Chapter Four: Once a Werewolf, Always a Werewolf
There are some things in life that you just can’t ignore. For example, take my dog body. How in the world did I get it? And why the heck is my freaking English teacher giving me hotdogs while he was naked?
Nothing made sense anymore, and I didn’t expect them every to again. All that I wanted to know is why the heck I am in a weird dream with a dog body and a naked English teacher.
I barked again, but Mr. Doug just smiled. He couldn’t understand what I was saying. He held up a package of hotdogs.
“Still hungry?” he asked.
I ignored him and looked around. I was in a sort of a swampy area with trees hanging closely together. Suddenly, I felt compressed. Were the trees closing in on me? Oh no! Not again! Not another panic attack.
I started barking, and yelling, “No! No! No!” I circled around the little camp that Mr. Doug had set up and looked at the trees that were closing in around me.
My ever-present claustrophobia kicked in, and I put my hands – paws, I mean – over my head and screamed. I was going to die, and I knew it!
I woke up once more that day, and just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, I woke up naked. Yeah, you heard me. I was butt naked, and in front of my English teacher!
“Oh!” I cried. I rolled over on my stomach and sighed. I suddenly realized that I didn’t have fur all of me! Oh man, I was happier than a dog with a bone!
I was on my belly when my teacher said, “Did you sleep well?”
What kind of a question was that? I grunted; not really wanting to talk.
“Where – where am I?” I asked slowly. Mr. Doug sighed and said, “I don’t really know. We just had to get out of the city before dawn, so we are most likely a few miles south of your town.”
I was flooded with memories once again and then I asked, “What happened? And why am I naked?”
Mr. Doug laughed cheerfully, which surprised me because I knew that he hated my guts. He fails people for reasons, you know.
“Well,” Mr. Doug said, “there are some things you should know.” He stopped and looked at me. I thought about getting up, and then decided not to. I was still naked.
“When I was first bitten, there was so much to understand, and I hated it when they made me wait to get answers, so I will answer any questions you have right now.” Mr. Doug continued.
“I’ll start. My name is Payton Doug. I am your English teacher and I am a werewolf.”
I gasped – or more of did a quick intake in breath. My stomach was hurting too bad for me to gasp.
“You’re a what?” I asked, confused out of my mind.
“A werewolf. You know, those things that look like wolfs…ring any bells?” Payton said. I quickly looked at him, and amazingly, his piercing blue eyes were calm today, and not as cruel looking.
“You’re not kidding, are you?”
“I have no reason to, Landon. And you’re a werewolf also,” Payton said, in his calm voice.
What? What the heck was Mr. Doug talking about? Oh come on! He is just playing games with me! I then remembered the little thing that happened before my panic attack. I was a white dog. What if that wasn’t a bad dream? What if I really was a….werewolf?
I looked at Mr. Doug carefully. “Prove it. Prove that you are a werewolf.”
He laughed and shook his head, “Not right now. Right now, we have to go. I have to bring to you Fort Wolfgang.”
“What?” I said, suddenly alarmed. “Fort Wolfgang? Are you crazy? I just made it up in my head! What are you playing at?”
Payton looked at me. His mouth twitched and said, “Landon, everything you wrote in that essay was true. Everything about it was true. I was surprised that you knew all about us.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! This made no sense!
“Please! Just explain what is going on!” I pleaded with him, “And then let me go home! I want to get out of here!”
“Landon,” Payton said, his voice soothing my pain. What was up with this guy? This was not the English teacher I knew back at school. That guy hated me, and now this Mr. Doug talks calmly about werewolves…what was going on?
“Will you please find me some clothes?” I asked him. He looked back at me, and nodded over to a bag that I had just noticed a moment earlier.
“They are in there.”
“Will you hand them to me?”
Payton smiled and stretched out to reach the bag. When it was in his grip, he grabbed it and tossed it to me.
“Hurry. We have to go soon.” He said, and then looked away.
I quickly pulled on my underwear and pants, and then the shirt that I had worn last night. Why did my English teacher have my clothes? I shuddered, not really wanting to know.
When Payton turned around, I noticed that he wasn’t naked anymore, like he had been when I had been a…dog. I couldn’t accept that I had really turned into a werewolf.
He wore a long sleeved shirt with a logo on the front that I couldn’t recognize. Payton also wore a pair of khaki shorts, green in color.
“Ready?”
I looked at him. “I don’t know what you are talking about. I’m going home.”
I looked up at the sky, and saw a couple of geese heading towards the beach. We were, after all, in New Jersey.
“Landon, you can’t go back. It’s nearly impossible.”
That made me laugh. “How is it impossible? Did you put a force field around me or something?” I said, chuckling.
“Your house burned down. Your family was trapped inside. I’m sorry, but I had to do it, Landon. It was the only way for me to finish my job.”
My heart suddenly froze.
“Whatever, liar,” I said, but I knew that he was telling the truth. Even in my blurred memories, I remembered the werewolf back at my house last night striking a match. My desk had caught on fire.
I looked at Payton with my mouth hanging open. “How could you?”
My teacher looked solemn and looked at the ground. “It was on Wolfgang’s orders. I had to bite you to transform you, and the only way for no one to know what had happened was for me to destroy evidence. The only thing that worries me now is that Ronda was alive. She fled –”
“What are you talking about? Wolfgang isn’t even real! My dad told me a story about him when I was a little kid! He isn’t real!” I yelled. I was suddenly very angry, but who wouldn’t be. If you had just found out that your whole life, family and friends, were taken away, how would you feel? I felt like ripping Payton’s throat out!
