'No need to ask what they're here for,' her mother muttered, nudging her by the elbow.
She looked up and followed her gaze.
The others were waif-thin and pale, to a man - or rather, to a woman, which they mostly were. This deep in the hospital, and with night lying black outside the window, there was only strip lighting to see by (which, to be fair, made everyone look unnatural). The chairs were laid out in rows, or lined the walls between doors. One woman, with her face hidden by a curtain of long black hair, was reading a magazine-ad about giving blood. Opposite, a wan couple sat next to a poster about S.T.D's, looking as if they'd just come from the opera.
Hoping for the right test-results this time, she thought.
The man slouched, a baleful eye fixed on the dark window, sucking sourly at his cheekbones, and his pretty young bride shot nervous looks at him, brushing at the love-bite on her neck.
Everyone else, she noticed, was very well-dressed. Even the scruffy ones had a sort of calculated, constructed look about them, as if they were slatternly by design and not by accident - by design-ers.
Assailed by self consciousness, she wriggled about on her moulded plastic seat, and resisted the urge to curl up into a ball.
As often happened these days, she felt that herself - her body - was all wrong. Her clothes were too tight, or too itchy, or they clung in the wrong places, were all misshapen. Wished she had some jewellery she could wear. She had felt fine when she left the house, and even looking in the mirror, before coming out – which was something none of these people, she realised, ever had to worry about. But now it felt as if her hair was trying to make roots down her spine, and she realised that she hadn't cleaned the dirt from under her fingernails properly.
She fiddled with her nails, and read the poster next to the couple, the one about the S.T.D's.
Bollocks, she thought.
It was the 'S' that was the important bit. She looked at the nervous young bride, with her hopeful neck. Even if that woman didn't get a positive result, this time, she was advertising with that love-bite that she could.
Bugger.
She thought about her own neck, scarred only by shaving rash.
Why didn't I wear a polo-neck?
A.H.A.H! Said the poster next to the magazine-woman, as she licked a dark red fingertip with a dark red tongue, and turned the page. Down the poster, she read the advice to the recently infected sufferer, about 'Aichmophobia! Heliophobia! Alliumphobia! Hagiophobia!'
The sucking sound of an opening door broke her concentration, and a nurse in scrubs appeared, to call her name. Obediently, she got off the furniture, waited for her mother to fold up her newspaper, and followed her through the door.
**
The doctor, when she went in, was in plain-clothes - her white coat draped across the back of her chair, all the better to show off the plaster on the inside of her elbow. She looked pretty drawn, underneath her Asian complexion. Of course, she thought. The Blood Drive.
'Lauren Talbot?' The doctor said, looking between them.
'Yeah. Hi.'
She reached out.
The doc made a valiant effort not to let it show on her face, but as they shook hands, she could tell from the look in her eyes that she'd felt the strangeness in her palm.
'So!' She said, falsely bright, as she took her white-coated seat behind the desk.
'Lauren. What can I do for you?'
She glanced across at the other person in the room, a rotund woman in her mid fifties, who was sitting on the examination table, next to a wooden stake. She wore a dog collar under her scrubs, and there was a bible in her hand. The woman waved at her cheerily, as she looked, and a tiny silver crucifix twinkled briefly before it went to get lost in her bosom once again.
'Just a precaution.' Said the doctor, in her well-spoken English. 'We find some of the donors get nervous. So, Lauren, what seems to be the problem?'
Her mother nodded at her, encouraging, and she took a breath.
'Erm… Well. About a week ago, I woke up in the morning, and my bed was covered in blood…'
She laid it all out, all the gory details, while the doctor hmmed and nodded and made notes in the file in front of her. As she spoke, her mother added in useful yet irrelevant details ('well, she's always had such a good nose for smells' ) as if she wasn't in the room.
'Obviously,' the doctor said, as soon as she'd finished. 'I can tell just by looking at you that you have a problem…'
Lauren blinked.
Oh. Great. She thought, as the woman opposite her launched into a speech.
Thanks, Doc. Thank you for your tact.
'…So, have you come into contact with any wild animals, lately?' The doctor was saying.
'Are you thinking Rabies?' She asked, trying to sound genuinely concerned.
Doc's eyebrows shot up. 'Oh no!'
Very carefully, and very clumsily, the doctor laid out a diagnosis for her disease, even trying to explain it in the non-medical terms she would understand.
'Obviously, when you hit puberty, hair does start to grow in certain places,' she raised her arm, 'in your armpits, and the pubic area, and so on: so really, what you have - is just a case that the hair is moving from there to other places. And there is more of it.'
My God. Lauren thought, astounded. I didn't know they gave doctorates in the 'Bleeding Obvious' now.
As oppose to just the 'Bleeding…'
But her mother nodded, and listened very carefully as Doc spoke about the clinical terms 'lunacy' and 'lycanthropy', and the history of legal trials. And then her mother told the doctor about the newspaper cutting she had about this latest pandemic.
Pandemonium was more like it.
Over her head and right in front of her face, they discussed her night-time habits and the unfortunate impact this would have on her already dwindling social life. Or 'un-life', as she supposed it was now. Or would have been, had it existed in the first place.
Clearly, there were no clothes which could stand up to the stresses of an instant change in shape and size, so the doctor recommended they buy lots of big, cheap, shapeless and nondescript things, in bulk. Fashion was irrelevant - who cares what a dog wears? (There was a slogan in that). Obviously, nights out were out of the question, and regular periods spent sleeping rough and eating anything she came across meant she'd have to get used to the idea of smelling like a rubbish heap.
