original fiction : The Grey Effect, a breif article, by Seamus Jones
Unbeta'd, breif, and based off a growing, stirring, growling idea that followed me out of a dream.
Any thoughts? Please do share!
When a person turns into a vampire, either by bite or accidental transfusion, they became brilliant. Perhaps this transition, amongst all the others, is a reaction to the loss of the sun. No color looks as bright or as strong under a house lamp when compared to midday where the white bleach of the sun makes everything brighter. The irony of this brilliance of personality and clothing suddenly leaping forwards is what it tries to mask.
Without the light of day, a vampire begins to fade. If a vampire stays to the shadows all colors will dim, as if without sunlight to remind the colors of what they are, the colors forget. At first the skin looses it’s flush, an entirely expected reaction and the most commonly cited characteristic of a vampire in popular culture. Then the hair will darken or grow antique in shade, better suited to ladies in old fashioned photographs then a living person. The longer a vampire remains out of light, even the flicker of a light bulb, the quicker the colors fade away until the remainders are merely shadows. Even clothing, once put on, will begin to fade in the same nature of the vampire itself. The process cannot be halted, merely slowed, by lingering under street lights or in the bright neon flash of store signs.
Like flowers with the passing of the sun, many vampires find themselves (in the deepest of ironies) turning towards any light that they can find. They will pass under them, turn towards them, and huddle around them with the same desperation as moths and flames. It is a deeply instinctual reaction in a creature once human and therefore so deeply, psychologically dependent on light that it’s absence rises a unconscious stirring of fear.
The brilliance of themselves, their personalities, is merely an attempt to hold on to what they knew. Some even go out of their way to wear the most outlandish clothing, in the most brilliant of colors, as often as possible. Most scholars agree that this is a tragic, and yet inevitable, result of vampiric transformation. Although the reason for the fading is not clear and lays more in the realm of metaphysical speculation, it is generally agreed it is a pitiable thing in an otherwise enviably skilled variation on the human species.
Any thoughts? Please do share!
When a person turns into a vampire, either by bite or accidental transfusion, they became brilliant. Perhaps this transition, amongst all the others, is a reaction to the loss of the sun. No color looks as bright or as strong under a house lamp when compared to midday where the white bleach of the sun makes everything brighter. The irony of this brilliance of personality and clothing suddenly leaping forwards is what it tries to mask.
Without the light of day, a vampire begins to fade. If a vampire stays to the shadows all colors will dim, as if without sunlight to remind the colors of what they are, the colors forget. At first the skin looses it’s flush, an entirely expected reaction and the most commonly cited characteristic of a vampire in popular culture. Then the hair will darken or grow antique in shade, better suited to ladies in old fashioned photographs then a living person. The longer a vampire remains out of light, even the flicker of a light bulb, the quicker the colors fade away until the remainders are merely shadows. Even clothing, once put on, will begin to fade in the same nature of the vampire itself. The process cannot be halted, merely slowed, by lingering under street lights or in the bright neon flash of store signs.
Like flowers with the passing of the sun, many vampires find themselves (in the deepest of ironies) turning towards any light that they can find. They will pass under them, turn towards them, and huddle around them with the same desperation as moths and flames. It is a deeply instinctual reaction in a creature once human and therefore so deeply, psychologically dependent on light that it’s absence rises a unconscious stirring of fear.
The brilliance of themselves, their personalities, is merely an attempt to hold on to what they knew. Some even go out of their way to wear the most outlandish clothing, in the most brilliant of colors, as often as possible. Most scholars agree that this is a tragic, and yet inevitable, result of vampiric transformation. Although the reason for the fading is not clear and lays more in the realm of metaphysical speculation, it is generally agreed it is a pitiable thing in an otherwise enviably skilled variation on the human species.