#two rabbit parents Were Not Prepared for a wolf puppy

[monty-glasses-roxy]

I am SO SORRY, but every time you talk about animalisms or dogisms my brain goes right to Roxy having to be on a leash any time they go out so she doesn’t poop in a neighbor’s grass.

SHE'S NOT THAT BAD LMAO

[joemerl]

Julycanthropy 2019

Hey, anybody interested in the novel that I’m writing? No, guys, come back.

So, this year I learned about Julycanthropy, which is where you use a bunch of prompts to draw werewolves each day. I found several people who instead decided to use them as writing prompts, and since my novel is about werewolves it seemed like I should try something myself. 

Basically, this is backstory, starting about twelve years before my story begins and ending a little before the present. Read if you’re interested, and I hope that you enjoy. 

Word count: 2,865.

New Moon

Roger turned into a wolf for three days every week. It had nothing to do with the moon, as evidenced by the fact that it was almost invisible tonight.

He didn’t need the light—his wolf eyes could see excellently in the dark, and he barely even needed them with how strong his ears and nose were. But he missed the moon when it was gone. It made him feel even more lonely.

On the hunt

It was several weeks of practice before Roger first managed to take down a doe. He spent three days gorging on it before leaving almost half of its meat untouched. He felt kind of guilty about that, and afterwards mostly restricted himself to rabbits and mice. They were easier to catch, anyway. 

Meal

“Can we please not talk about this during dinner?” his wife Carla asked, cutting up food for their younger son, Curtis.

Roger gave her a wooden smile, then turned back to six-year-old Randall, who had started the conversation.

“I eat rabbits because a deer is too big for just one wolf,” he said, trying to sound lighthearted about the whole thing. “But maybe I’ll catch one for the two of us once you start to change.”

There was a loud CLANK of cutlery as Carla looked up at him, nostrils flaring. Both boys recoiled in their seats, but Randall turned back to his father with cautious but curious eyes.

He forced a smile again. “...Of course, it’s always nicer when I get to eat your mom’s delicious cooking at home.”

Run

Carla was livid. “I don’t care!” she said. “I don’t want you talking about this in front of them!”

“All I’m trying to do is get Randall prepared!”

“You’re scaring him! It’s bad enough that you disappear half the week, Curtis keeps asking where you are, and Randall—”

“You can’t keep running from the facts, hon! His birthday is less than a month away! And after that—he needs to be prepared for after that,” he muttered, looking down at the floor. “He’s gonna start changing, whether we like it or not.”

She stared at him with her dark, furious glare. “And whose fault is that?” she spat.

Magic

Once upon a time, there was a mean old witch. One guy who lived in her neighborhood didn’t believe in witches. One day, he did something to make her mad—Randall didn’t know what. But the witch was so mad that cursed the man to turn into a wolf for three days every week, and then, to be extra evil, said that the same thing would happen to his sons after their seventh birthdays.

One of the girls at school said that witches weren’t actually real. Randall knew that she was wrong, just like his dad had been. 

Feather

Randall and Roger got along well. They were both playful and easygoing, even now that this whole curse thing had added so much stress to their lives. Neither one of them wanted Randall to be cursed, but at least they were together for the whole week again.

Birds of a feather flock together, Roger thought that first night, as his newly seven-year-old puppy snuggled against him in their tent. Now what would that expression be for wolves?

Tranquilly

Randall had been really scared to change, even though his dad kept saying that it wouldn’t be scary. But it was scary, and it hurt, and now he was a wolf and it felt weird and he was sad that Mom and Curtis were at home while he was stuck here in the woods. 

But he was with Dad, in a tent that they had constructed together back when they had hands. So he laid his head against his father’s furry chest and closed his eyes, listening to the sounds of the forest. His dad nuzzled his face, and slowly he began to feel safe. 

Rage

One week before, Roger had been alone in the forest, getting ready to transform, thinking about his son joining him the following week. He slammed a fallen branch against the nearest tree trunk and screamed bloody murder at the sky. Even when he was in wolf form he howled and bit himself and threw himself against the ground, cursing that witch and himself for what they had done to his family.   

Relaxation

Neither father nor son ever completely relaxed in the forest, trapped in bodies that were never quite their own. Randall felt much happier at home, snuggling with his parents in front of the TV or playing games with Curtis.

Bones

Roger taught Randall to hunt over the coming months, and soon deer had replaced rabbits as their prey of choice. Either way, two wolves ate a lot, and the area where they made camp was collecting quite a large number of gnawed-up animal bones.  

