The Blond Satan

Chapter 1-2

Gregory Spain’s life didn’t really change that much in the month after the cub incident. Apart from visits to his doctor for the scratch on his hand he continued his life, living one day after the other until one day he began feeling strange. It was a feeling he suffered with periodically until he finally came down with a strange fever that sent him into a delirium. Thinking he might be working too hard, he decided to take a little time off. He was sure that after a few days of rest he would begin feeling like his old self, until he woke up one night to find himself cowering against his bedroom wall. The first thing he felt was a sticky wetness. He looked down and saw something dark. He thought he was drenched in sweat until he realized it was blood. His clothes were covered not only with blood, but mud, leaves, and street debris. When he moved to walk he noticed that he was still wearing his stupid striped pajamas, and mud squished between his toes as if he’d been running through the city barefoot.

At that moment unwanted memories filled his mind, each one growing more and more hideous. He saw trees—tall trees surrounding him on all sides, but after that nothing but fog. And then, as if the devil had taken a broom and swept it away, the fog parted, and in among the sinister swirls, he saw—my God, was that a dead body? To push it out of his mind, he turned and hurried through the bedroom door, and over to the bar where he kept his alcohol. Grabbing clinking bottles and glasses, his hands shook while he poured one drink after another and downed them as if alcohol was the only thing that could set his world right again. The strong drink seemed to give his brain a jump start, and he remembered running along a city street and seeing the reflection of himself in a store window. No…no he was wrong. It wasn’t him, it was the crouching animalistic shape of a man—with claws, teeth—oh, my God, it was him!

As he stood, upending his third drink, he suddenly felt the familiar throbbing pain in his hand and looked down at the pink and swollen scratch. Moving quickly, he slammed the glass down and hurried into the bathroom and began tearing at his bloody pajamas until he stood naked. Slowly he lifted his gaze and looked toward the head-to-foot mirror and gasped at what he saw.

It couldn’t be him.

But it was.

He looked like a hybrid of both man and wolf, covered with blood. A man so raw and primal that something—he could hardly describe it—had taken him over. To his eyes he looked like a growling, snarling, feral man-slut that gushed with an untamed, blatant, s*x appeal. His long white-blond hair hung down past his shoulders and trembled with animalistic rage, and his eyes, green with gold specks, sparkled with evil. His lips were lush and full, and his teeth perfect, but his body, his mouth, and his five o’clock shadow was smeared with blood. This stranger he saw in the mirror caused a flurry of pictures to unfurl in his mind, and the next thing he knew, he remembered where he’d been earlier that night.

He saw himself crouching against the side of a building.

He saw fleeting, disjointed pictures of dark streets, heard high-pitched screaming, and suddenly he was in a struggle until he felt the deep penetration of his teeth into someone’s neck.

When he tasted the strange elixir, all warm and spicy enter his mouth, it wasn’t blood as he knew it, but an exotic wine such as he’d never tasted, and he had to have more. He sucked madly, letting it bubble into his mouth, and run down his chin, his neck, and over his clothes until he felt full of this sparkling cider the world called blood, but he called wine.

And then when it was all over, he saw himself racing away. Running! Running! Through the gray steam hissing from the city’s gutters, darting across a dark street, caught in the bright headlights of cars that skidded on their breaks and honked at the bloody sight. Up one street, and down another, he continued to run until he slammed inside and stood there safe in his home, his den, his lair, his hutch.

Now, after the shower had washed away the mud and blood, he looked down at his wound that before was swelled and throbbing and saw nothing but the small scar he’d expected to see before.

And then he knew.

He must be under some kind of curse or spell, and it had to have something to do with the wolf cub and the scar he left. Was it that simple, or was there more to the story? He lay naked in bed for several minutes until he finally fell asleep, his mind emptied of everything except that wolf cub and the poison he carried in his claws.