• Preface


    How far would you go to protect a secret? How easy is it to break someone into pieces? Lying? Hiding the truth? Both?

    But even if you try, wouldn’t it be dangerous for both if you keep protecting that secret so strongly… Even though you know it will end up hurting both of you?

    A werewolf. A Human. Is it possible to consider love between the two? There is no vaccine for loneliness… or maybe is it?

    Happiness. What an ambiguous word.

    I wake up another night. My nights are full of various things, I’ll tell you what. Hope, Dreams, Nightmares, constant lies. Pain. Oh, so much pain.

    Part One: Full moon curse


    My back hurts. I’m trying to pick up the pieces of broken glass that are shattered on the floor. Elizabeth didn’t sleep here last night, just as I told her to; it has been like this since I met her, three years ago. I can’t believe how it is possible that she’s still with me. I clean up this mess as I see the sunlight come inside the window; what a painful sight. How much I wish for the sun to come out at night, to make me normal again, to make me feel like a human. I’m a beast, a monster. Some people tend to think I’m crazy because I don’t talk too much; I have a job and try to go everyday; I have a very weak body contexture, and I call in sick several times a month. They don’t ask me anything, just leave me alone, as I asked them to do.

    As I finish cleaning up, I notice that my arm is bleeding, so as my left hand. What did I do this time? Did I bit myself again?

    - I have to clean myself up before Elizabeth gets here. – I whisper, starting to feel the pain. I feel a little pain and then it disappears, just as the flesh wound. The scar starts to appear in front of my eyes as I move to the bathroom, and once I get there, I clean up the blood and it trips to the floor. – Crap. - I curse, and grab a tissue to clean the spot. After cleaning delicately my arm, I get to my hand and clean it up too. I hope she doesn’t get here anytime soon, the hall it’s still a mess. But as it always happen, like the cliché movies, she appears just in front of my step door, ringing the bell.

    - Alex, I’m here. – My name is Alexander, but she likes to call me that way. It makes me feel special, anyway. I really appreciate it, because it differentiates my name from the ordinary people. Whenever I hear her voice, my heart starts beating faster and faster. That’s so much as I feel for her, it’s almost unbelievable. I reply begging her to give me one more minute and I finish dressing myself up, and cleaning quickly the other things that were scattered on the floor, just as my cell phone, my pillows and the curtains. Oh God, did I break the curtains? Now I have to fix it too, what will I say to her?
    - Honey, I need to use the bathroom. Would you please hurry? – She asked. I can’t bear with that tone. She sounds so… cute?

    - Coming. – I reply, totally hypnotized. I walk towards the door, kicking out of the way everything that interferes on my way. Sometimes I feel like I just need to see her and everything is okay. I open the door, to her playful green eyes, curly short hair and beautiful smile. She’s wearing a skirt and very cute sandals. I really like to see her dressed like that, she looks very beautiful. Whenever I see her, I feel like the world stops turning.

    She laughs at me because apparently, I just stood there still looking at her smile. She kisses my cheek and pushes me a little, to get inside the house. When she enters, I shiver. I didn’t finish picking up the curtains.

    - What happened here? – She asked me, pointing at a broken glass of water under the table. I shrug, and reply quietly. – I just punched my knee with the table and the glass fell to the floor. I was too sleepy to notice the table, so when I went to the bathroom this morning, that’s what happened. –

    She leans to pick up the scattered glass with a neutral expression. I don’t know if she believed me or not, but I want her to believe so badly. I couldn’t stand if she thinks I’m a liar, even though I am.

    Every full moon the sky shouts my curse again and again. As far as I know, I’ve been like this my whole life. Every full moon the sky embraces me and everything turns dark and lonely. My heart starts beating faster and my skin changes. I become an anthropomorphic wolf, with two long back legs and long arms. My fur is chocolate colored, maybe it’s the only good thing. I look at myself in the mirror and start howling in pain. There’s a part of my human being that still remains with me, but the other part, the beast, starts taking power. After just a few minutes, my mind just starts spinning around in circles, and I lose consciousness.

