Let me tell you about the day that my life changed
forever.
Now, most people will tell you that their lives
changed forever when they met their future spouse or when they won the lottery
or maybe even when they had a near death experience. My life changed forever the day (or more accurately, the night) that
I met my father. It wasn’t because he was rich, and it wasn’t because I had
been searching for him for the whole seventeen years of my life, no. It was
because he was a werewolf, and I met him during a full moon.
Don’t believe me? Well, here’s three facts for you –
one, werewolves really and truly exist. Two, they only turn in to wolves during
the full moon, but they do change and
three; they have an inbuilt urge to bite and change other people. The most
vicious wolves even have an insatiable urge to kill.
I guess I should have been warned when the full moon
coincided with the 31st of October but I have always loved Halloween
– it’s my favourite holiday. Vampires, witches, and monsters – what’s not to
love? My half-brothers love it too; I lived with them, my mum and my
step-father before all of this: I had never met my real father because he had
apparently walked out on my mum shortly after I was born. I didn’t care much
for him and it wouldn’t have worried me if I had never met him. In fact I wish
I had never met him because then none
of this would have happened and I would still be snuggled up in between my soft
cotton sheets right this minute instead of lurking, hidden on a random roof
waiting for the moon to rise.
I’m not making much sense at the moment so I suppose
I should start at the beginning – as I already said – it all began on the 31st
of October. It all began on Halloween. I had volunteered to take my
half-brothers, Josh and Carl trick or treating as my mum and Steve (my
step-father) wanted some “alone time” and, as I said before, I love Halloween.
Anyway we had visited about thirty houses, most of
which had given us sweets and my brothers were getting tired – after all, they
were only seven and five, when I suddenly got a strange feeling in my head. It
wasn’t quite a headache but it felt...different. Just as soon as it had come,
it was gone and everything was back to normal.
We visited a couple more houses before turning back
to go home, we were just walking down the garden path when I got that strange feeling
again – it was an irresistible urge to go down a nearby alley. I tried to
ignore it but it was impossible, eventually after struggling with my own mind,
I gave in and pushed my brothers towards the door before walking in the other
direction and going into the alley.
The first thing I noticed was that it was dark.
There were no nearby lights and the huge; full moon above me was hidden behind
dark, grey clouds. However, I still couldn’t bring myself to leave and go into
the safety of the house, less than a hundred meters away. Instead I walked
deeper into the darkness until I was completely blind. That’s when I noticed
that there was no sound, not even the noises of the cars on the road or the
owls in the trees, just silence. Complete silence.
I walked further still into the alley until
something told me to stop. I froze, motionless, trying to extend all of my
senses to try and figure out why I had been drawn here. I still couldn’t see
nor hear anything. I couldn’t feel anything and I defiantly couldn’t taste
anything, but...I could smell
something. It was quite subtle but I was sure that I recognised it. It was
musky somehow and it reminded me of farms. I was still trying to figure out
what the smell was of when the clouds drifted away from the moon, filling the
alley with beautiful silvery light. I saw movement up ahead just as I realised
what the smell was – wet dog.
A dark shape walked towards me out of the shadows,
stopping just before it reached the moonlight. “Hello, Louise,” it said calmly,
I realised that it was a man’s voice and that he sounded almost...amused.
“Who are you?” I finally managed to force out, “and
how do you know my name?”
“Don’t you recognise me?” was all he said as he took
another step closer to the moonlight. I struggled to understand who he was but
I was sure that I had never seen him before in my life. He took another step
forward and I saw his eyes, and gasped. He had unusual eyes, amber eyes but
what shocked me was that I see those very same eyes every time I look in the
mirror. They were my eyes, or as my
mother always told me – my father’s
eyes, one of the reasons she fell for him because they were so beautiful and unique.
I took a step back because now that I knew who he was, I felt terrified. I
don’t know why but I just felt like I shouldn’t be there anymore.
“Going so soon?” He asked as he took one more step
forward. A step that brought him directly into the path of the moonlight. At
once he began to change – his nose and mouth lengthened into a snout, he fell
onto his hands and knees, his legs and arms becoming thinner and turned into a
wolf’s strong sinewy legs. His ears grew, pointing
upwards, a tail appeared between his back legs and finally his eyes changed,
they stayed the same colour but the pupils changed, thin as a knife edge before
they dilated, allowing him to see clearly in the dark.
I stood frozen during his transformation, both
terrified and completely transfixed, but as he turned his new wolfish face to
me I felt the adrenaline pumping through me veins, and I turned and ran. I ran
as fast as I could back through the alley. The only thing running through my
mind was to get away and fast. Even as I ran, I knew it was hopeless: he was
much faster than me and a lot stronger. My suspicions were confirmed when I
felt something jump onto my back and knock me over. I felt his warm breath on
my neck as he lent over me and then I felt his sharp teeth bite into my shoulder.
Heat and pain. That was all I could feel now. My
body felt like it was at that extreme temperature where you can’t tell whether
you’re freezing cold or burning hot, that temperature where they both feel the
same. I don’t know how long I endured this for before I blacked out, but the
last thing I remember was hearing an eerie, animalistic howl from somewhere
close by.
***
I woke up in my soft bed and couldn’t remember
anything that had happened last night after I had dropped my brothers off at
home and, according to my mum, I had come home shortly after them and gone
straight to bed. The next three weeks past uneventfully and everything carried
on as usual, but then, at the beginning of the fourth week I began to get sick.
At first I just got a fever but as the days progressed I got sicker and sicker,
my mum called the doctor out but he could find no reason for my illness other
than “a bug” as he put it. Then on the next full moon, about four days later I
felt better, in fact I felt pumped. I was both stronger and fitter than I could
remember ever being before. However, by the time the sun set I was beginning to
feel a bit ill again, I originally just passed it off as the after effects of
the bug. But then the moon rose.
I was in my bedroom, looking out the window when the
moon rose and filled my room with its silver light. In that split second, I
remembered everything. I remembered last month when I had met my father and I
remembered when I had been bitten by a werewolf. I remembered all this in horror
as I stared at the full moon and felt a shiver run through my body. I hesitated
just a single second before I jumped out of my window.
I didn’t know how well I would be able to control
the wolf, if at all so I wanted to make sure that my family would be safe. I
changed in mid air and strangely it wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be
– it felt right somehow. First I felt
warm and then my body started changing, I instinctively knew how to position my
limbs as they twisted and changed and it was all over in a matter of seconds. I
landed gracefully on the floor, panting as if I had run a marathon.
That’s when the wolf took charge. I was just a
passenger in its body as it flew through the streets hunting, looking for
something, or rather someone to eat. I was helpless as it pounced on a middle
aged man and sank its long elegant teeth into his leg. I mentally closed my
eyes at this point, not wanting to see what was happening anymore.
***
After that, I never went home again instead I took
to hiding out with other werewolves, and learning how to control the wolf. Now,
three years later, I have a lot more control and a lot of the time I can force
the wolf into hunting animals rather than humans but occasionally, just
occasionally, I lose control and someone, wandering the street at night
disappears. So if you’re out on a full moon, be careful where you go and if
possible, don’t go out alone at all.
You have been warned.
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