Relief

I took a trip to Transylvania. I’m a big fan of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I wandered all over the area for five nights hoping to find a vampire. But I had no luck.

I was depressed and wandered into a tavern called The Lorrystone. I sat down on a bench and had a stein of draught beer.

An elderly woman was sitting on the bench a few feet from me. I said to her that I was in search of vampires. She didn’t speak English. So I bit my top teeth over my bottom lip, making a fang face, hoping to communicate. Her expression remained stoic.

I began to cry. It’s hard not getting what I want. I’d had a lifetime of disappointment up to this moment, and it poured out of my eyes. The elderly woman sat quietly unchanged.

I poured the beer over my head as a way of trying to shake off the tears. I sat there, wet, cold and sad.

I remembered when I was five years old and I saw Dracula for the first time. The Bela Lugosi version. I was so scared I peed my pants.

The memory of that smell and wetness had a familiarity to this moment. I laid down and rested my head on the elderly woman’s lap, the same thing I had done when I saw Dracula with my mother.

I fell asleep.