VAMPIRE and SUNRAY

…..VAMPIRE AND SUNRAY.

The vampire watched the progress of a sunbeam which had intruded into his sepulchre hewn from under the cliffs of the mountainside. Every day the slanting ray would shine its way across the cavern floor by degrees until it reached the rock wall, where it would slowly climb as the earth tilted and the sun lowered beneath the edge. The vampire would watch this with hunger and precision. The vampire, as its carcass deteriorated, would reverently track this solitary beams progress as day after day it would course across the solidity and the dusts. This vampire would try to remember what this had been like when there had been life in the body. The sunray would capture the vampires attention from the moment it began to sparkle over the top of the crevasse it entered every day. Decimated eyes would lap up every detail it presented and the vampires hunger for it grew. The vampire desired the sunray and the heat it brought direct from the vacuum of space. it gave of itself hours at a time and the monster drank it in. This vampire possessed thousands of years of memories and knowledge, yet was powerless to attempt to receive the sunrays total blessings. The vampires body was slowly dripping off and away. The ache and want of this the vampire felt was surprising, and had nothing to do with the matter of flesh. The vampires flesh had started sloughing around the bones in some places, drying and sticking to others. The vampire had not fed in quite a long while. All its attention was focused on the phenomena that spread itself before the creatures body everyday.

.....the vampire was nourished by the sight of the track of the sun across the mausoleum floor. Everyday, direct after the beam had touched by column a pebble on, the vampire would lay a cheek or palm down upon the floor and soak up the heat thru the mummified flesh, for this vampire was no more than that. This creature, who had glutted itself on the human species blood for millenia, was near dispersal, and it wondered at how the motes of dead skin floating in the reflection of the beam were not instantly annihilated. The creature, close to being a dried husk, hulked over to the track of light and closed in on a space recently vacated by the sunbeam and pressed its hoary head down upon the spot. The vampire imagined successfully the transference of the heat provided by the heavens. This vampire, who had decimated thousands of souls, who was known as the loathsome worm, who had crawled unimpeded thru armies, who had laid waste and ruin amongst the peoples of the continents, this being frailly lay its cheek full upon the stone from which the ray had just receded and somehow felt a gladness in seeking to accompany the rapidly receding warmth. This creature had discovered that, by applying its flesh to this shadowed spot, the heat from the mating of stone and sun would endure for moments longer, alive upon the vampires brow.

…..direct before the vampires eyes danced the silver golden yellow light of the sun column round about swollen with incredible proportion the closer to the electric luminosity centimeters in front of its face. All worlds were illuminated within the white heat of the sunbeams effulgence. Billions of dusts were flecked up therein and were not consumed, but massed together into legions of roping nets golden to the sight into dominions and fancies soon dissolved into the next wave of dusts as the vampire shifted closer to the ray of sunlight stealing its way into the mountain lair.

…..indeed, the vampire was one Ancient, brought forth before what we now know as mammoth, brought forth as a model, an anti-form, one who is dead but lives, resurrected from the time before when man in elementals had congressed and played together and giants were loose upon the land. This vampire had lived off the blood of giants, monsters, others, princes and kings. So vast was the was the appetite the vampire hosted for the live human essence of blood, so powerful the demons thirst engorged it, that this being became of monstrous proportion and metamorphed over the centuries into the shape of a gargantuan worm. This form carried the vampire thru many a time of attempted destruction. This creature who pitifully laps at the fleeting warmth of a sunray departed once sent millions fleeing thru the land, humans stampeding in terror, disease, famine and slaughter.

