I Wolf

I checked the calendar hanging on the wall next to the fridge. Of course, November was done, so I tore the page off. Three cute black kittens stared accusingly back at me from December. They were sitting in the snow next to a Christmas tree, wearing stupid Christmas hats and scarves and clearly not enjoying it. Probably photo-shopped, I thought. Or the handiwork of an evil taxidermist.

It was the first today. Twenty-four days until the big one, but more importantly, just three days until one eye - my name for that siren of the heavens that can bend and twist me like Optimus Prime - is due to make another appearance. I heard on the news that it was going to be a supermoon this time around. Great. Just what I needed. I’d only just gotten Mum to sew the buttons back on my shirt after my last transformation.

Having to repair or replace my clothes every 29.5 days was becoming a pain. Quite literally. Especially for my feet. Suddenly sprouting claws and going up seven shoe sizes was not much fun. Nor was watching my wrecked faux leather Italian loafers fly across the room. Or across the pub car park. I really shouldn’t have agreed to play darts that night. We still lost. It was supposed to be cloudy, but the Met Office got it wrong again. The woman who saw me change as I dodged between the moonbeams with shirt buttons and loafers pinging in all directions, fainted against a Range Rover, ripping off a wing mirror and putting a head-shaped dent in the driver's side door in the process. She later told everyone that she’d seen a monster, but people just assumed she was drunk or that it was that time of the month. If they only knew how close they were to the truth. The Range Rover’s owner sued her for the damage.

Having turned nineteen just yesterday, I was still getting the hang of things. I hated being stuck indoors, especially with one eye staring down. The pull of moonlight was stronger than a black hole’s gravity well. But I was determined to make a real effort to remain indoors this time, regardless of the weather forecast or the needs of the Red Lion’s darts team. Mum said I had to learn to control the urges. Eventually, she said, I would be able to ignore the lunar cycles and change only when I wanted to. Like when Jehovah’s Witnesses came to the door, she’d laughed. But, when the 4th reared its head, I was determined to keep the curtains drawn and find a good film on Netflix. Not a horror film, though. And I would watch it naked, just in case a stray moonbeam found a way in. I’ll leave the kitchen blinds open a bit, though, angled just enough to give that nosy old bat next door an eyeful when she goes out back for a smoke. If she wanted to ogle me, then fine, let her ogle. Maybe I’d pay her a visit one night and give her something to howl about.

I poured some Count Chocula into a bowl. I liked the irony as well as the chocolaty taste. I just wish I could get them from somewhere other than Amazon. Coco Pops just weren’t the same. They looked and tasted like burnt Rice Krispies. I can get plenty of unhealthy, sugar-packed American groceries from the local supermarkets, so why not my favourite cereal? I smiled, remembering I had enough boxes stashed under the stairs to start my own supermarket.

Sitting at the kitchen table, I added the milk and began spooning the brown mush into my mouth. After tipping the bowl up for the final delicious slurp, I opened yesterday's letters. A water bill, a council tax reminder, a flyer for the Green party, an ad for yet another funeral company, some Tesco vouchers - redeemable only as long as you spent at least £50 on a single shop within seven days - and a birthday card. It said “Have a Fangtastic Birthday”. It had a picture of a wolf driving a sports car. Thanks, Mum. Very original.

I suppose it’s not her fault. Genes are genes. But she could have made a little more effort to prepare me. I think she hoped it might skip a generation. It does that sometimes. She had been dropping hints for years that I might start experiencing some strange changes after my eighteenth birthday. I thought she meant, well, you know - things getting larger and hairier. Voice dropping low. Erotic thoughts about the girl at the post office. That sort of thing. Emma. That was her name. I’d asked her out a few weeks back, but she said no, then showed me her engagement ring. It looked like something from a cheap Christmas cracker, but I told her it was nice. Her fiancé turned up dead a few days later. Out on the moor. The report said that he had been the victim of a frenzied dog attack. I overheard the woman at the till in Tesco’s say he’d been ripped open like John Hurt in Alien. His heart and liver were missing, too, she’d said, causing me to stare guiltily at the bottle of Chianti in my trolley. There was no sign of the dog, though the police were “making enquiries,” which was police speak for “We don’t have a clue.” I made a mental note to ask Emma out again soon. When the dust had settled.

I’d jacked in my job - quality control in a pharmaceutical lab - a few months back. My boss had gotten fed up with me booking so much time off. With the nights drawing in and the clocks going back in October, I couldn’t risk being stuck in traffic on a clear night. Or a clear morning, come to that. Why can’t the Moon just stick to the night shift? The Sun doesn’t go bothering the night sky, does it? It’s nice and predictable, unlike its sinister, grey sister, who wanders where and when she will. Anyway, he said I wasn’t a team player and refused to sign my leave requests after the fifth or sixth time. So I told him to shove it and walked out.

Luckily for me, Mum was loaded. Her family had owned castles, big castles in Eastern Europe. My great-great-grandfather had been a baron or a count of somewhere or another. I can’t remember where, but it ended in –ania. I had royal blood. Working in quality control was for the plebs, but Mum thought I needed to have a purpose. So, after she bought me this nice mid-terrace property, I started selling stuff on ebay. I got myself a large lock-up and stocked it with shedloads of cheap jewellery, perfumes and clothes brought in from various Asian and Far Eastern sweatshops. I sold them on with a 200% mark-up. Hot cakes never moved so quickly. If there’s one thing you can say about Brits, it’s that they have taste. Bloody awful taste, which suits me fine.

Oh, and before you ask, my Mum isn’t like me. Only males suffer from this affliction. She has two brothers, my uncles, whom I had never met, who were now back in somewhere –ania, probably being chased across the countryside by a pitchfork-wielding mob. I’m an only child. I think Mum didn’t want to risk having another son, so she kicked my father out and spent the next eighteen years keeping a careful watch over me. I think she was hopeful that her ideas about generation skipping had borne fruit. Right up until my eighteenth birthday. It took her all day to clean the mess off the walls. Why she made such a huge chocolate cake, I will never know. Thank heavens she had the foresight not to invite anyone over. Then the mess could have been a great deal worse. Guts hanging from the ceiling. Heads in the sink. That sort of thing.

Thinking about lunch - you get very hungry when you’re a lycanthrope - I went back to the kittens and opened the fridge. The clingfilmed plate still had several slices of liver left. And a chunk of heart, the aorta sticking up like a flagpole. Oh, and good, I still had half a bottle of Chianti chilling. Life was good.