Aboriginal Australian Werewolf

Another night, another kill. Once the moon is high up in the sky, I can shed my disguise. I don't know why but the moonlight makes it easier to shift from one form to another. I could feel the full moon coming, since several days ago. It pulled at me like a magnet pulling on metal. And I cannot resist it any more than the sun could refuse to rise. Thus, I began to change. Going from a five-foot-eleven, slim young man with medium brown skin, curly black hair and light brown eyes. I often get mistaken for someone from the Horn of Africa but I'm as Australian as a kangaroo. The son of an Aboriginal Australian and an American woman of Irish descent. My name is Adoni Darel, and my name literally means Sunset After the Blue Sky.

Without hesitation, I step out into the darkness. Going from a regular guy into the creature which mother nature created me to be. A seven-foot-tall, vaguely humanoid and Wolf-like monstrosity with superhuman strength and speed. In my Wolfish form, I can outrun a race car. The guys and gals of NASCAR have nothing on me. And I'm strong enough to lift ten to fifteen times my body weight. Such is the power of the beast. Yes, there are Wolf-men in the Commonwealth of Australia. In spite of the risks associated with prowling in the darkness like that, I love running around in Wolfish form. It's my true form, though it took me forever to accept that.

I sniff the air, tasting a thousand sensations which humans couldn't imagine. I can smell the sandwich wrappers dropped by some careless bozo in the woods three days ago. I can also smell a dingo which roamed the environs last night. What really interests is the scent of the wild hare, and I pick it up. My eyes see through the darkness with perfect clarity, and I see the small animal in the bushes. With a powerful leap, I clear thirty feet. My claws tear through the bush, and I spear the rabbit. It didn't even have time to yelp. I feast, swallowing it in chunks and purging myself of the ravenous hunger I often find myself plagued with once I'm transformed.

Far from sated, but feeling better than I have in weeks, I take off. I love running at full speed in the vast plains of the State of Victoria. I run for hours, moving faster than anything human. Sometimes, I wonder how many others like me there are. As far as I know, my father is the only one like me. There are all kinds of creatures living in the Commonwealth of Australia that aren't found anywhere else. Just like there are unique peoples in this vast land. Take us Aboriginal Australians for example. To many, we resemble the people of sub-Saharan Africa. I'm sure we shared common ancestors, but my ancestors have been in Australia for hundreds of thousands of years. Long before the English settlers came, and forever altered the landscape and politics of this once-peaceful land. My father raised me to be proud of my Aboriginal Australian origins. Just like he encouraged me to make friends with all people regardless of ethnicity. My father isn't bitter toward the English, as we Aboriginal Australians call the white folks. In spite of all we've endured at their hands for centuries, we're proud citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia.

My father Balun Darel is one of the first high-ranking Aboriginal Australian police officers in the City of Melbourne, State of Victoria. He's currently a sergeant, something which amazes some people. My mother Annabelle McIntosh was born in Boston, Massachusetts, way down in the United States of America. She's been living in Australia for most of her life, though. Mom teaches English Literature at the University of Melbourne. I come from good stock, I guess. I'm one of the top students in the civil engineering program at the University of Melbourne. The fact that my mother is on the school's board of directors has nothing to do with my success. A lot of people stare at my parents when we're out together. Australia is full of interracial couples. White men from the settler communities have been having offspring with Aboriginal Australian women for centuries. Yet they gawk when they see an Aboriginal Australian woman with a white woman. I find that kind of funny, and also kind of sad.

There are many, many mixed-race guys and gals in Australia, the offspring of Aboriginal Australians and Europeans. Yet in many ways, I'm unique. My mother is white and my father is an Aboriginal Australian. I've gotten weird looks when I showed pictures of my family, even from other Aboriginal Australians of mixed parentage. I long for the day when racial politics won't play such an important role in the lives of all citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia. Sometimes, I feel like the ultimate outsider, because I am the son of two worlds in more ways than one. I'm human and inhuman, Aboriginal and Caucasian. My parents literally came from different sides of the spectrum. My mother is human, and my father is more than human.

