the hallway, Alexandra and her friends walked graciously on their stiletto heals, with their elongated limbs, elegant like a bunch of Siamese cats, casting their stretched angular shadows.
‘’Alexandra!’’
She turned around and stopped, and Obadiah could see that the smile she had for her friends disappeared once she saw him. He walked to her.
‘’Alexandra.’’ He didn’t really have any idea what to say to her. ‘’Can we go somewhere where we can talk?’’
‘’No. Not anymore.’’
‘’You’re still mad at me ‘cause of that movie?’’
‘’No, Obi, it was never about the movie, it was about you.’’ She looked him directly in the eyes through the net of her curled eyelashes to make sure he understands her words. ‘’About your derision of everything normal and ordinary… Isn’t it ordinary to give in to a little fantasy, however stupid it is? Or to go to college, to have a job, to live and love life? To care?’’ Obadiah didn’t answer anything, he just stared away, in one spot.
‘’Not for you, I guess’’, she said, and allowed sentimentality to push some tears in her eyes. ‘’If you keep going against the world, Obi, the world will crush you.’’ Again, Obadiah stood silent.
‘’My friends are waiting for me.’’ She couldn’t stop her hands from fixing his wrinkled shirt collar one last time, then she turned around, and walked away with her friends.
‘So, that’s it’, inner monologued Obadiah: ‘I’m on my own again.’ Alexandra is free to waste her time on giggling with her friends, on college, and other ‘normal and ordinary’ things. College is a waste of time for Obadiah, in day and age when all knowledge can be googled out. ‘It’s better this way, we were just slowing each other down.’ But, he couldn’t shake off the feeling of loss. Alexandra is not going to come around anymore. He will not smell her perfume again. Or touch her hair.
Great, immeasurable loss.
Maybe, she’s right. Maybe, Obadiah missed the point. And maybe, Francis is right too. Maybe, he really does need help. Five years ago, Obadiah was twenty, and thought that in five years he’ll be god of dices and decks. Now, he hopes that in five years gambling will make him somebody. But, he might be wrong. It might make him a thirty year old nobody. But, it’s not like he has much choice. It’s either this, or four, five years of some free state college, or a shitty job, or he can go to the closest New York city bridge and take a nosedive from it. There’s another option. He can reconnect with his Church, and they would probably find him a place to be, and send him around to share Watchtowers, and preach the Word of the Lord, and warn people of the endtimes.
While his thoughts were swarming in this state of hopelessness, he found himself standing – in the vicinity of the University – across the street from old communist Drastamat Derdzak. The professor was standing in the circle of A4 paper sheets scattered around him. The wind, insecure grip of his aged hands, or some passer-by’s elbow, caused him to accidently drop his folder on the concrete. It was not a simple task for a man of his proportions to bend down.
Obadiah walked across the street, picked those papers up and handed them to Drastamat.
‘’There you go, professor.’’ This ‘professor’ made Drastamat mistake Obadiah for a student. He shook Obadiah’s hand thanking him.
‘’Thank you so much, young colleague, mister…’’
‘’Obadiah Spelter.’’
‘’Mr. Spelter.‘’ He thanked 'Mr. Spelter' again, and continued on his way. Reluctant at first, Obadiah caught up with him.
‘’There's something I need to ask you, professor.‘’
‘’Oh? Please do, Mr. Spelter.‘’
‘’About those parasites you mentioned today, mind-controlling ones, can they infect humans?’’
‘’Liver flukes, yes. Flukes are flatworms that infect mammals, they live of the blood they take from the liver.’’ Feed on blood?! The dots connected themselves. Francis's vampire is a flatworm.
‘’Can they...‘’, stuttered now visibly unnerved Obadiah: ‘’Can they make you see things?!’’
This question confused Drastamat. ‘’What kind of things?’’
‘’Evil things.’’
Drastamat laughed to this shaking his head. ‘’No, of course not... Mr. Spelter, rest assured that we humans are the apex of the evolutionary ladder, we control, nothing controls us.’’
‘’Yeah, but‘’, Obadiah continued to stagger: ‘’Life progresses, it changes, right?! That's what evolution says, it evolves yes?!’’ Drastamat nodded. ‘’Maybe, the parasite evolved to such extent, that it’s able to somehow influence us with bigger brains?!’’
‘’Highly unlikely.’’ Drastamat took a good look of this unsettled young man, and 'realized' what this is about. It has happened to Drastamat before. The truths that science speaks often deeply offend some people.
‘’Are you a religious person, Mr. Spelter?’’
‘’I... I was raised by Jehovah's Witnesses, but I don't exactly go to church... I mean, we, they don't even have churches...’’
‘’Never mind that, Mr. Spelter, what I'm asking you is, do you believe in the ideas – however vague they may be – of good and evil?’’
‘’I guess... Don't everyone?’’
’’No, Mr. Spelter, only we, we with 'bigger brains'.’’ He quoted Obadiah's words from above. ’’Nature doesn't recognize good and evil, morality and perversion, we do. And if there is one thing in nature that fits our idea of evil, then it’s parasites. But, the truth is, it’s just another attempt of survival, by the work of automatism. No consciousness of good and evil there, or love and hate.’’
‘’Such demonic creatures…’’
‘’They have no knowledge of what they are doing to their hosts. To think anything else would be irrational.’’
Irrational or not, the dots kept connecting themselves. Francis’s vampire has gotta be some sort of new mutated liver fluke that he got from raw mollusks he ate. One that’s able to make his brain project the image of his desires and keep control of him in such way. Obadiah forced a smile on his face, thanked Drastamat, and parted ways with him.
But, maybe, what happened to Francis is nothing new and mutated. People have been ‘seeing’ vampires for thousands of years, digging out graves, and decapitating corpses. Just maybe, all those people were infected with the same parasite as Francis. So, parasites have no knowledge of what they are doing, fine. But, what if, the vision of vampires is an attempt of human organism to communicate to the brain that there’s something inside of it drinking its blood. Hence the hallucinations of blood drinking monsters. A Jungian reflex. Drastamat would laugh to this, Obadiah knows that, but this theory is not crazy as it sounds. If the parasite is releasing chemicals that are inhibiting the feeling of pain, the organism would have to find another way to communicate to the brain that there’s something inside doing him damage.
Yes.
YES.
Obadiah sat down on the curb with thoughts storming in his head. And they just kept coming. Francis’s projected vampire is not a boogie-man, like those of before. It’s desirable, sexually appealing. And in general, vampires today are associated with sex drive. How to explain this? Obadiah has an idea. He remembered seeing an interview with Stephenie Meyer – woman that wrote ‘Twilight’– in which she said how inspiration for her novels came from a dream she had in which she fell in love with a vampire. The same Jungian reflex misinterpreted in a completely new way. Instead of traditional misinterpretation of vampire visions as dead coming back to life, she turned it into a sexual fantasy. This, of course, means that Stephenie Meyer has liver fluke. And now, thanks to her, who knows how many people with liver flukes are fornicating with their subconsciousness. Because of a fuckin’ flatworm.
Obadiah has to do something about this. He has to tell the world. He got up off the curb, and disappeared between tall buildin
gs of New York City.
***