A Nameless Land, Chapter 1

Wake up, son of mine.
Momma got something to tell you.
Changes come.
Life will have its way with your pride, son.
Take it like a man.

Hang on, son of mine.
A storm is blowing on the horizon.

Changes come.
Keep your dignity.
Take the high road,
Take it like a man.

Listen up, son of mine.
Momma got something to tell you.
All about growing pains.
Life will pound away where the light don't shine, son.

Take it like a man.
Suck it up, son of mine.
Thunder blowing up the horizon.

Changes come.
Keep your dignity.
Take the high road.
Take it like a man.

Momma said like the rain,
this too shall pass like a kidney stone.
It's just a broken heart, son.
This pain will pass away.
-Momma Sed, by Puscifer.

The storm was of a sort few had seen in many years. It had begun the day before, and only grown stronger through the night. Now it was darkening once more, and the storm showed no signs of slowing.
He watched it from his bedroom, fascinated by the rivers rolling down the glass. It cast a black shadow into the room, ran an image of the rain across his face. He felt his heart speed up as he saw a bright white flash. He closed his eyes and counted.
“One... Two... Thr-”
An explosive roll of thunder shook the walls and the glass, setting off car alarms and shattering some of the larger windows in the area. The crackling, tumbling explosion seemed to go on for minutes, spreading across the skies like a shout from god. Soon it lost its steam, and the boy exhaled.
Three miles.
He wiped sweat from his brow and looked at his bed. He needed to get to sleep, as he had to go to school in the morning. But the storm was keeping him up. Not out of fear, so much -the thunder scared him quit a bit, but he found the rest of it to be very interesting. It seemed an extremely otherworldly state to occur in nature so frequently. It almost felt like a disrespect to not pay attention to the storm while it was about. But if he stayed up, he wouldn't be able to focus at all for school.
Before he could really mull over the decision, another flash of light blinded him, and he closed his eyes. He didn't even finish the first count before the thunder hit, and he quaked at the loudness of it. The heart of the storm was directly over him now. He ran back into bed and laid himself out flat -an attempt to make his body as little a target for a lightning strike as possible. He'd already made sure any electronics in his room were unplugged, and any sticks or pointy things were horizontal with the ground.
A candle burned in the corner, giving the wall a ghostly orange flicker.
Lightning was not something he feared, he was just superstitious. It made him feel like a fool, but for every strike that didn't obliterate him, he considered his paranoia validated.
Soon there were cracks coming over couple of seconds, and he gave up counting entirely. He pulled his head up under the covers and tried to think of a happy place, but didn't have the focus.
“Alright!” he said. “I'm afraid of lightning! I'll admit it!”
He said this as though it were an offering of his pride to whatever force managed the storm raging above. In his mind it seemed like the smart thing to do.
It didn't happen immediately, but the dirge of lightning strikes passed. The rain was coming just as hard as ever.
He felt his body still quivering from the fear and tried to force himself to sleep.
A pair of cats started fighting in an alley between two apartment buildings, and the screeching howl sent shivers down his spine. A horrid fear crept over him, like there was a presence in his room, watching and making silent threats.
Finally he jumped out of bed and left his room, hoping to find solace and hot chocolate in the kitchen.
But when he opened the door, he found his mother sitting at the computer desk, sipping from a steaming mug and looking out through open blinds at the porch and the torrent beyond. He tried to close the door before she turned, but didn't make it. She looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
“What are you doing up, young man?”
Her tone of voice was amiable, but not without authority.
“I couldn't sleep.”
“The storm?” she asked.
He nodded.
She looked back outside. “It runs in the family, I suppose.” She held out an arm, and the boy hugged her. She rubbed his shoulders, and he already felt the fear leaving him.
“You know, I haven't seen a storm like this since I was a girl. I was your age back then, you know.” He nodded, and his mother continued. “It's been a long time since I could really... feel a storm.”
She took a breath, words hovering at her lips, but she looked at her oblivious son and held back.
“How about,” she said, “I make you some cocoa, and we have a chat.”
He looked up at her eagerly. “Can I put on some Beatles?”
She smiled. As she went to the kitchen she said, “Alright, but not too loud. Your father's still sleeping.”
He nodded and went into the living room. As he heard water being poured and the oven being clicked on, he pulled out a metal case from beneath a turntable and opened it, revealing a small cache of ancient vinyl records. He sifted through them until he found the blue album, with the four mop-tops looking down from the inside corner of a hotel building. He removed the second vinyl from its sleeve -marveling at its translucent blue color- and looked at its label. He found his track and set it on the table, pressed the on button that started the table turning, then pulled the needle over and found the second large space between grooves and set it there. The last haunting seconds of the previous song played, then silence.
And then While My Guitar Gently Weeps began.
He smiled and jumped up onto the couch, pulling the blanket folded on its back over himself, huddling into a cocoon. He made a place for his mother, waiting eagerly for her return.
He felt a twinge of sadness at the song, but enjoyed it all the more. The wailing guitar line pulled something out of him that he didn't normally feel, and it was nice to be in that place, if even for just a few minutes.
If life could be like music, everything would be okay.
His mother came back into the room holding two mugs, and handed one over to her son. He cradled it and sipped cautiously, scalding his lip even still.
“Careful, it's hot!” she said, laughing as he gave a small shout. She put an arm around him and pulled the blanket up around their knees, and he cradled up next to her as close as he could without spilling his cocoa.
For a short time they could hear only the soft music and the pattering of rain, and the distant sound of thunder, and it was very peaceful. The white noise of the world dissolved his need to understand, and he closed his eyes.
“Kenny,” she said.”
He opened his eyes and looked up at her. She never used his name like that.
“There's something I've been meaning to talk to you about.”
Ken looked back down and felt his throat start to choke up.
“Is it about dad?”
She nodded. “He's been...”
After a few moments of silence, Ken hazarded, “In pain?”
She nodded again. “The mines have been getting to him. With the war going on now, they've made your father work twice as many hours for half the pay. He tried to get a transfer but they said someone with his condition can't work anywhere else. So it's... it's a bad situation, Kenny. He hasn't been doing so well.”
Ken stared intently at the spinning album -now playing Don't Let Me Down- and trying hard not to think about what she was saying.
“Kenny?” she said cautiously.
“You said this wouldn't happen.”
“What?”
“When we moved here,” he said. “You said this wouldn't happen.”
She nodded slowly and cradled her son's head.
“I said what I did because I didn't think things would be so bad when we got here. I'm sorry I lied to you, Kenny.”
“Can't we move away again?”
A tremble went through her voice. “I wish it were that easy, baby. We left the last time because we had no choice. Now, we have obligations. I'm responsible for a lot of people at work. And your father... as strapped as they are for workers at the mine, he'd never be able to get another job if he just up and quit. You need to get through school and get out of this place on your own steam, not on the heels of cowardice.”
There was silence between them. A siren droned on in the distance.
“If dad dies,” Ken said, “I can quit school and get a job in the mines. We'll need the money, and-”
A tear ran down his mother's cheek, and she held onto him tight. “No. The only thing you need to worry about is your learning. If worse comes to worse, I can get a job at the docks, we can move into a smaller place. You're too young to have to be responsible for our mistakes.”
He felt himself wanting to cry but not wanting to seem weak in front of his mother, so he buried his face in the blankets to try to hide it.
Several loud bangs came against the door in quick succession. They both jumped at the sound and stared at the door in disbelief and confusion. After a few seconds, they came again.
His mother said, “Wait here,” and got up, adjusting her clothes as she went to the door. She looked out the peephole and then opened the door. Outside, a young boy was about to knock on the door across from theirs, then turned at the sound of the other one opening.
He looked up at her, drenched to the bone and scared out of his mind, and stuttered to find words.
“Are you alright?” she asked. “Where are your parents?
Ken leaned over the back of the couch at the kid in the doorway. They made eye contact.
“Th-th-they're...” he looked nervously to his right, then back up at her. “I'm lost,” he said. “P-please help.”
He stood shivering outside their door for a few seconds as she looked him up and down. Finally she stepped outside and checked to make sure no one was watching.
“Alright, come inside.”
She led him in and stopped him at the edge of the tile entry square, the only place in the apartment besides the kitchen that wasn't carpet.
“Take off your clothes, please. Ken?”
He looked away from the boy and at his mother.
“Get a bunch of towels from the bathroom, okay?”
He nodded and ran into the other room, sifting through the drawers for a couple clean towels. He found them and went back to the living room, panic surging through him.
The boy was down to just his underwear, and held himself, shivering. Ken couldn't help but to laugh.
His mother gave him a stern look and snatched the towels away, handing them over to the boy. He dried himself off, then draped one around his shoulders and used it as a blanket. His mother led the boy to the couch and covered him with the blanket they had been using. She then offered him the cup of cocoa she'd been drinking, which he took hesitantly.
He spoke a barely audible, “Thank you,” before sipping at the drink.
A door to the side opened, and Ken's father stumbled out. He leaned on the door frame, his eyes heavy with sleep.
“What's all the ruckus?” he said, his voice a deep grumble.
“It's a boy,” she said. “He showed up drenched to the bone and asked for help.”
He looked between the shivering figure in the blanket and his wife. “And you just let him in? What about his parents?”
She glanced back at the boy, then stepped over to her husband and whispered.
“I think he's an itinerant. Probably made it over the city wall in the storm.”
“Then we should turn him in to the police before he gets us in any trouble.”
“Harold, hush,” she said. “Now isn't the time to be male. I just want to give him a warm bath, something to eat, a place to sleep, and then we can leave him out in the morning.”
Harold looked at her and then to the boy. “Are you sure you can live with that?”
She squinted. “I'll be fine. Get back to sleep before your hands start acting up.”
He went back into the bedroom and closed the door. She sighed.
“Ken,” she said, turning to her son,” Could you please go run some warm bathwater for our guest?”
Grumbling, he left the room and did so. As the water ran, he hovered in the doorway, listening to whatever conversation might occur between the two.
She set a hand on his shoulder, and he looked up.
“Do you speak much English?”
He nodded.
“Where did you come from?” she asked.
He looked at the turntable.
“A place too far away to have a name.”
She nodded. “I understand. How old are you?”
“Ten,” he said.
She smiled. “You're a year ahead of my boy.”
“Why are you doing this?” he asked.
She contemplated. “Because-”
There came another knock at the door, and she stood up.
Quickly, she said, “Go into the bathroom, tell Ken to turn off the water.”
He did so, stumbling as he ran.
She stood up and walked towards the door, but didn't open it immediately. The sound of running water went off, and there came another series of knocks. She opened it.
“Yes?” she said, bleary-eyed.
An older man wearing body armor stood there.
“I'm sorry to bother you ma'am, did a young boy come through here a few minutes ago?”
She couldn't help but notice the gun at his hip, its belt unclipped.
“I'm sorry officer,” she said. “Not a soul.”
He raised an eyebrow, then pointed at the ground.
“Explain that, please.”
A trail of water led from the doorway down the stairs and into the rain.
She stuttered for a few seconds.
Kenny ran out into the room, drenched in water. “I can't get my socks off, mom!” he said as he rolled on the floor, pulling at a pair of wet shoes.
She turned and looked at her son, then back at the officer. “I'm sorry sir, I wasn't thinking. My son thought it would be a good idea to play in the rain. I stopped him before the storm really hit, but I'm sure we'll be scraping mold from the carpet for weeks.”
He regarded her and the relatively dry carpet between her and the boy, but couldn't see the pile of wet clothes against the wall adjacent to the door.
“Moooom!” Ken shouted.
“Alright, alright! I'm sorry officer, is that all?”
He squinted. “Keep a look out for another kid, and next time keep better track of your son.”
“Will, sir.”
She closed the door, stood, then sighed and slid down it. Kenny walked up to her, dripping on the floor, and she hugged him.
“I love you so much, Kenny.”
He hugged her back.

