LJ Idol Exhibit B: Week 1 - The Lost Dracula Tape
This is my entry this week in the mini-season of therealljidol, Exhibit B. Please read and vote for the many fine entries and definitely throw some support to my partner, florencestoker. This week was an intersection, and we each wrote on a different topic. My topic was "Chillin' Like a Villain." My partner's entry was written on the topic "You Gave Everything You Possibly Could."
I've been in a nostalgic mood lately, and having acquired the software necessary to digitize my old cassette tapes, I've been listening to things I made in elementary school. Back then, I had a clunky black Radio Shack tape recorder that I used to record my own "radio interviews" for my fake radio station, WMLT, as well as audio skits with friends and family. This little gem was one I'd completely forgotten about: in fact, I didn't remember it until my Mom gave me a box full of items she'd recovered from under a loose floorboard in the back of my closet. Along with a dusty Barbie doll with a homemade pixie cut, and a dog-eared copy of the Judy Blume book "Forever", there was this tape, marked only "WMLT Drac. Int. DO NOT PLAY."
A: Hi, I'm here today with the scariest vampire of all time... Dracula!
So, Mr. Dracula, what's it like to be so scary?
D: I prefer to think of it as misunderstood.
A: What's there to understand? You suck people's blood until they die, right?
D: That is a very crude way of putting it. I prefer to think that I am granting people a gift, the dark gift of eternal life.
A: Before you get that gift, you have to die, right?
D: Excuse me. We have not properly been introduced. I know that you are the representative of this radio station, WMLT, but I am a bit confused. I expected somebody a little... older. You seem to be a mere child.
A: I am 10 years old, but I'm in the Gifted Program at school, so that's more like being 12 or 13.
D: Does your mother know you're talking to me?
A: I don't need my mother's permission. This is my radio station, and I call the shots. Are you the boss of me? No, you're not the boss of me.
Now, do you want to continue with the interview or not?
D: Proceed.
A: So where were we? Oh, yes. You suck people's blood, they die and then come back to life, forever damned to be a bloodsucker like you. And then they also have to suck blood and kill people.
Speaking of dying, didn't they kill you at the end of the book?
D: Well, that is what the book says. The book said many things that were inaccurate.
A: Give me an example.
D: The book makes it appear that I had some sort of predatory relationship with Lucy, but the truth is, we were in love.
A: She was in love with a big, creepy guy who smells like a coffin?
D: You have a charming candor about you. I suppose that is the way you see me. You are a foolish little girl. Lucy, however, was a woman with more sophisticated tastes.
A: If you say so. Or maybe you just used magic on her... "Blah, blah! I vant to suck your blood!"
D: I don't say that.
A: Well, it wouldn't matter what you said if you hypnotized her with your gaze, right?
D: It wasn't like that. She was very willing.
A: Right! She was willing after the hypnotizing. Like I said.
Hey, how did you get here? It's the middle of the afternoon. I thought you weren't supposed to be out in the sunlight.
D: A common myth, perpetuated by ridiculous Hollywood movies.
A: But doesn't the sunlight do something to you, like sap your powers?
D: It is true that I am weaker in the daytime.
A: Oh, so THAT'S why you haven't hypnotized me!
D: I have no desire to hypnotize you, delightful though you are. You are a very naive young lady who talks about things of which you have no idea.
A: So back to the book's ending. I thought they put a stake through your chest. I might be young, but I know that kills a vampire.
D: They were cowards, all of them, especially that blowhard American. He deserved his ignominious death. Typical of him, he failed to hit the true mark. While he was making his final speech, I used my last reserves of energy, as the sun's rays grew brighter, to mentally transmit a message to my second love, Mina, that she should tell them all that I was dead. She was the only true witness of that moment, and she told them that a look of peace crossed my face and I was no more. She always lied so beautifully.
A: I thought that part sounded fishy! After all, you're a vampire, so you're damned. There's no peace for you in the afterlife. You wouldn't look peaceful. You'd look as if the fires of hell were burning your eyeballs!
D: Again, with your refreshing candor. Don't tell me you've read such a complicated book already, at your tender age? No wonder you are so confused about the details.
A: I'm not confused. I'm reading well above my reading level. But I never believed that you would be so easy to kill. I mean, you'd survived thousands of years already. Nobody ever figured out who you were before or where your coffin was? It doesn't make sense.
D: This conversation is growing increasingly unpleasant. Can we talk about something else?
A: Sure, I have a question. Did Stoker create you, and if he did, how come you keep showing up in other books, movies, plays, and such?
D: Herr Stoker did bring me to life. That much is true. But I have lived on in the words of others, transmuting like a bat into new incarnations. Their collective words give me power. They are... the life!
A: (pause) So... if we all stop talking about you, then you'd finally die?
D: (longer pause) Um... I must be going.
(SFX: Bat fluttering away)
A: "Blah, blah, I must be going to suck some blood!" (giggle)
D: (from a long distance away) I don't say that.