…..the vampire neath the mountain left a patch of leathery remnant of skin, completely bloodless and of the consistency of parchment slow dissolved on the stone on the floor of the cavern. The vampire crept forward on creaking elbows and knees, scuttling on knobby appendages full restored after eons, again in human shape. The creatures body had re-metamorphed from massive worm back to its original anthropoidal form. The suns ray it could not help but to seek, tho it knew how terrible it would be to commit wholly to a full immersion in it. This would mean utter, total disintegration. The vampires bare cheekbone tingled with warmth. The vampire FELT this, a reward of the minutesdesol, who, excited and cast from the depths of space remain to flock and play upon the light falling from the sun, and who tickled the creatures cheek before they, separated from their lifegiver, expired there. Any vampire, being learned and bloated enough, can see the organisms of the submicroscopic minutedesol. This vampire had been a startling huge inflation, a grotesque behemoth described in several human texts, and because of this growth, was able to perceive most natural processes overlooked by the human species. There were gaps. This vampire believed that the stories it had absorbed of the giant squid were stories of vampires who had somehow adapted to the oceans salt and properties, submerging being an equivalent alternative to burrowing. All vampires were of what this creature knew as burrowers, for the sun surely would destroy undead flesh. This vampires tissue would be destroyed by the straight exposure, and it understood.

…..the vampires eyes were dazzled and dazed the warmth in the cheekbone continued as it crouched sliding forward, arms and knees, slow. The frame of the gap of the rock thru which the sun cast its ray sometimes allowed breezes to stir within the crypt in which the animated corpse crept. The vampire imagined a kingdom within a kingdom fancied in the dust stirred up by the breezes in its creeping. The vampire remembered first seeing the suns path upon the earth long ago when it had been an intruder and he had been blood-soaked marauder laid low and at mercys all.

…..the vampire wanted more. It reached out a hole riddled bone warped finger casual, the dainty and monstrous pinky, to test the sunray against undead flesh and paused... harkened back being crushed while in its leviathonic shape, scaled, bloated, secure, terrible with the people it had eaten, whole villages at a time slithering thru the invincible gullet, felling each mass, swallowing as a gaping hole. The vampire had been under the mountain in an easy tunnel, satiated and lethargic, out of the suns harm when the mountain had moved, shifted and rained down its vertebrae upon the trapped vampire, the brothers and sisters of earth and rock had pulverized its massive hide. The vampire broke then, its gluttonies were pierced and exploded amongst the tumbling innards of the mountain falling upon the beast. Outside of this, the dusts tailed after the avalanche.

….. in the crush of the mountain, the vampires only recourse was to hibernate, to heal, to rely on the vast stores of blood and misery to propel it forward in time to its survival and reclaimed sovereignty. The lock of the mountains face-come-down rendered the vampire immobile, forcing it to propose a sleep until such a time it was able to move again. Periodically over the centuries it would waken to find it necessary to wriggle against its receding frontier of flesh as its body disintegrated under the pressure of the mountain. Its loosening flesh was frail and cumbersome and with such exertions of shedding the excess matter tons of flesh turned to dust, and after the vampire would slumber again, still cramped to release.

…..one day this creatures body awoke to find itself in a chamber that had for centuries before previously been occupied solely by its massive head, awoke to find its carriage decimated to its former humanoid form and dimensions, awoke riddled with decay and malnourishment. Weak to a point, laid low by an ill-chosen, self-righteous resting place, the creature was ground by the march of gravity on matter. The monster tracks back as it follows the sunrays path, remembers being brought to a state of lowliness, being brought back to a larvae state of the undead blood feeders, the mortal bodys mold withered dry and flimsy, no blood, none scented and shut off from the sustenance of human masses trapped under the top of a mountain. Twas startling awakening in this submission, naked in a chamber where a pierce of sunlight slowly edged a pillar towards, lusty sunlight exuding a fiery inferno and dancing as it came. At first sight The vampire had scuttled as far away from the sunray as it could, floppily crazing and launching itself into a deep shadowed recess which had lodged one of the creatures teeth centuries before. Hypnotized by this present days sunray, the vampire remembered how stricken it had felt, so useless in the face of this solar gift. Now, the vampire laughed out loud at this picture and, lost in the splendor of brilliancy ascending up thru the crack, lifted a hand and shepherded the air around the sunrays leaning tower fleeing up the glowing track of the golden warmth of the shed sunlight.

