(previously published in Bloody Muse October 1999)
The night awoke and sighed with a sultry, summer's breath. Darkness shimmered with silver silence as the fertile moon grew heavy and round with encumbrance. Phoebe yawned and stretched her silent moon beams to awaken her child, the lone wolf. She drew him from his dreams of love, arousing deep, instinctual yearnings in the pit of his soul. He would do as she wished, for he was hers to command.
***
Somewhere in the darkness of night, the man known as Lucien stirred. A feverish sweat clung to him in his dreams and drew him from sleep. The bed sheets were twisted and encumbered about his naked body and he felt caged like an animal in a snare—mad, foaming at the mouth and ready to chew off his own ankle to free himself—as he kicked the sheets from him. He was soaked. Angelique lay beside him, her breaths deep and even, the silver light from the full moon illuminating her pale blond hair like newly fallen snow, her moonskin, as cool and pale as milk. Her soft lashes lay still against her cheeks like dandelion fuzz suspended before the breath of a breeze on a summer day. She looked to him like a beautiful angel; pure, sweet and innocent. Her mother had named her well.
He thought that she, if anyone could save him from his madness. He'd been sure from the first time he'd seen her more than a year and a half ago selling her pottery in the town market, that she was the ‘one'; the ‘one' that who would save his soul from eternal damnation. His grandmere had told him the legends of the ‘one' who would come and cleanse the evil that rushed his veins, crawled his spine and reworked his DNA and that of his families for generations. The ‘one' who would finally break the curse and set him free. But he'd been so young then, merely a lad as he stood at his grandmere's deathbed, her eyes wild with visions of dying and madness, grasping his sleeve in her pale parchment bird-claws and pulling him close enough to smell the decay upon her lips as she rasped, "Listen to me boy. . . Only love will set you free." But, those were not her words exactly and he could not remember if these memories were actually ‘his' own or ones that had been created for him from the numerous retellings of it.
He frowned now looking at Angelique wondering if he had been foolish to believe such fantasies, wondering if his grandmere had already been mad and driven to demented illusions even then as was the burden of his lineage, before they'd ever locked her away in the institution. He could remember his mother dragging him there to the ‘looney-bin' as she called it, kicking and screaming to visit poor Grandmere—the wraiths with zombie-eyes walking the halls, the screams of the damned that slithered under his skin and filled him with unspeakable dread—and he knew full well that there were things far worse than death.
Lucien turned over and quietly got up from bed. The familiar itch had begun to irritate his body and he scratched his flesh drawing blood. His nails had already grown a full half-inch, or so he imagined. He went to the water-closet and relieved himself, then splashed cool water over his head, neck and chest. It did nothing to quench the heat within him. He stared at himself in mirror trying to detect the minute changes that had perhaps already begun. He rubbed his finger along his teeth and lifted his upper lip to expose his gums. They were blood red and his canines seemed somewhat longer, sharper certainly, but he couldn't be sure. His eyes were bloodshot and the whites looked sallow and weepy like fried eggs gone bad. The patch of thick hair on his chest seemed even thinker and the hair on his forearms longer, more coarse.
He laughed then, thinking himself mad. He ought to be locked away for such paranoid delusions. At least one part of his grandmere's premonitions were coming true. He was fucking crazy. Lately he'd been unable to sleep, up all night til dawn, prowling the four corners of the little cottage, hearing murmurs in his head, struck but mad delusions as he painted bloody pictures like a person possessed. Then he'd collapse on the bed at daybreak and sleep all day, the sleep of the dearly departed. And the dreams, they were both horribly beautiful and strangely real. He dreamt of running wild, naked through the undergrowth, the full moon bathing him in silvery light. He dreamt of blood and the taste of human flesh, so tender and sweet and marbled with rich fats. And in these dreams he was a beast who walked on all four legs, a mad dog foaming at the mouth with savage eyes and a mouth of incisors for ripping flesh. He'd steal chickens and eat them feathers and all, and sometimes a barn cat or the sweet tender throat of a newly birthed calf. It was laughable really, him being a vegetarian and all. But there was nothing amusing about these dreams. They scared the shit out of him.
Each night he'd set up his easel and paint such horrible nightmarish creations. Smearing red ocher, crimson, titanium black and sable across the pale white canvas, marring its perfection. He would become obsessed, his brush-strokes wild and passionate, his hands working the paint into the canvas, often smearing his naked flesh with the paints as well, so he looked as demoniac as his creations.
