by Michael Dunn
On the ground, curled in a fetal position, there was an intense awakening sensation as she felt her eyes turn yellow. Then the real changes occurred.
It was almost too much for her to watch as her dainty and pale hands grew longer, sharper, covered with red fur, and would have gone into shock before the pain that spread throughout her body if the transformation had let her. Suzie began choking and when she tried to scream from the unbearable pain, she no longer possessed the ability to scream. Her face went numb, but she still felt the skin bubble and her muscles popping and stretching, sweating profusely amid feeling an overwhelming need to vomit. Mercifully, before it got any worse, Suzie blacked out and wouldn’t remember anything for hours.
2
After two long, agonizing minutes of an anguishing change, a newborn werewolf had emerged, beautiful and terrible in her thick red fur and yellow eyes, but also insane. The red werewolf (not Suzie, whose consciousness was asleep inside the beast), standing on two feet, howled at the bright full moon above, before she clutched her stomach and she felt the hunger – the overwhelming hunger that came with the ferocious lethal insanity. She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; both ferocious and childlike in her delicate progress.
Tony (as a werewolf himself) tossed a steak on the ground by his progeny, who ate it greedily, and the pain momentarily subsided.
The red werewolf got up and followed Tony, the brown werewolf. She didn’t recognize him or anyone else in this condition, but she felt she should follow the brown-haired werewolf, because she felt he would take care of her, and she followed him and the others into the woods.
In the woods, she saw a white-haired werewolf, and with the rage boiling inside her, she attacked the white werewolf when they approached the entrance of the woods.
JP fought to get the red werewolf off as she slashed and tore at him, and Tony tackled the newborn off JP before JP decided he was going to hurt the newest member of the pack.
Tony and his progeny wrestled for a bit as Tony tried to keep the crazed and hungry foundling from trying to kill him, but the red werewolf pinned Tony to the ground and was going to slash Tony until it looked in Tony’s eyes and stopped. The newborn recognized something in those eyes and knew the brown haired werewolf was not to be harmed, but the white werewolf was another story.
The fledgling werewolf sniffed, spotting a fox in the distance, and gave chase. The fox went running scared as the red wolf pursued closely behind, first on two feet, then on four. While the fox was running for its life, the young wolf ran for sport. This was a game for the youngling, and wherever the red werewolf ran, Tony was sure to follow.
The young wolf played with the fox for a couple minutes and not knowing its own strength and new abilities, knocked the fox with its head, sending the scared fox flying straight into a tree, killing it instantly. The babe nudged the fox with its snout, wanting the fox to play some more, but when the fox wouldn’t move, the red wolf dug its jaws into the dead fox’s throat. The blood spurted warm and pleasantly as the wolf enjoyed her first kill.
However, after eating, she felt sluggish and tired, and Tony, who had just fed on a roadrunner, nuzzled close to his progeny and led them both back to the trailer park.
3
As the yellow sun began to rise, Suzie awoke to find herself lying in the center of the trailer park on the ground and drooling next to Tony, who sat cross-legged, waiting patiently for her to wake up. Suzie was feeling much better now, despite where she found herself. She remembered very little, except the horrible and very real nightmare before she changed and nothing before waking up. She thought she should be feeling like she had been on an all-night bender, but that wasn’t the case. Instead, as Suzie sat up watching the sunrise, she felt dirty, like she had been rolling in the dirt for an hour, but she also felt fantastic.
“What time is it?” Suzie whispered, her voice was still a bit hoarse.
“Almost five-thirty. You should go home now.” Tony helped Suzie to her feet and brushed some of the dust off her frayed and tattered clothes.
Her clothes had been ripped and stretched, like a much bigger girl had been trying to wear them. Her shoes were beyond repair and she sighed disappointedly, because she really liked those shoes. Behind her lower lip, Suzie pushed out a patch of bloody reddish fur.
“Eww, what’s this?”
Tony glanced over. “Looks like fur.”
Suzie dropped the fur and squirmed, looking at her hands, since watching them growing into claws was the last thing she remembered before passing out. They were now small and dainty again.
