Holloway's Predicament

I have since given up the craft of the short story. This, along with the rest of my pieces, are dead to me.

Horror.


   Many emotions washed over me as I lay nude on the leafy forest floor, Sicily’s warm sunlight breaking through the trees and exposing my naked skin. Confusion, fright, and a strange, naive feeling of awe gripped my body - but what conquered and overcame them all was horror. The horror of real knowledge left untouched for centuries, and only spoken of in the darkest corners of the world by the discredited, insane tongues of occultists and obscure tribes dotting the globe. The horror of a frightening folk tale being as real as the air in my lungs, and the blood in my veins.

 



  The boat ride from the tip of Italy to Sicily is a beautiful, once-in-a-lifetime experience. It almost feels as though you’ve fell back in time. My feet began trotting at a rather busy, modern port, and found a resting place across a waterway of translucent, rolling aquamarine. Sandals that formerly plodded across unwanted pavement now scuffed along a dirty, rustic street. Although I found myself arguing with the idea of being planted firmly in such a foreign, old-fashioned place, I became increasingly pleased with the eye-pleasing scenery. It was certainly a nice addition to my original purpose of choosing Sicily as small break from my life in the States.

  Vacation seems to have a unique definition and purpose for each person, and I am no different. Formerly a forensic investigator from the great state of Louisiana, misfortune struck me a matter of months ago in the form of my clumsiness, a used needle, and most unfortunately, hepatitis C. Forced into a temporary state of retirement, I have decided to visit places of interest around our strange planet, to fulfill my own personal interests, forensic science and cryptozoology.. I do not love cryptozoology because I believe in such ridiculous things, however; I fulfill the role of the skeptic to a perfect degree, disproving the buffoons and morons which choose to believe in sea monsters and magical gorilla men. In a very rare, strange case I now found myself in Sicily, my curiosity piqued by something attractive to not one, but both of my hobbies.

  I found a letter in mailbox a few weeks ago written by a pen pal, and fellow skeptic. He recanted a rather humorous tale about some of the folklore in Sicily, most notably  a longstanding tale simply reeking of ancient ignorance and a creature who could have been La Chupacabra’s cousin. For thousands of years, Sicily’s countryside has been plagued by the slaughter of livestock, pets, and in the most extreme cases, people. It is not a well-known or popular subject in the larger circles of the astoundingly imaginative study of cryptozoology, due to the natives’ preference to keep what they refer to as a ‘curse’ hush-hush. After a bit of extensive research produced little fruit, I decided that a trip to Sicily would be in order, to possibly ease the grinding gears of my inquisitive mind and maybe provide a lesser distraction from the anguish my body was in.

  I quietly trotted up the steps to a large building with old, stained Italian lettering on the side. Fortunately, my trip would not be an expensive one, due to a previous, very convenient agreement with a member of the police in Bronte. In exchange for my expertise concerning a few murders roundabouts the farmlands in Bronte, I would be given free room and board. Not only that, but I would have a vast array of knowledge - knowledge on a scientific level, that I could use to delve deeper into this strange farce.

  I strode through the doors of the building, and was immediately given a warm welcome by whom I could vaguely perceive by a photograph as my ‘employer’ and roommate, Armando. Armondo was a middle-aged, portly fellow, his skin a dark brown. The top of his sweaty head was a bit lighter, however, the light patch poorly hidden by a terrible combover.

“Buon giorno ” Armondo bellowed loudly, before giving me a rather uncomfortable embrace in the form of a hug. “We have been expecting you for quite some time, Mister Holloway  I trust your trip was not...too strenuous?” Armondo arched both of his eyebrows, clearly hinting at my hepatitis as if I were secretly harboring the Black Death.

A small cough escaped my lips, muffled by my bony hand. “The trip was fine, Armondo. I’m not carrying a plague. You don’t have to spoil me with comforts and sympathy because of it.”

Armondo gave a slight frown, and nodded. “My apologies, Mister Holloway. I just thought...”

“Royal.” I quickly jutted in. “Just call me Royal. I feel like those titles indicate old age, and I’d say neither of us want to feel any older, hm?”

