I am not a vampire.
This is something I tell myself often. Whenever I can hear someone’s heart beating in the next room. When I can spot a fallen nickel from 10 yards away. When I have the urge to snarl at someone who made me angry. I am not a vampire, and I refuse to be called one.
My story is complicated, and it starts before my birth.
My mother was an orphan. She spent her life being bounced around from foster family to foster family. Some not so bad, others not so great, but her last foster family was the worst. When she was placed with a seemingly perfect couple at age 15, she thought that just maybe it would work out this time. To her surprise, her foster mother turned into a raging alcoholic behind closed doors, and for good reason, as she lived with a physically and sexually abusive psychopath that brought my mother’s not so great life into a new level of hell.
She suffered through the first few months, bravely taking the constant abuse, but one night, shortly after her sixteenth birthday, when the man and woman got into an alcohol infused fight that eventually led to the psychopath setting fire to the kitchen, she left. In the midst of the commotion she packed her bags and made her way out her upstairs window and down the fire escape and into the streets of New Orleans.
She started out as a waitress/stripper, then eventually started selling her body for top dollar. It wasn’t ideal by any means, but at least now she was the one that held control of her own body, or so she felt. For two years she lived the life of a high-priced street whore at night, and numbed the pain with drugs and alcohol during the day.
When she was 18, she became pregnant with me—ending her night life. She got away with it for a while, but she could only hide me for so long. Her pimp kicked her out of her apartment, so she was forced to take shelter with the homeless addicts in a basement on 5th.
When she was about six months pregnant with me, she was afraid of losing me to starvation. She went down the alleys behind the strip and looked for restaurants who could spare some leftovers, expired goods, anything to get her by. She built a good relationship with a young, Cajun restaurant owner, Lisette. Lisette would always put her leftovers aside for my mom, and every evening she would come by. Lisette took pity on my mom. She helped her sober up and offered her a job waiting tables at the restaurant. Things were finally starting to look better, but it didn’t last long….
One night while mom was taking the trash out back, she was met by a tall, handsome man with jet black hair and dark coal eyes. His appearance was pleasing, but his aura menacing. He lunged at my mother and silenced her before she had the chance to scream.
Lisette noticed she hadn’t seen my mother for some time, so she went out back to check on her, and that’s when she found my mother—neck mutilated, body drained of blood, cold, and lifeless. Almost. Lisette saw movement in my mother’s belly. She went into labor in the midst of her attack, and I was struggling to get out. Lisette ran to the kitchen to grab alcohol and a knife and in the back alley, performed my C-section. She got to me just in time. I was blue, suffering from affixation, nearly dead. She revived me, cleaned me, and brought me in. She called some of her less than respectable regulars to come clean up the mess, and they dumped my mother’s body into Lake Pontchartrain. After all, it was New Orleans. Who cared about the nobody whore who was killed in Leftover Alley.
Aunt Lisette, as I know her now, raised me as her own. She was a hero for taking in the abandoned baby left in the trash behind her restaurant. Only she and I know the real story, and why I am the way I am.
Mom was attacked by a vampire. She was drained of blood. I was filled with venom. Because of my newborn age, my size, and my current state, I wasn’t turned by the attack. But I was changed.
My name is Anika, and I am not a vampire.
Thoughts?
-JGP
Thoughts?
-JGP
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