A lot of stories are told about vampires, the love between a vampire and a human – so delightful! The forbidden fruit is the sweetest. Such is the perversity of the human existence.
The tangibility of the fruit varies from points in the story – inevitably, the heroine becomes a vampire also (despite her soulmate's protest) and they live together happily through eternity.
I don't know about you, but I've never had the patience for those kinds of things. True love, soulmates, bound through eternity. Maybe it's the werewolf in me, maybe I don't think I could deal with Ofelia for longer than I have now.
Right now, I am dying. I am sitting in a hospital bed, Ofelia beside me, her eyes glazed over in some wild daydream, some flight of fantasy neither of us will ever speak of. After all, love is always forbidden between humans and vampires – but between a werewolf and a vampire? Unthinkable.
Entry One
Valentina
Valentina was my best friend. She was smart and fierce, a perfect balance for my wimpy, doormat side. All through high school and college we were inseparable, stuck together by a mutual love of words and our combined secrets.
She stumbled upon my dark and dirty secret the summer before high school started. One in every 23.9 million people has the werewolf gene – and even a smaller percentage of that actually manifest. It's a wholly random and unfair body to be born in, but I was informed that the effects had been diluted over time. Come the full moon, my bones lengthened and sharpened, pain attacked my mind as every sense broadened and expanded to more than the human mind could bear – and that was nothing to what the werewolves of the old countries went through.
This happened at camp. My parents didn't know about my wolf side, my hairy doppelganger, and forced me into it.
Knowing that the inevitable was approaching, I hiked during all my free time to find a suitable place, and when the evening came, I was prepared.
I snuck out of the cabin I shared with five other boys and ran into a deep part of the forest foliage, jumpy with anticipation of the events to come. Going past the girl's cabins was nerve-wracking – I remember this part so clearly! The most beautiful girl, Anita, was bunking in the cabin at the edge of the clearing, their back window looking out exactly into my premade trail.
The moon rises a few minutes after the sun falls, usually. I had forgotten one thing when I was getting ready: when exactly the moon would begin to affect me. Usually it's about two hours before its apex when the twitch – the first stage of transformation – begins. I have no idea why it began early that day – it happened again, once every few years – but I was only halfway to the place I'd picked when the familiar wave of itchiness ran down my spine, tickling madly at my muscles and the bones they encased. Some have even been reported to laugh at the sensation, but it's infuriating more than anything else. Left with nothing to do, I curled up and fell into a bush, limbs flailing, tongue working indiscriminately, muscles contracting and relaxing in abrupt spasms. (I did remember to empty my nether regions before leaving.)
When the second phase – the burn-- was over with, I heard some people tramping through the immediate vicinity, lured by my combination of slurred screams and half-controlled yelps. The thick, wirelike hair had finished emerging and I was breathing heavily, not caring what had heard me. At least, my furry self didn't care: I did. And I tried to get away as quickly as possible, but they found me.
It was a girl and a boy, both looking distinctly tousled and alarmed. The boy – someone I vaguely remember as being named Darcy – looked at first courageous and full of himself, but paled and shrank away as our eyes met.
The girl was Valentina, someone I knew only in name and face from school. She looked scared at first, of course, but it was overcome by curiousity and a strange sort of greed. As her boyfriend ran away, she stood still and we stared at each other for forever.
“Calvin?” The doppelganger sneered at her and nodded. She looked impressed. “Dude, I know you have social problems, but this is way out of the ordinary Little League.”
This comment gave me enough gall to control my mouth, the resulting effort of which caused my extremities to tic all the more.
“Get...a...a...way!”
“Are you fighting to talk?” she asked. I was even more astounded as she edged towards me, stance somewhat defensive. At least one part of this girl was in self-preserving order.
“Ye...yes!” I spat. She relaxed into a smile.
“Oh, okay then.” She sat down next to me. “How long does this last?”
There was one stage left, and then the cooldown. The technical, widely-accepted term is the epiphany, but I use “freakout.”
