Critical Mick

Text Message to Jonathan Harker, 10 PM

Dearest Jonathan, thnx 4 the recipes but I dont like paprika. 2 spicy! Glad u r having such colourful diversions in Transylvania. Have arrived in Dublin but its rife w/ hooligans. Pls reply by soonest txt, Ovenmitt.

Txt Message, Ovenmitt to Mina, 10:08 PM

Mina, flower of fairest England. Yr boyfriend Jonathan is abroad & I am left alone on Bram Stokers streets. If u have arrived in Dublin, come aid me! Am on Duke St. & droves of scoundrels r about. Am not 2 scared. They move zombie-slow. Drunken louts.

Txt Message to Renfield, 10:12 PM

Hello Ren, Ovenmitt here. Am shaking w/ terror from my spit 2 my spats!!! Can u come collect me?

Txt message from Renfield, 10:20 PM

Sorry, am tied up at the moment. Would love 2 b roaming Dublin. Drink beer 4 me! Meet people! Above all, "bug" me again soon. ME-OW! A mind corrupted entirely, Renfield

Excerpts, Diary of a Shady Lady

Today was Abe's last day at the Civil Service so well all went out on the tear. I got absolutely poleaxed. I promised Lucy I'd stop by her place straight after work to return those items, but Goldschlagger scuppered that plan. Better late (and splashed with only a little sick) than never. Bastard bouncers did me a favor chucking me out on me arse.

Staggering off Grafton Street, I met some mousey feller who looked enough like Billionaire Bill Gates that I figured I'd say hello in hopes that he would buy me drink.

Txt to Renfield, 10:31 PM

HELP! Hooligans! At my gates! Drop yr roast chicken & save me!

Txt from Renfield to Ovenmitt, 10:32 PM

Harker chows roast chicken. I'm a fly-boy. Call Buffy.

Transcript of a Transvestite (kept in phonograph... accidentally)

TV: Say, sailor, that's a lovely... antique phonograph... you have there! Buy me drink?

OM: Blimy, take this tinfoil phonograph upon which I aspired to inscribe a record of my observations! O but leave my soul intact that it may to heaven fly when this wan shade of a mortal being pass away!

TV: Oh! Extensive wordiness, huh? You've been reading Bram Stoker's Dracula! Tee-hee! Blah! I vant to drink your Beamish!

OM: You, madam, clearly have a patience that would slight even solid novels like The Rizzoli Contact or A Haunted Heart for their non-Warner Brothers pace.

TV: Wha-?

OM: Fundamental to Warner Brothers cartoons is the Coyote in constant explosion! Instant punch-line. No sophistication. No drawing-room pace to challenge the classically-trained mind of a civilized man!

TV: I swear by me Ed Wood-style angora jumper, I haven't a clue what you're on about. You're saying it didn't take you forever to read Dracula? Hold that thought a mo, Billionaire. I'm bursting for a slash.

Txt to Van Helsing, 10:35 PM

Dear Doctor, yr reputation 4 perceiving matters that are not as they would seem has spread wide yr fame. So this I inquire: in Dublin do women make their toilet standing up? Or does in this Hibernian hell there dwell a race of men who sway habitually and don women's attire? If so r they dangerous?

Txt from Van Helsing to Ovenmitt, 10:36 PM

Yes but thank Gott in himmel he is not Scottish. Enter the nearest pub & reinforce yourself with Dutch courage.

Txt, Ovenmitt to Van Helsing, 10:36 PM

Am I 2 understand that u r on the way 2 lend learned assistance 2 this most shocking & otherworldly case?

Txt from Van Helsing, 10:37 PM

I will arrive. Then return 2 Amsterdam. Then make the same journey again. Several times. For no gutt reason.

Excerpts, Diary of a Shady Lady

The mousey feller ran into a nearby pub. Luckily the doorman was chatting up some underage skank in a €400 pair of stilettos. I breezed by. My billionaire rattled his foot nervously at the brass rail, but was too timid to catch the barman's attention. "Two pints!" I bellowed. The place went still as one of those lead-lined graves.

Piss-poor timing I have. Right in that silence, me guts gave up the ghost of that kebab and curry chips I’d scoffed to line the old stomach. BLOOF! Every head turned. Every nose. Me face went scarlet.

Mr. Billionaire coughed, then squeaked that he would be most refreshed by a brandy and not a pint. I yodelled loud enough ta be heard on Moore Street, "Two pints an’ two brandies it is, then!" Ye can’t let a wee thing like wind stop ye from celebrating a good night out.

Transcript of a Transvestite (kept in phonograph... accidentally)

OM (into phonograph): It boggles the rational mind, how in the form of a vapor the most wretched evil essence can escape through tightly-sealed cracks.

TV: Yeah, sorry about that. Well, Slante! Ah! That's the stuff to get down yer throat.

Gothic Bird: Lucy? My God, Lucy, is that you? You've changed! Horribly!

TV: Would ye ever piss off, ya dose of salts! I'm not Lucy. I mooched the clothes off a her.

GB: Sor-ry!

TV: Not half as sorry as you're about to be, petal.

TV's Arse: Bloooof!

