Vampire? No, just stupid and ugly.

I'm feeling a bit down today and I've recently read the first three books of Anne Rice's Vampire Cronicles. This is my pain.

The books are quite good. This first, Interview with a Vampire reminds me of Heart of Darkness. Which is, of course, one of my favorite books. Perhaps it's the way the story is told, or the darkness, or the nobility of restraint, or the symbolism and applicability. But, at any rate, it goes beyond what Heart of Darkness did. Indeed, it is a much larger book, and though it is not as dense with symbolism, it encompasses much more. If it may be not as fine a point.

The second, The Vampire Lestat, is as good if not better than the first. It is dark and forgiving, childish and yet wise. I admire the youth of Lestat after so many decades.

The third, The Queen of the Damned, is less polished and not as believable as the first. Do not ask me why I find Vampires believable when talk of spirits and witches breaks my suspension of disbelief. It merely does.

At any rate, today I found my self realizing that, not only am I not as smart as I'd like to be, I not as smart as I think I am. I am quite stupid as a matter of fact. And ugly to.

I look like a beast. A beast with crooked teeth, unruly hair, and skin that is red but for around my eyes. I look like some sort of perverted cross between a raccoon and a bear. And my eyes. There is no warmth or intelligence in them. There is only self serving malice and the pursuit of shinny things that I would wash and covet and clutch to me forever.

I have not the smooth white skin of a Vampire. And I have not their dark powers. I have not the power to shatter glass with my mind when I am faced with my true self. I have not the power to whirl papers and furniture about the room as in a typhoon of rubble and bloody beings. It would not be a childish tantrum but a horror.

Yet, I have not the power to crush the beating hearts of those whom hurt me. I have not the power to terrify them and drink of their blood, enjoying their life as they die. No, I do not have the power to break the bone and rend the flesh and ruin the lives. Nor the ability to corrupt those I love for an eternity. To pull them to me in an embrace that will ensure their life forever. And their torment. Their damnation by their own heart and mind. And the deaths and pain of many more.

Perhaps it is best that I am stupid and ugly. And not capable of all things. Perhaps the world is safer.

I am in a rage. For there is no way that I can achieve the great deeds and beauty that I dream of. I have not the intelligence nor the good looks. And it is unfortunate that I shall achieve nothing, neither good nor ill.