You disappear with all your good intentions
And all I am is all I could not mention
Like who will bring me flowers when it's over
And who will give me comfort when it's cold
-Thriving Ivory, Flowers For A Ghost
He remembers what it was like being human. He grew up in a religious family, his parents thought him to love God and he went to church every Sunday.
Vampires and werewolves were just the monsters he and his friends would watch in horror movies and laugh about. There was nothing to be afraid of because they weren't real, they were fictional, pure fantasy.
And God, did he end up eating his words.
It was all very surreal in the beginning, he was suddenly thrust into a world he did not know and became something he thought was non-existent.
He never told his family what he was, they would never have accepted him and as the good Catholics his parents were, they'd probably try to drown him in a tub of holy water or try to sly his head off with a butcher knife – his family could get quite creative if they wanted to be.
So instead of telling them what he had become, he lets them believe he was still human, still one of them. He wears the small crucifix his mother gave him when he was small around his neck and acts as if everything was the same when he visits, even as the crucifix was burning his skin.
He only nods in reply when his mother greets him with smothering kisses, asking him why he was so cold and then tells him to warm himself by the fire. He only smiles when his father commented that he still looked so young, still looks the same while his father was aging more and more every time he saw him. He tries not to wince as his cousins made fun of the monsters in the vampire film they were watching.
He would act as if he's still normal, still part of the world they were in and when he finally leaves them, he goes back to the motel, taking off both the crucifix and the facade.
Something short I wrote a few months back, a semi-quasi character study of Raphael.