Fadhil Al Azzawi

1940 / Kirkuk, Iraq

A Night With The Vampire

In a tavern in Transylvania
- It was evening -
I met a slim man with a top hat
And a black silk gown.
He told me his name was Count Dracula
And had just left his plush coffin
To hunt for young beautiful girls,
Coming back home from discos.
I did not believe him, of course.
He invited me to his cellar
To drink a glass of red wine
In honour of his Irish creator,
Bram Stocker.
When he took off his hat
And grinned at my face
I saw spiders roam in his hair
And his canine teeth drip blood.
I do not know how I escaped him
And with which stick I drove off his wolves,
Which chased me along the streets.
Was it professor Van Helsing
Who hurried to escape me?
Had someone draped garlic lace around my neck?
Or was it the beautiful Lucy who turned into a black bat
And let him follow her to the ruins
Covered in a blanket of fog?
All I remember now is that
When I woke up from sleep
I found that I had spent that horrible night
Laying up curled on the sofa in the living room,
As Dracula was still howling on TV,
burning in the sunlight infiltrating through the window.
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