Become

The story of Sam's attack, how he became a wolf. I don't own Shiver.

The mid-February morning was cold and spring was slowly coming. It made me look forward to summer even more. To the school-less days, warm weather, and playing outside. Today was just going to be another day in second grade at Duluth Elementary School. Being seven, I was impatient to get the day over-with.

A cool breeze blew suddenly, I could feel it though my coat. I shivered and scanned for the bus. It was late again. There were only houses and streets that consumed the quiet neighborhood. Movement was nonexistent. There were few kids close to my age in this part of the block, who rode the bus. Either that or they had older siblings that could take them to school if their parents couldn't. Today it was just another boy and me.

The kid beside me sighed; he was trying not to stare at me again. I didn't have to worry or wonder why. I knew what he was always staring at, at what caught many people's attention. My eyes...my golden-yellow eyes... I was an odd child, a mop of shaggy black hair and yellow eyes. People's reactions to my eyes vary from glances to outright staring. Many asked if I wore contacts. Sometimes I said yes and then sometimes I said no. Lately I was sticking with no, with the truth. I only said yes so they would stop asking so many questions, it got annoying after awhile.

"Finally," muttered the kid suddenly. He stood up and put on his backpack. I turned to see the big yellow and black bus drive towards us with its flashing red lights, coming to take us to school. I silently agreed with him. When the bus stopped at the curb, the other boy charged onto the bus and out of the cold. As I stepped towards the bus and about to board, I heard screams.

I was knocked to the ground. Luckily, I fell into the soft grass. I heard more screams, snarling, and the ripping sound of clothes. Something was pinning me to the ground and it was heavy. I saw flashes of black fur and white fangs. Then I felt pain, lots of pain where I felt I was being ripped apart and pinned down like prey. I felt teeth and claws tearing at my coat, trying to reach my flesh. I felt the wetness of my blood soak my clothes where the teeth had been successful at breaking my skin. I screamed and cried, fighting to get free. I tried to push the thing holding me down, off but the thing was too strong. Shouts, screams, and snarling started to all fade to a buzz. I felt weak and fragile, helpless and trapped. Then all went black.

I woke up to the sound of my mom crying and both my parents holding my hands, which felt cold and limp. At first, it was hard to open my eyes. When I could, I saw that I was in a hospital bed. I saw that I was bound in bandages and my body ached with numbed pain and stiffness.

My dad was sitting in a chair on my left, holding my hand and staring unseeingly at the floor, deep in his own world. My mom was holding my right with one of her hands and with the other, she held it over her mouth and with her eyes closed. She was crying heavily. Neither saw that I was awake. I tried to speak but I coughed instead; it hurt. My parents sprung toward me and fussed over me.

"Oh, sweetie, my poor baby…" whispered my mom as she kissed my forehead and brushed some of my black hair out of my face.

"Hey buddy," said my dad. His voice was rough and hoarse like he had been crying, too. 'Why?' I wondered.

"What happened?" I tried to ask. The words came out slurred and weak, like a soft dying whisper in the wind. They shared a look. I could not tell if it was of concern or something else. Dad spoke up.

"Two wolves attacked you, Sam. The neighbors saw them run through their backyards. You lost a lot of blood but not badly injured. No one knows why they attacked."

Wolves...The black fur and white fangs had been a wolf. I didn't know what to think. So I just nodded as Mom kissed my hand that she was holding and told me to get some rest. Comforted that I was not alone, I fell asleep.

I went home later that week. Oddly, the bites had healed quickly and the hospital saw no reason to allow me to go home to finish healing, at least not without rabies shots.

The bites from the wolves became scars within a week and I became sick with something close to the flu. Exhaustion, hot/cold shakes, nausea and aching made me tired and weak. Neither my parents nor I connected me being sick to the attack. No one else but my friends knew I was sick, everyone else thought I was not at school 'cause of the attack. Everyone knew of the attack, it was all over the newspapers. Some of the news people were still trying to get an interview with me. Cause of that, mom told me not to answer the door or the phone. I obeyed and stayed in my bed, watching TV when something good was on or sleeping.

Over that time, I got sicker and sicker. My parents didn't know what to do. Then it happened, the night I first changed. It hurt so much. I remember screaming and crying when my mom just watched on, terrified at what she was seeing. I turned into a wolf. Immediately, I had tried to go to my mom, tried to seek her out to lessen my fear, and she had bolted to where my dad was, screaming his name. He and my mom saw me turn back. Because changing caused so much pain, I blacked out.

When I came to, I found out that my parents had locked me in my room. They only gave me food when I was asleep or passed out from the constant changing. They thought I was possessed. I thought it, too. If I was not in pain, I was terrified and disorientated by what was happening to me. Then the changing lessened and I got better from being sick for many weeks. It was not until it was spring when I stopped changing all together and my parents believed I was cured. During that summer, they couldn't hide the fact that they were still wary of me. Which made me depressed and feeling unwanted. I rarely went outside alone, they were sacred it would happen again.

However, like always the warm weather slowly grew colder with each passing month as the seasons changed from summer to fall. Me becoming a wolf in the winter before had become a faded feverish dream that I had worked hard to forget about it in the spring. Then the nightmarish dream came back to haunt me during the first cold chill. I was walking with my parents to the house after a late night out when it started to happen again, for me to change again.

I had started to scream in pain as my dad picked me up and hurried me into the house, out of the view of the neighbors. I became a wolf the second we stepped foot into the house. My dad half dropped me and half threw me to the floor. My mom shrieked and closed the door behind her. I just laid there shaking in pain and fear, until I changed back and blacked out. To my parents, the demon had returned. They tried to get the church to do something about me, but the people wrote my parents off as crazy.

Then one day after I had passed out from becoming human again, I woke with my dad carrying me and following my mom as she briskly walked into the bathroom. I didn't understand what was going on. It didn't take long to find out. They tried to drown me. They thought I was possessed, a demon. Because of their thoughts, they tried so many times to kill me or free me of the curse. The most memorable was when they counted backwards to cut my wrists at the same time and then held me under water. All that would happen is that I gained horrible scars, both mental and physical.

At the time it had seemed like it would go on forever, but it didn't. I was saved from my own parents. A neighbor heard my screams, and they called Child Services. A lawyer called Beck took me away but he didn't take me to a foster home or anything. He ended up being like me, a werewolf. There were others too. Beck explained everything about being a werewolf and about how the longer you're a werewolf as years go by the warmer it has to be to be human. He and the others raised me to become who I am today, educated as a human with knowledge and a wolf with rank and survival skills.

My life had changed so much since the attack. My parents were in jail with life sentence. The cold made me change me into a wolf, but the warmth made me myself again. I gained a large family, the pack. Other good things happened also. I met Grace. She, also, saved me from losing my humanity ever again.

The End.

Feb 26 2011- edited. Check out profile for a link of an fictional interview with Sam and Grace I found a while ago.

To all, please comment/review. : )