Why, how wonderful and character-building, to remove the possibility of shallowness by removing the possibility of ever being presentable in the first place. What a marvel!
The consensus seemed to be that she was no longer to be considered a card-carrying member of the human race. Women would find her adorable, and amusing in a sort of pitiful way, and befriend her with ease - for there is no threat of competition from someone who may be relied upon to eat their own sh!t. Men would tune her out of sight and sound, as if she were a much older woman, and thus be filled with feelings of tedium and unease whenever forced into conversation with her. Her relationship with children was to be a punching-bag and/or guard-dog, until such time as she was able to squeeze out some pups of her own (which would probably have to be with the aid of donated sperm, unless a suitable dog-botherer could be found).
Lauren listened, while they laid out the glorious glittering path of the rest of her un-existence, and realised that there must be a God - for, truly, only an Omniscient Being could have put this much craftsmanship into f*cking someone's life up.
'Maybe I have the wolf-man gene.' She said at one point, trying to lighten her own gloom.
The doctor and her mother stopped talking, and looked at her.
She wondered if they'd actually forgotten she was there.
'Pardon?' Said the doc.
'I'm just-' Lauren mumbled.
For Christ's sake, don't make me repeat it!
'I'm just saying: maybe I have the wolf-man gene.'
They looked at her some more.
'No.' Said the doctor.
Well, quite.
So. Lauren thought miserably. Humour. Not a cure.
At least she didn't hit me on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper.
Eventually they left, with a prescription for three bottles, containing worming tablets, extra-strength mouthwash, and an anti-flea shampoo so strong that it gave her a headache to smell it. The woman behind the counter, who arranged for another appointment, was wearing a pair of fake teeth on top of her canines. You could tell, because they clicked and fell when she spoke. They made her sound as if she had braces.
'Ith a month'th time alright for you?' She asked, indicating the calendar behind her, which had pictures of the moon's phases above each day.
'Oh yes.' Said Lauren, resisting the urge to lisp. 'Fine. Thank you.'
**
In the car on the way home, her mother tried to cheer her up by mentioning all the money they'd save on toiletries now, and maybe it'd do her some good to get some exercise of an evening, and wouldn't it be nice for her to be able to blend in with all these new-fangled people?
'You can be a fang-bangle!' She chortled.
Lauren rested her face on her fist, and stared glumly out of the window.
Up in the dark sky the moon kept pace with their car, racing past the clouds.
It looked full, but wasn't - she knew. It was waning.
Bloody brilliant. She thought.
Just when I'm actually in the mood to rip someone apart, it's not my time of the month any more.
Her mother pressed the button to open her window, and accidentally opened the passenger-side one. Lauren felt her slide a look at her, as she adjusted the gap, to reduce the amount of cold breeze buffeting her forehead.
Does she think if she opens it too far I'll stick my head out and slobber down the wind? She wondered, feeling particularly uncharitable.
As they wound through the suburbs they passed a boy and girl on the pavement, wandering around in the dark. They were walking hand in hand, swigging from a bottle of White Lightning and eating sweets out of a paper bag. Lauren watched them in the wing-mirror, and thought: Who eats gingerbread-men in this day and age?
'Are you alright, love?' Her mother asked, after too long a pause.
'No.' Lauren answered. 'I'm wondering what Dad's going to say. I bet he'll think it's marvellous. He'll be getting me a dog-whistle so he won't have to shout when he calls me.'
'No he won't!'
'No?'
'…He might clear you a space in the kennel though.'
Lauren sighed, a long and bitter gust of breath.
'Can we not make jokes about me being cursed?' She asked. Was it too much to ask?
'I'm not!' Her mother cried, mortified. 'I didn't mean it like that.'
Silence fell again, a stinging one, both parties too hurt to unravel it. They drove on until the heat of guilt and ire had faded from their faces.
It was Lauren who eventually broke the ice.
'It's just: if I'm going to be a freak,' she started, 'why can't I be a normal freak? Why does everyone else get to be all dark and gaunt and interesting and go to night-clubs and live in castles and have people falling all over them because they're so cool? All I get to do is run around naked in the freezing cold and eat Pedigree f*cking Chum…'
'Not necessarily!' Her mother said, infuriatingly reasonable.
'Oh!' Lauren scoffed. 'If you say 'Baker's Complete' I will f*cking scream.'
'Don't you mean 'howl'?'
Lauren felt ready to bite. 'For f*ckssake, mum!'
'Oi! Language!'
They were driving through the woods now, and the moon flew on overhead, peeping down through a latticework of black branches. Eyes looked at them from the shadows between tree trunks; there was no trail of white for them to follow any more. Her mother turned the radio on, and it fell at random onto Radio 4. Desert Island Discs was playing, and an old African-American vamp, who'd been there, done everything and seen it all, was laying down her favourite tracks. The first was an old blues song. By Howlin' Wolf.
Lauren shook her head.
Just because I'm a paranoid monster, she thought, doesn't mean the world isn't out to get me.
She laughed, and her mother reached over and patted her on the knee.
'Never mind, dear.' She said, in a voice as warm and comforting as a cup of tea.
'I'll tell you what.' She added, as the owls hooted and the moon flew and the black trees creaked and Mad-Axe Max cackled, as they passed his Shed of Inventing.
'Next full moon, let's go and see your grandma…'
The End.