    It is not until the next day that I get to remind myself that I’m alive. I wake up in the break of dawn, just when the moon starts to hide between the mountains, and I cry. Every single night I cry. Last night, I woke up so abruptly that I couldn’t do it… Maybe is it because of her? I hope it is like that. Every transformation I find out that my body is technically indestructible. If I get cut, the wound heals after five minutes… It’s always like that. I’ve lived so many lives, I’ve been in so many places, but my memory can’t take it all in… It’s just a part of my very own life.

    Part Two: Tell me the truth.


    - What happened here, Alex? Tell me the truth. I need to know. – She looks at me, her smile subtly fading. It breaks me every time I see her like that, and I want to answer. I want to tell the truth, I want to be sincere. But I deceive her, I lie and lie every time.

    - I swear, it was just me tripping and the glass falling. – I reply. I need to do this. I need to protect her, I need to lie.

    - Ok. It’s ok then. - She turns around; to dump the glasses on the trash can inside the kitchen. It’s obvious that she doesn’t believe me. Nobody would. But I don’t want to say anything anymore; I just want to hold her. So I go after her footsteps and grab her left arm, turn her around and embrace her. I take a smell of her hair and touch her back with so much caring; I can’t believe she’s here again. Last time we had a big fight about why she should sleep at her best friend’s house several times a month. She told me she wouldn’t come back. But she’s here again, and she’s hugging me back. She takes a deep breath and embraces me with all her strength, but suddenly I hear her sobbing.

    - I know it’s not okay. – She whispers. – I know there’s something wrong. But I don’t want to force you. I want to wait for you to tell me, I know you want to. So I’ll wait, even if it’s a hundred years. I’ll just wait. – I can’t stand looking at her like that. She cries a little on my shoulder, she smells my perfume and then holds me tighter. I grab her shoulders and look at her in the eye, whispering “Thank you” as I lean to kiss her lips. Her soft lips, with that sweet smell like fruit. I’m here to love her. Maybe it’s the mission I’ve been living for so long. I wipe away her tears, and kiss her again. She’s here. That’s the only thing I care about now. Maybe… Maybe in order to be sincere with her, I’ll need to find out where I came from.

    We spent the whole morning talking. Just talking about random things in our lives, I just want to spend the whole day talking to her. She’s living with me, most of the time. I live in the woods, in a very small house far away from the city. I have a car which I use to move around the woods sometimes, and to go to the city to work. I’m what it’s called a normal person… most of the time. I like to think that way, so Elizabeth won’t feel differently for me, but sometimes a strange feeling of fear overcomes my mind and I start to think that maybe my facade of being a normal person would make her get tired of me.

    - I like this way of being with you, you know. – She says, suddenly, like reading my mind. – I don’t get bored at all. You are so funny when you talk about the people in your life: they are like strangers for you; but… I see your eyes, and it beats me. I find out suddenly the way you think, the way you actually feel. You are scared of bonding with people, because you think they will hurt you. You are like a stray dog. You don’t trust anyone and that’s what makes me feel special. – She takes a deep breath and keeps on talking afterwards. – You trust me, blindly. You can open your heart for me, I feel it. I just see it that way… I know it, I sense it, I feel it. I love it, Alex. – Then she gets on her feet and comes my way, looking at my eyes. I see it again, that little trace of doubt that crosses her mind, but she drops it away. She just wants to be with me in this moment, she just wants to be a part of me. And I want her to be it, too. We could stay in this moment for the rest of our lives…

    Part Three: My Origins


    At the middle of the night, my body starts to hurt. I don’t know why, but it must be the transformation I suffer. My bones are completely modified so maybe there should be some kind of secondary effect on that, some recessions on my own body. The pain doesn’t let me sleep, but I don’t want to let Elizabeth know I’m in pain. It feels like there are thousands of flames burning the inside of my bones...
    I stand up and go to the kitchen; that way, if I feel the urge to scream, Elizabeth doesn’t find out about it. Sometimes the pain is unbearable, all because of the stretching of my bones during the transformation. Even though, sometimes I just don’t care, I just ignore it and get through the day. In those endless nights of full moon, I forget every single thing that happens, so I can’t seem to be able to control my actions and my thoughts. I just wake up, the next day, within the darkness. When I know that that’s about to happen, I run towards the woods, so I can’t damage the things around me and make a mess out of my house, but this time, for some reason, I didn’t got time to run and stayed inside the house, so I ended up messing it all up and breaking windows and empty glasses of water. The only thing is that as soon as I wake up, I have to struggle with all that I did at night, such as wounds to myself and broken bones, or to find in front of me dead animals, terribly massacred by fangs. Sometimes my own mind can’t understand how I can be turned in such a terrible being, capable of killing innocent animals that way.

