Only Human (3 page)

Did you know
Humans grew things called tomatoes, big, red and juicy? They had potatoes and wheat, corn and peanuts, and oh so many delicious things, my mouth is now watering. Good job I’m alone because true Vamps do not drool, it’s a waste of good blood.

We have a secret garden in the basement
, with artificial light to grow some natural seeds and wheat so that I can at least have bread. I tend this myself, which I’m glad about because I love the smell. The soil from the barren land smells so good when I water it, and the plants smell even better. Life is what I smell, it’s life.

Sometimes I wish I was a scientist Amica
, and could work out what exactly happened, atom by atom that changed the genetic code into Vampire. Ancient Vamps, even before the Humans, were made, not born as they are today. They were bitten by the original, and the poison infected them and made them into bloodsuckers. They were much stronger and more savage than Humans, and so eventually overpowered and infected them. I guess I am stronger than the uninfected Humans of long ago. They wouldn’t be able to pick up the car like I can, or run five miles in five minutes. I do have some Vampire D.N.A.

You must think I am utterly
self-involved Amica. I’m not; it’s just that I’m so different and alone. I want my life to change but I don’t know how. Wouldn’t it be neat to time travel? I would land right into a human family with twelve million pet animals. We would bask in the sun and feast on all kinds of delicious foods. I would never ever be alone again. Oh, someone’s at the door Amica, back in a minute. Where’s my blasted fangs!

Don
’t panic, it’s all ok; it was just my uncle, Doctor Rauul. He’s cool! Top man in my clan, and he knows I’m human. In fact, he is the reason I am still alive. Actually, should I thank him, or bop him on the head for landing me in this charade? No, he’s too kind, all vamp (he’s 6’7”) but almost human too, in his ways.

He fashions my teeth and contacts for me and tries to help when I
’m sick from too much blood. Get this, he bakes! Some Vamps do human like activities just because it’s fashionable, or just to pass the time. They don’t eat what they make of course; they just class it as another skill they have attained. Bonkers!! My Uncle does it for a reason, me, and he’s just given me five cupcakes, bless him. He’s another man with secrets. I try to talk to him now that I’m a bit older, but he falls in with mother and father’s diagnosis i.e. I am still two years old! The night is coming when they will have to talk to me, and listen to me, I promise you that Amica!

I don
’t want to, but I’ll have to sign off now; got to concentrate on this history project, then its vamp grooming evening ready for the clan gathering tomorrow.  No-one else but my parents and Dr Rauul know I’m human so I have to look, act, and eat like a perfect Vampire, teenage girl. Rock on dies Lunea nocte and school!!!!X (I can’t believe I just said that). XX

YOUNG WOM
AN

7.01.3012

It
’s late friend, almost six a.m. The clan have gone back to their various pits and finally I am alone. You must think I am a total contradiction, complaining that I’m lonely, then being relieved when I’m alone again. I am even more alone when I am surrounded by the fifty three members of the Rauul clan. Forty nine of them would string me up in a second if they knew my secret. I would calculate that as fifty, when Zak is old enough to walk!

You see;
not a relaxing time for me. I go out of my way most of the time to keep a healthy distance from Vamps. I have no choice but to sit with them when it’s clan gathering. I have to wear this foul neutraliser oil or they will certainly smell my human blood. Most of them look at me with disdain, they don’t know I’m human but they know I’m not the same as them. I guess I can’t hide my revulsion sometimes when they are gulping down their blood. They put something else in it, then go a bit wild, and it spills from the glass onto their faces, arms and so on and they lick it off. Ugghh, not pretty!

Mother said something strange to me tonight, straight after this ritual. She said her brother knew of a treatment
that might change me completely, back to the Vampire I am supposed to be. I don’t know what to make of that. I feel angry, which is odd, because I’m usually a simpering wimp when it comes to my ‘disability’. I agree with everything the parent’s suggest to me without complaint. What’s happening to me? I feel like ripping this pit house to pieces this second! Is this the change? The
‘Fever,’
but I’m not Vampire, I shouldn’t feel this. It’s hot! I want to scream, what did mother put in my drink?

