Horror / The Casual Observer
I loved to watch them change, the velvet red moon bleeding through midnight clouds. There was always that warm breeze on the air, that’s how I knew. Warm currents meant the wolves were coming. It was never as dark or macabre as the movies made it, no, the change meant new life. I could see the birth of a new entity in their eyes. They stretched to huge sizes, much larger than a typical human’s eye; it was almost all pupil. A deep, black chasm replaced the iris. They could see through any darkness.
My dank basement was the perfect place to observe the transition. I had built an apparatus to contain them. Two half-inch thick belts went across their chests and were bolted into the concrete walls. They were flexible enough to allow for the usual expansion and increase in mass. Their arms were buckled at the wrist in cuffs behind the back, and their legs with some modified ski boots that I locked down into grooves in the floor. I tried to restrict their movement, just enough, so that they wouldn’t harm themselves by struggling. In fact sometimes I didn’t even lock up the weaker ones. If they hadn’t been allowed to feed for a few weeks, they wouldn’t even be able to stand up after changing. They’d just lie there, writhing, squirming with change. I liked to get close. Close enough to feel the prickly fur as it burst from their pores. Close enough to smell the heat of their blood boiling.
The first one I watched turn was just a boy. I was in the woods, a few miles from home trapping small game, rabbits and such. A figure stumbled through the trees towards me; I could hear its wheezing gasps for air. He must have been only twelve or thirteen and he collapsed in the leaves at my feet. I checked his pulse and found nothing; there was a bite-sized chunk of flesh missing from his right shoulder. I took him back to my garage.
He didn’t survive his transition. The pain burst his little heart within minutes. He never made it to the second phase, the bloodlust. It was a good thing this, had he beat the change long enough to thirst, I would have been his first meal. No, he wrenched his head back and I could see those blue veins in his fragile neck welling. As his canines grew the biggest vein burst spraying infected blood like a garden hose. He grasped at his throat in panic. And with those growing razor blade claws, he gaped the flesh so deep that I could almost see the white of his spine. It was awesome in its gruesomeness. I remember the fear that I felt, watching this poor boy inadvertently tear himself to death. The thick smell of iron and wet dog sent me into a shivering fit and I checked myself for blood spatter. I was clean.
For almost a year I replayed that scene in my head like watching a favorite TV show. After a few months it became only clips, bits and pieces of the original script. The soundtrack faded from my mind until all I could hear was his shrieks, and the squawking of those razorblades being dragged across the floor.
It wasn’t until the war ended that I saw it happen to a human again. This time however, I was looking for it. I had read about the traveling freak show in tabloids and on occasional flyers posted on walls in darker parts of town. For the most part it was a cheap thrill, a hoax, a bearded lady, a two-headed snake. But the closing act, the “Beast de la resistance” as they called it, was a glorious nightmare. The man was as tall as a doorway before his change. They wheeled him out of a tractor-trailer on two squeaky hand trucks, the kind used for pallets of dry cement or dog food. He was hunched over so that his hands almost touched the base of the cage. His eyes never lost their solemn focus, staring at his own feet. He wore tattered navy blue slacks, much too big for his slender, toned frame, which dangled from his haunches like a coat hanger. What looked like a sash was strewn about his shoulders, I quickly realized it had once been a shirt, stretched and torn.
I shoved towards the front of the crowd; this would be my first chance to see the true ferocity of a monster after the turn. I would never forget what I saw.
Just as the Ring Master announced what would ensue, the beast-man let out a crack of pure thunder, cursing the sky with his quiet eyes. Some phony Shaman shouted bogus commands from behind a curtain and a perfect, rose-tinted moon floated behind the trees. He began to change. But simply watching this anomaly was not enough. I wanted to research it, study it—experience it. My curiosities lead me to begin hunting the beasts.
I searched all the archives, the legends and tales, histories, folklore. My studies took me around the world from the Australian outback to the sewers of Paris, the Rocky Mountains and Constantinople. I met with a certain doctor in London, whose beastly practices were of especially important interest to my study. I hiked the snowy peaks of Nepal with seasoned Sherpas and rode mules to the base of their deepest valleys. Still, for almost a decade I couldn’t find a more perfect occurrence of a beast changing form in the wild. What I saw were footprints, scratch marks, or, at the very best and if I were lucky, bloodstains.
It occurred to me one fall, late into the month of October, to find that same traveling sideshow.
I contracted the Shaman, the Ring Leader and, of course, the Wolfman, to be a main act in my own fictitious circus. The leader happily agreed and they arrived three days later at the address given. I waited within the abandoned gray warehouse; the trap was set. They left the truck in the driveway and approached the huge door. I pinched my left eye closed to line up the shot. The first dart entered and clung to the Ring Master’s left shoulder, the second sunk like a warm knife into a block of Gouda, except that the Shaman was the cheese. I tossed the limp carnies off a dock and into the Hudson. They floated for days before being discovered by some fisherman.
