Anti Vampire Center

Inability to deal with reality, accidents, losing touch with one's own feelings

Another symptom of vampiric aggression consists of a sudden loss of the most elementary ability to manage reality. All at once it seems that things, spaces, substances delight in spiting us. We bump into objects, we let them fall, we have to repeat a telephone number several times because our fingers slip on the key pad, moving our chair we snag the wire and disconnect the plug from the computer where a document we're working on has not yet been saved, while we're eating we bite our lips or our tongue, drawing blood, as though we were incapable even of chewing.

Some accept it with a philosophical attitude, others simply fume and continue on, the more nervous types get angry, the restless ones curse and break something. But how many ask themselves if those accidents are not by chance related to a loss of energy? If we were to stop a moment and ask ourselves this question, we would notice how reality all of a sudden calms down, the goblin that seemed to be tormenting us gets frightened and flees to a far-off corner, the accidents cease. Why? Because we have unearthed a taboo. We asked ourselves a question. For a moment we gave up flagellating our paranoias, and we are finally on track.

The road, once taken, will be long, laborious, and often painful. Learning to watch over one's own energy, one's own freedom, one's own life, requires an awakening which - like all growth - can have some traumatic aspects. But on the other hand, how much more painful will a state of unconditional surrender to the Vampire's manipulations be?

In Mario Corte's short story Samuel Serrandi, the protagonist of the same name is a vendor of fake multimedia encyclopedias, a completely dehumanized individual who, once having invaded his victims' space, subjects them to a merciless drain of energy to the point of luring them into the net of a swindle worth millions. Here's how Luigi Limandi's ability to deal with reality (he being the current victim) is resoundingly upset in Serrandi's presence.

Limandi showed the guest into the living room. Unhesitatingly Serrandi gained a small armchair next to a small table, ignoring the gesture with which the other was inviting him to take a seat on the sofa, on which eventually the landlord sat instead. The latter, who was by now rendering his own embarrassment official with awkwardness and blunders in succession, just when he was sinking in the cushions, was caught by the idea of asking the other if he could offer him something to drink. While Serrandi, busy in extracting from a blue packet a handkerchief soaked in perfume, ignored Limandi’s offer, the latter thought well of springing up from the sofa’s depths, and so doing went to beat his head against a bookcase that stood above him. "Careful!" said Serrandi with icy promptness while gently wiping the sweat from his forehead with the perfumed napkin. "It has never happened, I assure you," was the astonishing answer of Limandi, who, definitively abdicating his role as a host, gave up the idea of offering something to Serrandi.

In the story Angelo, Ivan, a talented amateur soccer player, is hated by the team captain, since the latter feels his position of undisputed leader of the team and of the district is threatened. Ivan's rival, Angelo, subjects him to a true "vampiric storm" of impressive proportions, to the point that he loses touch with his own feelings and performs a series of irrational, blasphemous, and self-damaging acts: first he enters into an absurd condition of guilt with respect to his persecutor, then he refuses to drink a miraculous water that flows from beneath the church where he goes to pray, and finally he even ignores the miracle of Christ who moves and speaks to him to show him the way out of the nightmare into which he has plummeted.

As though he had materialized out of nowhere, a man with a tray in his hand appeared at the door of the sacristy. On the tray were four or five small glasses, the "cornetta" kind, of heavy glass, which in modest homes are used to serve sweet wine to the guests. "A new kind of eucharistic ceremony?", Ivan wondered. Marisella took one of the glasses and drank its contents all in one gulp, then returned quickly to her place. The man, who must have been the sexton, passed the tray around among the few who were present, each of whom repeated Marisella's action. When he approached Ivan, the man raised the tray a little to invite him to help himself. Ivan was fascinated by that scene which seemed pregnant with magical implications. It reminded him of an episode of the legend of the Holy Grail, and for a moment he felt like a knight of the Round Table. But guilt flowed in his heart; just as in the heart of Lancelot, who would never attain the Grail. He made a gesture that meant: "No, thank you". The sexton looked at him disapprovingly, then he took the glass and drank it himself. While he hurried toward the exit to reach Marisella who was already pushing the door open, he was still confusing himself with Lancelot. He didn't realize that, rather than betraying a king, it was he himself who had suffered reprisals and betrayals; and that contrary to Lancelot, his only guilt was that of having been chosen. One of the old women present in the church let out a smothered cry: she seemed to have seen the crucifix move. But Ivan, who by now had reached the door, didn't pay any attention to her. "Not Lancelot, but Galahad", the crucifix repeated behind him in a tired, afflicted voice. But he didn't hear it, because the illusion of guilt makes us deaf to the words of life.

