I grew up on the streets of Dubin, both as a chid and as a newborn vampire. I never had an easy life, but I'm not one to complain. No one ever said that life was easy or fair, they just said it would be worth trials that I faced made me the person that I am today.
I was born in 1900 to a poor family already consisting of six children. There was Fiona, the oldest and the only other girl, then came Sean, Liam, Malachy and little Paddy. I was the last born to my mother Patricia. My father, Kevin, worked on the docks. He didn't make a lot, but he brought in enough money to keep us from starving. My childhood was spent running around paying games of hide and seek, chasing and other such nonsense. It was simple but it was mine and I savoured every minute of it. I was the baby, doted on, spoilt. I wouldnt have wanted it any other way.
My childhood innocence was to end abruptly the September I turned thirteen. It had been a normal day I had just run down to the shops to buy mammy some woodbines out of the last of the weeks money, when I heard the screams of horror that pierced through our little street. I clutched the cigarettes tight to my chest afraid of losing them and ran as fast as I could up the road. There was something different about the skyline today...I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I ground to a halt in front of the pile of rubble that was our house. That and the one next to it had collapsed into a sorry pile of bricks and mortar. I heard a blood curdling scream. It took me a few moments to realise that it was mine, as I felt arms catch around my waist holding me to the spot, stopping me from running into the ruins. My whole family had been in that house.
Recue teams worked through the night trying to salvage people from the wreck, but I knew before anyone had to tell me that my whole family was gone. I was alone. I was terrified. I had never had to deal with reality before. My mother and older siblings made sure I never had to worry about anything. Now it was like a sharp slap accross the face on a cold winters morning. A sharp sting that only seemed to intensify as time went on. I turned my back on the wreck, on what had once been my life. I didn't know where I was going or what I was doing. All I knew was that Margaret O'Keeffe no longer existed.