13 Days 13 Shorts: Werewolves

Building up our spooky steam, here is the 3rd installment of 13 Days 13 Shorts. Today's short is written by the lovely Mia Resella and it is going to take you places you never thought you'd go in a werewolf story. Soon to come are some tales about zombies, demons, ghosts and spiders so stay tuned!

WEREWOLVES by Mia Resella

I had no idea who these men were or why they were chasing me.

I scrambled through the underbrush, weaving in and out of
trees, leaping over rocks and ditches and fallen logs with
tiny spiders living in them, completely unaware of my flight--
I even let the thorns rip at me as I scurried past, not
bothering to change course, wishing the men would follow me
straight through and imagining the little pointed sticks
tearing at their eyes and skin. But they were smart, fast,
and relentless. They shouted foreign-sounding words I barely
understood, as if I would suddenly turn around, stand up, and
regurgitate the gibberish back at them. "What do you want?"
And "Leave me alone!" were two things I'd start with, if I
only knew the language. Maybe Cynthia would know. I'd ask her
tonight, if I ever got home.

At an especially sharp turn I saw my chance and dove behind a
tree, worming my way under the root, hoping they wouldn't see
me. I lay still, panting, out of breath, willing my lungs to
calm down and be quiet. I was bleeding. Not sure why. Truth
is, I didn't remember. I didn't remember any of it: why I was
running, how I'd gotten here, or what had happened to make
these annoying men so loud and offended. My memory had been
failing me lately, and I felt as though someone was stealing
large chunks of my life, but there was nothing I could do.
All I knew was that I woke up on the forest floor, my head
full of fog, and within seconds of consciousness received a
smart whack on the head with a walking stick. It was
embarrassing to think of it now, and I blushed at the thought
of trying to explain.

"Hello? Henry? Come out, Henry!"

The men had stopped running, and started using a few words I
could understand, my name being one, the others I could
barely pick out from the thick accent.

"We won't hurt you, Henry. Come out here."

I almost laughed. I could smell the sulfur and torches. I
wasn't coming out. But one of the tiny spiders living in the
wood became suddenly aware of my existence and had begun
crawling toward my open wound, following the trail of blood.
Without thinking, I exhaled loudly through my nose, sending
the spider flying back home in the wind. But the men must
have been sharper than I thought. A hush fell over them and I
could hear the leaves crunch under their footsteps, closer
and closer.

"Do you remember your parents?" Cynthia had asked me one
night, as we lay curled up under the moon. But I didn't. I
didn't remember them. And from my silence, she knew. "I can
remember mine, but only a little," she admitted sadly. "I
can't even remember their faces. But I know I had them, a
mother and a father."

"A brother," I remembered suddenly. "And an old man. My
father. But I don't know them. I don't know if they are even
alive." Cynthia smiled. This is what I loved about Cynthia, I
could say sad things, and they would only make her smile the
warmest of smiles, because the sad things made us the same.
"You're like me," she said, burying her face in my shoulder
playfully. "No," I had corrected. "You are like me."

A sharp burst of pain interrupted my memory. One of the men
had shoved a torch straight into my hiding place, and the
flames licked at my hair. "Ouch!" I yelped and darted out
from under the then tree now oven. In the forest clearing I
was surrounded by the two men. One was younger and agile, he
held the flame. The other was elderly, he held a rifle but
didn't intend to use it. Instead of lunging at me, the men
began talking again, too fast and too hard to understand.
They rambled on and on, the old one doing most of the
talking. I simply stared, frightened and confused and alone.
I hated these men. I hated their loud voices. I hated their
sounds. I hated their smell. I hated the sulfur and fire. But
somehow something began to stir in my subconscious.

"Now, Henry, we don't want to harm you and you don't want to
harm us. We just want you to calm down and come home with us.
Then we can talk in the morning," the old man said, gripping
his rifle but refusing to point it at me. "We've been looking
everywhere for you. I'm afraid you gave us the slip."

"He doesn't understand you, Dad," insisted the younger,
waving his fire menacingly. Dad? Something was nagging at the
back of my brain.