One hunting expedition went wrong, however, and Randall wound up with a broken front leg. He hobbled on it for a day and a half, mewling in agony, before he could finally turn back into a human. He still had a broken arm, and they couldn’t even go to the doctor for it. His mom wrapped and unwrapped it each time he changed for the next few weeks, all while shooting furious looks at his father, who stared guiltily at his feet.

Escape

“But how do you break the curse?” Curtis asked shortly after his sixth birthday.

“I don’t—I don’t think there is a way to break it, Curt.”

“But there’s gotta be.” 

He never fully gave up that goal.

Snarl

Carla and Roger’s relationship had never been idyllic, and the curse added an extra strain. It was a rare fight when she didn’t remind him what he had done to their children, or how it felt being abandoned for three days every week.

Over time it became clear that Curtis took after his mother. He had the same mercurial personality and the same hatred of lycanthropy. He started to acting out to Roger more and more as his seventh birthday approached, and could often be found cuddling up with Carla, the two sharing their frustrations about the family’s situation.

Claws

Curtis seemed nervous but calm on the drive down the forest, listening to his father and brother reassure him that everything would be alright.

When the change actually started, however, he clawed at his skin in agony, begging for some way to keep it from happening.

Paws

Wolves have five toes on each front paw, but only four on the back. That meant that one toe sort of just disappeared every time they changed.

Curtis counted his toes every time he turned back into a human, no matter how much his father mocked him about it.

(“Huh? I didn’t mock him,” Roger said, surprised and hurt by his wife’s accusation. “I just chuckled a little. I thought it was cute!”)

Nature

“Look, I know it’s hard. Really, I do,” Randall whispered, kneeling down to look his little brother in the eye. “But...this is just how it us for us Packwood men. You’ll get used to it soon. I promise.”

Curtis didn’t even look at his brother, just glared down at the coffee table. “I don’t want to be used to it. I want to be normal again.”

Waxing

Things got better for a while. Curtis still hated changing, even more than Roger or Randall, but he did get used to it. He spent his first weekend pretty much just lying on the ground and shaking, but after a few more weeks he would run around, wrestle and howl with the others, and they learned a few tricks to help bring him out of his shell as both a human and as a wolf.

Carla had been miserable when Curtis started to change, both for him and because of her own loneliness. Baby Con helped with that. Obviously she complained about having taking care of him alone half the week, but he kept her busy and became quite the cheery little mama’s boy as the years wore on. 

Waning

“I hate hunting,” Curtis said, arms crossed tightly over his chest.

Randall forced a smile, giving him a playful push on the shoulder. “Aw, but you’re so good at it. Much better than me or Dad!”

Curtis scowled. He was only eleven, but was already in the sullen teenage phase that had largely bypassed his fifteen-year-old brother.

Things between their parents were getting bad too. They were fighting a lot more lately, with their mom often close to tears and their father just looking tired. Eventually the two separated, but Randall kept telling himself that it was only temporary. The two seemed even more miserable when they were apart; they cared about each other too much to not reconcile eventually.

Chained

Though he was no longer living with the family, Roger came over every week to pick up Randall and Curtis so that they could go into the woods to change. 

Then one week, he didn’t. 

Carla drove them, sighing and seething the whole ride to the forest. This wasn’t fair, she thought, glancing at her sons in the rear-view mirror. Roger was the one of who got them cursed---why did they still have to do this even when he was gone?

Howl

Randall insisted that their father had just had car trouble, or lost his phone, or something. He would be there when they got to the woods. Or show up sometime during the weekend.

“Liar,” was the first word Curtis said when they turned back into humans on Sunday.

Randall said the same thing, with less conviction, when they went to the forest the following week. And once again, their father failed to show. Curtis went to sleep in their tent, but Randall stood outside as though waiting for him to show up. 

Halfway through the night, he stared up at the new moon and howled.

Sharp

Occasionally, the boys transformed at home, usually for birthdays or holidays. This time, Carla came into the living room and was shocked to see five-year-old Con stabbing Curtis with a knife. 

Gently, on the front leg, as Curtis sat there and let him. As she screamed at them, Con yelled that Curtis had asked him to cut him before he transformed, because he read that making a werewolf bleed would turn them back into a human. He had been studying a lot of old legends like that, trying to find something that would finally break the curse. 

Large

Con couldn’t understand why Curtis didn’t want to be a werewolf, of course. He loved the rare weekends when his brothers transformed at home, when he could cuddle up beside wolf-Randall and wrestle with him around the house. Everybody said that he might not be a werewolf, since he was born after the witch cursed his dad, but all Con wanted was to grow up and be a big-boy werewolf like his brothers and hang out with them every time they changed. 

Slick

Nobody outside of the family knew about the curse, of course. Their neighbors simply thought that the boys enjoyed camping, a story which Curtis rather expertly maintained to his best friend, Dennis, who lived next door. 

