It is with untold of bittersweetness that I report on this latest development, which is filled with reassurance and yet a smidgen of nostalgia. I have just received confirmation from the Department of Folklore in Wilno, Lithuania, that in fact, the last known Vampyr on Earth has just died of AIDS.
Who Was This Last Survivor?
This Vampyr who, in his human life, went by the name of Baron Borit Von Grütenkvaltensjorgesborschkachov (luckily for myspell-check) legally changed his name 512 years ago to Kapitonas Neuntöter immediately postceding a rather inspiring tour of plaguespreading around the German areas of Eastern Europe. Once vaccines and fungus-garlic teas or whatever made The Black Death less deadly, Kapitonas Neuntöter settled down in a small cottage in a small village in Transylromania where he married the Famous burlesque dancer and infamous poetess Succubus Mėnesinių Ciklas. There they whiled away the centuries concocting wiles to capture lost children in the wild. They would also devour the occasional drunken tavern patron they would come across on the darker roads, but usually that was just in the winter time or on days of great festivities. They led relatively uneventful lives, even for vampyrs, for several human lifetimes. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that the life of Kapitonas Neuntöter, and the lives of all vampyrs across the globe, suddenly received a shock.
Let Me Learn You On a Little Lesser Known History
Even for those of you who are blissfully unawares of the comings and goings of occult and mythological beings, one quick youtubular search of anything pertaining to the decade that is known as the eighties will open your eyes to the fact that this ten year span featured the largest and most public population of vampyrs that our planet has ever seen. Although each continent had their fair share of nosferati, nowhere could compare to the density that pervaded Eastern Europe. The detriment caused by the overwhelming presence of these bloodsuckers caused these countries monumental concern. This led to Russia’s government developing a secret laboratory of their finest scientists to try to develop some kind of scientific solution to this overpopulation. It wasn’t until the latter part of the decade that these scientists concocted a virus specifically engineered to target vampyrs and their way of life. It was known as the Vampyr Immolation Virus, or VIVus for short. It was not lost on the scientist the coolness that a virus specifically designed to kill the undead had the nickname “VIVus” which is actually the Latin word for “alive”.
Part of the virus’ ingeniousness was its method of transfer. It needed blood-to-blood contact in order to infect a new host. This took prey on the vampyr’s well-known method of ingestion. Contrary to some people’s belief, the vampyr when indulging in a snack does not poke two holes into the jugular vein or carotid artery of its meal and then drink from the open wounds as if from a fleshy chalice. For you see, one of the first changes in the transformation of a human to a vampyr is the anatomy of the teeth, the canines in particular. they become more pronounced and sharp. What is not usually known is that at the points they have valves, that when inside of a bloodvessel, sense the sudden pH change, and open to a shunt in the core of the tooth that leads directly to the bloodstream (the posterior superior alveolar artery, infraorbital artery and the inferior alveolar artery), instantly bringing nutrients to the undead tissues. So in other words there is a blood-to-blood connection between diner and food during the entire time of consumption. The result being, once the final form of the virus was released, that vampyrs receive an ultimatum: risk dying from drinking contaminated blood, go to government-operated blood distribution vestibules, or die of starvation. A cold and harsh resolution from our Cold War buddies.
The plan once the virus was developed into its final and FDA approved form was to release it into different populations by surreptitiously installing infected and beautifully homegrown government-issued sex workers into major cities during flu season to silently infect the majority of our large human populations. This completely developed form of the virus would just give a human host one week of mild flu-like symptoms with occasional uncontrollable laughing incontinence and then circulate in the bloodstream asymptomatically for the rest of his or her life. When the virus comes in contact with a vampyr’s blood, however, the virus attaches to the conveniently named Draculin protein on the vampyr’s transformed tissues and cells. This then causes pineal gland malfunction which leads to sudden yet sneaky changes in their sleep patterns. During the next two weeks, the vampyr will gradually keep waking up 12.3 minutes earlier each day until he unwittingly awakens during daylight hours and accidently burns to death presumably while watching the beautiful sunset.
It All Goes Wrong
As you can see, this would have been the perfect deterrent for random vampyr attacks on villagers and tourists alike, but history had something different in mind. Everything would have gone according to plan if it wasn’t for a certain overzealous 3 star general by the name of Rekuital Mestʹ. He was in charge of the classified operation spearheading the creation of the VIVus and was chosen for that post because of his repeated fervent desire to put an end to what he called the “sexy scourge”. At the age of 14 his parents were ruthlessly killed and eaten by a succubus that had lured Rekuital back to his home. The succubus would have then asphyxiated him to death through a gauntlet of sexual adventures if it wasn’t for the village warrior monk’s fortuitous surprise visit that disrupted that deadly coitus. This obviously left poor Rekuital Mest’ scarred for life and very mentally deranged. This, however, was the perfect psychological profile to ascend the military ranks of the Russian Department of Folklore. It was not one fortnight after the prototype batch of the VIVus virus was created that General Mest’ snuck his way into the laboratory using his many security clearances and stole with the vial of unperfected VIVus. The problem was that this version of the virus apparently attacks both human and vampyric hosts with deadly results, although much more deadly for vampyrs.
This lead to the severe decline of the vampyr’s presence during the 90’s and by the 2000’s only the sparkly and wimpiest vampyrs that rarely suck the life force from anyone were left, ending with the loss of a wonderfully rich yet decidedly deadly subculture from the Earth.
