by Nick Stead
That pure white snow of the wintry world I’d come from had already been turned to dirty slush on many of the streets, symbolic perhaps of mankind’s polluted stain on the world. After spending so long in the purity of the natural world, or as pure as it could ever be in this modern age, it might seem odd to some that I had been so desperate to return to the smog of man’s domain. And yet it was all I’d ever known and all I’d longed to know again, before my latest attempt to reconnect with humanity had crushed that desire through the realisation that I would always be the outsider, never to be accepted in their society again.
Hard though it may be to believe, I had no intention of taking human prey. The curse hungered for human flesh, the wolf stalking restlessly in my subconscious, waiting for a chance to take control and revel in the hunt and the kill. As cautious as my lupine self usually was, hunger was stripping him of rational thought until he was reduced to his most primal state. My poor mental and physical condition was taking its toll on both parts of my identity it seemed, and while he hated me for usually being so careless, our personalities continued to shift, ever changing and swapping traits. As reckless as I could be, caution ruled me in that moment and I fought the wolf and the curse’s lusts, determined not to succumb to such cravings.
I would have been content to take a stray cat or dog, or even to scavenge what I could from the rubbish bins, but the bins must have been emptied recently for I found no carcasses to pick at, and the streets were just as deserted of animal life as the countryside had been, most creatures having the sense to shelter from the cold. Only one creature braved these conditions, always seeking to defy nature as they went about their hectic lives.
I heard the man long before I saw him. There’d been sounds of a car attempting to battle its way through the snow covered roads, then the slam of a car door as the driver was forced to abandon his vehicle and continue on foot. I could hear him trudging towards me as I fought my own inner battle. Briefcase in hand, he refused to be beaten by the weather, some urgent business requiring him to brave the blizzard and journey to the office. It was growing dark by this point and the working day must surely be drawing to a close, yet whatever his business was, it seemingly could not wait till the next day. He was so intent on his own battle with the elements that he didn’t notice me watching hungrily, fighting my instincts and the wolf. In the end my hunger won out, as it always did, though I wouldn’t let the wolf or the bloodlust completely take over, wanting only to feed and move on.
As I advanced on the latest hapless mortal to cross my path he remained unaware of me, his head bowed against the cold, the wind howling in his ears. I fell on him like the ravenous beast I was, sending him crashing to the ground face first. His precious briefcase was torn from his grasp, the catch flying open, but the man could do nothing to save his documents or his life. He screamed as my fangs tore into his muscular shoulders, ripping the meat free of the bone and gulping it down eagerly. His blood sprayed out, warm as it splattered my face. The man continued to struggle but I was too strong for any mortal to overpower. I moved from his shoulder along his arm, cracking bone in my jaws and leaving the limb hanging on by a thread of tendons and ligaments. More warmth splashed across me and I abandoned the meat in search of offal, biting into the flesh around his spine and burying my snout in his abdomen as if I could steal the warmth from him, as well as the flesh I needed to sustain me.
The sound of more humans from somewhere in their town centre distracted me from my meal. It sounded like they were holding some kind of festival, and though I had far from eaten my fill the loneliness rushed back in, more powerful than the hunger. Despite my earlier caution I howled as if to tell them I was coming, the sounds of human laughter calling to me as surely as the howling of a pack would call to the wolf. I abandoned my kill, suddenly convinced I was meant to be at the event this town was holding, as if it would give me the connection to humanity I so sorely longed for. In my current delirious state of mind I was foolish enough to think I might laugh along with them and rediscover how to fill that void with something other than anger, as there had been once, before I fell victim to the curse. Behind me the man lay dying, his life fading as fast as the blood leaking from his ruined body. He shook violently from the pain and the cold, powerless to do anything but wait for death to take him. Papers were blown from his briefcase and scattered by a gust of wind, as insignificant now as the man’s life I had ripped from him. Then the street grew still and quiet once more, fresh snow falling quickly enough to cover the corruptive stain I’d created on that pure white blanket.
