Vampire Slayer Classic

Every two years, the talented and lovely Patricia Rogers, who had the good fortune to be born on All Hallows Eve, hosts a massive and dazzling Hallowe’en party.  In the past, she’s decorated her house to look like an Egyptian tomb, the castle of Prince Prospero, and a hoodoo shack from the Louisiana swamps.

Last night’s party was on the theme of Dracula.  A good many of Vlad’s victims were impaled on stakes in the pumpkin patch, eerie ghost lights shone in the trees, a witch’s cauldron burbled over a fire, mysterious mist boiled from a coffin in the yard from which a newly-hatched vampire was making his exit, and a full-sized coffin sat in the living room.  One of the rooms was done up as Herr van Helsing’s study, with research materials, stakes, and a vintage typewriter.

My reflection demonstrates that I wasn’t costumed as a vampire. While most of the attendees seemed to think I was a Mississippi riverboat gambler or a well-attired gunfighter, I am in fact dressed as a character from the novel.  Quincey Morris, an American rancher, has the distinction of being the only person ever to have killed Dracula permanently, beheading him with a bowie knife after hacking his way through a fiendish tribe of Gypsies.  Unfortunately Quincey died shortly thereafter, since the effete Brits in his party were incapable of guarding his back while he underwent his heroics.

Movie versions tend to focus on the effete Brits, who can’t seem to kill Dracula in such a way that he remains dead, and Quincey has been mostly forgotten.  But not by me.

(The photo, alas, does not show my bowie knife, a classic Hibben Karate Fighter, designed by Gil Hibben as part of his black belt project in Kenpo Karate.  A fine weapon sold to me by the New Mexico Knife Man.)