Vampire brains are supposedly amongst the most highly evolved of all brains and so obviously use zebra crossings only at night. You may think this is a non-sequitur but is has in fact been undeniable for generations. After all (all what?) night is the best time for vampires and other creatures with long teeth to cross to the other side.
This reminds me, I had a wisdom tooth pulled out last week
and it felt as if the SAS were breaking down my front door;
the crunching and cracking and splintering penetrated my brain.
Does that mean I have a vampire brain now too?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t disapprove of the vampire lifestyle; some of my best friends are vampires. It’s just that their elastic eyes can be a bit off-putting at parties
as they stretch and dart under tables and chairs
and creep up behind you on long stalks,
look over you shoulder to check what you are drinking. (.05 and all that!)
After all (again!) it is preferable for a vampire to have a good feed of blood products than too many glasses of Merlot and then get behind the wheel (steering!) of a car and cause an accident.
If you are interested, my mother-in-law has wobbly eyes too
but I don’t think she is a vampire because she shops at Safeway’s in daylight hours and I’ve never noticed her biting the grandchildren.
But maybe we’re breeding a new type of vampire
that can tolerate daylight
and even as we speak (although strictly speaking we are not actually here speaking as in ‘using our vocal chords in a mutual exchange’ sort of way) they’re multiplying behind closed doors.
(—But I haven’t really got a mother-in-law;
I made that bit up!)
If you do indeed cross a vampire with a zebra,
you will probably end up with a horse in striped pyjamas
wandering the streets at night looking for blood, seeking whom it may devour (as well as neighing a lot).
Of course the real cliché here is my vampire,
lurking in the text, waiting to ambush and suck the blood out of words
leaving them pale and lifeless in empty graffiti’d stairwells (cliché)
or stretched out on beaches of sand as white as flour (another cliché), lolling back in striped deckchairs and holding those little drinks with umbrellas in them to keep the rain off (the drinks). VAMPIRES JUST DON’T EXIST ANY MORE!
I’ve used a few clichés already (visual as well as verbal) and you hardly noticed, sucked the blood from your brain without you even being aware; ‘Behind closed doors even as we speak and seeking whom it may devour.’
Clichés too (like vampires) wait patiently behind the eyes of friends as they pretend to listen to your conversation,
appear to hang on every word (there’s another!),
but are really waiting to pop out from behind an eyeball and suck yours dry.
I’ve even seen them in crowds waiting at traffic lights,
disguised to look like innocent little children clutching their mothers’ hands
but all the while planning a blood feast with their other little playmates.
I’d advise you to keep away from children’s playgrounds especially but not only during a full moon.
You might be thinking from all this that I’ve got a complex but
you have to agree, life is these days.
In the 1950s, the phrase ‘reds under the bed’ referred to vampires
not to Communists as is commonly believed
and everybody knows that vampires were just biding their time until the fall of the Berlin wall made them fashionable again.
These days (a phrase used here to indicate non-specificity and vagueness in common parlance) vampires (as well as clichés) can appear quite normal (I agree this is another word crying out for analysis on the psychiatrist’s couch WHEN I HAVE TIME!)
and some vampires (keep up now) I believe even wear business suits or dog-collars (those of the religious as well as the S & M variety).
Going forward, the Government of the day (1. obviously not of the night unless they are vampires who have been through the pre-selection process and elected democratically, and 2. fortunately most Governments, apart from Italy post-WWII, last more than one day) will tell you that vampires (or is it clichés, I forget which?) come across the seas in boats and that quote we will decide who comes to this country and I forget the rest unquote, but something about girt by sea and anyway, we should be grateful for living in the best country in the known universe.
It’s clear that Governments (and I use a capital G advisedly) don’t know everything and those boats are really full of clichés impersonating vampires.
But I’m digressing here and I want to convince you that it’s vampire-words,
(upmarket lifestyle timeless iconic words), that suck the blood out of the everyday.
Jehovah worked for the Department of Meaningfulness and spent the day arranging rubber bands in order of importance and colour-coding paper clips. He found this a very satisfying position and hoped one day to be promoted to the Department of Higher Reality hopefully before the new IT legislation was introduced.
He and his wife Astral were unable to have their own children but had just decided to adopt new-born twin vampires to save on babysitters at night.
Astral had a part-time job in the Department of Important Words. Her responsibility was to survey newspapers, speeches by Important People and radio broadcasts and notify the users when they were not employing a sufficient quota of Important Words. This quota had been agreed upon by Important People in the Government at around 3 to 1 Important Words in any one sentence. You will already have realised that I have been guilty of not fulfilling this quota from the beginning of my little lesson and that was why the SAS were breaking down my front door (as well as my teeth) earlier in this story. And why is it that like a heat-seeking missile my tongue keeps exploring the gummy cavity where my wisdom tooth once dwelt? But I do digress.
Jehovah and Astral called their twins Castor and Bollix to represent the duality of human nature. As babies, these two had no teeth as yet and so Jehovah and Astral commonly referred to them as Gummy I and Gummy II.
Therefore I leave you with this conundrum: can vampires be vampires without proper teeth? You be the judge.