Ken took off his clothes and set them with the itinerants, changed, and then went back into the bathroom, where his mother was making sure the other boy was getting what he needed. She walked out as he went in, going to put their drenched clothes through the washer.
He stood awkwardly in the doorway, and the other boy stared at him.
“You can come in,” he said. “I'm not modest.”
Even if he was, there was a layer of bubbles on top of the water, and everything below the neck was submerged.
Ken sat down on the toilet next to him.
“What was with that guy?” he asked. “Are you wanted or something?”
The boy had no reaction.
“I don't think I've ever seen a cop that close up before. Not a real one anyway.”
He waited for the boy to say something, but he remained silent, staring at the ceiling. Kenny's mother came back into the room. She brought a chair in behind her and sat down.
“I want to give you your privacy-”
“It's fine,” the boy said. “You have questions.”
She nodded and closed the door.
“What's your name?”
He sighed. “Calcifaryo Ayalin-Jiyundibnarafabi a Thrastefel.” He looked up at Ken's bewildered mother. “Everyone calls me Cal.”
She blinked. “Okay then...Cal. Why was that man after you?”
“I want to confirm what you said to your husband, that I'm an itinerant that jumped the wall and got caught. But I take it you saw something incriminating on that officer, and that's what this whole talk is about.”
She said, “You're very bright for someone your age.”
He shrugged. “I get that a lot.”
“His gun was holstered but it wasn't clipped, and his drawing hand was close at all times. He was expecting to have to fight back.”
Cal nodded. “And he was the only one?”
“That I could see.”
Cal sunk his head below the water then came back up. “You folks have been kind to me, where a lot of people wouldn't have been. I want to ask you a favor.”
“What's that?”
“For your own sake, you don't want to know why those men are after me. But if you ask, I'll tell you.”
Ken's mother mulled it over, then said, “Alright, we'll leave you alone about it. But if anything else happens, you tell us. Okay?”
He nodded. She returned the gesture, then stood and grabbed the chair.
“Come on, Ken. Let's leave Cal to his bath, alright?”
He looked hesitantly between the two of them, then went with her out of the bathroom.
Cal's eyes followed him out the whole way.

The Choice: Part 10

The Choice
Part 10

I look up at Jenn and wipe the tears from my cheek. She's been crying herself, and she looks at me expectantly.
“What happened after that?” she asks.
I sigh. “What happened is a string of disappointments and unanswered questions, to be honest. I haven't thought about any of this in years, but it still...it hurts so much.”
She speaks with more caution. “What happened?”
I took a deep breath.
“I got back to the hospital a couple hours later, and the nurses there said that visiting hours were over for anyone other than direct family. I wanted to express that I was related to her more than her parents were, but I held my tongue. I waited in the lobby for hours, falling asleep and waking up from nightmares I can only describe as...utter blackness. When I awoke, I felt a terrible surge in my chest, and I bolted upright. I ran to her room, and was stopped by the nurses outside. I asked them to let me see Caroline, but they said there was a problem. They told me to wait. One of them went back inside. He came back out several minutes later with a mask over his mouth.
“He pulled it down and he looked at me. “Are you related to her?” he asked.
“I said, “No, I'm her boyfriend.”
“He nodded and shook his head. “I'm sorry,” he said. “She's gone.”
“I just looked at him, rolling the words over in my mind. “Gone?” I asked. Because, I mean, it didn't make sense. The night before, she'd been in pain but she was okay. So, how did that make any sense?
“He took me by the arm and led me away from the room, and I shook him off. “I need to see her,” I said. “You're lying to me.”
“He said, “Sir, please. Until the family comes, I can't-”
“I shouted, “You have no idea how strong she is! You're lying to me, you have to be!”
“He looked at me and he looked at his partner. He said, “Alright.”
“He led me into her room, where a line of curtains surrounded her bed.
“And a pool of blood ran away from its wheels.
“He asked me if I could handle seeing her, and I said that I had to. He nodded, and opened the curtain a bit to let me next to her. He closed it behind me and said, “If you need anything, I'll be right here.”
“So, there she was. The only love of my life, cold and pale in a hospital bed. Her lips were already going white. Her skin had lost much of its color. Her mouth was slightly open, and her eyes stared without purpose to the side.
“The arm below the hand she'd used to turn me with was slashed through dozens of times, most of them deep enough to see scratches in the bone. She held a scalpel in her hand, and a trail of blood led away from a series of drawers at the side, many of which had been busted open.
“I could practically see it in my head. She argues with herself for a while after I gone, feeling betrayed that I left. She's already in a high state of emotion, because of the moon, because of the drugs she's on, because of what I've said to her. Suddenly she just wants to end it all, because her life has been nothing but a string of pointless miseries.
“Why love, when you only ever lose it?
“So she'd gone from drawer to drawer, breaking the locks until she'd found something in them sharp enough to cut her wrists. And she'd done that, hadn't she? She was a master of whatever she put her mind to. Never one to fail for trying.
“There wasn't a note. No message scrawled in blood. Everything she wanted to say to me was written on her face.
“I don't hate you. I don't love you. I don't care. I don't care about you, about the moon, and werewolves, about nature, about school, about my parents, about life, about love. I don't care about anything anymore.
“I almost wanted to tell myself that one of the wolves had snuck in and finished the job, but as skilled as I was at self-deception, I couldn't fool myself into that. It made too much sense. I still gave audience to the suspicions of course, but I can tell you right now that I never saw any of those wolves again. Whatever message they wanted to push on me, well... it stuck, and they knew it.
“So, as you can imagine, the next couple of years were not very pleasant ones for me. I spent most of that time alternatively hating myself and hating Caroline. In an irony that only made me feel worse, these shifts in opinion changed in tune with the phases of the moon. I spent a lot of my time trying to remember what happened the day she got shot, trying to find some flaw in my remembrance and hoping that it somehow triggered a flashback. Of course, that never happened.
“I finished out high school and I left. By that point, I hated the town with every fiber of my being. I went to college in another state, and that's when I started talking to people again. I got friends, and I came out of my shell, bit by bit. But I never told anyone about Caroline, and I kept my secret from all but a very select few.
“So, she died. And even without the guilt trip and the pity party... it was my fault. If I had have stayed with her, heard her out, even just been in the room, she never would have done what she did. I still find it hard to comprehend it. She knew I would have come back, she must have! What could possibly have possessed her to do something so brash without even considering the consequences?
“But then that's the question, really, isn't it? What if she did consider the consequences? What if she knew exactly what she was doing the whole time? That would be the worst part, knowing that she had done it simply out of spite. I wish I could go back and tell her how much I loved her, help her get through her issues about Christa and Micheal, and her life in general. If only I could have truly understood the weakness that I'd seen in her eyes that day on the train tracks, I might not have been such a fool. But acts of emotion are often unfounded and foolish, and one can't help but be how they are.
“But I've gone through the epilogue without giving you an ending. She died a week or so before the full moon, and you're wondering what I did?
“Well, her parents had the funeral on the day of the full moon, and because of that, I couldn't go. Much like when I'd first heard the call, I was racked with pains, but these were truly crippling. I found my hands shaking, my body convulsing, and I could think only of Caroline, and that simply made the pains worse. I reached a fever state where I thought I could see her next to me, saying comforting things, holding me. But I kept coming into a state of wakefulness, and she would be gone, and I'd find myself screaming for her.
“Darkness fell, and I ran as far as I could. With a terrible sickness realized that I was at the clearing in the forest where we had made love. I looked down at the pains of my past and wished it had never happened at all. I wished I had listened to her and never forced her to turn me, if only because being a wolf without her was worse than any horror a hell might be able to conceive. I was scared and confused, questions ran through my mind that could not be answered.
“And I looked up at the moon and felt in her complete and forgiving stare, and it made me want to die. I didn't deserve to be connected to such a strength, after having wronged myself and the only one I loved to such an extreme.
“And then I felt it in my body. A crack here, a crack there. Then, there came a snap from solar plexus, and suddenly waves and waves of energy poured out from it and covered my entire body. I felt weightless, and I looked up at the moon and begged her not to let me go through with it. I begged Luna to make all of it a dream.
“And then the pain started. What I later found is that the first transformation is the worst because your body, while capable now of undergoing such a shift, is not prepared to fight off the pains with the correct chemical reactions. Similarly, your muscles have never stretched into these positions, and your entire skeleton has to reshape itself.
“Your thought process begins to simplify, and as this happened with me, my grief only intensified. In my wolf form, I knew only that once I had, and now I had lost. I howled to the moon as I had yet been unable to do in my normal form.
“I felt vaguely that there should be someone at my side, but there was not. This sent me into fits of rage and fear. The forest was torn to shreds by the next morning, and I awoke in a pile of leaves. I opened my eyes and regarded the sky as something I never wanted to see again.
“My entire body hurt. My brain felt like it had been run over by a tractor. I hated myself, I hated the world, and everything seemed to be entirely wrong. I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep and never wake up again.
“But, I got up. I went to school. I went through my classes day by day and did the work and got through. I graduated, said goodbye to my parents, and I went to college. Every once in a while I would drive back, not see my family or visit the old haunts as much as visit her grave. It comforted me to talk to her. I knew she wasn't really there... the stuff that made Caroline the woman I loved went with her when she died. But it was nice to feel her presence, tenuous as it was, in a world where she was dead. And talking to her, I expressed my mixed feelings about everything, but I found that I could never bring myself to really, truly hating her. The thoughts that I had about us, the doubts and the fears...all they did was make my life more miserable. The only choice I could make was to move on.
“And even now, I don't regret the choice to become a werewolf. It hurts, sometimes, but I can't imagine life any other way. It's just the world I live in, you know?
“Everyone goes through life, and as they do they're presented with a series of choices. There's a myth that says that one choice is right, and one choice is wrong, but really that's just a morality play to make people feel pressured. The truth is that a choice is a choice, and a consequence is a consequence. There are some people who are so terrified of the consequences that they don't make any choices at all, and they spend their lives living in fear, in doubt... I made a choice. I don't know if it was right, morally or spiritually, but I know that it was the only option. My choice had been made from the beginning. It was in my blood, so to speak.”
I sigh and look up at Jennifer. She's staring at the table, a troubled look on her face.
“Penny for your thoughts?” I say.
She looks up and says, “You went through all of that... and you're still willing to turn me?”
I shrugged. “It comes with the territory. And like I said, what would be the point of living in fear of the past repeating itself? I've learned from my mistakes. I've told you the story, and now you can weigh the options better even than I could. You know what could happen, just as well as I do. But before you make your decision, let me draw your attention to something.”
I stand up and walk over to the counter, picking up the packet of razorblades.
“We tend to think only of the way things end, don't we? A movie, a story. But the ending...that's hardly a thing at all, is it? Life isn't like in the movies. We grow, we learn, we live... we try to form a narrative from the scattered pieces of our lives. Sometimes it comes together, sometimes it doesn't. In the end, we all die. But what about the journey? What about the path we took to reach the end?
“Despite everything that happened between Caroline and myself, I hold my memories of her in the highest regard. She showed me a world of happiness and love, and I only wish I had been mature enough to return that feeling in kind.”
I take a breath, then look back at Jennifer. “But, the past is past. I've made my choice, and I have to live with it. Now the decision is in your hands.”
I hold out the pack of razors.
“What's your choice?”

