Okay, this post is going to be in two parts. I came up with this
last weekend, but the idea took a while to gel, and it ended up being
pretty long. Some friends of mine got married last Sunday
(congratulation Micky and Michelle!), and at the reception I
overheard a brief bit of conversation, about vampires. Someone said
that they had always understood that the vampire myth grew from the
fear of death. Now that claim got a certain set of my brain cells
humming, thinking that it wouldn't have been as simple as that. I
didn't get into it at the reception, because when I get going on a
subject that I like, I can go on and on for a while. That's good for
a blog entry, but not so good for a gathering that's supposed to be
for wishing the new couple a nice, happy life together. In addition,
about half the people there did not seem like the sort that would
enjoy a long, drawn out discussion about dying in a rather unpleasant
way.
Now this is going to blend varying amounts of fact and speculation.
It is not gospel, nor is it me saying 'this is the way it happened.'
This might be the way it happened, or it might be similar to one of
the ways it happened. Or it might just be me letting my brain go off
on its own for a while. But it will at least try to follow a logical
path, and by doing that we can learn something. Be warned, that path
is going into some pretty dark territory.
Walk through this doorway with me. Careful where you step, because
we're now back in medieval times. This is a typical city, and isn't
the smell lovely? Yep, that's shit in the streets. Mainly human.
Stay alert while you're walking around, because people dump their
bedpans out of their windows. Also, try to not look weak. Even if
this place has a city watch, they're not going to care what happens
to a couple of strangers.
Let's choose a home at random. For our purposes, it could be a
peasant's hut or a noble's manor, or anything in between. Here we
go. We'll get to the rest of the family in a minute, but for now,
look at this person. It's the middle of the day and they're in bed,
and not because they felt like sleeping in. They're sick. They are
a bit sicker today than they were yesterday, and tomorrow they'll be
a bit sicker than they are today. I don't know if it's typhus,
syphilis, tuberculosis, or one of those strange diseases that we're
not familiar with in modern times. But no one thinks that this
person is going to live through the month.
Now let's look at the rest of the family. All of them, the husband
or wife, the children, and the uncles and aunts who live in this
house, know the sick person well. They've worked with them, shared
meals with them, and probably even had an occasion to sleep in the
same room with them a few times. That person is part of their life,
and everyday they see that person get weaker and weaker.
The kind of fear that type of environment produces settles into a
person's head. It stays there, and it will pop up when things get
quiet, like when a person is trying to get to sleep. Now imagine one
of those family members, old or young, man or woman, lying there in
the quiet, dark house. They can't stop thinking about Aunty Em
(we'll borrow that name because it's convenient), about how pale she
looks, and about how she sounds when she coughs. Given sanitary
conditions and life expectancy in the period we're in, it's probably
not the first person our sleepless subject has seen waste away, and
it probably won't be the last.
One thing that people everywhere have in common, and I don't think we
acquired it recently, is the need for answers. We have our inner
view of the world, and when something unknown confronts us, we have a
deep-seated need for who, what, when, where, how, and why. We need
these labels so we can make this strange threat fit into our world.
Ironically, all the reference points we use for the who, what, etc,
are the cornerstones of our preexisting world. A traumatic event can
expand people's worlds, but there's no guarantee that it will.
Take that setting, and think about it. I'll come back to it.
Daylight savings time has struck, and I need to see if I can fall
asleep without thinking about something horrible. But if I can't
I'll at least have something to write about.
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