Dreamwidth Vamptober writing prompt: @meli_writes — Vampire who isn’t sure whether they ever stopped sleeping
“I mean, part of it’s that people don’t have any sense of history,” Jasmine says gloomily. “Your average man in the street has a vague sense of Ye Olde that collapses everything from about 1950 back to the Middle Ages, and then Ancient that’s basically everything from the Middle Ages back to prehistory, then a placeholder marked DINOSAURS covering everything back to the formation of the Earth, and then skips everything between that and the Big Bang. So when you ask: what’s old, to a vampire, it’s all — Ye Olde, you know?” She sips her Cosmopolitan. “Anatomically modern humans have been around, ballpark, three hundred thousand years. Or two-to-four hundred K, as a bracket. And the general reckoning is that vampires change over time, and they get better. Harder, better, faster, stronger, eh? Technologic. No, hang on, I’m mixing up my Daft Punks.” She blinks, squints. “Ah, but there’s your answer.”
”…I asked whether you still sleep?” Kat says, patient but uncertain.
“Dunno, that’s the honest truth,” Jasmine says. “The thing is, you don’t see old old vampires because, like — pet theory — everything is anatomical. Thought and memory and perception, they’re anatomical. You can’t monkey too much with human functionality, you can’t just go bam! Blood-powered superhuman! and end up still....” She taps the side of her head. “So the development over time necessarily…some days I think this is all a lucid dream,” she adds. “Some days I’m not so sure about the lucid.”
She takes a pensive sip.
“I mean, what if that’s what happens?” she adds, with renewed zeal. “What if you dont see the old oldies walking around because they just sleep. Powerful, ancient…dreaming, sunk in the earth. Solipsistic superbeings, locked in, no longer human enough to ever move again.”
“And you think that might be what’s happened to you?”
“I know I don’t trust my perceptions any more,” Jasmine says softly. “Not after — there was some stuff. You’re better not hearing it. My brain’s changed under me, and I dont know what that makes me, or what it means. So. I dont know. I don’t have a good sense of what’s real, any more, or what’s happened or hasn’t. Do I remember sleeping? Do I trust it, if I do?” She stares into the distance, is silent for a minute, then shakes herself.
“But this is just sophomore philosophy class,” Kat protests. “Do we have truly have any perceptions in common even though we call the same apparent thing ‘red,’ all that.”
“Am I still me if I get Alzheimer’s,” Jasmine agrees. “Look, I didn’t say it’s profound, did I? And I know it’s a strain of thought that’s not actionable. The reply to yeah but what if all this is a simulation, maaaan is necessarily what about it, you fucking bore?” She grins lopsidedly and picks up her glass again. “What I’m planning to do about it,” she says, “is finish this, go back to my hotel room, drink about half a pint of your generously offered blood, and sit you on my face till you see god.”
Kat splutters a little on a mouthful of her own drink. “That’s presumptuous,” she says, wiping her chin with the back of her hand, but can’t keep the amused lilt out of it.
“We all know what interview with the vampire is a euphemism for, luv,” Jasmine leers.
