Lost

The cushion of the red couch feels soft beneath my back, a small comfort. The walls are a warm shade of mahogany, false and meant to reassure. Lining them are bookshelves, filled with various tomes, some old, but most new. They are the latest breakthroughs and results of the study of the mind. They are there to make me feel safe. They don't work, and I no longer look at them. My eyes stare straight ahead, into the pale ceiling. It seems to empty, so blank, so powerless, yet it blocks from me the sunlight and the sight of the sky. It is more honest. It is plain, bleak, and does not try to conceal from me the truth.

"I am not a monster."

I hear myself. My voice is soft and quiet, resigned to parroting back the words I know I am supposed to say. I do not believe the words, but they are the only ones I can say. They won't listen to anything else, and I have already given up on convincing them of the truth.

And sometimes I wonder. I wonder if it really is the truth, or if it is only my truth, and that my truth is somehow worth less. I wonder if an endless stream of rejections can change it, forcing into reality the false truth that they feed me. My lycanthropy is only true in my heart, my soul, and neither hold weight in this new world. The cries of my sanity have no meaning, here. Only facts and money. Those are the things that can shape the world.

She is speaking. Her mouth moves, blood red lips shaping words, and sound reaches my ears in a low, comforting drone. I know what she is saying and what she means, though my mind no longer registers the sounds as individual words. I do not care for what she says. They are nothing, soothing noises to placate me. Good boy. We're making progress here. Why don't you come back next week? I'm sure you'll overcome your problem if we keep it up.

I reply with the same brittle falseness, standing up and shaking her hand as if I meant it. My lips curl into an empty smile. Of course I'll come. I'm happy for the help. I'll be here right on time, just as I always am. A meaningless series of phrases, of sentences. I have learned, and I know now to tell them what they want to hear. When I don't, I suffer. And when my suffering is over, I am in the same place as I started--alone, lost, and treated as nothing.

The mists of Barovia are a fickle thing. When I needed companionship the most, needed comfort and reassurance, they took me and sent me to a world where I was nothing more than a number. Client number five-seven-five-four. Not Ambrose, not even 'the man who thinks he's a werewolf'. Just a number and a file. Time wreaks such changes that the memories of my youth are perhaps the same thing--a number and a file in some long-forgotten chronicle of the past. An ancient town, a long-dead tradition, and a man who disappeared hundreds of years ago, only to return again as a shadow of his former self. The thought amuses me, and I smile.

It was the wrong thing to do, and I am ushered out of the room with haste, but I do not mind. My body moves by itself now. It knows where to go and what to do, allowing my thoughts to wander. They always wandered. I have been told it is because I wish to escape reality, and I do. I wish to escape this reality, and to return to--where? I no longer know. I have no home anymore, and this time-warped world is more foreign even than the one I left. The home I thought I had, the companions I had, and even the keeper of my heart--all are gone. All have left me. All have been blown away by the wrong breeze at the wrong time, the mists that engulfed me the instant I drifted away unsuspectingly.

At first, I had thought it a blessing. I had woken from the mists into a clean forest, and looked into a still pool of water to see the refined humanity of my birth. There was no wolf in my features, none of the markings that constantly reminded me of my lost humanity. Instead, I had everything I had wanted back. My teeth were no longer monstrous, my hair was no more difficult to manage than when I had been a child, and my fingernails were as delicate and human as Angelina's.

My newly regained humanity had bolstered me, kept my spirits high, for even though I was alone, I was myself. I was not a monster, and I knew that if the mists could return me here, then they could return the rest of my life as well--even my precious Angelina, who would be ecstatic to see me as the man she'd fallen in love with, whole and pure. I could adapt to the new world, and I knew that though I was unfamiliar with the changes that had occured in my absense, I would learn quickly. I would find a way to bring my love to me and reunite us once more. I was sure of it.

I was unprepared for the first full moon.

I woke dazed and confused, with the taste of blood on my mouth and the memory of screams in my ears. I woke to a room destroyed, with cuts and bruises all over my body. I remembered terror and fury and death. I remembered the wolf, stronger now than it had ever been before, posessed of a savage bloodlust that scared me deeply. Even more frightening, I remembered satisfaction, bones crunching between my jaws, and the exhilirating thrill of the kill. I had killed, slaughtered a human much as I had slaughtered a horse before, on that first night when my darkest being was revealed to me.

When I went to the doctors, they sent me away. Werewolves were the object of fairy tales. It was impossible to be one. No one I went to would help me, and no one who could help was aware of my existence. I shouted the evidence, pointed to the marks I bore, even held up the newspaper detailing the mangled body of a girl, shouting at them as I forced myself to recall the actions I had done under the influence of the moon.

I was delusional. Perhaps I had hurt myself in the night. The girl had been attacked by a rabid dog, all the papers said so, and thus, it must be true. It had to be this way. It could not be otherwise, because it was not possible. I was sent to others, and when they had nothing that could help me, I was sent to still others. An endless chain of faceless doctors, all unwilling to listen, and all unable to see what was before their eyes.

The humanity I yearned for had become a curse, mocking me with every word I said. It concealed the wolf when I needed to expose it. It told the world the opposite of what I was trying to show it. And I could do nothing. I could say nothing, because the words were not the right ones to say, and anything I tried ended in failure.

