My Life and Early Unlife

Alex Smith

I am Alexander Paul Smith, of Clan Ventrue, Camarilla member in good standing in the Domain of New York City, childe of Jonas Rogers, the childe of Luke Jones. For the confused, I am a vampire. A vampire who has responsibilities but no real status in our world, mind you, but I am a vampire nonetheless. My closer acquaintances, the ones who would be friends if I trusted anyone, call me Alex. Jonas still calls me Alexander for some reason. Everyone else calls me Mr. Smith. Such a common name, but blending into the background isn't such a bad thing in my social circles. It can keep you alive.

I have somewhat long curly black hair, blue-grey eyes, and glasses that I purposely keep dirty to make it harder for people to read things from my eyes. When I was fifteen, a girl two years older than me told me that I had very expressive eyes. A consolation prize, since I'd just confessed my "undying love" to her. I was a social idiot as a teenager.

Other than the glasses, I really have no distinguishing facial features. In college, I was told I looked like an older version of Harry Potter, without the scar, but that's about it. I've read the books. My eyes are the wrong color, too.

I do have other identifying marks. Scars. No birthmarks, just scars. If you're not a vampire, you'd probably think I have a pair of fang marks on my neck. I don't. The Embrace doesn't leave scars. No, these were earned otherwise. The ones on my chest are from summer camp in between ninth and tenth grades. Sliding down twenty feet of loose, sharp rocks on your stomach isn't the best thing for you. Nothing deep, but the sheer number of them left me with a few scars. The ones on my wrists, about halfway up, are barely visible anymore. They didn't come from the rockslide. They were already there. Let's just say that I had major issues in sixth grade, that I owned a switchblade for three weeks during that time period, and that I don't have the issues or the knife anymore. I don't like thinking about it, and I like talking about it even less. I do carry a pocketknife now, but only since my Embrace. It's ridiculous, because it's practically useless as a weapon, but it still provides me with a certain inane comfort to have it.

What about my friends and family? That's a joke. I have a mortal family--mortal parents--and while I'm legally alive, I cut myself off from them almost a year before Jonas Embraced me. I suppose Jonas is my family, and I can trust him somewhat, since he'll lose dignitas if I become a disappointment to the clan. Friends, however, are another matter. I have no friends. Friends are weaknesses; friends require you to trust. I don't trust anyone enough to call them my friends. My family, my very dysfunctional family, is the Camarilla of New York City, but none of them are my friends. Acquaintances, allies, poker buddies, social circles, people to whom I act friendly while I wonder what part of my back they want to stick a knife in. I prefer the ones who are honest about it.

I was born on Long Island, a little over an hour's drive from New York, not including traffic. I went to a preppy elementary school in the city, a preppy middle school in the city, and a preppy high school in the city. By tenth grade, Mother and Father had rented me a very nice apartment in Manhattan for Sunday through Thursday nights, by the start of senior year the building went co-op, and they bought the apartment, and I lived there on my own seven days a week, going back out to the old house for holidays and my birthday. You might think that I became a party boy, but I didn't, although I claim with no hesitation that I had one of the best liquor cabinets of my class. The fact of the matter was that I usually partook of said liquor alone or, in the company of one or two others. No drunken orgies for me. Once or twice, this company was female, I admit, but it wasn't exactly romantic. Morbid teenage lust is about the only way to describe it, and I'm going to say no more on that subject. I was accepted Early Decision to Columbia University. The apartment was a present for high school graduation from Mother and Father. Uncle Robert gave me five thousand dollars to invest, told me he'd collect at my graduation, no interest. I paid him back by the end of the summer. I already knew what I wanted, declared an Economics major by the end of freshman year. I made my first million by the time I graduated; rather ironically, I passed that mark two days after I formalized breaking off from my parents completely. I went to business school at Columbia, too, for about a year, haven't finished it. The Embrace kind of got in the way. I still live in that apartment that my mother and father gave me, but I don't bring people to it. It's changed now. The windows have very thick steel shutters on them that block the sunlight quite effectively when I need to sleep. The liquor cabinet is empty. I can't use it anymore. The kitchen is the least visited part of the apartment. But it's my haven, more than my haven. It's my home.

By now, you may have guessed that while I've wanted to sit down and write this down for a while, if only for my own benefit, I've had a little trouble getting started. To get past this, I found one of those soul-searching quizzes on the Internet, and I'm answering the questions, although there are no results to get. It's just a "thirty questions you should ask yourself" kind of thing. This one is "Where do you go when you're angry?" Well, to answer it, inside my head. I point out to myself all the illogical things I would do if I let the anger take over, and the ways I can get back later at whomever or whatever has caused my anger. I prefer my revenge colder than I am.

I shouldn't put my greatest fear in writing, since it's not one I'll ever tell anyone, but I'm going to take a chance here and give this a shot. I'm afraid of simply being used for the rest of my life. I'm afraid of always being a servant, never gaining power and respect. That's what I'm afraid of. I don't mind not being top of the heap, as long as I'm respected.

My other greatest fear is Final Death. I'm still young, still young enough that I even look my age. I haven't seen centuries slip away like days. I haven't buried my mortal great-grandchildren like some. I don't even have any mortal children, let alone that. I wouldn't be ready to die even if I were mortal. But I never want to die. I want to have meaning, have existence, for eternity. That's why I accepted the Embrace.

