Lunacy

by Dan Dillard

Chapter 4

  His first change was gradual and took almost three weeks to complete. He didn't understand the biology of it at the beginning any more than he understood what he had become. The changes began from the inside and worked their way out.

  His senses heightened making him irritable-more irritable than the average thirteen-year-old. He now knew that his age helped mask the change from his parents. They saw their son becoming a teenager and weren't surprised by the time he spent alone, or by the attitude he showed when they did cross his path. He got in fights at school, even suspended. It wasn't until the second week when his mother woke him with, "Morning. How's my little monster?" that he thought things were abnormal.

  Then the physical changes started. He had muscles out of the blue. Easy enough to cover with bulky clothes. Then hair. Not armpit hair and pubic hair, but his entire body grew hair. That's when he ran away from home.

  The pain was intense in his joints, like his bones were shifting, twisting into places they hadn't been and didn't belong. Growing pains multiplied and scattered throughout his young form. Even his teeth ached.

  Jason called home that evening from a payphone. The sun was going down which made his appearance less obvious. The phone booth in the back of the gas station parking lot glowed and felt to him like a spot lit stage. Even the moths seemed to be looking at him.

  "Mom?"

  "Hey, baby. Are you hungry? We're gonna eat soon."

  He was starving. Hungry like never before. His mother didn't know he had run away, he hadn't been gone long enough to concern her.

  "I'm at Bradley's. Do you care if I spend the night?"

  He ran his tongue along his lower teeth, feeling new points. He couldn't it keep off of them.

  "Well, no. If it's ok with his mom."

  "It's fine. Pizza and movies in the basement. The usual," he said.

  It was anything but usual. His emotions swelled in his chest and he needed to get off the payphone before she heard the fear in his voice. Before he began to sob.

  "Well, don't stay too long tomorrow, ok?"

  "Ok, mom."

  "I love you, Jason."

  "I love you too, Mom."

  That should've given her cause for alarm. He couldn't remember the last time he'd told her he loved her.

  Pain shot through his body from his feet up through his legs and then climbed up his spine as if it was a fuse leading to a keg of black powder. He ran beyond what he thought possible. Speed beyond speed, led by instinct. His body had taken over and he had no memory of the next several hours.

  Bright sun woke him. A quick glance about the abandoned barn calmed him. It was a place he'd played hundreds of times with his friends. The light streaming in through the open hayloft door blinded him and filled him with warmth.

  The pain was gone, but he was exhausted and felt as if his mind was at war. He wished for sleep, but had to get away from the sun. Things appeared different, color was less precise, objects less crisp in their outline. He rolled to stand and found four feet underneath him instead of two. Feet covered in hair, and claws. It startled him and he stumbled into the plank wood wall of the old barn sending doves scattering from their nests.

  He lay down on the boards of the loft and closed his new eyes. He could feel his ears twitch, turning from side to side, and he could smell all manner of scent. The odors were so detailed he couldn't make any sense of them, like reading a language he hadn't learned. So complex and strong it made his head swim. Then he realized he wasn't hungry.

  "What did I eat?" he thought.

  What came out was more of a yelp followed by a low growl. Then he saw what he'd eaten. It looked like the head of a stray cat attached to a skeleton. Blood was everywhere. There was also a rat's tail, and several other bloody bones and tufts of fur. Jason felt his stomach turn, but it was more psychological than physical. He found the variety of stink pleasing.

  He decided to test his new legs and hopped down from the loft onto a stack of crates, then to the ground with a grunt. It was early morning, the ground still covered with dew. Before he could think about it, he was lapping water from a puddle on the concrete floor. Smoky blue eyes in a sea of gray fur looked back at him in the rippled reflection. It felt strangely normal. When he'd had his fill, he found a corner of the barn that was mostly shadowed and lay down.

  That was the first time he'd dreamed of the gray wolf and the human family. That dream comforted him like a warm blanket, fresh from the dryer. He slept until nightfall and woke in a frenzy. The hunger was back, much stronger. Nothing made sense to his human self. Again, the body took control of the mind, and he was running again, darting through trees and over crackling leaves in that small patch of forest. Jason felt like a passenger on some strange wolf ride, like the eyes he was seeing out of were merely windows in a strange vehicle.

  Then he was gone completely as if the hunger had eaten his human consciousness as an hors d'ourve. He saw flashes of light and smelled things unknown. He felt himself panting and noted a burning in his muscles.

  When he next woke, he remembered the barn, but it was different. The smells were less precise, the colors different. He was back in his human head. His vision was woozy and he felt seasick, exhausted. He struggled to two legs, stumbling into the morning light. A pair of his pants lay on the ground, illuminated by light streaming through the drafty wooden walls. He pulled them on absently, grasping at the door frame for balance and then walking in a daze, following a familiar path to his home. It was only luck that no one saw him.

  The walk home was a blur. As his eyes cleared and the fog in his head lifted, he began to fill with dread. He felt a sickening d?j? vu, a memory that was not quite his own, not quite human, but very violent. As he opened the back door, he saw his parents were dead. Faces twisted in horrible combinations of pain and betrayal, as if somehow, they'd known it was him. He smelled their blood in his nose, saw it on his human hands. He washed his face in the kitchen sink after vomiting.

  Jason cried. Painful sobs turned into wailing and thoughts of suicide. Torment over what he'd done and what he had to do. How could he call police and tell them what happened and how could he have no memory of what he'd done to them? The image of his mother's dead face would forever stare at him behind his eyelids.

  He set fire to the house. A can of gasoline from the garage and some stick matches made quick work of the job. Jason stood there while the blaze went from one room to another. He pondered tossing himself into the flames as penance for what he'd done-for what he was. Something, instinct perhaps, pushed him out the door, running this time on human feet.

  Twelve years later, on a bus somewhere between Texas and Indiana, Jason was still running. A tear rolled down his cheek.