“How did it go last night? I mean, how did I do? I mean, what did I do?”
Tony took a moment before speaking. “Well, after you changed, you played tag with a fox.”
“Who won?”
“Not the fox.”
“Why was I chasing a fox?”
Tony shrugged. “Maybe you were jealous of its red hair.” Tony managed to make Suzie laugh a little.
“You also went a little crazy. One of the highlights of last night was when you attacked JP before we pulled you off of him. Underneath it all, you must really not like him. But the craziness is expected.”
“That’s expected?”
“Oh, yeah. See, it was your first time and you haven’t quite completed your training. The first time is always rough.”
“Was it rough for you?”
“Yeah, but not as bad. Keep in mind, I had years of preparation before my first change. On top of that, JP changed a couple months before me so he was able to let me know what it was like. He and my parents watched over me during my first night. Tonight won’t be so bad for you.”
Tonight? She thought. There would be another one in July, August, and every month for the rest of her life.
I guess I’m going to have to learn to live with it. Suzie thought with a sigh.
“I’ve got to get ready for school,” Suzie said, as she got up and headed for her car. She checked herself in the rearview mirror and was appalled at what she saw.
“Oh my God,” Suzie whispered to herself.
Her hair was nappy and went all directions. Dried blood smeared around her lips and she thought she looked like either an exhausted, evil clown or a discarded, dead whore. She spit washed her face, because there was no point in letting her parents see the blood on her face and jump to conclusions.
For the rest of the drive home, she tried to remember the night before, but it was very much like remembering a lost dream, spotty and blurry. There was not much to remember, except feelings, and these feelings were followed by an overwhelming hunger. After that, she drew a complete blank.
Suzie tried to sneak in the front door, but Dee was sleeping on the couch.
Dee tried to wait up for her several hours-past-curfew daughter and fell asleep on the couch in front of a dead channel on the TV, startled by the sound of a car door slamming. Seconds later, Suzie stormed passed her toward her bedroom, looking like she had been in an awful fight: ripped clothes, hair a mess, with tattered shoes barely hanging on to her feet.
“Oh my God, where the hell have you been, young lady? And what happened to you?”
“I was with Tony,” Suzie said, now realizing this must look like a walk of shame.
“Do you know what time it is?”
Suzie growled at her mother and continued on her way to her bedroom before a badly needed shower. Dee backed away, afraid, and let her daughter be. Maybe, or maybe not, they would talk about this later.
Chapter Twenty-Three: Fresh Meat
May 11th, 1971
A dog bit Peter Jordan when he was five-years-old. It was not a simple nip on the hand by a rather harmless beagle or collie, but by a Rottweiler that had gotten loose from its pen and stalked the neighborhood.
Toro was the Bailey family’s three-year-old Rottweiler that lived three blocks up. Alice and Donald Bailey adopted Toro from a kennel when the dog was a newborn as a Christmas present for their ten-year-o
ld son, Vaughn. The dog had its papers, its shots, and its training. It was a loving, seemingly happy family dog that lived both inside the house (mostly during the winters) and outside in a wooden doghouse tethered to a chain. However, on that awful Sunday afternoon, Vaughn was busy talking to a girl (one he hoped would soon become his girlfriend), and forgot to lock the fence that surrounded the property when Toro escaped.
The dog wandered through the neighborhood confused and thrilled to have his first taste of freedom, knocking over garbage cans, chasing a kid on a bike that rode through the alley, and barking at a cat staring outside a neighbor’s window basking in the sun. This was the most fun the brute ever knew as it lurked through the neighborhood. Then it eyed something curious, something it didn’t understand. The dog moved slowly, silently behind the little boy in the sand box singing “Old McDonald.”
Peter was playing in the sandbox with his toys in the backyard of his family’s brownstone in Chicago, while his mom was inside doing laundry. His dad was in the front of the house washing his car on the hot July afternoon in the summer of 1958 and listening to the Cubs lose on the radio.
