Van Helsing: Double-Life*

Van Helsing is a teacher by day and missionary vampire-hunter by night, and he must decide if he's confronting the Apocalypse or maybe discovering simple humbling romance!

Finally, since I have this seemingly endless inability to retire from writing, especially after feeling an overwhelming need to return to Writer's Cafe to offer my friends here nice stories to ease our general fears and troubles during this great Coronavirus tribulation, I've decided to offer up this retirement-note special vampire-lore fable with ideas of great lifelong mythological interest to me. This gem was inspired by the Van Helsing media franchise (films, comic books, video-games!). I hope you read it and like it,

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Van Helsing was a prominent teacher at a prestigious Ivy League school (USA) by day, teaching courses about European folklore and mythology and had a specialty in the education of vampire myths and folk-tales. By night, he was a masked and clandestine underworld vampire-hunter. Now, Van Helsing decided to transplant his double-life by taking a teaching position at the University of Transylvania in Romania, where he could continue his education and combat regarding the presence and prominence of vampires in human history. Van Helsing was now something like a comic book character in Eastern Europe, continuing his odd double-life!

Van Helsing used various tools to deal with vampires lurking in Romania. He had various throwing and shooting items and weapons designed to create special perimeters of safety and security and blocking real-life vampires from invading civilization or deterring his other normal day-life as a respected university teacher of vampire mythology. One might suggest that Van Helsin'g special assortment and array of vampire-weapons made him a specialist in the dark world of blood-creature combat!

Van Helsing was a devoted Christian-Catholic and loved admiring stained-glass art praising the great history and myths of Christian storytelling and religious doctrine. To Van Helsing, Christian stained-glass art served as a spiritual protection and shield against the vanities of Earth, and he thought of his stained-glass images in his heart while dealing with vampires as a weaponized hunter and while teaching students in Transylvania about the special place vampire-lore held in human history in regards to the sacred beliefs of Christian myth regarding the ingestion of Christ's blood as a gesture signifying the ethical access to immortal life!

One night, while at a church in Romania, Van Helsing was praying and then was confronted by a winged creature that resembled a vampiric gargoyle or perhaps a blood-sucking demon from Hell. This demon told Van Helsing that he could never feel lonely or alone in his education or combat-quest addressing real-life vampires, for that was Van Helsing's permanent badge of honor. Van Helsing knew now this was no vampire movie or storybook and paid extra care when thinking about his lifelong mission to deconstruct the dark mystique and evil influence of unholy vampire clans on Earth!

On another day, Van Helsing encountered three extremely beautiful women at a Romanian tavern. The women seemed to be gesturing to Van Helsing, remarking how handsome he seemed to them, and he joked back to them and told them he once dated an Aer Lingus airline stewardess in Dublin, Ireland. However, these three sirens of beauty were actually revealed to be unholy servants of the European master-vampire known as Sinister. These three sirens of beauty instantly transformed themselves into fanged vampires, daring the valiant Van Helsing to continue his mission to deconstruct the very dark dominion of their supreme master Sinister!

Fortunately, Van Helsing carried special crucifixes and rabbits' feet for personal emotional confidence, so he'd not be distracted completely by the charms and seductions of these vampiric sirens of Hell. He also carried very impressive guns, which were loaded with polished and blessed silver-bullets, since Van Helsing knew from his personal educational research that silver-bullets not only subdued the mythic wolfen werewolf creature but also the vampire blood-sucker he'd studied for so long and engaged with as a traveling freelance adventurer!

Van Helsing decided to make an educational lesson themed Sinister golem sculpture on his computer and presented it to his mythology class at the University of Transylvania. Van Helsing explained that while Count Dracula was the legendary master-vampire of ancient times, this new power-pyramid uncategorized cryptic master-vampire known simply as Sinister was the modern rendition of a supreme vampire and reflected a civilization angst regarding the pure frailty of democracy in regards to the metaphysical temptation to defy Christ and his archangel Michael. Van Helsing told his class the influence of a supreme vampire like Sinister signaled the authority of anti-religious forces in civilization such as the adversarial AntiChrist and the enigmatic false prophet described in Revelation. Van Helsing presented Sinister as the ultimate video-game bad guy!

