Howl

You’re on a beach. The sand shifts under your shoes. You shiver in the cool morning air. Seagulls call to each other, and the waves lap against the shore.

You can’t remember how you got here. You can’t remember very much at all. You can only recall fuzzy short flashes, of the night and the moon and this beach.

You remember the hunger. The savage fierce hunger.

You remember leaping, flying over the sand.

You remember the moon, big and round and glowing white in the night sky.

The flashes of memory don’t seem like you. It’s not the way you think, the way you feel, the way you experience the world. It’s something totally different. Something Other.

Something wild.

The hunger was red and raging. You can’t remember what it was you ate. You don’t really want to remember. The half-remembered smell of blood makes you sick.

The hunger howled in triumph. You remember power and ecstasy and red dripping nails.

Then the sun came. And something happened.

There was pain. White screaming pain.

The Other disappeared, taking the hunger and the power and the wild with it.

You’re yourself now. Here on the beach, alone. No nails, no fur, no howling at the great glowing moon.

No idea where you are. No idea of who, or what, you are. And certainly no idea of what to do next.