Dedicated to all victims of the unbridled greed
Times
have greatly changed: now even people of his rank may fall from grace.
He looks at the peeling walls of the small apartment. From the former
glory he only retains the titles, his foreign accent and his servant,
faithful even though he has never taken a salary. He would cry. Not
because of grief, but anger, this insolent world does not nourish
respect for anything. Far from reverential fear of former times, they
just reserve for him indifference and oblivion. He would cry, but "men
never cry," use to say his father. And as he suspects, neither do the
monsters. So he drinks to forget, rather than because of true gluttony.
Life bores him: time is a prison for those who have nothing with which
to fill it.
“Renfield”... he calls as he tends the luxurious goblet, a family keepsake.
The
dense liquid leaves the body of the girl. He will take her back to the
streets where he found her later, when she no longer has anything to
offer. Homeless, drug addicts, prostitutes ... perfectly dispensable
people. He realizes it is unwise to act in this way, but these times are
not the times for squeamishness.
He
thinks of his beloved Tokay and all reputed wines he enjoyed during
that other warm life he barely remembers. Of all the things he will
never taste again, wine is what he misses more. He would sell his soul
in exchange for leaving the disgusting diet to which he is subjected.
But he no longer has a soul to sell. More than five hundred years eating
this rubbish, he tells himself unable to repress a grimace. While he
observes mesmerized how, in the screen of a television almost as
obsolete as he, a colorless woman uncorks a bottle. Everyone toast with
unconscious enthusiasm to the new year.
“Enough?” asks his servant confused by the ambiguous expression.
“Yes,
enough” he confirms absent. He knows what lies before him: only the red
thirst, eternal. A tiny tear, a nearly imperceptible black drop, slides
down his dry cheek.
.
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