by Michael Dunn
Tony nodded and said, “She’ll live.”
What kind of life she’ll have, he didn’t know.
Chapter Eighteen: A Brand New Suzie
April 25th, 1971
While Suzie’s body was rebuilding itself in a way her DNA never considered, her dreams were wild, powerful, and terrifying, any mental or emotional inhibitions were gone while her thoughts were base, primal, beyond good and evil, and it felt great. She was free - free from fear, free from worry, free from pretense with a connection to the world that was stronger and different than she had ever known before. She felt she was part of the Earth and not merely a temporary resident. The sensations were so vastly new she was nearly overwhelmed. However, even in her dreams she knew this newfound power came at a price, and Suzie quickly learned it was not only her outlook that had changed.
Her face felt heavy with the new, large, and sharp teeth in her mouth, and when she touched her teeth with her tongue, she pricked herself, tasting the salty blood from her tongue. Her body was heavier too, finding herself naked overlooking the canyons of New Mexico, she also saw she was bigger, stronger, like a cross between Wonder Woman and a wild animal. She looked at her once pale, dainty hands that were now red furry claws the size of frying pans. Her fingernails were no longer painted and manicured. They were pointed and sharpened and could rip and tear anything apart. Her senses were as sharp as her new teeth and claws.
Suzie found herself standing at the edge of a cliff, staring out at the beautiful night that belonged to her. The full moon was bright and yellow had turned the night sky from a solid black to a deep blue over the canyons as her long, red hair blew in the midnight desert wind. Her formerly emerald eyes were now as bright and as yellow as the moon. Wolves bayed in the distance, and Suzie could feel their resonations pass through her body and it gave her chills. It felt so good Suzie began howling herself. She loved her new self, but this Suzie was also dark and scary and looked for danger.
Suzie started running along the cliff overlooking New Mexico, running so fast her feet barely touched the hard, sandy ground beneath her. She felt so exhilarated she dared herself to leap to another cliff, a distance of thirty feet by air. Since she was feeling better than perfect, she decided to give it a try, something the old Suzie would have (wisely) never tried. Sprinting to the edge of the cliff, she sprang with her now powerful thighs and shot up like an Apollo rocket, hanging in the air, feeling like she was flying for several seconds before letting out an exuberant cry as she landed, skidding across the dusty, rocky ground.
However, when the sleeping Suzie got a view of the new version of herself in her mind’s eye, she woke up with a shudder, gasping, and then shouted, “Oh my God!”
2
Suzie was still in the hospital room and did a panicky body check. Her hands were normal, small, and feminine. Her painted manicured nails were back. Then, she ran her tongue over her teeth, and found they were square and even as normal, except her canines were a tad longer than she remembered.
Her mother was sleeping in a chair in the corner. Once Dee saw her daughter was awake, she sprang out of the chair to see her.
“Hello, sleepyhead,” Dee kissed Suzie’s bandaged forehead. “How are you feeling?”
Suzie stretched, yawned, and found the process excruciating. Every part of her body felt sore like it had been stretched and pulled too far and too hard.
“What time is it?” Her high, slightly squeaky voice was back, but groggy.
“Almost eleven o’clock.”
Suzie looked out the window and saw the night sky.
“P.M.?”
“You’ve been asleep for over twenty-four hours.”
“Twenty-four hours?” She had never slept that long in her life.
“Shh, just relax,” Dee gently stroked her daughter’s hair. “You were in a car wreck, but Tony got you here in time. You needed the rest.” Dee studied the stitching under the wrap around her daughter’s head. “Looks like you are healing very fast. Let’s see that mark on your forearm.”
Dee pulled back the tape and Suzie winced because her mom pulled the tape off her flesh too quickly.
“What mark?”
“You came in with a mark on your forearm. Your dad even took pictures of it.” Dee’s eyes widened with surprise. “Wow, it’s gone now, so I guess there is no chance of infection. You know, when your father saw you like this he started crying. He held your wrist kept saying, ‘He got to her. He got to her.’ And I said, ‘Yes, dear, he got her here in time.’”
Suzie tried to remember the car wreck. They left the dance in a hurry, anxious to get to their spot, then she remembered screaming, her head hitting against the windshield, and she would have gone through had Tony not grabbed her by the shoulder, yanking her back to the seat. She remembered something about a peaceful, bright light that was beckoning her, warm and encompassing, and Suzie wanted to be there. She was grateful Tony was with her and holding her tightly. Then, there was a sharp pain on her forearm, and everything went dark.
“Honey, Tony wasn’t drinking, was he?”
“No, I was with him all night. Neither of us had any alcohol. We didn’t even have any of the punch.” Suzie knew the punch was spiked.
Dee smiled, and continued stroking her daughter’s hair. “Okay, honey, we just needed to know. Do you want me to stay longer?”
“No, that’s okay, mom. I’ll be fine. Go home.” Suzie stretched and wished she hadn’t. Her bones cracked like she was an eighty-year-old woman.
Dee hugged Suzie, and then Suzie heard a loud and quick thumping sound and realized it was her mother’s heartbeat.
Dee noticed a puzzled look on Suzie’s face and asked, “Are you okay, honey?”
