Literary Doodles?

[Alias Pseudonym]

I wrote this thing and wanted to show it to people, but I wasn't sure where and didn't want to put a huge text wall in the doodles thread so here. This is a sort of freewriting thing I did. It is a short story about a werewolf. It is called 'What A Werewolf Really Looks Like.' Tell me if you like it.





They walked down the dark street with the purposeful pace of people who know exactly what they are doing. In the flickering orange light they cast wavy moving shadows in all directions. There were two of them; one had a cold look in his eye and the other's left foot made a clicking sound when he put it down.

"Hey, do you know why people are afraid of them?"

"Yeah." Click. "Obviously." Click. "It's 'cause they're monsters." Click. "They kill people."

"No, no, that's not it at all. They are monsters, but that's not why people fear them." He smiled, a slightly chilling expression. "No, people fear them because they're human. Same with the vampires. They're not scary because they're alien, they're scary because we understand them perfectly. Because we know that there's something deep inside us that's just like them."

"Look," Click, "I've been doing this for a lot longer than you have." Click. "I don't need your lecturing."

"But of course. And that's why we're such a good team, isn't it? You provide the good, solid experience and I provide a certain… flourish."

"Uh huh." Click. "Like a big graceful flamingo," click, 'right?"

"Well I was thinking more of a swan, or a raptor, or even one of the corvids, but I suppose you get the idea."

"Look kid," click, "you keep us both alive out here," click, "and you can be whatever pretty little birdie you want."

"Yessir, of course sir.

"Ha ha," click, "very funny.

The cold one gave him a hurt look. "I was trying to show my respect for your superior skills and finely honed instincts."

"Sure you were."

"I was!"

Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

"So is it-"

"Hey," click, "remember the rule.

"I wasn't going to ask about it."

"Yes," click, "you were."

"…ok, yes, but is it?"

"It is the same as it always is." Click. "Mind your own business."

"Alright, alright, sorry."


Three blocks to the south, a bad horror movie had just ended.

"Man. Man. That was sooo stupid."

"I know, like, why did we even see that? I mean…"

"Cause it's hilarious obviously! I mean did you see the monster? Oh man I nearly burst out laughing when it first showed up. I mean how was that even a werewolf?"

"More like a giant stuffed animal, right? More like a big fuzzy bear? Yeah that was hilarious. Oh oh remember the arm?"

"Ha yeah. 'My arm! It-it got my arm! AAAAAAA!'"

"Hey I didn't notice this but some guy I was passing in the aisle said that the prop arm they used was actually the wrong arm."

"Whaaaaat? You're kidding right?"

"Dead. Serious. Dead."

And then they both broke down laughing. It was an inside joke.

"Anyway I gotta get going, my parents will be worried."

"Awww lame girl."

"Yeah yeah I know but still. Gotta catch a bus."

"Ok see ya then."

"See ya."

She turned and started walking past the theatre. It had started to rain a bit and she hadn't brought an umbrella, but she didn't really care. She'd shower when she got home anyway.

She giggled. "Werewolf. Yeah some werewolf." She looked up at the full moon above and giggled again. "Oh no, the scary werewolf is gonna get me. My arm!"

"Hey," someone said. She turned. It was the guy from the theatre, the one who had noticed that the prop arm was wrong. It was a bit brighter outside than in the theatre but she still couldn't see him very well. He was on the short side, wearing blue jeans and a plain dark coloured hoodie. He had an unshaven look that fell somewhere between scruffy and rugged but closer to the former. She gave him an overall seven.

"Hey," she replied, "Did you like the movie?"

"Oh yeah. I'm a sucker for that kind of stupid stuff, it really cracks me up. I love how silly the scared people look." His voice was low, husky and brimming with confidence; it had an odd, almost animal magnetism. She adjusted his score to an eight.

"Wasn't the werewolf dumb looking?"

"Oh yeah. I mean, I didn't expect much accuracy but they could have come up with something that looked like a wolf. That looked more like a bear to me. Or just a big dark furry thing. Not scary at all, although the characters seemed to think otherwise."

"Oh come on, those people didn't really look scared. I mean, if you arm really got torn off you wouldn't stand around saying 'oh no my arm, right?"

"Oh, I don't know. People say some stupid things." Their eyes met. His were a deep, vivid brown -- almost yellow in the orange light of the streetlights. She could see the moon reflected in them, and wondered why she had never noticed how beautiful the full moon could be before.

"Hey are we lost? Is this the way to the bus stop?" she asked.

"Oh damn sorry, I should have been paying attention, we must have passed it. Probably missed the bus."

"No, I should have been looking too. Come on, let's go back, maybe it hasn't left yet."

They were standing very close together now; their hands brushed. She blushed.

