A Werewolf in Lewisham

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

Chapter 2 - Who Let the Dogs Out?

"Oi, Fido!" Came the cry in an all-too familiar tone of mocking contempt and stupidity, "Who's let you out without yer collar on?!" Lewisham's a lovely place, it really is (if you like that sort of thing) but there are some parts that give even the bad parts of London a worse name. The areas where every shop has metal shutters, where yards are surrounded by eight foot high fences topped with rusting coils of razor wire, and where walking alone after dark is pretty much a mitigating circumstance in the legal defence of the guy who mugs you. Of course, I almost always walk alone. Not because I'm looking for trouble, just because I live on my own and when you're like me it's quite hard to stay in close touch with friends, as they generally all seem to prefer to make sure there's at least a good couple of miles between their house and the possibility of a werewolf knocking at their backdoor.

"I think we oughta take you down to the pound, mate! You might 'ave rabies!" Yelled out another smart arse, almost a clone of Exhibit A, with the grade 1 buzzcut, cheap jeans and knock-off trainers, Adidas tracksuit top and fake Burberry baseball cap, with the hood of their top up over it, of course. The same weaselly, spiteful face, the same piggy little eyes, the same scrawny frame fuelled by cheap fags and Stella.

I stopped, hands in the pockets of my overcoat, and turned slowly to face the two comedians. And that's when number three - we'll call him No-Hood - stepped out from behind the bus stop shelter and into the orange light of the only street lamp for 50 yards that had a working bulb.

"Or maybe just destroy you 'ere'n'now..." opined No-Hood. Keep my head down, keep on walking, no eye-contact, don't want to start anything. A chorus of cackling laughter, like scared hyenas, as I made it past the other end of the bus stop, and I could hear them slowly moving out in pursuit, lazy scavengers that they were.

"Oi mate, you deaf? I thought dogs were menna have good 'earing!" Another bay of laughter from Clone and No-Hood at Exhibit's latest witicism. Ignore them, just keep walking. Glancing up, I saw a curtain twitch as the Lewisham neighbourhood watch got in on the act. Problem was, that was all they'd do - watch. Watch as some poor old dear that they knew by name got mugged and beaten for her winter heating allowance, watch as a young lad minding his own business got set on by idiots looking for sport, watching as some poor kid of a girl got raped just because she didn't know not to walk this way after dark. Miserable, complicit cunts.

"Woof! Woof!" Came another taunting call from the group - this time it was Clone piping up and joining in the fun. I stopped, then, right in the centre of a pool of dark, as far from the lights as I could be, and not directly in front of anyone's windows. Not much in the way of light, not much in the way of witnesses. See, pretty much everyone falls into the lazy thinking of assuming that me and those like me are just like we're represented in the movie - human most of the time, hairy great things with too many teeth at the full moon, can only be killed by a silver bullet to the heart, etc., etc. They're right on part of it - a silver bullet in my heart would definitely kill me, but then the same could be said of anyone. And, frankly, any bullet in my heart is going to be seriously bad news, it's not like I have some magical resistance to a punctured ventricle or severed aorta. But they're wrong about the change. Pretty sure that I told you a while back how it could happen any night, or any day for that matter, and how it was just a case of having the willpower and discipline not to flick the switch. Well, four years in the army and half a lifetime of not wanting to get hounded as a monster taught me plenty of discipline. But even so, there'd been plenty of involuntary - and a few voluntary - changes during those years. And your body can't go through that kinda morphic shift without undergoing some sort of permanent change. Most of it was pretty handy, really - for instance, I was comfortable in the dark because my eyesight and night vision were so much better than they should be, and I could exercise for a lot longer without getting tired. And, as these three knuckle-scrapers were about to find out, I was a lot tougher than I ought to be for my build. Army training helped, too.

Turning to face them, I took my hands out of my pockets and waited, quietly. They could see me, but not all that well, and by now they were probably starting to wonder why I'd stopped, and wasn't just fleeing in terror.

"Here, poochy-poochy!"