KRIS ASHTON

My wife and I love to entertain and often have our friends over for dinner and drinks. One such evening, a friend me told a story about a couple who rolled their car and caravan in the middle of nowhere. They emerged unscathed, only to be met by old woman who had seemingly appeared out of thin air.

 

It turned out she lived in a nearby homestead not visible from the road, but the tale intrigued me. What if the explanation had been a little more mysterious?

 

I wanted to turn it into a story, but the trouble was ‘weird person in weird town’ had been mined to death – not least by the brilliant Wolf Creek (2005) which all my proposed storylines seemed to imitate. Then I decided the old woman might be a vampire, except ‘vampires in a small town’ dated back to 1975 with Salem’s Lot.

 

The concept just refused to go anywhere or coalesce. That was until I considered the conundrum of vampirism: each meal depletes their food source and increases their numbers, so they are ultimately doomed to starve (much like Romero’s zombies). But what if vampires practised sustainable population?