We Are All Vampires by Rute Serafim & Karl Swainston
We are all vampires, but some of us are more vampires than others. We’re not talking about the blood-curdle-drinking vampires of the past.; no, the modern vampire is more sophisticated and is everywhere in society, seeking only the energy of another person. This contemporary and contemptuous creature will be a husband, a wife, a partner, or a boss in the workplace, daily draining their victims of life.
CHAPTER 2 - THE SUCCESSFUL VAMPIRE by Rute Serafim & Karl Swainston
Successful Vampires
Unlike their counterparts, unsuccessful vampires, whom we shall discuss later in the book, successful vampires operate within both relationships and society by influencing their power and charm to manipulate their victims and squeeze out every ounce of life force or positive energy from them. The charming vampire is one such creature.
The Charming Vampire
Successful vampires are initially charming and charismatic. They have to be. It is no coincidence that the vampire comes across as utterly charming. If the creature adopted noxious or abhorrent tactics and appeared downright monstrous, then its attempts to avail itself of the energy from others would fail immediately. We will later see this unsuccessful trait in the ugly and obnoxious variety of vampires.
The charming vampire is a consummate trickster, and it will do all in its powers to coax, cajole, and disseminate its way beneath its victim’s defences. Invariably, the charming vampire will end in some form of relationship with its victim.
The successful vampire has to be able to penetrate and burrow itself beneath the skin of its victim. Their stratagem is to disarm the victim and make the victim feel comfortable with the vampire being around.
If you pay scrutinised attention to these charming vampires, you will notice that it’s only superficial, and there is no substance to pack out their shallowness. They have learnt all their talk, which will be full of clichés.
The charming vampire does not mind. It will still exhibit all the tried and tested methods of seduction. If the creature can snare its victim, all is good; if the victim sees through the vampiric attack and confronts the monster, the creature will move on to another victim.
Vampires won’t waste time trying to feed upon one so obstinate. The charm is merely a tactic to facilitate more sinister forms of attack. The charm aims to soften up the victim. The vampire will move on to its next victim if the victim doesn’t soften.
In the realm and arena of commerce, the charming vampire is often ego-maniacal. It possesses an unalienable belief in its powers to suppress and succeed.
Defeat is alien to the successful and charming vampire. Defeat doesn’t exist. The vampire only sees defeat in the eyes of its vanquished victim.
Like a dog following the scent of a dying animal, these vampiric creatures have an almost superhuman ability to sniff out weakness; they possess remarkable intuition and precisely know which direction to turn to root out the vulnerable and avail themselves of their energy.
The vampire is a manipulative creature and a person to avoid getting into a relationship with. They won’t give anything but will take everything. They have remarkable tunnel vision to achieve this concentrated effort. This undiluted focus helps the vampire to realise its goal.
This creature is successful because it maintains such energy and single-minded and concentrated focus on its ambitions.
The vampire possesses that single-minded determination to win. Because of this, it is a considerable force to overcome in a relationship or business. Vampires can also sustain this concentrated focus, as the narrative from the novel, Murder and the Devil, shows one such ‘lustful’ vampire. In it, the successful vampire uses charm and manipulation to capture and control her victim. The narrative also shows the vampire in an everyday setting.
THE SUCCESSFUL VAMPIRE
THE SUCCESSFUL VAMPIRE
Sandra Magg was a mystery of a woman. She could be utterly charming, expressive, and expansive one moment but very dark and completely introverted the next.
She didn’t seem to tick like the rest of the human population but like an engine without a heart, beating a pulse of mechanical movement.
She was in her early thirties, had a fine figure and chose clothes which showed her body to full advantage.
Sandra was an extremely successful saleswoman for a national printing firm and had held the job for over ten years. The company let her alone, and she let the company benefit from her skills in sales. The more independence the company gave Sandra, the more trade and business she generated for them.
Her job took her across the length and breadth of the country; there were few places she had yet to visit.
Sandra Magg was married, but the marriage was utterly loveless and merely accommodated her ‘dark’ lifestyle.
Her husband, Clive, was an extremely mild-mannered man who existed in his private world.
Sandra had selected Clive as the ideal husband to compliment her ‘dark’ lifestyle.
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THE SUCCESSFUL VAMPIRE
Aged 25, Sandra’s parents constantly questioned their daughter about her relationships and asked whether she would get married and have a family.
Sandra’s parents were both teachers and both nearing the age of retirement. They doted unreservedly upon their only daughter and harboured great hopes that Sandra would marry, have children, and they’d become happy, loving grandparents.
The thought of having children, though, repulsed her very mind. The very idea of giving birth to another almost made her physically sick. Through various stratagems, she managed to keep this hatred from her parents. Still, in the end, their attack became incessant, and the only way to ensure her lifestyle and accommodate her parents’ hopes was to get married.
‘But to whom?’ she struggled.
Sandra Magg had never had a ‘normal’ relationship with a man. She had had countless sexual encounters but had no desire to enter into a relationship, let alone fall into love, a concept she held in utmost contempt.
On one of her visits to Manchester, she visited Laisters & Son, a small family-owned banner and poster manufacturing firm.
Clive Laister, son of deceased Emily and Frank Laister, ran the company. He administered to clinical precision the running of the business; for every decision he made, he would think of a general conducting his army in battle.
However, he always looked after his staff and was always fair in any concerns of theirs. This business quality made his trade successful; Clive was an independently wealthy man at thirty-four.
Clive’s personal life mirrored the mathematical manner in which he ran his business. He woke at 5:30 a.m. every morning, except on Sunday when he rose at 5.45 a.m.
He would fastidiously dress and preen himself, address domestic issues, and then set off to work to run his business with meticulous attention.