I could not even accept the wolf. There was no wolf to accept, no presence to absorb into my soul, to take into myself and control. The wolf was not real. It was only a part of my mind, and in all the months I stayed in this world, I could find not a single lupine hair in the room I stayed in. For all intents and purposes, I was fully human, and anything else was a result of my thoughts. I showed them my blood, and they showed me my illusory humanity. I showed them my heart, and they called me mad. Sometimes, I wondered if they were right.

But that didn't change the nights of the full moon, the nights I would awake bleeding and battered with the sense-memory of blood and death. It didn't change the headlines, describing yet another murder, yet another innocent victim mauled by an animal and left to bleed to death in the streets.

And it didn't change the doctors, who continued to ignore my pleas. It became an endless pattern in my mind. I would find someone and reveal myself to them. They would tell me I was wrong. I would tell them more. They would tell me I was wrong. I would offer more evidence. They would tell me I was wrong. I would agree to any testing, anything that would prove me right. They would tell me I was wrong.

Through it all, I was alone.

There was no one I could become close to, no one who believed me when I warned of the wolf within me. There was no one I could trust, and whenever I tried, I was reminded of the mists. The mists which I knew would pull me from this world the second I gained acceptance. Why else would I be here, if the mists did not wish for me to suffer?

Eventually I gave up. I gave in to the endless pressures around me. I said the right words at the right time. I accepted the pills they told me to take, swallowing them down bitterly even when I knew they would do nothing. I did what I was expected of me, and I remained silent about every new nightmare, every full moon, every single thing that ravaged my body and tore the remains of my soul to shreds.

I no longer know if I have a soul.

It is evening, and I have made it to my empty apartment intact. It is bare. The walls are a dirty white, and the carpet on the floor is more worn and faded than not. There is little to do here, and I have little. It doesn't matter. All I want is out of reach. I want to go home. There is no home left to go to, only an ancient site in a far-off country that strikes no links of memory in my mind. I want my heart back. It is far, in a world that may not even be a reality. I wish its keeper well, even as I wonder if the doctors are right and it is only a product of my mind's mad ravings.

The clock on the mantle beeps shrilly. It is time to take the pills the doctor has so kindly said would cure me--not of my lycanthropy, but of my belief in it. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I no longer believed in the wolf, but then I wake up with blood in my mouth and remember that it would be infinitely worse if I did not know what was happening to me. I would rather know than awake confused and scared every month.

In the bathroom, I fill a glass with cool water, catching sight of myself in the mirror as I do so. I am pale, bleak. I look faded, as if time knows where I am from and wants its child back in the dust with the others. I lack the healthy shade that formerly suffused my features, and I wish once more that I was where I used to be, in that place that is no longer home. I would rather be a visible monster with my loved ones than an invisible one in a place where no one will save me from myself.

I smile at my reflection. It is lopsided and false. I can not be honest any longer, even to myself. I am not surprised. What am I, but a wolf in sheep's clothing, blessed by a world where the sheep draw shutters over their eyes and refuse to see the predator in their midst? It is all I am. I should be glad for the havoc I can create, and for the many deaths I have tasted. It is in my nature.

In a flash of violence, I hurl the glass of water at the mirror. There is an explosive sound, and spiderweb cracks spread through the mirror, shattering the glass into a dozen fragments. Each miniature image bears the same lopsided smile, false and mocking.

I am not a monster, I tell myself.

But I am.

Pieces of glass fall tinkling to the floor, light and almost musical. I pick up a shard and hold it beneath the flickering, weak light of the bathroom. It reflects my face back at me, warped and distorted. I can not stop the laugh that escapes from my mouth. Finally, my external image is the same as the internal, twisted and wrong and dangerous.

The glass slices into the base of my thumb, and blood beads up, darkly red. It fascinates me as it wells from my flesh, then slowly begins to crawl down my arm. I fancy that I can almost see the eyes of the wolf in it, vicious and triumphant. It knows it is protected in this world. It knows with full confidence that it has won.

But I know with equal confidence that it has lost. I am not of this world any longer, and I see it for what it is. The solution is apparant now, blazing a neon trail of thought in my mind with a sharpness and clarity that I believed was gone forever.

A rabid animal needs to be destroyed before it can harm others.

I change my grip on the shard of glass. It is large, nearly as wide as my hand, and the edges are sharp. Blood already stains one edge, and in this light, it looks hungry for death. Just like the wolf. I hold my makeshift knife to my throat. I know where to cut for the killing slice. How could I not know it, when my teeth have torn countless necks in my memories? It is embedded in my mind, another instance of proof that the wolf is real.

I bleed more than I expect, and every pump of my heart sends a splash of vivid red against the broken remains of the mirror. My reflection smiles back at me, red and barely visible through the blood that coated it. I smile back through the haze of dizziness in my mind.

There is no pain. If there is, I can no longer feel it. Too much time has passed, and even the ravings of the wolf are subdued in my soul. Somehow, for some reason, I expected more. I expected the wolf to fight me, but it does not. It simply fades away, bleeding out of my body with the ebbing wave of redness. I can see it now, snarling and angry, shining wetly in a pool of blood. It is powerless, trapped in the remains of my heart and soul, which now stain the floor rather than give me life.

The wolf is gone from me.

I am at peace.

I smile.

I

end.