This story is not about vampires.
There are vampires in the cave under the village, and the villagers have learned to live with their fear, most of the time. If they could, they would pack up their things and go; but the vampires are everywhere now.
Life is certainly not as fun as it could be for the villagers, but they have their happy moments. The vampires also have happy moments. Sometimes, the vampires think “Boy, it sure is lucky we’re vampires. Those poor villagers. They should be happier.” But usually, the vampires don’t really think about the villagers at all, except in the most abstract of ways.
It’s been many, many years since the vampires colonized. There is a small flock of hunters, who only come out at night. But the majority of the vampires always stay down below, and do their favorite thing, which is to light a fire in the middle of the cave and make shadow puppet plays on the wall for each other.
The plays tend to be about the adventures of vampires inside of a cave. Sometimes the vampires even make shadow puppet plays about vampires making shadow puppet plays. Occasionally the plays are about the tragic existence of villagers, and a few of the vampires become sad about the whole state of affairs, and feel they have matured a little bit for having watched this story. They know they are a little better than most other vampires, because they feel a twinge of guilt as they snack on yummy villager viscera.
It’s true that vampires don’t like sunlight. This is because they have spent so many generations in the dark. However, sunlight does not, in fact, kill vampires. It just confuses them, and makes them angry. Which isn’t to say vampires are stupid. They are quite intelligent. They know all about the world, actually. They can tell you all kinds of facts and figures about it. But the number one thing they know is that the world is made of shadows, just like the ones that dance on the wall of their cave. So whenever a vampire happens to be caught out in the light of the sun for some reason, their natural instinct is not to look directly at anything—that way leads to bright shining madness. Rather, they will look behind it, and understand everything they need to know from the shadows.
And if a vampire should see a villager’s shadow, they fancy they can tell everything they need to know about them just from its silhouette.
Once in a long while, and only at night of course, a vampire will become curious about life in the village, and will leave their cave without any intention to kill. For the most part, the villagers will not harm a vampire among them, for fear of the consequences. Often the vampire has a grand time, walking among the villagers and studying their shadows very closely, and experiment at contorting themselves to get their own shadow to make similar shapes. It makes them feel very alive. Sometimes these vampires come back and show their vampire friends how to make these strange and alien shadow shapes, too, and they all have a grand time feeling very alive.
Once, there was a vampire tourist who actually went out in the daylight on purpose. Her friends thought her mad. She stayed out for so long, in fact, that her white, white skin gained just the slightest hint of color, though she didn’t notice. She was still a vampire, though.
She spent weeks practicing, opening her eyes even when the sun was out, and registering the bizarre sensations that resulted. She often heard the villagers talking about strange and alien concepts such as “red” and “blue” and “green” and “yellow”. With great effort, she stopped only watching shadows and started to learn how to interpret these other exotic things which the villagers took for granted.
One day, she met a villager called a “painter”. She was enthralled. What a strange thought! She couldn’t quite even wrap her mind around what the painter did, exactly, but after many days of careful observation—both directly, and via his shadow—she was fairly sure she had a pretty good idea.
The vampire tourist went back to the cave. She felt fulfilled and inspired. The villagers were doing so many interesting things! She even considered that their lives might be as interesting as vampire lives.
She tried to tell her vampire friends about what she had seen. They nodded their heads sagely and said, “Ah yes, we understand.” But she knew they didn’t.
She put on a shadow show, trying to express what she had seen in the language of silhouettes. Her vampire friends applauded at the end, and congratulated her, saying, “Ah yes, now we understand.” But she knew they didn’t.
She went back to the village, and took the painter back with her, to the wall of the cave upon which the shadow shows were traditionally displayed. She asked the terrified painter to paint the wall, and he did. Then she asked her vampire friends if they noticed anything different. “Yes,” they said. “Now we can smell something.”
“I believe it’s called ‘paint’,” said the vampire tourist.
“Is that what this breed is called?” they said. “It smells yummy,” and they grabbed the painter and tore him apart, taking turns spraying his innards into each others’ mouths.
The vampire tourist realized that her friends would never be able to understand what she had seen unless they, too, left the cave and went out in the daylight. She suggested that they should try.
“Maybe someday, but surely there’s no hurry.”
In time, the vampire tourist’s memories of color became fleeting. She began to imagine “red” as somehow the inside of a shadow, but it didn’t make much sense, even to her. Still, she would always treasure her memories of the time she went to the village in the daylight.
This story was written by a vampire.