I'm jumping into @lmac's collage contest this week, the 252nd round. I'm not eligible for a prize, but I love to participate. The round began last Thursday and will conclude on June 22.
As soon as I saw the template by @seckorama (see below) I thought of a book I once wrote. It was a vampire book, a gothic romp, and it wasn't very good, so I never published it.
My original plan was to create a vampire who was a complex character and who dealt with life's most profound issues. The book kinda got out of hand as I tried to make the plot relatable. That extra material ended up being a little silly.
The vampire sections, which are the best parts of the book, inspired my collage. I've copied a couple of those sections in the body of this blog.
Here is @seckorama's template, from which my collage was derived:
When you read the first excerpt you will see that the collage could have been an illustration for this piece.
Beware: These excerpts are bloody (they are, after all, about a vampire).
Claude closed the thick oak door. He secured the lock and took an elevator to the street. Tomorrow was Friday, and he had a number of important items on his agenda. He wanted to be well rested.
He saw something out of the corner of his eye. A shadow? It was gone. He continued toward First Street.
There it was again, hovering close beside him. Then it disappeared in an alley. What did that thing want with him? He quickened his step and reflexively balled his hands into tight fists. He walked resolutely toward the bright lights of an all-night deli when...
“What is that?"
Claude glimpsed the shadow again. It was larger than before, more distinct, like a falcon with an enormous wing span.
He quickened his pace, impelled forward by an ominous foreboding. When the shadow finally descended it took him so swiftly that he was not aware. It imposed upon him a numbing trance, obliterating all fear and sensation.
The police discovered Claude Moreau's body in a New York City alley. There was consternation at the scene. Bodies in exactly the same condition had turned up recently across the city. Always the head was missing. And there was an absence of blood. And yet, no sign of trauma could be discovered on the body. There were no bruises, no defensive wounds.
Theft as a motive was ruled out because Claude still had his wallet, intact with credit cards and cash. A Rolex and jade ring were also found. Claude's murder, and the others it resembled, were evidently carried out in a bizarre death ritual. The detectives surmised that a serial killer was on the loose and that the killer had an appetite for the grotesque.
The city was familiar to him. He had observed its transformation, from rutted dirt byways, to refuse-strewn asphalt alleys, to a glistening chrome and steel metropolis. He contemplated his feeding grounds. Millions of warm-blooded souls, their veins vibrant with the nectar that supported his existence. Always for him there was hunger and always prey. The passage of ages never abated the thirst that drove him from city to city, land to land, across the seas and back again until he had covered the globe hundreds, perhaps thousands of times.
No more surprises were left to him. No true refreshment. It was all consumption and survival.
He prepared to eat, and to allow chance to be his guide. He drifted casually, pulled by the scent of young blood, to an open window. The heedless occupant of that small apartment no doubt trusted the height of her building to protect her. But intrusion such as he was to visit upon that hapless dweller was something beyond the ken of modern civilization.
Benza hovered over the bed. A sense of something different stalled his progress. She lay without even the lightest cover to insulate her body. The heat of the room was pleasant to him, but was greater than what might comfort a healthy human. He leaned toward the prone figure and placed upon her neck his pale lips, which had not fed that night and were eager to accomplish their task. Once again he paused. Something in the taste of her was distinct.
He bit, she stirred, he tasted. And rose instantly.
A surprise. After centuries with nothing new. A surprise. She was known to him. In her veins coursed the blood of his people, of the tribe from which he in his human incarnation descended. And she carried, most surprisingly, the DNA of Paloa, the love of his youth who had perished in the vampire invasion, the same invasion which had transformed him into a beast.
Here, on a simple bed, in an overheated New York City bedroom, lay without doubt kin to his ancient people, the Kanakaon, and the direct descendant of Paloa. This scion of the Kanakaon, this slumbering woman whose neck lay bare to him, was a connection to his distant humanity and the people to whom he owed his existence.
I began with @seckorama's template and then borrowed elements from other sources. I tailored the borrowed elements to suit my collage. For example, I elongated the vampire and gave him a pointy head. Also, the victim, if you look closely, is turning to look over his shoulder in my collage, which he is not doing in the original. There are a few other modifications to the elements that I'm sure no one but me will notice.
- *Vampire and Bat
Sabine Kroschel Pixabay
*Man fleeing
Mohamed_Hassan Pixabay
*Moon
*Black cat
*Rat
My own photo
I used Gimp filters to help me achieve the effect I was going for, sorta of a Gothic/Noir look. Also, I used Lunapic filters to enhance that effect. Paint 3D was helpful as I manipulated the images.
I thank all those who contributed elements to my collage. Please note: All elements and filters were manually added. This is a human creation, straight from my very vivid imagination :)
LMAC and LIL
LMAC is a community, within the Hive community. We welcome collages from anyone. The collages may be created for our contest, or they may be free form.
If you use an image from our LIL library you receive extra consideration. Also, if you use these images in another community and add the tag LIL to you post, you will receive an upvote from LMAC. The image library at LIL was created entirely by Hive bloggers. Procedures for borrowing from and contributing to LIL may be found here, on @shaka's blog.
Thank you for reading my blog.
Peace and health to all.
Hive on!
Love the collage. It's right up my alley:). The excerpts from your novel, not so much. I've never had a liking for horror and avoided even the classics such as the Exorcist and those Halloween movies that everyone's seen. I find life itself quite horrible enough:)
I was in a mood when I wrote that. I sat down and typed out 80,000 words. I was trying to explore issues of life and death in a way that would be palatable to a popular audience. Who better to think about such matters than a vampire? What happened was, my vampire was philosophical and underwent a character transformation, but the book was unreadable :)))
I think the name Claude has been forever tainted ever since they used it for AI, like Alexa I suppose.
Never was a fan of vampires. There is something just..desperate and icky about them.
This is an excerpt from a book that was written long before Claude was an AI creation. I'm not publishing the book. It's not readable :) And I look past all the AI stuff. I will use the words Gemini, and Guru, (not Alexa...never had use for that name). I'm just beyond the whole AI universe.
In defense of my vampire I will say there is no better candidate for redemption than a vampire. And that's exactly what happens to my vampire. He meets that girl who reconnects him to his roots, to his lost humanity, because she is from his tribal lineage.
The usual sexual tension that most films play up between vampire and seduced young maiden...no, not in my book. Only this woman, who ends up being the catalyst for his reclamation.
So, yes, vampires are icky, but a vampire can also set the scene for a discussion about the value of life, life on what terms, good and evil....
Writing this was a very interesting exercise, and once I set the goal for myself of writing 80,000 words, I couldn't stop. It was a marathon.
Great one! Black and white perfectly suits the atmosphere!
Btw: Is Claude intentionaly Claude? Namely, as expert says, Claude is right now the best AI 😂
Thank you! Glad you like what I did with your alley😄
My Claude predates the AI Claude. This was written at least 10 years ago, when AI loomed only distantly on the horizon, and AI Claude was not even an embryonic concept :)))
It can't be that bad be a vampire, immortality, never sick...
Very nice work though