Indignation took hold of the whole world as soon as news transpired of the cold-blooded murder of Transylvania’s spiritual leader, Count Dracula. The militant and founder of the local anti-imperialist movement was a victim of what both human rights organizations and specialists in International Law called an “extra-judicial execution”. The UK government took responsibility for the action, justifying it as a legitimate reprisal against an open enemy in a context of war. Diplomatic sources, on the condition of anonymity, disclosed that the aristocrat has been killed by members of the SAS under the command of the notorious Dr. Abraham Van Helsing.

The count, better known among his many friends as Vlad Tepes (Vlad, the Impaler) was the founder of/and had been leading for over 500 years the MLT (Movement for the Liberation of Transylvania). Though nobody disputed his popularity in the region, a popularity made obvious by the thousands of protesters who took immediately to the streets of Timisoara, Oradea, Clu-Napoca and Tirgu Mures, his enemies insisted that he was nothing but a “vampire”, something his followers deny, claiming that “one man’s vampire is another man’s freedom fighter”.

The spiritual leader of the Transylvanians was finally found out by his killers yesterday in the crypt of his castle in Bran, 20 miles from Brasov, in the Central Carpathians. His spokesperson, Mr. Renfield, told our reporters that, cowardly caught during his morning nap while he was resting in his coffin, the defenseless old man had no chance to react against the high-tech wooden stakes with which the Americans supply abundantly the British army. He also assured us that “there are no vampires: they’re but an excuse to deprive us criminally of our lands and to justify this illegal occupation”.

Dr. Van Helsing, on the other hand, who didn’t assume or deny personally the authorship of the attack, told us that “vampires” do indeed exist and that it’s a mistake to call their elimination a “killing”, since they’re already dead anyway. Using for them the technical term “the undead”, he stressed that it is useless to fight only their lower ranks that are composed mainly of useful fools whom their leaders had submitted to a process of brain-and-artery-washing. According to him, as it is necessary to uproot this evil, the most humane solution is to destroy the very process that allows the creation of new blood-suckers: “Dracula was much more than a mere vampire, he was actually a factory for producing legions of vampires”.

The European chancelleries condemned unanimously this murder stating that it was against international legality and would surely be prejudicial to the region’s thousand year old peace process. The UN’s secretary-general said that the British action was “simply unacceptable”, that it was a barbarous act perpetrated against "a democratically chosen leader" (the Count was elected once, in 1496). He also said that even someone accused of vampirism has the right for a fair and two or three centuries long trial at the International Court of Justice. The NGOs, for their part, blamed the international capitalism because, as they explained, Vlad had been for long an obstacle against the woodcutting and wolf-hunting lobbies that have been trying to destroy the delicate ecological balance of the Carpathians.

The opinions of the experts were somewhat more varied. Some of them noted that, contrary to what the Count’s enemies said, he was actually a moderate whose long experience had thaught him that negotiations are always more profitable than the use of raw force. Having learnt this, his influence was central in holding back his younger and thirstier followers. “Now”, as those experts say, “it will be much worse, because, unliving, Dracula will surely be more dangerous than when he was only undead, and, besides, for each eliminated vampire a hundred new ones will rise from their tombs to keep on fighting until the entire world is converted to their cause”. Other experts in vampirology were less pessimistic since, in their words, “even vampires need living people in order to survive, or rather, to remain undead” (
) “If all living human beings were to be killed or transformed in vampires, whose fresh blood would be sucked? What would they (te vampires) do, suck each other’s throats?”

In spite of being seen by many as responsible for the disappearance of untold thousands of people, the aristocrat was considered an exemplary citizen by most Transylvanians. With an MBA in Occult Sciences and a PhD in Hematology, he used to attribute his longevity and youthful looks to lots of exercise every night and a very balanced diet. He was loved by almost the whole local population because, among other things, he kept in his castle a boarding school for virgin girls and a laboratory for clinical analyses, the services of which were supplied for free to the people.

With tearful eyes Mr. Renfield accused the slanderers of his boss saying that Hollywood shouldn’t be allowed to get away with what it had done. He blamed the movie industry for having transformed the image of a "philanthropic humanist in that of a monstrous leech" and said:” Dracula, a vampire? A vampire, in my view, is someone who, under the cover of daylight, gets in somebody else’s crypt, desecrates his coffin and, without the least respect for his peaceful sleep, drives a stake right through his heart”.