The Full Moon Treatment

"I will be recording our sessions. This is a requirement by the state." The scrawny man with the whispers of gray in his hair pressed the record button on his video camera. He sat down in the metal chair across from me, placing his hands on the sterling silver table and spoke to the camera. "My name is Dr. Johnathan Friedman. I am recording from the Ohio State Psychiatric Ward for the Criminally Insane. It is Wednesday, October 28th, 2025. I am sitting here with Mr. Tyler Costas. Our session will begin now. Tyler, how are we feeling today?"

That was a loaded question and he knew it. I had barely settled into this place when they told me my sessions would begin today. I knew they were coming, I had just hoped I would have a little more time to process everything that had happened first. His eyes were narrowed at me. I could feel the trepidation, he knew my reputation.

"I'm okay." I answered. I could hear the shake in my voice. I was not ready for this.

"You seem nervous." I guess psychiatrist are known for being observant. "Don't be. Today, we are just going to recap the events that led to you pleading insanity and being sent here. You can take all the time you need, just try to take deep breaths throughout. If you need any breaks just let me know." I don't know if it meant all of this to be comforting, it wasn't. I didn't want to recall everything. The love of my life was dead, his wife was dead, and it was all the beast's fault. "I asked that the guards put no restraints on you. I want you to feel comfortable here. Is that okay?"

"Shouldn't there be like a couch or something for me to lay on?" I really meant this. Sitting in these chairs that were bolted to the ground was not comfortable. I was already fidgety before all of this, now I had to stay still throughout the session.

"We might get you to a couch on our next session. This one is truly just a formality, I just need the details of what all happened on Thursday, July 2nd and what led up to it. Do you feel like you're ready?"

I wasn't, but judging by the stale air in the room, the intensity of it all, I knew I didn't have a choice. "Can I start from when I first turned into a werewolf? It's relevant I promise." There was the look of judgment, the smirk of disbelief rested on his face. He had heard about me and my.... affliction, already. Like most sane people, he chose not to believe it.

"Go on."

It started back in my sophomore year of high school. I took my girlfriend at the time, Cindy Watts the local drive - in movie. They were showing a triple horror feature, Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street. We loved watching horror movies together, and I truly loved her. At least, that's what I thought. She was the most beautiful girl in school, brown hair, long legs that seemed to go for miles, and a smile that could break your heart in an instant. I was the shy, nerdy kid. I had horn rimmed glasses, I couldn't gain any weight if I tried, and I was super into comic books and video games. She never cared how pathetic I was, she just wanted me for me.

That night at the movies, as we were getting to Michael Meyers first kill scene, we heard people screaming from their cars. People started to speed off and some of their dates were even ditched when they went to concessions and came back to no one there. I got out of the car to take a look around and see what the commotion was. That's when I saw it. A large black wolf. I thought it was a regular wolf that night, I learned later I was very wrong. I saw it across the aisle, it stood on its hind legs next to a Camaro and was trying to break the window with its claws. I learned later that this was a werewolf at the end of its life. It wasn't strong enough to do significant damage, but terrifying all the same.

The wolf looked rabid, white foam was dripping from its fangs. When it realized the Camaro's window was not going to break, it turned its attention to the only living being stupid enough to be standing outside its' car, me. It locked eyes with me. The beast's eyes were a bright yellow and the full moon shined a spotlight on the gloss covering its pupils. It may have been blind, but it knew where I was.

Cindy was screaming at me to get back into the car, but I couldn't, I froze. I felt like what Dracula's victims must have felt like when he put them in a trance. My hands were ice and my shoes were cement. The wolf lunged at me, I still didn't run. Cindy tried honking the horn to scare it, but it was determined. When it finally reached me, it latched onto my arm with its fangs. I still have the scars to prove it. As its teeth sunk in I noticed a few strange things. For one, most rabid animals when they bite, they tend to tear and rip, it was doing neither. It bit and held on like it had lockjaw. The second thing I noticed was my blood felt like it was on fire. I know now that this the venom that werewolves inject in their victims, to turn them. I didn't scream, I just fell to the ground from the impact and awaited death. A death that never came, and it probably should have.

Once the venom was fully in my system, the werewolf released and scurried into the woods behind us. Most likely, trying to find a place to die.

Cindy drove me to the hospital. I was in there for about a week with all kinds of tests being run on me. They checked me for rabies and several other diseases, but all my test results came back clean. I didn't even lose that much blood. They said the amount I lost was the equivalent of a paper cut.

Everyday after, I felt paranoid. I didn't trust my own eyes and what I had thought I experienced. Then the first full moon arrived about a month later. I was laying in bed scrolling on my phone, when my blood caught fire again, like it had that night. I felt sick and I threw up all over my bedroom floor. Thankfully, as I've learned, the first transformation is the weakest. I had locked my bedroom door to keep my little sister out, and that was enough to keep me contained.

Every single one of my knuckles broke. All twenty hand between both hands. It was like being stabbed with a thousand needles through each muscle. New bones grew in their place as I watched breathlessly. I screamed, but my parents were out of town, and while I had thought my sister was still in the house, she must've snuck out at some point. No one could hear me. We lived in the country so there were no neighbors to call the police as well, but I know if we had any neighbors in a three mile radius, they would've heard me.

