The Loneliest Creature on Earth

I wish people would stop romanticizing the lives of vampires. Seriously. To think I was actually one of those people, once upon a time. I liked Dracula 2000 and the Twilight movies, and don't even get me started on Blade and the Underworld film series. Yeah, I devoured all things vampire. Now that I'm one, life kind of sucks. My name is Tariq Suleiman, but my friends call me Tar. Or at least they once did. Don't have much in the way of friends nowadays.

I was born in the City of Ottawa, Ontario, on November 8, 1987. My parents, Ahmed and Hodan Suleiman come from Somalia, and I was raised in an Islamic household. My parents are very religious, or rather, they were. Haven't seen them lately and it's probably for the best. Nowadays, I don't believe in much. I think becoming what I am now has stripped me of any religiosity, whether that's part of the game for what I've become or something particular about me, I can't say.

I just take life a day at a time, basically just trying to stay alive. Well, you know what I mean. My new existence sucks but it's the only one that I've got. Got to make do with what I have. How did I become a vampire? I'll get to that in a minute, folks. Nothing glamorous about how I became one of the undead. In fact, it took place under mundane circumstances.

Baron Wellington, a professor of anthropology at Carleton University got his hands on a humanoid skeleton found in east Africa and thought he'd found that holy grail of anthropologists, the dreaded Missing Link. What he found was much older than even the most distant ancestor of the human species. Carbon testing on the humanoid skeleton revealed it to be eight million years old, far older than any human-like remain ever found.

What did the good professor find, you may ask? The remains of the last vampire. A humanoid creature that walked the earth at a time long before woolly mammoths and saber-tooth cats. Long before the Ice Age. The professor was fascinated by this find and so was I. For I was one of Professor Wellington's students, an aspiring scientist in my own right.

One night, while fooling around in the lab with my then-girlfriend Amina, this cute Lebanese chick I met in my sociology elective, something bad happened. We bumped against the humanoid skeleton, and I cut myself on its ancient bones. I thought it was just a cut. Twenty four hours later, I fell into a coma. Three days later, I was pronounced dead at the Civic Campus of the Ottawa Hospital, if you can believe it.

I was dead and buried, family and friends wept over my passing, and then they moved on. I clawed my way out of the grave, a most unpleasant experience if you ask me. When I returned to the world, I discovered that I was...changed. I didn't know what I was. I had become something straight out of a nightmare, and I was the only one of my kind.

Vampire myths have been around for as long as people have existed. Every culture, whether African, European, Aboriginal Canadian or whatever, has some myth about a blood-drinking creature that looks like a man but lacks anything even remotely resembling basic humanity. I could give you a list for the different names for vampires in various cultures, but I don't care to. It's not a good feeling, discovering that you're not only a freak, you're the only one of your kind in all the world.

I have changed in ways that I couldn't fathom before. I'm a five-foot-ten, 170-pound, skinny Somali-Canadian dude. Never been particularly athletic, I'm a lifelong nerd through and true. I was that guy who watched Discovery Channel and all the science and nature shows when other youths watched the more regular stuff. Yeah, I was odd even back then.

Ever since the, um, incident, I've experienced things that I never thought possible. I have become monstrously strong, and quite resilient. Once, on a snowy day, I got hit by an OC Transpo bus on Bank Street and it sent me flying into the window of a nearby CIBC bank. I crashed through the window, and miraculously, I didn't die. Any ordinary person would have. Instead of dying, I healed instantly, and walked away. Cool, eh?

Yeah, being what I am does have it perks, but the Thirst is something that I don't think I will ever get used to. I need blood. I crave it the way a crack addict craves his or her fix. I cannot explain it any further. Without blood, I grow insane, and borderline rabid. For this reason, I've made an arrangement with a local butcher. There's this dude named Paolo, who's got a restaurant in the South Keys area and he's really into meat delicacies. I told him that I need the blood for my science experiments, and flashed him my old Carleton University ID, plus some cash. Ever since then, Paolo has kept me supplied with blood, and it's a good arrangement.

I live in a one-bedroom basement apartment in Vanier, and spend most of my time sleeping. The light of the sun doesn't burn me to a crisp but it weakens me. During the day, I'm sleepy, slow and sluggish. How can I explain the sun's effect on me? Imagine going for three days without sleep, or food, and then having to drag lots of heavy stuff around. You'd be feeling weak, right? Well, that's how I feel when the sun comes up. Like a man who's worked a sixteen-hour shift. Dog-tired. I try to stay awake but once the sun's rays touch my body, I'm out like a light.

Just a guy trying to stay alive, that's me. I thought about moving to another town, but when you're what I am, traveling isn't easy. I have to be careful and avoid relatives and friends from my former life. I don't go to the suburb of Orleans anymore, it's where I grew up, and people might recognize me there. Besides, Ottawa is my hometown and part of me feels vaguely attached to it. Home is home, after all.

There's another reason why I haven't left town. There's something out there. I don't know what it is, but it can jump from body to body, and it has approached me. The first time I saw it, I was walking around the parking lot of Billings Bridge Mall, after hours. The entity approached me, and it was in the guise of a tall, blonde-haired young woman. I immediately sensed that something was off, and that's when it tried jumping into me. It was unable to possess me, and became fascinated with me as a result.

I have reason to believe that this entity is behind the rash of murders all over Ottawa. People behaving strangely, slaughtering their neighbors and co-workers for no reason. I saw something in the Metro newspaper that shocked me. The picture of Alison Dale, the blonde chick from that night, and she killed three of her relatives before being taken into custody by Ottawa Police. Three days later, Officer Diane Walkerton, a veteran of the force, and also the arresting officer in the Alison Dale case, killed her relatives. Both the Alison woman and the lady cop who arrested her are in police custody, and both women claim to not remember what they did or why.

I think the entity that tried to possess me is behind those murders. For some reason, whatever it is, it's targeting families. I'm going to find that thing, and I am going to stop it. I am not human anymore, and in the eyes of my family and friends, I'm dead and buried. Why should I care? Well, whatever I am now, I'm no murderer and I don't approve of those who take innocent lives. Besides, Ottawa is my town and this entity clearly doesn't belong. This is going to be a one-monster town if I have anything to say about it. Wish me luck.