One Of A Kind

I believe unique was the word my mother used. Different from the rest... special. Completely one of a kind. It took me a while to grasp exactly what she meant. Most parents tell that to their kids, so I assumed I was different... just like everyone else was. The truth is, I really am one in a billion.

When my mom found out she was pregnant, her entire world changed. With no husband or boyfriend, she knew she was in for a rough time, even if I turned out normal. The likeliness that I would be normal was anyone’s guess... my father being what he was.

The truth is, my mom was raped by a vampire. He jumped her while she was on her way to her car after a night of clubbing with her friends. She never told me the details, only that after he’d had his way with her, she managed to get away.

Because my dad was who he was, there was no one to prepare my mom and I for what being half vampire would mean. There is so much vampire lore out there with so many different weaknesses, we had to learn everything from trial and error. My mom’s relationship with her catholic parents became strained after she refused to let me get baptized. They thought she had “turned her back on the lord”. The reality was I grabbed ahold of my moms tiny gold crucifix when I was a month old and my hand blistered up. Getting dunked in holy water probably would have killed me, but it wasn’t like my mom could tell them that.

It took my mom ages to test sunlight. Despite how I’d come into this world, my mom loved me more than anything. She couldn’t live with herself if she took me took the park and I bursted into flames. She told me she stood next to the sunlight filled window for hours, trying to drum up the courage to put my little hand in the streaming daylight. She had me wrapped in a fire retardant blanket and had a great big glass of water to douce any flames. When she finally put my little finger in the golden light, she was overjoyed to discover it had no effect.

Blood, as it turned out, was a necessity. My doctor was greatly concerned with my low iron levels and had my mom take me to see him often. No matter what they did, from shots to supplements, my iron levels were always dangerously low. Once I started to loose weight, my mom realized it was probably related to my vampire heritage. Because she was a chef and had access to animal blood, she began taking it from the kitchen and mixing it in my formula. My iron levels shot up in a day and I regained my weight, completely astounding my doctor.

As I grew older, my mom realized semi-vampirism had an effect on my senses as well. I had much keener hearing, sight and smell. At age four, I would tell her the mail man was coming when he was still a couple streets away. I could tell her what the neighbors were cooking for dinner from inside our house. After I learned to read, I would read her street signs that were quarter mile down the road.

I was also a fast healer. If I scraped my knee playing with the neighbors, it was nothing but a flaking scab by the time I went to bed. My mom took me to the doctor less and less as he started getting too curious. The last thing she wanted was them running tests on me and finding out I was less than human.

When I asked why none of the other kids put blood in their fruit punch at school, she told me it was because I was different. She told me what I needed to know when I was old enough to ask. The word vampire didn’t come up until I saw “The Little Vampire” when I was nine and started making connections.

She gave me the best childhood a freakish half breed like me could ever have.