The Choice: Part 9

The Choice
Part 9

She said, in a weak voice, “Hey,” after I walked in the room. I closed the door behind me and kneeled next to her.
I held her hand. “Are you okay?” I said. “Are you-”
“I'm alive,” she said. She smiled. A tear ran down my face when I saw it.
“Have you heard the official story?” I asked.
She nodded.
I nodded in return. “What are we going to do about the wolves, then? When they find out you're still alive, they're going to want to finish you off.”
Caroline shook her head. “I know what you're thinking,” she said. “Leave it alone. We'll deal with that when I'm not doped up.”
She tried to smile me off the subject, but I pressed it. “Caroline, I should have smelled them coming! That's twice now we've been taken off guard by them! I mean, what gives them the right to-”
She touched my hand, and I looked down at her. She was crying.
“Please,” she said, “Don't go down that road.”
“Caroline, I'm trying to protect you-”
“And I'm trying to protect you!” she yelled, though her voice was hoarse and barely had any volume. “I love you too much to watch you do this to yourself!”
“What if they come after you?”
“If it comes to that, we can leave the city-”
“You think they'll let us do that? This is a personal vendetta, Caroline!”
She stared at me as I spoke. “What?” I said.
“What do you think you heard?” She asked.
“Huh?”
“After...” she shifted in her bed, “after he shot me. What do you think he said to you?”
“He said it he did it because he just doesn't like me!” I said.
She shook her head. “No. You've got it all wrong.”
“I know what I heard, Caroline.”
“No you don't,” she said.
“I know what I heard, Caroline!”
“Please!” she shouted again. “Please, just...listen to me. Trust me. Like I trusted you.”
I felt my hands shaking. Suddenly I felt nauseous. I started to cry, and she put a hand on my arm. I shrugged it off.
“If you'd never trusted me,” I said, hating myself with every word, “you wouldn't be in this hospital bed.”
She looked at me as if she'd been struck. She said, “Listen to me. I will never blame you. I would never, for something like this. I love you. Do you have any idea how important you are to me?”
“I can't protect you,” I said. “I can't even from a member of our own race. What good am I? What's the point of even-”
“Shut up,” she said.
I looked up at her, wounded.
“You have always acted like a victim. Do you know what would happen if I died? You would mourn for the loss of my presence, for my influence on your life. It wouldn't even cross your mind to think about the fact that I was the one who actually died! You're not the one who got shot, and there's nothing that you could have done to stop it from happening, so just shut up and quit feeling so fucking sorry for yourself!”
I stuttered into silence, and looked down.
“I'm sorry,” I said. “You just...I don't know what I'd do without you. I thought -I thought I'd lost you.”
At this point, I broke down completely, but instead of leaning on her, I stood up and left the room.
“Wait!” she called after me, her voice trembling with emotion.
I stopped in the hallway, but I did not turn around. I wanted to, so much. I wanted to go back and cry in her arms and let the whole thing go, but I was vulnerable. I still felt like I'd let her down. And I had to prove that I was still worth a damn.
So I left the hospital that night and ran. Across the streets, through the alleys, cutting through backyards and playgrounds, until I reached the ROTC field. I went under the police tape and tried to ignore the drops of Caroline's blood that the CSI team had missed. I searched wildly for any piece of anything that could give me the scent of the wolves. A stray hair, a piece of cloth, something. But they were sly as ghosts, and it'd been a long shot anyway.
I wandered around the city, feeling angry and wanting to take someone's head off, until I found myself at the place where we'd first encountered the wolves. I sat down amidst the trees and bushes and felt the coolness of its strength wash over me. I looked up to Luna, who I had been ignoring the whole time, and I felt a wash of shame roll over me.
This was foolishness. These wolves knew how to hide. They knew how to cover their scent. And what's more, I had no experience in terms of tracking. And if I did find one of them, what then? I didn't stand a chance.
But they had shot her. They'd killed Matt and they'd shot her and left her for dead. Why not me? Why leave me alive, wanting to find vengeance, capable of taking it? Why not just shoot us both in the head and have done with it?
It was so angering, I just didn't understand. The logic behind the attack was tenuous at best. They were threatening enough to keep me at bay without violence. But this? This random act of cruelty? And what he'd said to me afterwords, how did that make sense at all? It would take someone with a heart as black as coal to commit such a crime simply because they didn't like someone.
And then Caroline's words registered with me. What I thought he said. She remembered him saying something different. Why had I just stormed off without hearing her out?
I had to question whether I believed my recollection was wrong. At first it seemed an impossible thing to consider, but it occurred to me how angry I was, and how my vision had gone red. Did something happen that I didn't remember? Had something happened differently that I remembered incorrectly?

The Choice: Part 8

The Choice
Part 8

I felt wonderful that night, looking up at the half moon. Caroline sat next to me, and we watched it from a hill of our own. Again I felt the itching at the back of my throat, and I brought it up to Caroline.
She smiled. “That's your body telling you to show gratitude?”
“How?” I asked.
She tilted her head back towards the moon and let out a high howl that sent shivers down my spine. At the end of it, she looked back at me with a grin.
“Care to try?”
I stuttered, “Well...I've never done it before.”
“There's a first time for everything,” she said, “especially in this business.”
I opened my mouth and let out a loud, “Awoooo!” at the end of which my voice went dead and I buried my head in shame. “That was terrible!” I said.
She was laughing so hard she fell over, and gave her a shove.
Caroline sat back up and said, “Alright, come on, try again. Feel it in the back of your throat, okay? Let that guide you. Don't try to make the noise you think you should, just... do it.”
I nodded and gave it a second try. It came out shaky and unsure, but at the end of it something inside felt liberated.
Caroline said, “You'll get the hang of it pretty quick. It feels good though, doesn't it?”
I said, “Yeah. I thought that was just some dumb movie thing.”
She shrugged. “Sometimes they get it right.” She laughed. “If only because they throw so much garbage out there, at least one of it is bound to be.”
Caroline curled up next to me then. “What's wrong?” I said.
“I'm cold.”
I put an arm around her. “That better.”
She shook her head.
“Well, I know one thing we could do, but this is hardly the place.”
She smiled and gave me a quick kiss. Her eyes were dancing.
“That's what makes it fun.”
She grabbed my hand and dragged me up and into the nearby woods. I asked her, “Where are we going?”
She said, “To someplace more secluded! Hell or high water, we're doing this!”
I tried to make an argument, but she turned on me and took my breath away with a kiss.
“Shut up you lummox,” she said, short of breath herself. Her smile was ten miles wide. “Are you a man, or are you wolf?”
Before I could answer, she turned back and pulled me behind her. We ran together through the woods, and soon I found myself laughing as my instincts made me jump and climb around whatever got in my way. Then we reached a clearing near a creek, and Caroline tackled me to the ground.
Now, for the sake of discrepancy, I'm not going to tell you exactly what it was we did that night, though I'm pretty sure you can hazard a guess. Suffice it to say, our witty quips very quickly devolved into grunts and growls as the night wore on.
I'm not going to say much else on the subject, but I feel it very important to note that a werewolf woman can be a devil to handle in bed, especially with a rising moon. And Caroline? She could kill a horse with those thighs.
When the sun came up the next morning and we were naked as the day we were born, we regarded each other with pride and satisfaction, and laughter. Despite what either one of us might have to say about the other, by god we were happy. We dressed each other up and kissed and found it very difficult not to strip back down again. But we both had to make appearances at our homes that morning, and we were both quite eager to shower in case any vital parts had been exposed to poison ivy.
We said our goodbyes and went our separate ways, and when I got home my parents regarded me without much pomp and circumstance. I went about my day as I normally would, did chores around the house and thought at great length about how fantastic the previous night had been. I went outside around noontime and spend three hours running around town. I got home and climbed on the roof, and just watched the sky until the sun set.
All that day felt like a dream. It felt like nothing in the world could have gone wrong which, right there, should have been a sign for me to start freaking out. But I went to sleep that night feeling like a kid on Christmas.
Except I had a nightmare. It was so simple and fundamental that it made me wake up screaming. I only remember shades of black and red from it, and I find that to be a blessing. I went back to sleep almost half an hour afterwords, and while my sleep was far from peaceful, I had no dreams to speak of.
I went to school the next day and felt a strange sort of gravity about the building. I shook it off and went inside, but as time wore on it came back, and with it came a great feeling of discomfort. I found Caroline and asked her if she felt the same way. She shrugged and said, “I don't know if I'd go as far as to say discomfort, but I do feel something.”
I nodded. I wanted to say that we should leave, but I didn't. It seemed like a foolish thing to jump at shadows.
One thing I've learned is to always trust your instincts.
As the day wore on, I felt a disconcerting urgency rise in my gut. I thought about the moon, and felt myself shaking, wishing the sun would sink and Caroline and I could bask beneath Luna's brilliance. But the anxiety kept pulling me away from that, kept sending my legs into spasms. It reached the point where I couldn't take it anymore. I asked the teacher if I could go to the bathroom, and he said yes.
I walked out of the classroom and went straight from there to where Caroline was taking math, and I stood by the door. I did not knock or make my presence known in any way, but just as soon as I thought for her to come out of the room, the door opened and there she was. She closed it behind her and looked up and down the halls.
“What's wrong?” she asked.
“You don't feel anything?” I said. “Are you sure?”
“I...nothing big, like I said, but-”
“Listen to me,” I said, putting my face in front of hers. “We have to get out of here. Now.”
She looked doubtfully back at her classroom, then at me. Her expression became sure.
“Alright.”
I took her by the arm and made for the nearest exit, which was several turns away. Every step I made with the purpose of leaving that place, which now to me was so hostile I felt it might collapse out of spite.
As we came to a corner, we saw a teacher come out of an office and come our way. Rather than still our progress with questions, I took a detour through what I knew to be the boy's changing room. Caroline gaped at the urinals as we passed through.
“Is that what you guys pee in? That's disgusting!”
“Hey!” shouted a familiar voice. I stopped in my tracks, putting Caroling behind me from the direction it had come.
Matt stood there with his shirt off, a towel over his shoulder.
“You,” he said.
“What are you doing here, Matt?” I asked, already sensing a bad situation.
“Coach told me to cool off,” he said. “What are you doing here?” He nodded towards Caroline. “If you wanted privacy, you should have gone for a stall.”
I sighed. “Thanks for the tip. We're leaving now,” I said.
Matt went back towards his locker. “Hang on, hag on! I've got something I want to say to you!”
When he turned the corner he had a small knife in his hand, and he stepped towards me with anger. “I saw what you really are, you-”
I grabbed the hand that held the knife and twisted it, ending his sentence with a shriek of pain. I dropped him to the ground and said,
“Yeah, you saw. And if you have any sense, you will never talk to me or my girlfriend ever again.”
He grunted as we pushed our way out of the doors. No teacher one way or the other, and the exit just a few hundred feet down the hall. We more or less ran from the changing room to the side door exit, and we burst out of the place with such ferocity we almost tripped over each other. We found ourselves trapped near the building, as the football and soccer teams practiced on either field. Not able to get to a street and leave, we circled around and waited at the abandoned ROTC field. We sat where we had our first conversation and sighed.
Caroline said, “God, I'm going to catch so much crap from my teacher.”
I shrugged. “It's worth the price,” I said. “I couldn't take it in there for another second, and it only would have been worse in there with you.”
She nodded. “I know. Thank you.”
I smiled wanly. “I'll always be there for you.”
She smiled back, and inched closer to me.
“Weird how much has happened in so short a time,” she said. “I don't think my life ever used to be this exciting.”
“I know mine wasn't,” I said. “Would you have it any other way?” I asked.
At this, she seemed unsure of the answer.
Then there came a shout from several yards away.
“Hey!” Matt screamed, nursing his hand. “You can't just walk away from me!”
I said to Caroline, “Stay here,” then stood up.
“Back off, Matt!” I said. “Just leave us alone, okay?”
He stopped outside the circle of logs and tires. “Nobody threatens me,” he said through gritted teeth.
“You threatened me first, Matt.”
“Because you stepped in on my territory!” he screamed.
I forced a laugh. “Territory? What are we, a couple of dogs here? I mean, come on.”
“Screw you. You have no idea what it's like to be the person everyone looks at, to be the guy people say yeah, he's a badass! I worked my whole life to make people respect me, and you just decide one day to stop being a nerd, and everyone loves you! That is a load of crap, and I'm not gonna take it!”
I rubbed my forehead. “Matt, please. You want me to stop playing sports? Fine. I'll stop. You can't take me in a fight, and I don't want to make this any worse than it already is.”
“I don't care,” he said. “I can't sleep because of you. What I saw in your eyes, that ain't natural! You're a messed up kid, and and you shouldn't be alive!”
“You're talking about things you couldn't begin to understand,” I said. “Please, just turn around and leave us in peace.”
He took several steps toward us, waving his knife around. I made to grab his good hand, but something stopped me.
Whatever Matt had been saying, he stopped in mid sentence.
I turned around and saw a man in a trench coat holding me by the back of the shirt. He yanked me backwards, and I landed on the ground.
Caroline screamed, but the sound was muffled midway through. Several others in dark clothes appeared, two of them grabbing Matt.
The werewolf with the glasses stood with a foot on my chest.
“You screwed up, pup,” he said.
I screamed, “How?”
“You showed that kid your face. You caused a ruckus.”
“How was I supposed to know?!” I yelled. “It was an honest mistake, and I'm trying to take care of it!”
He shrugged.
“Rules are rules. You ask me how you were supposed to know? I guess that's a fair question. It's her fault, then?” he said, nodding to Caroline.
I shook my head, “No, it's mine!”
“Hm,” he said, “too late.”
He drew a gun from the side of his coat and shot Caroline in the stomach. My vision went red, and I screamed.
The events that followed are a blur to me, and are very difficult to sort through.
All that I am sure of is that I managed to throw the bastard off of me and get to my feet, only to be pummeled by three of them at the same time. The guy made a self-satisfied speech as he demonstrated that he was wearing gloves, and explained police procedure, and put the gun in the hands of Matt, who yelled that he wasn't going to lie about what he saw.
The wolf then held Matt's hand and drew it up to his head, and pulled the trigger. Matt's body fell limp, and dropped to the ground.
I turned to look at Caroline, whose eyes were very distant.
“Why?!” I screamed at the man in the glasses. “This doesn't make any sense!”
He put a foot on my chest again and leaned down in front of me.
“Because,” he said, “I don't like you.”
And then he grabbed my head and slammed it into one of the logs, and everything went black.
I woke up to ambulances and cops, seeing Matt and Caroline's bodies being wheeled away. They struggled to hold me down, saying I had a concussion and needed to go to the hospital, and I screamed that I was going to kill the son of a bitch that shot Caroline.
They told me he was dead.
Over the next few days, the story got out that there was a shooting on the campus of my school. The official statement was that an unruly student, Matt, had a psychotic episode in which he shot Caroline, and then himself. His reasons for doing so were only put together after they heard my testimony.
Despite my anger, despite so much hatred and fury that was coursing through me, I was at least smart enough to lie. I told them that I had stolen away with Caroline to have an illicit sexual relationship in the ROTC field, and that Matt had followed us out there. I explained about the episode on the soccer field, and my recent emphasis on physical fitness. No one questioned it. And the forensic evidence spoke to its truthfulness.
They released me the same day, but I didn't go.
I was told very soon after interrogations were over that, on the scene, they'd found that Caroline still had a pulse. She was currently several rooms down the line, being resuscitated.
I almost cried from it, and I wanted to punch the bastard for not telling me sooner, and hug him for telling me at all.
Caroline was still alive.