Armondo gave a brief chuckle at my sentiment, and gently ran his hand across the sparse hairs on the top of his head. “You said it.” He lifted a finger, on the verge of making another statement, but the beeping and fuzzy static of a radio cut him off. He unbuckled the small, rectangular box from his belt and conversed into it’s receiver for a moment in Italian, and then snugly buckled it back to his belt.

“Looks like you’re already needed, Royal.” Armondo made his way out of the door, and motioned for me to follow.

I followed him back down the steps quietly, to one of several old, beaten-up police cars. “Right behind you, Armondo.”

  From that point on, the days moved by rather slowly. When I wasn’t helping the local police identify bullets or body parts, I spent them asking people about folklore, and reading books about the area. Although I had heard a myriad of rather amusing and colorful stories, no one touched on the subject of whatever ‘lurked’ in the night. Much to my dismay, progress had came to a halt. A few days later, however, my connections with the area’s law enforcement would finally begin to come to fruition.

“Disgusting.”

  That was all Armondo could get out in English, while conversing to the Sicilian officers infesting the area around us. We stood outside of a small cottage, surrounded by the gored and mangled bodies of goats and fowl. I ignored the livestock and made my way to the door, which looked as though a bear had torn part of it down. And as soon as I got a peek of what lay inside, I truly had to agree with Armondo’s statement.

  Blood coated the walls of the one room cottage, dotted with small chunks of what looked to be bits of flesh and organs, ripped from the unrecognizable husks that littered the floor in chunks. Their limbs had been separated from their torsos in a most savage manner; arms, legs, hands, and feet were strewn about broken, blood-soaked furniture. Even though I had spent well over ten years viewing the scenes of murders, I had never quite felt a shocking sensation as I felt standing amongst such monstrous butchery. I took a moment to gather myself  - something I seldom had to do, and began to conduct my investigation.

  I searched the area thoroughly for weapons, finding only a broken axe handle, laying directly out of the grasp of crushed, bloodied fingers. I continued to search for another weapon, albeit in vain, frustrated by what was quickly becoming an anomaly. After a solid twenty minutes of searching or so, I gently crouched down by one of the bodies, and sighed. It was only then that I realized my incompetence, having discovered another odd reagent that littered the area en masse.

Animal hair.

  Animal hair in abundance, even embedded in the blood and meat spattered against the walls. “Surely this was a bear”, I silently thought to myself. I procured a set of tweezers from a bag on my side, and picked up a piece of the hair. After a few moments of examination through only my glasses, curiosity gripped me. I was wrong - the hair was dark grey in color, and very thin and wiry in composition. I dropped the hair into a plastic bag, and continued my investigation.

  Around an hour or so later, I made my way out of the cottage to deliver what I had learned so far to Armondo.

“Well? What do you think?” Armondo peered over my shoulder for a moment, and shook his head at the vile scene.

“It had to have been animals. There’s no trace of anything human in there. Although the door is pure mystery to me, the room is covered in animal hair, and the...erm, wounds, I guess, show signs of scratches. I’m sure there are bites, but there’s no way of telling unless you perform an autopsy on what’s left.” I fished several plastic bags out of my coat pockets, and held them out to Armondo.

Armondo wiped a few beads of sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief.. “What kind of animal do you think it was?”

“The cottage looks old, so my first thought was maybe that a bear killed the livestock, chased the two people within the house, and then tore down the door. But I found a problem with that. The hair is dark grey, and I’ve never seen or heard of a bear with that kind of coloration. So until an autopsy comes back, I guess the only remotely close explanation would be wolves. Maybe wild dogs, but I don’t know how a pack of mangy dogs could cause this much damage.”

Armondo’s face flushed pale. “Oh. Well, that seems like a suitable enough explanation. Maybe we should just rule it out as wolves, and leave it be.”

“What do you mean?” I cocked a brow at Armondo’s decision. “Don’t you think that if these people had family, they’d deserve a little more closure than a chance encounter with wolves?”

Armondo shook his head. “We’re simple people, Royal. That would be more than enough for the average Sicilian family.”


I nodded my head in disagreement.