Mental block and the tendency to perform acts that are not in our self-interest

Generally, a mental block strikes the Vampire's victim the moment the Vampire launches the final attack that will secure him the "award of energy" which is his goal.

We can all remember occasions when, against our will, we have had the absurd, unwelcome experience of finding ourselves with an object in hand which we absolutely did not want to buy; we will never know why we bought it. On the other hand, we can well imagine who was behind it: a very small Vampire, but a Vampire nonetheless. As we wander through a shop or market or trade fair, we are stopped and almost physically detained by someone who recites a magic formula to us: "What exactly are you looking for?", or "Have you every heard of XYZ?", or "This way please, just for a minute - there's no obligation - don't be afraid - come, sit down a moment". An unwilling conversation ensues, a fake interest is shown toward the proposal (almost always so as not to offend the speaker), we feel an acute nostalgia for the time when - just a few moments ago - we were free and happy to go where we wanted to... Then the sealed package of a product is opened expressly for us, or worrisome sheets of paper and a pen are put in our hand to sign something, or a calculator goes to work as the product is already being put into a bag... The game is done. We will experience only a persistent, inexplicable mental block of those brief but interminable moments.

And are we not struck by the same block when they stop us in the street to ask for small donations to campaigns for or against something or someone, presenting problems of vast and grave political, social or moral consequence in just a couple of words? While our mind is blocked, the important issues, which should be discussed in depth, which require dialogue, information and civic sensibility, are promoted through advertising slogans and accompanied by forms of solicitation meant to force us to decide quickly, without stopping to think. And so, out of our pockets comes a small, insignificant donation that will certainly not impoverish us. But a donation to what?

When someone, with the ways of a wire whisk salesman, stops us on the street and inflicts questions on us which offend our intelligence, such as "Are you for or against drugs?", or "Do you agree with unemployment?", or "Do you think it's all right for young people to steal?", we should be ready to respond with questions that for a moment will elucidate the absurdity of theirs, for example: " Are you for or against coronaries?", "Do you agree with traffic accidents?", "Do you think it's all right that death exists?". Instead, that mysterious mental block that comes over us when faced with such an impudent, irrational approach, makes us conclude that in the end it costs very little to gratify those people; and so we open our wallets and finance little frauds that have nothing to do with the great problems which were presented to us. What's worse, by doing so we offend the civic commitment and selfless honesty of numerous individuals who, either professionally or on a volunteer basis, are truly and seriously interested in unemployment, drugs, and young people who turn to crime.

In the above-cited short story Samuel Serrandi, Luigi Limandi is the victim of Serrandi, a vendor of fake encyclopedias on CD-Rom; when Limandi finds himself faced with documents that sentence him to pay enormous sums in exchange for a vile swindle (and that in the end will even cost him his life), he is overcome by a mental block which always accompanies the crucial phases of a vampiric assault.

Limandi reopened the brochure immediately and began to examine it frenetically. He strove to understand something, but his mind was like blocked. […] Serrandi began to draw a series of papers out of one of the so many big pockets of his leather bag. In front of Limandi’s terrified eyes, on the small table, documents containing obscure messages began to follow one after the other. They looked like the records of a trial destined to sanction his guilt from the beginning. He peeped through the records hoping to read in them a sign of the court’s mercy, yet on the contrary he seemed to make out in them, the ominous signs of a death sentence. Serrandi slipped the first of those sheets in front him. Limandi’s myopic eyes skimmed through the words without lingering over any of them. That mental block that had already revealed itself before the brochure continued to neutralize any effort of his to keep in touch with reality. […] Limandi was not reading. He did not succeed in reading anything. He was not able to think. He was literally subjugated. In some way he knew, and had always known, that all that Serrandi had told him was a fanciful invention and that on it void words of a mean cheat were printed, but nevertheless he was ready for anything, literally for anything. Maybe to be appreciated by Serrandi. Or maybe not to irritate him. Or maybe to come out of the nightmare of his presence, and to avoid to himself, at least for the moment, endurance that could be pretty well put off till later. […] Of course Limandi had never heard of either the Systhematic Multimedial or the giant editorials it was partner of. Yet he read about everything and was an informed person. But in his horizons, in that moment, there was only Serrandi with his irresistible tentacles. And he was completely at his mercy.