We Become the Night
Prologue:

TLDR; I’m a werewolf, get over it

I’m just your everyday, average, ordinary werewolf. Except, we aren’t called werewolves. Rather, we are called changelings. I howl long and loud in the bright moonlight. If my best friend got in between me and my goal, I’d kill them without hesitation. My body becomes more muscular and covered in long, thick, dark fur while my fingernails and toenails grow and become claws. I even have a tail and run around on all fours (not like those fake werewolves of Hollywood legend that are basically over hairy men standing on two feet). I, for all intents and purposes, look like a regular old wolf except for about double the size. Of course, this is only three days of the month during the three days of the full moon - before, during and after. And I have absolutely no control over the changes.

I wasn’t always a changeling. A person (obviously) has to be bitten to become a changeling. Ignore that crap about born werewolves or magic creating werewolves. It just doesn’t work like that. Not exactly like that, anyway, not anymore. Surviving a changeling bite isn’t easy either, so not surprisingly there aren’t many changelings running around. Since most humans that are attacked by a changeling die, either from blood loss or they contract rabies, or they get eaten, changelings are an endangered breed. Then there’s the pesky problem of being hated and hunted. That’s a story for another time, though.

I know what many of you are thinking, “Rabies? Come on, man. This isn’t some rabid bat we’re talking about here.” You’d be right; changelings are so much worse than some rabid bat. More than 59,000 humans die from rabies worldwide each year. About a third of those are changelings alone. All changelings carry the rabies virus too. It’s only a matter of whether a human is susceptible to the virus or not. Think of the rabies as comparable to vampire venom, it’s a way to incapacitate its victim so that the changeling can eat at its leisure. Also, I mean, a changeling doesn’t just want to bite humans. A changeling wants to chow down on humans. We’re basically just living, breathing doggie chow to a changeling. So, to sum up, a human must survive blood loss, rabies and possibly being eaten in order to turn into a changeling.

But I digress. I’m getting ahead of myself.

See, I wasn’t always a changeling-hmmm, I said that already. Anyway, I used to be a shy, introverted kid. I would keep my head down and just try to get through the day. I was, and to a certain extent still am, a bit of a geek. I wore glasses that were far too big for my skinny head with lenses so thick they looked like they were cut directly from an old Coke bottle. Seriously, you could fry ants with these things. They were big and heavy and had an annoying habit of sliding down my nose at the most inopportune times. My hair is always a mess, no matter how hard I or my mother tried to comb it down or how short it was cut. I kid you not, dear reader, I once had a buzz cut; we’re talking full on Full Metal Jacket style haircut. Not only did it look horrendous on me, but I swear I still had pieces of hair that would stick up. I often wore clothes that were too big for me as they were hand-me-downs from my brother. Not that I minded wearing my brother’s clothes, it’s just that he’s always been a few sizes bigger.

In any case, I don’t often think of those days. They can bring a bit of sadness to my eyes. Sometimes, though, you have to look back to see what’s ahead. So, let me take you back. Back to before. Back to a far simpler time (though I didn’t see it that way then-hindsight and twenty/twenty and all that nonsense). Back to when I was only an average student at Albert K. Browne K-12 School in the incredibly small ass town of Moose Woods, Idaho. Back to normal.