 “Simple or not, this needs to be conducted in a little more professional manner than just ruling it out as an animal attack, and putting them in the ground. Besides, I’m sure the coroner doesn’t see this much excitement often.” I cracked a morbid smile, only to be met by a very grim, serious stare.

“I’m writing this off as an animal attack, and that’s that. There’s no reason wasting our time and resources on something that needs no further explanation.” Armondo trotted off quietly, leaving me in a state of confusion at his odd decision.

“What the hell has washed over him?” I thought to myself. “This could be a breakthrough in intelligence for their homely police force, and yet he doesn’t want to look further-


The gears in my head began spinning again.


I jogged over to Armondo’s squad car and hopped in the passenger-side seat before he had the chance to take off.

“Armondo, can I ask you something?

Armondo looked over to me, somewhat annoyed.

“Sure, why not.”

I took a deep breath, hoping that the question I was about to ask wouldn’t get some sort of refusal.

“Armondo, I’ve heard of a folk tale that was generated here in Sicily, kind of similar to another one known as ‘La Chupacabra’. It’s basically a story from South America about a creature that feeds off of livestock...

Armondo sighed. “There are some stories that aren’t meant to leave Sicily, to keep people like you from coming here and asking about them and then carrying them all over the world.”

“What exactly is that supposed to mean, Armondo?”

I drummed my fingers on the dashboard, awaiting an answer.

“It means that you should mind your own business when it comes to local matters, Royal.”

I paused for a moment and scratched my chin at what Armondo said, speechless for the time being. But something clever soon came to me.

“I suppose I’ll pack my bags and go back home, then.”

“What? Why? I just got a letter hinting at a grant for all of the good casework we’ve been doing.”

I glowered at Armondo, my voice filled with spite. “Because I don’t want to work with an a*****e. You’re safeguarding some special secret from me and treating me like an outsider, just because I’m curious about something. I came here to help you and learn about your country. And if I can’t do both, then I’m not interested in doing anything here at all.”

Armondo rested his head on the steering wheel for a moment in silence, and let out another sigh.

“Alright, fine. I don’t care, as long as you do as you said in your letter and continue to help us, prick.” Armondo grabbed a pen out of his cup holder, and scrawled something on a piece of paper. “There’s a farm a few miles out of Bronte. Go there and ask for Ugo.” Armondo handed me the paper in an aggressive manner, practically slapping it into my hand. “Here’s directions. Get a taxi or something.”

  Although the short ride home and the few hours before we both called it a night were silent and awkward, I was more than pleased with my shrewd negotiation. I took my nightly dose of pain medication to damper some of the abdominal pain caused by my hepatitis, and began what felt like a dolorous process to me, sleeping. I must say I slept exceptionally well that night (a rarity in my case, for the pains of my deteriorating liver seldom subsided for anything), perhaps because I was finally making headway.

  I woke up bright and early the next morning, and after arguing with around three italian speaking cab drivers, found one who possessed an adequate knowledge of the English language. By no means can I express any method of racism or anguish over this, as I know that I myself have used many an ethnic and racial slurs under my breath in frustration over the foreign hordes that live in the States. After settling into the cab and trying my best to explain the directions to the relatively competent cab driver, we were finally on our way.

  I must truly say there is an eerie beauty about Sicily in the early morning;  fog curls around the trees and rolling hills, creeping over the distant fields of crops like a wispy blanket. Even though my aches and pains had seemed to increase from all of the movement and work I had partaken in the past few weeks, the verdant, rural scenery of Sicily made a feeling of peace and comfort swell up within me which kept me content.

  The old, yellow taxi cab snaked along the dirt roads for what seemed like hours in silence, before the fellow driving decided to start a bit of small talk.

“Hardly ever drive in old country this much for visitors. Where you go?”

I looked up from the piece of paper in my hand, which I was currently looking over to make sure I hadn’t flubbed up the directions.

“A small farm. I believe it is owned by a fellow named Ugo?”

I felt my head meet the passenger-side front seat, as the taxi cab driver slammed his brakes.

“You get out! You get out now!”

I recoiled from the blow to my head. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

The cab driver got out of the vehicle in a fuss, and opened my door.

