Somali Werewolf Prince

Have you noticed that whenever they're showing a werewolf movie on TV, it's always told from the human's viewpoint and never that of the so-called unfortunate creature? Seriously, the plots are usually so boring and predictable that I always skip right past any werewolf/or creature movie. Hikers meet wolf-man in the woods, a few of these poor bastards get killed and one tough dude or a stalwart broad kills the monster at the end, and it's revealed to be one of their own crew members they previously thought was dead. Why bother watching when I can predict the plot ten times out of ten? I swear, someone should sue the filmmakers ( if they can be called such ) for their complete lack of originality.

Of course, since there's no National Coalition for the Rights of Lycanthropes, on account of most humans believing us to be the stuff of myth and all, I don't see that happening anytime soon. So I'm not holding my breath. Let me pause for a second. You might have noticed that I said 'us' instead of them, and that's no Freudian slip on my part. I am a proud member of the aforementioned category. Yes, ladies and gentlemen...I'm a wolf-man. And I'm here to set the record straight about my kind.

If you're wondering whom these frustrated lines originate from, I guess it's high time I introduce myself. Lest you think you've stumbled upon the diary of a madman. My name is Suleiman Rosenberg Rahman. I was born in Toronto, Ontario, to a Somali immigrant father and white Canadian mother. I'm currently a civil engineering student at Carleton University in Ottawa, and I'm also a member of the Science Fiction and Horror Society at school. Most of the time, hanging out with my fellow nerds is a pleasure. At least that's how I felt until Movie Night last week.

Last Friday, I was chilling with some pals of mine from the Society and like nerds the world over like to do, we went to watch a horror movie together. My friends opinion that werewolves are freaks of nature that ought to be hunted down and exterminated kind of hit a bit close to home. That hurts, man, especially since the person stating that opinion is Vanessa Rosewood, the President of the S.F.H.S. and my former crush. The first time I laid eyes on Vanessa, I was absolutely mesmerized.

Growing up in Toronto, I was used to seeing beautiful women of all hues but Vanessa rosewood was something else. Five feet ten inches tall, with chocolate-hued skin, long and neatly braided black hair, and sharp features. Tall, dark-skinned, curvy and big-bottomed, this Jamaican chick had everything I like in a woman, and then some. Oh, and before you accuse me of being sexist and focusing solely on physical attributes, I know for a fact that she's got one hell of a brain. Vanessa Rosewood is one of the top students in the electrical engineering program.

I ran into her in the Minto Building at school, and we just clicked. There aren't a lot of black students in the engineering disciplines at Carleton, even though we're one of the most racially diverse schools in all of Canada. Vanessa was walking around with her friend Kennedy Lang, a short Asian gal with spiky hair, and they were handing out flyers promoting "Women in Male-Dominated Fields". My eyes lit up when I saw the tall, fine-looking Caribbean chick handing out gender-sensitive literati. Since I'm a progressive sort of fella, I stopped by to offer my support and introduce myself. Kind of an obvious move, I know, but it worked, for Vanessa wrote her number on the back of the flyer which she handed me.

I walked away with a big grin on my face, thinking that Vanessa was feeling me. Sadly, it was not to be. You see, she was merely recruiting people for her fledgling new club, the Science Fiction and Horror Society. I should have known that hot chicks like her don't stay single for long. On the first meeting of the club, which I eagerly attended, Vanessa introduced me to her vice president and boyfriend Liam Valentine. The guy's tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed and square-jawed. Oh, and he also plays football for the university. I resisted the urge to use my lycanthropic super-strength to crush his bones when the smiling bozo offered me his hand to shake.

Watching him and Vanessa, holding hands and hugging every five minutes, I felt like puking or ditching but instead I stayed with the club. It's a good thing I did because I met some really cool people I wouldn't have met otherwise. Aaron Fisher, a short, stocky guy with reddish hair and green eyes with the most nerdy glasses I've seen since that nerdy Urkel guy on Family Matters. Even though he shares an apartment with Liam on Bronson avenue, Aaron and I ended up becoming best buds. He's dating Vanessa's best friend Kennedy Lang, the pixie-like Asian gal with the spiky black hair and tattoos. Kennedy is fond of leather garments and curses like a sailor, but I must admit she and Aaron were made for each other. Rounding up our group are Esteban Gonzales, a tall, chubby Hispanic guy, an openly gay Jewish guy named Elias Rosenthal and finally, the lovely and outspoken Nadira Mahmoud, a curvy, bronze-skinned and dark-haired Lebanese woman.