Peter didn’t know Toro was behind him until he felt the dog’s breath on his neck. He turned slowly and the little boy’s fear over took him looking eye to eye with the dog. Peter’s screams scared Toro and that was when the dog bit him, and in a moment, the bite became an attack. Toro’s teeth clamped down on Peter’s left forearm into the brachioradialis muscle and shook the boy as if he were a rag doll.
The neighbors came out when they heard the terror and ran out as fast as they could, bringing rakes and shovels and whatever else was handy to try to beat the dog off the boy. James Jordan ran into the garage, grabbed a tire iron, and arrived in time to see a couple of the neighborhood men trying to beat the dog off his screaming and bleeding son. Before James could arrive to crush the dog’s skull, Donald Bailey arrived with a .38 revolver and shot the dog in the head. Toro fell dead on top of Peter, who was crying and clutching his arm.
“I’m terribly sorry about this, James,” Donald said, smoking gun casually at his side. “I don’t know Toro got loose until I heard your boy screaming. I got my gun and ran here as fast as I could. Toro’s had all the shots. He’s not rabid, if that’s what you’re wondering. If you have to bring in the body to prove it, I understand.”
James said nothing, keeping his anger to himself. He picked up his son, who was now shaking after the dog’s teeth had been removed from his arm.
“Send me the bill, James. I’ll take care of it. I’m terribly sorry about this.”
James nodded and carried his boy to his car, then laid him in the back of the family’s Oldsmobile and rushed Peter to the hospital.
Peter was treated for shock upon arriving at Rush University Hospital. The attack left nerve damage leaving his arm permanently numb and unable to bend at a certain angle. The bite was bandaged and despite what Donald Bailey had assured them, Peter received rabies shots – fifteen in the stomach, and the boy would always remember those shots hurt worse than the bite itself. The family left the hospital the next day with his arm in a sling and a permanent fear and hatred of dogs.
2
Peter’s first time was terrifying.
His new neighbors down the road had a dog named Bowzer that not only barked when Peter walked by, but barked incessantly day and night. It was a broken record of barking, and the eleven-year-old, like the rest of the neighborhood, just wanted the dog to shut up.
His first time, when the urge was overpowering and overwhelming and he couldn’t resist, was on a night that just happened to be during the full moon. He dressed in black and snuck toward his neighbor’s yard, while Bowzer was still yapping away, chained the backyard, next to his Snoopy inspired doghouse.
It was easy for Peter to skulk around in the middle-class, suburban neighborhood, and as he crept toward Bowzer, the dog was yapping louder and harder, but since he was always yapping, his owners took no heed anything was wrong.
“Hiya boy,” Peter whispered to the dog.
Slowly and hesitantly, because he was still afraid of dogs, Peter reached for the back of Bowzer’s head and Bowzer took a nip at Peter. The boy groaned, retracted, and then smacked the dog. When Bowzer whimpered, Peter hit him two more times. The dog howled until Peter grabbed him again, and this time he held tightly to the scruff of his neck. Bowzer tried to move backwards, but it was chained to the ground and the boy’s grip was too tight. Bowzer didn’t whimper or yell again, not until the knife was shoved in his throat.
Blood splattered all over Peter’s face and clothes, and although Peter was expecting blood, but not that much and definitely not sprayed outward like that all over him. The scared boy almost cried out until he remembered where he was and what he had done. What was he going to do?
Oh my God! Oh my God! Peter’s mind was on the verge of panicking and panicking would get him caught.
The backdoor opened in pitch blackness and all Peter could see was a silhouette of the neighbor woman, who called out, “Bowzer! Bowzer! Are you all right?”
Oh shit, Peter thought. If they don’t hear from the dog in the next few seconds, the backyard light will go on and they would see what he did.
As the dog whined and whimpered one last time before dying, Peter remained frozen until the woman went back in the house, then put the knife back in his sheath. Then Peter bolted for home, running faster than he ever had before, and climbed back into his bedroom.
The clothes came off in a hurry and then he ran to the shower. Peter scrubbed himself in the shower and watched as the blood circled the drain.