  “You get out! Get out of my f*****g cab!” He began to pull on my shirt forcefully, screaming profanities in muddled English and Italian. I gave him a good push, knocking him on his backside. I may have been sick, but I was certainly not weak.

“What’s your problem, you piece of s**t? I’m paying you to drive me out there!”

  The cab driver slowly rose to his feet and bolted towards the driver’s seat. I turned around in my seat again, only to be met by the unwelcome touch of two steel barrels brushing against my nose.

“Out of cab! Out of my damn cab!”

  Several things came to mind. Among them were words such as ‘guido’, ‘goombah’, and ‘meatball’, but the number one thing that came to mind was to get the hell out of that cab before my head got shaped into a canoe. I practically dove out of the cab, and watched the strange driver go completely off of the road to make an abrupt turn, and then speed away in the opposite direction of my destination. I scuffled on down the road towards my destination, cursing under my breath all the while.

  My long walk gave me time to think. I wondered about this ‘Ugo’ person. Why did the cab driver dump me out at the mention of his name? Did he know something that I didn’t? In light of all of the strange circumstances surrounding what I perceived as nothing but folklore, I tried to remain stalwart in my skeptic position. But somewhere, deep in the back of my mind, imagination was trying desperately to tug on the strings of my mind like a puppeteer.

“What if there is more to this?”  I thought to myself. “These people are guarding this like Area 51.”

  I stopped for a moment and snickered at myself. I was walking down a dirt road in Sicily’s countryside, weighing the options of some great monster existing. Here I was, plodding down a strange road, in a country whose land was as foreign to me as the language it’s people spoke. “It’s amazing,” I thought to myself as I continued walking, “simply amazing how being clumsy with a needle has destroyed my life.” My smug snickering quickly turned to a frown, as the silence gave me time to dwell on what had happened those few months ago. I’ve never liked silence for that same reason; it’s the reason why I try to limit my privacy, and the reason why I now took a hearty helping of sedatives along with my routine dose of pain medication at night. Silence gave me brief moments to contemplate, and contemplation typically made me an unhappy man.

  Now all of this sappy loathing and self-pity reminded me that I needed to pop a few pills in order to continue my one-man march through the countryside, so I began to fish around in my pockets for my medication.

“Damnit!”

  I came back out empty handed. “Now what am I supposed to do?”

  I looked back at the road. I could backtrack, and look for the bottle; of course, that would send me back at least an hour, and even then it could have fallen into the cab as I leapt out. I shrugged, and simply continued walking. I had gone too far now to let a bottle of pills hold me back.

  A few hours later, I turned off on a narrow dirt path, leading to a small farm. I looked down at the piece of paper, now almost crumpled up, and hoped that I had followed the directions correctly. I strode down the path, eyeing my surroundings. “Finally!” I thought to myself, “My efforts are coming to fruition.”

  It really wasn’t much of a farm; the place looked as though its field hadn’t been tended to in years, and the small cottage squatted beside it only made the place look even more run-down. The windows were boarded shut and vines crept up the brick exterior, as if they were holding on to the pile of bricks and wood for dear life. With the exception of a few dirty, squawking chickens and a goat tied to a well that insisted on bleating and nagging continuously, it seemed abandoned. Nonetheless I gave the door a few loud raps, in hopes that someone would answer.

  The door creaked open wide enough for an eye to peek through.

“Who is it?”

I tried to look around the door. “Ugo?”

“Yes, who IS it?”

“My name is Royal. Royal Holloway. I was looking for some information, and Armondo sent me here...”

  The door opened slowly, revealing the figure behind the door. Long, shaggy grey hair cascaded down a set of feeble shoulders, mottled in with a long, wiry beard. Ugo stood rather strongly for a man his age, only slightly aided by a cane. Nothing really seemed out of the ordinary for a hermitic old man like himself, except for his eyes. Aqua rings stared out at me, the pupils an odd turquoise. I jumped back, startled at his gaze, and was only greeted by an eerie, gap-toothed grin.

“Come in, please!”

Ugo hobbled over to a chair, and tapped it with his cane. “Have a seat!”