The fire left from the burn drained away, leaving my psyche feeling odd. The closest thing I can relate it to is being naked in public. The mind is so mismatched to the body, the body so alien to the mind, that they both reject each other if left to their own devices. I know a werewolf who kept himself from doing this by watching action films nonstop during the full moon.
Anyway, the Valentina's presence saved me from the strongest effects of the freakout. She was chattering on about God knows what, and paused once. “Sorry, am I being annoying?”
“No...keep going!” My doppelganger snarled and it must have reached my face, because she started a little and immediately launched into more meaningless talk.
The freakout lasts until the moon begins to descend, so that night, it lasted longer than usual. Thankfully, Valentina had a lot to talk about. I remember the topics rather well because I had nothing else to concentrate on: her boyfriend (who she meant to dump, even though he had gorgeous green eyes), her girlfriends (Theresa, Molly and Indigo, all of which considered country to be the best music ever, even though it was so, like, not), who she would date if she had the looks (some guy called Kingsley Shockton), what she would be when she grew up (an English teacher), every single phone number she'd ever heard (she remembered them better than faces, it was amazing she recognized me).
She was the half-cool, half-nerdy kid that was accepted because she was smart and she could speak their language. I learned every detail of her false life that night. As the epiphany waned and the cooldown began – hair falling out, protruding bones dissolving to calcium-rich dust and sharpened teeth edges coming away, I noticed her relax. The doppelganger screamed at me, fading away with the moon.
“Are you done?”
I was coughing, faking the fit to wonder what was next.
“Dude,” she just said, shaking her head.
“Yeah, dude, like, totally, dude,” I said, forsaking the coughing and almost making fun of her earlier spiels. She caught the reference and raised one eyebrow.
“Well,” she said.
“Yep,” I said.
“So, what kind of drug are you on? I know some crazies who want some.”
“It's not, it's a disease,” I said.
“And your parents sent you to camp?” She had dropped the pretensions, was all serious face and grave voice.
“My parents don't actually know I'm on diseasous drugs.”
She cracked a grin.
“So what triggers it?”
“Hold on, hold on,” I said. “Before I tell you anything, you've got to tell me something.” Her smile vanished and she cocked her head, brows furrowing over a coy smile.
“Now why would I do that?”
“So we're even, just like before,” I said. “Collateral.”
She made a pleased sound. “I know what that means,” she said, reverting back to her cool-girl voice. I shot her a disgusted look and she relented.
“Ask me anything you want, and I'll answer.”
“Truthfully?”
“Absolutely.” She held out her hands for me to examine – none of the fingers were crossed.
It took me about an hour of questioning to get to the heart of her actual identity – the core of light she built her mind around.
“I believe in angels.”
They flocked to her, wrapped their arms around her, guided her feet and watched over her when she slept. She was fearless. I was skeptical at first – but I suffer from werewolvery, why shouldn't she believe in the messengers of fate?
After that, she was with me as often as possible during the full moon, sometimes bringing a book and reading aloud or just talking about the people in school.
We had knives at each other's throat always, but that was okay. Neither of us ever planned to use them.
*****
"The Doppelganger" (I know I'm missing an umlaut xP) is a series of short stories about a werewolf and the events in his life, all of which lead to an organization called Zeitgeist.
I can't seem to write novels and vignette-sort-of-things seem to be my strong points, so! Here is something I want you to have fun with when you kill it with fire.
More important than you killing it with fire, however, is I want your reactions to the various stages of transformation. The twitch, the burn, the epiphany and the cooldown. Also, I'm trying to reach a balance between show and tell (this is a memoir sort of thing while Calvin is dying, so it's got to be pretty brief), so any comments on that are needed and will be embraced with love and affection.
please, please kill it! I hate plot bunnies.
Also, if you reviewed, go ahead and post a link to something you'd like me to review.
Danke schon! (missing umlaut!) XD
~Sumi
