father grabs a knife and waves it at her. She runs from the cottage, runs from the screaming and the flashing blade. She sees a flickering light in the distance. She hears voices. She smells cooking! She heads for the light, bursts into her neighborsâ cottage, grabs a chunk of pork from their stewpot and crams it whole into her mouth. The neighbors run away and the girl gobbles their supper. She wanders off into the countryside. The next day some village boys find her lying motionless in a beet field. The village elders are called. The local tooth-puller pronounces her dead; the priest says that she is possessed. They decide to burn her quickly. A pyre is erected on a hilltop. The girlâs body is placed atop the enormous pile of dry logs and branches. The priest throws a torch onto the pyre and within a few seconds the flames are roaring and the villagersâ facesare orange with reflected firelight. Then something inside the tower of flame moves, and they see the shape of the girl. She erupts screaming from the pyre into their midst, her entire body on fire. She twists and turns and leaps in a dance of death as the villagers run shrieking. Then she diesâfor real, this time.
That is what might have happened to a diabetic a few hundred years ago. Imagine the stories the peasants would tell! All of the symptoms I described are possible symptoms of untreated diabetes. The sweet smell of too much glucose in the blood, the strange, acrid reek of advanced ketoacidosis, the rotten smell of bacterial infection. Madness, ravenous hunger, extreme sensitivity to sunlight and sound, bleeding, receding gums (that make her teeth look longer), cold, clammy skin, and deathlike comaâall resulting from untreated diabetes. Even the spontaneous, repeated revival from a deathlike coma is possible.
It seems clear to me that diabetes in the Middle Ages led to the folktales that led to Bram Stokerâs book that led to Anne Riceâs novels and
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
and all the other vampire stuff. Diabetics were the original, the
real
vampires. They werenât evil or superpowerful or immortal. They were just sick. Like me. Iâm actually a proto-vampire. When I take an insulin shot now, I think of it as vampire vaccine. If I quit taking insulin altogether I would become that starving vampire girl from the Middle Ages. I might come crashing into your house and eat
your
pork stew.
Or whatever.
You never know what a vampire might do to you.
1655 words (including these)
7
Draco
I get a sick feeling as soon as I turn in my paper to Mrs. Graham. Like maybe I should have left out the part about impalement, or the part where I threaten to break into her house. Oh well, I just wrote what I was thinking. Sheâll have to deal with it, just like I have to deal with her. I donât know why all my teachers are so hard on me. Itâs not like there arenât a lot of other kids doing worse in school. Buttface, the school counselor, says theyâre hard on me because Iâve got so much potential. Like because I got straight As for a couple years, all of a sudden itâs not okay for me to be average. Whatâs so terrible about slacking off for a year or two? Donât I ever get to relax?
Buttface says itâll matter when I try to get into college. Just to piss her off, I once told her I was planning to go to beautician school to learn to do manicures. Buttface sat back and stroked her glass-bead necklace. She always goesfor that necklace when she gets upset. When Iâm in her office sheâs usually pawing at it within seconds.
Buttfaceâs real name is Ms. Butkus. She is married to a man named Steele but kept her maiden name. This reveals something about her, but I donât know what. Sheâs not actually stupid.
After creative writing, I materialize in the doorway to her office. She is sitting behind her desk doing nothing, as if she has been waiting for me.
âHi,â I
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