"Sure he does, don't you Henry? Dig deep inside you." The old
man was nervous. I cocked my head to one side, confused. But
that thing in the back of my brain was still there. I tried
to dig deep. It was becoming clearer and clearer, trying to
tell me something, and suddenly, I remembered:

I was hungry.

Starving, in fact. I lunged at the man, digging my claws into
his chest. I longed for the taste of human flesh. As I sunk
my teeth into dinner (which had somehow fallen right into my
lap) I wagged my tail happily. Hunters had made deer scarce
in the woods, and the farmers had moved their cattle away in
fear. But now, finally, I had plenty to eat. I slopped up the
meat and howled joyously at the sky. In my excitement I must
not have noticed the younger man sneaking towards the fallen
rifle. "You son of a BITCH!" He yelled, swinging the metal
stick into my side. It sent me back a few feet. Back off, I
growled. I'm busy. The man, pale and white and shaky, pointed
the rifle, fired, and missed (of course)-- but I smelled
silver in the bullet. I grabbed a mouthful of whatever I
could carry and decided to disappear into the woods. "Henry!"
He shouted desperately after me. "God dammit Henry! God damn
you!"

It's funny, with all that I am forgetting lately, I recalled
perfectly the last night before I had met Cynthia.

It seemed just a few nights ago. I had woken up to the moon
streaming through an opened window. I was in a cage, a thick
iron cage with a cold floor and humansmell everywhere. I
looked around, bars looming at me every which way, and I
began to panic. How did I get here? Last I remembered, I was
running free and happy in the forest, chasing a rabbit at the
break of day, the funny little burs scratching at my legs and
never the rabbit's. Now, my heart was pounding, my stomach
turning. I smelled old stale sheep's meat laying next to me
and couldn't bring myself to even lap up the blood. This
world wasn't mine.

"H-Henry?" The voice calmed me. I looked up, and through the
bars saw a young human woman, a girl really, looking scared
and frail as the rabbit, with legs as pure and soft. Pretty
young thing, I remembered thinking, my head still in a fog.
"Henry, is that you?" It was then I noticed something
sparkling in her hands. A big, heavy lock. I pushed my snout
against the cage door and it swung open effortlessly; she
must have removed it just prior to me waking up. Now she was
petrified, unmoving. I stepped out of the cage delicately,
eying the girl, growling under my breath, looking for a door.
I knew only that I wanted to leave. I would be quiet, and she
would be quiet, we established with our eyes-- and I would
leave this place. It would have happened that way, too, but
just at that moment a man had burst into the room, shooting
silver bullets from a shotgun into the air. I snarled and
barked madly, darting for the window. The girl screamed and
hurled the lock at me. I snapped at her ankles, her blood was
sweet, and she fell to the floor just as I leapt out the
window. The ground was hard, smooth rock under my paws and
walls were everywhere. This place was stupid, and I was so
hungry. In the distance I could smell the forest and followed
its scent faster than I had ever run before, no one chasing
behind. It was soon after that I met Cynthia in the very same
woods, with her soft silvery coat, howling at nothing. Pretty
young thing, I remembered thinking. Nothing was making sense
in my world, but she wagged her tail and told me she was lost
and hungry. "We'll find meat," I said, and she smiled. I
never told her about the cage. I never told her about the
bullets, or the man, or how one minute I could be happy and
free with her and the next I could wake up in a place I had
never seen before.

I was heading back to her now, with a mouthful of fresh meat.
This would make her happy. She would smell the blood on me a
mile away-- just once I wished I could surprise her. I
wouldn't tell her about the men and their words, and how I
woke up with a blow to the head. Slowly but surely, all of
these things were adding up, these strange happenings and
faded memories, and more and more I felt something was wrong
with me. Why could I understand the humans' words? Why did I
keep forgetting? Why did the woods seem to be in a different
season every night? I felt I was close to something horrible,
and worried Cynthia would rather not be close to it.