…..the creature paused and felt back. What was that noise? It was the echo of the laugh come back splits after its production that had startled the vampire reverie. Raising a partial silhouette, listening.

….. once before, shortly after recovering its human form, weak, undead, buried by centuries, the cavern had been invaded by a few hysterically laughing humans who had stumbled in, a massive tangle of ropes and hooks and noise, filled with blood, interfering with the sunray. From them, the vampire had felt exhilaration, triumph and exultation of achievement wave off of them in happiness and success. Evidently they had reached a goal. The vampire had heard them clanging on the mountain, slowly climbing, but had had no thought as to them invading this habitat. When it was certain the humans were to invade its lair, The vampire had invisibled into a rift of rock to watch and observe the ecstatic beings entrance. Here was food enough to glut. In fact, these humans were tickets to more food. The vampire had stayed his teeth. They had clambered into this sanctuary, looking as tho they were tumbling down from the sunray itself. They set up there where the sunlight tracked, had set possessions about, built the first fire the vampire had seen for centuries, ate, drank, sang and did not stray too far from the narrow chasm that ushered the shining sunlight deep into the cleft of the mountain. And hide itself tho it might, the vampires influence was felt among the humans as it dripped and scurried thru the air to latch unto their collective consciousness. The humans gathered there voiced to one another their fears as day fell, and the vampire caught of them the terrors of their unbeknownst and the winds screaming in their nerves. This absolutely was a hunger trigger for the vampire breed and its thirst made its own voice manifest in the abrupt snap of its jaws trapping together in the dark of the night of the cave where the rigidly frozen faces of the humans sweated in defenselessness. This one sound, so tiny to the vampire, appeared to deafen and to stun the paralyzed humans and it left them so dazed as to afford the vampire every opportunity to feast. The creature stayed its appetite, fascinated by the play of sunlight upon these creatures, how it freely roamed their bodies and they without the least effect or notice of it. To preternaturally see, after centuries of eternal darkness, how sunlight played upon these lives was filling enough for the vampire.

…..the vampire had watched the sunlight creeping over the faces and limbs of these too frightened to move, senseless and abandoned bodies with their psyches and senses searching to jump away faster than death could snatch them. How would the sunlight feel now, mused the vampire. It toyed with the idea of touching the sunray. Long ago, as soon as they could drag their startled senses back to cognition, the humans had left hurriedly without much of their truck, leaving possessions which even now littered the cavern floor. These things the vampire ignored as it crouched across the ground, enthralled by the pillar of light and its progress.

….. the vampires pinky touched the light and sizzled, burning the tip to black, which ashed and fell off to the first knuckle. There where the sunlights influence ended, so did the flame splutter and die. The vampire felt a heat spread from that thru its undead corrupted flesh and was gladdened. These were human feelings, the vampire realized, not felt since... the feelings overpowered the monster so, even in their fleetness, and it tried to apprehend them. The feelings overwhelmed the vampires songs of destruction into another light way of being, and it quickly sacrificed two fingers to the ray and was rewarded with a heat radiating up its boned forearm, where the sensation quickly faded. The vampire sat still and felt the heat to the last little bit of it. The heat serenaded the vampire close, alluring and free, while its charred stump fingers smoked. The last piece of heat went off to where?

…..being itself lost in dreams of warmth, the vampire had allowed the sunray to escape across the chamber where it lit upon a metal cup. Earlier this day the vampires knee had struck the cup, rolling it to where it now received and reflected the bounty of the sunray. This cup and the sunray intercepted and the column of light bounced from that, producing a glare and sheen which covered half the chamber in its reflection, a titanic radiance which rested sublime, cloaking the rock with a silvery face. The vampire sought and found the object cupped in its memory, the use of it, the way in which the humans used this vessel to hold the liquids they drank. The cup was fabricated of a reflecting metal and the sun danced from it, igniting half the sepulchre in a mottled blaze of light.