"Hey," he said. The animal sound of his voice was clearer now. It sounded raw and wild; a strong, restless longing.

"Hey do you know what a werewolf really looks like?" he said, almost growling.

"No I-"



A mere block away, two men suddenly broke into a run.

"It's slippery," one said, and the other glared at him.

"Shut up." Click click click, "We've got to hurry."

"How do you know something's happened?"

"What," click click, " didn't you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"The silence." Click click click click. "There was a piercing silence."

"I don't see what you… oh. Oh. The sound of the rain, the traffic, it stopped for a moment. That was a scream?"

"What are they teaching you people?" Click click click. "You should at least know what an attack sounds like."

The other one started to say something but didn't, and they ran on in silence.

Her body was lying prone in an alley in a puddle of its own blood. Her arm had been ripped off and her throat torn out, in that order.

The one with the clicking leg turned slightly green. The other turned to him surprised.

"I'd, um, thought you'd be used to this by now."

"Used to this? Impossible.

"It got away, didn't it?"

"Yeah. It happens. They're damn clever. I'll report this time, don't worry."

"W-why the arm? I thought they usually went for the throat."

The older man turned to his partner. "Damn, kid, how would I know? I don't want to know. My job is to kill the damn things, not psychoanalyse them."

But his partner wasn't listening. "…he torn her arm off. That must mean something. I wonder if he knew her before? I wonder-"

"Ah, forget it. Be quiet, I need to radio this in."

Beep. "HQ, this is Flint. I'm reporting a werewolf attack at third and ninth, near the movie theatre."

"So it got away?" said a voice over the radio.

"Yeah. It got away. This time."

[Alias Pseudonym]

Part 2! This chapter is called 'In a Blue Moon.'



It was a cold, clear night. The moon shone overhead, noticeably thicker on one side that the other. Not as beautiful as a full moon, he thought, but not bad, not bad at all. Still made him want to howl, howl with the roaring wind to glorify the night. The pull was still there, still strong and wild, but no longer pressing. He had made his offering to this moon already; he would not need to make another till the next moon was full.

It was time to lay low. Stay away from monster flicks, the hunters might have caught on. Find a group of young people and blend in, that was the way of the predator. Then, in another month he would find a new victim and once again taste human death and human fear.

Instead, he was walking back to the same theatre as before. On reaching it, he simply stopped and stood outside, staring into nothing.

"Oh hey," someone said, "I remember you."

The werewolf spun and just stopped himself from growling. He was on edge -- he shouldn't be here. The hunters would be looking for him.

"You're that guy, like, from the movie, right?" It was a girl speaking She was wearing a colourful skirt and a fuzzy coat, and she had dark circles under her eyes.

"Which movie?"

"Ah I forget. Something with a vampire in it. Or a werewolf. Yeah I think it was a werewolf."

"The one with the arm scene?"

"What? I don't really remember that, I remember this part where they turned up a light really bright and the werewolf got all blinded and started running around in circles."

"Oh. Yeah I remember that. It was the same movie. That was what, a week ago? I'm surprised you remember me. I thought I was pretty inconspicuous, you know?"

"I guess. Yeah, you're right, you didn't really stand out, but I'm pretty good with faces. So, you here to see a movie? Maybe the new vampire one?"

"Huh? No, I wasn't planning on it. Not all that fond of vampire movies, actually."

"Really. Going to the one with the cute dog that saves all the poor orphan children then, eh?"

"No!"

She laughed. It sounded musical, and it somehow made him thing of icicles falling and breaking on the ground. "Oh hey, my date's here. Gotta go," she said, and left on the arm of a tall guy in a greenish coat.

The werewolf walked down the street toward the bus stop and passed it, tracing the steps of his last killing. This was unbelievably stupid and he knew it, but walked on as if in a trance.

There were no traces that someone had been killed there, now -- the hunters would have cleaned it up almost immediately. Werewolves killed not only silently but without any trace; they would not have found any evidence however hard they looked. He walked right over where the body had lain and continued aimlessly through the night.

Voices echoed through the empty streets. "No, we have to go." A woman's voice.

"Ah come on honey, really?"

"I don't ask this of you very often you know."

"But we just don't get along. It's like torture, just being in the same room with them."

"We visit your relatives all the time."

"That's different, everyone gets along so well. Come on, not even you can really like spending time with your mother."

"Dear, they're family. You can't just throw that away because they aren't the easiest to get on with."

The man grumbled. "All right, how about next weekend? I'll be able to stand it better if I'm not missing the game at the same time."

"Deal. Come on, lets go get something nice to eat. There's a sushi place somewhere around here I think."

The couple rounded the corner and found themselves facing a pair of wild yellow eyes, glowing with reflected moonlight.