Werewolves are everywhere, according to my father. We hide, even from each other. Dad told me that I'm even rarer than I thought I was. Half-Breed offspring of humans and werewolves are extremely rare because of speciation. Once, humans and werewolves shared a common ancestor, one that was lost in the mists of time. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, humans and werewolves became two completely different species. Werewolves evolved along divergent lines yet still looked human, mainly because they lived in a universe dominated by humans. Just a form of adaptation. According to my father, there are tons of werewolves among the Aboriginal Australian communities, but our kind hide even from the people that spawned us because the Werewolf species has been persecuted by humans longer than any group. Long before Africans and Jews were mistreated simply for being different from mainstream Europeans, werewolves were hunted down by human beings of all races simply because they viewed us as a threat. Sad but true.

Anyhow, where was I? Oh, yes. After running all night, I rested on this sandy hill. Overlooking the beautiful City of Melbourne. The crown jewel of the State of Victoria. Australia's best town as far as I'm concerned. We've been getting a lot of immigrants lately. Folks from the Republic of India, South Africa, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, the Republic of China and the Caribbean among others. A lot of Aboriginal Australians don't welcome the onslaught of 'brown people' from the other side of the world. It's sad that they have the same xenophobic attitude as so many Australians of European descent. The way I see it, Australia is the world's biggest country next to Canada and Russia. We're big enough to accommodate lots more people. I welcome my country's new diversity. As the sun creeps into the sky, I feel my power receding. Once again, my body shifts back to human. I transform from a seven-foot-tall, hairy superhuman creature into the regular guy that I try to convince everyone I am.

I start the long walk back to the City of Victoria. It's hot, and I am reminded of how foolish it was to run so far from town. The wilderness was calling me, man. My father doesn't approve of these late-night wolf outings. He keeps reminding me to be careful. Even though, by his own admittance, he wasn't so careful when he was my age. My pops was a real hell-raiser according to his buddies at the Melbourne Police Department. He used to get into fist fights with bigoted Europeans, and he was an amateur boxer who went undefeated for five years in his weight class before quitting. It's not exactly hard for a wolf-man to beat up a human, even when we're not transformed we're still stronger, faster and deadlier than they are. We're not human, no matter what we tell ourselves.

My mom often tells me the story of the first time she saw my pops. It was the 1980s, and she was a newcomer to Australia, having moved to the Australian State of Victoria from the U.S. town of Boston, Massachusetts. He was in a boxing match, fighting some big Irish guy who was one of Australia's top boxers at the time. And he beat the Irishman to a bloody pulp. Shocking the Australian boxing world. That day, she knew he was different. She pursued him, eventually discovering his secret. He was more than human. Her love for him was so strong that she overcame her initial apprehension, married him and had little old me. Makes for a great love story, huh?

Sometimes, I wonder if I'll ever have a great love story like that. I'm twenty years old, and I excel at everything I do. I'm one of the best students in the civil engineering program at the University of Melbourne. I'm also Vice President of the Aboriginal Australian Student Association of the State of Victoria. An organization encouraging Aboriginal Australians to attend higher education institutions. You can't get anywhere without an education these days. My favourite politician, U.S. President Obama, often states that and I agree with him. My mother proudly tells me that she attended Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts. Obama's alma mater. How about that? Yeah, school is important. Aside from the A.S.A. activities and rugby, I don't have much of a social life. I've had girlfriends, but I never really let anyone get too close to me. I don't think regular gals can handle having a werewolf boyfriend. This is real life, not some fairytale. It's not like in fucking Twilight or something. Anyhow, it's been real, folks, but I've got to go. I've got two hours to get back to my apartment in southwest Melbourne. I've got an exam in the afternoon and given what I spent last night doing, I'm going to have to cram for it. Peace.