“Uh, yeah, sure, mom. I just thought I heard something.”
Dee smiled. “Okay, I’ll tell your father you’re fine. Bye. Love you.”
“I love you too, mom.”
When Dee left, Suzie closed her eyes, and could hear people talking outside her room and listened to entire conversations on the floor. She heard a mother down the hall yelling at her two bratty little kids to behave with the threat of getting slapped. A doctor in an adjacent room was saying that some woman “would not make it through the night.” The bored nurses at the front desk talked about what they were having for lunch.
Suzie did not know the exact radius of her hearing ability, but she could hear crying babies on the maternity ward as well as a woman giving birth, screaming tenderly to her husband, “Look what you’ve done to me, you dumb sonofabitch!”
She found her sense of smell had become more acute as well. The odious scent of urine and ammonia permeated through the halls making Suzie wince. There were other noxious smells in the hospital Suzie didn’t want to identify, and she didn’t want to flex her olfactory senses like her hearing.
Then, all of a sudden, the hunger came and it was overwhelming. She pressed the button to the nurse’s station and when they did not arrive fast enough for her she shouted, “My God, who do I have to kill to get some goddamn food around here?”
Suzie was surprised by her own outburst. When the nurses eventually brought Suzie more food, she said, “I’m so sorry about that. I don’t know what came over me.”
She devoured the tray almost instantly as if she hadn’t eaten in days. The food the nurses had brought up had helped, but it was not enough and she wanted more. The nurses brought her two more meals and some snacks they scrounged up and Suzie ate them greedily.
With all the changes going on in her body, Suzie feared she might be pregnant and the thought made her gasp in horror.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
It was certainly possible, since she and Tony had not been exactly careful, but she was on the pill, but waking up with all these changes, being pregnant made sense to her. She was hungrier than usual, not feeling her best, her body was changing, and all she could think about was sex and food. She wondered if this is what it was like to be a boy – to think
only about sex and food.
Suzie felt she was being silly. If she were pregnant, the doctors would have informed her, right? But then again, did they even check? She came in with a head wound, not because her water broke. Suzie was not certain if she was going to ask for a pregnancy test, at least not while her mother kept coming by every day, and on top of that, part of her did not know what the results would be. She feared the test would come back positive and why shouldn’t it? She had never failed a test in her life, so why should this one be any different? Her mother would probably faint, and her dad would more than likely go hunting for Tony and then her.
So, I’ve ruined my life, she thought with a dreadful sigh, falling back onto her pillow. Instead of taking classes at the University of New Mexico in the next few months, she would be changing diapers at three in the morning. There would be no CPA in her future. The only numbers she would be crunching would be how many bottles of formula were ready and the number of clean diapers on hand. Once the baby came along, she would be lucky if she would be able to ask people if they wanted fries with their order.
Tony seemed like he would be a good father. He was making okay money as a mechanic’s assistant, not great, but good enough for a teenager who had been working since he was fourteen. He told her would be promoted to full-time mechanic after graduation.
Then Suzie began to worry about what if Tony did not want to be a father and left her with the baby. Hopefully, her parents would help out, but that was not always the case. There was a girl in her class who was kicked out of her house when her parents found out she was pregnant. Suzie began to cry at the thought her future was over before it started, and ironically, believed her crying and emotional fragileness might well be an indication she was with child. Her presumed anguish turned to fear when the nurses startled her.
“No need to get upset.” The nurse said, as she set down another tray of food the cafeteria. “The food’s not that bad.”
Suzie laughed quietly. “I don’t suppose I could get a pregnancy test while I’m here and, um, could you not tell my parents.”
The nurse smiled, “I’ll see what I can do.”
The nurse looked at the mess on the table by Suzie. “My goodness, look at all you’ve eaten. You devoured it all like a hungry animal.”
Then it all came together in Suzie’s head. Wide-eyed, agape, Suzie looked at her forearm where there had been a mark and understood why these changes were happening. What her dad had tried to tell her, Tony’s disappearance during a full moon, and the bite mark all clicked in her head. Then Suzie gasped and a pregnancy scare was the least of her problems.
3
Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Suzie looked out the window with the sun pouring in. It was morning, and she was still in her hospital bed. Before closing her eyes again, she smelled something familiar. She turned her head and sniffed again. Tony had just gotten off the elevator and he brought food.
“Tony, hi,” Suzie said beaming, when he entered the hospital room.
“Hi,” Tony sounded as excited as Suzie. “How are you feeling? I brought you something.” Tony put the McDonald’s bag next to her tray from the cafeteria.
“Oh God, thank you! I just woke up and I am so hungry. I’ve had about three lunches since midnight. I feel bad I made the nurses make two trips to the cafeteria. Now, I’m so worried I’m going to get so fat eating all this stuff.”
“Don’t worry about that. You’re never going to be fat,” Tony said, looking away, and scratching the back of his neck.
“Oh, you’re so sweet. Come here.”
Tony embraced Suzie, who pulled away from him with a curious look on her face.
“Where did you go last night?”
Tony looked puzzled. “Home, why?”
“I don’t know. It’s weird, but I thought I smelled someone on you.”