10.01.3012

I’m sorry Amica; I haven’t spoken to you since dies Solis nocht.  I have been dying for the last two nights. I don’t remember much after my last entry to you at the end of the clan gathering. I think father made mother put something in the glass of blood I had to drink.  It changed me into something, not human, not vamp, they won’t tell me. I want to die. I’m tired of not belonging.

Mother and Father are arguing downstairs and Zak
’s here in his bouncer just looking at me. It’s odd, he looks sad; he’s not creating or throwing his toys at me. Can babies sense death? You know, in this tragic moment, I think I actually love the little tyke. We Humans are fickle.

Someone
’s at the door, OMG its Garok! How the hell does he know where I live? Fangs, where are my fangs and contacts? They better not let him upstairs, I look terrible!! They are, of course they are! I’m dying and they allow, what would have been my future husband, into my room to watch!  Zak’s crying now, little brat!

Hey you, I
’m back! I just said goodbye to Garok and watched him walk down the road from my bedroom window. He’s so strange and intriguing, but more importantly, he’s smoking hot!!!

There
’s a chance I may have been exaggerating when I said I was dying friend, turns out, I had my first period! Mother said I am a young woman now, although she didn’t look too pleased about it. It’s a condition human females endure, and it happens once a month. I actually shed blood once every 28 days! Suddenly, being human isn’t such a romantic and appealing condition!

Female
Vamps don’t suffer this torture, I guess they are 99% blood most of the time, considering the copious amounts they drink each day. Their system is permanently suitable to bear a Vampire child. This confuses me; how can someone who has no heartbeat and is technically, by human standards, dead, be able to reproduce a life? Then again, is a vamp child alive or dead when it is born? They are immortal, dead, a carbon copy of their parent’s D.N.A. Yet Vamps walk around, go to work, absorb nutrients from the Clone’s blood, and essentially, live? If I make it through to adulthood, I am going to be a Scientific Historian, and if that career does not exist, then I will be the founder of that occupation. Someone has got to find answers to these questions! I am a young woman now and my voice will be heard! Who am I kidding! I’ll probably be strung up and recycled in the Clone farm, twenty times over before then. If that’s the case, and Garok turns out to be human and captured too, I hope that we will be next to each other at least.

I never told you what he brought me when he visited me earlier. He had a small cardboard box wrapped in gold
en wrapping paper, and I thought it was perfume or expensive blood cakes. It was a crystallised rose!! The most beautiful thing I have ever seen, apart from Garok himself. He asked me not to show it to anyone, as if I would! This is not a conventional vamp gift at all. Vamps don’t care about preserved flowers, it would be considered completely pointless or highly suspicious. Is he trying to tell me he is human? Does he know that I am human?

He didn
’t speak much while he was here, but he brought me my homework and said he’d be glad when I was back in school. I haven’t seen him smile once. His eyes are huge though and filled with sadness. I’m imagining his human eyes underneath those lenses. I bet he has brown eyes; that would be really something to see. Part of me hopes he is human, the selfish part. The selfless part of me that really likes him, wishes he was a vamp for his own sake.

I might be back in school tomorrow night if I stop bleeding. Yet again,
BLOOD
! I just can’t get away from it Amica. Uncle Rauul has fashioned me some binding strips for each month I suffer this fiendish, undignified condition. I will have to be housebound for a couple of days when I’m ‘menstruating’ (this is the correct terminology for this horror) partly because of the vamp’s sensitivity to human blood, and also because I am not very nice during this time apparently. That is a matter of opinion friend! Adios, goodbye and ta-ra, I’m off to bed. XX

11.01.3012

Hey you, up early tonight because I had to do a thorough, post period grooming session before school. I am one thoroughly neutralised, whitened, and accessorized fake vamp! I'm keeping my distance from that bloodhound Simone today. I’ll talk to you later Amica.

