by Stead, Nick
It had me convinced I was meant to be at the town’s event. My delirious state of mind made me foolish enough to think I might laugh along with them, and rediscover how to fill that void with something other than anger. I abandoned my kill and started toward the festival, certain it would give me the connection to humanity I sorely longed for.
My victim lay dying behind me, his life fading as fast as the blood leaking from his ruined body. Violent shivers racked his muscles as he succumbed to both 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 life I had ripped from him. Then the street grew still and quiet once more, fresh snow covering the corruptive stain I’d created on its white blanket.
My flesh shifted back to its human shape, but again my feverish mind failed to consider the problems my appearance would bring, with my lack of clothes and bloodstained 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. The humans had gathered there in their hundreds, despite the heavy snow. Winter tried to push me back with a strong gust of wind, but I was oblivious even to the cold in my desperation to join them. I pushed on.
Luke was quick to find me, his voice full of excitement as he 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 too interested in the town event taking place to press him for answers right then.
A local band played on a stage and burger vans lined either side, a crowd packed in between them. Those on the stage noticed me first. The bassist’s eyes met mine as he scanned the throng and his fingers fumbled his guitar strings. It was as though his hands had suddenly forgotten how to play. He gawped at me in shocked silence, taking in my naked, gore-spattered body. The rest of the band started shooting him furious looks until they followed his gaze and lost their own grips on the music. Instruments went quiet and the lyrics died in the singer’s throat.
The crowd turned to see what they were looking at with shouts of “What the hell?” and the like. But they also fell silent when they caught sight of me standing there.
I was met with more stares, just like the night I’d entered the pub. Except 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 continued to stare in horror or morbid fascination. A few 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 to come rushing to your aid. No one wants anything to do with someone who doesn’t fit into the nice little boxes 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. Blood turned to something molten and my eyes became fiery pits, the snow turning to steam on my bare skin. My bloodlust rose up with it, and it was pressing for the change. I gave in to 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 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.
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.”
Luke’s eyes shone with a bloodlust of their own. “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 rushed out of me in response to his words. Then the screaming began, and the chaos. The humans scattered like any other panicked herd, and my heart sang.
I bounded forward and fell upon them, slashing with clawed hands and ripping 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 with disappointment until she began to fade, drowning in the darkness I’d fallen back into. Luke stayed to watch again, though I soon lost sight of him in the pandemonium. Most of the terrified humans were fighting 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 began to pile up, 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. Others I left broken and bloody but still alive when they hit the ground, in the grip of a long 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, reaching over 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 but I wouldn’t let go. A smell like roasting pork filled my nostrils and made me drool with hunger, though it was tainted somewhat by the sulphurous stink of his hair sizzling. Then he went limp and I dropped him to take more victims. I’d eat only when the last one was dead. None would escape my wrath.
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. The sight of them standing there was more infuriating than anything. They should be fleeing before me, not recording videos!
The band members hadn’t yet had chance to exit the stage and join the stampeding throng. It had been most packed around there, the humans 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 fo
rward, killing several in the crowd as I made for the stage. Some part of me 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 lead guitarist I grabbed by the throat with one hand, and tore into his belly with the other. My claw slid through the soft flesh as easily as a knife through butter, opening up a huge gash which spewed blood. I plunged my hand inside and ripped out his entrails, then stuffed the body of his beloved guitar in the hole. He was still screaming when I turned to the bassist.
Since this man had been the first to stare, I gripped his head in my hands and drove the claws of my thumbs into his eyes. More screams rang out and he writhed in my grasp, but it was too late for his sight. I dropped him to the floor and watched as he tried to crawl away, blind and helpless. Then I stamped on him, hard enough to shatter his spine and render his limbs useless. His body went limp, but the screaming continued.
Finally I advanced on the drummer. He was on his feet and ready to run when I seated him 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, yet 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 wouldn’t get far. Winter’s blanket was too deep for them to escape by any method other than on foot, and it made them even slower and clumsier than usual.
The massacre spilled into all the surrounding streets, as if the first blood spilled in the square had been 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.
Where the Slayers were in all this I can’t say. Either any that happened to be in the area had died before they’d had chance to draw a weapon, or they had forsaken this particular town for some twisted reason. Not that it mattered. They weren’t going to disturb my carnage for once, and there would be no help for these people. All the humans 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, 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 focused 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 and pulling her to the ground. She screamed and cried for help, reaching out towards the kid who 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 to the ground.
