THE BROODY BRIDES OF DRACULA

The inspiration for this little piece is odd in that it came to me in a very vivid dream last night. However dreams have inspired many a notable notion, not least Count Dracula, conceived after a troubled night’s sleep, brought on, according to original author Bram Stoker, by a ‘too generous helping of dressed crab’. Curiously, my dream concerned the exact same scene inspired by Stoker’s nightmare. It is the close of the third chapter of the novel, where Jonathan Harker – increasingly reluctant guest in the Count’s Transylvanian castle – is discovered by a trio of Dracula’s undead brides. He is just about to fall victim to their lethal ‘kisses’, when the Count enters in a fury, saying the Englishman belongs to him. The thwarted vampiresses complain that Dracula never loved them, and by way of response, he gives them a bag containing a baby.

It’s a controversial scene, and many film adaptations opt to ignore it, only the boldest directors daring to depict the unholy beauties feasting upon the infant (which Stoker himself only implies). It was this sequence that featured in my dream. Specifically, I was having a spirited debate about the significance of the scene, putting forward a new theory which I remembered with curious clarity when I awoke. What if, I suggested, the baby hadn’t been some kind of consolation prize for the brides, but exactly what they actually wanted? Perhaps they only threatened Harker in order to force the Count’s hand, and oblige Dracula to give them something they wanted but he had always denied them? Something that would prove he loved them… In short, the brides of Dracula were broody!

Think about it. Vampires don’t reproduce like humans, but create new members of their race via an infectious bite. So, a vampire wanting a baby would bite a baby, as Dracula’s three brides presumably did in the story. Vampires don’t age, so this would be a vampire infant for all eternity. They retain many of their human characteristics, so this baby would have no teeth, hence no fangs with which to draw blood. It would also presumably cry like a baby, incessantly if it had no means to assuage its hunger, though as an immortal it would never die. Once you consider this you can quite easily see why the Count would be reluctant to welcome an immortal, eternally crying baby into his castle. Indeed, in my dream I realised, this was the real reason he fled Transylvania and headed to England. And I hadn’t even eaten any dressed crab!…