    I lean against the window, trying to bear with myself, trying to think in what happened to me. Sometimes memories come and go from my mind, they just hit me as a lightening and then they just leave as quickly as they come… I can’t find the meaning of this curse, I can’t find the cure, I can’t find anything, I just have doubts in my mind…

    -------------------------------------


    - Today I need you to stay at your friend’s house. – I said, looking at Elizabeth’s eyes. She looks up at me and says that it’s okay, she’s used to it, so as me.
    - Why do you look so tired these days? There’s always a moment of the month when you look terribly tired, you have black circles around your eyes and you don’t eat much. It’s weird, you should see a doctor. Why don’t we go tonight? - Oh God. That took me with my guards down. What should I say to her? I’ve never been to a doctor since I’ve never been sick, and now I have to make an excuse.
    - I need to rest tonight. Maybe tomorrow, but I’m feeling really tired. Actually, I think I’m going to go to bed once you get out of the door. –
    I think she bought it, since she didn’t say a word after that. She stood up and kissed my mouth a couple of times.
    - I’ll miss you, Alex.- She whispered in my ear, and then walked out the door.

    I stand up from the couch once I hear her footsteps get far from the house. I don’t have much time, the moon is about to appear in the sky and I’m starting to feel my bones burn. Anyway I managed to arrange the whole house looking for something I had inside my bedroom the whole time. A little red box, and inside, a silver ring with a little diamond on the top.
    I was planning to propose to Elizabeth the next day. I really think she’s the one who will make my life better, she had made my life meaningful and joyful, it’s all thanks to her, and so she deserves this. I want to be with her the rest of my life; I want to share everything with her. Every single moment of my life, so I was going to tell her the truth about my condition. I know she’ll understand it, I know she won’t leave me. I just know it, I’m certain. A couple of hours have passes since she left, and I miss her already.
    I keep on staring at the glowing center of the ring as my skin starts to burn. Time’s up.

    The pain starts when my hands start to become into anthropomorphically looking paws, with long fingers and nails. I look at my own hands, without recognizing them and scream loudly. The little red box with the ring, falls to the floor and rolls down the bed. The pain is unbearable, so I lose consciousness immediately. “Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elizabeth…” Those are my only thoughts when I lose my head completely. As my mind runs away from this awful truth, my body changes dramatically, my spine gets longer and curve, my mouth becomes into jaws and my senses are totally altered, my smell gets totally sensitive and I can smell the green grass outside my house. The wolf’s eyes started to look around the house, feeling trapped, paranoid, and claustrophobic. He ran, looking for an exit, without finding anything and started to wave his arms around the hall, throwing everything he found on his way to the floor, starting to howl desperately, feeling alone and trapped. But suddenly, he sensed a smell that he never had felt before: The smell of flesh and bones, or to be specific, human flesh and bones. His heart started to beat faster and faster, feeling the excitement of a new prey. Tonight was going to be fun, apparently.

    Part Four: Mistrustful Mistake.


    - Alex? – I ring the bell three times. No one answers. I’ve never done this, this is not my way, but I can’t take the mystery, I can’t take this fear. I can’t understand why I doubt, but sometimes this is the way we women are… I’m so scared of the truth that I take a couple of minutes to think about my next movement, maybe I just need to get back to my friend’s house and act like nothing’s happened tomorrow when I see him. I lean a little closer to the door, to listen through it. I hear the sound of broken glasses and a heavy breathing. “What?” my heart starts beating faster and faster, as my hands start to shake. Why is he breathing so heavily? Is it him? Did something weird happen? The only thing I can think about now is running away, but I gather all my strength to stand in front of the door and start looking for Alex’s spare key. I need to enter that house now, I need to see with my own eyes what’s the matter, what’s happening inside. After looking below the door mat, I remember he changed the location three months ago because someone entered the house and stole some stuff; it was near the stairs, right between a crack on the wood. I lean and grab it, with shaky hands. This was it.

