A Savage Howl
by Sarah Conrad

I needed to be alone that night. It had been more or less a full month since I had been attacked, and I was finally well enough to go out again. It was about time, too. I was getting really tired of my dorm room, of being doted on by my damn roommate, and of the constant visits by her friends. I was tired of television, I was tired of canned food, and I was especially tired of the guys who thought they could win my affections by caring for me during my convalescence.

The attack had been one of the most frightening experiences of my life. I had been walking in the woods when it had bowled me over, all fur and fierce eyes and teeth. The next thing I knew, I, Rose Loughrey, was in the hospital. I didn’t even see what kind of animal it was, but they told me later after the bite was examined that it was some sort of large dog. They said it could be a wolf, but it probably wasn’t that, due to their rarity. I was just happy to be alive. They released me from the hospital the next day after a series of rabies shots, and I went back to the dorm room for a month’s worth of bed rest.

The month was up, though, and there I was, walking in the forest again. Part of it was just to get away from my roommate and her smothering friends, but there was something more to it as well. I guess I felt drawn there, like I had something to prove, to overcome my fear. 

I had dressed pragmatically, wearing a T-shirt, comfortable jeans, a leather belt, and old weathered hiking boots. I hadn’t bothered to tie my chestnut brown hair back, and it hung loose to its full length, down about my waist. I was on a different path than the night I was attacked. Better to not take too many risks.  As I went, I looked up at the sky and smirked to myself. It was a full moon, just like the night I was attacked. During my convalescence I’d grown fond of the irony of being attacked by a huge dog on the night of the full moon. My roommate’s eyes had grown wide as saucers when she’d learned about the coincidence, especially since she knew the part about the bite looking like it came from a wolf. For about two weeks during my recovery she thought I was going to become a werewolf until my merciless teasing made her shut up about it. She still believes in all that supernatural bullshit, though.

Walking along the path, I came to my destination, a clearing I loved to sit in at night. Moonlight was streaming through the gap in the trees, painting the stones and moss strewn about the clearing silver. I sat on the largest rock, just as I always did, and craned my neck up to gaze at the night sky. It was a beautiful night, the sky clear and brightly lit by the moon, the crisp autumn air a welcome change from the stifling indoors.

I shifted my weight on the rock, and my stomach growled noisily. As I looked at the moon an odd shiver passed through me. I exhaled sharply, shrugging it off, and idly noticed that I had broken into a cold sweat. I didn’t think anything of it, though. I’d been through as much many times during the past month, and I wasn’t about to head back over just that. I continued looking up. It seemed my gaze was almost transfixed by the moon. Not that I minded.

Eventually a sharp pain in my fingertips brought my attention back down. Looking at my hands, I saw I was bleeding slightly from my cuticles. This held my attention until my eyes discovered the cause of the blood. My fingernails were growing, right as I watched. They had extended beyond my fingertips, and hadn’t stopped yet. They seemed to be somewhat more pointed. My eyes traveled up my arm as I noticed another detail. Along the exposed length of my arm a crazy itch had spread, leaving in its wake the sprouting of tiny dark brown hairs. A look at my other arm revealed much the same.

This was freaky. It was like some science fiction movie. I chalked it up to some lingering drug reaction. It was what it had to be. A hallucination. Again, I didn’t really mind, and I didn’t want to go back. Hell, it was almost fun.

It was then that my clothes started to feel tighter. The pain in my fingers had already faded, though, so I didn’t worry. Instead, I looked myself over, curious. It felt like I was actually getting bigger. A look down at my chest confirmed this as I saw my breasts swelling, pressed taut against my shirt. It was a loose shirt normally, but now it was skintight. My jeans clung to my contours similarly. It was surreal.

