A Werewolf in Lewisham

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Being a modern fable about things that go bump in the night

Chapter 1 - ??? Anonymous

"Hello. My name is Jake and I am a werewolf." There was a moment's hesitation before the response came; a murmured and somewhat uncertain chorus of "Hello, Jake!" from the half dozen others seated in the little circle of worn, plastic chairs. We were a sorry looking bunch. But then happy and satisfied-looking people don't generally feel much need to meet up with others in dingy, dirty and poorly heated community halls on rainy Thursday afternoons to talk about themselves and drink milky cups of tea and eat stale biscuits whilst they listen to people very much like them do the same. Granted, we weren't your usual bunch of addicts - a werewolf, a vampire and his girlfriend, a dead Scottish accountant, an immortal Anglo-Saxon lord and now-lich, another vampire, and Maggy. None of us were entirely sure who or what Maggy was but she attended every meeting, without fail, and sat happily in the corner, knitting a jumper that looked like it was designed for the grandson of some kind of ancient sea monster. Which may have been the case, for all I knew, or it might have just been that she wasn't very good at knitting. I cleared my throat and continued, trying not to look into those earnest - and in one case skeletal - faces as they stared at me, eyes (or eye sockets), full of encouragement. "It's been an entire month since my last involuntary change..." another murmur of replies, and the bony clicking of Haraldr's fingers as he gave a light applause. "And nearly two since I last tore anyone's throat out with my teeth." The congratulations and encouragement came with a little more conviction that time, as the group started to warm up and come out of their shells a little. God I hated going first.

So I should probably introduce myself. I mean, to you. They already know who I am. But yes, as previously suggested, my name is indeed Jake and I am a werewolf. I'm not from Transylvania or Russia or anywhere exotic, I'm from Lewisham, in south London. I'm not descended from a cursed bloodline and my parents have never, to my knowledge, dabbled in the black arts. Although they did live in a hippy commune when they were younger, which explains a lot of things about them but not why their son has a tendency to turn into a wolf-like creature with a penchant for running around at night and killing things. No, as far as I'm aware, there's no interesting back story as to why I am what I am, it's just an unfortunate genetic quirk, like double-chins, premature balding and webbed feet. That's what they say, leastways. "They" being the doctors that specialise in people like me. There's not many of them because any professional who takes a career interest in werewolves, vampires, ghouls and other such "Creatures of the Night" is unlikely to be taken very seriously by his colleagues. We're halfway between a freak show and an unpopular minority group. Imagine a traffic warden who votes Tory... in Scotland. That's about where we rank on the popularity scale.

It all started - like so many other unpleasant life-altering physical changes - with puberty. When Dad told me that I was going to start growing hair in unusual places, I didn't think he meant all over *Pause for laughter*. Cheesy joke, I know. As I've said above, Mum and Dad (or Jennifer and Luke to their friends and other relatives) are pretty normal folks - sort of - and my change had nothing much to do with them, other than the recessive genes they were both carrying. Genes that lay dormant until the onset of puberty, when I suddenly started fancying girls, getting erections at inappropriate moments (and almost every other moment, too), getting spots on my face and having a strange desire to run naked through the woods and kill small furry animals. Though now I come to think on it, none of that's especially unusual for some of the kids round here. Bit of a bugger finding any woods to do it in, mind. Sitting on the tube to Charing Cross and then getting a train out past the M25 and into the Kent countryside kinda spoils the whole mythos of the werewolf. "Look! The savage beast! Getting a weekend return to Ashford!!" Yeah, doesn't really work. Anyway, I'm wandering off topic. Where was I? Oh yeah, school. School is... well, it's like a special form of hell. Really, you'd save a lot of grief if you home-schooled your kids and just gave them a light kicking every now and then and called them names. All the same, remember your school days? Were you one of those awkward, slightly nerdy kids who weren't quite smart enough for anyone to want to copy your work, but were just too smart to fit in socially? Yeah? So was I. And I was shit at sport and I had bad acne. Really, I was pretty much at the bottom of the school social heap. And just when I thought it couldn't get any worse... I wet myself at the school disco. No, not really. But that would probably have been easier to live down. Puberty and all the social games of girls and school are enough of a minefield without your teeth and nails growing to awkward lengths, and your hair becoming incredibly thick and dog-like. Bad hair days? Yeah, I had a few of them.

Course, it's not all linked to the full moon (we just make reference to that as a sort of little joke that's not very funny). No, that would be far too bloody convenient and easy to plan around. It's not linked to much of anything beyond willpower, really. Every day is a constant struggle to not drop to all fours, grow fur and claws and go chasing after chickens. Some days are harder than others. When you're fourteen and some fat bastard who's been held back a year is holding your jacket over your head while his mate punches you in the guts is harder still. Still, the good news is that they both made full recoveries with no significant lasting scars, except for a lifelong fear of dogs. And I got moved schools. The second time it happened, I was halfway through losing my virginity. Susie Markopf, was her name. And you know that with a name like that and a guy like me, she was a reeeeal winner. I've not heard from her since but I still keep in contact with her parents - lovely couple, the Markopfs - and they tell me that she's doing well and that the home's very comfortable and all the nurses are very caring.

That time, I didn't move school. By then, there were enough people like me that the government had some idea as to what to do with us. They handed us over to the Army. No no... not like that. As soldiers, not science experiments. There were still only a couple of dozen werewolves and a handful of other folks with unusual dining requirements by this time but we'd made the front page enough times that the government had funded research into what we were and what we did. In a bygone age, we'd have just been executed - which probably explains why there's so few of us now - but this was Tony Blair's New Labour England and that sort of thing wasn't done. Too many pressure groups insisting on our human ("inhuman", surely?) rights and how it wasn't really our fault, we just needed some loving care and discipline. So the army seemed the natural environment for at least one of those two things. After all, if you've got a huge, slavering monster that eats people then giving it a gun is hardly going to make it any worse. Funny thing is, they were actually right. Discipline really did make a big difference. Couldn't get that at school - what kind of nut-job would a teacher need to be before he could tell off a seven foot tall werewolf? "You there! At the back! Put that boy down and stop shedding!" Nah. Army Sergeant Majors, however? Christ, the one I had... you'd think he was old hat when it came to werewolves. Most people, when faced with three hundred pounds of snarling death, tend to soil themselves and scream. Slapping the aforementioned snarler across the chops and yelling at him to stand to attention is not what normally happens. And, weirdly, it worked. I don't know whether it was the human part or the dog part that responded better, but good ol' Sgt. Stanley "Shit" House never received anything worse than a withering look or a threatening snarl for any of us in the Informals. Any one of us could have ripped the man in two without even breaking a sweat, but none of would have dared for fear of incurring the wrath of his 120dB vocal chords and military-grade halitosis.