Blessed animals

Renfield, fanatical servant of Count Dracula, scans every inch of the psychiatric ward where he is confined in search of spiders, ants, flies and even birds. His aim is to devour them until he is filled with vital energy on his initiatory path to the immortality promised by his master. Each time he craves heavier animals, with more blood, he manages to manipulate flies, tame a bird, but they are too small creatures. He becomes enraptured, delirious, speculates on the greatest, he is a madman of extremes, but not even in his most lunatic thoughts could he imagine himself subduing a dinosaur, despite the fact that he is being enslaved by a vampire.

Meanwhile, the count, sheltered in the night and repudiated by his people, deploys all his power over different beasts. He leads hordes of wolves, foxes, rats and birds of prey, manages to subjugate them until they are completely tamed. He joins them in a celestial dance transformed into a bat. From up there he plays with his shadow cast by the moonlight and fantasizes about drawing their silhouettes. Will I spread out light as mist, become a noisy raven, a perpetual vampire or will I become human again…? No. None of that. I do not want to give up, I want to be free, despite this wild and painful immortality.

Dawn. Dazed, Dracula runs swiftly down a corridor lined with ancient tapestries with twisted zoomorphic figures and indecipherable typographical symbols. He passes through a hall, stumbling over rusty armor and stuffed vermin on his way up the spiral staircase that leads to the castle’s highest tower. Through the windows of the building, always closed, the first rays of the morning sun filter through, lacerating his nocturnal figure. He sticks his head out of a small window, scrupulously observing the horizon with the scrutiny of an eagle and, as such, he launches himself into the void. He soars mightily towards the great incandescent ball and in a matter of seconds, his charred body is eternally extinguished.

His conflict has been resolved, he will no longer be a wolf, nor a raven, nor a vampire, nor will he ever be a mortal human again, he is now just another prodigy of nature that disappears forever.

Curated by Fosi Vegue