"Werewolf" by Peter Steffe

Do you know what it’s like, to have a demon inside of you? I do.

Do you remember, back when you were a child, all those fairy stories that your parents used to tell you? Well, maybe fairy stories is the wrong phrase. Fairy story means it has a happy ending, with the hero or heroine skipping off into the sunset. People don’t die in fairy tales either. No, what I mean are the other ones, the darker stories, about the monsters that live under your bed, or the demons that hunt at night and will gobble you up if you’re not in bed in time. The stories of Dragons and the Knight’s who slew them. The stories of the werewolves who hunt in the hills, or the vampire in the ruins of an old castle. At the time, you don’t think much of them. They’re fun stories that give you the shivers, things your parents tell you to get you to do what they want you to, or to get you to be quiet. The thing is though, some of them aren’t stories. It seems a stupid thing to say, I know, and I also know that in all likelihood, you won’t believe a word I’m saying. But it is the truth, I swear to you.

My name is Peter, and I am cursed.

When I was sixteen, I was bitten by a werewolf. Now, don’t go yet, hear me out. I was walking home from a party at my friends house, and I was drunk. Yes, I know sixteen is too young to be drinking, but we all did it. I hadn’t had that much, I mean, I could still walk, but I’d had enough to seriously mess around with my logic. When I heard the noise in the bushes, I thought that it would be a smart idea to go check what it was. That was how drunk I was, that I was willing to go creeping into a moving bush in the middle of the nights.

This is…where is gets a bit hazy. I can’t remember clearly what happened after that. I remember hearing the panting breath, I remember being knocked to the ground and I remember the burning sensation as the teeth closed around my wrist and my blood running down my arm. What I don’t remember is how I got away from the beast, back home and into my bed. It sounds stupid, I know, but it’s the honest truth. I just remember waking up with a splitting headache, my wrist bandaged and vague memories of what had happened.

I didn’t tell anyone about it, of course. You don’t, when you’re that age. I thought I’d got rabies at first, I thought I was going to die. Even after a few days had gone past, and it became clear that it couldn’t possibly be rabies, I was still paranoid about it. I kept it quiet though, wearing long sleeved shirts and covering it in cream every day, hoping it would heal. It did as well, unnaturally fast too. There were only a few marks by the end of a week, and it had totally healed by the end of the second. No trace, none at all. I even began to think that I’d gotten away with it.

Then the next full moon rolled around. I started to feel a bit odd a few days before hand. First I noticed that I needed to shave more often, and that my nails were growing faster too. Then I got hot and sweaty and my mum said I was coming down with a fever. Hah. I wish. When the full moon came, I was lying in my bed with the curtains open, the moonlight streaming down onto my face.

I can’t quite describe what it feels like to change, except that it’s agony like you’ve never known. It’s like your skin is being turned inside out, and that your body wants to explode. You’re bones re-shape themselves, your muscles, hair and teeth grow incredibly fast. It is unbearable agony, all the way. Ave you ever had a broken bone? Imagine what that feels like, but with every bone in your body as they reform. Every hair that grows is like a razor-sharp spine thrusting out of your flesh. It’s hell.

And when it’s done, you are left so hungry. For your body to do something like that, it requires a huge amount of energy. And so you’re left there, alone, with no experience of this, your brain being over-ridden by your feral instincts, desperately hungry for food.

I don’t want to tell you what I did that first night. I couldn’t anyway, even if I wanted to. I think my subconscious has hidden it away, deep below the surface where I can’t get at it. I’m glad of that, too. All I know was that when I woke up, myself again, I was lying naked in some back alley somewhere. And I reeked of blood. Do you know what it’s like, to have done something like that but to have no memory? To know that you must have killed but not knowing who or where they are? In some ways, it’s even worse than the pain of the transformation. At least that lasts only a few minutes, this feeling never goes away.

I suppose you want me to tell you that I went home after that, back to my loving and caring family who sympathised with me and promised to help me in everyway they could. I didn’t though. I never went back there. I couldn’t, not after what I’d done. I lived on the streets for a long time, begging for food and clothes, dreading each full moon and what it brought with it. I ran for so long, trying to escape from what I was that I almost forgot who I was.

Do you know what the worst thing was? I started to enjoy it. I can’t remember when it first happened, but I just know that at one point I started to enjoy what I became. I stopped fighting it and embraced the thing inside of me. I found out that you don’t have to transform just on a full moon, you can do it anytime of the night of day, if you want to badly enough. Food, always an issue for the homeless, stopped being a problem around about then. It stopped being a problem for a lot of other homeless people too, they lost all of their problems once they met me in a darkened alley way.

I’m 34 now. I’ve been this way for more than half of my life. I embrace it, revel in it, live for it. I’m more wolf than man now, I think. The feral instinct is with me all the time, I can’t get rid of it. Even when I’m in human form I still have the burning hunger. I hate myself, I hate what I’ve become, but it’s too deep within me to fight it anymore.

So I am asking you.

I may look human to you now, but believe me, I’m not. It is taking all my will to stay this way. I need…I need you to do for me what I cannot. You’re marked now, I know your scent. If you don’t kill me, I’ll kill you. Tonight. Please, end it for me now. Save your own life, and God only knows how many others. Don’t let this nightmare go on any longer.