American Werewolf

The next couple entries are written by a friend of mine. For obvious reasons, he has asked to remain anonymous. 

I don’t remember much of how I got bitten. Mostly, I go by what people told me happened, but it’s strange, you know? It’s like everything before the bite was somebody else’s life. Didn't know how good I had it. But whatever.

I was camping with a bunch of friends, up on the cliffs of Flaming Gorge. Three days into Spring Break, it was a blast. Next thing I knew I was in the hospital. They told me I’d fallen off the edge of the cliffs near our campsite, and somehow managed to catch onto a ledge twenty feet down. I was treated for a couple bruises, nothing too bad. They told me I was lucky.

Up above me, in the campsite, everyone else—they were all dead. Killed, slaughtered by some animal. I’m glad I never saw that. Later that week we had a group funeral. John, Harris, Amanda, Colby, Sammy, and Terrance all together. It was closed casket.

They figured what it was pretty quick, but it was weird. Werewolf attacks don’t happen every day, you know. Not in Durango. They figured it was probably some tourist slipped through airport security, that kind of thing. Anyway, they called in some specialists, a shaman and a guy with yellow eyes, and then this other guy, normal looking kid around my age. The shaman said they could use me to track the first wolf. They could already tell I was bit, you see. Showing the signs.

What are they? Oh, you hear how silver burns the skin of a werewolf? Not true, doesn't do any good unless he’s already shifted. I can still wear silver rings, piercings, or whatever if I wanted to. The way to tell is a lot more subtle. There’s a difference in the aura of course, but mostly that changes with the moon, so you can’t tell much less it’s close to full. Then the canines are a tad longer, temper is shorter. Huge craving for red meat. Also, I smelled different. Animals didn't like me anymore, if they could smell me. The real test was when they scanned me with this special ultraviolet light. My bite was the first thing to heal up on me of course, but they found the traces left, like a ghost scar on my left leg. You could tell I really got tore up.

The man with yellow eyes smiled at me and shook his head. He was the one that did the little light thing. For some reason he kept glancing over at the kid that was with them. Told me his name was Connor, told me a lot about “my condition”, he called it.

There’s no cure. They have a couple options to deal with it. I could be locked up in a special facility every full moon, I could take special pills that would make me asthmatic and weakened for the rest of my life. Or I could join the Pack. It was no choice really. The Pack would never stand for another predator in their territory. If I’d tried the lock up, the pills, they would have killed me anyway, and it would be better.