Lou's Llife

Damn, this bus stinks! I hate NYC Public Transit on so many levels. It's slow, it's noisy, it's crowded and IT STINKS! But when your a college student with no car and no money what are you gonna do, right? I swear, if one more person steps on my foot, I'm going to kill them. And I do mean that literally!....... There IS another reason why I hate the bus, but I try so very hard not to think about it. After 429 years, it has become second nature to ignore my baser, violent instincts. But just because I ignore them, doesn't mean I don't still feel them.

These smells make me hungry in a way that is impossible for most other people to comprehend. The average human can distinguish between 2000 and 4000 different odors, depending on the individual. Since I'm not entirely human, I can smell EVERYTHING! I find human smells very interesting for more than the obvious reasons. You know how they say not to judge a book by its cover? Well, you REALLY can't judge a person's smell by the way they look. I mean, I smell the normal smells like everyone else. To me a model smells like clean skin, and lots of chemical smells from her hair products, and nail products, makeup and very expensive perfume, and a homeless person usually smells like some combo of B.O., sweat, vomit, urine and alcohol.

But I can also smell things you cannot, so to me a model's blood can smell very bad, the closest smell I can compare it to is vulture vomit. On the flipside of that, I have met some homeless people that have blood that smells better than any perfume ever created by a human. Occasionally, I still get surprised by getting whiff of some beautiful, wet, delicious smelling blood, and turning around to see who smells so good, and see some 80 yr old bag lady covered in dirt and urine.

I did tell you I'm a vampire, didn't I? Sorry, didn't mean to freak you out by talking about blood like that. I forget that people don't know sometimes. It's like I have a big, deep, dark secret that I have buried so deep that sometimes even I forget about my "handicap". Never completely forgotten, but almost. I've survived all these years by being able to keep a secret better than anyone else on the planet. My name is Alouette Sivney, but nowadays I go by Lou. I am a second-year Law student at NYU. I was born in The Year of Our Lord's Grace One Thousand Five Hundred and Eighty and to say I've been around the block a few times is an understatement. The stories I could tell you...........

There have been a few humans over the years, not many, but a very few people that know about my condition. So, I suppose you are now thinking all the questions that I usually get asked every time I choose to confide in someone about myself, What do I eat?, Where do I sleep? Can I come out in the sun, or only at night?, Am I immortal? Am I repulsed by crosses, holy water or garlic? Can you kill me with a stake to the heart? Do I have special powers like telepathy? Am I psychic? Can I fly or turn into a bat? What happened to me, how did I become this way?, Why do I feel the need to play the normal college student role and live like a human, associate with humans and not with my own kind?

The tendency of you humans to fear anything that is different from the norm, or dislike things that you do not understand, is something that transcends all time, all generations. That's the main reason I have had SO FEW friends over the years. Not many people can handle the burden of having to keep the knowledge that there is a vampire living next door a secret. And also, I cannot emotionally afford to make human connections, if I truly get attached to someone and then to have to watch them slowly age and die while I remain the same, is heart-breakingly painful. Maybe that is the reason I chose to confide in you. I do have limited human characteristics such as the need to unburden myself from time to time. To know that I'm not alone in the world, that someone else shares this secret, is strangely comforting.