Zabeth's Journal - All the posts - Zabeth, my life as a vampire

You would think that the other kids didn’t like me only because I was born different, with my red eyes, big ears, fangs, and too white skin… It was true. But it wasn’t just that. At first, I didn’t really understand why others didn’t like me. Why was I being made fun of? To make fun of someone because they were born different… Why would someone do that? As if everyone had to be born the same!
How clever we’d look… if we all had the same face.

Being different is a good thing

Let’s say there was only one kind of bird on earth… pigeons, let’s say… all grey, all walking and shaking their heads, all “cuckooing,” wouldn’t we miss the other birds? With their different heads and bodies? With their different colors? And their different chants?
I think we would be bored to death.

Read the full comic on tallncurly.com

In my case, what made everything even more complicated was that I was not only different from others physically. I was also different in my head. And in my heart.

When people make fun of you because you were born different

For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt out of step with others. I didn’t always understand them, how they functioned, what they thought. Is that why they didn’t understand me either?
For example, I never got how, when you get to some place with many people you don’t know, how come ten minutes later everyone is talking to each other and looks like they’re having a good time. I’m usually sitting alone, asking myself, “What are they talking about? They didn’t even know each other ten minutes ago! »
And when I try to do the same, I often feel like I’m not saying the right thing or asking the right questions. At least not the ones that are expected, because the discussion usually turns very short, and the person quickly switches to someone else.
I’ve gotten into the habit of doing things alone. For some reason I don’t get, it bothers many people. I have often heard criticisms or comments because I’m often alone.
The thing is, there are always reasons to be the way we are. And since not everybody can know my reasons, why can’t people accept me the way I am, seriously? Instead of judging me?

Enjoying solitude

Make no mistake. Just because someone enjoys being alone, it doesn’t always mean that he or she suffers from it. Solitude and loneliness are not the same thing!
OK. In my case, it is true that I have often suffered from isolation in my life. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy solitude, when I choose it. Being alone can be a good thing, too, for drawing for example. Or to write stories! I love writing stories… One day, I’ll be a writer.
Sometimes, while the other kids are running around chasing a ball, I’m thinking of a new story to write. Or I’m birdwatching. Or I watch little animals. You can learn so much from watching animals.
Anyway, I don’t make fun of children who will end up with bruises and holes in their pants, because they’re having fun. So why do some of them have to make fun of me because I like to daydream?
There are things that are just done better alone, that’s all. That doesn’t mean we’re weird.

Ms. Vain

I remember one day I was watching two ants fighting over a crumb of bread. I swear, it looked like the fight of the Titans. Neither of them wanted to let go. I could see each of them wanted to be the one who would bring the biggest crumb back to the anthill. To be able to show off to their friends…
I read a book about ants one day… If you knew how crazy it is, the society which they live in. There’s so much going on there!

Well, that day, a young girl I will call Sophie came up to me and asked me what I was doing. I told her that I was watching the ants.
Sophie loved to tell other people how stupid they were. She did it all the time. And, of course, that’s what she told me.

– You’re so stupid.

To which I replied:

– You mean that you’re smarter than me?

After thinking thoughtfully for about a second, she shouted:

– I’m a thousand times smarter than you!

That’s when I thought of my grandmother.
She always gave good advice. She had told me something once, which seemed very appropriate to me. I said:

– The one who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else is usually dumber than everyone else.

Sophie stuck her tongue out at me.

– Oh yeah, you look so very smart like that, please accept my apologies… I answered her.

And Sophie left.

A handy little tool

You should try my grandmother’s line when you come across a Ms. or Mr. Vain. It works for just about anything!

” The one who thinks he is better than everyone else in one area usually sucks in everything else.”

“The one who thinks he is prettier than everyone else on the outside is usually uglier than everyone else on the inside.”

“The one who thinks he is more interesting than everyone else usually has less interesting things to say than everyone else.”

Thanks, Grandma. <3

We’ll get back to vampires later. Now, I’m going to tell you a little bit more about me and about the day kids started to make fun of me at school.

When you can’t wait for global warming

I was born in an ice-cold country.
Because vampires already have a lower body temperature than average, I’ve always had all the trouble in the world to warm my body and heart up. A life of hypothermia.

I have always envied vampires who are born in a warm country. Things are not easy for them either, but generally speaking, they still do better than us little polar vampires.

