. Six nights out of the week, I even believe it.