Wolf Asylum

by Mark Fuson

  Where was he going? Why did he need something from the kitchen?

  “Are you going to help me or are you just going to peep me?” Darwin asked to himself.

  “What are we looking for?” Darwin replied to his clone.

  “We’ll know it when we see it,” was the response given as cupboard doors and drawers opened and closed.

  “I’m leaving without you! I don’t want to be late!” the voice in the other room yelled.

  It was Steve! The voice was now recognizable and brought panic in Darwin. He wanted to run into the other room but he was compelled to stay and rifle through the kitchen. For a moment he stopped and hesitated, leaving the countertop and turning to the door. Even from the kitchen the real Darwin could see the light from outside flooding into the next room; the front door was open.

  “For Christ sake, get back here! We can’t go anywhere until we have it.” The illusion demanded.

  Unable to stop, Darwin returned to the counter and continued moving and shaking every item he could grab, still unsure what he was looking for. Each object passed through his fingers and instinctively he knew it was not what he sought. The task at hand now consumed him but he was still aware of the sounds from the next room though he could not discern the speech anymore.

  “It must be here,” Darwin-the-image insisted, “Did you check inside the Easter Bunny?”

  “Yeah, no…I’ll go look. Where is it?” Darwin asked, not stopping his haggard search.

  “In the oven!” the visionary Darwin proclaimed.

  Frantic, he ran over to the old style gas oven and ripped the door open. Inside the flaming interior was a lone cookie sheet with globs of burning dough surrounding a milk chocolate oddity.

  Indeed, a chocolate Easter Bunny sat in the center of the cookie sheet, gleaming at the surprised onlooker. The confectionary grinned a sharp set of jagged teeth that appeared to be made of eroded Pez. The candied eyes had caved into the cacao creature leaving gaping holes that continued to expand rapidly. Heat from the fire wore down the exterior like napalm on a civilian casualty. Holes in the chocolate skin appeared as small blemishes, but continued to grow by the second.

  The pooling bunny attempted to clear its throat and speak but only a dark brown bubble formed from its mouth. The mass grew for a moment until it burst, splattering sweet liquid throughout the interior of the oven. The speckling quickly smoldered and burst into flames accelerating the demise of the sweet.

  Another gurgle and spurt, and finally the rabbit spoke its message. “The wall,” It said with its final breath before igniting into a puddle of burning sugar.

  Darwin watched as the flames began their advance out of the oven in search of more fuel for the flames. Instinctively Darwin kicked the oven door shut with a loud crash that shook the whole kitchen, but arrested the advancing fire.

  The wall?

  Perplexed, Darwin looked around while his counterpart continued to rifle though a drawer stuffed with tea towels and other homeless objects. At first it wasn’t obvious; the kitchen was merely a kitchen. The walls were covered in a flower pattern wallpaper that was unremarkable. A reproduction of American Gothic hung on the wall. It was slightly crooked.

  The kitchen had nothing on the wall or anything about the wall that seemed important. As suddenly as he had concluded that there was nothing on the wall, it hit him. It was plain as day and so obvious. The shiny metal bar…

  Eyes opened, Darwin found himself sucking in some of the hot water through his nostrils. Startled he bolted upwards, coughing a little as he cleared his airway. It took a few moments for him to realize where he was. Ripped away from his dream world, he felt as though his mind was still caught in the slumber. The disorientation was unnerving; he knew where he was but at the same time he wasn’t sure. What he could see was only familiar but not clear.

  “A wall,” Darwin mumbled to himself.

  Images crumbled in his mind and the world he had been to was quickly becoming a forbidden lesson. The more he concentrated, the more the pictures and words became distorted until finally it was all gone. Darwin had lost his dream world and now he sat in his pool, more calm than before, but still on edge.

