THE WOLF BOY cont. He could, yes indeed. But something told him that he would only be a wolf for the nights of the full moon. The rest of the time he would have to live with his human body. He took a last longing look at the night outside. "Tomorrow," he said to himself. "Tomorrow." With first light the pains hit him again, the cramp and the red-hot needles as before - but they only lasted a couple of minutes, and they didn't bother him much now that he knew what they were. Naked, he stood in front of the mirror and saw the displeasing sight of his human body, thin and white and bruised here and there where they had got at him. They wouldn't get at him as a wolf. In fact ... Then the smell hit him - the stink of full-bodied vintage wolf pee. Yecch! He dressed quickly, bundled the sheets together, and tiptoed downstairs to the washing machine in the kitchen. He would probably have it finished and on the pulley by the time his parents woke up, and he would think of an explanation if asked. "Wet the bed. Sorry, mum." Meanwhile - he shredded his torn pyjamas with a pair of scissors, dumped them in a bin liner, tied it up, dumped it inside another bin liner, and dumped the lot in the bottom of the rubbish bin.   That day was Friday. Usually the bullies were happy to have the weekend in front of them, with lots of free time to commit axe murders in, or whatever the hell they got up to, and left him alone. Relatively speaking, that is. And, relatively speaking, so they did. That Friday all that happened to him was that he got elbowed in the ribs, had his new glasses knocked off in the corridor, got tripped on the stairs, and had his satchel dumped in a puddle in the school playground. Then the bell went and the week was over. Two of his persecutors went home in the bus, one was picked up in a snazzy Peugeot, one walked. Hidden, Tommy waited for the one who walked, and, when he saw him swaggering past, hands in pockets and backside jutting, followed him on the other side of the street and a hundred yards behind. If I change again tonight ... With the possibility of getting even actually in sight, Tommy could find no forgiveness in his heart, none at all. In the 1-2-1 Room, ‘Hi-I'm-Somebody' talked about "the need to understand the nature of a relationship". ‘Hi-I'm-Somebody' thought that having your head flushed down a toilet pan or getting spit wiped in your eyes constituted "a relationship". Tommy didn't. He thought it was an offence against life, and he intended to wipe it out. He followed his persecutor to a house in a suburban side-street, saw him let himself in with a latch key, saw the Nissan parked in the driveway, saw the garish curtains, and the paving slabs, and the concrete bowl with some stunted shrub, and felt no forgiveness. After ten minutes he went up to the door to make sure of the name on the bell, and came away. That night, leaving his parents welded to their couch in front of the television, tommy prepared for THE CHANGE. At least, he hoped he was going to change. The moon still looked full, and he had seen enough films to connect this sort of activity with the full moon. He left the light on, and lay down naked on top of the bed. The window was open, and he was sure that he could hop down onto the kitchen roof and so into the back garden. After a while he dozed, and then awoke with that same sweet pain - and laughed. YESSSS! There was no fear this time, no uncertainty. It was happening, and he was running with it. This time he left the bed with a bound and was over at the window in a second, pushing it wide with his muzzle. "Ooooowwwwwooohhhhh!" It was midnight and the moon was doing its silver duty about the sky. Whatever moved within a mile on four feet or by wing heard him. It can't be! A wolf? Here? Now? YESSSS! He leapt from the window, and his body was lithe and strong. It was like having the most powerful bike ever up to its highest gear, except that it was a hundred times, no, a thousand times better than that. As he ran through the night towards his goal he knew that all the chains which had bound his human body had dissolved and that, for a few hours, he was able to do whatever he liked. *** It made the afternoon news on radio and television, it featured in the national news that evening, and by the time the Sunday papers were ready for it, a second killing ... "Brilliant!" "Hold the front page!" "You're not going to believe this!" said the hacks ... guaranteed headline status everywhere. TWO BOYS KILLED IN SAVAGE ATTACKS! SLASHER FIEND SLAYS AGAIN! LORD OF THE CANNIBALS! BLOODY BEAST BUTCHERS BOYS! BOYS BUTCHERED BY BLOODY BEAST! BLOOD FIEND BUTCHERY! BEAST OF BLOOD! RIPPER RAMPAGE! NIGHTMARE ...! FRENZY ...! GORE ...! The police were round the blood like bluebottles. It was the inevitable image - the clustered white cars, revolving blue lights, swarming dark uniforms, buzzing radios, and, in the centre, two wrecked rooms, two bodies mutilated beyond recognition, and the blood splattered over the walls, splattered over the ceiling, running down the stairs, soaking into the carpets, forming puddles wherever it went. On Monday morning the Head Teacher called the whole school into assembly. He stood up on the dais looking grave, and ' Hi-I'm-Somebody' and ‘Hi-I'm-Somebody-Else' sat behind him in serried ranks looking graver. "Boys and girls, most of you will have heard ..." And the pupils all looked shocked, Oh God!, they did. Most of them hadn't known the dead boys; those who had thought they were louts and within the school they were thought kindly of by precisely no one. They were and missed by no-one, except possibly their two meat-headed friends, who were too meat-headed to think much at all. But for all that, everyone looked shocked, they did by God! Death is the ultimate fact of life and it had just hit them all with both barrels. Tommy sat there in the assembly, thin, bespectacled, round-shouldered. His face was carefully expressionless, but inside he was singing and dancing. Got 'em! He hadn't changed last night, but three nights of the full moon were enough. If it happened again next month - and, Oh please God!, let it happen again! He knew exactly what he was