    - I’m sorry for not trusting, but I need to do this. – I whisper, as my hand moves toward the door’s key lock. I grab the key with my hand and turn it, opening the door, shaking. The lights are off, I can’t see anything, but I keep on listening to the strange sound of a heavy breathing. Is it an animal? What if it’s a bear? Or a thief? Now I’m scared and want to run away, but my legs don’t respond to the commands of my brain. I swallow deeply and breathe heavily a couple of times to push the door open a little bit more, having half my leg inside the house. – Alex? – I whisper, scared. Frightened, I might say, what if something happened to him?

    Since he doesn’t answer to my call I start to panic a little bit more. I’m alone; it’s dark outside and inside the house and the full moon just lets a little bit of her light to enter inside the room. Full moon, what a mystery, how many secrets can the moon reveal?

    I desist from my original intention, and when I step backwards to close the door, I hear a roar. “Is it a bear?” I think, and then I think about Alex, worrying if he’s okay. So I gather all my strength to get completely inside the house and turn on the lights. As I do this, my both eyes get numb with the sudden light, and when I focus, I see it.

    An anthropomorphic wolf, with long arms and legs looking straight at my eyes with his, red-colored , frightening me; I don’t know what to do right now. He looks angry, maybe it’s the light. I try to escape, but the door closes behind my back when I move my feet. I can’t turn my back to that monster; he will kill me in an instant… So I try to act calmly and think straight. What should I do? I get down to the floor, shaking from head to toe, moving slowly towards Alex’s room. What if that creature just killed him? I can’t stand the fear, so I had to check it, and the animal looks at me so firmly that I believe that he’s devouring me with his sight. He is going to kill me, I feel it, but right now all I can think about is Alex. I needed to say that I loved him, for a last time. That I’m sorry, that I wanted to see him, to spend my whole life with him… This is not happening. This is simply not happening. As I get closer my right hand touches a broken glass and my palm gets cut. I moan a little and then I shut my mouth with my left hand, panicking completely, he was getting distracted with another thing but my voice recovered his attention. I start to cry, the fear consuming my whole body. I can’t believe this, it’s a nightmare.
    - Alex, Alex, Alex. – I cry, shaking, paralyzed as I see the wolf walking towards me. – Someone, please. Help me. Help me.- I move faster to get to Alex’s room, just to take a little glance at it for a last time, but the wolf’s angry growl paralyzes my movements again. – ALEX! – I scream, crying out loud, that’s the only thing I can think about. It was a mistake, I had to trust him, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please, please, save me, Alex. Please…

    I crawl to his room, moving my arms and hands as a support, and without really watching what I was doing. My hand was bleeding, but I wasn’t feeling anything, I just had adrenaline running through my veins. My heart, rushing at its fastest, made me stand up and run towards his room and locking the door immediately, but the wolf’s claws got to pass through the door. – Alex, please… Save me… - I whispered, crying, and looking for something to defend myself. But then my bloody hand touches something red below the bed, and my heart starts to rush even worst. – No, no. This is not what I think it is.- Yes. It was an engagement ring, and I was about to die killed by a monster that only appears in horror movies. My body feels weak, the adrenaline disappearing from it. I was sad, I felt terribly sad. And I was trapped...

    Part Five: The end of the curse


    “- Ms. Johnson, I swear, it wasn’t me. I was at my house yesterday, that food was stolen by someone else. –
    - I don’t care, boy. You’re a liar, and I’ll make you pay for it.-

    It was a dark and cloudy night. The wind was blowing; cold as freezing, and a bright full moon was showing through the little houses around the block. Alex was looking at an old woman’s eyes, scared by her threat but without being able to do anything else but stare at her, waiting. She wasn’t going to believe in his words, even though he knew he was right.

    - Ms, I can’t say the contrary anymore, you won’t believe it. How many do you want for it? I can’t give out much money. I don’t have enough to even feed myself, so this is all I have. – He handed out a couple of coins. It actually was everything that he had, so he was making a huge sacrifice because of someone else.

