A Werewolf in Lewisham

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

Chapter 3 - How Did I Get Here?

Yeah. This... this is not good. I'm cold, half-naked, and sitting in a stinky, filthy back alley surrounded by chunks of dead mugger. Oh, and I'm covered in blood. Aaaand I don't think there's as many pieces of Mugger McNuggets as there should be, because I'm fairly sure I ate some of them. Did I mention it's raining? It's raining. Really quite hard. So add "soaking wet and probably going to catch hypothermia" to my list of woes. Happy birthday, me. Better yet, happy Sweet Sixteenth.

So, you may be asking, what is a sixteen year old girl doing in an alleyway, covered in and surrounded by the remains of a recently-deceased mugger? Well, there's the short answer, or the complete answer. The short answer won't make much sense, and the complete answer isn't short. But let's back up a little bit...

Last week, my life was going swimmingly. Or as swimmingly as life can go when you're a teenager and having to contend with the tedious balancing act of school life vs. social life without getting permanently grounded by your parents. Things weren't rosy, but they were pretty okay. I was doing alright at school, just counting down the weeks till my GCSE exams and feeling reasonably optimistic about my chances. No boyfriend, again, but I wasn't that upset about that because he was an immature jerk anyway and frankly I needed the space. Hadn't really been in any major trouble at school, or at home, since I got caught smoking behind the maths block last term. I wasn't Miss Popular but I had a few good friends and no real enemies to speak of. And, most significantly, I was looking forward to my sixteenth birthday next weekend. Yeah, I know, fifteen nearly sixteen and still excited about birthday parties, sue me. Wasn't going to be anything super amazing, just tickets to see PEARL JAM!! Okay, so I lied about it not being super amazing but at least now you can see why I was excited, right?

So, anyway. As I was soon to be sixteen, and finally legally allowed to do stuff that I'd been doing for nearly a year, I figured it was a good time to finally come out to my parents with a secret that I'd been hiding from them pretty much ever since puberty reared its ugly head and decided it was going to fuck around with my body and make me grow hair in weird places and shit like that.

It, um. It didn't go well. Mum was mostly too shocked to say much. Just stood there, shaking her head slowly and saying dumb shit like "I can't believe it" and "But you're our little girl!", or "Are you sure? Maybe it's just a phase...". Yeah, it's just a phase. I'm sure that in a year or two my body will have changed its persuasion(!) Come on, Mum, it's not like I chose to be this way! Anyway, she was still better than Dad. He said some things that no parent should ever say to their child, not even if they've just crashed the family car into the family house. I mean, he's always had a bit of a temper... don't worry, I'm not about to go into a story of domestic abuse - he never beat me; he just had a tendency to shout a lot when he got annoyed. Well, this time he did beat me. Not much, just a slap across the cheek and a face full of spittle while he screamed his disappointment at me. And then he told me to leave. Told me that I wasn't welcome anymore, that I wasn't his daughter, that I was dead to him. I tried to reason with him, I tried to tell him that it wasn't his problem, that it wasn't going to affect him, that it was just a part of me that he needed to accept, that I was still his daughter and I still loved him. He told me he didn't want my love, and that he didn't want me. Mum was of no help whatsoever, she was practically catatonic by this stage and hadn't even reacted when Dad smacked me across the face. The small part of me that was still thinking rationally asked if I could get my things, but Dad wasn't keen on that, either. Said it wasn't my stuff, because he'd bought it all for me.

And there I was - a week shy of turning sixteen and promptly made homeless, just because my parents' couldn't handle who I am. Just because it was something that they didn't understand, and therefore something that they were afraid of. So much for parental love and acceptance. Get caught with weed? Grounded for a month. Turn out to be a werewolf? Get out and stay out.

Did I mention I'm a werewolf? Yeah, I probably should have said that earlier. Why, what did you think I was talking about? Oh, right. Yeah, I should probably explain that, too.

See, the thing is, when I was talking about puberty fucking with my body and making hair grow in weird places? I meant like all over. Now, I don't know much about it, because it's not like there's a Teenwolf Awareness Group at school. The LGBT crowd, self-harmers, substance abusers, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, and all the rest had their little groups where they could meet people in the same situation and help each other come to terms with their lives. But I don't recall seeing any flyers around school that said "Do you periodically suffer from all-over body hair? Do you sometimes wake up with blood smeared on your face and chunks of dead fox stuck between your teeth? Then come join us as the OH FUCK I'M A WEREWOLF Society!" So there wasn't really anyone to talk to at school, and while I tried online... yeah, let me just say one word - "Furries". You start telling people you're a thirteen year old werewolf and you get all sorts of wrong attention.