"Oh, hello," said the woman, edging behind her husband warily.

"Hey," said the owner of the eyes. He didn't raise his voice, but somehow it held a high, mournful howling. "I couldn't help but overhear your conversation."

The couple backed away slowly. "Really?" the man said. "Well, you know how it can be with relatives sometimes."

"Yeah," said the werewolf. "Yeah, I know."



Flint sat in a brightly lit café and scowled at his coffee.

"Dammit! It doesn't make any sense," his partner railed. "He already killed someone this moon! Why again? Why two? Why a full week later? I don't understand. It doesn't fit the pattern."

"I hate coffee."

"They always kill one person, almost always of the opposite sex, always when the person is alone with no witnesses. I don't get it."

Flint sighed. "Look, Felan, the pattern isn't absolute. Sometimes, once in a blue moon, you get a weird one. I've seen one or two weird ones in my time."

"Yes but why do they break the pattern? What makes this one different from the one I took down in training? Him, he had an obsession with the time -- every one of his kills was within a second of midnight. And I know that wasn't normal either."

Flint forget himself for a second and took a sip of his coffee. He grimaced. "Don't worry about it. You shouldn't try to get inside these thing's heads. They're monsters, real messed up. Don't go there."

"But if I could figure out how he thinks, I could figure out what he'll do next. We could get him!"

"If you could really do that I'd be worried about you kid. Ugh, I hate this place. It's to bright. I wanna go somewhere seedy and poorly lit. With alcohol, ideally."

"Yeah, you'd get drunk and every demon and monster with a grudge against you in a ten mile radius would come swooping in for the kill. It'd be quite a show, actually. Maybe we should."

"Hah! They would be killing one another over the right to kill me. Might take out more than I have in my entire career."

"You really don't get any down time in this job, do you?"

"Realizing what you've got yourself into, kid? Well there's no turning back now."

"The thought has not crossed my mind." Felan spoke in a low, very calm voice that he used every now and again; a voice that always gave Flint a chill. "Not even once."

"Good for you," Flint started to say, but Felan glanced at his watch and stood up suddenly.

"Well, I've got to get going or I'll be late."

"It's almost midnight. You got a date with a vampire or what?"

Felan smiled. "Something like that."

[TalonLeuco]

^_^ i like the story so far, but I can't help but wonder... did the girl go "ahhh no my arm" I laughed at the irony of the idea a moment and then realized how awful a thing that is to laugh at, shortly followed by a shrug.

[Alias Pseudonym]

I dunno. You'd have to ask the werewolf. Anyway, chapter three. I don't think I'll be posting more here so check out my deviantArt account. I've titled the whole story Lonely Howling.



Chapter 3: Liquid Silver


Felan's smile was gone, supplanted by a pained expression. 'Something like a vampire' might have been a bit of an exaggeration. What faced him in that candle-lit room was the lowest of the undead, less than the most meagre wight. It was not even properly undead -- it had nothing of the body or the soul of anything once alive. It was a mere echo, a malevolent or at least mischievous remnant of some particularly spiteful person. It was, above all, very easy to conjure (though there was always the risk that a particularly hateful one would attack). This, however, was the fourth Felan had summoned that night, and the window for the spell was closing. He was growing frustrated.

"What kind are you?"

"I'm not sure" "What do you mean" "Who are you" "I don't know" the thing said, all at the same time, all in different voices. That was a good sign.

"So, do you know anything about a werewolf?"

Until now, the thing had resembled a small, sickly green coloured puff of smoke. Now it billowed out and became a mass of writhing mouths, telling a hundred stories at once. This was a gossip, a mindless soulless ghost that did nothing but absorb information. This was what Felan had been looking for. He smiled.

"The werewolf that killed the couple, and the girl before that, all this month. Tell me about him."

The thing fell silent. He had expected this. Werewolves could not be found so easily.

"Tell me about the human who became that werewolf, then."

The thing billowed again, less than before, and began to speak in a hundred voices at once. Felan took pen and paper and began to write furiously.



It was cold outside, but that was not why he was shivering. He shivered because of the eyes. There were always eyes, always peering at him from every nook and cranny, their gaze drilling into him like tiny little knives. From the river below the bridge, from the shadows between the buildings, and from beneath the hoods of every passing man and woman, the whole world was looking at him. It was absurd, of course. He was a werewolf. Nobody could possibly be watching him without his knowledge. He felt a particularly piercing look from behind and turned slowly. No one was looking at him, of course, but instead there was a girl. He must have sensed her.

Her eyes were darker than he remembered, and the little bit of makeup she was wearing was smeared. She must have been crying. Probably crying over her dead friend. The werewolf felt stab of emotion, a mix of sympathy and dark amusement. She passed without seeing him and he followed her, off the bridge and down to the riverbank, away from the crowd. The river rustled like a snake flowing leisurely along its bed. She tripped on a concealed root and nearly fell into it -- without thinking he caught her hand and pulled her up.