The Choice: Part 7

The Choice
Part 7

Immediately after they were out of sigh, Caroline checked me over.
“Are you okay?” she said.
I nodded.
“Good,” she said, and slapped me.
“Ow! What was that for?”
She pulled me up onto my feet, then got right in my face. “Do you have any idea how close you just came to having your head knocked off? You're not even a full werewolf yet, and you were staring down a damned pack leader! If he had been anyone even slightly less understanding, he would have killed you right on the spot!”
I rubbed my head. “Yeah but, he was going to hurt you,” I said.
“He wasn't gonna hurt me!” she yelled. “A fact that he made very clear with his elaboration!”
“Yeah, well, I didn't believe him,” I said. “I didn't want to risk it.”
She sighed and turned away.
“Good lord, I have never... EVER come that close to peeing myself.”
I laughed, and she turned on me. “You think that's funny?” she pushed me into a tree, and I turned my head, confused.
“I...yeah?”
She punched me in the face, and I stumbled over a few steps.
I wiped blood from my mouth. The taste set off my senses. “Okay, that was uncalled for-”
Another punch landed in my gut, and I fell to my knees, heaving. She tried to punch me again, but this time I caught her fist in mid-air. I looked up at her, angry and confused.
“What's wrong with you?” I said.
“I'm pissed off, that what's wrong with me!” she screamed. She tore her fist away, then said. “God, I'm going to find that smarmy piece of shit and rip him to shreds!”
“Caroline,” I said.
“No one, NO ONE talks to my man like that!”
I stumbled up and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Just punch me again, okay?” I said.
She stopped in the middle of a shout and stared. “What?”
“Whatever you need to do to keep from chasing those guys down, just get it over with and get it out of your system. The last thing we want to do is start some kind of war.”
She was trembling from anger, but as she looked at me she seemed to calm down. Eventually, she exhaled and shrugged me off. “Don't flatter yourself. It wouldn't be a war, it'd be a massacre.”
I said, “If they hurt you, you bet your ass it'd be a war.”
She smiled. “So, uh... sorry for beating the shit out of you.”
I shrugged. “I can take it,” I said, nursing my stomach. “I'd always wandered how hard a woman could punch.”
“You sexist jerk,” she said with a smile. “I should slap you for that.”
I kissed her, and after a few moments she become greatly enamored with the kiss, to the point of knocking us both onto the ground.
“God,” she said, “your blood is fantastic.”
I laughed and said, “I don't know if now is the time, Caroline.”
She turned her head and looked at me, and I nodded to the street.
Lined up like an audience, a couple of kids stood on the sidewalk. Backpacks showed that they had just gotten out of school.
Caroline waved, then stood. She held out an arm and pulled me up.
“Alright, so, let's get out of here?” she said, embarrassed.
“I dunno,” I said. “I think one of those kids wants an autograph.”
As we walked past them, she punched me in the arm.
Before we parted, I said to her, “You were right.”
“Huh?”
“It's not like it is in the movies,” I said. “It's better.”
She smiled.
As time continued to pass, what Caroline told me that first morning came true. I found myself hating everything man-made that I looked at, and feeling sorry for every living thing that wasn't. But what she had left out was the worst part. I would often wander outside, looking for comfort in the moon, and finding nothing. It's the detachment from the source of your strength that makes you so angry. It's an odd thing, really, because you know the moon is still there, but it's the light you want, and there isn't any. You almost hate the moon for making you its slave, then turning away.
But then with each passing day, as slivers of the moon begin to show, you become excited for the prospect of the full moon. The anger and contempt fades away, and you feel that the whole thing is worth it.
It was two days after the new moon, however, when I made a mistake in gym class. I had yet to be calmed by the presence of the moon, and I was still riled from the encounter with the four-eyed werewolf.
Now, by this point everyone had noticed my sudden zeal for physical activity. Most everyone, after they got over their initial shock, greeted me with open arms. There was one guy in particular, however, who did. His name was Matt, and he was very much a football prep. He'd never really liked me, and had on a few occasions bullied me. But after I became a werewolf, after I stopped standing awkwardly at the edge of the field during our soccer games, he took it as a challenge. I guess, from his perspective, I was one guy he would never have to worry about to subvert his authority, and that I was doing just that seemed to bug him on a very fundamental level.
Well, one day while playing soccer, he was making a run down the field and I kicked the ball out from under his feet and rushed it to the other side of the field. He ran to catch up with me and shoved me to the ground, stealing back the ball.
The coach, of course, was not watching, and there was no penalty.
I watched Matt run away from me, already pissed off, already in a foul mood thanks to the moon, and the bastard gave me the finger and laughed. If it had been one or the other, I might have been okay. But that was not, by any means, an okay thing for me.
So, I stood up. I dusted myself off. And I pushed my heels into the ground and ran at him faster than I'd ever run before. I angled myself behind him, and I jumped.
I looped an arm around his neck in mid-air and put the full force of my body against his back, which knocked him over. When he hit the ground, our forward momentum continued, and I rode him a sled.
Then I flipped him over.
I had no intention of punching him, biting him, or hurting him in general. I just wanted to express, as calmly as I might, that if he wanted to keep his testicles he might want to stop being such a dick to people he didn't have the grey-matter to comprehend.
What Caroline had yet to tell me is that, when furious, a werewolf's eyes turn red. And their demeanor turns very specifically animalistic.
So, when I spoke to Matt, what I thought were a few encouraging words turned out to be the most terrifying experience of his life. Turns out he was a home-brewed Christian who, despite his outlook regarding me, was actually pretty simple and pretty okay.
The coach, who must have heard the outcry from the peanut gallery, tore me off the bastard, and Matt cowered that I'd threatened to kill him, and that I'd been punching him. The latter of the two, thankfully, could be easily verified as having been a complete fabrication. The former was a subject of some investigation, but because of my recent push in standing amongst aforementioned peanut gallery, my actions were vindicated.
Matt threw the first punch.
It's very strange, looking back on the events of my life, seeing the twists and turns that led me from one place to another... If I had just let the offense go that day, I wouldn't be talking to you right now.
If there's any regret I have about the course my life has taken, the closest I'd come would be tackling Matt and letting him see what I was.
So, Caroline reprimanded me for my actions, and explained to me what happens when a werewolf gets angry. I was worried, but I said, “I imagine he's too scared to do anything about it. And anyway, after a couple days he'll probably convince himself it was a trick of the light, anyway.”
She more or less agreed, and the matter was dropped entirely.
A little less than two weeks before the full moon.
Even less until... Well, you'll know soon enough.

