thrall (throl)n.: a semi-hypnotic state brought on by interaction with the vampire which results in our heightened suseptibility to suggestion from the vampire.My friend Angel was just telling me that one of her vampires showed up at her house quite unexpectedly the other day and asked her if she’d like to go to a street fair with him and his kids. She’d just had a miserably draining encounter with him (and his kids) the day before and it was still fresh in her mind, so when he asked her, she was able to tell him no -- but what she couldn’t understand later was why she’d even considered his proposition. “The weird thing was that I was actually thinking about doing it!” she told me. “Why would I do that, especially when I’m still sore from the last time he bit me?"
Answer: She was caught in her vampire’s thrall. He showed up suddenly and without warning (a favorite vampire tactic, famously employed by salespeople and by people who try to sell religion door-to-door, too), made eye contact with her, and bingo: there she was -- in his thrall and once again highly susceptible to his suggestions.
Vampires are notorious for this -- I mean, we all know that you're never supposed to look into a vampire's eyes, right? And yet the whole thing baffles me a bit...what is it that happens when we do?
Could it be that the vampire's eyes reflect our own indecision?
We are most vulnerable to our vampires when we have not yet taken the time to clarify for ourselves who we are and what we want in our lives.
Could it be that the power of the vampire's thrall lies not so much in the vampire's will for us, but in our uncertainty about what our own will for our lives is?