This complete mechanical lifestyle excluded any notion of love, although it did not crush such a desire either; it merely set it aside as not being as important as other more pressing matters.
Even up to his thirty-fourth year, he had never had a whole relationship with a woman. In his early twenties, he had had a couple of brief encounters, but they came to nothing, and he gave up the desire for the opposite sex and plunged himself ever deeper into his work and his hobby of war games.
It was at this time he met Sandra Magg.
From the moment Sandra met Clive, she knew he was the man she would marry; she instinctively knew that he would allow her to maintain her present ‘dark’ lifestyle whilst giving her parents the hope of fulfilling their desire for grandchildren and a happy retirement.
‘Hello, my name’s Sandra Magg from Reid’s National Prints, and by the manner of your smile, you must be Clive Laister.’
Sandra held out her hand, accompanied by a smile with so much sincerity and charisma that Clive could not resist being warmed by the woman’s address in front of him.
‘Please, Sandra, proceed this way, and I will immediately order some refreshments, and you can tell me how I can help you.’
The pair then disappeared into Clive’s office.
They remained there for over two hours; in those two hours, Sandra had quickly concluded her business affairs and secured, without much objection, a contract from Clive’s firm.
Sandra had then set about eliciting all manner of information from Clive: his interests, especially his passion for war games and his eternal pursuit of creating a mathematical formula that could equal Einstein’s E=mc².
Sandra mustered every conceivable and reserved ounce of mental and physical energy to remain interested in Clive’s life.
At the end of the meeting, Clive, somewhat intoxicated by the narration of his autobiography to Sandra and encouraged, asked Sandra whether she would like to have lunch with him.
Her tactic was to say, ‘Yes,’ but she faltered and felt she couldn’t take another two hours of his autobiography and replied, ‘I would much prefer to have dinner tonight with you, Clive, if that’s fine by you?’ and she touched the top of his hand ever so gently.
Clive became somewhat overwhelmed and stammered back, ‘Of course, Sandra. Yes! Of course!’
They agreed to meet at 7 p.m. at a select Manchester restaurant.
The dinner went as planned for both parties: Sandra trapped her husband, and Clive couldn’t believe his luck.
Within two months, they were married in a brief ceremony. Sandra’s parents were the only guests since Clive’s were both deceased in a traffic accident, and he had no friends.
At first, Sandra would play the dutiful wife; for the first year, she would endeavour to return home each day rather than book into a hotel as was her wont and custom.
She showed enormous tenacity in design to maintain her assumed affection for her husband. They appeared to be a happy couple, but no children blessed the marriage, and Sandra’s parents became disheartened once again.
Shortly after the elapse of the first year, Sandra began slowly changing the marriage’s structure.
Clive had developed a new passion: chess. He’d joined Manchester Chess Club and had become engrossed in the game.
Sandra took full advantage of this latest mathematical obsession of his and began to stay in hotels when travelling away from home and return home only on the following day.
It then became two days, three days, four days, until sometimes she would leave on a Monday morning and wouldn’t return home until Friday night, claiming to have more work on and that her extensive travels over large distances meant it impractical to return home each night.
Clive accepted this, as he always did, and fell ever deeper into his pursuit of cracking the code of how best to play chess.
The couple grew more distant.
On the weekend, Sandra would return home, complain of exhaustion, and resist Clive’s sexual advances.
Finally, all sex ceased regularly, too, and only occasionally, throughout the year, would Sandra instigate an advance of Clive to keep him trapped.
Clive began to attend chess tournaments almost every weekend, so husband and wife rarely saw each other.
Sandra had succeeded in her design. She had become married and financially assured but kept her lifestyle intact.
Children never blessed the marriage, and her parents crawled into their pensionable age without hearing their hoped-for grandchildren’s laughs and cries.
Years passed, and both of Sandra’s parents died.
Sandra’s last bane of her life left her, and she smiled.
To all her friends, colleagues, and family, Sandra led the ideal lifestyle: a working wife, a loving husband, wealthy, good-looking and highly charismatic.
However, in reality, a darker side contrasts this existence. Sandra would regularly hunt for men on certain evenings after sales and occasionally during the day. She would never entertain her clients but would pick up men in either some hotel bar or other such establishments. She would only pick up one man a week and carefully choose her man. She would never meet the man again or frequent the bar or hotel where she had the liaison, nor would she take a man in the same city or town in the same month, but would choose different cities and towns to ‘trap,’ as she would say, ‘my prey!’
Although Sandra exercised great caution in her selection of males, exhibitions such as this sexual expression always carried risks in which Sandra – and on several occasions – contracted some venereal disease. However, because of her loveless marriage, she quickly sorted the problem in some obscure private clinic, and the dutiful husband was none the wiser.
In her sexual encounters with men, Sandra always instigated a savage form of love over her ‘prey.’ She selected her man on the basis that she would determine the events of the night and not the man. She began to fantasise through her sexual acts that she was exacting some punishment for the feelings of lust.
This perverse way of viewing sex and practising it dominated Sandra’s thoughts. It wasn’t long, however, before an encounter with a man presented Sandra with the freedom to express her rage upon another person directly.
THE SUCCESSFUL VAMPIRE
THE SUCCESSFUL VAMPIRE
Sandra is a vampire and displays all the characteristics of a successful and powerful vampire: she is ambitious, charming, determined, focused, lacks empathy, and will exploit everyone, including close family, to get what she wants. This vampiric creature delights when her parents pass away. Family and parents are no good for the vampire.
As will be seen later, the vampire is a hopeless parent and partner. The vampire is too selfish to be a loving and caring parent or partner.
However, the aversion to parenting does not dissuade the vampire from entering into marriage or relationships. But before the vampires can do so, they must eliminate their victim’s friends.
THE SUCCESSFUL VAMPIRE