The basement was already prepared for experimentation. The buckles and chains were secured. I tranquilized the beast and carefully carted him into my garage.
When he awoke the next day I had already strapped him in. It would be about a week before the next full moon. The time could not have been more perfect. For six days I took blood, and on the seventh, I waited. The sky opened up to reveal a shining silver saucer.
The change was fast, in my notebook I scrawled all that I could, as quickly as I could:
11:19 The creature has begun to rapidly grow hair on 90% of its body—canines have started to lengthen almost double their original length.
11:21 Arms, legs, waist, chest have all begun to expand, beast has grown a foot taller—eyes almost completely black. Violently shaking, trying to escape the chains. Has not made more than a few groaning sounds.
11:24 Transformation almost complete, it’s hands and feet are the size of cooking pans, nails replace by long ravenous claws, I can see the blood pulsing through its body. Heartbeat is audible from 15-20 feet away.
The thing smelled like a wet dog, foaming spit dribbled from its mouth as a result of hunger. A dark hatred that once lay stagnant behind its eyes now bubbled over. It tugged and fought against the restraints, but they held firm. Just as the change had finished the beast let out a howl that rattled the ceiling. Something crashed into pieces above us. The animal threw its huge shoulders back and forth, desperately wanting to devour anything that bled. Its black nose twitched as it sucked in my scent, the scent of my blood, of my organs. The creature chomped, its huge mandible emitting mechanical clanks as the horrible knives in its mouth struck one another repeatedly like sparking flints. Saliva dripped down its furry chest. Then, only minutes after the thirst began, my worst fears were realized. I heard a snap, like some adult tree being torn in two by a heavy wind. The beast fell silent, its head hung loose, swinging on the chain. Then its knees gave way underneath it, no longer commanded to support the body. I approached the lifeless monster to find it had broken its own neck.
After draining nearly all its blood I buried it by a Spruce in my backyard.
I tested the theory that the “curse” could be transmitted through blood. I was able to catch and infect two or three animals a week, rabbits, squirrels, even a small dog. I called the owners and informed them that someone had hit it just inside my property and promptly driven off. I explained that it might be too gruesome for them to view the remains. They thanked me for my concern.
I found that in order to get the vermin to take the change, more than a few drops of blood were required. In fact I used nearly half of my supply testing this. But lady luck seemed to look kindly upon me that holiday season, for just as Christmas approached she brought me a gift.
His name was Parker and bless my heart was he courteous. He totaled his little blue Chevy on the only tree in my front lawn. I never could figure out what he was doing driving in such a heavy storm. But the lord gave him to me and I had to use him. It was a good thing too that he hit that tree the way he did for I was all out of tranquilizer. I wrapped a tourniquet around his leg; the way the dashboard folded in on him he was lucky not to have lost it completely. I replaced the blood that he lost with what I had in stock and kept him on constant surveillance in my newly adapted basement.
I’d seen two of them thrash and claw themselves to death, and I wouldn’t risk a third. So I took out all of the chains and straps and built a glass room. Bulletproof, shatterproof, scratchproof, that’s what the man who sold me the glass had promised. I told him I was building a high-tech bear trap and he assured me that it would hold anything short of a rhinoceros. It was an exciting prospect, keeping such a rare beast as a pet. I replaced the ceiling of my basement with steel and left a space large enough to drop a body or two down. This eliminated the problems of a door with potentially weak hinges.
And so, when the time came it must have been mid-December, I set up to see all my hard work and experimentation come to fruition. Parker performed brilliantly. He changed liked clockwork. First his skin changed color, from a pale peach to a bluish gray in minutes. As his muscles expanded the tiny barbed hairs sprung out from all of his pores. Anguish set in on his face as his skin stretched and formed around the new mass. It looked like someone was pumping air into an already over-inflated tire. Bulges of flesh popped out from his neck and shoulders. His hands and feet widened into paws and grew blades as long as dollar bills. A black film formed over his eyes until they were like two pieces of burnt coal. It was hideous and beautiful. The universe was forming again six feet in front of me, from just a meaningless speck of dust. His nose jumped around snatching for an odor, or a meal, and when he saw me standing there, I became prey.
By now I shouldn’t have to say that the man at the glass store was a liar. In a second Parker’s huge paw was through the cage and his stiletto claws lodged in my arm. He wailed madly at the moon while devouring my flesh. I watched him peel the skin from my chest down to my waist and pick my ribs clean. When he started gnawing on my arms, I blacked out.
I don’t know when I regained consciousness. I was looking up at an orange sky above spider webs of tree branches. A light snow dusted my face like ash and I could taste someone’s coppery blood on my breath. It was delectable.
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We all become victims of our gruesome greed so I liked the way it ended.
Descriptive, informative, makes a person wonder how someone could be sick enough to enjoy watching another suffer the changes your beast did, which is good. If a story can evoke feelings of anykind then you know it’s good.
Nice job.
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