"Stephen, you need to leave, you've been cast out," said Helene Jean, my mother and the Matriarch of my now former clan, the Roamers. I looked at my mother, and her eyes were as pitiless as the sun. I stood in my study, holding a copy of Wonders of the African World by Henry Louis Gates Jr. A big and tall, dark-skinned and bespectacled black man in his twenties, that's me.
The Roamers rule much of northern Haiti from our hometown of Quartier Morin. Among our kind, we're feared and respected for our longevity and sheer numbers. These are dark times, though. I looked at my mother and smiled, wished her well and then headed out of the house where I've lived for the past two decades. I kind of saw the whole banishment thing coming, but I'll get to that soon enough...
"Alright, mother," I replied, and just like that, I found myself all alone in the world. It was a beautiful day in the town of Quartier Morin, northern Haiti, but I couldn't see that beauty. I walked through the small town where I'd spent my entire life, and made my way to the nearby bus stop. I needed to get to the City of Cap-Haitien toot sweet, because as soon as night fell, my life would be forfeit...
It's a thing among both humans and those like myself who are more than human. When a new leader or Alpha takes over, he or she gets rid of every last vestige or remnant of the old regime. Roman Emperors, gang leaders, Zulu tribal chiefs and Aztec kings have done the same. In that same vein, I found myself unwelcome in the only home I'd ever known, all because of, well, supernatural politics...
I'm Stephen Jean, and I am a Loup Garou, what normal people call Werewolves. Got some bad news, people. My kind are real, and we live among you. We've been around since, well, forever, really. We're at the grocery store, we're on your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We are at the gas station, and in your college library. We're people that you see and talk to every damn day. Hiding in plain sight is totally our thing. It's the secret of our success.
I absolutely hate how, in the movies, Loup Garou are portrayed so negatively. If we were monsters who prowl about looking for human prey under the light of the moon, we would have been hunted to extinction by humanity ages ago. I'm not evil. I'm not totally good. Neither are you. I'm a person, with the usual ups and downs. I go to university. I hold a job. I'm a fan of Association Sportive Capoise, the local soccer club. I have a girlfriend, my dear Danica. I have a life, alright?
It's out of concern for the preservation of said life that I hurry out of Quartier Morin. I got into a camionette and rode it to the Cap Haitien International Airport, and from there, I flew to Port-Au-Prince. I bought a one-way ticket to Miami, Florida. If I ever returned to the island of Haiti, I'd be a dead man. Nothing to do with political strife and poverty and all that jazz. and everything to do with the fact that my Pack has a new Alpha...
My sister Hannah has a boyfriend named Mitchell Besigye, who's originally from Uganda. Like my mother, sister and myself, Mitchell is a Loup Garou. He and Hannah met while she was studying at a college in the City of Ottawa, Canada, and really hit it off. Nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that Mitchell is a sociopath. He'd been banned from his own Pack back in Uganda and was looking for a new one to take over...
Now, when I first met Mitchell, I thought he was an arrogant asshole, but I didn't really see him as an enemy. I saw him as yet another douche bag that my sister Hannah brings home to meet the family. She has a thing for guys who are terrible people. Typically, she gets rid of them after a few months. Mitchell wasn't like the others, though. For starters, he wasn't human, and that complicates things...
If you know anything about Loup Garou society, then you know that we function the same way a wolf pack does. There's an Alpha couple that rules the rest of the Pack, and they provide leadership and guidance to the members of said pack. Mitchell was brought into the Roamers pack by my sister Hannah. She wanted him to take over. As you can imagine, Mitchell and I kind of clashed as a result...
"If I ever see you again, I'll tear you to pieces," Mitchell said to me, during our last confrontation. As I said before, Mitchell is a sociopath and to be fair, so is my sister Hannah. I've always known this and largely kept out of their way. I focused on my studies at Roi Henri Christophe University and my relationship with my then-lady Danica Seide. I am a Loup Garou but prefer the company of humans, something which most of my species consider to be odd.
The Loup Garou community is, like every other community, full of all kinds of people. You've got your nice people, jerks, total bitches, and everyone in between. We're not the most open-minded community either. It's a known fact that Loup Garou can only reproduce with other Loup Garou. It's not like in the movies when all you need to do to become one of us is get bit or scratched. Real life is much more complicated than that...
I'd been seeing this young woman named Danica Seide for some time, and everyone knew we were a couple. Danica was about five-foot-eight, cute, with dark brown skin and short, kinky dark hair. She was a real tomboy, but I liked that about her. I could see myself spending the rest of my days with Danica. When a man meets an amazing woman, he simply knows. My fellow Loup Garou mocked my fondness for Danica, since she'd never be able to bear my pups...
Danica Seide thought I was an ordinary human being and had no idea what I truly am. You may think my secrecy about my true nature was an act of cowardice. It's not that simple. I wanted to tell Danica but couldn't, not without endangering both of us. The Loup Garou community doesn't take kindly to rule breakers, and the secrecy around our kind's existence is our most fundamental rule...
Another rule is that our kind is intolerant of weakness. My father Francois Jean was a strong Alpha, but I was not seen in the same light by my clan. My mother Helene and my sister Hannah sided with Mitchell in his bid to take over because that's what female Loup Garou do. They align themselves with a strong male because they think of it as a matter of genetic survival. I was out of allies, and out of time...
"Come at me, little man," I told Mitchell, who stood a few inches shorter than me. Like a lot of little guys, Mitchell likes to act big and aggressive. Me? I typically try to avoid conflict but usually find a way to get rid of whoever gets in my way, whether they're human or other. I've always been an intellectual, more of a seeker of knowledge than someone into political gamesmanship. Serves me right...