That's how my freshman year began, ladies and gentlemen. Honestly, between school, my hormones, and my parents constantly calling to check up on me, I felt like I was going nuts. My folks, Abdullah Rahman and Josephine Rosenberg-Rahman have got to be the most overprotective parents on the planet. My older brother Omar is studying at Northeastern University in Boston, and he had to get an international plan on his cell phone because our folks call him five times a week. We've both decided to leave Facebook since Mom and Dad decided to get on it after I decided to follow in my brother's footsteps and study outside of Toronto.

Don't get me wrong, I love my parents, but isn't acquiring knowledge and independence as a young person what college is all about? On one hand, I understand their concern. It's not easy being a wolf-man in a world made for and by humans. Seriously. If you think being an ethnic or religious minority in a lily-white country like Canada is hard, you should try being a werewolf on a planet full of humans! My whole life I've felt like the son of two worlds. I am half black and half white, half Somali and half Canadian. Born and bred in the GTA. Ever since I can remember, I've always felt different. I just couldn't put my finger on it. Until the day I turned thirteen, and my parents sat me down and talked to me. They told me the awful truth of our family's unique genetic heritage.

In the movies and poorly written novels, a person becomes a werewolf after being bitten by one. Well, in real life, it doesn't work like that. My kind are a species similar to but quite different from ordinary humans. In order to have a werewolf pup, you need a werewolf mommy and a werewolf daddy. You don't get to join our club by getting bit. We're not like those shambling brain-dead shmucks on The Walking Dead. We're more exclusive than that. We're an off-shoot of humanity, just like the species that preceded modern man like Homo Erectus ( ha, I giggle every time I see this word, sorry ) or the Neanderthal man. As I've said before, my kind and yours are quite similar but there are differences. I can smell a woman's period over a distance of two kilometers. Sorry, but it's the first thing that popped into my head.

Moving on. I can hear sounds so low that no ordinary person can hear them. Like a pin dropping at a distance of a hundred feet. I can also block sounds thanks to some tiny internal muscles in my ear canal, so I don't go crazy from auditory overload. The average wolf-man has five times the strength of a healthy human male of a similar size. We're not indestructible or anything but we're immune to virtually all diseases on the planet, including stuff like AIDs, cancer and all that jazz. While our kind heals far more quickly than yours, we're nothing like Hugh Jackman's Wolverine. Sorry. That'd be wicked cool, though.

Alright, then. I take it you've had your fill of the particulars of werewolf physiology? We're people just like you. Some of us are good, some of us aren't, and most of us fall somewhere in between. There aren't a lot of us around. Just a couple million spread across the globe. You'll find us everywhere, from the metropolitan areas of America and Canada, to the frozen wastelands of Russia, the bustling towns of continental Africa, and the cityscapes of South Asian nations. We're very color, every religion and every background you can think of. A lot of us work in law enforcement and the medical professions because having people in these lines of work helps preventing our kind from being detected by humans. Oh, and we cremate our dead. Always.

I have often wondered if my people have ever lived together in one place, with a common language and culture. Unfortunately, I'll never know the answer to that question because, as far as I know, my people don't like to leave behind any evidence of our existence. The field of werewolf anthropology is nonexistent, as it is. I don't like to dwell on the past, I've always been a moving-forward kind of guy. Yet the loneliness I feel while in Ottawa makes me homesick. There aren't any of my people here and the only gal who lights my fire is head over heels in love with another guy.

Last Christmas, my brother Omar came back from Boston after completing his second year at Northeastern University. He introduced the family to his fiancée Maryam Jones. A tall, fine-looking young African-American woman whom he met at school. My brother is doubly lucky, not only is the lovely Maryam a Muslim convert, having joined the Nation of Islam from a Christian background, but she's also one of us. Yup, Maryam's a werewolf. Apparently, there are werewolves among the African-American population of the United States. My brother is so lucky. Honestly, how did a nitwit like him get so lucky? Not that I'm hating or anything. I did help the guy with his university applications....while I was in the frigging tenth grade!

