Although this Junji Ito short, first published in 2002 and printed in the UK in the volume Smashed, is not a vampire story it does feature an incredibly clever (if strange) story and there is a blood element and vampire bats. There is enough, I think, to touch into genre tropes.
The story actually takes in eating disorders also, so please take note before reading. It follows Nami whose boyfriend breaks up with her, causing her to become obsessed with dieting and this leads her to become bulimic. The bulimia leads to her vomiting blood and she begins to dream of blood raining from the sky and a hand reaching for her. She wakes to find blood on the sheets, assuming she has vomited in her sleep.
After some time, a young man called Kazuya Tani tries to talk to her, expressing concern over her weight loss and offering to be a confidant, if that would help. She shrugs him off. When she meets him again, he looks gaunt and he suggests he has decided to diet for as long as she does. He then takes her to a shed as he has something to show her and it is full of vampire bats. One feeds from his hand and then goes towards her, spitting blood at her, as he admits he lied about the dieting.
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Vampire bats will regurgitate blood for hungry members of the colony and he has been feeding his blood to the bats and they have been visiting her when she sleeps, giving her his blood to try and sustain her. She vomits and runs and he chases after her, unfortunately he is hit by a train as he runs across a line, his body dismembered by the machine. The bats suck at his blood trying to reanimate his severed body.
Nami wakes in hospital and discovers she was bitten by the bats, though her parents are dismissive as vampire bats are not native to Japan. After they invade her room she goes searching, convinced that the authorities have not found all of Kazuya and she can hear his disembodied voice saying that there is not enough blood and asking for help. She finds his head and goes to pick it up when it turns into a bat and flies with the colony into the night, then a rain of blood, like she experienced in her dreams, pours down onto Nami.
As you can see there are definitely elements here that fit into the genre, the use of blood for health (whether it is sustaining Nami or not is unknown but the blood loss is certainly causing Kazuya’s health to diminish). The transformation into a bat is, of course, out of the vampire playbook – interesting that it is only his head, of course. This is wonderfully Junji Ito and a great little short.
In Hardback @ Amazon US
In Hardback @ Amazon UK
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