The Choice: Part 6

The Choice
Part 6

I had vague dreams of an awkward childhood and a painful double-life that had, until recently, been entirely secret. I felt a spire of doubt and confusion and love. That last bit, that love... it seemed to make everything else feel small and unimportant.
I woke up in darkness, feeling slightly disoriented. I looked around and wondered idly what time it was. I stretched my arms and stood. Everything was hazy, but my muscles were tingling slightly and I felt wonderful. The air I breathed into my lungs was cold and felt like a million dollars. I saw my shoes next to the fireplace, and realized Caroline must have taken them off while I was asleep.
I stumbled into the kitchen, not weak so much as disoriented, and poured myself a glass of water. It seemed like I could feel every drop of it running down my throat, and it energized me as it quenched my thirst.
Next to the sink was the bowl, now tipped upside down. Lifting it, I found it completely clean.
The floor and the counter were cleared, and I saw that the trash can was empty of any lining.
I sat at the kitchen table and regarded my hand. How many times had I looked at it through life, and now, by way of two simple cuts, it was the gateway into a completely separate state of being?
The bandages were unstained, and I realized that at some point Caroline must have changed them out, because the wax on top of my hand had been cleaned off. I was curious to see the state of my wound, but didn't want to take off the bandage without knowing where a replacement might be.
I looked around the kitchen and noted all of the signs of a suburban normalcy with a clarity that felt oddly out of place. A clock on the microwave showed in green letters: 5:39.
And then I realized that there wasn't a light on in the entire kitchen, except that clock and the light of the moon coming in from the window. But that wasn't anywhere near enough light to illuminate the otherwise pitch black kitchen, so how could I possibly see?
Amazed, I rushed into the first room I found -which turned out to be a panty- and locked myself inside. No light from anywhere, and yet I could see everything. Every box of cheerios and every bottle of pellegrino was clear as day, and I freaked out from the excitement.
“Holy crap,” I said, “I have night vision!”
I burst from the closet, eager to try it out elsewhere, only to trip over the wooden baseline in the doorjamb. I landed chest-first on the tile, and if not for the lucky placement of my hand, my head would have smacked it hard enough to give me a concussion.
I regarded my bandaged other hand and was grateful it hadn't been that one to shield my fall.
I laughed at my childlike excitement and eventually got up and closed the door. Wondering where Caroline was, I wandered back into the living room.
In a chair next to where I'd been asleep was a disregarded blanket. She'd been watching me there, possibly for hours. What time had it been when we went through with the change? Not even six, probably earlier than that. I wondered what time she had finally decided to give up the ghost and sleep in her own bed.
A thought occurred to me, and I smiled.
I crept up the stairs and around to the door. Ignoring the sign, I stepped inside.
The moon hung in the window, and it caught my gaze. My motions ceased entirely, and I was unable to do anything but gape.
The moon! Had it always been so big, so powerful? Immediately I felt a surge inside my chest, and there was a tickling in my throat. I tried to scratch it by swallowing, but it stayed. After standing there for several minutes, it faded.
I closed the door and looked at Caroline. She lay asleep on the far side of the bed, one arm out of the covers. The bandage on her hand was significantly more sloppy than the one on his. I smiled and crawled into bed next to her.
I put an arm around her waste, and set my chin at the nape of her neck. It felt right to be so close to her. Her warmth felt so comfortable. My heart raced, and soon she stirred.
She turned around and said,
“Pull up the covers, I'm getting cold.”
I did, and she kissed me on the cheek, then put an arm over my shoulder and buried her head in my chest.
I ran my hand through her hair and thought about how wonderful the world was, and then I fell back asleep.
When next I awoke, the sun was flashing in my face. I blinked and cleared the sleep from my eyes, and found Caroline changing in front of the window.
She turned around as she pulled her shirt on, and though I tried to act asleep, she saw me.
“How long have you been awake?” she said, blushing.
“I dunno,” I said. “Long enough.”
She sat back down on the bed, leaning next to me.
“So, how do you feel?” she asked.
“Pretty normal, I guess. Last night, I almost crapped myself when I realized I could see in the dark.”
She smiled.
“Other than that though, no obvious differences just yet. Everything feels really, uh...” I struggled to find the right word.
“Clear?” she suggested.
“Yes! That's it exactly. I had a cup of water last night and it was like... it felt like I was drinking the universe, you know?” She laughed, and I blushed. “Sorry, my words aren't really working right now.”
“It's okay. I know exactly what you're talking about.”
“Oh!” I said, “Speaking of water, what was that blood-water stuff supposed to do?”
“Get your body used to the energy you gain from blood,” she said. “It's important to get that out of the way right at the beginning, otherwise your body won't know where else to get it from, and might start taking it from the wrong places.”
“What do you mean?”
“You'll see,” she said. “Trust me, you'll know what I'm talking about soon enough.”
I nodded. “So, uh, blood. Is that something I'm going to have to eat...drink, all the time now? Because I thought that was a vampire thing.”
She smiled. “If I said yes, you would be so pissed off right now.”
“It's not yes, is it? I know we're hardly the picture of emotional balance, but I really don't want to go around cutting myself all the time.”
She smiled. “Even if you did, it wouldn't help. You can't gain energy from your own blood.”
“Even still,” I said, “am I going to have to go around stabbing people for sustenance?”
Caroline laughed. “No. I mean, during the full moon you will have to kill some things, but that's...” she smiled, “you don't have to worry about that, trust me.”
“But-”
“Trust me. Anyway... blood helps to calm us down, or rile us up, whichever it is we need the most. The only thing you have to worry about when it comes to blood is bloodlust. That's when you let yourself get really angry and, in the process, let your more animalistic instincts take control. You could kill somebody that way.”
“I see,” I said. “I'll keep that in mind.”
She nodded. “Now get up. We need to get some food in you.”
“What about you?” I asked. “You lost a lot of blood yourself.”
“Yeah,” she said, “but I didn't go through a complete physical, mental, and spiritual makeover overnight.”
I got up and found all my dizziness and weakness gone, and walked behind her back to the kitchen. She sat me down at the table and I watched as she cooked up a very standard breakfast.
“This feels oddly normal,” I said. “Not to mention a little old-fashioned. Woman making breakfast, guy waiting expectantly.”
“Yeah?” she said. “Well, don't get too used to it, bub. This ain't a hotel.”
She looked over her shoulder and smiled.
I rolled my eyes and looked away.
We ate together, eggs, sausage, and bacon, and the meat particularly tasted better than any I'd had in my entire life. She told me to expect that reaction from a lot of things.
After that, we sat together in silence. Oddly enough, there was very little to talk about. Eventually she said, “My parents will be home soon. I don't want to rush you off, but-”
“I understand,” I said. “Besides, I kind of want to get home anyway. Something tells me a little normality will help me gauge things.”
She nodded. “Now, if you have any questions about anything, or if you freak out or wind up in a bad situation, you call me, alright? You're not alone in this.”
“I know,” I said.
We kissed, and I left.
What became readily apparent is that the turning did not actually happen overnight. As the days wore on, I felt a number of alien sensations as my body and my mind began to change. Physically, I realized that I had greater endurance. I did not become vastly stronger or faster, but I did have a greater capacity for physical exertion. Mentally, I found my thought process becoming more fluid and more based around impulse. I started doing things more as they came to mind rather than mulling them over in silence, a fact my parents took notice of almost immediately. I was afraid the reaction would be negative, but they were in fact proud that I'd finally decided to get out and do things with my time.
The changes weren't all pleasant, though. I found myself to be hungrier than normal, with a faster metabolism. With this came an odd feeling that my choices for a meal were not limited to only include that which was dead. People, it seemed, looked just as delicious as an uncooked steak might.
In school especially this became an issue. As mine and Caroline's relationship became public, attention was drawn toward us and with that came a slew of insults and jeers. Caroline was unfazed, but it was everything I could do to keep from ripping out the throats of the jocks who thought they were being so funny. Caroline's hand was all that stayed me.
At night, I found my dreams becoming more and more unsettling. When I asked Caroline what that might be, she said that Michael had told her that because of our closeness to nature, our dreams could sometimes overlap with the flow of the world. As such, they could often be portents of the future.
After nearly a week of being a werewolf, I found the experience to be wholly worth the troubles leading up to it. A side-effect I had not expected of being a werewolf was the connection to the world around me. Everything alive seemed to breath and exist and speak in ways that human ears had long forgotten how to understand.
That comes to be the most important thing. Caroline explained to me that werewolves, more than anything else, are guardians of nature. Our hunting instincts are to kill only what is needed. Our violent tendencies, she said, are a reaction to humanity's violent acts against nature.
As a human, I would have laughed at that called her a tree-hugger. As myself, I knew she was right.
That's another thing. I quickly came to regard who I had become as who I had always been, but freed. Somehow, being different, being the same as Caroline, it made living that much easier.
She watched me very closely in those first days, for her own sake as well as mine. But she soon saw that I had been made for this, and her fears were laid to rest. I had never seen her smile until I shared with her the sensation of feel Luna's energy flow through me. It's an amazing connection we have with the moon. It's just a rock, orbiting us in space, but somehow... through us, it's more than that. By our connection to it, it is a spirit all its own. This raises questions as to where the spirit first came from, but Caroline had no clue. And, really, it didn't matter. We were in love, and moon fed us strength.
One day she took me to a place she visited often, and immediately I knew why. It had a presence all its own, and seemed brimming with energy. Against all odds, it was an outcropping of trees and bushes a couple hundred feet from the corner of two major roads, backed by an apartment complex. I felt an almost religious reverence for the place as we sat down beneath the shade of the trees.
“As far as I can tell,” she said, “there are places like these all over the world. I assume so, I mean, because I've found them everywhere I go. I don't know what they are, or what they do, but when I'm here, it's just-”
“Overwhelming,” I said.
She nodded and put her arms around me.
We laid back and watched the clouds roll by.
“This is amazing,” I said. “Is it always like this?”
Her smile faded.
“Caroline?”
“It comes and it goes,” she said. “You'll see.”
I shook my head. “No, please, tell me. I want to be prepared.”
She sighed. “I don't want to ruin your good experience.”
“It's fine,” I said. “I don't want to go on thinking it's all sunshine and rainbows if it isn't.”
Caroline smiled. “You have a funny way of putting things.” She sighed. “After about another week, you'll find yourself feeling heavy. And angry. You'll start noticing the smell of car exhaust and people sweating, and you'll just want to destroy things. It's-”
“That's in line with the cycles of the moon, isn't it? The closer in proximity to the new moon, the angrier we are, the closer to the full moon, the more agreeable. Right?”
She nodded. “More or less.”
“Hm,” I said. “Well, that makes more sense.”
“How do you mean?”
“So far it's just been so...nice. It was almost making me feel uncomfortable. There wasn't a balance to it, you know?”
“What's wrong with being happy all the time?” she asked.
“The whole point of being happy is to rise above sadness. I mean, if it were just smiles and nature love twenty-four-seven, I'd be miserable. How are you supposed to appreciate the good times if there aren't any bad ones?”
She shook her head. “I'd never thought of it that way.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yeah. I mean, the whole angry cycle is what drove Christa to the point of suicide.”
“Well, like I said, I'm not her.”
Caroline smiled. “Obviously.”
After nearly thirty minutes of watching the sky, I said, “I'm really wondering what's going to happen on the full moon. I mean, is it a full body transformation, or what?”
She grinned. “I'm not going to spoil it for you.”
“Come on!” I said.
Caroline put a hand to my chest, and I laughed. She shushed me, and the humor drained immediately when I saw the serious look on her face. She sat up and turned around. I did the same.
Three men stood between us and the sidewalk, all of them wearing trenchcoats. They had a smell all their own, and I realized that it was similar to Caroline's.
They were werwolves.
The one in the middle wore glasses, and he spoke up.
“You,” he said, “boy. You're only a few days old, aren't you.”
Caroline stood up. “I turned him,” she said.
The man in the glasses sneered. “I don't need you to tell me the obvious.”
I squinted and stood as well, putting myself a little in front of Caroline. Without thinking about it, I found myself growling.
He laughed. “Don't bare your teeth at me, pup. Not unless you want them knocked out of your skull.”
“What do you want?” Caroline said. “If this is some territorial thing, fine, we'll leave.” She eblowed me. “We don't want any trouble.”
The man in the middle dropped some of his forcefulness. “This isn't about territory, wolfess,” he said, “whatever your name may be.” He looked between the two of us. “Let me guess. He's never met a wolf besides you, and you've only met a handful yourself. If that. Am I right?”
After a few moments, she nodded.
“I thought so,” he said. “Well, there are a few things you need to know about us, pup. Feel free to listen yourself, wolfess. Those of us in charge know when one of our own comes around, and we especially know when one is born. That last part, in particular, is why we are here. Turning is very dangerous business. Under normal circumstances, there is a very rigorous set of tests one must be put through in order to be given the privilege. Your instructor, wolfess, must have left these out when he taught you.”
Panicked, she said, “He heard the call! And we've been deliberating about this for over a month. It wasn't a decision made lightly.”
“The decision to rob a bank isn't made any less likely,” he said, “but that doesn't make any less against the law.”
“How did you know her... her instructor was a male?” I asked.
The man in the glasses tilted his head. “Are you a people watcher, pup?” he asked. “I don't suggest trying to analyze my actions too much. We are not the same as the fare you've spent your life studying.”
“How did you know?” I pressed.
“Either you can't take a hint, or you place an unfortunately high amount of confidence in your own strength. Whichever the case may be, I suggest you drop the subject entirely.”
I cracked my knuckles. “Don't threaten me,” I said.
Caroline grabbed my arm. “Please, stop.”
The man in the glasses squinted. We stared each other down.
He said. “Worry not, wolfess. We're not here to hurt either you or your pup. We don't act without reason.”
“Then why are you here?” I asked.
“To touch base,” he said. “To let you know that we're here. That we're watching. And that if you make a mistake, well, expect to face the consequences.”
“Not a very friendly lot, are you?” I said.
“We don't let outsiders into our number,” he said. “And we do not take kindly to idiot pups blowing our cover and forcing us to leave what has otherwise been a very friendly home to us.”
“What?” I said. “Is that what this is all about? I'm not going to make any mistake like that. I'm a werewolf too! I don't want to make this any harder for anyone!”
“That's an easy sentiment to mime, kid,” he said, “but words mean nothing from a pup as fresh as you. If it means anything, however, consider that we are giving you the benefit of the doubt. We're not here to make your lives any harder. Merely to... give weight to any acts of unruliness you might be considering.”
My hands were trembling from anger.
“If you're so sure of yourself,” I said, “why the friends? Don't you think you can take me?”
Caroline sighed, “I'm sorry, he's just-”
Before she could finish her sentence, I was on the ground, and the wolf with the glasses had his hand around my throat.
“I could crush you like a flea if I so chose, but experience speaks that a cornered animal will do anything to survive, and strength comes fastest in numbers. I'm not here for your woman, I'm not here for you, and I'm not here take anything from either of you. So I suggest you quit while you're ahead and let bygones be bygones, otherwise you won't get the chance to learn how to suppress that damning little urge for dominance you are so possessed of at the moment.”
He let go of me and walked back towards his friends. Caroline kneeled by my side, regarding the other wolves with angry eyes.
The man pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and said, “Now, if you'll excuse me. Wolfess. Pup.” He nodded to each of us in turn, then started walking away. His friends followed suit.
Then he turned and said, “Oh, and, wolfess?”
Caroline glared.
“Michael says hello.”