A: Thanks for joining me for my interview of Dracula, which I'm going to hide in the back of my closet so no one ever hears it. Why give that blood sucker eternal life, right?
WMLT... the Spying Team!
What have I done?
I've been in a nostalgic mood lately, and having acquired the software necessary to digitize my old cassette tapes, I've been listening to things I made in elementary school. Back then, I had a clunky black Radio Shack tape recorder that I used to record my own "radio interviews" for my fake radio station, WMLT, as well as audio skits with friends and family. This little gem was one I'd completely forgotten about: in fact, I didn't remember it until my Mom gave me a box full of items she'd recovered from under a loose floorboard in the back of my closet. Along with a dusty Barbie doll with a homemade pixie cut, and a dog-eared copy of the Judy Blume book "Forever", there was this tape, marked only "WMLT Drac. Int. DO NOT PLAY."
A: Hi, I'm here today with the scariest vampire of all time... Dracula!
So, Mr. Dracula, what's it like to be so scary?
D: I prefer to think of it as misunderstood.
A: What's there to understand? You suck people's blood until they die, right?
D: That is a very crude way of putting it. I prefer to think that I am granting people a gift, the dark gift of eternal life.
A: Before you get that gift, you have to die, right?
D: Excuse me. We have not properly been introduced. I know that you are the representative of this radio station, WMLT, but I am a bit confused. I expected somebody a little... older. You seem to be a mere child.
A: I am 10 years old, but I'm in the Gifted Program at school, so that's more like being 12 or 13.
D: Does your mother know you're talking to me?
A: I don't need my mother's permission. This is my radio station, and I call the shots. Are you the boss of me? No, you're not the boss of me.
Now, do you want to continue with the interview or not?
D: Proceed.
A: So where were we? Oh, yes. You suck people's blood, they die and then come back to life, forever damned to be a bloodsucker like you. And then they also have to suck blood and kill people.
Speaking of dying, didn't they kill you at the end of the book?
D: Well, that is what the book says. The book said many things that were inaccurate.
A: Give me an example.
D: The book makes it appear that I had some sort of predatory relationship with Lucy, but the truth is, we were in love.
A: She was in love with a big, creepy guy who smells like a coffin?
D: You have a charming candor about you. I suppose that is the way you see me. You are a foolish little girl. Lucy, however, was a woman with more sophisticated tastes.
A: If you say so. Or maybe you just used magic on her... "Blah, blah! I vant to suck your blood!"
D: I don't say that.
A: Well, it wouldn't matter what you said if you hypnotized her with your gaze, right?
D: It wasn't like that. She was very willing.
A: Right! She was willing after the hypnotizing. Like I said.
Hey, how did you get here? It's the middle of the afternoon. I thought you weren't supposed to be out in the sunlight.
D: A common myth, perpetuated by ridiculous Hollywood movies.
A: But doesn't the sunlight do something to you, like sap your powers?
D: It is true that I am weaker in the daytime.
A: Oh, so THAT'S why you haven't hypnotized me!
D: I have no desire to hypnotize you, delightful though you are. You are a very naive young lady who talks about things of which you have no idea.
A: So back to the book's ending. I thought they put a stake through your chest. I might be young, but I know that kills a vampire.
D: They were cowards, all of them, especially that blowhard American. He deserved his ignominious death. Typical of him, he failed to hit the true mark. While he was making his final speech, I used my last reserves of energy, as the sun's rays grew brighter, to mentally transmit a message to my second love, Mina, that she should tell them all that I was dead. She was the only true witness of that moment, and she told them that a look of peace crossed my face and I was no more. She always lied so beautifully.
A: I thought that part sounded fishy! After all, you're a vampire, so you're damned. There's no peace for you in the afterlife. You wouldn't look peaceful. You'd look as if the fires of hell were burning your eyeballs!
D: Again, with your refreshing candor. Don't tell me you've read such a complicated book already, at your tender age? No wonder you are so confused about the details.
A: I'm not confused. I'm reading well above my reading level. But I never believed that you would be so easy to kill. I mean, you'd survived thousands of years already. Nobody ever figured out who you were before or where your coffin was? It doesn't make sense.
D: This conversation is growing increasingly unpleasant. Can we talk about something else?
A: Sure, I have a question. Did Stoker create you, and if he did, how come you keep showing up in other books, movies, plays, and such?
D: Herr Stoker did bring me to life. That much is true. But I have lived on in the words of others, transmuting like a bat into new incarnations. Their collective words give me power. They are... the life!
A: (pause) So... if we all stop talking about you, then you'd finally die?
D: (longer pause) Um... I must be going.
(SFX: Bat fluttering away)
A: "Blah, blah, I must be going to suck some blood!" (giggle)
D: (from a long distance away) I don't say that.
A: Thanks for joining me for my interview of Dracula, which I'm going to hide in the back of my closet so no one ever hears it. Why give that blood sucker eternal life, right?
WMLT... the Spying Team!
What have I done?