Liselotte Eva Sinclair D9

A P P E A R A N C E

I like to think I’m pretty. I have nothing else going for me, so the least I can be is pretty. I’m five feet and eight inches tall, and weigh all of a hundred and thirty pounds. I’m pretty fit. I don’t have any extra layers of fat hanging out, but I’ not very muscular either. I pretty much have no upper body strength to speak of, and I can maybe run a hundred yards before feeling winded. Because of my fear of the sun, I have pasty white skin. And I am talking pasty, yo. I look like a piece of white bread. I absolutely glow in the moonlight.

I have long, wavy red hair. My eyes are blue, and I wear vampire fangs. You heard me right. Fangs. My brother made them from me, and I wear them 24/7. They’ve sort of messed up my teeth, but I don’t really care. I also wear oodles of clothing. When I have to leave the house, I wear long pants, and a long sleeved shirt, and sunhat, and sunglasses, and a kerchief pulled up around my face, and gloves. I have as much of my body covered as possible. Why you ask? I’m afraid of the sun, of course.

P E R S O N A L I T Y

I have a problem with an over active imagination. I can turn anything into an adventure. My turn to take out the trash? I need to deliver a secret package to a drop off point, while fighting off savage dogs, corrupt peacekeepers, and getting pass dangerous obstacles! I have to clean the dishes? I’m sanitizing tools for some great heist, or maybe an assassination! I take any droll thing and make it wonderful and exciting. I can’t help it. The only thing about it, is sometimes it weirds people out. They don’t understand my need to make everything an adventure, not to mention when I tell them I’m on the run from spies for seeing something I shouldn’t, they think I’m crazy.

There’s something else. I have horrific dreams. My vivid imagination comes into play even while I sleep, and at night it’s not all fun and games. My dreams are filled with carnage and violence and monsters and crazies, and it just freaks me out to the point where I wake up screaming almost every night. When I was a little girl, I slept with my brother, but I’m too old for that now, and don’t have anyone to comfort me at night. I rarely ever get a good night’s sleep.

Other than that, I’m a pretty upbeat person. I always try to be positive and I don’t really get angry. I like to have fun, and play around. I rarely am ever a serious person. I guess you’d say I was immature, since I always make jokes and what not. But being serious is boring. And I hate being bored. I love to go on adventures, and try new things. I’m not afraid to climb the tallest trees, or scale buildings, or stand up to a peacekeeper. I love streaking through the woods, and skinny dipping (at night of course). I’ll do anything! Anything, that is, instead of go out in the sun.

I don’t have very many friends. At school, no one talks to me. No one. I’m the weird girl that is afraid of the sun. Now that I’m in high school, people just ignore me. But when I was younger everyone was really nasty to me. It’s one of the reasons why I grew up with such a strong imagination. I had to entertain myself. I’ve never really fit in, but I don’t mind. Talking to people and trying to connect was never really my thing. I prefer to be left alone with my thoughts. People are boring, they don’t know how to have fun like me.

H I S T O R Y

When I was a little girl, I was left home alone sometimes. I was always excited when an occasion arose where my parents were forced to leave me home alone. The house was my playground. I ran around, jumped on beds, danced on the counters, pretended the floor was lava; it was great. Well, one day I sort messed up. I was pretending to be a jungle cat in the backyard. You know, crawling around on all fours and stalking leaves and whatnot, kid stuff. And I maybe locked myself out.

I’d like to remind you that this was when I was a little girl. I think I was six or seven. Little kids, they don’t worry about things like locking mechanisms, and sun poisoning. When they are home alone, that stuff is the furthest from their mind. Their main concern is how much time they have left to roam around the house pretending to be invisible and exploring in their big brother’s room. So when I left the house to go on my awesome kitty adventures, I let the door close behind me. The door locks by itself. I was locked out. I was stuck in my backyard; a dilapidated stretch of dead grass with no shade surrounded by fence that a little girl had no chance of climbing. Did I mention it was the middle of summer? And that it was around midmorning? And my parents and brother were not due back until late afternoon? Which meant I had a few hours of baking in the sun to get through? I probably should have said that in the beginning, so you’d understand a little better the situation.

By the time my parents got home I was collapsed in the background with every inch of my exposed skin charred to a crisp. Over the next few days, layer after dead layer of skin sloughed off exposing raw tender skin underneath. It was quite painful, and although I eventually recovered, I never really forgot that day in the sun. I was terrified of the sun after that. I rarely ever went out unless I had to, and when I did go out, I wore longs sleeves and pants, and gloves, and a hat, and sunglasses, and a kerchief. Kids at school got a kick out of it for the first couple of days, but when they realized that I was legitimately afraid of the sun, they became cruel.

I had always been picked on – my imagination had always been a little too wild for them – but after my eccentric dress, the pranks they played became more frequent, clever and humiliating. They filled my desk and locker with light bulbs. During lunch, they’d move my desk outside in the middle of the blacktop. They’d use mirrors to reflect beams of light at me during class. While I was walking home, they’d pull my hat and glasses and kerchief from me. They’d hold me down, and force my face toward the sun. I’d remember the blisters and the stinging pain and I’d scream and scream and scream. And they would laugh.

I never got over my fear of the sun. My mother died when I was ten, and it was just me, my brother, and my father. Papa wasn’t as supportive of my phobia as my mother. He found it unreasonable and he’d yell at me and throw things when I said I couldn’t go outside. I’d cry when papa yell, and my big brother would come and comfort me. “It’s okay,” he said one day, “I know why you can’t go out in the sun.” I looked up at him and sniffed loudly. “Why?” I had asked, doubtful. That’s when he had held out fangs and with a wide grin said, “Because yer a vampire.”

Everything changed that day. I started wearing the fangs all the time, and I felt empowered. At school when kids picked on me, I hissed at them and bit them. Papa wasn’t happy about that. We had to move because I bit one to many people and the school kicked me out. My brother, Eric, then told me I was a good vampire and was no longer allowed to bite people. So then I started going out at night and fancying myself some sort of superhero. I’d climb trees and pretend I was scaling a building. I’d build forts and pretend they were under siege by evil peacekeepers. I had a very lively imagination.

As I grew older, the games stopped, but I still went out at night. It was nice. I was still terrified by the sun, so I still wore all those protective clothes. But when I went out at night, it was usually in just a shift, a nightgown. Usually sleeveless. I felt free at night. What was moonlight, but secondhand sunshine? If I couldn’t bask in sunlight like the normal girls, then I’d make do with the moonbeams. It’s not like anyone was dumb enough to be out after curfew and see me, so I went in as little clothes as possible. Of course, I still wore my fangs.

The fangs are a security blanket. They make me feel safe, and strong. I know I'm not a vampire. That would be ridiculous, but I also know what power they gave me when I was a little girl; the power to stand up for myself after years of systematic torture. It had been a great and wonderful feeling when I had bitten that first little boy for making fun of me, and every time I wear my fangs, I’m hoping to relive those feelings.

At the age of 17, I have an older brother who still lives at home because he’s worried about me and a father who I love dearly, but who thinks of me as a nuisance. I still wear long sleeves, and long pants, and gloves, and sunglasses, and a sunhat, and a kerchief, because whenever I go outside I still think about that one day when I was a little girl where I sat and roasted in the sun for five hours. I'm still afraid of the sun, and I’m still called a freak, and I still wear my fangs.