So after about 1000 years or so Dracula has awoken from his slumber. He decides to get an update on what he’s missed in the last millennia, so he enlist the help of a millennial- vampire to help him acclimate to the new scary modern world.
This prompt was found on the subreddit r/writingprompts, here: https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/g6f3ej/wp_modern_update_so_after_about_1000_years_or_so/
“I told you, the sun won’t hurt you that much,” said James.
Dracula still hesitated to leave his crypt. James rolled his eyes.
“Did you put on the sunscreen like I told you to?”
“The ointment you gave me… how do I know it will not harm me?” said Dracula.
“I use it every day, it’s fine. Besides, we’re vampires – vampires have to stick together, right?” said James.
Dracula considered this for a moment. Then he nodded. He opened the bottle of sunscreen and began putting it on his arms, his neck, his face – anywhere that wasn’t covered by his old, worn tunic.
James took a quick look back the way they had come; he couldn’t hear any footsteps, so no one had followed them – good.
“Have you eaten yet?” he asked.
Dracula looked up from his work as he set the bottle of sunscreen down.
“I have not,” he said.
James saw the hunger lurking beneath his eyes; he knew it all too well.
“You say it is the year two-thousand-twenty-twenty?”
James nodded.
“Then it is no use in making any assumptions.”
“What do you mean?” James asked.
“Had I awakened earlier, I would not have thought the world had changed too much; there might still be vagabonds or beggars in the streets to feed from -“
“Well, there are still people you’d call beggars,” said James, “but-“
Dracula’s eyes lit up like embers in an old forge.
“Can’t you just feed from animals?”
“You forget, James, I am born of the very oldest vampires; only the blood of humans can sustain me.”
James sighed.
“I was afraid you’d say that,” he said.
He motioned for Dracula to follow.
“Come on, it’s easier if you see it for yourself.”
Dracula nodded and began to follow, but stopped short. He turned back around to his coffin.
James rolled his eyes again.
“What is it now?”
“I cannot go out dressed in these old clothes; I saved a particular tunic to wear when I awoke.”
Dracula opened a compartment underneath the blood infusion device that had kept him stable for 1000 years. From the compartment he pulled out a tunic, folded neatly. It smelled the same as everything else in the crypt, but was otherwise in good condition. He unfolded the tunic and put it on over his old one. It was made of wool, dyed white, and stretched down to just above his knees. His plain hose and bare feet looked even more worn when put together.
“I paid handsomely to have it dyed, just before I entered my slumber,” said Dracula.
He smiled. James tried to hide his reaction, but didn’t do it well enough; Dracula’s smile faded quickly, and he looked more like an annoyed cat than a vampire.
“I understand it may not still be in fashion,” said Dracula, “but you could at least pretend not to be afraid of me.”
“Alright, alright – can we go now?” said James.
Dracula nodded.
“Lead on.”
James led Dracula out of the crypt. His tomb had been in the deepest part of it, but as they made their way through the winding tunnel, no other coffins lined their path.
“How did you convince someone to build a crypt like this?” James asked.
“There was no convincing,” said Dracula.
James chuckled, but didn’t look back from the light of his flashlight as it illuminated their path.
“Thralls are out of fashion, you know,” he said.
“You misunderstand – there was no thrall. My father was a stone mason; he and I worked together to build this crypt,” Dracula answered.
They were nearing the entrance of the crypt; James could smell the fresher air seeping in just ahead, and his flashlight was becoming less useful as the sunlight reached out to them from the path.
“You had a father?”
“Only the very oldest vampires were born as they are; my father was one such vampire, who turned my human mother into one of us. She then gave birth to me, a full-blooded vampire.”
“Oh. So, what you said earlier about being born of old vampires… I thought that was like, figurative.”
Dracula raised an eyebrow.
“Figurative language is not very useful when one is immortal; if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it is that it is far better to be direct,” he said.
James pushed open the door to the crypt, and stepped out into the fresh air outside. Dracula followed after.
It was sunny, but there were still a few clouds in the sky. They stood in a dense forest; aside from a few chirping birds, there was nothing around. Dracula took in a long, deep breath.
“I’m surprised you haven’t asked more questions,” said James.
“One thousand years is a long time to sleep… far too many things must have happened to be able to ask them all – and in any case, I doubt you could know everything that’s happened. I will ask when I wish to,” said Dracula.
He paused. Then he said,
“Although… if there is something you feel I ought to know, then you may as well tell me.”
James thought for a moment as a hundred different things popped into his head; did he explain what a phone was? Did he show him how to access all known human history with it? Or maybe…
“Why don’t we start small? Um… what country was this when you went into your slumber?”
“Wallachia,” Dracula replied.
“Ok, well, it’s called Romania now,” said James.
Dracula gave him a confused look; he seemed to mull over the name for a moment. Then he shook his head.
“Strange,” he said, “very strange… oh, something does come to mind now!”