I grabbed hold of an arm and ripped it from the socket, crunching with new hunger. The boy went into shock then, his breaths rapid and shallow. He was dead by the time I tore open his back.
Flesh shone beneath the streetlight and vertebrae poked through. I resisted the temptation to devour more of the meat and turned to the girl, fixing her with my murderous gaze as she struggled to rise on her ruined leg.
The limb gave way and she fell back down, onto her side, covering her head in her hands as if that would protect her from this living nightmare. I grabbed her good leg and chewed through more muscle and bone, 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 were no longer recognisable, the lighter hairs 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 senses 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 it had still been the province of the living.
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, the despair on her face plain to see. 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. Finally she grew still and all was quiet, save for my panting.
“Must it always end in blood?” Lizzy asked sadly.
Blood and death, that seemed to be all that was left to me. But I didn’t say it out loud. Even my anger was draining back into the emptiness, and I knew better than to try and cling to it by then. I would only fail as I had so many times since leaving my hometown, so why bother to continue struggling to hold onto it? I let it fade away, staring down at the tattered ruins of yet more lives my rage had claimed.
Flaps of torn flesh blew freely in the wind, a ghastly flag to my savagery. Maybe the vampires were right, maybe I was no more than a beast, feral and brutal. I stared down at my bloodied, monstrous hands as if, even more than a year after falling victim to the curse, I still could not believe they were my own.
Whilst no mortal could ever match the beauty of the vampires, the girl I’d slaughtered had been quite pretty by human standards, which I noticed in a detached sort of way. Half her face remained untouched, the right eye still whole and not yet dulled, the flesh pale in death but unmarred by even the ravages of acne, perfect and unblemished like a porcelain sculpture. The rest of her was unrecognisable as male or female, or even human, her body so badly mutilated that she’d been robbed not only of her life, but of that beauty she’d once held.
My rage might seem dead to me once the gaping chasm engulfed it and the emptiness returned, but, when it did rekindle, it seemed nothing could withstand my wrath. I’d once thought becoming a werewolf would be a gift. It hadn’t taken long to learn why it was always talked of as a curse. This power I’d been granted was destructive and nothing good could come of its ravaging
nature. I’d known that when I’d come to realise I could no longer live among humans, unless I wanted more people I cared about to get hurt. And I was reminded of it once again. I wasn’t safe to be around mortals, the Slayers posing as much threat to any around me as my curse. It could only ever end in death, either at my jaws or at the hands of the Slayers who had already proven they would go to such lengths to end the curse for good. The hallucination of Lizzy was right; how many more must die before I surrendered myself to my lonely fate?
It seemed I couldn’t tear my gaze from that one perfect eye, and in that instant she was no longer some unfortunate stranger that happened to cross my path, but Amy’s friend, Mel, lying on the ground waiting to be buried. It had snowed that night as well, a night that now seemed a lifetime ago.
In the midst of all the grief and the guilt I’d probably thought about how the world would never know such beauty again, but that was foolish. There were billions of girls on the planet, many of them blessed with good looks. There would be more, equally as beautiful as the girls and women I’d stolen such beauty from. Was that all mortals were? Just another of their species briefly walking upon the Earth until death claimed them, each just another face in the crowd, unremarkable and so very alike hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of others around them? And what did that make me, a being with no foreseeable end and no others of his kind? I had never truly been one of them, the blood of wolves making me different to the sheep I’d tried so hard to imitate and fit in with. So why did I still torment myself with that which was denied to me, even before my wolfish half was awoken?
“It’s a terrible thing, to walk this world alone,” came a male voice from somewhere behind me, as if he had heard my thoughts. But it wasn’t Luke this time. I hadn’t noticed the human since I’d lost him in the chaos I’d created. “Do you not tire of it?”
“Better this way,” I grunted. “I can’t control it. Friend or foe, my bloodlust claims all. This world holds no place for one such as me. I have no place among humans, nor among wolves. The vampires shun me. So who else can I turn to? I am the last of my kind. To live in this void, between worlds but never truly a part of any of them, is to be alone.”
