Dracula’s Rise and Fall (Within a Week)
“Horror in Romania,” “A Dark Force Awakens in Transylvania,” or “Vampires Spread Terror!”
These were the headlines plastered across newspapers and discussed in every news broadcast last week. For an excruciatingly long week filled with fear, panic, and collective hysteria, misinformation permeated every corner of society. People refused to leave their homes, hung garlic on their doors, covered their mirrors, and—unexplainably—started washing all packaged goods with bleach and baking their own bread like it was the COVID era all over again.
Schools were closed, remote work policies reinstated, and the parliament was locked in endless debates over a proposed law promoting “individual armament for personal security,” which was repeatedly rejected by the joint efforts of both liberal and leftist groups.
The moral decay that often accompanies times of crisis hit me two days after the situation broke out, thanks to TV commercials. Ads for everything from “garlic-infused sunscreen” to “thermal-imaging door intercoms” flooded the airwaves, making it clear that every company in the country wasn’t genuinely concerned about our well-being but was instead eager to grab every last penny they could. I always thought this idiotic society of ours would be wiped out by a zombie virus. Apparently, divine intervention doesn’t favor fools, it favors capitalist class, as it chose to send us vampires instead.
All the chaos lasted only a week. Within eight days, Count Dracula (or, as the government media successfully rebranded him through a smear campaign, “Mr. Vlad”) had awakened in the cellar of a neglected castle that the Ministry of Culture had long failed to restore. He drained the blood of a few unfortunate souls (217 people, according to the media), but was soon tracked down thanks to the diligent work of intelligence agencies. Before the authorities could reach him, however, his location was leaked on Twitter, prompting a group of nationalist vigilantes to attempt a lynching. Wounded and desperate, he fled to the countryside, where he was finally captured after villagers reported, “a man in black abusing our cows.”
The abrupt unraveling of Dracula’s legend in the 21st century was, to put it mildly, hilarious. But the revelation that vampirism could be cured with a two-week course of penicillin? Now that was an absolute fiasco!
Captured by state authorities, Dracula was detained, and the bacteria responsible for vampirism was found to be easily eradicated with the world’s most common antibiotic. Order was restored, the drama ended, and the tools for wrapping up the world’s shortest horror story were at hand.
In an ideal world, people would have been able to discern between “truth” and “right” and this story would have ended here. Unfortunately, while the supernatural catastrophe might have been resolved, the inevitable natural disaster of societal idiocy was just beginning to show how it could doom humanity. And like every catastrophe rooted in collective idiocy, this one also began with a government-citizen partnership. Which government, you ask? China, of course.
The desire to possess one’s own biological weapon is every teenage girl’s (and China’s) dream. So it wasn’t surprising when rumors surfaced that China was scheming to infect the Western world with vampirism as revenge for the devaluation of their currency. However, vampirism wasn’t weaponized in the traditional sense.
While being a vampire came with obvious downsides—becoming a walking corpse, a relentless urge to drink blood, photosensitivity—it also offered undeniable advantages: no need for sleep, endless stamina, and drastically reduced heating costs thanks to a low body temperature.
What some considered a “curse” was viewed by certain governments as the blueprint for the perfect workforce. Unsurprisingly, saliva samples from Vlad’s infected victims began to appear on the black market. Theoretically, individuals could be temporarily infected, worked to full capacity, and then restored to their human form with antibiotics during vacation time. China, of course, planned to implement this strategy—minus the vacation.
At this point, dear reader, you might assume that everything spiraled out of control—that someone escaped from one of these factories, the infection spread uncontrollably, and chaos ensued. But in China, Murphy’s Law does not apply, Chekhov’s gun jams, and when it comes to human rights violations, everything proceeds exactly as planned.
China’s sudden surge in production efficiency became a hot topic of global discussion. Behind closed doors, rumors of vampires being used as laborers swirled, but they were dismissed as conspiracy theories. Most people assumed the workers in question were actually Uyghur Turks.
Still, whispers grew louder as vampire saliva became increasingly accessible online. The potential of vampirism was no longer a secret. It was only a matter of time before this potential crossed continents and reached a group of ambitious stockbrokers in New York.
Watching small screens with endless data streams, predicting which companies would suffer losses, and lying convincingly. This is my understanding of a stockbroker’s job description.
I had always assumed that stockbrokers needed to remain perpetually alert, proactive, and energetic. Apparently, a group of young brokers shared this belief, as they decided to incorporate vampirism into their work lives by ordering the “illness” online.
Ironically, vampirism—a condition often associated with bloodsucking—had found its way to a profession entirely devoid of such activities (!) and gave these young individuals a competitive edge. However, in true white-collar fashion, these brokers preferred not to remain vampires indefinitely. Instead, they treated their affliction with antibiotics, essentially engaging in a bizarre form of “micro-dosing.”
Though cocaine was undoubtedly a cheaper alternative with similar effects, it lacked the exotic flair required to satisfy their American Dream aspirations.
We were no longer living in a story about vampires terrorizing small medieval towns, defended by a few scruffy peasants armed with scythes and pitchforks. Those innocent days of considering vampirism a “curse” were long gone. In less than a month, society had descended into a sadomasochistic dystopia where people paid shady dealers to infect them in dark alleys.