  Darwin looked around his watery home, wondering where Mary had gone to. His mind now somewhat rested, he began to prepare himself for the long walk home. He would change to make the trip, there was no other choice. If he found her, as the wolf he could help her. Biting her was a possibility, or biting her and then reverting to human form in front of her could also work. She might be a werewolf already, Darwin knew there was a chance he had infected her just as he had Cindy.

  His mind raced in scenarios derived in fantasy and reality.

  “Maybe she stubbed her toe on a rock, and then she changed?” Darwin surmised to himself. “She was undressing. If she didn’t know she was a wolf…the anger from a sharp rock slicing into her foot could have pushed her over the edge. Anything could have!” Darwin concluded, releasing a mountain of tension from his shoulders.

  Darwin stood up, relieved he had potentially solved the riddle of Mary. Darwin released the plug inside his mind that held the wolf in and began to will the change upon himself. His finger nails began to lengthen and his muscles began to spasm. The world around him changed spectrum and everything sharpened to crystal clarity. Where his human eyes could only see a few feet into the trees, his wolf eyes allowed him to view several hundred yards.

  Darwin upturned his face to the sky and howled at the night as his canines pushed their way forth. Only partially transformed, more of his senses began to heighten and suddenly he became aware of an odor that he had not noticed before. The smell could easily be confused with sulphur, but it wasn’t, it was something else.

  There, at the far end of the pool, Darwin finally saw it. A small, brown paper bag sat on the rocky edge. Curious and puzzled, he slowed his transformation, which was a little like trying to stop urinating after you had started. His change continued but at a reduced pace; it would not stop.

  Darwin picked up the bag and peered inside and found the new smell. It was egg he could smell. Two egg salad sandwiches wrapped in wax paper along with four chocolate chip cookies at the bottom of the bag. He didn’t have to open up the bag fully to know what he smelt. After all these years he still hated egg salad; rotten egg farts or not.

  As his snout began to broaden he again took a whiff of the mystery lunch bag. His mind spun like a toy top through his childhood memories, flickering in and out of focus…wavering back and forth. Inside his mind the show sounded like a movie projector. He saw Zack for a moment—then Teddy, the school, his first transformation; the images began to blend into one, indistinguishable moment in time.

  Then the image jammed and reddened, the sound contorted like a record album being played in reverse. Time stopped in that shower room, the Ridgemount High School torture chamber. Darwin was forced to watch again as he killed Steve.

  The fire had engulfed the room by his foot. Newman had set the trap, but it was Darwin who had finished him off. Knowing this set his mind into a frenzy once again.

  Again Darwin’s curse took hold.

  Chapter Fifteen

  They came for him very early one morning. There was little he could do to stop them. Never could he have imagined the frustration and futility of being manhandled lacking the appendages to fight back. His mid section wobbled like a fifty pound sack of potatoes in the arms of a child, but the abductors tightened their grips and moved faster down the corridor.

  Teddy Holmes had asked who they were, but no response was given. He recognized them as the same men who had brought him to Darwin months earlier. The men did not look him in the eyes as they hauled him away, nor did they speak to each other. They were on a mission.

  As Teddy’s demand for answers evaporated in the restrictive and sterile environment he found himself growing warm. The sensation was new to him but he hardly took notice to it.

  A door flung open with the blow of his head further ang
ering him. His body flew through the air and impacted against the padding of the wall. He had barely come to a halt when his eyes filled with color.

  The door slammed shut leaving Teddy to quietly experience his first full transformation.

  High above the padded room Doctor Gagnon watched her specimen morph into a sin against nature. Unlike normal werewolves Teddy had no limbs, but to the good doctor’s surprise, Teddy did sprout deformed claws from his stumps. The razors pierced the stump-paw, pointing in random directions with both short and long knives. The rabid, oversized animal looked like a cross between a giant gerbil and a wolf. Doctor Gagnon chuckled as she realized Teddy could almost pass for a radioactive hamster-if there were such a thing.

  With her long, manicured and highly polished nails she depressed the button for the microphone, engaging a crackle in the speakers high above the frightened and confused animal. Slowly she moved in her supple red lips to the mic and spoke.

