The existence of my species has always puzzled humans. Personally, I sometimes wonder why. We're everywhere they are. At the office, inside the boardroom, on the subway, in the halls of congress and everywhere else. On college campuses, on the street and in the armed forces. We're from all walks of life, you know. Yet still there are so many of these weirdoes who think we don't exist. Isn't that funny?
My name is Jerome Claude and I am a vampire. Standing six feet one inch tall, with broad shoulders and a stocky build. My skin is dark brown and my curly black hair is cut short on the sides. By all appearances, I appear to be twenty four years old. That's cool, because that's how old I am. Vampires can and do age. And no one lives forever. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Presently, I'm walking through the unfamiliar halls of Westlake College in Andover, Massachusetts.
I'm back to a place which should seem familiar but isn't. Westlake College has really changed since I enrolled as a freshman, years ago. Back then, the school was smaller. There were only two thousand or so students. Now, Westlake College has thirty eight hundred students. This small private school has really gone big-time. There is a new athletic complex on campus and it houses an Olympic swimming pool. The Department of Athletics is bigger and better-funded than I remember. They now sponsor men's varsity baseball, basketball, soccer, swimming, wrestling, volleyball, lacrosse, ice hockey and football along with women's varsity softball, basketball, soccer, swimming, field hockey, equestrian, lacrosse, ice hockey and volleyball. They compete in the NCAA Division Two. That too is a new. When I originally enrolled, we were Division Three. I'm still a triple minority on campus, though. Black, male, and nonhuman.
I started college at the age of nineteen and stuck around long enough to complete three semesters. Afterwards, I took a long break. I had a lot to do, folks. Vampires everywhere had to put their differences aside and work for the common good. You see, an international cabal of men and women armed with high-tech weaponry were hunting us down. I don't know why they were hunting us. We're not the monsters lousy horror movies make us out to be. We just lead our lives like ordinary people. Yet these fanatics came after us like the frigging Nazis or something.
The war lasted several years. All of us had to answer the call. I had to submit to survival training, along with every other adult male and female vampire I knew. The Hunters were a well-organized bunch. They had billions of dollars at their disposal, along with the kind of equipment and weaponry you only see in Saturday night science fiction movies. I mean, they had these guns that could vaporize you. Only a few specks of dust would remain. I had never seen the like in my life, folks.
