Happy Phantom: A Vampire Tale

Thus, I made my first friends at my new school. Larry and Jade was awesome. They took me to the movies a few times and we attended each other's sporting events. Jade tried to fix me up with her girlfriend Jenna Arlington, a tall, fine-looking young black woman. Jenna was something else. She was a junior at Saint Christopher, having transferred there from Spelman College. She played on the Women's varsity Rugby squad for our school. She came from a prominent athletic family. Her twin brother Michael played baseball for Morehouse College and her father once played football for Georgia Tech. She was smart, sexy and funny. Pretty good company too. A total tomboy who loved sports, comic books and action movies. What more could any guy ask for? We went out a few times, but we were too different. For starters, we were two different species. Jenna Arlington was a member of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. I was a member of Homini Tenebrae, as vampires were known scientifically among our own kind. Romantic and sexual relations between vampires and humans are strictly forbidden. A surefire way to get the Trackers on your ass was to start having unnatural relations with a human. Doing so endangered the secrecy which protected our people. It was a death sentence.

So my relationship with Jenna Arlington didn't go further than a few awkward kisses and nervous jokes. It was simply not prudent for me to start dating her, or any human. Only in extraordinary circumstances could a vampire be forgiven for having sexual or romantic relations with humans. We have spies in the governments and socio-political circles of the world. Our infiltrators did what was necessary to keep information about our species activities from falling into the wrong hands. The use of sex and deception in infiltration missions could be forgiven as a necessity. I wasn't a spy acting on orders from the High Council of the People. I would be decapitated for getting some human nookie. It's times like these that I really wish I were in Boston.

In modern times, Boston has been a bastion of liberalism and enlightenment. Gay and lesbian couples walking around downtown Boston could do so without fear or shame. They enjoyed the same rights as everyone else. Same-sex marriage was legal in Massachusetts and California. I felt right at home there, as a bisexual man and as a vampire. The concentration of vampires living in Boston was higher than most cities in North America. The vampire community is fairly liberal about homosexuality and bisexuality. And we don't frown on interracial relations either. You can call us bloodthirsty monsters if you want, but we don't discriminate based on race, gender and sexual orientation. There are male as well as female members on the High Council of the People, the supreme ruling party of the vampire nation. Black vampires date and marry Asian, Latino and Caucasian vampires without anyone batting an eyelash. If you live close to forever, you get over prejudices and hang-ups.

In many ways, we're far more enlightened than the humans. Yet they see us as monsters and hunt us down. Give me a break. There are no sex crimes among my kind, you know. Of course, the craziest of sexually sadistic psychopaths should think twice before he or she goes about taking on the men and women of my species. We who can outrun a cheetah and lift a yellow cab above our heads when driven to anger. If I were in Boston, I could get laid, damn it. I haven't met any vampires since coming to Blacksburg, Virginia. I had seen a few, here and there in the city. They kept glancing about furtively. To what end, I didn't know. But I was sure I had seen vampires in the city. On the subway, in restaurants, etc. My eyes did not deceive me. To a vampire's eyes, no human can ever be mistaken for a vampire or vice versa. Humans think we're all a bunch of pale-faced weirdoes dressed in black and constantly talking in bad European accents. The vampires of Virginia were mostly Recluses, a decidedly low class bunch. I kind of find this strange, but then again, everything about this state was weird.

Let me explain things, if you will. Earlier I described vampire society to you. We're living in the modern age, embracing the Modernist viewpoint. Living out our lives among the humans. Working. Owning businesses. Paying rent. The works. The Traditionalists have been wiped out. They who threatened our well-being by voicing their desire to take over humanity. As if a hundred thousand vampires could dominate a planet of billions. Especially in modern times. We'd go the way of the Dodo real fast.

There are vampires who reject both the Modernist and the Traditionalist viewpoints. They are known as the Recluses. Gentlemen and ladies, I present the losers of my species. For centuries, the vampire community has been striving for self-improvement. We reproduced very carefully. Each family was allowed no more than three offspring per cycle. A healthy male vampire can sire hundreds of offspring upon as many vampire females in his lifetime. However, there are mandated cycles. I was born in the 1980s. My life-giver ( mother) last cycle took place between 1978 and 1988. Female vampires have a ten-year gap between their fertility periods. They can conceive only during certain months once a decade. Our numbers increased like wildfire. We took care not to become too numerous, though. Should our numbers swell, our society might become too vast to contain, and chaos might ensue. Oh, and among our kind, the females choose the males, not the other way around. A male vampire with virility, power and strong genetic lineage will be favoured by many vampire females.

Such is the way of our people. The Recluses are those among us who have been made outcasts. They were born out of cycle. When a female vampire allows herself to be impregnated out of cycle, she will give birth to a different kind of vampire. Why? Simply because her body isn't producing optimal levels of certain chemicals which are necessary to produce healthy, normal offspring. The Recluses are monsters. They're not very bright. Their powers are unstable. They're monstrously strong, and about as bright as mules. Putting them down is the merciful thing to do. They're the genetically inferior members of the vampire race. Below even the humans. Normal vampires are immune to sunlight, silver, garlic and holy objects. The things humans think are lethal to us. Recluses are atavistic throwbacks. They're incapable of speech. They're mindless creatures. Sunlight won't burn them to ash like the movie say it would. However, sunlight weakens the Recluses. It saps their strength. That's why they tend to live underground. And come out only at night. The average Recluse has ten times the strength of a normal vampire. Oh, and they're addicted to blood. Human and vampire alike. For some reason, they're always extremely fertile. Recluse males and Recluse females produce litters of night-dwelling monstrosities. Go figure.

Our people have fought a long and terrible war against the Recluses. It's the most divisive subject in vampire society. Any father or mother worthy of the title, whether human or vampire, will think twice about abandoning their son or daughter just because he or she is a genetic monster who will prey on all that lives. The Recluse can't help being what he or she is. They will attack humans and vampires and feed on them. And they're very hard to take down. A bullet to the brain does to a vampire the same thing it does to a human being. No ifs, ands or buts about it. Bullets don't bounce off a Recluse. Far from it. But the Recluses can regenerate. Something no human or vampire can do. This makes them next to impossible to kill. You have to cut a Recluse into pieces and then set its remains on fire before it can die.

Our scientists have come up with contraceptive medication which female vampires can take to avoid pregnancy out of cycle. But that doesn't solve the problem. The Recluses are everywhere. Efforts to wipe them out result in countless vampire deaths. And the Recluses have become even deadlier. They've developed venom. A human cannot become a vampire. A vampire cannot become human. Yet a single bite from a Recluse can kill a human being. The Recluse bite is also lethal to vampires. Yeah. That's the gist of it. Does that sound like fun? I didn't know it back then but Virginia's underground was teeming with Recluses. That's why there were no vampires around. It was a vampire's no-man land. The Recluses predations have resulted in a secret human militia known as the Night Cadre. Those fanatics thought all vampires were like the monstrous Recluses and were out to take us down. I had to warn my people. War was coming. Human versus vampire versus Recluse. Three species would fight for domination of the world. I could only hope that my species wouldn't face extinction.