“Landon, there are some things that you have to know! For one, everything that you wrote in the report was true! I don’t know how you knew, so I looked up the list of werewolves and I didn’t see your father’s name there. So then I knew that you weren’t a werewolf’s son. I really don’t know how you knew!”
“Why does that matter? You didn’t have to go and kill my family!” I yelled back at him, and that was about the time that my tears flooded my eyes, and I fell to my knees. I put my hands up to my face and bawled.
I could feel Payton watching me in horror, and I hoped that he knew that he had just destroyed me life.
“I don’t want to be a werewolf! Take it away from me!” I cried through muffled tears.
“Landon, once a werewolf, always a werewolf. There is nothing I can do anymore. You are just going to have to accept that you are a werewolf.”
I cried some more. My family…Celeste, my dad, and my mom…they were all dead. Courtney, oh Courtney!
I slowly sniffled and said, “Go away! I don’t want to look at your ugly face again!”
Payton didn’t move. He knew that this was hard on me, because it had been equally hard on him. When he was only eight years old, a pack of werewolves had barged into his house and slaughtered his family. He was the only survivor, because Wolfgang had instructed that Payton should be brought before him. When Payton was bitten, he had been through an unimaginable pain that killed for days on end. When he was laid before Wolfgang’s feet, Payton was reassured that he wouldn’t be killed. Payton would live and learn to hunt humans. In his training, Payton was considered a ‘smart’ werewolf, because he wasn’t like the rest. He remembered when he had a life, and when he used to love it.
Payton had married Sarah Phillips right after he had turned thirty. He hid his true identity, and loved her more than anything else in the world. Wolfgang became furious with Payton for abandoning the werewolves, and sent three of his guards to kill Sarah. When they arrived at night, Payton fought off two of them, but the last one killed Sarah. Ever since then, Payton had been loyal to his breed, and regretted marrying Sarah, even though he still loved her.
“Landon,” Payton said, with a sudden stronger voice, “you are just going to have learn to be like us. You are going to have to leave your home, and your friends and come with me. We need to go to Fort Wolfgang.” Right after he said that, Payton said the few words that one of the werewolves had said to him, “You need to face it like a man, and agree to our standards. You are a werewolf now. Once a werewolf, always a werewolf.
Whoever said that dogs are colorblind is full of crap. I never noticed it when I was a werewolf the first time, but the next time I transformed, I felt every little tiny bit of me like…shift into a new shape.
It was when Payton brought me back to my house. The police and the firefighters in their bright yellow suits were there. The fire was put out, of course, and I saw that my house was completely gone. It just was. It was really weird, because every time I looked at my house, it was like I wasn’t really at the location that my home used to be. It’s difficult to explain, but when you just found out that your family is dead and you are a bloodthirsty werewolf, everything becomes just a little stranger.
Payton was talking to me, but I wasn’t paying attention. The police were over there, inspecting the ruins of my house, and we were watching from across the street. Before we had arrived here, Payton had told me that if I tried to escape, he would transform and take me directly to Fort Wolfgang. He said that I should consider this a pleasure, but I found no pleasure in this visit whatsoever.
I felt the rage and the sorrow build up in my heart. I wanted to kill Payton. I wanted to tear his heart out from his ribs, but I knew that I would have to wait. I wanted to Payton to be as miserable as I was. I wanted him to die.
It was then that my English teacher noticed me transforming. I didn’t really feel anything, and Payton told me to run as fast as I could. I looked at him, and he grabbed my arm and started running.
“What? What are you doing?” I asked. He looked at me and pointed to my hands.
I quickly looked down and gasped; my hands were sprouting fur by the second! The fur was white and soft, but I didn’t have time to examine it! I was transforming!
There was something growing larger on my face, and it wasn’t until we had found some backyard of a house that I noticed it was my nose. Well, more of a snout now. My teeth were becoming noticeably longer and I bit my tongue. Pain shot through my mouth and I roared out.
Payton quickly shushed me, and I said, “Help! I’m going to die!” but it all came out in barks now.
What was happening to me? Well that was a stupid question to ask, because I knew the answer instantly: I was transforming into a werewolf.
Payton told me, “Everything’s fine. This is normal for new blood to not mix in with the werewolf side of you yet. You may transform anytime. There is no knowing when. Other than that, you look fine. Everything grew into proportion and it’s all good. Your white fur really intrigues me though; I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Payton reached out to touch my fur, but I snapped at his finger. He growled at me and kicked me lightly in the stomach. I bared my fangs at him and glared into his blue eyes.
Then I thought, whoever said dogs are colorblind is full of crap.
Transactions like that are really annoying. It doesn’t hurt like I thought it would. It actually felt kind of good. I liked having that warm feeling when the fur grows out from my body, and I just loved it. Except for the fact that I was turning into a werewolf.
One person might ask, “Don’t werewolves only transform in a full moon?”
That was one of the first questions I asked Payton when I had transformed back to my original (naked) self. Man, that got annoying. Every time I morphed I lost my clothes, and I woke up nude. Yeah, that’s a pleasant thought.
Anyway, Payton answered, “Landon, werewolves can transform any time they want. The only objection is at night; werewolves have to change at night. It is mandatory. And we cannot morph back until morning.”
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to be continued. Can someone tell me if I should post shorter sections?
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