"Henry!" I heard her barking and running toward me. "Henry!
We'll eat and hunt! I'm starving! I missed you! Is that an
arm? A whole arm? For me?" She came bounding out of the
underbrush, howling and jumping. I dropped the flesh on the
ground and she gobbled it up, then began licking the drying
blood from my fur. She sniffed me all over, circling and
wagging her tail. But suddenly she stopped. Cynthia was
stronger than me, younger and healthier, and always hungry.
When she was tense I always felt a tingling of fear, a
reminder she could overpower me at a moment's notice. "What's
wrong?" I whimpered submissively. She began stepping
backwards, fear dancing in her eyes. "Henry... there's
something on your back." I, too, smelled it suddenly, and
felt it on my fur. Bits of cloth, some kind of shirt that had
torn and stretched. Only a few patches of it remained, but I
could tell I was... wearing it. I tore at it frantically with
my teeth, ripping it off, and ripping into my own skin in the
process. I didn't care. This thing was wrong. It smelled of
man, but my scent was all over it-- they were one and the
same. I felt tears springing to my eyes but I wouldn't let
them fall, I bit at myself mercilessly until the last of the
garment lay on the ground. I could only stare at it in
horror.

"What was that?" asked Cynthia breathlessly.

"I don't know."

"How can you not know?" She cocked her head to one side,
daring me to tell her I couldn't remember, I hadn't been
remembering, that my world was coming undone every time I
came in contact with a human. I didn't need to tell her. My
silence said so much.

Graciously, she decided to ignore it. She came over to me and
licked my new wounds. She was more gentle than I even knew
she could be. We said nothing, both glad not to be standing
so far away. She pressed her body up against mine and I felt
the feeling returning. She gave me a warm smile, a nice
present considering I hadn't even said anything sad, pressed
her nose up against mine, and lead me into the forest. The
rest of the night we hunted and talked about silly things,
like the little bugs that try to eat the rotting meat if we
don't eat it fast enough. "As if they can beat us," Cynthia
had laughed. We killed a deer and this put us in a brilliant
mood.

That night I lay with her once again under the moon. She
curled up next to me and I felt safe listening to her
heartbeat, feeling her lungs rise up and down. "I wish it
could be like this forever," I told her, nuzzling her fondly.
Sleepy, she nipped at me to stop. "Like what?" she mumbled
grumpily. "Like this," I said. "I wish we never had to fall
asleep. I never have enough time with you." This time she
smiled and bit my ear playfully before burying her head under
her paws. I let her rest a moment, but the thoughts of the
evening still plagued me.

"I love you," Cynthia muttered. I gulped nervously.

"If I were human, would you bite at me?"

"Not in a million years," she said gently, the end of her
sentence dropping as she drifted off to sleep.

"I think you would," I whispered into the darkness. "I really
think you would."

The next evening I felt groggier than ever as I awoke. My
body ached and my eyes were heavy-- and I was hungry. I
stretched and reached over to nuzzle Cynthia but... felt
nothing. I suddenly realized the smells were all wrong, none
that I recognized. My eyes snapped open. I was in a room, a
human room, with walls. I was laying in a bed, unbearably
soft, with blankets and pillows around me. This is Hell, I
thought instinctively. I have died. The nauseating smells of
perfumes crept under the door and into my nose, and somewhere
outside a crowd was screaming. But the pain in my stomach
insisted I was alive. The horrible, gnawing pain.

A knock on the door. "Sir? Sir, are you all right in there?"
A man's squeaky voice. He tried to open the door, but it was
locked. "I heard screaming, and I don't care what you say, I
am opening this door if you won't answer me, sir!"

I growled at the faceless voice. I was in a strange room and
someone had taken my Cynthia away-- and this pain in my
stomach, I could barely stand it...

A key turned in the lock. I felt my body tense. A rather self
important young man stepped in, short and thin, sneering
dutifully in his very official and very moth-eaten uniform.
At the sight of him, I lost all sense of control. His smell
was intoxicating. I was dizzy with hunger, so I devoured him.