“What is it?”
“When I entered my slumber, there was a great plague upon the known world; what became of that?”
“The Black Death you mean?” James said without thinking.
Dracula’s eyes threatened to bulge out of his head. James raised his arms and motioned for him to be calm.
“I know that sounds really bad – and it was! But we recovered just fine.”
“I see… but surely many must have died. How could the world recover from such a thing?”
“How many people do you think are on Earth right now?” said James.
Dracula smirked.
“I have the strangest notion that anything I guess will be incorrect.”
“Seven billion,” said James.
Dracula’s smirk faded into a look of genuine confusion; James could see him trying to imagine such a number in real time. He shook his head.
“You are right, the world has certainly recovered.”
He looked around the forest.
“As have these woods; there were not this many trees when I went to sleep.”
James chuckled.
“You’re lucky you didn’t get paved over for a fast food parking lot,” he said.
Dracula gave him a look.
“Do I need to know what that means?”
“Not really – not yet, I mean.”
James checked the time on his phone; it was late afternoon.
“We’d better get moving; I have a place we can stay that’s pretty secluded,” he said.
He started to put away his phone, when he noticed Dracula staring at it.
“Oh, right, you probably want to know what this is.”
“May I see it?” Dracula asked.
James nodded and handed him the phone. Dracula grasped it in his hands as if it were a snake that might bite him.
“It’s so… thin!” he said.
“It’s kind of like… a book,” said James, “a very small book, that holds a lot of information.”
Dracula tapped the screen, and it turned on. He gasped and drew his head back from it as if it had cast sunlight on his face.
“That’s normal, it’s supposed to do that. Here, let me show you.”
Dracula gave James his phone back. James tapped a few times on the screen, then showed him what he had found.
“This is a picture – that’s like a… a painting, but you don’t make it with paint.”
“This book has illustrations too?”
“Sort of. Do you recognize this?”
Dracula stared at the image, and gradually his eyes lit up.
“This is a map of Wallachia! How kind of the man who made it to have put it in your book.”
“It has other maps – more than just maps, really -“
James checked the time again.
“Listen, we really should get going now,” he said.
“May I read some more of this book?” said Dracula.
James nodded, and reached into his pocket as an idea came to him.
“Here, I know a better way you can use it,” he said.
He handed Dracula a pair of small, wired headphones, and plugged them into the phone. He pressed a button on it and handed it to him.
“Speak what you want to know, and it will find it,” he said.
Dracula stared at it in awe.
“Let me see,” he muttered.
Finally he thought of something.
“Who now rules over… Romania?”
The phone made a small beep noise, and spoke the result back to him in a friendly, voice.
“The President of Romania is Klaus Iohannis.”
Dracula looked more confused, and James could see the questions popping into his head, all vying for his attention.
“Remarkable!” he said.
He looked at James.
“Come, we may travel while I use this book of yours,” he said.
James nodded and led the way, smiling to himself as Dracula kept rattling off questions to his phone.
“Who now is the king of England?”
“Is there a faster way to travel than by horse?”
“Where is the nearest apothecary?”
“What has become of the Church?”
“Where might a man find a tailor?”
“What new hymns have been written?”
It was about dinnertime when they reached James’ small home in the mountains. Dracula followed him into the living room and looked around the quaint space. It was a very open house, with one master room containing his living room, kitchen, and a small dining area.
“This is very nice,” he said.
He held up the phone as he offered it back to James.
“As is your book,” he added.
James took the phone back along with the headphones, and put them back in his pocket.
“I have some blood stored away for you,” he said as he walked into the kitchen.
“Where did you get it?” Dracula asked as he sat in one of James’ chairs.
“Animals,” James answered.
He looked at the label he’d made for the container.
“This one is sheep, from a farmer in town.”
Dracula gave him a look.
“I did not think such a young vampire like yourself would steal a sheep.”
“I didn’t. He knows.”
Dracula looked confused as James sat down and served him a mug full of the sheep’s blood. James drank from his own cup of the same stuff.
“You told him?” Dracula asked.
“It was either that or spent my days looking for innocents to drink from, and I won’t do that,” James answered.
Dracula considered this for a moment. Then he nodded.
“It will not sustain me as human blood would… but it will suffice,” he said.
“I’ll go and talk to him tomorrow; he might let you take a small drink from him – he owes me a favor anyway.”
Dracula chuckled.
“Things have even changed among my own kind, it seems. My father would never have allowed me to reveal my true nature to a human.”
“That’s the thing with being immortal – you don’t change, but everything around you does.”
Dracula nodded and took a drink from his mug. James could see his eyes flicker with life as the energy from it coursed through him after so many centuries without a proper drink.
“When night has come, I would like to go into town and see how people live in this new time,” he said.
James nodded and finished his mug. They both sat in silence and watched the sun sink down, and gradually the stars and moon appeared to replace it.
Wallflower Showcase 