• Dzama

Wolf

Sure, there were three of us at the time but that hardly made a difference. He went bounding through the tall reeds and we never found hide nor hair. We were out there for a good part of the spring and it was raining off and on the whole time. We’d stop in at the old farmhouse and old Maggie would brew us up coffees and we’d warm up but then we’d go back out there, knowing he was there somewhere. Then he’d strike again, some of the cattle this time, or a pig and we’d all curse him for slipping through our fingers so easily.

It began when he was just a normal boy who’d go hunting rabbits with a slingshot in the fields. Seemed normal enough. Didn’t talk at all. I mean never. Never said a word except to his mother and she didn’t talk much either. Then came the day when he returned from the fields bitten by what he said was a bear but we knew there were no bears out there. There haven’t been bears in these parts since there were Indian tribes here.

I saw him in the hospital and he looked different. He’d lost the aimless stare he used to have. Now his eyes darted around and he fidgeted more. At the time I thought Dr. Barsky had drugged him up in the hospital but it didn’t go away even weeks after he’d been home. First thing he did was kill his whole family. We thought maybe the animal he told us about had come back and gotten into the house that night. But no, it was him all right. He must have killed fifteen people before Willie got him locked in a shed. He locked him up when he was a regular boy. But you know how it is with those things, when the moonlight hit the shed he broke right out of there and tore up Willie and his whole family, not to mention his dog, his cat, and his flock of chickens. The monster had an insatiable appetite, it turned out.

It was my idea to get wolvesbane. We got that and silver bullets and set out to make our village safe again. One afternoon I found myself sitting there, a wreath of wolvesbane around my neck and two pistols loaded with silver bullets. I felt like the Lone Ranger and all I was doing was trying to watch some TV. My plan was to shoot the boy and go back to living my life.

Well, the boy had other plans. After I’d passed out in front of the TV he went around the perimeter of the house and poured gasoline everywhere. He was keeping his distance on account of the wolvesbane. Then he set the house on fire. I swear, that kid was possessed by the devil. What I did was I got the hell out of the burning house and grabbed the kid before he could run off. I shot about a million holes in him with the silver bullets, at close range, but not before he bit my arm.

So I’ve been sitting here with the gun going back and forth on whether I need to shoot myself. Half of me says do it, the other half says wait to see what you turn into when the full moon rises.

Copyright © 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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