Until very recently, God and I hadn't been on speaking terms since shortly after I started college. My parents raised me as an evangelical Christian, and I do believe in God and Jesus, but I couldn't find it in myself to have faith that He cared enough about me individually to save my immortal soul. I always did believe in my immortal soul, but I sinned enough that I considered myself a lost cause in His eyes. Maybe I wouldn't be relegated to the deepest pits of Hell, but Heaven wasn't going to be embracing me with open arms, either. I've already told you I was fairly morbid by my senior year in high school, and that continued. I was cynical. Not skeptical, just not willing to give myself to God for a form of immortality unless I was sure He was going to give it to me. Those feelings have thawed somewhat, and now I'm feeling the twinges of hope that He'll take me back, but I'm still worried.

I met Jonas Rogers about a month after I made the millionaire mark. He was in business and had noticed my rather meteoric rise. He took me under his wing as a protégé. I'd already gone mostly nocturnal by this time; 4 PM to 8 AM was my usual day and business school was night school for the simple reason that I liked the night. He pretended to have a similar schedule, for different reasons that later became obvious. Business wasn't all we talked about. Life, death, religion, myths, all these and more were fair game. And then he brought up the subject of immortality. It was a hypothetical question, an "if you could have it would you take it" question. He spoke of downsides, hypothetical ones. Basically, hinting around the edges of it but never saying it outright, he asked me if I'd be willing to become a vampire. I saw that, of course, but I still thought he was being hypothetical. Still, I considered the upsides, the downsides he described to me (and he did imply most of them), and I came to a conclusion. Yes. I would take it. It became a lot less hypothetical really fast. He showed me his fangs, and asked me again. I had second thoughts, but I proudly stood, presented my throat, and said "Yes." I've had some regrets, some things I've missed, but I don't think I would have changed my mind if I'd known what I know now. I want to exist forever, and may God have pity on my soul.

The next question on the quiz is whether I have a secret. Obviously, the people who wrote this haven't heard of the Masquerade. Even if I did have a secret beyond that, though, I wouldn't share it in writing. I don't really have any since the whole cross thing was revealed to the entire Camarilla (thank you so much, Sarah Capone), but I wouldn't share them. The only people whose hands this is likely to fall into besides my own are vampires, and why on earth would I trust them?

Now I'm supposed to say "what makes me laugh out loud." What makes me laugh out loud is a good joke, preferably not at my expense. As long as it's someone else besides me, or a joke made in good fun, and as long as it's well said with a good delivery, I'll laugh. I'm still pretty human, especially when it comes to my sense of humor, although I still have that morbid touch that I developed when I was seventeen. I'm not some insane idiot with a Dr. Evil laugh just because I'm a vampire, for goodness' sake.

Skipping to the next question, never been in love, well, not truly in love. Thought I was a few times, but I wasn't. How do I know? Because the ones that I thought I was in love with who rejected me never left me with a broken heart. Love has never exactly been one of my goals. What do I need with love? I'm a vampire. Eventually, it's almost inevitable that I will lose my ability to love to the Beast. You think I don't know that? You think I haven't met older vampires who are cold and dead and inhuman? I have. Love dies with the reproductive organs. It just takes us a while for that to settle in. The closest thing we have left is the freaking Blood Bond, and I don't feel like giving someone else that level of control over me, even if I have it over them too. Who needs love? I have myself, and that's all I hope to ever need.

Now we're on to the more "unconventional questions." What's in my fridge right now? Nothing, I unplugged the stupid thing a week after my Embrace. It's useless to me now, and I don't have mortal guests. I don't have Kindred guests if I can help it. Members of Clan Ventrue are the only ones I let see my haven. I've been considering getting a ghoul, which means that I'd have to plug the fridge back in. Ghouls need to eat things besides blood. What's on my bedroom floor? A little dust, and not much else. I'm fairly tidy besides the dust. What's on my nightstand? A clock radio and a little lamp. Nightstand is a bad name for that for a vampire. I prefer just "bedside table." To answer the last part of that question, my garbage is filled with shredded paper. I really don't create that much clutter.

What do I wear on my feet? Well, around the apartment when I don't have guests, I tend to wander around in my slippers. When I have guests, I wear my dress shoes. No matter what, though, I always wear white socks, instead of black dress socks like you're supposed to. Why? Well, I wear those black turtlenecks under my suit jackets for a reason, which is that morbidity I developed. But I feel that wearing all black is bad for you. So my white socks are a symbol of faint hope. Buried, hidden, trodden on, but still there.

The smells of my childhood kitchen seems a little far afield, but lemon detergent is the one I associate with it. Ms. Lee, the housekeeper, always believed in lemon-scented detergent as the most effective. The room fairly stank of it most of the time. Needless to say, I tried to avoid eating in the kitchen.

From that to spring cleaning and what's easy to throw out. I don't have clutter. If I have something, I have it for a good reason. I don't have much lying about, but I wouldn't throw out any of it…well, that spear only brings back memories of a major mistake, but that's a good reason to keep it. I think I'll hang it on a wall so I don't stake myself on it accidentally though. Better, I'll get a ghoul and then get him or her to hang it on the wall for me.

Oh my. This is an amusing question. So amusing I think I'll let you read it. The answer should be pretty obvious. "It's Saturday at noon. What are you doing? Give details. If you're eating breakfast, what exactly are you eating? If you're stretching out in the backyard to sun, what kind of blanket or towel are you lying on?"

I believe I'm sleeping, shut away from any possibility of letting the sun touch me until dark. That seems like a good way to end this, since I'm sick of these ridiculous questions, and they apply less and less to vampires after this. So that's it for now. But it's been fun doing this.

I am Alex Smith, and I am a vampire. And this is the tale of me. Perhaps someday I will reopen this story. But for now, my tale is done.