There are three types of undeath. The vampire is a great example of the first sort. Pure magic, though some pedantic people make some distinction between different magics and want to specify sorcery. Other pedantics want to specify something else. Others, still, want to pretend it’s source is at bottom scientific from that wonderful sort of contradictory science, the science unknown. This leads to the other end of the classical spectrum, that of the zombie. Mindless body, and whether it is caused by magic or science or has any cause at all, the result is the opposite of the vampire. Many different and varied instances of undeath lie along this spectrum. Inspector Doom is something else entirely. His body and soul, torn apart by a bomb, were stitched back together by scientists who didn’t believe in the soul at all. Yet the soul of my old friend still persists, haunting the mechanized image of what he was.
Where the idea came from:
I had a strange dream. It had something of the humor in it of Leslie Nielsen in Naked Gun. Cartoonish, I’ll say. There was a thief and I think murderer. We had encircled him with a variety of whacky methods which I don’t recall now, but he was a vampire. When he tried to turn into a bat, grab the item he was stealing, and fly away, then a huge cage fell on him and he returned to his normal form. We see behind him a strange creature, a mix of Inspector Gadget and Judge Doom decked out by the Church with a bunch of skeletons, relics of different saints, hanging from the spidery arms of a rotating umbrella contraption (that is, the skeleton of the umbrella sans the webbing) rising from the back of this “Inspector Doom,” as I’ll call him.
The two, Inspector Doom and the unnamed vampire, looked ready to fight, and when the grinning Inspector Doom accused the Vampire of his crimes, all the skeletons lifted their arms and extended their own accusing fingers at him. Yet, just then the vampire’s daughter interposed herself, her back to Inspector Doom, and added her own complaint. I think she had been the one he was stealing from and that she was accusing him of betrayal, a broad betrayal of vampires in general. Inspector Doom seemed to be having the time of his life; he was almost giddy. Anyway, my alarm went off and I didn’t see the end of the affair. However, that image of the rotating contraption with the skeletons was beautifully balanced between cool and ridiculous, and the character of Inspector Doom, a sort of psychotic cyborg, was just too rich not to set down.
Also, last night, I awoke and was asked a question: would I rather relive a great moment or have a new great moment. I fear the question loses something in putting it in English; the idea existed purely as intuition in that half sleeping wakefulness, and I could not answer. I asked God, for He would know, and settled on wanting to have a good time going forward. Then I had this crazy dream which is just the sort of verging on ridiculous but also kinda cool thing I love. I can’t think of the word right now. The Monk, by M. G. Lewis is like it; everything is so huge and crazy and yet serious.
Tale Told 