I can't remember what it's like to be human
I can't remember what it's like to be human. I have been a werewolf since the age of five. My first memory is my first transformation – the moment I became a monster. It was a night of screaming, or at least that's all I remember. I never stopped screaming. I guess the screams were all in my head, for a wolf cannot make a human noise. After that, the longest night of my life, I was myself again. Myself, but different. You can't go through something like that and stay the same person. Especially not at the age of five. Especially not when you have to repeat it each month, every month, until the day you die. Lying on the cold, hard concrete of the basement, I waited. Too weak to shout for help, let alone move, I waited. After what might have been minutes or hours the door opened from above me and I was flooded with light, light I had been praying for but how it hurt me, attacking my eyes and making me shrink away. In silence I heard my father's heavy footsteps stop as he loomed over me. Loud. Everything was so loud. But still, more than anything I wanted to hear his voice. Why wouldn't he talk to me? Was he angry? As disgusted by me as I was of myself? Then slowly, gently, he lifted me from the pool of blood I realised I had been lying in. I shrank into his warmth, breathing in the familiar, homely scent of his aftershave. But everything smelled different now. My father lay me down in my bed, still saying nothing. I drifted in and out of consciousness for the next two days, but he never left my bedside. When I woke up her was still there, watching over me, a grave look on his face. He would never leave me. But there was something missing. I cleared my dry throat, testing my voice, afraid that I had screamed it away forever. My father looked at me, and I thought I saw fear in his eyes – afraid of what I might say, of what I had become. When my voice came out it was nothing but a quiet, hoarse whisper. I did not recognise it.
'Where's Mummy?'
To this day I have never seen such a range of expressions flash across someone's face. There was relief – I was still Remus, a jolt of regret, and then I saw his heart break.
'She's gone, son. I'm sorry. She's gone. It's just you and me, now.'
Years of transformations have erased any memories of before that first night. I can no longer remember my mother.