I finally finished my Vampire screenplay. It’s been about a month since the first germ of the idea (which was simply, “I know, I’ll write a vampire script!”), and most of this time I’ve been sick to varying degrees. More sick than usual, I mean. This did not come as a surprise.

In the past few years, as a result of certain “evidence,” I have come to more or less accept the literal existence of “vampires,” albeit without putting much stock in the Hollywood fantasies of said beings. Nonetheless, the idea of an ancient race of superhuman entities that keep humanity as livestock and continue to control our thoughts and actions behind the scenes, both on a local and a global scale, has, I freely admit, become a more or less central tenet of my weltanschauung. It is also a primary strand in the tangled web of my own personal “karma,” as relates to my chronic health problems and overall gloomy and morbid state of mind. So why not incorporate some of this into a “trashy” horror script, and see what comes up? It has to be good for something besides bad health and a demented worldview, surely?

What turned up was Vampires, and not just the imaginary kind.

I guess you could say that there were three types of Vampire that showed up.

There were the ones I conjured with my imagination for this fiction, of course. These were drawn from my own investigations (and entanglements) into the Occult, and so like any other characters of fiction, at least partially partaking of everyday reality.

Then there were the Vampires which I “imagine” (or deduce) really do exist, non-physically, invisibly, and perennially, around or inside my energy field, sucking the life slowly out of me. These fiendish beings were no doubt stirred into a feeding frenzy by my decision to focus my creative energy exclusively on THEM. (And perhaps, did all They could to prevent me blowing the whistle on Them via this screenplay?)

And finally, for you skeptics out there, there was the very mundane, strictly physical (though still invisible) Vampire manifestation, in the form of an intestinal parasite known as THE HOOKWORM. These little critters come out of the Earth itself , a curious detail, since a theme of my movie is that humanity is the “real” vampire, and that the supernatural kind of Vampire is part of the Earth’s justice, or revenge upon us. Anyway, the hookworm (which apparently ONE IN FOUR people on the planet are hosts to) have no trouble getting under the fingernails (for example), and from there worming their way inside the body, using their tiny, microscopic teeth, which resemble razor blades. Once inside you, they continue to pierce the flesh with their miniature fangs in order—you guessed it—TO DRINK YOUR BLOOD.

The result of this is the usual insidious, relentless symptoms associated with parasites: exhaustion, nausea, diarrhea, and so forth, all of which I have been suffering pretty much constantly since I embarked on this script.
The good news is that it is finally done and, if the medication I’ve been taking is any good, the hookworms are on the run! I have managed to keep the script exactly to the page count limit stipulated by the industry, 110 pages, and registered it with the Writers Guild. I think it meets the requirements of the genre (simple, grisly, suspenseful, scary, possible to film fairly cheaply), while living up to my own standards for plumbing the darker depths of the human psyche, exploring the Vampire archetype and occult realities, etc etc. It even has a message of sorts. I like to think of it as Blade meets Blue Velvet (in the industry jargon), probably the closest I have come to a genuine “Trojan Horse” work, i.e., one that carries the plasmate but actually has a fair chance of getting through the Gates of Hollywood. It’s called The Keepers. Maybe the sequel will be called, Hookworm?