GB: This is dreadful! I shall die from sheer want of air!

OM: My God! The woman in black has gone ghastly, chalkily pale and collapsed into my arms, almost fainting! Here, this brandy will return the color to your cheeks and gums.

GB: Free drink! Nice one! Mmm. So, what's the story? Are you with this... miss?

OM: A presage of horror at the mention! The "Miss" is bad, very bad... To him I say: "Pouf!"

GB: Wha’?

OM: To banish the snarling monster I have summoned the assistance of Abraham Van Helsing, M.D., D. Ph., D.Litt., etc

GB: Van Helsing is from Bram Stoker's masterpiece of gothic horror, Dracula! I love that book. Especially all the little details that never make it into the films: the ship steered into port by a dead man, the news reports about escaped wolves and children gone astray, the mention that Van Helsing's wife lives in a netherworld between life and death....

OM: As do I! Be not thunderstruck, though my confession be a dose of that modern Morpheus, chloral. I, Ovenmitt, am a foul thing of the night! I am... a vampire!

GB: Did you mention Morpheus? Yeah, I love The Matrix too. Even the second and third ones were alright.

OM: Like many readers of Dracula, you have skimmed over the element most important. I pronounced, by every dead thing, I'm a vampire.

GB: Ovenmitt the Vampire?

OM: Yes, a thousand times!

GB: Prove it by murdering us another round of drinks. Let's see you suck down a pint, Ovenmitt.

Txt Message, Ovenmitt to Lord Arthur Goddammit, 11:57 PM

Have depleted all funds purchasing spirits 4 denizens of Dublin nightlife. Send cash! PS U'd b much astonished. The oddness of a madman in an asylum has nothing on this town.

Excerpts, Gothic Bird's Journal

Heard the worst pick up line ever, tonight. But got absolutely twisted on my ear from all the brandy and burnt rum punch that Oventwit the Vampire poured into me.

"So how'd you become a vampire, Ovenmitt?" I humoured him.

"In the confabrications of popular penny-dreadful novels, some modicum yet remains true to the vampire lore. You know how vamps, travelling covertly by ship, feed off the blood of rats and vermin? That is fact. What authors neglect in favor of inventive plot twists and low-cut dresses is mention of the vampire rats that result."

"You were bitten by a vampire rat?"

"A vampire mouse, actually," this sad Ovenmitt blokie claimed. Which explained his prediliction for scurrying into dark corners and squeaking helplessly.

I got talking to this obnoxious Civil Servant transvestite that the longwinded wannabe had come in with. He had ruined Lucy's jummie and kept farting like kebab, but Ovenmitt fetched drink anytime you growled. The booze had me in a stupor, I guess. I loaned this bloofer lady the black lace shawl that I had found in Mrs. Quinn's Charity Shop.

"A thousand apologies, my darling young woman," Ovenmitt tapped my shoulder. "Would you mind terribly if I smeared a little of your blood on my lips and cheeks and chin?"

"Those mentions of mingling blood, in Dracula? That's the metaphor Stoker used to refer to nookie. Queen Victoria wouldn't let anyone mention sex outright, lovie." I closed one eye and watched my suitor go scarlet. The barman started flashing the drinking-up-time lights. "And you're not the type I usually neck with!"

I swear on the many silver piercings that impale my dark Gothic soul, the same way Drac transformed to a dog or a fog or a bat? Ovenmitt the Vampire turned into a meek little mouse!

Txt, Ovenmitt to the Count, 1:40 AM

You monstrous bastard! 400 years of "drinking blood." How did u get 3 brides to live w/u, esp. as u never do any housework? I cant even get a taste. Whats the secret?

Txt, Count Dracula to Ovenmitt, 1:55 AM

Stoker originally named me The Yardstick Ruler, but Queen Vic wouldn’t allow that either.

Excerpts, Diary of a Shady Lady

"Oh, go on ya bad thing ya," I needled the gothic bird who'd given me the antique black lace. "The Billionaire has gotten us both plowed. Let him have a nibble."

"Would you let that twitchy little text-messager give you a hickey?"

"No," I returned her good point with one of my own. "But then again, I'm not being offered another free set of holes in my ears." She jangled her already impressive collection of hardware and got stuck in. I have never seen a bloke so glad to give a girl a peck on the ear. But then again, I've never seen a guy go out on the prowl lugging around a tinfoil phonograph.

Billionaires! Mad as ducks.

Txt message, Ovenmitt to Mina, 3 AM

Who needs ya, ya slapper. Got me a taste of something younger & sweeter, w/ Blood Alcohol Content high enough intoxicate a draughthorse. Stop the Earth! Whoo-hoo! Even tripping over some muttering fat-assed bastard on the way out into the sweet night cant bring me down! Your ever-loving goo and faithful fiend

OVENMITT

Critical Mick mumbles into a phonograph he robbed:

Bram Stoker's novel is dated. Vamp fans will find it worth a read, but a looooong one. At 224 pages, fellow Irishman Denis McEoin/Jonathan Aycliffe's The Lost covers the ground from here to Transylvania, creepier and with more accessible character.

Dracula. Has Critical Mick no respect for the classics?