Alyssa Duran, Week One, Story Two

The Curse of the Were-Pup

Leave it to me, Unlucky Jim, to acquire the unnatural beauty and hunger of being a werewolf. It happened seven years ago with a former best friend who had transformed into a furry beast right in front of my eyes. I was in such a state of shock I could not move, and his intense and immediate hunger left me with a missing chunk from my side and a two week visit to the local hospital. During those two weeks my symptoms seemed to get worse to the doctors, even though my wound was healing. The first night I finally turned, I noticed a fuzzy feeling crawling up between my rear and my back as if a thousand tiny bugs were in for the race of a lifetime up my spine. There weren’t many people in the hospital on the night of the full moon, so I jumped out of the window in the crisp evening air and found a small family of squirrels on the side of the highway not to far away. When I woke the next morning I was nude in a ditch with dozens of cars passing by the second, laying their horns in anger or sheer amusement as my embarrassment lent for a good piece of free entertainment. That day I ran home with a trashed highway newspaper wrapped around my privates.Seven years down the road and I’ve become accustomed to the lifestyle that I had been granted. On the full-moon nights that I would turn, I’d drive about forty miles outside of town before the sun set into a forest grove. There, I would feed on animals to my heart’s desire, and that was quite a bit for my hunger is rather fierce. When I awoke in the nude, I’d find my way to my car and change into the extra pair of clothes I had in the trunk. It was an easy solution to what could have been a difficult problem and no one seemed to miss the absent animals.During those years, it never occurred to me that I was a mystical creature. My only fear was that people would be afraid of me if they knew the truth. When I finally decided to confide to my therapist about three years ago that I had this tendency to turn into a wolf on the nights of a full moon she began writing furiously onto her notepad and then assured me that I was only hallucinating and that werewolf’s have never and will never exist. After the encounter with my therapist I walked with this excruciating fear for several weeks that a van would pull up and capture me and suddenly I’d be in a mental institution. Yet when I pictured the looks on their indefinite faces when I did turn and ate a volunteer gave me a little pleasure. Still, I vowed to never talk about it again.However, that opinion changed after I met Judie. We met at a coffee shop about two years ago. She took my order and I asked her out. Her beauty stunned me, although it stunned me more that she agreed to date such an unlucky fellow as myself. I avoided her on the full moons and after four months I fell in love with her and she fell in love with me. Another three months and I proposed under the light of the very crescent moon on the balcony of her two-story abode.As the wedding plans became more detailed I became more afraid. There was this tiny nagging feeling I had about the tiny issue of me being a werewolf. How would she take it that first full moon night when I drove myself out to the forest and ate innocent creatures? I could never let her see me, surely I would eat her! For the first time in seven years I found my way of life to be a curse. I had to find a way to stop it.We decided to have a year long engagement which suited me just fine. It gave me time to figure out how to get rid of the curse. I figured since I was a mythical creature I should look into the stories of the mythical to find a way to cure myself. I studied werewolves, but to my utter grief I found that the methods for curing a werewolf were completely impossible for me to do without endangering a human being. Someone would have to call my name or extract my blood and who would believe me enough to actually do it and risk their lives at the same time? That was preposterous. So I looked up magic of which the first thing I learned about was a genie’s lamp.More information told me of a fellow who went to a cave in search of a magic lamp in Egypt. This was strange, I know. I’d always heard of Aladdin myself but the book A Real Lamp of Magic seemed plausible enough. It said this particular lamp was hidden there several hundred years ago to protect the people from making terrible wishes. I hopped a plane, explaining to my fiancée I had a business trip to attend and found the cave mentioned in the book. My explorations found me nothing but a flying carpet and I came back home to do more research.The next book I found dealt with fairy godmothers. I assumed since I was real they had to be real too. All I had to do was find mine. How does one find a fairy godmother? Nothing in the books told me. I had to be a good person and in a dismal position in order to find her, much like Cinderella had been. These particular criteria seemed rather difficult considering werewolves were not necessarily the best of people. I decided instead to downgrade into just finding the tooth fairy.That night I pulled my tooth out by stringing it to my oblong paperweight and throwing it over the balcony of my fiancées two-story home when she was still at work. I bled for three hours but I got the tooth. I placed my tooth under Judie’s pillow. When Judie fell into a peaceful slumber I waited in the shadows for her to show up. I saw her fly onto the balcony and then walk into the bedroom through the sliding doors. It was nearing three-thirty and the light from the moon showed light blue wings and a pink dress. I think she