Dracula/Harker’s Professor Abraham Van Helsing, unlike in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, is no eccentric, erudite grandfatherly character who tempers his cruel resolve with empathy. Quite the opposite, my Dutch polymath embodies the worst in people the LGBTQ+ community has had to suffer and endure since forever. To understand what that entails if you do not know already, read below my reimagined Van Helsing’s introduction in Dracula/Harker—Part II and shudder at his “humanity.”
Professor Van Helsing’s Journal
August 8th; Dr. Seward’s Asylum, Purfleet
Though now, like me, a physician by credential, my former student, unlike me, not having experience equal to the challenge, proved himself the worthiest of lesser men in admitting his shortcoming by consulting me on the most disturbing case of unrepentant serial sodomite Mr. R. M. Renfield. As John’s former teacher—nay, mentor!—I must ironically thank him for having failed because having studied his patient’s file and examined and interviewed the wretch himself, I fear the pernicious effect his undisguised—no, naked!—degeneracy might have even on a doctor’s trained mind! Fortunately, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent Jehovah—may He be eternally praised by His true name!—has seen fit to use me as the instrument of His divine will to safeguard my dearest pupil—and unsuspecting society—from such virulent contagion and vile corruption!
(Copyright © 2025 by Mark Zidzik. All rights reserved.)