…..the reflection of the sun thru the chink in the crypt wall off the metal of the cup caught the vampire full on. This being, centuries old and fearless in it, flinched in the light for the first time since the Change. The creature shuddered, and the shadow flung stuck to the wall behind quaked a blurred outline. Showers of dust jumped off this frame and, having hopped up, remained hovering just off the vampires paper thin skin, particles countless revolving in the still cold air of the mausoleum. The vampire having imagined it had stepped somehow into the sunray, stepped backward and threw up a jut of bony defenses, then paused. This reflected light had not destroyed the vampire, and in this the creature rejoiced. REJOICED!

….. the vampires first redemptive and fulfilling emotion ripped thru its dirt-caked rag bone frame as the suns cupped reflection bathed it in a wash of etched out light. The vampire forced air into its leathered lungs and laughed popeyed face up towards the reflected rays then turned swiftly to regard its shadow silhouetted against the side wall of the cavern. The vampire found it could still move preternaturally and elaborately and spent some few seconds entertaining itself with shadowplay. The vampire spoke its blackened tracing gestures, pantomimed several of the Tales Passed On and was pleased that its skill in lesser facade remained intact, weird and impeccable, precise and terrifying. The earth rolled the earth farther into the orbit, the edge of the crypts cavern wall clipped past the edge of the silver cup which cut the rays from reflecting and the sun returned spotlight upon the floor as the shadow dropped. Likewise, the vampire suddenly crouched down and laughed in the remnants of the heat. the reflected light had penetrated the ripped-in leather hide of the wizened, descaled vampire, who reached for the cup there on the floor and stopped, considering.

…..the vampire pondered whether to adjust the cup upon the floor so that it could continue its reflection play, or to leave the cup where it was, right there where it would be sure to give the same spectacle tomorrow. The vampire lamented that it only got to enjoy the suns hot-down for a short period, for the very first time since before, when the heart pumped and the skin absorbed and felt and was touched. The creature flickered and then proned itself, bringing the almost vacant eyesockets close to the beam of light milling across the cavern floor, warping fingers around the cup, sucking the remaining heat cast off from the metal. The dust raised from the vampires hide flurried a cloud of itself. The vampire could feel itself within each of the billions of the billows, as if each flake of dried skin were antennae reaching out from its own body. Eerie lights played about the cavern walls. Excited lights played over insects emigrating from the vampires body.

.....and then the light was gone, shut off from the vampires eyes, taken away by the same crack which had birthed the sunray this day and every day. It was close to night, and the vampire was free to roam the surface of the earth without the fear of direct sunlights annihilation. Yet, the vampire remained beneath the mountain, not for fear or for any of the emotions that govern us humans daily life, nor was the reason for self preservation. Ragged as the vampires flesh was, the monster felt strong enough. it had enough frame and knowledge and tricks to assimilate itself again, to take a journey gathering bones and dusts of dead things in order to recreate its majesty and power. This is done easily by all vampires who travel far and have length to their existence. The vampire stayed in the cave in order to experience the sun one last time. The vampire huddled upon the floor of the cavern and waited out from its brow at the flutter and flight of a million dust flakes pouring off its skull.

…..the vampire waited the night, static in jutting vertebrae and ribcage, a mimic of the mountains that sheltered it, looking as a lump of offal or a chunk of wasted material heaped frayed angles and shudders upon the smooth rock. The vampire was enraptured by the memory of seeing the play and feel of the light offered by the nearest star. A vague sensation of memory reflected to the vampire of its self when it had been human and had been loved, revered and given. The rotting brain nestled in the remaining ridge of cranium. A bleached heap of 20 broken swans. A long face cracked triumphant and resolved. The vampire was reawakened, ready to drink deep, primed to at a very last. receive the final embracing scorch of the sun. the sky outside threw down silvered pink announcements to mornings mountain, where the vampire waited the kiss of its new lover, the suns touch.