  I sat down in the chair, observing my surroundings. Moss grew on the inside of the dilapidated cottage, sparsely decorated with the bare essentials - a stove, a cupboard, and a bed. The inside was truly no exception to the rest of Ugo’s shabby property. Ugo pulled another chair up directly in front of me, and eased into it.

“What was it that you wanted to know, Royal? I seldom have company, but I know that if Armondo sent you, then we will certainly get along well.”

I was a bit taken aback by his prowess in the English language, but nonetheless quite refreshed.

“There’s a legend that seems to be well known amongst Sicilians that I would like to know, but when I ask anyone, I’m immediately given the cold shoulder and treated like a leper. Armondo finally broke down and told me to come to you...”

Ugo eyed me curiously. “Speaking of lepers, are you sick? You seem a bit strained.”

I blinked. “Well, I do have a disease, but I’m fine...”


Ugo shook a finger at me, and nodded in disagreement. “No, you’re sick. Something plagues your body, I can tell...by the way you stand and sit. Tell me, what ails you?”

I forced out a frustrated sigh. I almost regretted not going back to look for my medicine so I could avoid this topic.

 “Is it necessary that I discuss this with you? It’s somewhat of a private matter.”

“Well, you want to ask me questions about something that no one else will tell you. Why can’t I ask you one of the same value?”

I shrugged my shoulders. The old man had a point, unfortunately.

“Hepatitis C. I acquired it from a used needle at a crime scene.”

Ugo nodded. “And you walked all the way here from Bronte, with Hepatitis C? You must be exhausted.”

“Halfway. The cab driver threw me out after I mentioned your name. Can I please get some answers now?”

Ugo frowned, and nodded once more. “I suppose so. What do you want to know?”

“Some kind of story about a beast that roams Sicily and kills livestock, and people.”

Ugo chuckled. “Ah. The Sons of Remus. A well-woven tale. Are you familiar with the story of Romulus and Remus?”

I nodded in agreement. “Yes. They were the sons of Mars, raised by wolves, one founded Rome, etcetera. Yes, I am familiar.”

“Well, it is held among the older Sicilians and those with deep-rooted bloodlines that when Romulus slew Remus, that he cursed the ground Rome was built on, and cursed the teat that fed Romulus - which was the same that fed Remus.”

I scoffed to myself quietly, almost expecting bigfoot to make a guest appearance in a story already rooted in hokey mythology.

“Now, Remus and Romulus had but just a spark of divine fury and bloodthirst in their blood, having been fathered by Mars. This is why they were both sentenced to die in the Tiber river as children. However, they were saved by divine intervention and their mother and nurtured by a wolf, thus implanting an aspect of the wolf’s ferocity upon their beings.”

I drew conclusions in my head for a moment, still musing quietly to myself, but something astounding struck me. I grew silent, and gave Ugo my full attention.

“Little did Romulus know, but when Remus cursed Rome, he placed a blood curse upon every Roman generation from that day forth, forcing the first child of each fifteenth generation to become an aspect of Mars’ fury, and a son of Remus.”

“A...werewolf?”

  It felt as though someone had thrown a dumbbell on my heart as Ugo nodded. For the first time in my life, a concept so foolish began to materialize as a plausible and factual terror. I looked back on the scene at the cottage. The mangled bodies, the broken down door, the animal hair - something unfamiliar gripped me.

Fear gripped me.

“The sons of Remus roam Italy, immortal and only able to die by the sword. Those who stand in their path are consumed and torn apart without mercy; and those who manage to escape soon fall victim to Remus’curse.”

  I buried my face in my hands for a moment, ignoring the sharp pains in my stomach. Slowly, I looked up at Ugo, who had fallen silent. He was staring at me in complete silence, his face lacking any kind of human expression.

“What troubles you, Royal?”

“Nothing. Just feeling a bit sick.”

Ugo cracked an eerie smile, his eyes still set upon me.

“You may be sick, but the only thing that pains you right now is a sickness of the mind.”

I looked at Ugo inquisitively. “What do you mean?”

“You are gripped by truth, Royal. Truth...”

I sunk low in my seat. There was something about Ugo that made me very, very uncomfortable.

“Truth, and fear.”

