He sloppily folded his crushed velvet tuxedo, threw it on top of his dresser, and slid into his pajamas. A boring plaid number, but they were comfortable and consistently warm, no matter what cold, dark recess of the dresser they had dwelled in. Perfect for a nice, long sleep. It was 9:30am and he had earned it.
He’d just come back from a particular difficult night of fighting crime.
It had been months since he’d worn his pajamas to bed. For hundreds of years he promised that he’d never get so lazy to sleep in his crushed velvet tuxedo every night, yet that’s how things had ended up. The tuxedo was as comfortable as a hug after all, and with its multiple pieces, it took a good amount of effort to put on and take off. It was a uniform made for men with plenty of time. Not the normal attire for the year it was, 1984, but he’d given up on living the normal life of a man. He wasn’t a man at all, actually.
He was a Dracula. The 7th to be exact.
And he was brutally heartbroken.
Woe was him. His name was Woe. He was also very sad.
He had become the 7th Dracula exactly 60 years, 364 days, 12 hours, and 59 minutes ago. He hadn’t been around long enough to stop keeping exact count the way his predecessor had by the time they had met. In fact, he still had a good 120 years before he reached his predecessor’s years of service.
His predecessor, a Dracula by the name of Lestat, had told him to stop keeping track of the minutes and hours and days. He warned him that he’d go mad if he did this, though it was perfectly understandable that he did. He gave Woe many different warning throughout his training, as was his job. To pass the torch. To ensure Woe was well equipped for his job as Dracula.
Lestat had been a great mentor. No one, not even Woe could argue that, however, that wouldn’t stop Woe from making the grave mistakes that lead him to his current state of loss and agony.
He had made the terrible, no-good mistake, a mistake he was warned about in his training countless times, of falling in love.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, he had made the second most terrible, no-good mistake a Dracula can make as well. A mistake he was also warned of countless times, though, one wonders if he hadn’t been warned about the second mistake, then maybe he never would have even considered even making the first mistake, as if this warning was proof that the other could be broken – the mistake was turning the woman he loved into a vampire.
I say he turned her into a vampire, not a Dracula, and that is for a specific purpose. They are two different things in the same way a square and a rectangle are two different things. The way a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle could never be a square. I will explain all that later. For now, what is most important are the intricacies of what made this broken heart all the more brutal, which lead to the events of this story. The story of the 8th Dracula, the greatest hero the world had ever known.
It all started when Woe turned his love, Emily, into a vampire so he could be with her eternally.
What he did not foresee, is that despite this gift, she would leave him.
This is a story I’m working on based on a side character in my book I’m editing, Lessons in Debaucery. I’d love to hear your thoughts about it. It’s obviously not very far along, but I hope it gives a good indication of what the story is all about. This will be less of a straight comedy than Lessons in Debauchery, but will most likely still have lots of funny elements because I can’t help it.
While Lessons in Debauchery is a sea of one-liners, He was a Dracula, is a heartfelt comedy.
Please give your feedback in the comments section and I’ll keep writing and posting it. I think I’m going to post this exclusively on this blog until it’s done or someone yells at me to stop.
Joe Cabello 