I transformed back to my human form but similar to that full moon night when I’d entered the pub, my feverish mind failed to consider the problems this appearance would bring, with my lack of clothes and blood stained skin.
“You know you can’t go back, Nick,” the hallucination with Lizzy’s face said, my only constant companion. “Why do you continue to torment yourself with these false hopes?”
I was barely aware of her as I stumbled into the town square where the humans had gathered despite the heavy snow, oblivious even to the cold on my bare skin in my desperation to join them, to be one of them and enjoy their world as I once had.
Luke was quick to find me, and he eagerly asked, “On the hunt again?”
“You’re even more bloodthirsty than I am. Why do you enjoy all this slaughter so much?”
“You’re not the only one to suffer people’s hatred of anyone they see as different from themselves. There’s a few I’d kill myself if I could but, unlike you, I have to answer to the law.”
That might be partly true, but I wasn’t entirely satisfied with his answer. Bullying alone wouldn’t have made me a killer, if it hadn’t been for my lycanthropy. There was much more to this human than he was letting on, and I was determined to discover his secrets eventually. But I was more interested in the town event taking place to press him for answers right then.
A local band played on a stage directly in front of me and burger vans lined either side. Hundreds were packed around the stage and crowded round the burger vans, waiting to be served. Those on the stage noticed me first. The bassist’s eyes met mine as he scanned the crowd, his fingers fumbling his guitar as if his hands had suddenly forgotten how to play while he gawped at me in shocked silence, taking in my naked, gore spattered body. The rest of the band soon followed suit and the crowd turned to see what they were looking at with shouts of “What the hell?” but they too fell silent when they caught sight of me. They stared as the customers had in the pub that night when my mind had briefly become whole again, but there were no kindly women to mother me this time. Worse than the silence was the jeering that came soon after, kids of all ages pointing and laughing and shouting freak, while most of the adults just continued to stare in horror or morbid fascination, though some of them joined in the childish laughter. Always it came back to the cruelty of mankind, and their intolerance for anyone who differed in any way to what was considered ‘the norm’.
“See, they don’t deserve to live,” Luke whispered in my right ear. “Your pain should be clear to see but instead they just point and laugh, and stare at the freak among them. No one cares enough about you to come rushing to your aid, no one wants anything to do with someone who doesn’t fit into the nice little box assigned by society.”
As I looked back at them I began to see the school bullies that had tormented me through my mortal years, and between their behaviour and Luke’s words, something in me snapped. My rage blazed into life, roaring through the emptiness until the fury filling my core must surely have given me a fiery glow, my veins alight with blood turned to something molten, my eyes replaced with fiery pits, the snow turning to steam on my bare skin. My bloodlust was re-awoken, wed so closely to that rage as it was, and it was pressing for the change. I gave into it gladly, welcoming the power and the greater strength of my lupine form, and revelling in it. But as had become my wont I only took it halfway, letting the townsfolk see the true
nature of the monster I had become.
“Don’t do it, Nick. You know this is wrong,” Lizzy said, appearing on my left side.
The jeers soon died in the throats of the crowd when they realised they were witnessing the impossible. I fell to my hands and knees while the change took hold, the shifting of bone and flesh too uncomfortable if I remained standing. As always when it was brought on by rage the pain felt good, and I ignored the voice of my conscience as I embraced the transformation taking place. The changes were not as dramatic as when I took it fully to wolf form, and it was over quickly. I rose back onto two legs and turned my fiery gaze on the now silent crowd, horror and disbelief holding them in place.
“Teach them a lesson, Nick,” Luke urged me. “They deserve the same cruelty they just showed you. Let them feel your pain.”
“No, Nick,” Lizzy implored. “It’s time to put a stop to the needless slaughter. Just let go of the anger and turn back. You don’t have to do this.”