When you have a low body temperature, especially in winter, you shiver all the time. You spend your time wrapped up in layers and layers of warm clothing, but you still shake, and to top it all off, you have trouble speaking because your teeth keep chattering.

I can tell you that on your very first day at school, and as luck would have it that day in September, the mercury has decided to drop to 40 degrees, it’s easy for people to make fun of you.
That’s what happened to me, and I remember the only thought that went through my mind as a little girl at the time was: “I’m off to a bad, bad start. »

First day of school, first teasing

In the courtyard, while some kids were laughing at me because I looked like the Marshmallow Man, others came to ask me what my name was, and all I could answer was: “Brrlb brrlb brrlb.”  Huuuge success.

You can only imagine what happened when, once inside, I had to peel off all my layers and appeared in all my glory for the very first time.

When they saw my red eyes, big ears, white skin, fangs, and long black hair, the kids all started screaming in terror and running around.
Plus, I couldn’t choose my own clothes at the time, and my mother had dressed me all in black, vampire-style.

Me? I was paralyzed.
Seeing that I was even more terrified than they were, they stopped, circled me, pointed at me, and started laughing.
And they laughed, and they laughed, and they laughed. They looked like a bunch of hyenas.
They would laugh and make fun of me for centuries, but I didn’t know that yet.

The beginning of the end

From that very first day, I was given some of the names that would stick with me for the rest of my life: ugly, monster, dead girl, Draculette, jellyfish, and so on.

On that day, the first groups of friends formed.
I remember that all the little blonde girls had gotten together at the same octagonal table. The children wearing glasses too. The children who screamed the loudest had also all gathered together.
Then there was this table with kids with no particular signs’ where there was still a place left, but when I came to sit down, they told me that I was too ugly to sit with them.
I remember wondering if they had taken a good look at themselves.

When I came home that night, after a very quiet ride in the car with my mother, I firmly told my parents that I didn’t want to go back to school ever again in my life, that I was done with the nonsense.

Needless to say, I was not listened to.

Let me tell you the real story of Dracula, my ancestor. Like me, he was bullied as a child.

Baby Dracula

A long time ago, when Dracula was born, he was a baby like any other. It is even said that he was particularly cute!
As he grew up, he became a sweet and sensitive little boy. He loved animals, especially rats and wolves, and loved to garden with his grandmother. His only crime was to have been born with long fangs, big pointed ears, and excessively white skin that stood out against the black of his hair.
He didn’t even have, like me, red eyes. His eyes and face changed over time because of his frequent outbursts of anger.

While his parents pampered him in his small village, other children were very mean to Dracula.
They repeatedly mocked him. They ridiculed his teeth, the whiteness and sensitivity of his skin, and had fun pulling his ears until they hurt him very badly.

One day, the bullying became particularly vicious.

The cave: the point of no return

Dracula was still just a teenager, when a group of kids set a trap for him. They tied him up and took him to a cave that overlooked the cliff near the village, where they left him, lying on the ground, blindfolded and unable to move, for a whole night.

It’s in that cave that, alone and terrified, Dracula met a pack of bats. They attacked him and bit him all night long. They wounded him badly and drank most of his blood.

Dracula’s poor, dying heart pounded harder and harder, trying to pump what little blood was left in his veins. This is how it quadrupled in volume.

In the early morning, after looking for the source of the cries they had been hearing all night, the villagers found Dracula on the ground of the cave, dying.

Blood transfusions did not exist back then. Seeing his pale complexion – even paler than usual – they gave him goat’s blood to drink, hoping to bring him back to life.
It took a lot, but it worked. The only drawback was that Dracula had to keep drinking some regularly because he fell back into a coma as soon as he ran out of blood.

The transformation

That night in the cave left very bad memories in his mind, as you can imagine. He was never the same after that incident.
All the fear, anger, and sadness that he had accumulated during all those years of being bullied came back to him in one fell swoop and never left him again.
He vowed to spend his life seeking revenge on those who had hurt him.

Dracula did not yet know that as long as he would drink blood, he would never die.

One day he cut himself with a cleaver and put his finger in his mouth to stop it from bleeding. That’s how he discovered by chance that human blood is much stronger than goat blood.
From then on, he started killing people instead of goats to drink their blood.

Each time, just before he bit them, Dracula repeated the same thing: “Now you too will know what it is like to be emptied of everything you are by someone else. »

This is how Dracula became Dracula, and this is how many vampires become either recluse who flee the world and people, or, more rarely, bloodthirsty beings like Dracula.