I Vant To Lick Your Stamen

Back in the olden days, people used to up and die of things, one right after the other, plagues and boils and consumption and what-have-you, wiping out whole families and numerous community members. The victims were all connected in some way, people felt certain, and the only plausible explanation for any of this was, of course, your vampires. Rumors got started. Hysteria ensued. One poor soul rises from his coffin and starts perforating people to death, and pretty soon people think they’re everywhere. Many parts of the world boasted vampires, but there was always a good clot of them in Serbia, and so it is not a real surprise that we’ve got another one on the loose now in the town of Zarozje.

Not a new one, but that’s the thing about vampires: they hang in there. Sava Savanovic in fact had the distinction of being Serbia’s first vampire back in the 1700s. He was a man of means, the owner of a nice grist mill on the hill, and in his glory days, he reputedly picked off one citizen after another who brought their grain up to him for processing. It’s not a bad business plan if your business isn’t so much milling flour as drinking blood. This is the first indication we have that the good people of Zarozje might have been a little on the dull side. Mrdjvk goes up to the mill and comes back dead and drained, Jckjvckstc pops up to see what’s up, Drgnvlsc goes and gives it a whirl, no one comes back, and no one stops to consider that maybe whole grains are better for you after all. Before long a swath of the community has been disenvoweled, with repercussions to this day.

What sort of society, we moderns wonder, would tolerate the existence of one prosperous fellow on the hill who fattens himself up by gradually sucking out the very life-blood of the working people while they’re still alive? It’s preposterous. It’s what happens when people no longer have a stake in their own future. Or in something.

At some point a group put it all together and marched up to the mill with a stake, which as we all know is bad for the heart, and poor Sava finally met his end, or so they thought. Unfortunately it made him pissy and his spirit lived on, residents said, in a butterfly. We scoff at these things today, but we weren’t there. The chrysalis was tremendous.

Boogah boogah.

Humans are always trying to keep people alive, but they should worry more about keeping them dead. On many occasions someone suspected of being a vampire has been exhumed for examination and found to be plump and juicy, and in need of remurdering. This happened as late as 1890 in this country when a whole clan seemed to be succumbing one by one to tuberculosis. As the last little boy lay ill and his family grew desperate, his sister was disinterred, found to be a vampire, and run through with a wooden stake, whereupon portions of her were blenderized and fed to her brother as a tonic. He turned the corner almost immediately, although it was the wrong corner. The science was inexact.

So now, back in Zarozje, land of the malevolent butterfly, the old grist mill finally fell down this year. And five people subsequently died. Citizens are pretty sure it’s the vampire again and are taking no chances. Of course, this is the same crew descended from the original dummies who kept marching up the hill with their bags of grain. They’re worried about a butterfly and they’ve got garlic stuffed in their pants. You might not want to take them seriously, but they have a point. Poor old Sava is now homeless and irritable, sitting at the freeway off-ramp, and if you can read his sign, you’re standing way too close.