The Choice: Part 5

The Choice
Part 5

Two weeks later, when her parents were out of town again, I arrived at her house. My heart was in my throat, and I felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff, looking straight down. And the question that kept running through my mind was, did I have the guts to jump?
I knocked on the door, and after a few seconds Caroline answered the door. She let me in, and as soon as she locked the door, she gave me a hug, and we kissed, and she said,
“Are you ready?”
“Are you?” I asked.
She smiled. “I think so.”
It was the day after the full moon, and she looked very tired. We'd waited until then because, according to her, she wanted to give my body and mind enough time to get used to the change before its first shift. Despite my impatience, I had agreed.
We walked into the kitchen where, sitting on a counter there was a burning candle, a bowl, a pack of razorblades, a bottle of alcohol, and a first aid kit. The simplicity of the layout made me nervous.
“So that's it, huh?”
Caroline nodded.
I walked over to the counter and picked up the pack of razors, then looked at Caroline. She shrugged.
I sat down at the kitchen table, and she offered me a drink. I accepted.
“So, uh, I've been meaning to ask you. How have your parents not found out about your, uh... your lycanthropy, I guess.”
She sighed. “Please. Please, do not use that word in reference to what I -to what we are. Lycanthropy is a mental illness. We're not insane.”
“That's debatable,” I said.
She shook her head. “To answer your question, I honestly don't know. I've done my best to keep the secret, and all I can say is that it's worked. I try to sneak out to a forested place where there aren't many people, and I try to keep track of myself. But I have to be honest with you... there have been a lot of times when I should have been caught. Whenever I was sloppy about my location, or I couldn't get out in time, or whatever... people would see me. It hasn't happened often, but every time they have, they've just... looked away. I've never been able to explain it except to say that Luna takes care of her own.”
I nodded.
“But that could be just luck,” she cautioned. “Just because I've gotten lucky doesn't mean you should just go out and be crazy and expect to get off Scott-free, you understand?”
“I know, I know,” I said. “Don't worry, I'm not an idiot.”
“Sometimes I wonder,” she said with a smile.
“Well, you're the one who's dating me,” I said.
We fell into silence after this and continued to draw our gaze back to the counter, where the tools of my transformation waited.
Neither of us seemed ready to go through with it yet.
“So how is this, uh, going to work?” I said.
She looked. “The razors are for cutting, the bowl is for collecting, the alcohol is for disinfection, and the kit's for healing.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And the candle?”
She smiled. “Distraction.”
Confused, I opened my mouth to ask what she meant, but before I could say anything she said, “Do you want to see my room?”
She didn't let me answer so much as grab my hand and take me upstairs. On the door was a sign that said,
Please KNOCK before you come in!!
Caroline said, “Nosy parents,” and opened the door.
Inside, the walls were covered with drawings of wolves and cartoon characters, pictures of the moon and of nature. On the far wall was a bookcase lined with books whose spines were bent and broken.
I said, “Do you read much?” as we stepped inside. She laughed and plopped onto her bed.
“Only when I have nothing better to do,” she said. “So, yeah.”
She patted the spot next to her in the bed, and I sat down. As I made to take off my shoes, she grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled me down, then rolled over on top of me and kissed me.
“What's up?” I said.
A smile spread across her lips.
“Do you want to see me naked?”
I stuttered and blushed. “I, I-”
I sat up, and she put her arms around me, keeping me where I was.
“What's wrong?” she asked.
“I don't know if-”
She leaned around and kissed me on the lips, and held me there, and I put my arms around her. We sank back down onto the bed, and I said, “You're dangerous.”
She smiled. “Why's that?”
“Because, I...” I felt horribly embarrassed for saying this, and it showed, “I'm really attracted to you, and you know it.”
Caroline said, “Don't you want to?”
“Yeah, but isn't this kind of sudden?”
She stopped kissing me, and there was a realization in her eyes. “Oh. Oh god, I'm sorry,” she said, blushing. She got up off the bed and paced around the room. “Shit, I am so sorry.”
“What?” I asked.
“It's the moon,” she said. “You know how you feel after a full moon? I guess it's different for everyone. The shift, it, uh... it gets me riled.”
By then she looked like a tomato, and she shook her head. “I really, really did not mean to put you in that position,” she said.
I got up off the bed and put my hands around her waste, and kissed her neck. She gave a soft moan and I said, “I enjoyed it, trust me.”
We kissed again, and stood there in our embrace for a while before she said,
“We should get this over with.”
I agreed.
We walked back downstairs, holding each other's hands. Each step felt like it was the last, and so many odd things were coming to mind. These were my final moments as a normal human being. In fact, from here on out, the expression of humanity would be something exterior from myself. I would no longer be included in that bubble.
I was about to become something entirely different.
From this moment forward it would just be me and Caroline. Us, together, against the world.
And, strangely, that was okay with me. For the first time since I met her, I had no doubts, no second thoughts.
She set the bowl down on the kitchen floor and brought each of the other items down in turn. We kneeled there, considering the razors, and the bowl, and the finality these objects seemed to represent.
The ending of one life. The beginning of another.
She disinfected her hands with the alcohol, then told me to do the same. She then handed me a razor and told me to carve a wide X on my palm. I stared at my hand and felt a deep fear. My hands trembled, and I looked at her.
She smiled and said, “Give me your hand.”
I did so, and she grabbed the candle.
“What was that for aga- AHHH!”
She turned the candle upside down over the back of my hand, pouring a stream of hot wax on the back. I yanked my hand away from her and said, “What the hell was that for?!”
Caroline held up a bloody razor, and said with a smile, “Distraction.”
Mouth agape, I turned my hand over and saw the two cuts, and the blood that was already seeping from them.
“Holy shit,” I said.
I looked over at her, and she had already cut her own hand.
She held it out to me and said, “Hold my hand.”
I regarded her hand and mine and, trembling put mine against hers. Her fingers clasped, and I followed suit.
Soon, blood was dripping from between our hands into the bowl beneath them.
She looked into my eyes, and I looked into hers, and I felt the terror slowly drain away. Blood ran down our arms and for a while I felt nothing beyond the dull throb in my palm.
Then a shiver ran up my spine, and my vision went white. Next I knew, I was laying in her arms, our hands still clasped above the bowl. Her other hand was running through my air.
She said, “You've been out for almost fifteen minutes.”
“Is that normal?” I asked.
“The only other person I've done this to would say so,” she said. “How do you feel?”
I sat up, groggy. “I didn't see anything, and I don't... I don't feel any different.”
“Good,” she said. “That means it's working.”
I raised an eyebrow, then shook my head. “I'm tired.”
She smiled. “That happens with blood loss.”
Caroline peeled our hands apart. A line of dried blood outlined our hands, and the flesh around the wounds was white. Immediately she opened the first aid kit and started tending the wounds. I expected a sting when she cleaned my hand of with an alcohol pad, but there was only a dull scratch.
“It doesn't hurt,” I said, mystified. “Is that some kind of... superpower, or something?”
Without stopping she said, “Yes, love. It has nothing to do with your hand going numb.”
My head lolled backwards, and I laughed. “I feel funny.”
She rubbed the wounds with neosporin and wrapped my hand in a bandage. “That's fine,” she said. “Just don't go to sleep yet. There's one more thing we need to do.”
She laid me down on the kitchen floor and took the bowl towards the sink.
“Say, I was wondering,” I said. “Why did we need the bowl, anyway? Couldn't we just have done it over the sink?”
The sound of running water. Then she turned and handed me a cup of water. Only, it was tinted red.
“Wait. Wait a minute, what? No, no no no,” I said.
“Trust me,” she said, “It'll help.”
“Well,” I said, apprehensive, “why not just... blood?”
“You can't handle it yet. You'd vomit it back up in minutes.”
I shook my head, “It's not hygienic.”
She held up her still-unbandaged hand. “What about this?” She smiled.
“Caroline...”
“Trust me, okay?” she said with patience.
I held tried to take the water from her, but my hands could barely hold it up. “Man,” I said, “this is weird.”
She held the glass up to my lips and said, “Drink.”
After a few seconds, I opened my mouth and let the water slip down my throat. It tasted vaguely of iron, and set my senses off immediately. I drank it all, and then back. Caroline was barely able to keep me from hitting my head.
“Holy...wow,” I said. “That was...wow.”
Caroline smiled, kneeling next to me, holding my uninjured hand.
Looking at her wound, I said, “Hey, you should really take care of that.”
“I'm fine,” she said. “I'm going to help you get up, and we're going to walk to the living room. Once you're on the couch, I'll get you another glass of water, and then I'll clean everything up.”
“But-”
“I promise.”
I sighed. “I can't argue with such a pretty face.”
She put arm under my shoulder and lifted me up. My vision blurred, and my head rolled from side to side, and I could barely support my own weight. I tried my best to keep myself balanced, but I was dizzy. Caroline held me up, though, and together we made it to the other room.
She set me down on the couch, and once again told me not to fall asleep yet. I sat there for a few moments, staring off into space, my eyelids drifting closed. So many strange, blurry thoughts were floating through my mind. I wondered if this was what it felt like to be high.
Caroline came back with a glass of blood-water, and helped me to drink it down. Afterwards I said, “Can I have some more?”
She replied, “You're not ready for it. Besides, you need sleep.”
I laid back, and before I could try to life my legs up she did it for me. She draped a blanket over me and kissed my cheek. I smiled like a fool, and immediately fell asleep.