“You know it will feel good this time. It’s what you’ve been waiting for, and it’s too late to turn away now. Unleash your fury on them. Enjoy the slaughter while your rage lasts.”
A wordless roar of anger rushed out of me in response to his words, and then the screaming began and they scattered like any panicked herd before a predator. My heart sang with their terror and I fell upon them, slashing with clawed hands which ripped through cloth and flesh, exposing bone and spilling guts. My jaws snapped around the leg of a woman trying to flee and sent her crashing to the ground. She’d been carrying her young boy in an effort to save him but my bloodlust would not be denied, my rage directed at all of them and demanding the lives of every last one. I killed man, woman and child alike, exulting in their screams of pain and terror and the deaths I tore from them all.
The image of Lizzy looked on disappointedly until she began to fade, drowning in the darkness I’d fallen back into. Luke stayed to watch as he had every other time he’d been around to see the gruesome spectacle my rage created, though I soon lost sight of him in the chaos. Most of the terrified humans were fighting against each other to escape the monster in their midst, crushing each other in their mindless panic. Any who fell were quickly trampled into the snow beneath the feet of their fellows.
Bodies quickly piled up in the square, my supernatural speed allowing me to kill dozens in the blink of an eye. Some I made quick work of, ripping out their throats with tooth or claw, some I left broken and bloody but still alive when they hit the ground, in the grip of a slow and agonising death. One of the men in the burger vans was too slow to make his escape from the vehicle and I leapt up on the shelf beneath the counter where the sauces were laid out for customers, reaching over the counter to grab his head. I pressed his face against the grill where burgers were still sizzling, steam rising up as his skin touched the hot metal. He screamed and his body jerked violently but I would not let go until finally he went still, a smell like roasting pork filling my nostrils and making me drool hungrily, though it was tainted somewhat by the sulphurous stink of his hair sizzling. Regardless of how tantalising the pork smell was, I would not eat until the last one was dead, determined none would escape my wrath.
As I’d seen in the pub, some of the humans were stupid enough to film me with their phones and digital cameras they’d brought to the event. I wasn’t too concerned with any footage they’d captured, trusting any devices that survived the chaos to be taken care of by the Slayers. I was more infuriated to see them standing there when they should be fleeing before me with the rest.
The band hadn’t yet had chance to exit the stage and join the stampeding throng. The crowd had been most packed around there, the ones nearest the front pushing through those slower to react, fighting for their lives. There were a greater number of casualties in that direction, before I’d even got to them.
I turned my attention to that area and bounded forward, killing several in the crowd as I made for the stage. Some human part of me, remnants of the boy that had once longed for fame and fortune, wanted to stand in the spotlight where the crowd could see the glory of my bestial form, singing with a strength and speed they would never know as it crushed their fragile mortal bodies, magnificent but deadly. In reality the humans were too busy trying to escape to pay much attention to the bloody spectacle now taking place on stage, but still I dealt the band especially grisly deaths.
The singer I impaled on his own mic stand to keep his body propped up, then grabbed his lower jaw and ripped it off to leave his tongue lolling out. Finally I pried open the skin and flesh around his voice box, moving on once his natural instruments were laid bare.
The soft flesh of the lead guitarist’s belly I tore open as easily as a knife through butter with the claw of my left index finger, while I held him by the throat in my right hand. I ripped out his entrails and stuffed the body of his beloved guitar in the hole, then turned to the bassist who’d been the first to see me. Since he’d been the first to stare I gripped his head in my hands and drove the claws of my thumbs into his eyes while he screamed and writhed in my grasp. I dropped him to the floor, still alive, where he tried to weakly crawl away, so I stamped on him hard enough to shatter his spine and render his limbs useless. Finally I advanced on the drummer who I seated back behind his drum kit, ripping open his chest to break two ribs off and force them into his hands like drumsticks. This was some of my bloodiest, most brutal work, but still the bloodlust was not satisfied. With another roar I leapt from the stage and back into the now lifeless crowd. The living had finally made their way out of the town square, but they would not get far. Still the snow fell around us, too deep for them to escape by any method other than on foot, and even that was made hard enough.