"Th-thank you, I-- huh? Who… didn't someone just catch me? Hello? Hello!"

He sat among the trees and bushes a mere five feet from where she stood, but she would not see him. His fur was the colour of night itself, and nearly invisible to those who didn't know what to look for.

"I guess I'm imagining things." She stared into the dark river for about a minute before climbing the path up to the bridge. To her eyes it was black, like a great chasm in the earth with the only the tiniest bits of light filtering through from some strange realm on the other side.

"It sparkles," the werewolf murmured to himself, "like liquid sliver." He did not follow her.




His name, before he lost the right to it, was Jake. He was the third son of a wealthy industrialist, a quiet, withdrawn, contemplative boy. When he was fourteen he found in his father's library a book of magics, a thing purchased by his father as a curiosity but never carefully examined. It contained a small number of spells and a much larger selection of alchemical recipes. He half-heartedly attempted some of the spells, with little success, but it was the alchemy that really captured his imagination -- the spells could only conjure the elements, fire and wind -- alchemy could create gold, heal sickness, and extend life. These, to his mind, were lasting things and therefore of real value.

He was an avid reader, and could easily read the descriptions of the products, but the formulae themselves were written in strange symbols and unfamiliar words. One of the spells in the book claimed to be able to contact a described person from any distance. He tried to cast this spell three times, first leaving the specified person blank, which did nothing, second trying to contact 'Hydrargyrum' who he assumed was the books author, which caused the whole thing to collapse back into the fire spell and would have burned down his father's house if he had stopped it a second later. He did not attempt the spell again for some time, not until, by chance, he learned what went wrong. Hydrargyrum, he found out by chance from his father one day, was not a name at all, but an old word meaning 'silver water,' and a potent alchemical ingredient. With this knowledge in hand, he decided to try the spell a third time, this time name the target of the spell simply as 'a great alchemist.'

This time the spell, a very adaptable construct, did find its target. Jake told the alchemist he contacted where he was and what he had found freely, expecting that the other man would come to provide instruction in how to use what he had found. Instead, the alchemist simply took the book, explaining to Jake's father that the Book of Hydrargyrum was far to dangerous a thing for any novice of magic or alchemy, never mind a child. Jake was enraged and insisted that the alchemist at least take him on as an apprentice in exchange for giving up the book, and, after a great deal of testing, the alchemist agreed that Jake had potential and accepted. Jake's father, who already had two elder sons to succeed his business, was pleased with this and sent Jake off with his blessing.

The alchemist never had any intention of teaching Jake any of the formulae of the Book; they were such complicated magics that he hardly dared to attempt them himself. However, unbeknownst to him, Jake had already carefully memorized what he considered the greatest of the recipes, the transmutation of lead to gold (he was too young yet for the notion of eternal life to have any great appeal.) As he grew in alchemical knowledge, he gradually discovered the meaning of the symbols and words he knew by rote, and eventually he felt he knew enough to attempt the transmutation. As an alchemical apprentice, all the ingredients he needed were easily available to him save one: the hydrargyrum (which was needed for all of the Book's formulae.) The alchemist would become suspicious if he even asked for hydrargyrum, since nothing he had been taught in alchemy required it.

His father had passed on during his apprenticeship, and his brothers now owned the company. Jake went to his eldest brother and asked for hydrargyrum as a favour. He was arrogant, and hoped to prove himself to the alchemist by successfully performing the difficult transmutation. His brother did get the hydrargyrum, but instead of simply giving it to Jake he demanded that Jake perform the transmutation to produce gold for him first. Jake was enraged by his brother's greed as well as jealous at his inheritance, and so he said that he would perform the transmutation, but instead performed a different, twisted magic, fusing some of the silver water with his elder brother, melting him into a silvery puddle.

Jake then attempted the formula he had memorized, and he succeeded, in a sense, as the lead was indeed turned to shining gold. But he was unprepared and incautious, and in the process he allowed a small amount of each ingredient to be absorbed into his own body, leaving him badly poisoned. The alchemist sensed the large use of magic and came, but when he saw what his apprentice had done to his own flesh and blood he refused to cure the poisoning, and planned to simply leave his former apprentice to die. However, the middle brother was not satisfied and demanded that the alchemist put a curse on Jake as additional punishment for what he had done. The alchemist saw this as petty and vindictive, and, hearing of the greedy motives of the elder brother, he despaired of there being any merit in Jake's entire family. Without curing him, he cast upon Jake the curse of lycanthropy. Forever after, a nameless werewolf would live a cursed life with silver water flowing through his veins.