Of course, vampires were not just the stuff of video-games and comic books. In fact, the Satanic and underworld influence of the vampire mystique afforded these hellish blood-suckers an eerie and frightening air of tangible power on Earth. Van Helsing knew that to deal with the powers and spheres of such beings on this planet, he'd have to shrewdly balance intellect and imagination with trained careful human imperviousness to the darkness of basic raw lust and yearning for dangerous immortality. Yes, vampires were the thing of Earthly disease!

Van Helsing decided next to present the Marvel super-villain Scorpion (Mac Gargan) as a human sociological folkloric antidote to the threatening visual appearance and physical attributes of the vampire. You see, since Scorpion was a writhing and winding tailed agile muscle-man of great agility and deadly prowess but not a blood-sucker but rather a poison-spewer, possessing a scorpion's death-tail, the comic book villain symbolized a mental image of raw Earthly vitality. This was the sort of basic imagination required to confront the vampire mystique on Earth as a human with great dioramic wits!

Van Helsing next encountered a very dashing but dark male vampire who introduced himself as Louie. Louie explained he'd been a sort of sidekick vampire to the head-vampire Lestat in Eastern Europe but felt the overwhelming need to betray and depart from Lestat's side once his guru had begun to exhibit ugly traits of pure cannibalism, drinking too much blood plainly. Louie wept for the vampire world when thinking of Lestat and fearing what the supreme vampire Sinister would now afford the greedy Lestat. Van Helsing immediately and correctly recognized Louie was a conflicted vampire and secretly hoped he'd travel to Ireland where he could spread the good word of alternative folklore perhaps about colorful fortune-hunting leprechauns to finally dilute the deadly spheres of influence created by vampires. Van Helsing hoped Louie would become something of an Irish charm for Europeans, especially since Louie was very handsome and could offer feelings of humbled beauty!

VAN HELSING: I truly hope I never engage with those three terrifying sirens of Hell in Romania again, those seducing charms of the supreme-vampire Sinister for whom I have no doubt all vampires defer to as the ultimate messenger of digested anarchy in Europe.

When Van Helsing took a break from his vampire work and mission and combat and teaching, he relished his meals of pure garlic pizza. Garlic pizza, you see, reminded this complex and brilliantly imaginative and valiant warrior on Earth that no vampire dread or consciousness would dispel the basic human yearning for simple joyous comforts such as delicious foods designed to create feelings of great bubbly energy. Garlic pizza was a godsend to Van Helsing!

VAN HELSING: I've defeated you in the game of Othello, Sinister!

SINISTER: So what, Van Helsing?
VAN HELSING: You must tell your vampire legion there's a worthy challenger.

SINISTER: Perhaps in a thousand years, I'll consider you something of a challenger!

VAN HELSING: It seems to me you're simply dehydrated by Othello.

SINISTER: Perhaps, Van Helsing...perhaps!

When Van Helsing fell hopelessly in love with a gorgeous troubled female vampire named Elana who was acquainted with the equally-torn vampire Louie who betrayed and departed from the evil head-vampire Lestat, Van Helsing wondered if he should retire from his mission to spend a life of marriage and happiness. He loved Elana and trusted her, despite the fact that she was an immortal vampire. Van Helsing knew at the very least he'd always protect his sweetheart from the timeless threat of vampire deformity!

Was this a vampire-apocalypse, or was Van Helsing simply a new age messenger who beckoned a new brand of vampire myth and folklore and even education? Was Van Helsing a worthy challenger to modern vampire ghouls such as the mysterious Sinister, or was he a destined man of romance who'd simply vanish and flee and retire away with his new vampire love Elana? Would Van Helsing be the right kind of priestly warrior in this hypothetical vampire-apocalypse, or was he a humbled manchild of worldly Dianetics?

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)

Reviews

[Kari Rakitan]

This is indeed a fun escape from reality. The images are particularly delightful. The exposition drags on too long, though. I recommend getting to the action sooner. When you first mention he meets the beautiful women, I was expecting more there, but then you jumped back to his time as a professor, and I was disappointed I didn't get to hear more about the sirens.

[wordman]

very interesting piece,a teacher and vampire hunter,lot of books on this and movies