"Mwen se yon lou garou," I said calmly, looking right into my boyfriend Marcelin Etienne's chestnut eyes as the words left my mouth. Just like that, I betrayed my people's code of secrecy. I just told my boyfriend that I am a Werewolf. The two of us sat inside Renedad Restaurant, a nice little Haitian eatery located in the east end of metropolitan Ottawa, Ontario. I waited for Marcelin's reaction, and then he smiled and shook his head.
"Jacqueline, you're a funny chick," Marcelin said, laughing as he continued eating his plate of white rice, brown bean sauce and goat meat. Not sure what kind of reaction I was expecting, but this wasn't it. Putting on a smile, I bit through my fish, ate it and changed the subject. Yup, Marcelin and I went on bantering about exams at Carleton University, life at school, the lame clubs in Ottawa and things of that nature. To think I spent last night agonizing over how to tell him the truth about me. Oh, well.
My name is Jacqueline Augustin and I'm a young woman of Haitian descent living in the City of Ottawa, Ontario. I'm in the Nursing program at Carleton University, and when I'm not in class, at work or at home, I deal with...problems. There's a lot of unnatural things happening in the City of Ottawa, and it is my duty to punish the wicked. You see, about a year ago, my father, Jacques Augustin, sat me down and talked to me. Papa and I have always had a close relationship. He raised me alone after my mother died when I was little. We had a conversation I shall never forget.
"The time has come for you to know the truth about our family, ma petite fille, we are Loup Garou, what the Westerners call werewolves," Papa said to me and I lasted about five seconds before I burst out laughing. Of course, when my father's eyes turned bright yellow and his teeth elongated and sharpened, and hair grew all over his body, I stopped laughing and shrank back from him.
"Papa, sak pase ou?" I asked, my heart thundering in my chest, and the creature my father had become grinned, shook his head, and in the blink of an eye, resumed my father's form. Five-foot-nine, slim, dark-skinned, with silver hair and real bushy eyebrows, the man who raised me, my beloved Papa. Smiling, Papa gave me the rundown about our people's history.
"From the Dawn of Humanity, we've been around, men and women with the ability to turn into wolf-like creatures, and we stay hidden because humanity has persecuted us in the past," Papa said, and he smiled at me, waiting for my reaction. This was totally crazy, for sure. I looked at Dad, stunned, but after what I'd just seen, I had no choice but to believe him. Fear and excitement swirled through me as I thought about my father morphing into a fearsome beast-man in front of me.
"Can I change like you?" I asked, and Papa grinned, and nodded. Thus I was made privy to the family secret, and welcomed into a brand new world. Now, if my lack of shock surprises you, guess I have to explain myself a bit. My whole life I've felt different, and not just because I'm the daughter of Haitian immigrants living in uptight, at times xenophobic Ottawa. I've always been a little faster and a bit stronger than everyone in gym class back in high school. I thought it was because of my natural athleticism but it turned out to be more than that.
"Now, Jackie, being what we are isn't all fun and games, our kind are endangered, we have many enemies," Papa cautioned me, and then he told me about the various other supernatural creatures that went about disguised as people in the mundane world. Apparently, there are vampires out there, and we werewolves have a sworn duty to cull their numbers. Sounds farfetched to me, but in this ever-changing world that I live in, I would learn to keep an open mind.
Three nights after Papa and I had that talk, we went to the woods near Casselman Village, a few miles outside Ottawa, and there, under the full moon, I transformed for the first time. In the movies, whenever a person turns into a werewolf, it's horrible to look at and seems painful. I worried it might be so, but turns out, my worries were completely unfounded. When the moonlight struck me, I felt my body easily pass from one state to the next.
"I feel amazing!" I cried out, and I stood in the clearing, shielded by the trees, fully transformed and free. I looked down at myself, and I didn't feel ugly or tormented. Rather, I felt at peace. My father stood a short distance away, fully transformed, and he smiled at me. And then, without warning, he took off into the woods, a blur of speed that moved faster than anything human. I followed him eagerly, and later that night, we caught a deer and shared its meat.
Papa took me on numerous trips to the woods, far away from human eyes, where we could truly be ourselves. The full moon isn't what transforms us into werewolves. We are what we are and would revert to our true forms at some point, no matter where we might be. The moon empowers us, the way a battery fuels everything from your iPhone to most electronic gadgets. We simply have a special relationship with it, what can I say?
I absolutely love being a Loup Garou. Let the world continue to wallow in its ignorance about us so-called supernatural creatures. The truth is that the creatures that humans call vampires, werewolves and demons, are simply other intelligent species of humanoids who've been around since the dawn of humanity. We are born, and although most of us members of these inhuman breeds can live a long time, much longer than ordinary humans, we eventually die. Come to think of it, eventually all things die. It's just the way of the world.
Fast forward a year, and I've got the hang of the Werewolf lifestyle, if you will. There are quite a few of us out there. In Ottawa alone, there's a few hundred of us. Like any community, we have our ups and downs, friends and foes. Among our people, my father is a member in high standing. You see, Papa's got the unwanted, admired and sacred duty of eliminating threats to our people. And the deadliest enemy of the Wolf people is the vampire.
"Les suceurs de sangs sont trop nombreux a Ottawa," Papa said to me one night, as he got ready to go hunting. Translation? Blood suckers are too numerous in Ottawa. I insisted on going with him. In the past year, I'd learned to master my newfound abilities and felt confident enough to take on anything. Of course, I hadn't faced any vampires before. I guess what I felt could be dismissed as the overconfidence of youth.