Here I am, in my dorm at Carleton, sulking after the one group of people I thought were cool told me to my face that creatures like me ought to be exterminated. I shudder to think of what the humans would do to us if they ever found out we existed. Given what I know of human history and their innate savagery, that's a scenario I don't even dare contemplate. Humanity doesn't have an impressive track record when it comes to acceptance or tolerance of those who are different. I mean, think of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, European colonialism in Africa, the Holocaust, the police persecution of African-Americans in today's America, anti-Islamic sentiments in modern Europe, and so on.

My family has endured a lot and I don't want to do anything to add to that legacy of hardship and sorrow. You see, my father emigrated from Somalia to Canada because of inter-clan and sectarian warfare among various groups of Somalis in the old country. My mother is descended from Jews who left Germany for North America in the 1930s, shortly before Nazi fever seized Germany under Adolf Hitler. Within both of my bloodlines, folks have suffered as a result of being different from those in power. And as a werewolf housed in the body of a biracial human male in contemporary human society, it doesn't get any more different than me.

Earlier, as I was checking my messages on Facebook, I got one from a very unlikely source. Nadira Mahmoud, the Lebanese chick from the group. In a very neat and friendly message, she told me she noticed I looked sad after the movie and asked me if I was okay. I'm cool, I replied, and thanked her for checking up on me. I shook my head and smiled as I read Nadira's message. Of all the people in the group, she's the one I know the least. We're on each other's Facebook, and we make small talk at school, that's about it. I always see her walking around by herself at school. Nadira is kind of a loner. Like me. It takes one to know one, I guess. The final part of her message read "werewolves are awesome". I grinned from ear to ear as I read that. I know she meant movie werewolves, like Jacob from Twilight, but it still brought a smile to my face. You're one awesome lady, I typed, and wished her a good night. Then I logged off and watched Underworld on Netflix.

Suddenly feeling sick of staring at the TV while lying on my bed, I decided to go for a walk. I was on the fourth floor of the dormitory building, and rather than to take the elevator or walk down several flights of stairs, I got the genius idea of leaping out the window. It was really late, and a cautious peep out the window revealed that there was no one nearby. I took a deep breath, then leapt. I landed noiselessly on the pavement, and hastily took off into the night. Mother nature made my kind stronger and faster than ordinary humans. At speed far exceeding that of a cheetah I took off, and soon found myself outside campus.

I raced down Sunnyside avenue, and made my way towards Bank Street, heading for Rideau. If anyone in a passing car or truck looked out their window, all they'd see is a blur zipping past them. I finally made my way to my favorite mall, then walked into the MacDonald's across the street. I stood in line, and when my turn came, I ordered myself a sandwich with fries and a coke. I paid and waited. Sometimes I get these late-night cravings for fast food. It's a good thing my wolf-man DNA keeps me fit at six-foot-one and 180 pounds, because otherwise, I'd be a fatty. I avoid the gym because I get worked up around female sweat. It's as close to having a pheromone as a human female can get.

The plump white chick behind the counter took her sweet time with my order, and I noticed that she served some skinny white guy who came after me. While my high-yellow ass was waiting. Naturally, I had something to say about that. Your order is coming up sir, she said sheepishly. I rolled my eyes and nodded. Finally she gave me my food and I walked out with it, not caring that everybody was staring at me. Frigging fast food workers. Always giving lousy service to minority customers, and they wonder why we get pissed off at them. I ran back to campus, and ate in my room. I went to bed soon after. When I woke the next day, my world was changed.

I went to my morning class, and then went back to my room. I was checking my favorite porn site, Spring Thomas. It hasn't been updated in a long time, and I've heard that the blonde-haired redneck chick who used to star in it quit working in porn but it's still got hours upon hours of steamy interracial content. A blonde chick with a southern accent hooking up with well-hung black men and occasionally black women. Kind of turns me on, and I don't apologize for it. So I sat in my room, jerking off while watching this sweet and very willing blonde-haired redneck woman with a southern accent getting stuffed in every orifice by a gang of black guys.

I heard a knock at my door and cursed out loud, for what man likes to be disturbed right when he's about to cum? I finished my business and cleaned myself up, then adjusted my clothes and went to the door. There was no one there. I sniffed the air and scented something peculiar. A scent I had never smelled before. I was about to head back into my room when I saw the note on the floor. I picked it up. "I know what you are." As I read those five words, next to which a wolf's head drawing lay ominously, my heart sank. What the fuck?

