XVII — Vampiric Entitlement

Have you ever felt entitled to something? It doesn’t matter what it is: have you felt entitled to it? I have. I feel today I am entitled to respect because of my age; I feel entitled to employment benefits because I have worked hard; I feel entitled to see Leeds United win the Premiership.

Apart from the latter, these are all examples of noble entitlements, just rewards because of the industry, sacrifice, and effort we have put into something. These noble entitlements do not hinder the happiness of others. This makes them noble. They are entitlements veering in the direction of the Buddha.

Vampires do not possess this form of entitlement.

There is another form of entitlement: deluded entitlement. Leeds United winning the Premiership is one such example.

Racid, the vampire in this narrative, is like all vampires: he takes whatever he can and does not feel it is wrong. More disturbingly, the vampire will commit heinous acts to secure their deluded entitlement.

When ordinary people commit a crime, they will feel a sense of guilt and a nagging conscience. On the contrary, the vampire is in no way conscious of the acts of the crime they commit. They deem such actions entirely natural and in keeping with success in life. They have no empathy or sympathy, or guilt. The vampire is a cold, calculating creature. Racid is a vampire, and he, too, is a cold, calculating creature, even in infancy. Racid is also a demonstrable example of an ugly and obnoxious vampire.

There are characters in this life and history who are, quite simply, evil. No matter how much love and sweet attention is given to them, they cannot resist being bad. Racid was one such character.

In 1935, to a pair of wonderful parents, young Racid was born. He was a weakling of a child, but his infirmity only made his parents dote upon him even more.

His mother would pinch his cheeks with love and try to make him chuckle, but little Racid never even raised a smile, let alone a chuckle.

As time progressed, Racid’s parents worried whether something was wrong with their ‘little baby’ and his lack of laughter. They took him to a specialist; numerous tests were carried out, and the devastating news was returned that the boy was ‘retarded’; such was the brutal diagnosis of the time.

However, it wasn’t that Racid was ‘retarded’ which made him bad throughout his life; there was something within the child, in his heart or head, which manifested itself in quite extraordinary characteristics of selfishness. These extraordinary characteristics of selfishness and the cold and calculating manner in which Racid acted prevailed within him throughout his life.

At the tender age of five, Racid began to attend infant school. From his first day there, he was a loner, and as the years passed, he became increasingly withdrawn.

He had no friends, nor did he desire any. There was, however, one thing young Racid was intensely interested in: possessions.

He would grab with greedy hands anything offered to him.

Racid’s bedroom was a veritable miser’s nest full of rubbish. His parents loved to see the inordinate passion with which he grasped any new possession. They showered gifts upon him, but strangely, he never thanked them with that beautiful shine of light shown when a little boy looks at his parents after receiving presents.

They didn’t mind, though, as they loved him without reserve.

The years passed on.

Racid left infant school and carried the same cold and calculating character into high school.

At the end of his school life, Racid left with no qualifications. In fact, the boy couldn’t even read, though every effort had been tried; the boy only once showed enthusiasm for his studies.

Although Racid wasn’t all that bright, he did know how to act in his best interests; even if that meant bringing great misery to others, he didn’t care. Such was the complete lack of conscience within the boy.

Racid returned to his family home on his final day of school and declared to his loving parents, ‘I’m off now. I don’t have to live here anymore, and besides, I can’t stand you both.’

‘But we have raised you? We have given you everything!’

‘You only gave me what I was entitled to. Nothing more,’ Racid replied coldly and unsympathetically.

Racid left home, but before he had done, he relieved both his parents of what spare cash they had in the house at that time.

He possessed no remorse for his actions.

Racid never sought communication with his parents again.

When he encountered them by chance, he would either cross the road or turn and walk the other way. His mother was devastated and inconsolable. Her health suffered, and in her 48th year, cancer took her from this world.

Racid’s father, Albert, now hated his son.

With the money Racid had stolen from his parents, he secured himself a cheap bedsit. Since it was easy to find cheap bedsit accommodation and employment in those days, Racid readily took a job cleaning up in some nearby factory.

For the next fourteen years, Racid worked in the same factory. He always tried to gain a better position with his firm, but his employers couldn’t stand him; he’d turn up on time and was never sick, which was all that mattered to the factory management.

Just as in school, Racid in the workplace was a loner. He never socialised with his work colleagues, went for a sandwich, or drank with them. The only social communication he had was one of profit.

Racid possessed a cheap van, and in his spare time, he would regularly roam the streets of Leeds, searching for any old scrap to sell for a profit at the factory.

Racid was now 30 and had had only one brief liaison with the opposite sex, but nothing came of it.

No decent girl would entertain him, deeming him ‘an oddball’.

He possessed a squat, fattish, and somewhat twisted frame for a man; he stood no taller than five foot, five inches.

‘Why waste money,’ he would say to himself after combing the thinned hair strands over his head and wiping the extra lard off the comb with his only towel.

Racid knew he was ugly and didn’t care, or he was not bothered about being obnoxious. He knew he had little chance of winning over the heart of a fair woman.

He had come to accept the reality of who he was, and the only recreation and felicity he sought had been giving full vent and expression to his grasping and miserly lifestyle.

However, in his 30th year, Racid’s fortunes and life changed.