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Otto tells people that he doesn’t remember being turned. He's eight hundred years old, of course he doesn’t remember something that happened to him when he was twenty two. Even if it was one of the most pivotal moments of his life. Even if it changed everything. If someone asks, he says he doesn’t remember. If a person decides to pry, he bears his fangs at them and hopes it scares them off.
He’s lying, of course. He remembers. Oh, does he remember.
It was hot, nowhere close to his birthday. He had a concept of dates, of calendars, but he didn’t use one himself much. On the farm, all that mattered were the seasons and how far they were into them. His birthday is just after Christmas - they don’t celebrate birthdays, but it’s good to know he’s a year older. That he has survived another one.
The fields furthest from the farm were full of barley at this time of year. They cycled the crops out as efficiently as they could with the amount of hands they had. Otto’s family was large, big enough that they only needed a few hired helpers to make things work.
This day, Otto was out in the barley fields, setting up a scarecrow. A flock of birds had been bothering the fields all week, and there’s only so many times Otto can send his sister’s children running through the crop to scare them off. This should do the trick, and if it doesn’t, well. Otto has his bow and arrow still.
The field backs onto a stretch of wood. His dad told him once that this was all forest at one point, before people moved in. It’s hard to believe now with the endless empty, crop-growing land.
The good thing about having the woods so close is the game that sometimes wanders out. Rabbits and deer, and squirrels, things they can eat. His mother always tells him not to kill too many or they won’t come back.
But this rabbit is huge. It could feed them all for dinner tonight, if Otto can catch it. He has his crossbow slung over his shoulder, his knife tucked into his belt. Imagine the look on his brothers’ faces when he comes back with that thing. The scarecrow is set up, he has nothing else important to do today. A few shots, see if he can get it. If not, no harm. No one will even know.
Otto treads carefully into the dark trees, walking slowly over towards the rabbit. It’s facing away from him, sniffing a patch of grass. It hasn’t heard him. He’s close enough to shoot it.
He raises his crossbow, looks down the sights, and-
A heavy weight hits him in the side, sending him sprawling on the floor. A sharp pain erupts in his shoulder as his crossbow shatters into pieces. There’s someone on top of him, but he can’t see them. There’s blood in his eyes, thick and wet, all over his face and his neck as sharp, throbbing pains continue to erupt all down his left side.
Otto fades. His blood aches as it all flows out of him. The blue sky above him turns grey before everything goes black.
He wakes up on the ground, cold and hard beneath him. Groaning, he tries his best to sit up before he manages to open his eyes. His weak arms struggle to lift him further than a few feet, so he tries to roll over. He tumbles to the ground, hard rock, with a pained grunt. What the hell? He was on flat ground when he fell asleep.
Otto finally opens his eyes and finds himself in a room made of stone. Not the forest where he last remembers being. His skin hurts. What happened?
Hauling himself up, Otto stumbles towards a door on the far wall. When he looks down he sees his shirt is soaked in blood. It sticks to his skin - too much blood for him to be alive. Is he alive? He must be, he can feel the cold doorknob in his hand as he opens the door.
When he steps out, he realises where he is. The crypt, under the church. What? None of this makes sense.
He wants his mother, so he navigates his way through the winding tunnels and out of the church. As soon as he is out on the grass, his skin stops burning.
The walk home is long, especially in the dark. Of course, he knows the trek between the church and his home like the back of his hand. He’s done it every week since he could walk unaided. But everything looks different at night, like there might be monsters lurking around every corner.
Eventually, Otto makes it back to the farm. He can see the house at the top of the hill, a lantern still burning in the living room. As he climbs up onto the porch, he sees his mother sitting at the kitchen table, crying into her hands.
“Mama.” Otto croaks out as he steps into the room.
His mother screams, so loud that it sends his father running down the stairs with his old sword from when he went to war. Father drops it as soon as he sees Otto standing there.
“You were dead!” Dad insists. “We found you, dead as a doornail in the woods.”
“I ain’t dead.” Otto coughs. At least, he doesn’t think he is.
“Then what are you?” His mother asks, shaking like a leaf. “Because you sure don’t look like my son.”
Otto doesn’t know what she means until he catches sight of himself in the metal side of a water jug. He’s pale, his skin almost translucent. He runs his tongue over his teeth - they’re sharp, like tiny knives.
“What… happened to me?” Otto asks.
No one has an answer for him.
It takes years for him to figure it out. Why he outlives his parents, his siblings, the wives he still manages to marry despite everyone knowing what happened to him. He doesn’t age, he doesn’t change. Townspeople go missing and no one suspects him. They’re all people no one wants anything to do with anyway. Drunks and wife beaters and murderers. Otto makes sure of it.
A rich man, taking pity on the seemingly young man he meets in a deserted tavern, teaches him how to read. It’s a slow process, but Otto eventually gets the shape of the letters and what they mean. He reads the few books that the man gave him over and over again, then goes in search of more.
“Do you have a book about monsters?” He asks the shopkeep at the first bookstore he finds.
“Having trouble, are ya?” The young woman jokes.
“Could say that.” Otto shrugs.
