November 1
Parallel evolution is a scientific term: two species that are seemingly, but not actually related, growing alongside one another. Think horse and zebra, and you will grasp the concept. I have made a small study of it, for reasons that should be apparent to you at this point.
Did you know that homo sapiens was not the only humanoid race wandering the earth? There were several others; sentient hominids that walked alongside homo sapiens and even mated with them. The current genetic makeup of your race is as mixed a genome as can be imagined. Your neighbor may have a completely different concentration of a divergent populace; he may be, largely, another species altogether: ten percent Neanderthal, or five percent Denisovan. You never know, and yet you call everyone “human”.
Whatever you were, you were very tenacious, and swept across the ancient world, conquering it through effective breeding practices. But you could not ever destroy us in such a way. We are your only predator, so when you thrive, we feast. We have always been an adversary to you, and thus, we evolved to be unobserved. We evolved to mimic and disappear. We evolved to pretend.
My race does not form tightly knit families or travel together. We do not enjoy each other’s company or feel ostracized when we are not included. We do not organize. We do not form governing bodies. We are predators, and we guard our territory jealously. It has been months since I have spotted another of my kind, and that is exactly as I like it.
I have never seen my creators. I do not know how I came to be. I have no theories about our reproductive process, and cannot locate any discernible genitals upon my person. Perhaps one day I will simply become ill and crumble like a shell, and from the ruin of my body and blood a new creature will emerge. I by no means find this thought comforting, but if I have no choice, it seems logical to at least attempt to come to terms with it.
When I opened my eyes for the first time, it was to stand up from a sticky pool of blood and gaze about in recognition. I had never seen the world, but this was it. I was not perplexed. I doubt we feel perplexity of that type. I looked down at my naked limbs, at the ring of red around me, and was certain that I existed, and that I was hungry.
By scent alone, I could detect the lines of the terrain that had belonged to the former monstrous occupant, and that land became mine. I saw other creatures that looked like me, but were not like me, and I knew that I must camouflage myself in order to survive. That very night, I stole clothing from a plague victim. Thus my birth, education, and transition to adulthood encompassed but a few hours.
For many years, my life consisted solely of the simple truths of sustenance and concealment, until I began to really pay attention.
I have no idea if the others like me are as observant. Perhaps I am unique, but regardless, over hundreds of years I learned that I have more akin with a shark or a Komodo dragon than I do with you. Books, radio, television, and now the internet, have furnished me with a far superior body of evidence outstretching my own experiences, proving that we are nothing alike, no matter how easily I hide within your towns.
I respect your condition because it is something I do not share. I am as careful to observe it as a woman in a Muslim country is to don a scarf. When a mother talks of her baby, I listen and I smile, though not too widely, and when a clerk at a store makes a friendly overture, I am amiable. But it is simply the trappings of camouflage. I am an observer, passive or active.
Speech was the most difficult thing to master. It has taken me many years and the assistance of modern dentistry. You see, I have sharp teeth. An entire mouth full of them. But now, clip-on dental veneers are cheap and easily made. Dentists no longer bat an eye when they look into my maw. They assume I have disfigured my grin to be more accepted by some subculture, and I forbid them to x-ray in an effort to keep this impression intact. They take a mold of my fangs, perhaps scold me for my flossing habits, and then build me a lovely row of false, snap-in teeth that fit around my own like a gauntlet over a hand, arming me for verbal assaults.
I now speak perfectly, though I have often seen that my natural tone is unsettling to the human ear. In order to converse, I must adopt a kind of falsetto. My tongue, which is very long, cannot manage sharp sounds, and consequently, I am plagued by the softened “s”, “th”, and “t”, but it has become a somewhat charming quality in practice. Humans hate friction, even in fricatives.
I know that my body does not look as yours does. My skin is very smooth and hairless, the pores almost invisible. I do not sweat. Try as I may to hide it, my complexion is a grayer tone than is perceived to be healthy. In certain light, I am often asked if I am feeling well, even by perfect strangers. I reply that I am anemic, and they seem to feel this satisfactory.
I am average height, but I am slight. This length and narrowness of form is deceptive. Our muscles, you see, are dense and more efficient. We are more powerful than you, perhaps by several times, though our stamina appears to be somewhat limited. We are fast, brutish, and lethal in tiny bursts of motion, but we burn through calories quickly, and if we are hungry, we become sluggish, desperate, and more violent.