Slowly every other bone in my body broke, including my neck and spine, and new, larger, stronger bones grew in their place. Hair covered my body. The hair grew in after the bone breaking pain and weirdly, it acted as a numbing agent. Probably the transformations attempt at keeping me alive. My teeth cracked one by one, fangs grew in their place. If the dentist took a surgeons scalpel and cut each one of your gums open, and then proceeded to pour salt in those gums, you might have a taste of what I felt. That's when I blacked out.

I came to the next day, my room was destroyed. Laptop broken, TV smashed, clothes ripped to shreds. But I was back to being myself again, albeit, very broken inside. My bones were back to normal, but I knew something wasn't right.

I didn't tell anyone what happened. I knew they wouldn't believe me so I did the research on werewolves myself. I was certain that that was what I was now. It took me years to figure out a system for keeping me from hurting people. I always managed to get myself out someplace in the middle of nowhere, or in a cave somewhere, anywhere with no general population.

While all of this was going on, Cindy and I broke up. She said I wasn't present in the relationship anymore, that I was secluding myself. She was probably right, but I didn't know what else to do. I didn't want to hurt her, and I needed to protect myself. We still remained friends, even when she began to date other guys. We would do our homework together, play some online games, and generally just be best buds from that point on. I felt some of the jealousy when she would bring guys around, but that faded over time. I had no feelings about them whatsoever, until she met Sam.

She met Sam Johnson our senior year right before graduation. He was a poet, a musician, basically the hipster of the school. And damn did she fall for him. When she introduced him to me, there was one problem. While she had already fallen for him from the first time they met, now so had I. He was beautiful. He had long black hair that clung to his shoulders, he was skinny but you could tell he worked on what muscles he had, but it was his eyes that did it for me. Light blue eyes that contrasted with his darker complexion, and when he looked at me, he pierced me like the fangs of the wolf two years before.

Years went by, my infatuation never left. All three of us moved into houses just outside the city after college. I built myself a cage in the basement of my home, padlocked and chained because I was getting stronger. On nights of a full moon, even if they wanted to hang out, I hid in my basement. I was not going to put my best friend, and the one I truly loved at risk.

Things became messy when the two of them decided to get married. But truly everything became messy the night my parents died in a car accident. I was inconsolable. I came over to their house, hoping to find Cindy first because she had known me the longest. She was out of state on business, and when I called her from her house she said it would take her a day to get back but she would be on her way. I didn't know Sam was there. I was sobbing so loud I was blocking out my own hearing and didn't hear the shower running. When he came out, water glistening off of his chest, he saw me standing there crying. He held me all night in his towel, never bothering to dry off. He comforted me like he had known me my whole life. After I finally settled, I don't know why I did it, but I kissed. I don't know why he did what he did, but he kissed me back.

Over the course of the next three years, our affair continued behind my best friend's back. I was still in control of my transformations, but I was out of control with him. It was hot. Every single time we got together we knew it was wrong, but we couldn't resist tearing each other apart. I loved him, and he loved me, at least that's what I thought.

In early June of this year, I finally cracked. I needed him, I didn't want to hide it anymore and frankly, I didn't give a damn what it did to my "best friend". She didn't love him like I did, she didn't appreciate him like I did. I gave him an ultimatum, her or me, simple and plain. That's when he decides to tell me that while our affair is "hot" and "fun", I'm not the one he truly loves. He chose her. I couldn't have that.

On July 2nd I invited them over to my parent's place which my sister now owned. Like I said, it was in the country with no one around for miles. I got there early, before the full moon would rise and prepared myself. I stabbed my sister with a knife, she wasn't there for me for my first transformation, she wouldn't be there on what I thought would be my last transformation. I cut the power tot he house but left it unlocked and told them both to make themselves at home when they got there. They arrived, the moon rose, the last thing I saw was them making out on the couch when they noticed the power was off and I wasn't there yet. They were rubbing it in my face!

When I came to, Cindy's head was at my feet, detached from her neck. I found her body on the front porch. Likely I bit her by the neck and shook her until her body went flying outside. I found amusement in this. But I couldn't find Sam. The one who truly betrayed me. I somehow knew I hurt him, but I had a strange feeling he had gotten away.

"And after that is when you noticed that your car was missing Mr. Costas?" Dr. Friedman asked. I didn't know if he believed me, at this point I didn't care.

"That's what the police told me. They said he stole my car, ran into the hospital bleeding profusely from his abdomen. After they somehow patched him up, I heard he ran to the police and told them everything." I said

"Are you aware that his version of events is vastly different from the one you just told me?" His eyes narrowed at me, he wanted to know if I was crazy.

"I am not crazy. I am a werewolf and I know what I did."

"Then clarify this for me Tyler. The investigators found a bloody butchers' knife in your house, with Cindy and Sam's blood on it. There was a bite mark on Cindy's neck, but the teeth match your dental records on file. Is it possible Tyler, that all of this, all of the transformations, is all in your head?"

"It's a full moon tonight doc. Why don't you stick around and find out?"