Dream Gets

ley’s book. And Godzilla’s people told me he was on location and couldn’t be reached, so I’d have to save him for later.

Most of the time, you see these… well, monsters sucking someone’s blood or stomping Tokyo to death, which may get them the publicity and notoriety that feeds their public image. But I started to wonder, what if I sat down with them over lunch and had a civilized interview? Learned their origin stories ~ probably far less melodramatic than those pumped out by Marvel and DC ~ and generally used my interest in the man behind the monster mask, not to mention my immodest charm, to really get to the soul of these characters?

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Dreaam Gets

I was able to start with the Count. He is resting between appearances and available. His background is pretty murky. We all know Bram Stoker based Dracula on medieval warlord Vlad “The Impaler” Tepes, about whom there’s a lot of story but little reliable source.

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Count Dracula, however, appears fully formed and dressed for a night at the opera when we first see him. For some reason, he wants to leave Transylvania and his castle full of black mold and ex-wives for the UK. He could have hired a cleaning crew and a lawyer to settle his divorces, but where he lives in Eastern Europe,

Dream Gets they still have a thing about vampires and don’t hesitate to dig up their recently dead to stake them or burn their hearts.

Why none of the locals went down in his basement, where he sleeps in his coffin (because why?), and drove a stake through his heart to put an end to it for good neither the count nor I understand.

However, he did agree to meet me for dinner and answer my questions as best he could.

“I’m just glad someone wants to hear my side of the story,” he said. Happily, he’d forsworn his white tie and opera cape in favor of an Aloha shirt with a wild flower print, since he’d just come back from Hawaii and a visit with Madam Pele, volcano goddess. “That woman loves to gossip,” he confided, but he wouldn’t tell me who or what they gossiped about. He wanted to talk about himself.

“It’s such a relief to get it all out there,” Dracula told me, sipping his Bloody Mary. “Especially when there are so many fake rumors going around. I know just how Harry and Meghan feel!”

Dracula didn’t set out to be a vampire, he tells me. He was the only son of his father, the late count, and was leading a pretty normal life in a tinpot kingdom surrounded by other tinpot countries where everyone fought with each other and united to fight the Ottoman Empire.

“It was just what you’d imagine. Seven hundred years ago, it was all mud, manure and dirt. No one bathed, and everyone had Transylvania Alzheimer’s ~ they could forget everything but a grudge. So instead of learning to read and write and do math beyond a gradeschool level, like every other kid, I learned to fight.”

He dug into his rare steak. I noted he eats European style to this day, even though he’s been in this country for a hundred-odd years. “So, everyone fought with everyone else. All the time. Just like an Errol Flynn movie, only with real blood and guts! Ha! Didn’t know I was a cineaste, did you? Yes, I love movies. I teach a night course at the New School on the history of film. Well, I have to make a living

Dream Gets

somehow. Those trips to the blood bank don’t pay for themselves. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Vampire.

“It’s a funny story,” he count continued. “You’d think with all the undead roaming around, I’d have gotten bitten by another vampire. Nope.”

He leaned forward. His breath smelled like Altoids, rather than the foul stench of the grave I’d expected. I also noted that he had a faint trace of Dior Pour L’Homme as his aftershave. And his manicure was perfect. No claws on this vampire, no. In fact, he was immaculately groomed.

“You wanna know what did me in?” bodyworkenergetics.com

I nodded my head.

“Fruitcake.”

“Fruitcake?”

“Fruitcake.” He nodded. “Caught the virus from fruitcake. Nasty stuff. You don’t know what’s in there! Some of that dried fruit can be deadly! Always thought one of my enemies would do me in, but it was Aunt Irina’s fruitcake!”

“Fruitcake.” I pondered. I had a lot more questions about fruitcake, but at that moment, the count’s phone buzzed.

“Excuse me, I gotta take this. It’s my agent,” he told me.

While he talked to Bernie, I pondered the deadliness of fruitcake. Somehow, it made a lot of sense, but looking back on it now, I can’t tell you why.

“Well,” Dracula said when he got off the phone. “Looks like Bernie’s got some work for me. Gonna have to take the red eye to the coast. Of course, I go in my coffin. I can sleep in the hold during the day and get into L.A. at dusk.”

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Dream Gets get an executive producer’s credit and enough money to afford a nice basement in Holmby Hills. Oh, and I collect Medicaid and Social Security since I got my citizenship. Not bad for 700 years, right?”

He slipped into his jacket, gave me a Hollywood air kiss and disappeared. It was only after he’d left that I realized I was stuck with the tab.

“What exactly do you do?” I asked.

Dracula dabbed a bit of salad off one of his fangs. “I’m a consultant. I’m a technical advisor on all these glurge teen vampire flicks and whatnot. Need an expert vampire? Gimme a call. I’m retired from in front of the cameras, but I

Helen Chappell is the creator of the Sam and Hollis mystery series and the Oysterback stories, as well as The Chesapeake Book of the Dead . Under her pen names, Rebecca Baldwin and Caroline Brooks, she has published a number of historical novels.