  “Darwin asked me to experiment with the gift, so that’s what you and I are going to do,” she said softly to the animal below. “I thought you’d appreciate a change of scenery. Special Projects is so barbaric. Hadamar is my baby; I think you’ll find it comfortable here.”

  The animal growled and hissed, struggling to move around using his claw-encrusted stumps. Each attempt at movement improved over the previous and soon the fur mound was managing to circumvent the perimeter of the room with relative ease. As his mobility improved so did his momentum around the cell which he began circling repeatedly at greater speeds. The padding of the room was tough, but not so much so that his retarded stumps didn’t cut into the fabric a little bit.

  “You should be honored. We’ve already learned that limbs will not spontaneously regenerate after amputation and transformation. Now the next question is, will they slowly regenerate over time. You grew some claws, maybe with each transformation your body will repair itself? These are the questions I have been empowered to find answers to.”

  Releasing the microphone, she moved her hand to a switch which lowered the lighting in the rubber room from a mid day look to a dusk motif. As the intense surgical style lighting dimmed the creature below began to calm.

  “Teddy, relax. I know you’re frightened but I also know you can understand me. Come back to me Teddy,” she whispered into the public address system of the crazy hotel.

  The animal sat with his stumps sprawled out to his sides, allowing him to cock his head upwards to the viewing room above. Inside the lycan mind of Teddy he settled, allowing the primal thoughts to float like disturbed dust. An image of tearing out a throat fell to the abyss first. This was followed by a view of trees and bushes rushing past his face as he ran in the woods. Hundreds if not thousands of images swirled inside his mind and one by one he shut them off, forcing them to drift to the floor of his mind. As he began to bring his instincts under control, his body began to morph back into a cripple.

  Doctor Gagnon kept a close eye on the forming human stumps, curious to know if the claws would leave human fingers or finger nails. She watched with her eyes and had one of three cameras focused on his left stump. The skin bubbled. The bones popped and cracked and the razors began to slide back into human scar tissue. At first glance, no regeneration had happened.

  Teddy the amputee rested, collapsing his naked body over to lie on his back. His shiny torso sparkled with sweat as he looked towards the ceiling. Shifting his eyes, he peered into the viewing room in an upside down view of the doctor.

  “What do you want?” Teddy asked.

  “We must know our limits Teddy. You’re going to help us find those limits,” she replied.

  “Does Darwin know what you’re doing?” Teddy asked with a tinge of frustration.

  “Of course he does. This was his idea.”

  Teddy asked nervously admitting what he now was, “Is this how you treat your own kind?”

  Doctor Gagnon balked. “Teddy, you may have the gift but you have a long way to go in proving your worth.”

  “Darwin and I, we understand each other. I begged him to kill me, and instead he does this to me! What do you want? I confessed my crimes, what more do I have to prove?”

  “Darwin was only the first person whose approval you have to gain. Now it’s time you impress the rest.” She chuckled softly. “You and I are going to work together for the next several months. We must know what happens to us when we are exposed to certain elements. For example, what happens to us if we don’t eat human flesh? It’s an interesting question, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve already had human flesh! My own flesh, but I’ve still had it. I know what it feels like, the pull it has over you. It’s a drug!” Teddy yelled upwards to the ceiling.

  “Exactly! I already know what the flesh is to us. I want to know what happens if we stop taking it. We have been warned about something called the ‘degradation’. I have my doubts about it, but I must know more just to be on the safe side. Imagine Teddy, if we could survive without human flesh how dangerous that could be to our pack?” Gagnon asked.

  “What’s ‘degradation’?” Teddy grunted as he tried to rotate himself around using his stumps to push him along the rubber room floor. “Wouldn’t it be easier to survive off of animals?”

