Bloodred Metamorphosis

Drip, drip, drip.

That fucking faucet. Fuck it.

Drip, drip, drip.

The marching cadence for my descent inward provided an almost four-to-the-floor backbeat for my transformation.

As I felt hairs growing, sprouting, sharp and like tiny spikes piercing the tender layers of human skin and flesh, and as the clock chimed out the moon at its highest point, something in me died. It always did, and it always plunged me into an unnerving existential crisis.

Staring at the mirror in my shitty, rat-infested one-bedroom flat, I noticed my eyes changing, from my deep, engaging browns to a glowing blood-red, marigold-yellow tone.

The perfect hovel for me, the monstrosity.

The abomination of a man who already had misanthropy down to a fine art, you'd swear he was talented, merged with the hunger and instinct-driven beast that stalked the suburbs every month.

Next, my back started to break as I convulsed. Calling it painful does not sell the agony nearly enough.

No longer able to maintain my gaze into the reflection staring back at me. As my spine became dislodged from the rest of my skeleton, so too did my pelvis and the numerous bones that made up my limbs.

Sheer horror. Those were the only words I could think to describe the pain, or sheer fucking horror.

As the bones extended and my muscles grew, the pain increased. Blood splattered across the floorboards.

The old stains got a new coat — fresh Pollock-style drippings.

You probably remember those really cool and sexy sequences when the handsome young man transforms and his beautiful pristine pearly white fangs come through.

If that's what you think it's like.

Think again.

As my grubby human teeth are displaced and spat across the floor, my fresh set of bestial incisors, molars, and fangs pierce through the tender membrane of my gums and stretch out from the side of my mouth. Just as my mouth lengthens and my nose shrinks.

Every time, I swear I will remove my piercing, but every time I forget, and as the transformation consumes my entire body, the piercing rips through my tender flesh.

The claws rip my fingertips to shreds as blood drips down my paws. Gazing at the reflection gazing back at me for the first time. What felt like hours was mere minutes.

I was a fucking wreck. A bloody, fucking wreck.

I feel hungry.

The hunger was not for the fresh meat of some housewife-by-day. furry-sleaze-peddler-by-night.

It was for justice. Recognition for the beasts of affliction, the evil that lurks at night.

Revenge on those who made beasts like me bedroom fantasies and dangerous kink-shaman.

Looking at a sheet of paper on the table, with a letter addressed to myself, I see my new targets.

Rosie Fay, the author of the truly abysmal The Wolf and the Baker's Dozen.

Ellie Cornwall, who penned the monstrous abomination of Darkened Crimson (from The Darkened Dagger Series).

And Samantha Wrong, who concocted, with suitably sexualised cover art, Bestial Sins (The Feenix Alpha).

Other predators had taken to using Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge. With Match, OkCupid, and Plenty of Fish as backup plans.

I liked to do things old-school.

Stalking in the park late at night, or in the local cemetery.

Okay. I didn't say all the tropes were wrong.

Rosie Fay had a penchant for visiting her local mausoleum. She believed it kept her in touch with the darkness.

I just think she couldn't make friends with the living or anyone who didn't have the shaggy coat of a German Shepherd across their chest.

To make it personal, I decided to introduce myself.

From the shadows, I howled.

It was fun watching her jump out of her skin, only to pretend to be aroused and not petrified.

"Who are you?" she asked, the tremor in her delivery was making it hard for me to keep up the charade when all I wanted to do was sink my teeth into her and consume her.

"I am the stalker of the night, of course. The muse you never knew you had."

Her cheeks reddened. The daft bitch was definitely aroused now.

"Yes, Rosie. I'm a werewolf," I confirmed.

I watched as she gasped and tried to compose herself.

"Come into the light, please. So I can see you. For so long I've waited for a real man to take me."

"I will come into the light. But there is one thing I need you to remember Rosie."

"What's that, my dark beast?"

"I'm not a man."

Before she could reply, I pounced on her, and was making light work removing the skin from her face to feast on those cheekbones before her arousal made me sick with disdain.

It turns out, there was a lot of Rosie to consume, but that was good.

As my mother always said, "A full wolf is a happy wolf."

God, I hated that woman.

Still, as I cleaned poor Rosie's bones and took her pelvis as a keepsake, I had to conclude that mother was right.

Ellie Cornwall was even easier to find.

She liked to help out at the local wolf sanctuary.

Fortunately, I had some friends there who were able to arrange a meet-and-greet.

I claimed to be a fan and wanted to help her with ideas for more realistic wolf interactions in her next book. I also told the staff that Ellie would likely benefit from feeding the wolves up close and intimately.

It's amazing what you can get with a wry smile and a hormonal security guard who obviously thought he was in for a carnal treat on the CCTV.

Given my affinity with wolves, they played their role perfectly.

I had calmed them with the promise of a treat for their obedience.

"Hello? I was told to come through," called out the rather sweet, disgustingly sweet, Ellie.

"Right through here, my dear. I'm your biggest fan," I growled, unable to contain my excitement, seeing as Ellie was younger than Rosie. I always enjoyed my first twentysomething each month the best.

"Nice growl. Been working on that for long?" she asked, rather bolshy without a sense of fear or dread at all.

"You could say..."

"Yes?"

I held back before pouncing on her.

"I've been working on it my whole life."

The younger, the prey, the easier the feast.

Ellie was delicious, but didn't fully satisfy me.

Fortunately, Samantha Wrong was about to find out what it means to be in the wrong place at the right time or the right place at the wrong time, or you get my drift.

She had been doing a reading at the local library for young and aspiring, horny authors looking to break into the dark romance genre.

I met her outside the library once everyone else had headed home for the night.

"Mrs Wrong. My name's Paul, and I'm a producer working at Phony Pictures, and we'd love to talk to you about adapting your latest, and dare I say, best novel."

"Really? I was told a long time ago, the best I could hope for was a straight-to-DVD affair," she replied sceptically.

"Whoever told you that was a jackass who wouldn't know a monster of a franchise if it bit him on the ass," I scoffed, sneering behind my fake smile and plaudits.

"If you'd come to me a year ago, I'd have jumped on you like one of the crude caricatures in my novels. But I'm really looking to drop the dark romance shtick and try something that truly matters."

This was new.

"Oh? Not content with fame and fortune from turning the howling beasts of the moon into the latest Christian Grey-esque badboy-suitor for needy fems?"

"I thought you said you were a fan... Anyway, no. Originally, it was a joke. A terrible one that grew legs and a beating heart. I'm sick of it. Especially when there are enough sickos out there who want to rape and claim women, based on purely human motivations, not some uncanny need."

At this point, dear reader, I almost wanted to believe her. Almost.

I wanted to believe she was a shining light in a dark world.

I'd love to tell you that I struck up a long-lasting friendship with this bright and beautiful, vivacious creature. That I showed her my tender side, and that we lived forever in peace in a cabin in the woods.

But remember. I’m not your fucking kink. I’m a hungry fucking beast.

She was very tasty. Her principles and guilt went down nicely with the crate of beers I stole from the Seven-Eleven en route home before sunrise.

*

Thanks for reading!

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Author's Notes: This is for Sam Spinelli's brilliant Unofficial Challenge: More Howls for Halloween! I have a similar distaste to Sam for overly romanticised werewolves and shapeshifter-type horror characters. I will not go into detail here about my hatred of vampire-romance crap, either. Needless to say, as is the case with most of my work, many of my own opinions bled into this. And keen readers will spot that this is the second story I've published this week that features a reference to Jackson Pollock.

If you fancy it, here are a couple of other things I've published recently.