The massacre spilled into all the surrounding streets, as if the first blood spilled in the square was the bleeding heart of the town and now it was being carried into the connecting veins and arteries. Young and old fell before me, strong and weak. If we lived in an age of heroes then perhaps this tale would have a different ending and I would not be here to tell it myself, but the Slayers are far from heroes and there were no others to stand against me. In stories they say evil never wins, yet in reality evil, if that’s what I am, triumphs just as often as good. The real world is harsher than those of fantasy, though monsters like myself are real enough. But in reality heroes do not miraculously appear to deliver the townsfolk in their hour of need, and prey fall before predators, both natural and unnatural. My rage claimed them all, and no rescue came. Though it was a wonder no Slayers had shown up to disturb me from my carnage. Either any that happened to be in the area already lay dead before they’d had chance to draw a weapon, or they had forsaken this particular town for some twisted reason. So there would be no help for these people. All they could hope for was a quick death when I caught them, for die they would that night. Even those who’d been quickest to react and had managed to put some distance between us while I slaughtered in the town square, even they could not escape. If it hadn’t been for the snow maybe some of them would have stood a chance, but it slowed them too much and none made it far. And then finally I was advancing on the last of my victims, a group of the school children who had mocked me so, and thus unwittingly brought about their own doom.
They heard me coming and turned to look, their hearts pounding faster with renewed terror. Even with the scents of blood and death so thick on the air, I could still smell the stink as one of the boys lost control of his bowels. I slashed open his throat in disgust and focussed on the other three, intending to make a meal of them. They were running again and I gladly gave chase, bounding over the snow on all fours. One of the girls fell and cowered before me, the other two never even slowing or looking back. I leapt over her, deciding to kill her last, and continued to close the distance on the other two. The other girl was slightly slower so I caught her first, grabbing her meaty calf in my jaws as I drew level and pulling her to the ground. She screamed and cried for help, reaching out towards the kid w
ho might have been her boyfriend. I left her on the floor and pounced on the boy. He’d ignored her cries and was still running, until I landed on his back and sent him crashing to the floor. His screams joined her own as I snapped one of his arms in my jaws, ripping it from the socket and crunching hungrily. He died soon after, his back torn open to reveal the bone of his spine and ribcage, the flesh shining brightly beneath the streetlight. I didn’t eat my fill from the first one, turning back to the girl struggling to rise with her ruined leg.
She fell back down, onto her side, and covered her head in her hands as if that would protect her from this living nightmare. I grabbed her good leg and chewed on that, moving up to her abdomen and the rich organs that lay just beneath that smooth skin. Her heart beat its last as I wrapped my jaws around it, pulling it free. Blood oozed down my throat, spilling over my jaws and onto the snow. The markings of my coat which resembled a mortal timber wolf were no longer recognisable, the lighter fur darkened and stained from the slaughter. My fur was matted with blood and gore, which must have made me look even more fearsome. When I’d eaten my fill from those two I hunted down my last victim, the girl her friends had left behind.
She’d picked herself up from the spot where she’d fallen and pushed her cold, aching body onwards, back down the street. The snow was quickly covering her footprints but she would not be hard to track down, even with my inexperience at using my enhanced sense of hearing and smell. The sound of life was unusually loud in this town of the dead, as if she belonged here no more than I had when I’d first entered and it had still been the province of living men. There was no challenge in hunting her down but that didn’t matter. I soon had her in my sights once more and this time there would be no escape. She knew as much, her despair plain to see on her face, and her terror of the pain and death that was soon to come, as it had for all the others. Yet still she struggled when I bore down on her, her punches growing weaker as the cold stole the warmth from her body and I savaged her flesh, until finally she grew still and all was quiet, save for my panting.