A Somali Vampire's Passion

In every organization, there are those at the top and those at the bottom. I work for Jerome Magnus & Associates, the top criminal defense law firm in the City of Toronto, Ontario. And since I'm hanging out in a dark alley, standing over a dead body, and having to dispose of it as it's starting to snow, I guess you could say that I'm not one of the movers and shakers of the organization. I'm a garbage man. I clean up other people's messes. And I can't stand that shit. As a vampire, I can smell a lot of things, and the stench of death nauseates me to my core.

Before we go any further, the name is Yousef Chatah and I was born in 1790 in the region of Sana'a, Republic of Yemen. My father, Omar Chatah was a Yemeni scholar and preacher, and my mother, Fatima Mohamud, was a Somali tribal chieftain's daughter. A princess among her people. In my lifetime I've been many things. A thief and a scoundrel by necessity, a preacher, an assassin, a poet by avocation, an artist, and a wanderer due to the constraints of fate. I had lived a full, adventurous life long before I joined the ranks of the undead.

In 1812, I became a vampire, thanks to Abdul Fatimid, a legendary vampire who ruled the desert-dwelling undead in a vast realm stretching from the Yemeni desert to the depths of Somalia, all the way to the Ethiopian border. Fatimid had been alive since the time of the Crusades, and he was feared by mortal and immortal alike in that region. I attempted to steal from him one night, on the docks of the port of Aden, Somalia.

I should have known better than to attack the stocky, muscular older Arabian man I saw walking in the docks at midnight by himself. He carried himself with preternatural self-assurance. Yet, driven by despair, I sought to relieve him of the contents of his purse, for I had not eaten in several days. Fatimid proved to be more than a match for me, though I was a tall, large man. Even a physically powerful man like myself is no match for a vampire. Fatimid caught me, overpowered me and then, he fed upon me. Before he could dispatch me, as was his custom with scoundrels, I hurled myself into the Gulf of Aden's cold waters.

The currents carried me far from shore, and the vampire master leapt into the waters, searching for me. Fortunately, he didn't find me. I drifted a long way from shore, and effectively drowned. My body lay at the bottom of the sea, hidden from the sun's rays in the daylight hours by algae-encrusted rocks. Three days later I awakened, and I found myself changed. Any man or woman bitten by a vampire will become one of the undead unless their body is properly disposed of. Cremation is an effective method, as is decapitation.

Anyways, I awakened as a vampire on the third night, and slowly, painfully made my way back to shore. As a mortal, I'd been a lot of bad things. As a vampire, I got even worse. First, I set off on the trail of Abdullah Fatimid, the monster who created me. It didn't take me long to find him. There's a bond between a vampire and his maker. We can sense each other across great distances. Almost like a magnet sensing metal. Anyhow, Fatimid lived in an underground lair with his haram of gorgeous female vampires, dozens in number, guarded by a trio of eunuchs whom Fatimid transformed into his own undead bodyguards centuries ago. It wasn't easy infiltrating the lair, I had to do it in the wee hours of the morning, when vampires at their weakest.

A lot of vampires consider the light of day to be the ultimate impediment. Me? I've always seen it as a mere obstacle. A great one, to be sure, but not an insurmountable one. That's why I refused to let the light of the sun get in the way of my revenge. I entered the lair, wrapped from head to toe in thick layers of clothing, and then dispatched Fatimid and his bodyguards. I found them sleeping. The older a vampire gets, the weaker he or she becomes during the daytime hours. Older vampires tend to fall asleep the moment the sun comes up. Its light diminishes their strength and saps their energy. Newborn vampires still combust in broad daylight, but we tend to burn much slower than the old ones. It can take a newborn vampire several hours in the sun before he burns to ash. The old ones burn within moments.

I killed Fatimid along with his eunuch vampire bodyguards Ali, Khan and Wahid. Then I established myself as the new King of the Desert. I even took Fatimid's favorite vampire doxy, a six-foot-tall, bronze-skinned and raven-haired, curvaceous Arabian woman named Mouna Khalid, as my companion. From Mouna I learned the fine art of being a vampire. This gorgeous vampire woman had been Fatimid's sexual plaything for almost a thousand years. Back when he was a living man, he'd been a Sultan and she was one of his sex slaves. After he became a vampire during the Crusades, Fatimid transformed his favorite sex slave Mouna Khalid into one of the undead. In life as in un-death, she was his to own.

The other female vampires of the harem didn't take too kindly to my deposing their lord and master Fatimid, and soon deserted me. Mouna stayed by my side, though. I'm a lot of things, ladies and gentlemen, but a slave master is not one of them. I offered Mouna what she'd never had in the thousand-plus years of her existence. A real choice. Born into an impoverished Syrian Christian family, she'd been sold into slavery at a young age and somehow ended up as part of the harem of Sultan Abdullah Fatimid. For a thousand years, Mouna only existed to pleasure Fatimid. Now that he was dead, I offered her freedom. You can go wherever you want for you are free, I told her.

I want to stay with you, Mouna said to me, smiling. I looked at her, stunned. This woman was full of surprises. Arm in arm we walked back into the cave. The following night, we left for Ethiopia. For over a century Mouna and I remained together. In 1890, I set sail for the isles of the Caribbean and she returned to her native Syria. I settled on the island of Haiti, where I established myself as a ruler of the country's Voodoo-practicing minority. I became a 'blood god' to them. I remained among the Haitians until 1978, when my curiosity about all things American drove me to move to Boston, Massachusetts. I lived there until 2009. In 2010 I moved to Toronto, Ontario.

Upon my arrival in Toronto, I quickly learned about the movers and shakers in town. A law firm known as Jerome Magnus & Associates controlled most of the power structure in town. The metropolis was home to millions of humans, and thousands upon thousands of non-humans such as vampires, werewolves, monsters and other entities I don't even have a name for. The Firm hired me as one of its enforcers. That's what I'm doing in this dark alley at midnight, ladies and gentlemen. I'm standing over the body of a fat, chubby white man. Once he was a 'brash and ballsy' politician, and he made headlines across Canada and around the world for his drunkenness, his drug use and his refusal to leave office when caught. Now, at last, the Rulers of the City have decided that enough is enough.

I dispose of him swiftly, reducing his body to a bloody pulp with my superhuman strength and then burning the remains in a secure location. No evidence. No witnesses. I return to my loft, a fancy building that's owned by a client of my employers. This is what I do every night. I make people disappear. One night, when the supernatural forces at work in this world decide I've seen too much, they'll send a demon, a monster, a werewolf or a fellow vampire to take me out. I've seen it happen to colleagues in the same line of work. Someday, it will be my turn. But not tonight, hopefully. I go to sleep, and dream of simpler times. I dream of the desert, and of my sweet Mouna. How I miss her.