I left my room in a state of panic, wondering what I should do. I thought about calling my parents, but decided it would only worry them. I had to solve this problem myself. What would I do if and when I caught the culprit? I didn't know. I'm frigging eighteen years old and I've never even been in a real fight...wrestling with my brother and male cousins in the basement doesn't count. Still, I told myself that if it came down to taking a life and risking the survival of my entire race, I'd do whatever it takes. When the options are either survival or genocide, it's a clear choice.

I walked through campus, feeling angry, frustrated and more than a little lost. Finally, I sat in the library, feeling powerless. In my paranoia I stared at random students, both acquaintances and strangers, and sought in their faces the answers to the questions that haunted me. Which one of them had seen me in my true form? Were they about to upload evidence of my kind's existence on YouTube and expose us to the world? So many questions and zero answers. I logged onto my email account, and did some homework. Civil engineering isn't for slackers, but I love it. Put me in a poetry or social science class and I'm dead in the water. Math has always made sense to me. The beautiful of math and science? Their simplicity. Two plus two equals four regardless of where you hail from. From the simplest equations to the most complex. The African, the Arab, the European, all will come to the same answer if they follow the steps the right way. Math and science are all about practicality and predictability, leaving very little to chance. It's beautiful, neat and ordered. So unlike...life.

I was so lost in thought that I didn't notice a certain someone sidling up to me. I whirled around and gasped when I saw who it was. Nadira Mahmoud, the curvy Lebanese chick from the science fiction club. As Salam Alaikum brother, she said with a grin, gently touching my arm. Masha'Allah it's good to see you, I replied. Nadira looked pretty good in a long-sleeved red T-shirt, blue jeans and black leather boots. I've never noticed before but she's really beautiful. I find women of all races attractive, especially African-descended women, and European women but Arab women are extremely lovely as well. A lot of brothers find Arab women appealing but my father discouraged me from pursuing them. The Arabs are racist as hell when it comes to their women dating and marrying outside their race and culture, Dad cautioned me. Peachy, I replied sarcastically.

What's new and exciting? Nadira asked, snapping me out of my reverie. I looked at her, and for some reason, I reached into my pocket and handed her the note that I'd been carrying since this morning. I found this in my room, I said wistfully. Nadira's brown eyes met mine, and she took the note and read it. You can't give in to blackmail or anything like that, she said with a coldness in her voice that startled me. I'm not sure what to do, I said with a shrug.

Nadira laid her hand on mine, and her serious yet oddly compassionate eyes bore into mine. Fight this, Nadira said. Slowly, I nodded. I understand what you're going through, she said, then excused herself, for she had to go to class. I watched her go, and realized two things. The first is that Nadira's a lot more interesting than I previously thought, and she has a fantastic, thick and decidedly heart-shaped ass. None of this helps me with what I'm going through, but I appreciate her sympathy.

A few minutes later, I was done with my homework and decided to head back to my room. That's when I ran into yet another familiar face. Hello amigo, said Aaron. I looked at the short, red-haired white dude I considered my best buddy. Having the best week ever my man, I said sarcastically as I exchanged dap with him. You look scared shitless, Aaron said. Midterm jitters, I said quickly. Aaron looked at me. You sure, man? he said, touching the silver crucifix hanging around his neck. I found it distracting, for some reason. Aaron noticed me staring. Don't like my cross? he asked, a bit coolly. Nah it's cool, I replied hastily. One of the few things that mortals get right about werewolf anatomy is that we're severely allergic to silver. We don't like it. Catch you later, Aaron said, then walked away.

Get a grip, I told myself. Seriously, the last thing I need is to start spaz out on my friends. I walked home, and when I arrived, there was a second note on my doorstep. "You're going down monster-boy", its intro read, followed by "be on the football field at midnight, alone, or your kind will be exposed." I read and re-read the note several times. Shit. Whoever sent the first one had me right where they wanted me, and I had no choice but to play their game. I lay on my bed, thinking. I'm eighteen years old. I've never had a girlfriend. I've never had sex. I've never had a job, unless raking leaves for my elderly neighbors and doing their driveways during snowstorms counts. This could be the end of me.