The paintings were terrible. At first glance they appeared to be only a chaotic splotching of colors. But after staring at them for a few moments the grisly images would crawl out of the canvas. Torsos ripped wide and spilling forth their inner organs, nightbeasts hidden within the folds of dark nebulous shadows, nudes bent and broken like toy dolls, their heads and bodies all askew, their beauty forever maimed. He didn't know from where these visions came—from his dreams most definitely, dreams that held the key to the mysteries that were buried deep within his subconscious—but certainly his mind could not have created such savage abominations. Or perhaps his grandmere had not been crazy and she was right after all. Perhaps he was becoming. But, becoming what?
The paintings had upset Angelique, so he'd taken them to his studio in Paris at the urging of his friend Gilles. He been both surprised and elated when Gilles had found him a showing at a prestigious gallery. Now his paintings were selling like hotcakes. And to think that his past works—the virginal landscapes and delicate nudes done in pastels and feathery strokes—had interested no-one. No. It was his madness that the public desired; these twisted nightmarish landscapes of his inner mind.
Lucien pulled on a pair of worn-out jeans and opened the cottage to get some air. Outside, the night was humid and clung to him like the bloody wet entrails of a dying body. The thought sickened him and he shivered in the heat. He decided a walk would clear his head and help to cool his madness. The garden smelled fragrant and lush with fruit ripening on the branches. Grapes where growing plump and soon would be time to harvest. To the east the land gently undulated like the curves of a woman, with fields of grain. He fondly remembered sketching that scene a thousand times, at least. Further, the dark woods were barely visible on the horizon, a black shadow against the blackness.
The moon was full and bloated and shone down at him through the tangle of tree branches. The scene looked oddly familiar as he stared up at it and after a moment he realized it was a scene he had painted. Yes, just so. They way the moon seemed to stalk him through the leafy foliage; the way it seemed to be watching him, possessing him as it had in his mad visions while he'd painted. An eery sensation fingered up his spine. He felt incredibly drawn to the moon's power, as if she pulled at him, like an umbilical cord stretching the infinite distance between them. Her voice was the song of the wild, of the wind, of the blood, and delivered him unto the primaeval stirrings of his birth.
A soft breeze blew against his skin. But rather than cool him it blanketed him in a sticky sweet warmth. Sweat poured down his face and chest. He struggled out of his cumbersome jeans, leaving them hanging on a branch. The heat pressed in on his flesh. Worse though, was the heat inside of him that boiled and bubbled in his stomach, through his intestines and roasted his muscles like steak on a barbecue. The itch plagued him, crawling through his extremities and under his skin like maggots eating him from the inside out. The itch was deep—cell deep—and attached him on a molecular level. He clawed as his skin desperately, gouged hunks of flesh from his body in a futile attempt to cure it. Rivulets of warm wet blood flowed from his legs, arms, chest. He rubbed his back against the rough bark of an old oak, fell to the ground and rolled in the moss and mud moaning. The itch only became more insistent, like a mosquito bite that becomes inflamed and painful when scratched, like a wound that refuses to heal.
His own blood filled his nostrils, warm rich fragrant, the smell of raw fresh meat made liquid. He brought his bloody fingers to his lips, tasting the sweet essence of his own body. The flavor was like rare veil, or calve's liver, tender young succulent sacrifices. He savored the sweet essence on his tongue. It was ambrosia.
The slow agony spread through him and cramped in his stomach. He could feel each muscle move beneath his flesh, beginning to bulge and stretch. His tendons stretched tight as piano wires. His spine shifted, each vertebrae popping like twigs. Each bone and muscle and cell began to transform within his flesh. He was ripped apart, bones separating from flesh, tendons screaming, piece by piece by piece. . . Becoming. . . Remaking his flesh in ‘her' vision. Through his tear-filled agony he saw ‘her', the moon gazing down through mottled branches, smiling a moon's bloated dead smile, the pocked-flesh as cool and pale as milk. He cursed her then and swore his vengeance upon her. Then blackness blanketed him in sweet unconscious night.
The dream again—or was it only a dream?—lying still on the mossy ground, fur slicked with sweat, panting hot ragged breaths, his heart beating slow and steady to her lunar rhythm. The smell of humus and dead things filled his nostrils. Memories lay distant, and raced through his blood—memories of the ancient tribes of wolf-men who chased the clouds and devoured the moon. The nocturnal hunt as he ran wild with the pack. The hunger stalked from his bowels to his stomach to his throat, the lunacy swallowing him with a single gulp.
