Segment – Coffin, Metal, and Christopher Lee

"Have a happy and merry, fun and jolly, merry, merry Tuesday." the facebook post read. Simple. So Slen did not celebrate Christ-mass. That was really all I needed to know. He didn't have to rub it in my face. Catholics can be such idiots. They don't even know when the Sabbath is. But I had other plans to think about. Tonight I was going to try my new experiment, and I hope it worked out as well as I think it should.

The immediate plan was not to take place at this moment, for it was the time of the sun, and I must retire to my casket to regain my life through the dark. My casket, made of Indonesian Teak, lay waiting. The long dark planks, fitted together by a memorial maker in Djakarta, had been my favorite this century. I had paid for it handsomely and here it was, calling me to retire into another day of escape.

The coffin was longer than usual, for I am an unusually tall person. I am 2.4 meters in height. Men balk when they see me for the first time usually, when I am first risen in the night. When I was young, I would wear the classic vestures of "Count Dracula" and I would get no ready customers. But I am wiser now and plunge men's minds into the fog and though they may look up at me at my unusual height, they seem not to notice the particulars of it. It seems to them that I am quite normal, and that there is nothing odd about me.

Because men are sheep. They are, for the most part, drinks to be sipped with the greatest of delights. Not all men are this way, mind you. Some men are reborn with The Christ, and they are the hardest to pierce. Ah, not that my teeth or my fingers have lost their edge, but it is the Spirit that dwells within them that gives them their power. I almost drink no men who have the Spirit, but when I do, I dine with delight.

I was speaking of my coffin though, and I digressed away from it like a man. I apologize.

Each tree has a life and story of its own and this Indonesian Teak is no different. The wood grows with the life that is given it from where it was planted. My teak was harvested on Irian Jaya, where the world is still wild with the lusts of the primitives. My tree was one of special delight, for it grew in blood of sacrifice. Where the fetishes of men waxed deep with their hatred of their neighboring tribe, they had slit the feet and genitals of their enemies and left them to bleed out into the roots of this marvelous old god of the forest.

The fresh Mayim and old Shemesh had given this tree a particular feel as well. Lizards and insects and who knows what else died and lent their spirits to the folds of the bark, and the tree had grown tall and fit. I had heard of the harvest of this great wonder and had hired the casket maker to acquire the materials from it for my coffin. The dark lusts bled through the wood and made it intoxicating in every way. It was a joy to touch.

The bottom panel was the heart of the tree, it was strangely lighter in color than all parts of the other planks, and there was a cracked seam that ran the entire length. The men who had planed the boards had specific instructions to leave the heart alone, for it was cracked. They were going to cut it and seam it together, but I found out about their plans and flew down to their workshop to stop them. I almost killed them, but I calmed myself and told them to leave it alone, for the flaw was part of the story of the wood. They plugged it with sawdust from the cut around the top, sealed it with the sap of the Guggul tree, and made it smooth.

The design was not sarcophagus style, with the loose lid that could be thrown back. It was a unique side-hinged device, with the hinge working off the bottom part of the side, from shoulder to toe-board. My coffin was not lined, or designed with copper or gold or silver. I had no dirty metals in use either. None of the designs of men over the smelting pot had any love from me. Though they mixed brasses and alloys and various steels with all their imaginations, none of these concoctions held any love from me. The hinges on the coffin were made of ironwood, fitted together using the old techniques.

My affinities were my own however. I only knew of one or two other purists among the fold. The brass family was a love of ours. Amusingly, many of the fold loved the faux silvers. Cupronickel swords and buttons and fasteners were all the rage during the 1960's. This was in part due to the sweeping fever with our kind from those in power in Hollywood. The man Christopher Lee had appeared in the 1958 movie: "Horror of Dracula" and after this, a wave of vampire movies swept the nation of the great United States of America.

I would tell you more of Christopher's involvement with our kind but he has just recently passed (anything less than 100 years is still recent to our kind). So I shall not slander him or his name with any stories. But from 1958 to 1976, that his face was your world's only relation to the people that is my kind, is not lost on us. Our love for him is that of deep, abiding respect. Man though he was, he promoted us in the spirit of our beloved Bram Stoker.