Just like that scene in Psycho, Peter thought, then looked at the soap. The Ivory soap bar looked like a strawberry ice cream bar. How do you get blood off soap? The boy’s mind screamed. He did his best to wash the blood off the soap, but in the end, took the bloody soap bar with him and replaced it with a new one from the bathroom cabinet.
Peter took the bloody clothes and bloody soap bar and hid them in a plastic bag and disposed of them in the school’s incinerator the next day before school. Watching his clothes burn, Peter felt elated he had gotten away with it scot-free.
Later that afternoon, Peter was doing his homework in his bedroom, when his mom entered, delivering a load of laundry.
“Did you hear what happened to Bowzer?”
The boy, wide-eyed and ears perked, shook his head.
“Somebody killed it last night.”
“Oh my God,” Peter said, feigning surprise.
“As much as I feel for that family,” Linda said, as she was putting away the boy’s clothes. “That dog was getting on my nerves.”
Linda put away Peter’s underwear and found the boy’s knife. She picked up the knife and saw the dried blood on the sheath.
“Where did you get this?”
Peter shrugged, “I traded it with a friend at school.”
“Did you cut yourself?”
“Huh?”
“There’s blood on your knife.”
Peter’s face turned a bloodless white.
“Um, yeah… me and a friend at school decided to become blood brothers so we cut our fingers and I guess I got some on the knife.”
Linda shook her head. “Wash up for dinner.”
She kissed him on the forehead and left his bedroom.
3
Over the years, the blood lust became a compulsion, and Peter fought it until he could no longer resist the urge to kill. He couldn’t go more than a few months without resisting the compulsion, and over the years, he graduated from Weiner dogs to beagles to collies to Rottweilers and Dobermans.
The woods Albert Mullins and the other residents were so afraid of thrilled Peter, because it could be his own personal graveyard, and if any of the dog carcasses were found, their deaths would be blamed on this mythical beast, whatever it was, that had been scaring the locals for generations. Peter imagined if he ever encountered the so-called Beast, he could take off its m
ask to reveal ‘Old Man Whithers,’ just like in a Scooby-Doo cartoon.
Peter drove out to the eastern edge of the forest that was miles south of town and the perfect place to dispose of a body. He popped the trunk of his car and pulled out the bloody laundry bag. His dangling cigarette fell into the trunk.
“Shit!” The dog killer scurried to extinguish the cigarette before it set the car on fire, because that would really ruin his night. Once Peter smashed it out, he grabbed the bag and started walking before lighting another one. Peter took five steps and stopped.
“Dammit!” He said, before turning around. He forgot the shovel. He almost always forgot the shovel.
The Rottweiler in the bag didn’t put up much of a fight as the dog killer had hoped and that was a disappointment. Killing the gentle, kind, and stupid dogs was no longer any fun and hadn’t been for some years now. Killing Lassie and Rin-Tin-Tin had lost its thrill and only killing attack dogs was worth anything. However, of late, even killing attack dogs no longer produced the high he so craved. He may have to go to a higher level. Maybe a person next time.
At the edge of the forest, Peter stopped, dropped the bag and began to dig, humming the song, “Hurdy Gurdy Man” when he saw a red wolf in the distance. The full moon shone in its gleaming yellow eyes.
There were two wolves staring at him — a brown one and a red one — with burning yellow eyes, watching and growling at Peter, who smiled and poised the shovel as a weapon ready to strike. He gasped in delighted anticipation because he would graduate from dogs to wolves in a couple of minutes. This would be his best kill (or kills) yet.
“Come on, wolfie.” Peter whispered, tapping his fingers on the handle of the shovel.
Then, something happened Peter was not sure he saw correctly, because it looked like the brown wolf motioned with his head for the red wolf to get him.
They can think? Peter wondered. They can communicate?
He didn’t have too long to ponder as the red wolf charged towards him. Peter got his shovel ready and waited as the wolf ran toward him and pounced. Peter swung the shovel and knocked the wolf away.
