October 28th

NIKOS’ BIRTHDAY

(with a roar from the vomitorium)

PARASITES!! All of you. Fucking parasites.

(stepping slowly into the audience with the elegance of decay comes the vampire--skin pale and tight on his frame, eyes aflame:)

I wonder if any of you ever gave serious thought to what it might be like to be a real

vampire. I mean an honest to God blood-sucking fiend from Hell. That’s what I am. My living is death, without the pretence. Without the shame. Call me a metaphor.

(he laughs)

Its exciting to me to feel so much blood, so many cattle collected into one room. I don’t just hear your hearts beating, I can feel it, even smell it, a hundred hearts all pounding a single rhythm in my head....I am what you call supernatural.....what do you think that means? That I exist beyond nature? No, I am what you think you are. I am more natural than nature itself. You. You, there. 21? 19? You have maybe eleven years of memories worth a damn. What are they? Your dog? Your parents? First kiss? First fuck? I remember sitting in a prisoner camp during the Civil War! I remember reconstruction. World War One. World War Two. I have over one hundred and fifty years of memories. Memories of things you can’t possibly imagine. I have watched America in her "rise to glory" from a third rate back woods country to the most powerful nation on Earth. There is a lonliness that comes with power, and from that a bitterness that seems to justify everything. Every night for one hundred and fifty years someone has died to keep me alive. To keep me young and healthy and beautiful. To keep me powerful.

(pause)

There are only two things that make me different from you.

The first is that I look into that person’s face before I kill them.

The second is -- I’ll live longer.

(lights fade)