I was shocked by pain again, though, as something sharp sliced into my tongue, drawing blood. I exhaled sharply at the sting. Probing with my wounded tongue, I realized this was no hallucination. Protruding beyond the rest of my teeth were my canines, longer, and still growing, already quite sharp. I grew worried as I came to the understanding that this was real, that I actually was changing. With that clicking in my head, the rest of the details seemed to all come together. Bitten by something that could have been a wolf on the full moon. Christ, my roommate had been right; I was turning into a werewolf.

My tongue stopped bleeding as I frantically started to take inventory of the changes. The hair on my arms had gotten thicker, taking on a sparse but shaggy look, but still growing and filling in the gaps. My fingernails looked more akin to claws, and I could feel by my toes bunching up in my boots that it was probably at least similar down there. Probing with my tongue again, I felt that my canines had stopped growing, finishing out as four inch-long fangs. I touched my face with my hands and felt rapidly growing downy fuzz on my cheeks, almost like sideburns. I continued up my head, noticing my eyebrows felt bushier. I felt my ears, and was surprised that they twitched at my touch, already coming to a gentle point and growing longer and more pointed, slightly hairy.

I looked down and saw that my shirt was stretching more than it should. If it went much farther, it would rip. It was constricting me too; I was short of breath. I reached down with both hands, gripping the bottom of the shirt, oblivious to my nails digging deep into the fabric, and pulled. I didn’t expect what I got, though, as I accidentally tore the shirt apart, the shredded remains falling to the ground. My chest was completely bare, moonlight shining down on my skin. My nipples stiffened in the night air, and I began to feel vaguely aroused by my change. 

My jeans were slowly tearing on their own by then, starting at the cuff. They ripped along the seams, going upward and exposing my legs, which were at least as hairy as my arms. I heard a creaking noise down near the ground. I looked down and saw the leather of my boots splitting away from the soles as my feet grew out the front. A pressure was building at the base of my spine, and it had become quite painful. I felt a welcome release as the seat of my jeans split noisily. My hands felt the area of the split, and I discovered I possessed a small tail, covered in dense fur, and getting larger at an alarming rate. I was still growing, too, I could tell. My joints ached, my back cracked and popped, and my breasts swelled to match my bigger frame. My hands were gnarled and twisted, bearing leathery pads on the palms and dingy claws on the fingertips.  I was swooning, off-balance; I couldn’t do much other than watch.

 I absently stroked the growth on my cheeks, and at my touch it seemed to blossom, thickening into twin tufts of fur. I felt something like silk sliding along the skin of my shoulders and back. My right hand reached back there, and met with massively thick and shaggy mounds of fur there, which even then still twitched and sprouted, streaming upward, outward and downward in a tangled but silky heap which made it look as if my shoulders were much bigger. I heard a metallic popping and wrenching noise from about my waist, and looked down. The zipper on my jeans had burst, and the ruined rags that once were my jeans tumbled down my legs. My gaze was drawn to my crotch, where the moonlight illuminated my loins to almost electric effect. The vague arousal I’d felt just earlier heightened to a definite horniness. I was beginning to feel a bit moist between the legs. I watched, as my pubic hair seemed to come alive, thickening and splaying out from my crotch, becoming a dense ruff ringing my privates.

Stretching, a pure liquid ecstatic pleasure ran through my veins, and my joints cracked and popped. Somehow, I could feel that the changes had stopped. I was quite a sight, a full foot taller and rippling with muscle and hair, a bushy wolfish tail extending from my rump, twitching nervously from side to side. I was…well, I was a werewolf, and against all my rational self could muster, I felt changed in mind as well. Standing there, I felt savage, unrestrained, and very, very sexually aroused with what I had become. Licking my fangs eagerly, I smiled wickedly.

Then, something seemed to build up deep inside of me, begging to be released. It worked its way up from my diaphragm, and I inhaled sharply. My head craned upward, my eyes fixated on the moon for a brief moment, and then I closed them.

Release came.

It was like…It was like sex, and the giddiness of falling, and crisp autumn air and…oh, I can’t compare it to anything, really. It was all of those things and more, compressed into a blessed ululation. My lips had parted and I was howling…