The Choice: Part 4

The Choice
Part 4

I went home that day with a lot on my mind, but as it got closer and closer to night, the tremors got worse and worse. It got to the point where I was lying prostrate on the floor, listening to music as loud as I could to distract from the pains. I was barely able to hold myself together in front of my parents.
Then night came, and while I wanted to go outside, something told me to wait. I laid there thinking about Caroline, wondering what would happen if she decided not to turn me, how I would live my life like this if that were the case. I felt validated that all of this was actually happening. I worried that maybe I was just really good at deceiving myself. What proof did I have besides my own first-hand experience, which could easily be pretended?
Such thoughts came and went with the tide of my tremors, and vanished completely when I felt myself sit up, and I looked out my window to see the pale glow of the world, and I knew it was time.
I snuck through the house, feeling almost reverent of the silence, and went outside. There was a spot I had picked on top of a hill, and I made my way there with my eyes planted firmly to the ground.
I felt a pressure on my back, and I longed to turn around and see the moon with my own two eyes. My hands were trembling, and the tremors seemed to have passed into another sensation entirely. When I reached the top of the hill, I took a deep breath and looked up.
The moon. Sitting low on the horizon, a ring around it from the thin cloud cover. The tremors ceased entirely, and the panic, fear, and excitement all drained away entirely. Suddenly, all was peace.
I took a deep breath and sat down, and felt a smile on my face. Nothing else mattered anymore. In my mind and my heart, I felt like I could do anything.
I must have sat there staring at the moon for almost an hour before I yawned and decided I needed sleep. This feeling defied my understanding of werewolves, but that made it all the more interesting. It was calm and peace, and I never wanted it to end. I was excited to tell Caroline about it, and I wanted the next day to come as quickly as it could.
When my head hit the pillow, I fell right asleep. I had very abstract dreams that exuded peacefulness, and I didn't stir once.
I woke up the next morning and got ready for school the same way I always did, except the feeling from the night before was still prevalent.
Caroline listened and nodded as I described the sensation, a dumb smile on my face. When I asked her if she thought I was still crazy, she only shrugged.
Over the next couple weeks, we continued to talk during lunch and after school. Eventually she gave me her phone number, and we started talking late into the night as well. It turned out that we had a lot of things in common. Besides our wolfy similarity, I mean.
As time wore on, however, she continued to wait to deliberate on her decision. Did she want to turn me, or didn't she? The longer she waited, the more doubtful I became.
Then, after two weeks, I confronted her about it, and she decided that she would make her mind up over the weekend. We made plans to hang out at a bookstore.
We met there on saturday and sat around drinking coffee like a couple of hipsters, and had an extraordinarily mundane conversation about manga. I for my part didn't want to rush her decision, and she seemed very distracted.
Eventually, she looked around at the store, disgusted, and said, “Can we get out of here?”
I obliged, and we went for a walk. We were silent for a long time, making our way down the streets. She'd stop to look at flowers growing in the bushes every once in a while, and I'd watch her with curiosity. She seemed to have an abiding love of nature, an aspect of her character that had never come out before.
When we reached a railroad crossing that circled around into a forest, we looked at each other with knowing smiles and decided to see where the tracks would take us. When we were out of earshot of the street, she spoke.
“I haven't decided yet.”
“But Caroline, if this is what Luna wants-”
“Please don't get into that right now,” she said, “I can't take it. You have no idea how little sleep I've gotten over the past couple weeks. And you...” She sighed. “I know you think you're in this circle because of the call, but you're not. I can tell just by looking at you that you haven't felt an iota of what I do.”
“Then help me reach that point,” I urged. “I want to help you.”
“You want to help me because it gets you what you want,” she replied. “Why do you want to be a werewolf? What could you possibly stand to gain?”
“I've already told you.”
“I know you have, but...” She shook her head, “We're just kids. I know how we feel now, but what about in the future? How can we possibly know if we'll still be together five, ten years from now?”
“Together?”
She continued without acknowledging my statement. “What if you end up disappointed? What if you-”
I said, “What if I'd never talked to you in the first place? What if either of us had never been born? We can ask what-if's all day long, but it doesn't change the situation we're in.”
“You don't get it-”
“No, I do,” I said. “We can't change the past but we can change the future, that's what you're trying to say. If we do this and something goes wrong, there's no taking that back. You're so focused on the threat of everything going wrong, have you even considered the possibility of everything going right?”
“How often in your life have things gone right?” she asked.
“How often in my life have I ever had to make a choice like this?”
Caroline said nothing in response.
“I know enough about myself,” I said, “to know that even if this is a bad decision, I won't regret it. The past is what it is, and regrets only make things worse. What I want is for you to trust me that we can make it work.”
She stopped walking, her head facing the ground. It took me entirely too wrong to realize that she was crying.
“What's wrong?”
“You don't know...” she said, “you don't know...”
“What is it?”
I held her arms and tried to peer into her face. Eventually, she looked up at me.
“There aren't very many werewolves in the world. The only reason I know I'm not the only one is because... I met one, when I was a kid. And he...” Caroline shook her head and said, “I didn't first start... being a werewolf until I was eight. He met me right around then, in time enough to keep me from revealing myself to my parents or the people at school, or whatever. He taught me how to control my urges and gave me pointers. We shared a full moon together, which was...amazing, and then he left. A few weeks after that, I told a friend of mine, and she asked me to turn her. I did, because I thought it would be really cool, and Michael said that I could turn people, I just had to be sure. He showed me how. The only restriction was that the other person had to be...close. Wolfish at heart, I guess. I just wanted to have someone to share this experience with me, so almost that same day, I turned her.
“Over the next three months, I watched her become more and more dissatisfied with herself. She started to notice faults in the people around her, in the culture they lived in, in the world... She wasn't ready for it, and she grew up in ways she wasn't supposed to. She hated the pain, hated perspective...hated me. She asked for a cure and I said there wasn't one. She tried to tell family and friends on me, cried for help, but all she got was laughs and a forced visit to the psychologist. One night on the full moon, she went into her father's office and found a gun he kept there, and she came after me. She knew my favorite place, and sure enough I was there. The moon hadn't come up yet, and I was just waiting, and...
“She gave a speech about how hateful the world was, how unsympathetic... and she said she hoped I lived forever so I could feel the pain of it the rest of my life. And she shot herself. I ran home and locked myself in my room, had one of the most painful transformations of my life... The police questioned me because they found innumerable mentions of me in her notebooks, with everything about us laid out plainly. I told them it was just a game we played, and I'd stopped playing it with her because she'd started taking it too seriously. Everyone seemed to blame me for what happened, because no one could conceive of why an eight-year-old would shoot herself in the head. A few weeks later, we moved to the other side of the country, but my parents never stopped watching me after that. They've loosened up a little since then, but they're always keeping tabs on where I am and what I'm doing.”
I asked, “How did you get away today?”
“They're out of town, and they believe I don't have any friends. But do you understand what I'm saying? I've been through this once before. I know how it ends. As much as I want to, I already... Her death was my fault. I can't deal with that again.”
She put a hand on my chest. “I can't lose you like I lost her.”
I was quiet for a few moments.
“I'm sorry,” I said, hugging her. “I didn't know.”
“It's okay,” she said.
“I can't imagine what that must have been like,” I said, “and I'm sorry it happened, but... That's not me, Caroline. The situation is different.”
“How is it different?”
“It's not obvious? Your friend, she had probably never even thought about werewolves. I've been obsessed with them for years. And she didn't hear the call. I'm ready for this, Caroline. I want it. For both of us.”
“It's the same decision-”
“But for different reasons. What do you expect me to do, Caroline? Walk away, after all this? Can you even do that? You keep acting like terrible things are going to happen if we do this, but if you really didn't want this then you would've walked away a long time ago. We've already made our decision, you're just trying to give me a reason not to go through with it. And -and if I thought this was the wrong decision, I wouldn't make it. Ever since I heard the call, I've felt so...alive. So empowered. For the first time in my life! I've felt like I'm actually living! If there's more to be felt, I want to be a part of it. And you... you're the only friend I have. Every time I look at you I see this -this sadness just below the surface, and it drives me mad. I don't want to see you like that anymore, if I can help it. And I think, this way, I can. I'm willing to hide myself from the world if it means I don't have to hide myself from you.”
She wiped a tear from her cheek and laughed, “God, we're so melodramatic.”
Without saying a word, I leaned in and kissed her. I'd never kissed anyone before, and it scared me half to death that I was doing it. But at the same time, it was the only thing to do. The only way to prove that I didn't care about the drama, the difference in perspective.
I only cared about her.
And when I pulled away, she looked at me with such vulnerability, and I realized that the toughness, the harsh words, they were all just a front. Inside, she was just as scared and just as doubtful as I was. Up until that moment, she'd been fighting with herself as to whether or not I was like her.
She hugged me as tight as she could and cried into my shoulder, and I held her, remembering my life, remembering all the tiny, pointless tragedies that had led me to this moment. I never thought I could measure whether my life had been worth living, but in that moment I knew that, no matter how lacking I had been as a human being before then, things were different now. Because of Caroline, I could be a better person.
I said to her in a soft voice, “You and I were meant to be.”
She replied through sobs, “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”