Oh No! Garok asked me out on a date tomorrow night after school! I know I should be happy but I
’ve never been alone with a boy, vamp or human. What do I say to him? I can’t be honest can I? I don’t know if he is human or a trustworthy vamp. I can’t get to know someone when my whole existence is a big fat lie! Good God, I have nothing to wear, I never go out except with the clan! I could be sporting a bin liner and they wouldn’t notice. My boobs are too big to wear mother’s clothes, and they’re not exactly fashionable anyway. Shorts, I have some nice shorts from my birth-night. They’ll look nice with my black, sparkly T shirt and black tights. Sorted, don’t know what you were worrying about Amica!

I
’m going to write a list of things I can and can’t talk about with Garok;

Our respective c
lans, how many, where they live and so on.

School, which subjects we like or don’t like.

Schoolmates, who he likes or doesn’t, and fall in with is opinion.

What we want to be when we grow up.

What activities he likes, i.e. swimming, reading. Fall in with his opinion.

Music (This should be No 1).

Now what I shouldn’t talk about;

My weight!

Simone or any of the ‘BitchVamps’ unless he brings them up.  

Blood! Yuk, he’ll sense I hate it.

Zak, for the same reason.

Humans.

There, that’s a start, now I’m going to ask mother about sex! Just kidding, can you imagine the outrage? I’m not daft; there’ll be none of that how’s your father, until at least I know if we’re the same species. Not even then, until I’m a century old, according to my father. I don’t think the parents quite understand the term ‘mortal’.

I must tell you about the upcoming field trip with school. In one week we are going to visit the Elder
’s Headquarters in the Capital. That’s the busiest city of the New World in our Sector. We are staying for two days in The Underground, a two star B&B, probably only fit for students or penniless Vamps out of work. Don’t know how Simone will fare in that establishment. It means I will have to sleep in a pit section like the others, not on a bed, which I’m allowed to do here sometimes if we’re not expecting visitors. I’ve got mixed feelings about it Amica. I’m burning with curiosity about the whole system that governs this world, but it’s also a potentially life threatening situation for me.

The Elders are the oldest and wisest of the
Vampire race, and are said to have telepathic powers, magical abilities and premonitions of the future. My God, I’ll be crushed like a fly if they read my mind, or worse, look into my future. I won’t have a future! They rule this world from the Ordinatio, a fantastically elaborate piece of architecture, built to impress and intimidate all that enter it! We will spend at least one day in this building, shadowing the staff, and experiencing the complexities and challenges our wonderful government have to deal with each day! Buck teethed, twerps if you ask me! The problem is, this is mandatory for all students in my year, and if I don’t go now I will still have to go, possibly alone, at some stage in the coming weeks. The parents are terrified at the prospect, and are engaging in closeted meetings with my uncle this week, to find a solution. I think that is why mother was asking me if I would consider this new treatment, to change me back into a Vampire. She won’t accept that I never was a Vampire. I’m not a freak, I am just different!

Oh I
’m fed up worrying about it. I have a date with Garok and I am going to enjoy it! It might be my one and only chance for a conversation with another decent human/Vampire. I know I don’t make sense friend, but bear with me, I’ll work it all out eventually.

I
’m going to see if there’s any flatbread left from last night’s dinner. I seriously can’t stomach anything else tonight. What if I was to drink a jug of blood and wake up with a volcano on my face for my date with Garok? I was reading about young Humans years ago, and they used to get volcanic spots that erupted right on the tip of their noses. Especially if they were going on a first date with someone they liked! I guess it wasn’t all sunlight and crystallized roses eh?

Great, I got some bread
, and mother visited the Ancient Arts shop while I was at school. That is where they sell all the old fashioned implements and ingredients needed to recreate human activities. You would think I would love it in there, but I always feel like I’m being watched. It could be ‘a sprat to catch a mackerel,’ to use an old human saying. It means it could be used as bait, to lure any beings in the human condition and expose them. Anyway, because mother made a rare visit, I am having pasta for dinner! I hope she bought ten hundred tons of it and freezes it so I can have if forever. OMG, it better not give me a volcano on my nose!