Nightfall, at last I can move more freely. I step out of my apartment. The plain brownstone building in Vanier, Ontario, has been my home for the past two years. The landlord is an old man who doesn't ask too many questions as long as he gets his rent money in time. A tenant who sleeps during the day and comes out only at night? Not something he's given much thought to, I guess. I think about catching the bus downtown, then decide to walk instead. It's only about two kilometers anyways, and I could use the exercise.
I walk across the bridge that separates downtown from the east end, and shake my head as I notice the Shawarma restaurant across the street. I used to be one of their regular customers, just a few years ago. Now I can't stand the taste of any food. Bread, meat, they taste like cardboard to me. Thankfully, I can still drink alcohol, although more for the taste than anything else. A vampire's system isn't designed to process human foods, but alcohol is the exception. Most vampires I know drink a lot of whiskey and wine because it's one of a few things we can still process. I wasn't a drinker in my mortal days but I sure as hell am one now, I tell you that much.
Before this goes any further, the name is Miguel Etienne. A six-foot-one, lean and well-built black man in my early twenties. I was born on the island of Haiti in 1984. In 1994, my parents, Cassandra and Michael Etienne moved to the City of Montreal, province of Quebec. I've spent most of my formative years in metropolitan Montreal, and it's where I met a lady who changed my life. In the summer of 2004, I was twenty years old and after completing my sophomore year at McGill University, I was looking for adventure. I don't know what possessed me to come to the City of Ottawa, Ontario. Many people say it's the most boring of all the big cities of Canada. We don't have a lot of big cities here in the Great White North. Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa, Hamilton, Toronto, Edmonton and Winnipeg, that's about it, really.
I came to Ottawa because I had never been there before and also because my cousin Jean-Donald Etienne was staying in town with his girlfriend, a Lebanese Christian chick named Artemis Abdullah. Jean-Donald has always been a player, and he's banged his share of women, both black and white, when he lived with us in Montreal. He enrolled at the University of Ottawa to study civil engineering and I guess he liked the town because he stayed there even in the summer. I wanted to know how in hell he got himself a tall, gorgeous Arab woman because honestly, I didn't think Arab women were into us brothers. The night I came to Ottawa, Jean-Donald and Artemis came to greet me at the greyhound station. Honestly, the first time I laid eyes on Artemis Abdullah I knew she was trouble but I was too busy checking out her bronzed body, her heart-shaped ass and her big tits to pay attention to what my instincts were telling me.
How in hell was I supposed to know that my cousin Jean-Donald's girlfriend was a centuries-old vampire once feared, both in ancient Greece and in the pre-Islamic Arab world as the monstrous Lamia, the she-demon? I mean, I was raised Catholic and always envisioned demons as red-skinned, horned creatures from hell, you know? Artemis was trouble for sure. In hindsight, there were several red flags that I ignored when I totally should have known better. Jean-Donald told me he and Artemis met at a club downtown, and just hit it off. She claimed to work during the day, thus explaining the fact that he only saw her at night. Yeah, major red flags, man. Also, that summer, there were a string of strange murders all over the province of Ontario. A total of six men and nine women had been found dead, their bodies incinerated. The Ontario provincial police force wouldn't reveal much about the investigation, but they did admit that we might have a serial killer on our hands.
I was completely indifferent to such things. I mean, what are the odds that a psycho killer would show interest in me? Average Joe black man? Besides, from what I've read about serial killers they tend to target women and gays, and since I didn't belong to either category, I considered myself pretty safe. I'd come to the City of Ottawa to get my party on. To be honest, I'd gotten into a bit of trouble back in Montreal. I was dating this tall, gorgeous and big-bottomed, fine-looking Haitian mama named Marguerite Cameau. You should have seen her, man. The face of Alicia Keys, the body of that singer Ashanti and the killer booty of tennis champion Serena Williams. I wanted to wife that, for real. We met at McGill University freshman year. Like me, she was a criminology student. We hit it off and I asked her out. We started seeing each other and for about a year, everything was cool. Until the day I came to her apartment to surprise her and I ended up being the one who got surprised. I caught her in bed with another dude. A white dude at that. Man, I was not prepared for that shit. I think I went a little nuts because I attacked the white dude and nearly beat him to death. Long story short? I couldn't go anywhere near Marguerite or her new beau, some Irish bozo named Connor Grant. Restraining orders, man. They can be such a pain. In hindsight, I made off pretty good. I mean, I didn't end up with anything on my permanent record or anything. The judge was pretty lenient.
Oh, well. That day, I decided that I would expand my playing field. You see, my conservative Haitian parents raised me to be a good brother. Go to school, go to church, date only black women and stay out of trouble. Well, that bitch Marguerite is the one who got me in trouble. So it's goodbye black women and hello to women of other races. For real. I went after white pussy like it was going out of style. That's why I was so fascinated with Artemis Abdullah when Jean-Donald introduced me to her. I had been with white girls and one Asian woman before but I still considered Arab women to be out of my reach. Artemis introduced me to a girlfriend of hers, a Lebanese beauty named Francine Abdul-Hamid. Francine stood around five-foot-nine, busty and big-bottomed, with light bronze skin, green eyes and long curly black hair. The gal was thick, and she liked the brothers. That's all I wanted to know. The fact that she and Artemis might be otherworldly monsters never occurred to me. I just wanted some of that fine Lebanese booty, man.