A low, guttural noise vibrated and gargled in Ugo’s throat. At that moment my fear got the best of me, so I leapt backwards out of my chair and sprinted towards the door. I heard Ugo’s feet touch the floor with a youthful spring.

“Please, don’t leave! It’s a long walk for someone as sick as yourself.”

I stopped at the door, my skin follicles pinching and contorting into goose bumps. It was almost as if he was hinting at me not making it back to Bronte.

“What the hell do you want from me, old man?”

Ugo approached me slowly. “There’s a reason why I told you, Royal. I knew you were in anguish. I knew that you had it before you made it to my door. I want to help you, Royal.”

“You’re a damn fool.”

I laughed nervously, my back to the door. Denial was now my only defense.

“Do you like living with pain? Don’t you know what will happen a few months from now? A few years from now?”

I felt dumbfounded. It was more than clear that Ugo could see through my charade.

“It’s none of your f*****g concern.”
   
Ugo snarled, and slowly crept towards me.

“I’m doing you a favor.”

  I bolted out of the door. Running seemed futile, however, as I felt something rush through the grass like a violent gale, and bring me to the ground in one swift move. I howled in pain as something drove it’s knee into my back with the force of what felt like a club, as if trying to crush my kidneys.

“What do you want, damnit! What the hell do you want?!”

What felt like rugged, long thorns dug into my shoulders, and anchored themselves there by ripping backwards in my flesh.

“To free you from the chains of pestilence, Royal.”

My breaths grew short and close together as I began to hyperventilate. Hot, foul smelling breath brushed against my neck, creeping around to my nostrils and filling them with a scent unimaginable.

“Get the hell off of me!”

Ugo rammed his knee into my back once more, causing me to yelp like a pup.

“Silence! Don’t prolong the inevitable.”

  My body went limp, as tears streamed down my face. “This is how I’m going to die,” I thought to myself, “torn apart by the thing I’ve sought to disprove.” I buried my face in the dust and dirt under me, awaiting what I knew would be a grisly, torturous execution. I let out a small yelp, as I felt hot saliva trickle down my neck, and rows of razor-sharp teeth drag along my shoulder.

  What felt like an eternity passed, until it happened. Multitudes of ivory daggers tore into my shoulder, and began to rip and tear mercilessly. I let out frenzied, pained cries for help as I felt my own flesh being shred and torn into ribbons, some horrible monster ripping through the tendons in my shoulder like a wolf attacking a defenseless doe. I felt my body get pulled off of the ground, and shook violently by the gaping, gored shoulder.

  I began screaming so hard at this point that my voice began to crack; no pain on this world could have even remotely compared to the hell that I was being put through. I could hear my tendons pop and snap as the beast shook and flailed me about violently. Once the pain reached a point to where I had accepted my fate, I felt my body tossed several feet, into the grass beside the road. I tensed my body up in fear, awaiting more pain and suffering. I lay there for a few more moments, shaking and weeping. What happened next shocked me.

  Ugo’s door slammed shut. I lay on the tall grass, wallowing my face in my own blood. Why had he stopped? Was he just going to leave me out here to bleed to death? To die a painful, terrible death? It certainly seemed so, as I writhed and trembled in the cool evening air.

 Then, I realized what he had done. I hit my head on the ground, and let out an angry scream.

“You b*****d!” I screamed. “You’ve turned me into one of you!”

  I belted out a string of insults and curse words, infuriated by what he had done to me. I clenched my teeth around my tongue, debating on what would hopefully cause me to die of blood loss quicker. I bit down with as much might as I could muster, only breaking the skin and sending another jolt of pain through my body. Tears streamed down my face as realization of my fate began to settle in.

I had to get as far away from human life as possible.

  I forced myself to my feet, wobbling back and forth weakly. I stumbled a few feet forward, only to collapse once more and hit the ground. I continued to move towards the main road in the best way I could - rolling, flailing, and wallowing my way along the ground like a slug. I did this until my limbs felt like lead due to loss of blood. I groaned and managed to roll myself over, noticing that the tip of the sun was sinking behind the horizon.

