For the Love of Myself and Lucy Westenra
Mr. Stoker, I was sixteen when I first read Dracula,
I was sixteen when I read how the brides,
those beautiful monsters three come to suck Mr. Harker’s c–
blood, and I was sixteen when I re-read that over and over
and over and over and up and down and in and out and…
Mr. Stoker, I was sixteen when I first realized women,
are not meant to repress their passion and sexualities, as you have taught us
with gorgeous Lucy,
who took her pleasures like selecting assorted candies,
with the brides,
who swore their lives to their lord and master and sire,
with Mina,
who resisted temptation for the love of her husband.
Mr. Stoker, I was sixteen when I first learned I am not Mina, as good girls should be.
I am Lucy, who welcomed the Count into her room each night
with open arms, and, were it me,
open legs and open heart and open mouth to
sigh and moan and thank God for this nightmare.
And as my trembling fingers found a part of my body
I was taught to keep under lock and key and never,
never, never show a man lest I marry him. In that,
I am not Mina.
I am soft-skinned Lucy who let the Count in every night to suckle at her b-
neck, to drink the hot blood in her gorgeous body that surely had
lumps and curves and dips like my own,
like the one I learned to love.
For I believe the Count would love a virginal girl
willingly giving herself over to a wave of
temptation and lust and passion
that leaves you breathless and forsaking God,
accepting the dark, accepting
pleasure, pain, ecstasy,
of dreams you tell no one,
but scribble in your diary when no one’s looking.
I am curly-haired Lucy who wore flimsy nightgowns that surely had
skirts to be pushed aside with
gentle, cold, clawed hands.
My own hands can only do so much, but they have done me well
During hot sweaty summer nights where I cranked up my AC
and imagined I were nude in a cold Romanian castle with a sharp-fanged vampire,
and I am his prey, and I am his love,
and I am in love with myself.
All at once, Mr. Stoker, I realized vampires were
of Mr. Byron and Mr. Polidori and Mr. Le Fanu—
But also of
girls who want someone to love their imperfect bodies,
girls who sweat shamefully onto pages of erotica,
girls who ink bats and fangs on their skin, just to feel the bite of teeth.
Did you know, Mr. Stoker, that I, all these years later,
would admit so boldly to have learned to love my body,
to no longer be ashamed of the pleasure I give it,
thanks to your vampiric lord and his alluring brides?
Should I be sorry, Mr. Stoker? Should I weep at your grave?
Or find some way to adorn it with
my muffled moans into threadborne blankets,
as I writhed at the thought of a
cold corpse-like man descending upon my thighs,
to drink not of my blood, but of my nectar?
Our bodies craving each other,
My body alive with euphoria,
My heart drained of blood,
My mind blank from lust.
Mr. Stoker, I was twenty-three when I first realized
I am allowed to enjoy sin,
I am allowed to enjoy darkness,
I am allowed to thirst for creatures who thirst for me,
because I’m one hell of a self-loving vampire-fucker.
Biography
Victoria Wraight (she/her) is an avid reader and writer always looking for the cryptic and strange in her hometown of Buffalo, New York. When she isn’t haunting local bookstores, she can be found hunched over an iced coffee writing her next weird idea. Her work has been featured in Diet Milk Mag, Wintermute Lit, Hearth & Coffin, and Not Deer Magazine.