“There are darknesses in life and there are lights; you are one of the lights.”
We all experience darkness, illness, isolation,fear — a world of half-light and waiting, where faith and fear are sometimes the same language whispered in different keys. Dracula: A Requiem in Terror represents a journey out of darkness and ultimately into the light.
A requiem of sorts in terms of a metaphor. A journey from death and darkness to the hope of light and glory.
Each scene, each sound, each flicker of light represents a prayer whispered into the void. This is not a story about monsters. It confronts them and defeats them, eroding the dark statue that once stood and carving a brave new world in its place. And ultimately, one can see his or herself where there was previously no reflection.
So this is a requiem — not for death of a person that is, but one who was. And then a rest-- in peace.
It is gratitude. It is release.
It is love made visible.
A Requiem for a Life Before the Dawn
How exactly does one offer a requiem for the un-dead?
The better question is: why would one?
This is not a requiem for a vampire.
It is a requiem for what was taken by one.
Beneath the capes and widow’s peaks lies a story of ultimate sacrifice — not for acclaim, but because it is the noblest sacrifice: “Greater love has no one than to lay down his life for another.” Dracula is a novel of death — physical, mental, metaphorical — and Stoker is persistently drawn to the edges of mortality, to how broken a person can become before rising again.
A traditional requiem begins in darkness, lamenting death before undertaking the arduous journey toward the light of glory.
Viewed this way, Dracula becomes a novel of hope — of rebirth and new birth.
This piece embraces that journey, carrying us into darkness only long enough to find the strength to fight our way back. It honors sacrifice.
And it lifts its gaze toward the possibility of a brighter future.
requiem, n.
re·qui·em ˈre-kwē-əm (also ˈrā- or ˈrē-)
1: a mass for the dead
2a: a solemn chant (such as a dirge) for the repose of the dead
2b: something that resembles such a solemn chant
3: an act or token of remembrance
REQUIEM AETERNAM