Of course, “camping” seemed like a pretty poor excuse to miss church every Sunday, even if they attended the Wednesday night services, so Pastor Gerig was under the impression that they visited family each weekend. Carla could even count on five-year-old Con to cheerfully keep up the ruse.

She knew she should be more worried about that, but she didn’t really see any other option.

Space

Practically every night that he was a wolf, Randall would sit on his favorite rock and gaze up at the stars. Curtis couldn’t understand how he found this so entertaining.

Clock

Sundown on Thursdays is when they transformed. Curtis spent all day checking the clock, dreading when he and Randall would have to go out into the woods, and then all day Sunday watching the sun, waiting for it to go down enough that they could change back again.

Climb

“Can werewolves climb trees?” Con asked, sitting in the boughs of the one near their house.

“Sure, little cub,” said Randall, who was sitting with his back against the trunk. “It’s a bit harder than doing it with hands, though.”

Con hung upside-down from the branch, his long hair nearly reaching the top of Randall’s head. “When I turn into a wolf, will you and Curtis teach me how to do it?”

“If you turn into a wolf one day, sure.”

Con scowled at that qualification.

Broken

One weekend, their mom told Curtis and Randall to stay home. She wouldn’t explain why, just browbeat them until they agreed. 

Changing at home was a mixed bag. On the one hand, they didn’t have to go hunting, instead eating steak and hamburger (and eating so much that staying home every week wasn’t really an option). On the other, their more wolfish instincts compelled them to roam around the woods, so that just sitting and watching TV all day made them feel tense and confined.

Randall spent most of Friday and Saturday playing with Con, letting him ride on his back or having wrestling matches on the couch (which always ended with Randall pinning him and licking his face, to Con’s delight). Curtis moped all weekend because of course he did, but Con put on one of his favorite movies and read to keep him entertained. Overall Randall thought that it was a pretty nice weekend.

Until they changed back Sunday night, and their mom finally worked up the courage to tell them what the doctor had told her. 

Pain

“The last thing I wanna see is one of you boys in pain.”

Curtis doesn’t like to think about the days surrounding his mother’s death. 

Smoke

Randall was eighteen, and now his brothers’ legal guardian. Thanks to the curse, Curtis moving to the city with their grandparents wasn’t doable, and Con was understandably terrified at the idea of moving there alone. 

The next few months were difficult, obviously, but Randall did a good job of keeping things together. He couldn’t get a normal job, since normal jobs generally require working more than four days per week, but he managed to scrounge up enough money, barely, to get by. He comforted Con when he cried. He tried to give Curtis space, though his efforts on that front were shakier than he would have liked.

With his lazy smile and laidback tone, you barely could tell how lost he felt, groping ahead as he stumbled along, his lungs sometimes burning every time that he breathed— 

Discovery

Con began to accompany his brothers on their camping trips every week.

It was the first time that he had every actually watched them transform, and the first time that he had been allowed to play with them as wolves outside. It meant three days every week when he got to run around through the trees with Randall, climb trees with Randall and listen to Randall howl up at the sky. (Curtis, of course, spent most of his time moping around on the ground, because he’s boring.) Sometimes he got to see them hunt, which was scary but also exciting, and then eat, which was gross but also exciting. (Con had a backpack full of snacks and sandwiches for himself.)

Then at night he would read the bedtime story, since neither of them could talk, and then curl up beside them to go to sleep. If he got scared or sad about Mom then Randall would lick his tears away and play with him some more. It was great.

Con was counting the weeks until his seventh birthday, when he would finally find out if he would turn into a werewolf too.

Home

Con chattered happily the whole ride home as Curtis sat in moody silence. He was having one of those almost dysphoric moments that he got on Sunday nights, when his own human body felt strange after three days as a wolf. 

Three miserable days with nothing to do, unless he wanted to run around and howl at the sky like his two idiot brothers.

Once they got home Curtis made a beeline for the bathroom and took a long, hot shower. Then he stumbled into his room (which used to be Randall’s room, before Randall moved into the master bedroom) and collapsed onto his mattress. He lied there for a long time, trying not to think, trying not to remember that he had to do this whole damn thing again in four days.

Full moon

Five days later, Randall was sitting on his favorite rock, looking up at the sky again.

The moon was full. It looked nice. Seemed comforting, somehow. Reminded him of when he used to sit up here with Dad.

But it also made him feel wistful. Reminded him of all those stupid werewolf stories, the ones that Curtis still vigorously tore through trying to find some cure for their curse. He envied the werewolves in those stories. They only had to change one night per month, after all.