I believe today’s entry is the last we’ll be hearing from Jonathan for a while.
I can’t think of much to say personally except that I haven’t gotten any more tumblr harassment in a while. I guess my strategy worked! I’ll try to write up some more stuff just in case. I also found a very interesting article about Dracula and queerness specifically, that looks to have a lot to say about Bram Stoker’s personal life and interest in Oscar Wilde. It’s called “‘A Wilde Desire Took Me’: The Homoerotic History of Dracula” by Talia Schaffer.
I don’t know what this is from but I got it by searching for Oscar Wilde.
I really want an excuse to read that essay but I’ve already started in on this vampire book so I guess we should finish that first. Let’s say I’ll make a bonus post for every $30 donated to my ko-fi? https://ko-fi.com/playerprophet
Today Jonathan wakes up just before dawn and, once he hears a rooster crow, he books it downstairs to the front door, throws open the locks and bolts, and tries to haul it open. Instead, he realizes that the count locked it at some point, and it’s all futile.
Hysterical with desperation Jonathan figures he’s about to die anyway, so he climbs the wall back into Dracula’s room to look for the key. There’s no key in the room—just Dracula’s collection of ancient treasure—so Jonathan goes back down into the vault to Dracula’s coffin. The lid is on it, hiding Dracula’s face, but the nails haven’t been hammered into place yet. Jonathan, figuring that Dracula must have the key on his person, opens the lid.
There lay the Count, but looking as if his youth had been half renewed, for the white hair and moustache were changed to dark iron-grey; the cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath; the mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran over the chin and neck. Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood. He lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion.
DID DRACULA TAKE A BITE OUT OF JONATHAN ALREADY???
The sight of hot young Dracula obviously creeps the hell out of Jonathan. “The coming night might see my own body a banquet in a similar way to those horrid three.” BABE IT’S TOO LATE. BABE WHO ELSE IS THERE FOR HIM TO EAT BABE?
Jonathan gropes the corpse but can’t find the key. He looks at Dracula, who appears to be smiling, and Jonathan can’t stand it.
This was the being I was helping to transfer to London, where, perhaps, for centuries to come he might, amongst its teeming millions, satiate his lust for blood, and create a new and ever-widening circle of semi-demons to batten on the helpless.
Again this sense of entrapment and abuse. Jonathan is being exploited and used to further Dracula’s desires, and he rages against his own helplessness, but he was a tool from the beginning. Like Jonathan was kidnapped and married to Dracula so he could get a green card while Dracula held Jon’s passport as blackmail. It’s not Jonathan’s fault, but he can’t feel like he did all he could to stop it.
Jonathan grabs a shovel to try to stab Dracula in the face with the sharp end, but Dracula opens his eyes and stares at Jonathan. Jonathan feels the shovel shift in his grip and he merely gashes Dracula’s forehead, and the shovel knocks the coffin shut again. There’s a real sense here that Jonathan doesn’t feel like he was in control of himself in those short moments where he was exposed to Dracula’s eyes. The closed coffin means he doesn’t have to look at Dracula anymore, but Jonathan is still disturbed by Dracula’s “grin of malice.”
Jonathan desperately tries to think of what to do, (in my mind’s eye, while sitting on the floor in grave dirt) but it’s a struggle as his brain “seemed on fire.” He moves when he hears singing of the Romani and Slovakians coming to get him—as Dracula said. He runs to Dracula’s room, planning to make a break for it as soon as they open the door. Instead, he hears a door below unlock and open, so they must have some other exit in the cathedral or the vault. Jonathan can hear the people moving about, so he tries to go back downstairs, but a wind blows the door shut in his face, and he cannot open it.
I was again a prisoner, and the net of doom was closing round me more closely.
Your prisoner status has never stopped being a fact, Jonathan. Honey. Baby. Sweetheart.
Jonathan listens and hears as the people below nail Dracula’s coffin shut, wheel out his box and the others, and lock the door. Outside, the Romani leave in their carts.
I am alone in the castle with those awful women. Faugh! Mina is a woman, and there is nought in common. They are devils of the Pit!
FAUGH! Can’t wait to read more of this book and have bigger and mightier thoughts on Jonathan’s relationship with gender.
Jonathan swears he won’t sit around and let those women have their way with him. As an insecure heterosexual gentleman, only HE may be the penetrator! (Never mind that he might have already been penetrated by Dracula.)
You know I love making these penetration jokes but that essay I mentioned above, in the first paragraph, notes that Bram Stoker started writing Dracula a month after Oscar Wilde was convicted of sodomy. You could read vampire biting like a metaphor for sodomy here, but that might project some homophobia into Stoker that might be valid, or maybe not. Hopefully we’ll find out soon.
Anyway, Jonathan plans to grab a handful of gold and wiggle his way out of the castle via the outside wall, then he’ll flee and catch a train and go home.
At least God’s mercy is better than that of these monsters, and the precipice is steep and high. At its foot a man may sleep—as a man. Good-bye, all! Mina!
“If I fall and die at least I won’t suffer the humiliation of pissing myself with terror every day.” Too bad you already wrote about pissing yourself in terror in your journal, buddy. It’s fine though as it seems Dracula likes you better when you’re pissing yourself in terror.
I wonder what happens to Jonathan’s journal? Will he keep it on him for when he drops into the abyss to be lost forever? Obviously he doesn’t do that but it seems risky. Otherwise leaving it in the building is also risky. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Bye for now, Jonathan!