The Choice: Part 3

The Choice
Part 3

So, not surprisingly, I went home that day and had a heart attack. I didn't know whether to write it all of as a hallucination or to start screaming from the rooftops that werewolves were real. The latter, of course, seemed a very foolish notion, especially considering my conspiracy-fueled ideas on the subject.
Werewolves. Werewolves! Holy crap! Oh my gosh, what the hell? How is it even possible? I can't begin to describe my excitement, my fear, my apprehension... I didn't know what to believe, so I believed everything. Any attempt I made to temper my feelings just ended up being squashed a moment later by another question I might get an answer to. I didn't know that I could believe her or not, but just the possibility that there was this completely other race, this culture that, according to common society, doesn't even exist, and that I had stumbled onto it like a rock in the middle of the street, I mean... this was a huge deal. It was an affirmation of all my thoughts and expectations about the world, and for the first time in my life, things felt right.
Caroline was, to me, infinite possibility. I wanted to learn everything about her, her family, her lycanthropy. Everything that could give an extra dimension to my boring life, I wanted.
The next day she found me during lunch. She sat next to me, her tray exhibiting signs of extreme vegetarianism, and said,
“Prove to me why you're not a waste of my tine.”
“Hello,” I said, “you're sitting next to me.”
She shook her head. “And?”
“I figured you didn't want to socialize. People are looking and they're going to think we're, I dunno...”
“What? Dating?” She laughed. “Who cares what they think, we don't fit in with them anyway.”
“'We?'”
She took a bite of a celery stick and said, “You're nowhere near as stealthy as you think you are. Even when you're looking at me out of the corner of your eye, you're still looking at me. I've been watching you right back, okay? I could tell you were an outcast from the start, but I never expected this.” She shook her head again. “You take notes on people like they're, what, test subjects? Seems like you spend so much time trying to understand people, you lose the ability to live among them altogether.”
“Yeah? And what's your excuse?”
“You already guessed it, remember? We're not talking about me, we're talking about you. Unless you're all touchy-feely about that crap.”
I scratched my chin. “You have a very abrasive personality, did you know that?”
Caroline made to get up. “Fine, if you're not going to take this seriously-”
“Wait, no, hold on!” I said, grabbing her wrist.
Now, if I can just have you hold that image in your mind for a moment; Caroline half standing, half sitting at the table, looking at me with apprehension; me holding her by the wrist, desperately trying not to blow this chance. If I could point to any one moment in my life and say, “There, that's it, that's when it really began,” it'd be this one. Not many people have that luxury. It helps a lot, in retrospect, being able to see the very second the world changed and trace the transformation over time. You learn a lot about yourself and the world around you that way.
When I grabbed her, there was a very sudden moment of silence. The white noise of a hundred teenagers conversing disappeared entirely, and time itself seemed to slow to a crawl. And then I felt a pull in my chest, and my vision went black.
But it wasn't blindness, because I still saw things. It was different, though. My eyes had gone dark, but as I was being pulled through...whatever you might call it, my soul or essence or what-have-you experienced the visceral sensations of the universe. Conscious experience, despite what we might fool ourselves into believing, is more than just seeing and hearing and feeling; when you take the body away, suddenly you're not limited by your body's pain, pressure, and temperature thresholds; suddenly you don't have to worry about your brain needing to focus on one input at a time in order to make sense of it. When it's just the soul, you experience everything. Every blade of grass and drop of water. But even that doesn't do it justice, not really. It's like... every single atom is a vibrating universe all its own, and the soul touches them all individually, flows through them, expands them, becomes them. My soul was ripped out of my body, and pulled through what felt like an infinitesimal number of universes.
And yet, I somehow arrived at the image of the moon. And instead of being this rock in the sky reflecting the light from the sun, it was like a... a power source. It emanated this white, flowing energy that charged me and calmed me and made me feel like everything was simple and in its place. I had images of running through forests and hunting and howling at her -because Luna is a presence entirely her own on that plane, something I'm sure you've felt for yourself.
In all the time that I had been interested and obsessed with werewolves, I had never truly felt in my core that they could be real in an honest, scientific world. But when I touched her hand, I felt like I should have been one all along, like it was my calling.
My destiny.
And then I was back in the cafeteria, holding Caroline by the wrist, dazed and confused and not being entirely sure where I was.
Now, keep in mind that the entire experience happened in a span of time less than a second. I could barely have quantified what happened as having even occurred at all, except that I remembered it so thoroughly, albeit in a strange second-hand sort of way. I'd used senses that my soul understood perfectly, but that my physical body couldn't begin to comprehend.
I let go of her hand like it had given me a static shock, and when she looked at me expectantly for my explanation, I struggled to remember what it was she had asked me in the first place.
I said, “You're not going to believe this.”
I explained what little of my experience I could put into words, and she remained silent for a while. I asked her what it could mean, and eventually she explained.
“What you're describing is called astral projection, but I've never heard of it just happening like that without drugs or something. You're not on drugs, are you?”
“Of course not,” I said.
“Okay, so... what the hell?”
I stared at the palm of my left hand, rubbing it with the fingers of my right, and I said, “So, is that some kind of werewolf superpower?”
“Are you really entirely clueless?”
I said, defensively, “I'm sorry, I've never exactly done this before!”
She held up her hands, “Alright, okay, calm down. Everyone astral projects. Generally, that's what dreams are. Your essence leaves your body and goes to the astral plane, tied to your physical self only by a strand of energy no thicker than a thread. You ever wake up from a bad dream feeling like you just got flung into the upright sitting position?”
I nodded.
“That's the thread pulling you back. Anyway, it can be done consciously, but it's very difficult. It generally requires a lot of patience, and at least a couple years of daily meditation and self-discipline. There are a few stand-out cases but, uh... no offense, but you don't seem the type. And anyway, no one could just throw their essence out there so specifically and pull it back that quickly without at least a little preparation.”
“How do you know I'm not just that good?”
She rolled her eyes, “Because that's stupid, and you're stupid for saying so.”
The bell rang for us to go back to class, and she said, “Meet me at the same place after school, okay? I think I know what happened.”
I nodded and gathered my things.
Well, we met after school and we discussed my experience. She asked me a lot of questions about myself and my life, turning out my insecurities and trying to understand what I had seen from my perspective. Nothing about her opinion changed, of course, and I felt a little bit silly falling in love with the sound of her voice as she essentially interviewed me for inclusion in the Caroline Friend Club.
When she finished, I asked her to tell me what she thought, and she said she would rather wait. Not because of any dislike, simply that she wanted to wait what the effect of my experience might be. She would rather, as she said, be proven silently wrong than start a fuss and end up getting me hurt.
So, while it annoyed me that she might know something about me that even I didn't, I agreed to wait with her, and put forward that, in the meantime, we hang out outside of school.
I had spent several hours rehearsing the potential responses to this question at home, and not a one of those responses included the phrase, “Okay.” She said this and hurried away, late for whatever it was she had to do after school, leaving me flabbergasted beneath the trees.
Over the next three days, we continued seeing each other in school, and she asked me questions about philosophy and theology. I never had to explain why I wasn't a waste of time, apparently, as she found me to be a curiosity even compared to herself.
We'd made tentative plans to go see a movie over the weekend, a strangely normal thing for her to suggest. Not that I cared; I liked to think that I had the guts to put a hand on hers and an arm around her shoulder, to let her lean on me and maybe steal a kiss when emotions were high on the screen. Of course, on the night before we were to go, she canceled for reasons she wouldn't explain, and I was left feeling nonplussed and rather stupid.
It came to my attention that my experience took place the week before the full moon. Well, that Sunday I started to feel something very strange as it got closer to night fall. My fingertips tingled, and my heart seemed to be racing even though it wasn't beating any faster than normal. I had an excitement coming from a very primal part of me, and without thinking about it I went outside and ran as fast as I could in the direction that seemed like it would take me to the nearest outcropping of trees. I ended up just laying there on the ground, staring at the moon, feeling like a dog lazing in the sun. It just felt so natural, and I couldn't help but smile. I had the urge to go into a restaurant and order a steak so rare I could still hear it moo. I thought about chasing deer and killing them, to eat them and just to enjoy the hunt.
Of course, tempering these sensations was a fear that I was just making it up as I was going along, that I was letting myself believe what I wanted to, finding signs where they weren't any. And after so many days, I could easily convince myself that my experience had been just a flight of inspired improvisation. Maybe all of this was just my plea to get into Caroline's inner circle. Hell, maybe she wasn't even a werewolf? She could have just said yes because she thought it was good sport.
I did consider her words, though, and that possibility didn't seem entirely probable, but I couldn't write it off. There was no proof one way or the other for any of the possible explanations, so I had to believe that they could all be the truth.
I imagine by now you're starting to see a pattern.
Well, I went to school the next day and didn't tell Caroline about the night before, although she seemed to have expected me to say something and was obviously disappointed when I didn't.
The following night, however, the night directly before the full moon, I almost killed myself climbing up a tree, and I found myself heaving in my bedroom, unable to sleep, being shaken by the ghost of a pain I couldn't place. I told Caroline the next day, and explained my reluctance by saying that the first night hadn't seemed too out of the ordinary, but now it was starting to get undeniable, and I needed an explanation.
Caroline told me to have patience for the rest of the day and try to act normal, as the pains were still coming to me. She wanted to explain it after school. So I waited, and every class seemed to last an eternity. My mind was wandering to various places at speeds I couldn't keep up with, and while I was exhausted I was also exhilarated. I didn't know what I wanted and I was scared out of confusion. But Caroline gave me a hope.
I thought I was becoming a werewolf, and it scared the hell out me, partly because it didn't make any sense. I mean, she hadn't even bitten me! But I was simultaneously fighting it and letting it wash over me, this recurring sensation of free-fall. I almost landed myself in detention last period for not hearing a teacher call my name five times in a row, but thankfully I still remembered algebra and answered the question with relative ease.
And then I ran to the ROTC field and waited for her.
Caroline sat me down on a log and explained it as best she could.
“What you're going through right now... it's the call.”
When she didn't say anything else, I said, “And what is that?”
“I... don't know, exactly.”
“How do you not know?!”
“Because I -because it's not like it is in the movies, okay? Werewolfism is a lot weirder than you realize.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was born a werewolf, but neither of my parents even think they exist. I... know things, but I could never tell you exactly how I know them.” She took a deep breath and said, “I may come off as really confident or whatever, but I'm kind of freaking out right now because this is something I thought was just in my head.”
“Oh, you're freaking out?” I said. “I'm the one feeling like my stomach is turning into a boulder and having fantasies about killing woodland critters!”
“Alright, sorry!” she yelled. “We're in this together, okay? So just calm down.”
I took a breath and said, “What's going to happen to me tonight?”
“Probably nothing.”
“Probably?”
“Nothing like what you're thinking, I know that. You don't have the blood of a wolf, you can't shift like I do. The call is something else entirely.”
“Would you be so kind as to explain?”
She composed her thoughts for a moment.
“What you're feeling right now is a general transformation of your soul. You see, there are people like me, who were born werewolves, and there are people like you who were... not. But were supposed to be. Maybe it's some genetic thing that didn't come up quite right in your bloodline, or maybe your soul got put into the wrong body, I don't know what could lead to this situation. But you're like a...a baby werewolf that hasn't been born yet, and can't be without my help.”
“Did you just call me a fetus?” I said, then shook my head, “Nevermind. So, why is my soul, uh, transforming?”
“It's re-purposing itself now that it's come into contact with the spirit of the moon.”
“Okay... What does that mean for me?”
Caroline took a deep breath, seeming reluctant to tell me more. But she continued.
“It means that, after tonight, you're going to spend the rest of your life fighting off the impulses you're gaining now, and you're going to want to become a true werewolf. You'll likely find yourself reticent to go anywhere for fear of hurting people, or lose your mind trying to act like a normal human being. You'll fight as hard as you can, but you won't be able to resist it. That's why it's the call. She wants you to be one of us, and she's given you the energy to make that possible.”
“She?”
“Luna. The spirit of the moon.”
“I see,” I said.
We sat in silence, I rubbing my palms again.
“I guess I want to be a werewolf,” I said. “I mean, I'd never given it much thought before. Not like this, anyway.”
She shook her head. “What do you mean you want to be?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“What you're going through right now, you'd define it as painful, right?”
“Yeah...”
“Well, I promise you that being a true werewolf is much more painful. The battle you'd be going through against the call is nothing compared to what you'd go through trying to lead a normal life as one of us.”
“You pull it off pretty convincingly,” I said.
She stuttered. “I, well... You, you have no idea what it's like to be this thing that's a joke to most people, alone in a truth that no one would acknowledge even to a crazy person-”
“I wouldn't be alone, would I?” I said matter-of-factly. “And neither would you.”
Caroline stared at me, then laughed. “You are a piece of work.”
“What? Am I wrong?”
“Not necessarily, but you have no idea-”
“You keep saying that, but I just... I mean, if you're so alone, what harm would come of having someone in your life who is like you? Who does know exactly what it's like? And as for me, I just don't think it's going to be like you say, with the fighting and the struggling and all of that. I'm freaked out and nervous and...a lot of things right now, but ever since my experience... This feels right to me, you know? Like this is what was always supposed to happen.”
“There you go with that destiny talk again.”
“Well, hey, you're the one who said that werewolves are just born with no regard for genetics. If it really is like that, what are the odds that you'd be born in your family and live here, as a werewolf, and I would be born in mine and have my obsession, and then come here, and us have this conversation? You change a single detail in either of our lives and this whole thing just falls apart. So, why not destiny?”
She shook her head. “You're seeing what you want to see. Hindsight always gives you a good plotline, but what about the future? What's stopping me from walking away right now and never talking to you again?”
“Because we're in this together,” I said. “I think you're curious to see why I feel the way I do, why the moon would pick someone as -someone like me. I think despite everything, you feel responsible for my pain and don't want me to hurt any more than I already do.”
I rubbed my temple and stated, “And more than anything, you don't want to be alone anymore.”
Caroline stared, slack-jawed, then bit her lip and shook her head, turning away, laughing.
“Where the hell did you come from?” She said. “You are just... you- you- you don't even... Shit!”
She ran her hands through her hair and sighed. “Listen, I like you, but you don't want this. I promise you, you don't want to be like me.”
“Why not?”
“Because it hurts being singled out, seeing the world from a completely different perspective than everyone else. I mean, you can't comprehend...”
“What if I'm sick of being like everyone else? Maybe I want a new perspective?”
“Yeah, but for how long? This isn't reversible. I didn't have a choice, I am stuck this way. You do.”
“I guess, but do I really? Even if I choose no, I'll still have to fight the call the rest of my life.”
“That's a small price to pay comparatively, trust me.”
“But the whole point of me hearing the call in the first place is to bring me closer towards being a werewolf. Isn't it? I mean, if I've been chosen for this-”
“Chosen? You say that like this is some kind of movie or something. This is just how it happens, okay? This is just the world.”
“It's not like the world I've lived in all my life. Look, I know what you think here but you can't change my mind. You can't change how I feel. I have spent my entire life just...watching people. You know? I'm sick of being that person, of being the guy who never gets into trouble and never does anything exciting. Since I met you, I've felt more than I have probably my whole life. I don't want this to stop. Whatever this is, be it destiny or chance, I want to see it through to the end. And I don't think you want to just give it up, either. I mean, do we really want to go the rest of our lives wondering what would have happened if we had followed through on this?”
“We could live to regret it,” she said.
“I won't. Even if I am wrong and this is a terrible idea, I won't regret it, and you know why? Because despite everything, I did something. I lived. For once in my life, I actually made a choice and saw it through to the end. If nothing else, at least I could say that I tried.”
Caroline stared at the ground for a few moments before saying, “You are a very surprising person, you know that?”
“How do you mean?”
“You're...different. You actually think about things. You didn't seem like much at first, but...”
She mulled over her thoughts, then stood up. “I have to think about this. I'm not saying one way or the other yet. I need some time to make sure.”
“Make sure what?”
She smiled. “Make sure you're not just crazy.”