SNAFU: Wolves at the Door

The man was lean and hard, athletic enough but definitely not a body builder. Scott, who tended to work out regularly, was about the same height and had him by easily thirty pounds of muscle.

John stared directly at Cullie, his face still set in a sneer, and started breathing fast. His breaths were almost silent at first, but then there was a light whimper followed by a full-out groan.

Scott watched it happen, every last second of it, his mind frozen, his eyes bulging.

The man threw his head back and gasped and as he did so, his skin split, tearing like thick paper and revealing a different shape beneath its surface. There was no long drawn out process as he’d seen in several movies, there was simply a sudden growth spurt as the average sized man became something entirely different.

What shook off the shredded remains of a human being was a werewolf, one that stood easily seven-and-a-half-feet tall, and had to weigh at least a hundred pounds more than the man it had replaced.

The guy with the ponytail kept speaking, while every one of the hunters who’d been called to pay a debt scrambled away from the beast looming over Cullie.

“Wolfmen, werewolves, lycanthropes, whatever you want to call us, gentlemen, we’re very real.” He moved forward and looked the beast in the eyes. Scott could only stare in awe, but his friend Eric had a different look on his face. Eric looked like a man who’d just had an epiphany.

“Sweet Jesus,” Mark spoke softly, his voice shaking.

“Keep your gods to yourself, thank you.” The man staring at the monster in front of him stepped back and the werewolf fell forward, onto its hands and knees, even as it once again became the man named John. John very calmly put his clothes back on, leaving behind the shredded underwear.

“Hate when I forget the briefs,” John muttered almost apologetically as he got himself back into his jeans.

“Would you like me to tell you the rest of the story now, gentlemen?” The obvious leader of the group settled down against one of the tables and crossed his arms. “This is the part where things get grisly, and since you wanted the truth, you’ll get it.”

He looked over at George when he spoke. “George wanted them to stop, but I guess he didn’t feel too strongly about the situation. Instead of making them leave the wolf alone, he lit a cigarette, grabbed himself a beer and went into the woods.

“So he didn’t get to see everything that Cullie and Mark did. He didn’t watch while they took turns cutting at the crippled animal on the ground.” The rumble was back in the man’s voice, a sound unsettlingly like a dog growling as it ate. “He was busy leaning against a tree and then puking his guts out when he heard the animal’s cries change.”

He pinned Cullie with his glare and continued again. “What gets me, what really amazes me above all else, is that your friends didn’t stop with the cutting when the wolf started to change shape.”

Mark was hyperventilating, his hands were clenched and his eyes were locked on the ground at his feet. Cullie was looking at the ground too, but more like he’d been caught in the act of doing something he wouldn’t have minded doing as long as no one knew about it. He looked more like a man accused of public masturbation than a murderer.

“When the change happens, there’s no mistaking that what you are dealing with is human. You saw that yourself a moment ago, gentlemen. But Mark and Cullie here? That didn’t stop them.”

He moved away from the edge of the table and looked at the two men. Turning his head from one to the other, his own breaths coming like a bellows stoking a furnace, he made sure to look them both over.

“In the very farthest stretches of polite society, it’s possible that someone could have overlooked their killing a wolf, even if they felt the need to torture it to death. But I ask you gentlemen, what do you think about your friends murdering a twenty-year-old woman?”

Eric shook his head; his face pale and sickly.

Scott felt his gag reflex try to force his recently consumed dinner into reverse and dry swallowed until the impulse vanished.

“Now, how about we add one more factor into the equation, one I’m sure neither of these fine, upstanding citizens decided to mention, even to George over here. The girl, my daughter and John’s wife, was pregnant when they hit her.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake you’ve got to be kidding.” The words were out of Scott’s mouth before he realized that he had spoken. The giant of a man turned on him and nailed him in place with a stare.

“I wish I were. I’m not. They murdered my daughter and my grandchildren, Mr Lassiter.” He walked closer until he was physically looking down at Scott. “They murdered her and then, to make sure no one would ever know, they dug her a shallow grave and buried her. On the bright side, at least your friend Loman was good enough to bury her head with the rest of her body.”

“How do you know all of this?” Eric spoke, as calmly as he could. He looked a little green around the gills, but still composed.