The food hit my stomach and, finally, I got some wits about
me. I vaguely wondered if this is how Cynthia felt, being so
hungry all the time. I could finally feel my paws on the
floor, a strange wood. What was this place? I gnawed on the
young man's bones angrily. People were screaming in the hall
now, running about in a panic. I smelled no gunpowder. Mostly
women, children, and old men. I walked through the hallways,
sniffing for a door until I found it, and escaped into the
night air.

Someone is sick. They are playing a sick game on me. And it
is not funny.

I was in a foul mood. My forest was nowhere to be seen. The
air was full of commotion and panic. "Henry!" A familiar bark
found its way to my ears. "Cynthia!" I howled as she came
loping over. "What's going on? Where have you been?" I
demanded. She was limping, blood trickling out of her
beautiful silvery fur. "Are you all right?"

"What were you doing inside?" She barked angrily. "What on
Earth were you doing in there?"

I didn't know. I never knew. And she could tell. I had no
answers for her, except the ones neither of us wanted to
hear. This time, she wasn't ignoring it. She was hurt, and
terrified. "Why are we here? What's wrong with you, Henry?"

It was then she saw the human blood covering my snout, and
softened. "Let's go," she said. "There's lots of meat here.
We'll talk later."

But we would not talk later. Before I could even hear the
gunshot, I felt it. The small cylinder of silver, buried in
my chest, cutting through layers of flesh and organ and bone.
I fell to the ground. Cynthia screamed.

"Henry!" A young man laughed hysterically, holding a long
rifle in one hand and a box of bullets in the other. I
recognized him immediately as the man from the forest who had
shot at me and burned me with a torch. "You little son of a
bitch, I told you I'd get you! You thought you could hide
from me? You are no brother of mine! I will send you straight
to Hell!"

I looked helplessly at Cynthia, but she knew. She saw the
relationship, the recognition, and knew I had been hiding
things from her. She knew I had been with the man before. She
remembered the shirt I tore off in the woods. My failing
memory. And why were we so far from our forest? Why had I
been laying in a bed? She locked eyes with me, afraid. I did
not dare to plead with her. She lingered only a moment, then
ran off into the night, without so much as a goodbye.

"Where's your friend going, Henry? Scared?" The young man
loaded up another bullet as he walked forward, fearless. I
felt the blood oozing out of my wound, pouring like a hidden
river from my chest. The man keep talking, but I could no
longer understand his words. They were foreign and strange. I
was not human, stop talking to me. No part of me is human.
Not anymore. I tried to force my mouth to say something he
would understand, like "Go away" or "Have mercy and let me
die alone in the woods like a good dog," but all that came
out was a whimper. This made the man very happy. He put his
heavy boot on my flank and loomed over me. "Stupid dog," he
said, insane tears in his eyes. Snot poured out of his nose
and he was shaking, shoving the end of the long metal stick
into my gut threateningly, mad little boy without a father.

I didn't care. Everything was gone. Everything was a lie.

I heard the clicking sound of the rifle and prepared to feel
pain, then no pain, then nothingness. Then... I smelled her.

"Augh! Bitch!" The man screamed in agony. She had come back!
Cynthia had come back! She clamped onto his arm fiercely,
teeth sinking straight through, and he fired the remaining
bullets into the night. Cynthia released him and ran to me.
She curled up next to me despite the growing pool of blood.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"I never have enough time with you," I said weakly. She
buried her nose into my fur. "I wish it could be like this
forever. I wish we never had to sleep."

Cynthia smiled. The warmest smile at the saddest thing she
had ever heard. And I felt myself slipping away. I looked at
my legs and saw them transforming, losing their fur, becoming
longer, human legs. My body was disappearing. I was
frightened. I did not want to become ugly.

"It's all right, Henry," cooed Cynthia. "There is nothing
wrong with you. You are perfect."

I curled up as small as I could and grabbed hold of Cynthia,
holding her close. After a while, she stood, licked my wet
nose, and said goodbye. The young man was sniveling on the
floor, clutching his arm and crying hysterically. Cynthia
looked at him, then walked right past, into the shadows. I
had never before seen her let somebody live. She knew more
than I knew. I had no idea who this man was. Who I was. Where
I was. But I was tired, and happy, and I wasn't hungry
anymore.