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The snow fell. And it fell, and it fell, and fell. The gale-force wind blew against the walls and into the room. Through of a window of the two-story, rural Michigan home it seemed to like to fall on given how much fell on it, a young boy of fourteen with wild, curly brown hair took in the white-coated land. Within eyeshot was Lake Superior, frozen over and gleaming. The occasional car drove by, mostly from the first half of the century. From the boy's jacket, he pulled a cast iron ankh, suspended by a tied long string. A piece of paper was put on it with tape, which he pulled off and read.

I don't know who you are, but if you found this, I'm glad you did. We need some help. Put this on, get used to the after effects, and whenever you can, find the cave. When you're ready, I'll set it so that it goes back to before we needed you. It doesn't matter if it's tomorrow or ten years from now. I'll do whatever I can to stay alive, now you do your part.

D. te & S. A.

He, rightly or wrongly, surmised the people (or person) who wrote the note were loons. No necklace could possibly give any side effects, unless someone was dumb enough to eat the thing. He felt so safe in this assertion that he decided to put the necklace on to prove that it really was harmless. Slip it on, and … nothing. No mystical side effects, at least nothing he could tell.

His mother called him down from the first floor, most likely to tell him lunch was ready. He took one last look out through the window and took off his jacket, leaving him in a red-and-white striped turtleneck. He flew down the stairs to find out what she wanted, and to his lack of surprise, she had lunch ready. Twice baked potatoes. He liked them, not his favorite thing but they were definitely very acceptable.

"So, " she said inattentively, handling three other potatoes to add to the three on the counter for the rest of the family, "Nixon's been sworn in today. Guess we'll have to wait and see how his Presidency goes." She poured herself some coffee and considered, but ultimately rejected having a cigarette. "Your father should be getting home soon," she said. After drinking from her cup, she elaborated, "from work."

The boy did not like domestics. It bored him.

The mother made up two plates, one for her and one for her child. "Lawrence, make sure you don't go outside without some sort of insulation. It's. . .I'd say, 24 degrees outside? Even if it's just the old quadruple layer trick my parents taught me when I was a girl," she instructed her son.

"Alright, Mom," he said, "I'm very well aware that it's cold as balls outside, I won't die out there."

Mrs Abbott set her head in her hand, but didn't say anything more on the subject. Lawrence finished his potatoes and put the dish in the sink, before taking the stairs back to his room to get a wool pair of over-pants and his well insulated leather jacket. Once he was bundled up and gloved, he nearly flew outside. The jacket warmed up the ankh, keeping it from cooling him down. He felt a little prickling sensation over his face, and chalked it up to the cold.

Along the road in front of his house went by a couple of cars from the thirties and forties, obviously cars from his home town. If there were any cars from the sixties, or even late fifties, it would be an instant indicator they're from out of town. The sound of the cars faded as Lawrence walked from his house to the forest on the opposite side of town where a few of his friends were.

Each footfall gave a crunch in the snow and left a depression nearly six inches deep. His legs grew somewhat cold, but thankfully the fact he was wearing boots with his pants tucked inside negated some of that. The rest of him was varying degrees of warm, mostly his chest. His head was the coldest part, and that prickling feeling was still there. By the time he reached the forest, he was red-faced and shivering. His hands were in his pockets, and each of his breaths clouded his vision.

He didn't see anyone, but he did see a snowball headed straight toward his face. Unfortunately, he saw it as it was colliding with him. The ensuing snowball fight lasted for an hour. By the time they ended, they were all shivering and wet. The sound of a 1949 Chevrolet Suburban roared near the forest, drawing closer until. . .collision. The SUV crashed into a tree, nearly taking it down and crumpling in the hood. Lawrence, alongside his friends, rushed to see the scene. The driver had collided with the windshield, which was broken from the impact. There was no saving him.

Lawrence hopped onto the side of the car to look inside. There were three emptied beer bottles, confirming his suspicions. "Alright," he said, "it's best we leave. We should tell someone about this, at the very least." He hopped off the SUV, and ordered his friends to ditch with him, running back to town, screaming bloody crash.

