Work Text:
My name is Cherri. I'm a 1599 year old vampire. I was born in... 1520...? I, however, was turned in 1536. I was from an ancient African kingdom, the Ndongo Kingdom. Me and my family were taken aboard a ship, the colonizer's ship, the same ship where I'd be raped and turned by men I couldn't understand. They turned the rest of my family as well.. My sister, brother, and mother. They left my father behind, he got to live the rest of his life a free man, I presume.
Cherri wasn't always my name, I just don't remember what my name used to be. I chose Cherri since it sounded French, anything to sound more white.
My family wasn't the only family turned on that ship. Others were also given the curse of immortality, and others had their curses used against them. Everyone knows vampires can't stay in the sun, and can only come inside when invited. Everyone knows that! Even the masters. They used these facts against us. They kept us locked out, in the sunlight. We BURNED. Many other vampires I knew died out in the fields because of this, hell, I almost died.
Despite this, many of the vampires still remaining are African, a few are Irish too. Many of the masters had turned their families as well, so all it took was one slave locking an entire family out to end a lineage. That's why there are so few colonizer's now, we burned em all.
That however, is not where my experience stops. I lived through segregation, lots of it. I lived through the lynchings, the fires, the massacres. But, I've also lived through the creation of culture.
I was a flapper, a whore, I danced with boys and girls. I sang the blues with my brother, we sang for the white people, and we sang at the jukes. I lived through the creation of rock, hip hop, and rap, I've been goth since the 1980s!
I've loved through wars, I've watched society rebuild more times than I can count. This, however, will be a recounting of these experiences. A journal to help jog my memory when I need it most.
My story.