I am not a — dare I even write the word — vampire. I cannot turn into a flock of bats. I cross running water all the time, eat garlic, and have no counting or knot-related compulsions. In fact, I crochet. I do, however, drink blood, interact smoothly with wolves, and have a modest aversion to sunlight.
I do not know if I am immortal. So far in my life, I do not appear to have aged. I know my face. It has looked at me from still lakes, burnished silver, glass and Mylar, and now, CCTV. It has never changed. I am as tall as I have ever been. I am as broad as I have ever been.
I have no abnormal repugnance of human food, despite what you have read of the “V” word. I enjoy coffee, wine, fine cheese, and an occasional Snickers bar, but I am not nourished as I should be unless my refrigerator is stocked with a spare arm or leg. I do not gorge. I do not lavish myself with baths of blood. I eat a portion that amounts to about 2000 calories, and a single human corpse may last me several weeks.
Now we come to the meat, as it were, of the manifesto: the hunt.
I drift through this patriarchy in slacks and a tailored coat. However, when I kill, I frequently do so in a skirt. My species is androgynous, you see. It is possibly a defense or adaptation mechanism that allows us greater safety. Whatever the reason, it is certainly convenient. So the next time you pat a girl on the backside, and she tells you not to touch her if you want to keep your fingers….you should listen.
Four or five hundred years ago, everyone wore shapeless sacks that dragged on the ground and lifted easily for the necessary excretions, but the modern era has divided you even further, pressed out roles that you seem to play. Now it takes more effort to switch from one gender to the other. Perhaps your customs are a modern adaptation against us, to make it more difficult for us to hide. I do not know, but as a natural response, I have become a master at makeup and costume, appreciative of certain “looks”.
I like tall boots. When I hunt in them, I am protected from filth. I pile the mess of hair-like filaments atop my head into some kind of pleasing coif in line with the fashion of the year. I wear padding where it looks most appealing. I paint my face. When I look in the mirror, I am the same to my own eyes, but not to those looking for a target. It is a costume. It is camouflage. And it works.
Nine times out of ten, I take a solitary man who often carries a weapon or is under the influence, but I do not discriminate. I have hunted women. I have even captured a teenage boy hitchhiking away from a juvenile record and an outstanding warrant. A dozen or so bodies a year is a pittance, and I am careful to always vary my attack, my disposal: my modus operandi, as they say on television.
I do love television. I have a premium package. And yes, even monsters must deal with indignant cable company staff. On late nights, I stay up and watch all manner of program. I obsess over infomercials, and, I confess, have a storage room filled with useless items I have purchased to examine and test. My favorite is that suction-cup knife sharpener. It is really quite remarkable considering the lengths a man used to go to to have his one knife sharpened at a whetstone.
You may ask, “What does a monster do with its day?”
I will give the ancient reply: “Whatever it wishes.”
I like to shop, and even when I must relocate to prevent myself from being discovered, I am never far from a mall. I collect, you see. Antiques are my drug. I do not know what need I am satisfying, but when I walk around my lofted warehouse space and look at all the shelves of trinkets, I am filled with what I can only assume is pleasure. I roll them in my fingers, position and clean, appraise and repair. I have dolls, glasses, bells, pipes, pocket watches, Depression glass, skeleton keys, and old canes. I have stamps and coins, patches and pins, toys and instruments. They amass in my home until they bury me, and then I sacrifice one of them to my cable bill or my lust for black truffle pâté.
I invest, but to say that I do so is a bit misleading. I invested very carefully, in what we now call utilities and viable nascent technologies and simply did not budge. Like Xerox, Apple, Google. All those delightful inventions that surprised you? I saw their potential at once, probably because of my continuous habitation. I remember what has come before, and am invariably either annoyed by or enamored of it. So it is that I am able to do as I please in your capitalist society without fear of impediments, unless the IRS counts. I have, since its instantiation, been audited a total of 14 times, under six different identities. I ate three of the auditors.
Death and Taxes.
I like to walk through the park during the day, and to garden on my roof. I enjoy driving fast cars, constructing things in my workshop, and reading books in the library. To move among you and interact is no chore. I enjoy it as a kind of mental exercise. I am unafraid of you, because I know that you do not see me, even though I see you.
I like what I see.
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