Lou's Life Chap 2 "Vampire FAQ"

Where do I begin? That is my current pressing question, what do I tell you first? Before I begin to answer your questions, maybe it would be easier if I explained how I feel about being a vampire. Over the years I have met maybe a hundred others of ny kind, we're not as common as you might think. Seeing how they handle their "condition" has caused me to form my opinion of this life. Some vamps consider it a curse, they constantly think dark, depressed thoughts, they consider themselves the living damned, they hide in sewers and skulk in shadows and are always wailing and gnashing their teeth. UUGGH! I could NOT live my life being so completely, entirely, miserably depressed. Then on the flipside of that, some vamps think of it as some sort of God-complex. They feed exclusively on humans and consider themselves to be some sort of superior species of human. These are the vamps in every scary movie you've ever seen, they get high on human fear, it makes them feel powerful and complete. As for me, I consider myself somewhere in the middle of the two. I look at vampirism as a "condition". Like some sort of medical condition, like a handicap. A human-vampire hybrid who is burdened by having to feed on blood, but at the same time extremely fortunate to have heightened senses and abilities. I have to have a strong enough willpower to force myself to not freak out you humans by showing my non-human side. Living as human as possible saves myself a lot of complications from having to explain why I do things.

I guess I could start with answering the question of what I eat. Of course, it comes as NO SUPRISE that this would be your first question. You humans are so predictible in that you all think alike sometimes. Humans like to think of themselves as the top of the food chain. I suppose some basic survival instinct kicks in when you are the prey instead of the predator. It makes you despise and fear me. But I really don't like to think of you in that context. I don't look at you as food, and yes, I do realize that is unusual for my kind. The way I look at it, you and I are alike in more ways than we are different. Killing a human is distasteful and disturbing to me. I used to be one of you, and if not for a major Twist of Fate in my life, I would still be human. Actually, I wouldn't still be human, I would have died a really, really, really long time ago, but you know what I mean. So I satisfy my diet by raising rabbits. They serve my needs, they are easily transportable if I have to move, and it doesn't raise to many eyebrows. Lots of normal people have rabbits as pets or raise rabbits for food, they just don't eat them quite like I do. I won't gross you out with the gory details. But rabbits are just for daily sustenance. I do occasionally take a "vacation" and go camping and hunting. Bear blood is my all-time favorite.

Moving on to the next Vampire FAQ, where do I sleep? Um, well, in a bed of course. It is a myth that we have to sleep in coffins. I tried a coffin once, just for the experience, didn't like it, to claustrophobic. I don't really have the NEED for sleep, but I'm human, remember? Or at least as human as a vampire can get. I do spend a period of my time each day at rest, laying in a bed. I use that time to read, or watch TV, or study, or write. In 429 years, I have been to school some 30 different times. Being that I was turned when I was 19, I can make myself fit into the 15-25 yr old demographic very easily, depending on how I dress, the amount of makeup I use, or wear my hair. The very first school I ever attended was Oberlin College in 1833, it was the nation's first university to accept women and black students. Before that I went to "home-school", because for the first 200 yrs of my life, women were not allowed to be educated. Most men didn't know how to read or write back then, and for a woman to know something a man didn't know was some sort of abomination to all that is holy. My creator, Quinn, was known at court in England, associated with the upper-class, and had educated himself, and he taught me to read. I would read every book he would buy, steal or borrow. I took it from there, and over the years I have gotten 8 Ph. D's, 6 Law degrees, and 16 different Masters degrees. Every decade or so I will retake the same classes and aquire the same degrees over and over so I can get the latest information. Especially with my Law and Medical degrees, I need to stay current and up-to-date on my knowledge. That also answers the question of why I play the college student role, because I really am a college student. Nobody really cares that I am more educated than most of my Professor's, my knowledge just helps me keep a really good GPA.

Next FAQ, yes, I can come out in the sun. Because of me not being human, my skin does not have the normal pigmentation of human skin. I'm very pale and my skin is cold to the touch. If anybody asks I tell them that it's weird, my uncle is an albino, so albino genes run in my family. People usually accept that answer. The "no sun" thing is another myth, probably started because in the beginning, when there were very few of us, alot of vamps lived in caves. Of course, as I said, there are also those depressed and morose vamps that take pleasure from living in total darkness in sewers and mausoleums, I also believe that is what started the myth about us being able to turn into bats. Bats live in caves, so when some lost and confused human wandered into a vamps cave and suddenly there are bats flying at them, they were scared and assumed the vamp was chasing them in bat form. But to answer the second part of that, no, I cannot fly and I do not turn into a bat. I believe the myth about flying also comes from people not understanding that part of being a vampire is the ability to move instantaneously. As soon as it is a thought, it is an action. As soon as I think about standing, I am standing. If I focus on a building a mile away, by the time I look at it and want to stand beside it, I am standing beside it. The only way for a human brain can comprehend that kind of speed is to classify it as flying.

Yes, vamps are immortal. Humans are very frail, fragile creatures. When we are turned the human side of us dies, the heart no longer beats, blood no longer flows. The fragile soul within us is crushed and the vamp soul becomes the dominate spirit occupying the body. A vamp soul is definitely a different entity from the human soul. I've already told you about alot of the differences, such as instant action and heightened senses. This also leads into another one of the common Vampire FAQ's, I don't really have any "special" abilities, such as telepathy or psychic abilities. If you remember I said we are more alike than we are different, I just have a different soul. That also answers the question of why do I feel the need to play the normal college student role and live like a human, associate with humans and not with my own kind? I don't want to associate with my own kind because, frankly I have not found any other vamps that I truly get along with. They are all either to morose, or to superior for me to deal with. The only other vampire that I keep in touch with is Quinn, my creator. I feel things and experience things differently than any other human or any other vampire. I am my own individual.

Now, as for the answer to what happened to me, and how I became this way, that's a really, really long story.........