  “That’s what you and I are going to find out. I already know the influence blood and flesh has over us. What I’m interested in understanding is that desire; does it continue to grow inside of us until it drives us to insanity if we don’t feed it? Can we live without the flesh? What happens to us!” The doctor paused waiting for Teddy to protest, but he remained silent. “I want to know. I must know. If the pack learned that we could survive without human flesh then our members may try to wean themselves off human flesh. If they do that, we lose our control. Right now, we are their protectors and their providers. As crude as it may sound, we are the drug dealer. We are the safer way of getting their fix without them having to give into their desires in the broader world and risk being discovered,” Gagnon concluded.

  Teddy finished rotating his body into place and now he was able to rest his head propped against the wall giving him a better view of his captor above. His heart raced and his body remained hot. Certainty and uncertainty pulled at his mind. He knew he could change again as his frustrations grew, but a part of him still disbelieved the possibility.

  “So, our first experiment has given us excellent data. What I would like for you to do now is change again. I see you are close to losing your control, so we may as well move on. I want to see if your limbs improve with each successive transformation.” The doctor said all this without taking her eyes from her chart where she was jotting some notes.

  “What happens to me if I prove that we can live without human flesh?” Teddy persisted. “Doesn’t that make me a danger to the pack?”

  “Change, Teddy,” the doctor said plainly.

  “Answer me!”

  The doctor put her pen down and tapped a computer screen a couple of times. At that moment Teddy let out a silent yelp as a spike drove through the padding in the floor and pierced his upper thigh a few inches from his left stump. With his phantom hands he tried touching the spear that had driven through what remained of his leg. He couldn’t move the impalement and the pain was severe, but he kept his wolf inside.

  “Change, Teddy. You won’t like what I’ll do to you next if you don’t do as I ask,” Doctor Gagnon insisted. “This is for your own good. I wish you could see that I’m only trying to help you. I don’t want to wait for you; we must move things along. If you don’t change willingly then you force me to make you change. So, what will it be?”

  Remaining silent, Teddy could feel himself losing his grip. He wanted to change, but his stubborn side was resentful of what the doctor was doing to him. He wanted to resist. He wanted to believe that Darwin had not ordered this treatment. In that moment, Teddy understood what it was like to be bullied. It was out of his control. The people he had tormented all to hide his own secrets; the fear and anger
that they must have felt over the abuse because they were powerless to stop it. Now Teddy was facing payback for a lifetime of wasted morals. He could submit to stop the pain or he could resist. He could cooperate, but the torture would continue; that’s what bullies do.

  “Teddy, you know this room was specially designed by me. It can do a lot of things-all in the name of science. I don’t want to hurt you, but I can make you change. You think you can control the power? The entire floor is wired with spikes; and those spikes have a special function.”

  Teddy continued his defiant stance, making a split second decision to no longer interact with his captor. He would remain silent and refuse to cooperate. He would fight the change as long as he could. It’s all he could do.

  Doctor Gagnon, knowing her subject was beginning to rebel, decided it was time to prove to him who was in charge. With another tap of her screen she engaged her next secret.

  Like an army of fire ants biting his insides, a wave of discomfort began to flow outwards through his stump and into his torso until he could taste the electricity flowing through his dental fillings. The sensation was unpleasant, but it reminded Teddy of touching a staple with a bare hand that had pierced a string of Christmas lights. The voltage was low but even still he wanted the feeling to end.

  “How do you like it?” she asked, hoping Teddy’s will was nearly crushed, but he remained tight-lipped. “It gets better, much better.”

  A second later and the slow moving voltage disappeared and in its place something that felt more like lightening impacted every nerve center in his body causing him to convulse and seize. Every muscle locked into a Charlie horse position and the pain became his world. The room disappeared along with the doctor. His convulsions became so violent he hadn’t realized he had bit partway through his tongue until it dangled. Teddy held onto the only image that was keeping him in human form-the lake shore. He would later have time to consider the image that had drifted into his mind that was helping him to resist, but for now his rational mind locked onto the image.