Dissclaimer: All the characters are mine, the world is the property of White Wolf
The Boy and The Wolf
Werewolves. What do you see when I say that word? The Hollywood image of a giant salivating beast? Most would say that werewolves are men who can change into monsters, but everyone knows they don't exist. People who know real werewolves say they're monsters who can turn into men, but never to our faces.
They're both wrong. Werewolves are the shepherds of both worlds, the hunters of humanity, the ultimate predator. You are weak, you are prey and you know it; how do I know you feel like that? I am one. I've seen the looks you give me, how you skirt round me in corridors and I know what's in your heart.
The werewolf is the ultimate expression of rage beyond anything you can imagine, but what if you can't let it out, could you hold on if centuries of rage were urging you to kill and destroy?
I can't hold on, but I can't let it out…
I'm Mathew or Matt, fourteen years old and gifted, or cursed with lycanthropy. I'm a werewolf you moron, so get that blank look off your face or I will. I have black hair and everything else about me is average, average height, weight and build. If you saw me, the only thing you would notice would be my general disregard for anything you say, and the large muscles on my arms that come from punching a punching bag for two hours a day.
My day started, like every other, with the alarm at seven, waking me from dreams of running, hunting and killing. I turned the alarm off or at least tried to; my arm wouldn't bend back and couldn't reach. I opened my eyes, saw everything in shades of grey and closed them. I'd shifted in my sleep again, some day my mum would come in here and find a wolf in the bed or hairs all over the sheet; well, as soon as she found a bio-hazard suit.
Unless you hadn't guessed my room was a tip. Festering piles of what ever had been on the floor at the time, filled the room giving it a smell which was sort of a cross between rotting meat and mouldy carpet. The wolf loved it; the rest of the house said I needed to get an air lock for my door to stop the smell getting out.
I shifted back to human and turned off the alarm, then tried to get back to sleep. But the wolf was already wide awake and howling that it wanted to get up. I rolled over and grumbled 'just five more minutes', but the wolf started jumping around my head like an untrained puppy, barking that it smelt sausages. When it briefly stole my voice and I let out a little yip, I decided to get up; there was never any hope of sleep after the wolf was up.
Getting out of my room is difficult, however unlikely it seems you can get lost, you head towards the door and you find your way blocked by a mound of something; trust me you don't want to look. After wandering for a while you'll come across a gap between the piles and go through, only to find it's a dead end. So you keep searching until eventually, I find you and lead you out.
I however never get lost; I just followed the scent of my passing from yesterday, a perk of my condition. I picked up my bound set of clothes, a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt, a towel and go and have a cold shower which really annoys the wolf. Down stairs mum is cooking sausages in the kitchen; I hate it when he's right. And I wolf them down steadfastly ignoring the little voice in my mind saying they would have been better raw. I have considered going to the school psychiatrist to get rid of him but some how I couldn't quite imagine me saying to her "I'm a werewolf, how do I stop?"
"Have you done your homework dear?" my mum asked sitting down at the table sipping a cup of coffee.
"What do you think," I snapped back thinking about the English essay that was now serving as part of the jury rigging for my punch bag. She sighed, I felt sorry for her for having such a horrible son, briefly, and then the wolf reared its head. 'How can you feel sorry for her, she is weak, she is soft, she is pray'. No! I cried in the dark recesses of my mind, as I felt my teeth lengthen and fur pressing on the inside of my skin desperate to get out.
I fled from the table leaving my surprised mother behind, back into my room, back to my beloved punching bag; probably the only reason I hadn't gone insane by now. I pulled back to hit it focusing all my inhuman rage on it. Wham. It flew back hitting the wall, hard. Wham, I hit it again as it came swinging back. There was a shout from the next room, my father being woken as the plaster from the ceiling came down in showers.
"Matt, stop hitting that bloody punching bag!" I paused then attached a cinder block to the bottom of the bag with my home made hook. Wham, the bag hit the wall again but not as hard.
"Matt, this is your last warning!" I put the second cinder block on the bag, this time it didn't quite reach the wall. Good. I kept punching for the next half hour hitting the bag until my rage was spent, finally, after covering up the scratch marks from my suddenly very sharp nails I went back downstairs grabbed my bag and an orange, 'an orange!' cried the wolf, and left the house just in time to catch the bus.
And in the shadows of a dark alley two pairs of eyes watched. Two wolves were sitting there watching, they didn't speak, wolves can't speak but there was a conversation.
"That's him then." Said the one with bone white fur
"Yes, a rahu, I think." Replied the other with black fur doted with brown.
"I wonder how we missed him."
"It is strange, usually they have lost control by now, but you can tell he's cracking."
"Still it's odd we missed him."
"Never mind, it's been hard controlling the territory, since we lost the others."
"When should we tell him?"
"Soon after the rage has subsided, we can't risk losing anyone else."