 “Maybe I should just give up,” I thought to myself. “Hopefully this is all just some kind of nightmare.” I shut my eyes, and let out a quivering, pained sigh. I simply laid there quietly until the sky grew dark and dotted with stars, awaiting some kind of change. Any kind of change.

Then, it happened.

  I opened my eyes. My pain had dissipated, and my shoulder had began to tingle vividly, as if numb. I tried to move my head to look, but my neck was so stiff that I could not. Soon a disgusting, crawling sound filled my ears - like thousands of larvae crawling on my body, followed by the sound of what resembled rubber being stretched over a hard surface. I finally managed to turn my head, only to see my shoulder restored to it’s previous state, as if nothing had happened. I crawled to my feet, bewildered at the sight.

  I finally managed to stand up on my own two feet. I took a deep breath, only to have my senses given a shock by what felt like thousands of sounds and smells. I could smell and hear everything around me with peerless depth - the insects rustling through the grass, the almost sickeningly sweet scent of wildflowers, and the smell of Ugo’s chickens and goat. The smell of Ugo’s chickens and goat powerfully resonated over everything in the area, barraging my brain and causing my nerves to burst with sheer ecstacy. It was at that point I knew I was changing, but something within me didn’t care.

Not as soon as the strange feelings of euphoria and pleasure began to settle in, did pain begin to grip my body. I fell to my knees, as a stinging sensation throbbed through my whole chest. I let out a loud groan, as I felt my ribs break and expand, painfully stretching and tearing the skin and tendons which were already drawn taut over them. My arms and torso began to grotesquely crack and distort into deformed, crooked masses of flesh and skin, breaking my bones like sticks due to the pulling and pressure from the swelling, strange new muscle developing in the old musculature’s stead.

  The sickening changes did not even begin to stop there. I felt my legs stretch and tear, and my feet shrivel away to mounds of padded-flesh, three claws ripping through the stumps where my toes once were. Lastly, my face - oh, my face! The cartilage in my ears popped and stretched to points, and my nose sunk back into my head. Blood filled my mouth as my teeth were torn forcefully from my jaws by razor-sharp, lupine fangs, painfully being adjusted into a comfortable position via my jaw stretching and breaking to accommodate them. I let out a cry of pain, my vocal chords making the human scream vibrate and shift into a feral howl.

  Despite my radical disfigurement, my body began to straighten out and pop and crack, as if everything was fitting together. I could literally feel ash-colored hair sprouting from every follicle on my body, covering me in a thick layer of fur. Slowly, I felt aspects of my mind slipping - reason, remorse, love, mercy, and I felt feelings which mortals repress consume my thoughts. Things like gluttony, lust, and rage filled my consciousness, as I leapt to my feet.


  The moral, gentle human in me keeps me from discussing what happened that night, as simply the thought of it nearly brings me to tears. I have become a monster, taking life only for purposes of gluttony and bloodlust. I have left this written account of my story here  after several suicide attempts, in hopes that someone will find this, and end my misery.

  I am Royal Holloway, son of Remus, and descendant of Mars. I no longer suffer from Hepatitis C, as this damned curse has cured me. The only thing I suffer from is humanity, and I beg whomever comes across this letter to end it.

Author's Note

I feel like the dialogue between the characters is a bit bland. If you find any spacing errors PLEASE feel free to tell me, as I have a strange phobia that copy/paste is operated by mischievous goblins and does strange things when you use it.

Reviews

[Fallen_Immortal]

This was great. It was not at all the stupid 13 year old Twilight thing. I found the lead in to a werewolf story to be ingenius and original, and really the werewolf element was a perfect size. It didn't overpower the entire story, but it wasn't as if you decided randomly to add in a werewolf ending. I thought it was great reading of a character who came into the werewolf community from the polar opposite belief. It was immensely better than reading of characters who want it so bad until they finally get it.

I loved the ending with his transformation. It reminded me of Underworld, when the lycans' ribs pop out and expand, and the whole process just seems painful. I liked the idea that the transformation broke his bones as well. It explained a lot, and made the fantasy elements have a slight bit of realism only because they had a reason, rather than being 'because I wanted it.'

Great story. I enjoyed reading it, and I'll be sure to read some more of your work.