But, basically, sometimes at night I get wracked with spastic convulsions that result in me growing about a foot taller, getting teeth and claws from out of a horror movie, and developing a nice thick glossy fur coat. After that, I can never remember very much except in terms of smells - the greasy rain, the scratchy air of South London, the sweet fear of prey, and the rich coppery scent of fresh blood. Hey, don't judge me, I didn't choose to be a part-time killing machine. First time this happened I freaked out, barricaded my bedroom door and hid under my bed sheets for the entire day. Whenever my parents tried to open it I scream about being a freak, about blood, and told them to go away. Given my age, you can understand why they might not have twigged that it was something they should worry about. After that, I calmed down a bit and tried to tell myself that it was just a really horribly vivid and visceral dream brought on by my first period, even though that had actually happened several months earlier. And, yes, I keep... kept lots of secrets from my parents. Parents are like the government - on the whole, they're there to protect you and keep you safe, but it's generally best if you don't let them know too much about your private life.

And then it happened again. And again, and again, and again. I tried to keep track of it in a diary, but it got so often that I didn't even want to think about it or remind myself of it. By the time I was fifteen, I lost count of how many mornings I woke up praying to whatever gods there might be that the blood and flesh I was vomiting up didn't belong to anything with a name. And every time I walked down the street and saw a missing pet notice taped to a lamp post, I felt a pang of guilt and horror, while fervently hoping that it had nothing to do with me. Still, at least there wasn't an increase in people going missing in the area, and I don't remember seeing any news reports about horribly mutilated bodies being found, with pieces missing, so there's that at least.

But the worst thing was always not remembering. It's like when you wake up after a party, not really remembering what you did but just having this overwhelming sensation that, whatever it was, you should feel pretty embarrassed about it. And, yes, I go to parties and get drunk. I know, I know - I'm a stain upon the moral fabric of society and all that but come on, this is London in 2013, I don't know a single fifteen year who doesn't get drunk, have sex, and occasionally smoke a blunt. Anyway, as I was saying, it's the whole not-knowing things that gnaws at what I hesitate to call my soul. Okay, so maybe all I did was run around the parks as a wolf-creature and eat a couple of pigeons and maybe a fox. That's not bad, that I can cope with. I mean, hugely embarrassing in polite social circles, I'm sure, but not really anything to be ashamed of or worry about. But I simply don't know. And I've not been a werewolf long enough to know if human flesh tastes different to a fox. What if I attacked and killed someone during the night? Hell, for all I know I could be a mass murderer! If I am, and if they caught me, would I go to jail or would I just be put down? Another thing I don't know.

The thing is... I know I'm not alone. I don't know how many of us there are, but I've heard of plenty of stories, and pretty much everyone in the country knows someone who knows someone who knows a werewolf. Or a vampire, or a ghoul, or whatever. We're rare, but we're not mythical or anything. And yet there seems to be so little information out there. The current government doesn't officially acknowledge that some of its citizens are, and I hate to use the word, "supernatural", and I don't even know of any self help groups. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places, of maybe all the stories are heard really are just stories and we're a lot rarer than I think.

So, homeless, penniless, underage, and a lycanthrope. Nothing to my name except, quite literally, the clothes I stood up in. Don't even have my mobile phone on me, which is seriously sucky. I, of course, tried a few friends, see if they could put me up for a few nights till I found something more permanent, or until my parents realised they were being complete tools and brought me home - not something I held out much hope for. But, at every door, I was greeted by a concerned, scared or angry parent, very firmly turning me away and telling me that I wasn't welcome there, either. Seems Dad had been forewarning people - "Hey Brenda, sorry to disturb you but I just wanted to let you and Mike know that our daughter's a flesh-eating monstrosity so you might want to keep her away from your family unless you want to get killed in your sleep." And after that I tried the local homeless shelter. Which, let me tell you, is a pretty damned intimidating atmosphere for a fairly attractive young girl all on her own. I mean, the folks that run it are super nice, in that vague, wishy-washy Christian way, but let me tell you that the homeless have just as many scumbags and perverts as any other class of society. As a result, I only managed a single evening before freaking out and slinking off into the night.

All of which brings me closer to how I came to be here - indecently clothed, adorned with gore, and slumped in an alley way. The whole changing-into-a-slavering-beast thing? Totally does not seem connected to the moon, full or otherwise. Only seems to happen at night, though, and previously it had only happened when I was really tired and drifting off to sleep. This time, however, I was wide awake. And in the process of being mugged. I say "mugged"... I mean, I'm pretty obviously penniless and not carrying anything worth stealing, so I doubt it was my purse he was after, but I'd rather not think about that. Either way, I was sitting in a relatively clean patch of an alleyway, sheltering in the loading bay area of our local Superdrug, generally trying to work out what the hell I was going to do next and running through an unpleasantly short list of options. Having just about reached the conclusion that "Break down and cry while fervently hoping it's all just a dream" was the most positive action I could take, I was [...]