Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I was slumbering away my one hour break on the itchy cot in the back room of the guards booth, when a knock at the door behind me awoke the curious puppy within me.  I raised my head and tuned my ears towards the crack between the door and floor to try to guess who it was. I guessed it was my guard Gabriel.

“Jade. Come.” commanded Gabriel.

“Hey, hey, hey. Don’t start that with me, you can only talk to me like that when the inmates are around.” I grumbled at him, while picking a little junk out of the corners of my eyes.

“Yeah, I know, I just like mesin’ with ya Jadey” he laughed.  

“Well Jadey doesn’t take kindly to humor after her cat-nap” I said in a mimicking voice.

“Cat nap? Isn’t that a little ironic?” he shot back.

Yeah, well so is a human prison protected by wolves. I thought to myself, even in my grouchy state I couldn’t bring myself to undermine Gabriel like that. 

“I told you, knock it off” I grumbled as I pushed the door shut for a little privacy.  I stood up did a couple stretches as my human self before crawling onto the ground to focus.  I focused on a mental image of a moon rising, while holding tight to the crescent moon and star ring in my right hand.  I began to feel the tickling sensation of fur growing on my arms.  Soon followed the uncomfortable crunch of my facial bones growing into a snout and my hands and feet morphing into paws.  The tail is probably the worst part, to get the muscles for that one, my body actually creates them, but it was all over before I knew it.  

After I was done I looked over to the mirror to make sure I had come out okay, no missing patches of fur or human fingernails.  All I saw looking back at me was an average looking wolf with amber colored fur, white paws and auburn eyes.  I congratulate myself for another successful transformation and pawed at the door for Gabriel to let me out.   

I looked up and saw Gabriel standing in the doorway jingling the leash, like I was a dog ready to go out for a ride in the car.

Jeez, you just wont let down will you? He laughed again, being the sarcastic jerk that he is and I love.  He leashed me up and walked me out of the guards booth into the aisles of Sandulf States inmates.

  Most wolves here hate their guards, they hate being leashed up they hate taking commands and they hate their jobs.  They are always barking at them, gossiping and ridiculing them, probably out of a notion of jealousy that they are still leading their lives as humans, were as the rest of us are stuck living like, well, dogs.  I however, consider Gabriel something of an uncle.  So sweet and caring, he’s been my guard for years, we’ve come to trust and respect each other, even though I wont admit it to the pack.

It’s probably because Gabriel isn’t like the other guards. He never treats me like a dog, never provokes my temperament, and at least manages to understand how werewolves are.  

I want to say this straight out, I don’t particularly care for what I do.  Sure, it can be fun here and there, making my way down the aisles of inmate, barking, snarling , causing them to shake in their boots. 

After a while though, it starts to lose it allure. As we made our way down the corridors of societies non-conformist’s, the drones on as usual.  Up then back, bark here, bark there, a whistle is blown they come out of their cells to go shower, eat, workout, read, and they come back.  Then its up the aisle again, come back, again and back.  Fun right?

I was staring out into the little plate-glass window all the way at the top of the end wall of the aisle.  I started to wonder if this was truly going to be the rest of my life, never leaving never seeing anything the world has to offer besides its slimy rejects in cages.  I was watching the full moon peek ever so slightly over the bottom ledge when I heard a small coughing fit coming from down the aisle.  Gabriel had barley noticed it, but my ears had picked up on a prisoner coughing up what I can only assume was his lung.  His cell mate began to call over to my guard as we took our time getting down to the cell.  

“What's the problem?” asked Gabriel.

The cell mate yelled in a spanish dialect, and before I could recognize the word sangre, I could already smell the blood. The man was coughing terribly, jolting and convulsing as the blood speckled the mattress the he clung to.  I backed away, feeling the wolf inside me wanting to take down the weakened prey, if only I had known then what kind of trouble this was becoming.  My officer felt my resistance and pulled back form the cell door and ran down the isle to the guard’s booth.  Another officer, Mike, came through the door followed by a nurse and a medic a few moments later.  

Gabriel tied my leash to the pipe going up the wall in a loose knot. Just tight enough to hold me back, but loose enough to set me free should the situation take a turn for the worse.  Gabriel followed behind Mike back to the cell to help.

Meanwhile, the man had convulsed his way the cell door and was clinging to the bars now.  His cellmate was yelling and shouting for help, which started up the rest of the prisoners.  The entire block was now an orchestra of excited shouts, whistles and clamors of shaking cell bars. The guard held up his nightstick to the cell door and yelled for the cell mates to get back.  They obliged, and the guard opened the door to let the convulsing prisoner out of the cell so that the medics could help him.

As the guard was sliding the cell door shut, the cellmate lunged forward and put his arm straight into the open gap of the closing gate. The guard started to beat the man’s arm back with the night stick, but cellmate had grabbed ahold of it and pulled it away from his grasp.

The prisoner was now swinging the stick about causing the night guard to back away from the cell, with the convulsing prisoner still squirming around on the cement floor.  Gabriel caught sight of what was going on outside of the Guard’s booth, and quickly ran out to help his fellow officer.  His efforts however, were too little too late. He flung the stick up wards and brought it barreling down towards Gabriel’s head.  Luckily, Gabe had reacted quickly enough to duck out of the way.  Now amred with a nightstick, the prisoner sprinted past Gabriel, down the hall and towards the doors that lead to the exit gates.  

My leash had luckily been fastened loosely enough so that I could break free as I belted down the hall to catch him.  

The thin, moral fibers of my existence had become a fainter and fainter part of my being with every sprint and dash I had made down that corridor. So faint had become the voice that held me back from my mutation into a beast, that my inhibitions of honor had drowned in the blood the raged within me as the scent of his sweating body tickled my nose. Closer and closer I came to the rabbit that had escaped from his hole.  

As I pounced onto his back, and only a second later had hit the ground the thump of his head hitting the ground echoed in my head for a moment as I caught my breath, allowing my human heart to catch up.  The hunger for flesh overcame my inhibitions as I ripped into the nape of his pale, brown, perspiring neck. The hall in which I had caught the prisoner in had gone silent, only the sound of a irritatingly high-pitched ringing broke the air. I instinctively perked up to the sound of dog whistle and backed off of my now paralyzed prey.

The other guards had swooped in to retrieve the man, the medical personal had taken out every syringe, bandage and tool they could find to start reviving the man, but to no avail.  A few blood filled coughs and a final gasp, the man’s eyes closed with a flicker while his head rolled back, leaving the rest of his body unmoving in the arms of the officers.  

My heart was still racing, my paws wanted to go for another run, they ached to chase more, to be the cause for what was right, to follow a path that was created just for me. That however, didn’t happen.

Gabriel leashed my collar, turned me away from the prisoner and led me to the staircase leading down the wolve’s den.

Reviews

[Abhinav]

i think the font should have been larger, but i liked the chapter.. great start..

[Coyote Poetry]

A very good start to this story. I like the transformation. The conversation was interesting. I like the situation you create in this story. A wide open ending. I desire to know the who/what/where and how now? A excellent chapter.
Coyote