“Oh, that was probably JP.”
“Huh?”
“We got into a fight last night.” Tony pulled the collar of his T-shirt revealing his left shoulder, exposing the scratches he had received. “Sometimes even after a shower and washing clothes a scent still lingers.”
“Again? What were you guys fighting about this time?”
“That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. You see . . . well . . . um…” Tony hesitated while scratching the back of his neck.
“Whatever it is, it’s all right, really,” Suzie prepared herself for the worst.
“How’s your head?”
“Great,” Suzie lifted up the bandage. There was a small scar, and always would be a small scar, but it would be strategically hidden under long bangs for the rest of her life. “The doctors are amazed at how quickly I’m healing,” Suzie said, elated and almost giddy.
Tony closed his eyes and dropped his head for a moment, but then raised his head and forced a smile across his face.
“That’s great, Suze. Looks like you’ll be out of here in no time,” Tony laughed, trying to hide his nervousness. He wasn’t good at it.
“I know and you know what else is weird? I can hear people talking down the halls and on different floors! I can smell everything in the hospital, even JP on you! It’s so weird, but great! Do you know what I mean?”
“Uh, yeah, actually I do…”
“At first, I thought I was pregnant, but then I thought about something my dad tried to tell me… about you.”
“Oh? What?” Tony took a seat.
“He tried to tell me you were… you were, or at least hide or care for, a werewolf.” She laughed it off as a joke, hoping he would too, because if he did, that would mean he found it preposterous also.
Tony didn’t laugh. Instead, his face went pale with his eyes widened, “Why, um, why would he say that?”
“I thought it was because he wanted me to break up with you, and then, a couple weeks ago, when you and JP had to leave early and there was a full moon in the sky.”
“I told you, JP and I…”
“Then, there is the way I am healing. I can hear babies crying on the floor above me. I’m ravenously hungry after a very long nap, and I’ve been having these dreams where I am this super wild beast woman who could do things I can only imagine. I wanted to hate it, but I couldn’t, because… I had never felt so alive before. Is that what it’s like?”
Tony had no idea what to say. His first instinct was to deny it, but he had come to the hospital to tell her all this, but she had already known about it. He stayed silent and let her continue.
“And there was this mark on my arm when I got here. The mark is gone now, but I was told it looked like a dog bite, but you don’t have a dog, do you?”
“Uh… no.”
“You did it.”
Tony was trembling and fidgeting.
“Well, say something.”
Tony talked slowly. “I-I-I came here to… to tell you, how and why you survived the accident… but you already guessed. It’s hard for me to talk about this, because… because I’ve been told since I was a very little boy if I talk about this… everyone will die. And after what I’ve done… we’re lucky we’re both still alive. What was… required to keep you alive… is forbidden in the community. But what you’ve said is right, so when you get out of here, it’s time you came home and met the family.”
“Uh, okay.” She had wanted to meet Tony’s family for months, but he said he was embarrassed by them because they were poor, but that never mattered to Suzie. She wanted to meet Tony’s parents, because it made her feel closer to Tony, something she wanted more than anything, except maybe the food in the McDonald’s bag.
“What is going to happen to me?” Suzie asked as if she was asking a doctor who had diagnosed her with a terminal illness.
Tony dropped his head and sighed. “I think you already know, don’t you?”
“During a full moon, I’ll turn into a big, hairy monster terrorizing the countryside.”
“There’s a lot more to it than that.”
“Oh? Like wha
t?”
Tony sighed and looked around the hospital room. “This isn’t the place to talk about this, but what I can tell you is from now on you’ll have to come over to the trailer park every day to learn how to… how to be… what you’ve become.”
“I have to learn…”
“We all did, but we’ve had years to prepare.”
Suzie asked, “How long do I have to learn this?”
“Um… about three weeks.”
Suzie gasped in surprise and horror. “Three weeks?”
Tony closed his eyes and nodded.
“Well, what happens if I can’t learn it that fast?”
Tony tried to look her in the eyes, but couldn’t do it. He rubbed his temples, because a headache was approaching.
“They’re going to kill me, aren’t they?” Suzie asked, terrified and pleading.
“Both of us,” Tony corrected, and cleared his throat. “Because if you aren’t a quick learner, everyone will die.”
Chapter Nineteen: Member of the Pack
April 25th, 1971
Suzie was released from the hospital two days after the accident. This was the happiest she had been since her nurse friend brought her the news she wasn’t pregnant. The poor girl celebrated with a loud sigh. Although she had a pretty good idea what the results would be, it never hurt to be certain.
Jack and Dee brought Suzie home and as Suzie was entering the front door, ahead of her parents, she said, “Mom, I have to go to Tony’s tonight.”
Dee was shocked and Jack looked enraged.
“But, honey,” Dee said, opening the front door for Suzie. “You just got out of the hospital. Don’t you need your rest?”
“Mom, I’ve had plenty of rest for the last couple of days. I feel like I’ve been caged up for a week. I have to go.”
“Even after what that boy did to you?” Jack asked.
Suzie whipped her head toward her dad with the fiercest look she could make, and resisted the urge to snarl. “You mean saving my life?”