Sporkula!

When I mention my writing at work, the most common assumption is that I am working on a comedy, because I crack wise a lot. So, when they find out it is a spy thing or a vampire thing, they are surprised.

Honestly, the spy thing surprised me too, but vampires make sense because while not really an obsession, the have figured in my dreams a lot, and that is where I get a lot of my ideas. This is also completely logical, because my worst fears fit in nicely with vampires.

It started with a mild phobia of being bitten that I had growing up. I was not scared of animals in general, but any time it looked like a dog was going to bite, or any animal, or even my younger sisters (it’s been a long time, but they did fight dirty back in the day), I would go into this irrational panic. It wasn’t debilitating, but it bugged me. I never mentioned it to anyone until I was in I think my junior year of high school, when I admitted it to my mother. She immediately wondered aloud whether it was because of Prince.

Prince was a dog that my family had when I was born. When I was brought home from the hospital, and laid down for a moment, he tried to eat me. No real damage was done, though we no longer had a dog after that. I had always known about the incident, but I had never made the connection. Suddenly, it made sense. I don’t really know that this was the origin, but it was logical. Probably all I saw was teeth, which could account for the fear being of bites and not dogs. In a development that would make Freud proud, that was the end of my phobia. Understanding it ended it. But the nightmares had already happened.

The first was the worst nightmare I have ever had. I was six, and I was scared of the dark. Well, I did not want to be moving around in my room in the dark. I shared a room with my older sister, and we had agreed to alternate turning off the lights at bedtime, but I would often try to get out of it on my nights by pretending to already be asleep. I had outsmarted myself this time because I went to bed without my teddy bear, Karen, and once the light was off I could not go and get her. (I was six, okay. It only gets worse if we get into Karen’s origins.)

So though I was not completely comfortable, I did fall asleep, and I dreamed that I was in the gym at school, with my sister and all the neighborhood kids, and a bunch of others, and a vampire burst in. In a move that I know came from watching Scooby Doo, I jumped into my sister’s arms. She dropped me and ran away, leaving me to face the vampire alone. (I know it was a dream, but she totally would have done that in real life too.)

This woke me up, or so I thought. I was in my bed in our dark bedroom, but the vampire was looming over me still. I screamed and dove under the covers, waiting for parental aid. No one came. I asked my mother about that the next morning. She had heard something, but she thought it was my younger sisters so she checked on them, didn’t find anything, and went back to bed. Scarred for life, I tell ya’.

Anyway, I suppose there were other thoughts and dreams, but the main notable one happened in ninth grade. I was with my family and we were driving along this mountain road near sunset and had some car trouble. Someone stopped and talked to us, and my instincts told me he was a vampire. To check, I tried looking at him using the car mirror, but I saw his reflection just fine, so okay. We went on to town, but suddenly things started getting weird and everyone was under the mind control of this guy, who was in fact a vampire, and there were burning red fingerprints where he had grabbed my arm.

This was not a wake-up screaming nightmare. I’m not sure if I have had any of those since I was six. It was just an eerie feeling all day type of nightmare, mainly because it was bugging me that I saw his reflection. Then I had my super-smart breakthrough.

The reason vampires are not supposed to have reflections is that they don’t have a soul, and the reflection was tied in with the soul. That is not how reflections work; it’s a light refraction thing. But this is not about physics.

Anyway, I toyed with this a lot, and started working on a story—not with much dedication, but it was kind of always there. It took a different shape when I was in college, and then I realized that it was kind of trite. That wasn’t good, so I made a library trip and checked out some books and read a whole slew of vampire stories. I dreamt that night, and while my dream was inspired by the stories, it was still my own thing and it fixed the story and made it much more interesting.

Other changes and adaptations have taken place. I think I pretty much have it down now. That was actually the first screenplay that I started, but I have not finished it, and if I am focusing on things to sell, I am not sure I want to hand that one off. It would be really easy to make it lurid and cheapen it, and at this point I don’t really trust anyone else with it. I mean, I have been working on it for twenty years now, in a manner of speaking. And honestly, it has changed a lot. Nothing is really left of the dream, though those images may pop up somewhere else, but the reflection thing is still important, and the story that has taken its place is more mature and intriguing.

I do have one other vampiric fear, and that is an aversion to people who suck the life out of you. Going by the nine personality type model as put forth by Daphne Rose Kingma, I am a people pleaser. I want to make people happy, and do things for them. There is another type, called the attention seeker, that really want your attention and focus and maybe praise but sometimes they will take insults just don’t ignore me. I have gotten drawn in with these people, and what happens is that you try and try to fill the hole, but you can’t. They always want more, and will suck you bone dry and then continue sucking because that is what they do. They suck. Metaphorically.

Over time I have developed an aversion to them, when I can’t barely manage to be nice because I am too busy plotting my escape route. Perhaps it is wrong of me, but all I can say is “You shall not feast on me!” (Scrubs reference.)

So vampires are always a theme for me. The twenty-year project is actually a trilogy with a spin-off television series, one of my completed short stories is vampirish, though not exactly, and there are lots of things I have never put to paper (or hard drive) but I have still thought. And there are things I prefer about them to other monsters. Zombies are just gross, but vampires leave a good-looking corpse and usually you don’t turn at once so you have a chance to fight it. I like that better than the whole werewolf one bite and you are eternally cursed thing.

I just remembered one other vampire dream. Based on who was in it, I must have already been in college, so I was already after the bite phobia. Vampires were taking over (as they do) and some of us who were out at night had scattered to hide. One guy was missing when we got back together, and when he came back I was so relieved that I gave him a hug, but it wasn’t enough, so I hugged him again harder and kissed him.

Of course, he wasn’t my boyfriend, who got mad, and was probably going to end up cooperating with the vampires, but forget that part. Just go hug someone you are glad to see, whether or not they have recently escaped from vampires.