had brown hair. I gasped a little at the sight of the actual tooth fairy, who wouldn’t? She heard me though and after finding me staring at her she went right back out the window to the next child.I figured since I had found the tooth fairy I was getting closer to my goal and needed to only find the right creature to help me with my endeavor. After all, I only needed one measly wish. That was when I found out about the leprechauns. Following a rainbow was not a difficult concept, although rainbows were long things that could stretch for an eternity if they wanted to. I thought that Ireland only had leprechauns and I really had no want in the world to take another long flight in order to acquire I wish I wasn’t sure they’d give (after all leprechauns gave gold not wishes but they were my best shot).It rained a week later when I was still pondering my strategy, and by the afternoon there was a glorious rainbow hanging over our town and falling delicately into the forest where I hunted on the night of a full moon. Since I wasn’t sure if leprechauns were only in Ireland or not I decided to give it a try in the woods before taking a plane halfway around the world. I went deeper into the forest than I ever remembered going, even as a wolf. The air was humid now, as most southern air is even after a rainstorm. It seemed like the longest walk I would ever have to take, but I finally found a little nook in the trees that ended with the bright lights of the rainbow floating down to the ground as if making a walkway to the heavens. I walked up to it, shuddering at its transparent beauty, and stuck my fingers through it. Just as I did a short little fellow in green with a bulbous nose and red curls came up and pulled my shirt. He told me good day and asked what I was doing there. I answered that I had followed the rainbow in hopes of getting a wish and I was surprised I did not have to fly to Ireland after all.The little fellow explained to me that there were few who traveled outside of Ireland, but it was a leprechaun law that at least one leprechaun be present for every rainbow. He also told me that I was a fool to ask for a wish because leprechauns did not give wishes but only their pots of gold when a human found the end of the rainbow. They prized their pots of gold, he said, but he was forced to fork it over since I found the rainbow.I took this piece of information to my advantage and inquired as to whether it would be possible if I could trade the pot of gold for a wish instead since I knew they had much unaccounted for magic rolled into their sleeves. He lifted his eyebrows and wondered why it was I would give up so much gold for a measly wish. I explained my wish and with the wish came my situation: I had a fiancée who did not know I was a werewolf and that I thought she would be scared of me if she knew the truth. Of course, I didn’t want to lie to her either, nor did I want to watch her leave when she found out. He understood I did not want to make my fiancée frightened of me and agreed to the trade. He told me everything was fixed with the snap of his fingers and that I was to go home. I was ecstatic. It had been seven long years since the curse had been lifted from me. The full moon was tonight and I would not need to go into the woods. There was nothing more to fear. I went to my little house and called my fiancée and told her to come over.She did with a little night bag assuming she’d be staying the night. I decided I would tell her the truth. I told her I had been a werewolf but was no longer one. I told her she could or could not believe me, but I hoped she loved me enough to believe me and not run away. She laughed a bit and rubbed her hands in my hair. She said I was silly and werewolves didn’t exist. I sighed, but I let it go. After all, I was no longer a werewolf, what would it matter?Yet, as the moon rose with its great full authority I felt myself change like so many other times before. I panicked. What had happened? I was putting Judie in incredible danger! Her face was etched with astonishment and disbelief as she saw the fur encompass my face. I felt myself shrink into that all too familiar four legged position. When the transformation was complete Judie was towering over me like a colossal giant and I had to crane my neck back in order to get a good look at her. Surprisingly, I did not have the urge to eat her, only to cuddle with her, and even more surprisingly Judie was not screaming but staring at my with a pleasurable shockInstead of screaming, she started laughing full belly laughs that sent her leaning against a chair before she fell over. When she had calmed, she picked me up and took me to the mirror. My baffled self looked into the eyes of a small wolf puppy. I growled low under my breath, knowing that I was in fact a fool. At least I didn’t have to hunt anymore and all Judie would have to do (assuming she chose to stay with me) would be to take me out to pee before bed and feed me puppy kibbles for dinner. At least everyone would from now on be safe. The night was going to be a long one, but I was glad the curse of my hideous werewolf bite had been lifted. It was lucky for me Judie still married me after the sure trauma that unforgettable night left imprinted on her brain, but she liked dogs and was glad to have one even if for only a short time. That leprechaun had been a mischievous fellow granting that all too literal wish for me, and now I was forever a full moon were-pup. Leave it to me, Foolish Jim, to be the one to give the wrong explanation when making a wish and become a rather not frightening, nagging, untrained fur ball one night a month.