As an experiment in free-writing, I dashed this out in 15 minutes tonight, just before bed. I'm still coming down off a day of being on anesthesia (medical procedure required it) so I'm not sure where these ideas came from, otherwise. But in any event, I thought I'd share this, here.

It's only scraps. It was done to get a thought out of my head and onto the page.

Here it is in simple text:

---

Werewolf In Another World
2013 – Sylvan Scott

Bands of black split the sky north to south with a strip of sunrise-tinged clouds reddening their lightning-blue contours. Wind whipped through Travis’ hair, snapping it like long whips. The waving, prairie grasses mimicked the motion as did the distant, skeletal arms of the imposing forest. The eaves of spring had not yet settled upon them, however. Soot and ashen cracks scarred their landscape with only the babbling river delineating the former battle lines of the month’s-gone forest fire.

Silver light peppered the western sky, barely visible through holes in the stormy clouds. The sun, just about to rise behind him, was just coloring the towering, vine-covered ruins through which he gingerly stepped. Aged bricks cracked and fell away at his feet. He stepped gingerly, hearing the faint, echoing boom from far, far below. Whatever the aged towers and walls had been built upon, it was hollow and deep and ready to collapse. Taking the few rooted bushes as signs of where there was solid ground, he made his way towards the ruin’s edge.

Lilacs suffused the air while a scattering of honeybees the size of his thumbs, zipped into the morning air following the receding, night weather.

As he reached the edge of the ruin, he allowed himself to breathe more easily. The ground felt more secure beneath his feet. How he’d come here, he didn’t know. Where this place was, he had no idea. One moment he’d been stripping off his clothing in Wayfare Park and the next…

He couldn’t remember what had come next.

At one moment he had been there and the next: here.

But it had been a night like so many others. The change had come upon him and he had to flee. The full moon had risen and started bringing it out. He’d begun to grow; to rip his clothes. The heat of grey fur had begun to cover his body. But then…

Then: blankness. Then: mystery.

He’d begun the change; the change he’d fought for so long and taken such great pains to control had simply ceased. He stepped, clothing partially stretched and ripped, into this strange vista. This wasn’t Bigfork and didn’t remotely resemble the rough hills of Montana. He knew little about magic: only that it existed and that, for almost a year now, he’d suffered from one of its legendary curses. No one else believed him but that didn’t matter. He was a werewolf and the truth stared him in the face every time he woke up after one of the nights of a full moon.

But this time, he hadn’t fallen asleep. Night hadn’t fallen. One moment he was changing and the next…

That gap between “then” and “now” infuriated him. He could just about feel the beast within clawing to get out from frustration at the ambiguity of his situation, alone.

The receding storm rumbled at him and he scowled through the humid, morning air.

Another magic, no doubt. Another whimsy of some forgotten spell or weird ritual or lost curse. He’d read enough magazine short stories to know that’s how this stuff always went even if his only experience was with the lycanthropic aspects of magic. But however it had happened, perhaps he was finally safe.

Another rumble shook the sky and he looked up.

A chill fell over him.

As the sun rose and the clouds scattered away across the sky, he saw the source of the silver light. Slowly, it was being overwhelmed by the dawning sun but not fast enough. He felt the change return, stronger this time. He cried out, his throat elongating the sound from human into a howl. His eyes shifted with the rest of his head as he felt bone splinter and move like cracking rocks in a lava flow. His face stretched into a wolven visage but went further.

The light was blinding to his eyes and moreso, now, than ever before.

He felt himself splitting; growing bigger as he changed. His muscles screamed as he pulled apart.

There, in the alien sky above, was not a full moon but two of them.

High above in daylight, as the sun rose behind him, the light of the twin moons shone past the clouds to suffuse him with their power. He howled in pain as his body divided and split. Fur covered him as it always did but, now, over twice as many limbs. Four arms; four legs…

Two heads and torsos.

In minutes, the pain retreated into a faint throbbing echo of its former self.

Travis looked at Travis and shivered at the beasts he’d become.

end