Chapter 1: Leaving AGAIN…
I was leaning against the door of our car and was staring at the front door of our home…
Well, our home-for-a-while… Whatever. I thought to myself, disgusted.
I was saying goodbye to the place I lived once AGAIN. We always did that. We changed house, state and sometimes country every few months, even weeks sometimes. If people thought we were too weird, we left immediately. My childhood used to be really strange. I grew up between two worlds. My parents were vampires… and I was not.
They’d known each other since they were children. My dad lived in Texas and when he was four years old, he moved with his parents to Alaska. That’s when he met my mother. They became inseparable. They had literally grown up together. They used to date in high school, but my father, Alem (I know it’s a strange name, his parents came from Africa) started acting weird and soon after that he disappeared without saying anything. He didn’t show any signs of life for a year.
When they met again, my father was completely different, changed. His tan skin was pale white and his beautiful (strangely not dark brown like his parents’) grey-blue eyes had turned into scary, freaky amber. He was a vampire. Of course, my mom didn’t know. She was then a junior in college and had moved on with her life; that is until he reappeared. Some weeks later, my dad confessed to her what he was and they stayed together because my mom didn’t care about his monstrous nature.
A little later they made love, like any couple madly in love would and Emma, my mother, realized she was pregnant. With me of course! They did not use any protection as they had only been with each other and never thought my dad could get anyone pregnant. They were wrong and I was created.
My father took care of her, but realized that the innocent thing inside her was sucking away her life. I still feel guilty about that…
Day by day she became weaker. There was no way it could be avoided. She loved me with all her heart and could never have an abortion; it was never a consideration for her. The womb was too hard (like vampire skin) for a human doctor to cut; let alone trying to explain how in only a half a month of normal gestation, there was a five month old baby growing inside my mother. The pink color she always had was gone and a sickening white, gaunt appearance was taking its place. Her swollen belly was like a sea of purple bruises. Her reddish-blond hair was losing its shine and she was in extreme pain, but she didn’t show any signs of it to my father. She was very brave and strong; protecting me at any cost.
When I was born, my father had barely enough time to turn my mother into a vampire. All the while, trying to keep me far enough from her so that I wouldn’t be dangerous to her; or her to me. The only memories of my mother as human that I have are the three painful days of her transformation. Her constant, continuous screams throughout both night and day would have gathered many people around if we weren’t hidden in a little house, which my mom owned, deep in a forest in the Alaskan mountains. Fortunately, it was the middle of winter and there was always the danger of blizzards at any time and that helped keep humans away.
Her newborn year wasn’t as hard as my father’s. It seems that her motherly instincts won out over her vampire ones. I was never in danger when I was around her. This also helped her develop her self-control early. In just four months, we were able to appear in the human world.
We tried to follow a more gentle diet. My father had a passion for humans and saw them as people, not food, like many others of our kind did. My father had discovered that his vampire nature could be controlled and seven months after his transformation, he found a better way to feed himself, (better for the humans at least) drinking the blood of animals. He has followed this diet ever since. The animal blood made his eyes change from a bloody crimson red to a warm golden color, which made it easier to move around humans. When he went back to find my mom, he was still experimenting with this diet so his eyes had just starting changing. That’s why they were amber then. My mom’s eyes also changed faster than my dad’s, around her eighth month as a vampire, since she started out with this eating habit and adapted very well. (We had moved near humans four months after my birth and until her eyes had changed she was wearing contacts.)
I’m proud to say that I’ve never tasted human blood in my life, although my classmates smelled really nice at times. I also smelled very good. I thought of tasting my own blood once but quickly changed my mind for fear of what it would do to me or might actually hurt.
My childhood years were full of love from both my parents and the many vampires we met throughout the years. I found out I could win their love very easily…they thought that I, and my little gift, were adorable. But I also lived in constant worry for my future and the painful fact that I didn’t fit in anywhere. I didn’t belong neither to the vampire world nor the human one. I was growing too quickly to bond with humans without them noticing that I’m different, but the fact that I grew at all made me automatically unable to belong to the vampire world. There were many things that made me different. I was hot, much hotter than normal people, but pale like a vampire. My eyes didn’t change through my eating habits or my thirst. Their natural color is sky blue (a combination of my father’s grey-blue and my mother’s dark blue), and my hair is dark red with tones of black. But these were minor things since I could change them at will; it is one of my powers, my favorite one.
The fact that I grew up too fast is also worrisome. On my first birthday, I already looked like a small five-year old, so staying in one place was hard and I had to stay hidden a lot. My growth is slowing now and in my fifth year, I look like a fifteen year old; although I’m pretty short, just 4’9”. I got that from my mother. Because of that, we were forced to move often so that people didn’t become suspicious.
“Eshe, honey, are you ready?” My mother asked me, waking me from my thoughts and bringing me back to reality.
“Yes, mom, let’s go.” I sighed and shifted my weight to the other foot while running my hand through my thick hair in frustration.
I opened the door I was leaning on and got in the car. I slammed the door hard and I think I felt the car shaking.
“Eshe, please, be careful.” My dad said with a slight chuckle. “We’ve only owned the car a month.”
“Sorry, dad.” I smiled as I buckled my seatbelt and stared out the window as the trees started to fly by. I would miss this place.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click here to get to the next chapter!
No comments:
Post a Comment