The girl finds him such a book, and Otto flicks through it. It talks about all sorts of things - witches and lycanthropes and selkies and demons and words that Otto can’t begin to pronounce. But there’s one thing in there that Otto recognises. Something that sounds familiar.
Vampyre. The bloodsucker, the night stalker, the pale creature in the shadows.
Well. that would explain the bloodlust. And why he can shift into a bat.
Having a word doesn’t make it easier. He still has to eat. He still has to kill and maim and outlive everyone he has ever loved. He is still alone. The generations of his family that understood who he was are long dead. They still own the farm but they don’t remember their uncle Otto anymore.
Otto spends two decades getting very drunk with Shakespeare.
When William dies on his own birthday, Otto realises he has no idea how old he is. It’s 1616 right now. He thinks he was born in 1221. That makes him… 395. He is nearly four hundred years old.
Is he still a person? Can he ever be human again? Does he want to be? Would he know how, after so long of being like this, to live a normal life?
Who is he? No one has an answer for him.
It takes another four hundred years. He meets people and loses them. Other vampires find his wish for a normal life foreign and illogical. Even Grace, the only person he can’t outlive, leaves him when he won’t let her kill someone.
He’s too human to be a monster and too much a monster to be human.
Otto finds himself in a forest one March night, starving. He hasn’t eaten in days - he doesn’t want to eat. Killing people has taken its toll on him. He walks through the trees, waiting for sunlight to burn him through the gaps in the leaves. It’s pitch black right now, so it isn’t going very well, but whatever.
He hears a howl to his left and whips around. A werewolf. By how high-pitched it is, it must be young. He didn’t think Lycanthropes came out this far. He can’t hear any other howls - is this young wolf on its own?
Otto approaches slowly until he finds a clearing. In it is a young black-furred wolf, yelping as a human man tries to hit it with an axe. The wolf is young, probably an adolescent, writhing frantically as it tries to get away. It is alone. So is the human.
Otto sees red. He leaps out from the shadows and barrels into the human, knocking it away from the wolf. It drops its axe and screams for a moment before Otto tears its throat out. God, he is so hungry .
When he’s done, and the human is so dead that nothing, not even vampirism, could bring it back, Otto looks back at the wolf. It’s curled up on the ground, whimpering from all the cuts and gashes it’s covered in. The poor thing can’t move.
Otto scoops it up and takes it home.
The wolf is a boy, teenage. He sleeps in one of the many spare rooms of Otto’s house - seriously, why did he get such a big house? Otto watches him as he naps, wounds freshly bandaged, hair washed and brushed. The kid was in bad shape, barely conscious and unable to talk. Otto couldn’t get his name out of him, until he woke up.
“Jawn.” The kid says quietly. “I’m Jawn.”
“Nice to meet you, Jawn.” Otto nods, trying his best to look non-threatening. “I’m Otto.”
“You’re a vampire.” Jawn says carefully. “Are you going to eat me?”
“No.” Otto laughs. “I am… one of those, but I won’t hurt you. I just want to get you back to your pack.”
“I don’t have a pack.” Jawn picks at one of the bandages on his wrist. “I’m an orphan. And I’m homeless.”
“Oh.” Otto thinks for a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “You can… live here, if you want. It’s just me, but I have plenty of room.”
“Uh, sure.” Jawn side eyes Otto. “Promise you won’t eat me?”
“I promise.”
“Good.” Jawn nods. “It's nice to meet another monster.”
Otto agrees.
They get on well - Jawn is sweet and funny and considerate and Otto slowly remembers how to live with people. Jawn mentions his friend Awsten needs a place to stay. Then Awsten says his friend Travis is being evicted after his mother died and needs a room. Then Travis has a friend whose parents have kicked him out, and suddenly Otto is surrounded by people who call him a vampire, and don’t seem to care that he is one.
“I’m a vampire, by the way.” Otto says to Geoff when they’re standing in the kitchen together.
“I know.” Geoff is cutting up an apple that Awsten asked for. “I noticed.”
“I know.” Otto laughs. “I’ve just… never said it out loud before.”
“At all?” Geoff asks.
Otto thinks for a moment, then says, “I guess not. I didn’t have a word for a very long time. And then when I did, it just felt so scary.”
“Hm.” Geoff picks up a slice of apple and feeds it to Otto. “You know, I didn’t learn what transgender meant until I was nineteen?”
“Really?” Otto asks through a mouthful of sweet, crisp apple. He has never thought to ask too much about Geoff’s transition. It seemed like his business alone.
“Mhm. There was a long period of time where I didn’t know what was wrong with me, then suddenly I had a word for it. It didn’t fix anything - in fact, it made some things worse. But at least I knew.” Geoff smiles gently at him. “It took me a long time to be okay with it and even longer to say it out loud. But it does help.”
“I guess so.” Otto says. “I’m a vampire.”
“You are.” Geoff takes his hand. “And that doesn’t have to be a good or bad thing. It can just be… a thing.”
“Yeah.” Otto squeezes his hand. “I like you. A lot.”
Geoff laughs. “I like you too, Otto.”
He’s a vampire. He’s a monster. He’s a bloodsucking, nightstalking monster.
And he’s Otto. That’s the important part.