going to do. Chop the other two. Yeah! *** Over the next week the police conducted dozens of interviews in the school. They used the 1-2-1 Room with its bright yellow paint and lots of soothing pictures. Tommy was called in to face a pretty policewoman ("Hi, I'm Jacki."). She had a laptop computer which she opened, looked at with a concerned expression on her face, and then asked him about his relationship with his dead persecutors. "I wanted to kill them both," said Tommy. He said this in a matter-of-fact way with his arms folded, because, after all, he had killed them both. Policewoman Jacki looked more concerned and used the words "shock", "trauma", "awesome", and "totally chill out". Tommy kept his arms folded and said nothing. He was given a week off school to help him recover from the awesome shock and trauma of having known two boys who had gone to the shredder. He spent the time reading up about werewolves on his computer, and watching werewolf videos when his parents' bottoms were transplanted to office chairs and he had the couch to himself. Pretty Jacki dropped in to ask him if he was chilling out, totally. She sat smiling at him in the armchair with her knees drawn together, the black and white chequered cravat at her throat, and ruby earrings glowing over her sombre uniform. "You know what I think?" said Tommy. "I think a werewolf killed them." Jacki's smile was invincible, but her eyes jumped. "A - werewolf?" she said. She looked at her lap, and found that she hadn't brought her laptop with her. She looked back at Tommy with a very concerned expression on her face and used the words "distressed", "reality check", "get weird", and "panic attack". Tommy nodded knowingly, said, "A werewolf - definitely," and went on to give amazingly accurate details of both attacks. "Cool," said Jacki, feeling a prickly heat coming on. "Cool ... yeah." And she packed up her smile and left the house, looking and feeling rather dazed. *** Three more weeks passed, and the full moon came round again. That two more boys from the same school should be slaughtered with the same savage ferocity, apparently by a dog of unknown type, but possessed of extraordinary strength and cunning, simply beggared belief. Coincidence? Surely not. Yet there was no trace of human participation at any of the four killings. Television cancelled programmes and featured documentaries and interviews with all manner of concerned experts who talked in a very concerned fashion about whether a dog could possibly have done this, or done it at human instigation, or, if not a dog, then what? And everyone who could reach a computer looked at that computer in a very concerned way. Jacki typed the word "werewolf" and clicked on "search". "Boys and girls," said the Head Teacher, and back to the 1-2-1 Room came the police, and every one was shocked, all zoos and safari parks doubled, trebled and quadrupled their security, there was talk of armed vigilante groups in the street, and the newspapers went orgasmic. EVIL FIEND STRIKES AGAIN!!!! Blah-blah-blah. And through it all walked Tommy, unmoved. He had never felt so calm, so confident, so completely in control. He had that certain indefinable glow that brought respect in classroom and playground and meant that he no longer had the word victim stamped across his forehead in letters of fire. As the first week became the second and the second turned into the third, no one jeered at him any more, no one tripped him on the stairs, pushed him into the toilets, or broke his glasses. It was almost as though they knew, yet they couldn't know, because it was impossible and werewolves didn't exist. As they used to say in the Westerns, Tommy walked tall. *** It was early in the evening, with the full moon due that night, when Jacki turned up at Tommy's house. His parents were both welded to the couch in front of the television, of course, and Jacki chatted with them for a while, then let them give their whole attention back to the box while she went upstairs to his room. Tommy knew she was in the house. He was sitting waiting for her, his eyes calm, his body quite immobile. Computer and CD player were silent. Jacki came in and sat down on the bed. For a while neither of them spoke. Jacki studied Tommy's face. It was the sort of face you don't want to meet in the Interrogation Room. Neither defiant nor indignant, neither sullen nor brazen - the face of someone in control. "And he's only a child," she thought. "Listen," she said quietly, looking straight at him. "I know what you did. I know it's impossible, but I know you did it. And tonight you're going to do it again, aren't you?" Tommy looked at her unblinkingly. "I'm not moving," said Jacki. "When you change, I'm going to be here to see it. I know that you will become much stronger than I am when that happens, but until then you are just a little boy, and I am a police officer on duty" - she let him see her baton and handcuffs - "so if you even think about running away ..." Tommy smiled, for a second, just a twitch at the corner of his mouth. "Take me with you!" Jacki pleaded, voice low and intent. "There's so much I could do if I had your power!" Somewhere, ‘Hi-I'm-Somebody' and ‘Hi-I'm-Somebody-Else' were drinking their cocoa and boning-up on a bit of child psychology before going to bed. Somewhere the Head Teacher was sitting watching the telly with a glass of brandy in his hand, wondering if just maybe he was failing the children in his charge. Somewhere the Chief Constable and the Chief Superintendent were worrying in case any of their minions were abusing anyone's civil rights. Somewhere criminals and bullies of all shapes and sizes were swarming, cocky, vicious, self-righteous and cruel. Somewhere someone had had enough. Tommy moved for the first time. He leaned forward slowly and ever so slightly, bringing the tips of his fingers together and resting his chin on them. He looked at Jacki with his calm, confident eyes. "Are you sure?" he said. *** Three hours later two huge wolves were loping through the night. THE END   All copyrights reserved Colin Mackay 2001 This Story is Copyrighted, if in doubt, please read COPYRIGHTS section at TALESetc.com