Just a few hundred feet from town he started getting a pain in his back. Nevermind that, he thought, I just need to get to town. When they did, he nearly fell down, leaning against a house.

"Hey, Law, what's up with you right now?" Raymond Fournier asked, slowing down but not stopping.

"Severe and spontaneous back pain!" Lawrence yelled back.

He took a second to recover and ran as fast as he could to catch up with the others. They slowed down for a second so that he could get back to them, and they ran all the way to the sheriff's office, where they reported the incident. In return, each of them got fifty cents. They were dismissed, and they walked over to the diner for a soda.

"Hey, Law, your ears look a bit weird. They're attached now, they weren't just yesterday."

Lawrence felt his ear and it indeed was attached. Alongside the back pain, the attached earlobes were concerning. He wasn't dying though, he thought, so he shrugged it off, or at least tried to, He'd have to worry about it later. For now, he drank the soda he paid for. It was cold, but in a good way, in spite of the frigid outdoors.

The January air hit him like a sledgehammer after being in the warm diner for the last twenty minutes, as he said goodbye to his friends. From here, he was at a loss as to what to do. First, he made a snow man in his neighbor's yard. Then, he tried curling with the snowballs. No luck, it was actually a bit boring. When all else failed, he simply walked out to Lake Superior to try to find excitement, and while it certainly looked really nice, and in fact he wouldn't mind painting it, he just didn't feel it. Finally, he just gave up and went back inside, back to the warmth of his room.

Inside his room, he gave himself a good looking over with a pocket mirror. His face was already patchy with stubble, and his mouth was poking out a little bit more. His ears were definitely attached now, and he worked up the courage to check out why his back was, and quite frankly continued to hurt. He felt his tailbone and there was a protrusion. He felt crazy but he almost felt like he could control it with some thought. All that could be done now is see where it went. As for the time, it was one of the things that went. Despite being only nine when the crash happened, it was already three, and he didn't get much done. So, he wrote down the day's events in his notebook, airing his curiosity to his changes.

When he set it down, his hand brushed against the paper from earlier. After effects. Could this be the after effects? Or just the beginning? He had to think about it. In the meantime, he took off the extra layers and the boots. He took the opportunity to look at his arm. There was more hair there than usual. Oddly, a lot of this hair was silvery in color, or at least grayer than the hair on his head. He paced around the room for a little before ultimately deciding that he wasn't going anywhere today, might as well fall asleep. He shed his pants and socks and jumped in the bed, happy for the warmth it provided. It didn't take too long for him to fall asleep, either.


January 21st was all in all a normal day, had it been for the fact he didn't wake up two feet smaller, with a tail. Unfortunately for him, he did. His body was unrecognizable, essentially an odd, wolfish creature on two feet with blue fur. There was a sort of calcified mass on each of his wrists, and his hands were really not even hands anymore, more like paws. Getting up, he was left in just a sweater and the necklace, nothing else fit him. It didn't matter too much given he was now a wolfish creature with blue fur that did an okay job at covering him up, but the gesture at least would have been nice.

As for why he wasn't freaking out, either it was a dream (which it didn't seem to be; he could read something twice), or it was real, and he needed to spend his energy on returning, or at least getting used to the new body. Since he knew his dad was gone to work, and his mother and sister were asleep, he grabbed a sheet of paper and a pencil and wrote a note explaining his problem. Rather, he tried, but his handwriting was exceptionally poor due to the fact he didn't really have a thumb anymore. At least it was still legible, so he grabbed some tape and affixed it to his door, some of his new fur sticking to the tape. At least it was easy proof, without them actually seeing him. Then again, it's not like it couldn't have been any other blue strands. He wrote a bit in his notebook, but didn't ultimately have a lot to do. He tried card games, but that got old, then he tried drawing, but he wasn't great at that. So, finally, he decided to go out to get a glass of water. Now that was something that was risky and exciting, at least to a fun-starved 14 year old recently turned into a wolfish creature.

He made sure to not make any noise, which was easier considering he had much less mass. But not perfect. He heard his mother get up just as he was getting his tail through the door. He barely had time to close the door and walk to his chair before she left her room, read the note on his door, and opened it to see if he was okay.

He forgot to lock the door.