    - That won’t do, boy. You’ll listen to me carefully. – The old lady had a weird appearance, like she was from a different world. She started to whisper some words in a strange language, and then looked to Alex’s face. – You will live many lives, but none of them will have meaning. You’ll be cursed forever, because once you find a meaning for your existence, you’ll lose it.- Alex didn’t believe the woman, until the very moment that his bones started to burn and his skin started to break…”

    The wolf started to smell the blood on the floor, tasting it within his thoughts, his instincts starting to flow over his body, taking its power to get to his prey. She smells so good.

    - ALEX! –The wolf walks towards the closed door and starts scratching it. He hears her voice screaming and crying, his mouth watering. His heart beating with excitement, he crashes the door open and sees the body of his victim, screaming, crying. He can smell her fear, as he walks to get closer to her. Little by little his whole senses could feel her; her delicious smell and her strange appearance, his eyes focusing in every single part of her body. His ears were burning because of the annoying screaming, but he didn’t care, he just wanted some food, so he walked towards her body and Elizabeth started to walk backwards, getting closer to a window. She thought about it a couple of times, and then she decided to jump off that window to run away from the monster.

    - This is not going hurt- She whispered to herself, at the moment that she jumped off the window and the crystals drilled her skin. She felt pain, but at the same time the relief of being away from the monster at least a couple of minutes. She had to think quickly, as quickly as she could, she needed to get away as fast as her legs would let her run.

    Meanwhile, inside the house, the wolf was moving anxiously, looking for the missing scent of his prey, getting desperate. A prey never got away from him, ever, and he was going to find it no matter what.

    Elizabeth was running between the woods, bleeding and disoriented, feeling lost. She needed to get to the city quickly, but she didn’t know which way to go, because she had never been so scared in her life, so she ran away in whichever direction her legs permitted her. – I need to know if Alex it’s okay, he might have run away before I got to the house. I grabbed the ring before I jumped out of the window, so I needed to see him and tell him I knew everything about the ring. When my mind wanders about this, I feel a crack on the woods and turn around, scared. My legs keep on running, now in a state of alert, thinking it might be the wolf who found my scent between the woods…
    The wolf ran between the tree branches, biting and breaking everything beneath his way, feeling the smell of her blood all over his body, his senses completely altered. He knew she was near, somewhere near, he felt her perfume mixed with the blood.

    Elizabeth kept on running, until a misfortunate turn of events made her lost her equilibrium and fall because of a broken branch on the floor. She felt the fear running through her veins, and she let go of her consciousness. She was bleeding too much; she had no more energy to keep on moving…
    And the wolf got to her side, looking at her, moving his nose around her. She turned her head to face him, and then she realized it. His eyes, even with the color of blood in his pupils, were full of loneliness, sadness and sorrow. His eyes looked exactly as Alex’s.

    The wolf grabbed her arm, breaking it immediately because of his strength, moving frenetically, without knowing where to start. Then, he grabbed her back to make her sit in front of him, and moved his hands towards her neck, right into the vein that was beating faster. The feeling of the hot blood running back and forth, made his hunger worse, and he opened his mouth and bit her neck, right in the vein. She screamed in pain, crying, feeling weak and scared. No more, please. Make this pain stop…

    “Elizabeth.”

    As the hungry wolf was drinking her blood, tasting it with hunger, his heart started beating faster, and for a reason, his eyes were turning brown-colored.

    “Elizabeth”

    - Alex… please… Stop… - She whispered.

    “This is not it.” The fur started to disappear, his bones going back to normal. His eyes taking conscience of where he was, started to cry with anger and pain, looking at Elizabeth’s tired eyes. Her green eyes, injected in blood and with a great sadness, but they were hers. They were the most beautiful eyes in the whole world.

    - I love you. – He whispered, feeling his body burn, watching her eyes for a last time. She was dying, he knew it, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Not anymore.
    - I love you too.- She replied, tears running through her face while her heart started beating slower than it’s normal pace. His eyes were full of tears too, but he didn’t want her to see him crying.
    - Will you marry me, Elizabeth? – He asked, touching her face.
    - Yes, I will.- She answered, closing her eyes and putting a smile on her face, for the very last time.

    And at that moment, he lost the meaning of his own life.