INSTINCT Lon T. Ryden Jai-Lynn and Toby and I were at McGruder's and we were all having beers on fake ID's, and Toby was telling us about how last night he'd thought seriously of suicide. "Just take a handful of my dad's sleeping aids," he said. "That would do it all right." Like there was something to be proud of in that fact, and the whole time I was looking at him, I kept thinking of a line from the book Naked Lunch: "Mold odors of atrophied testicles quilted his body in a fuzzy gray fog..." Because that's all Toby was now-days. He had gone so far down. All he ever seemed to be doing anymore was selling his things at the pawn shop, and taking the money downtown, to the Man, to buy Junk. No more guitars, no more Marshall 1500 watt head and amplifier stack... Jai-Lynn said he hardly even bothered with fucking her anymore, and my God, with a girl like that how could he ever think of anything else? For Toby, there were no more good times. His addiction had taken the luster and fascination out of all the other pleasant things life had to offer, and now he was sitting there, bragging about what kind of pills his dad needed to combat his insomnia with. And I could smell him: the smell of his sickness, like yellow-gray depression sweating from his pores, clinging to him, hiding in the unwashed folds of his clothes. And I could smell her too. Her deodorant, and perfume -- something asexual by Calvin Klein -- and her young sex-ready heat. And it was like Toby wasn't even there, the way she kept looking at me, and batting her eyelashes, and playing with the curl of her raven-dark hair around the index finger of the hand she wore Toby's ring on. My blood felt fever hot. I was actually salivating. * The calendar behind the bar was of the sort that showed little symbols of the moon below the number for the day, and beneath Thursday, March 31st, was an empty white circle, and the sun would be down in just about an hour, and here I was sitting in close proximity to two people who were just begging for it... * A year ago, there was a full page black and white photo of Sasquatch on the front of the Star National Interlocutor. A man on a hunting trip in Northern California had encountered the beast of lore and, in the spirit of scientific discovery, let that one of a kind specimen have it with both barrels. Then reloaded and let loose again. Then took a picture of the remains. Now normally, I see a thing like that, a story and picture combo with that for subject matter, and I scoff. It's ridiculous. I would have liked to scoff at that particular story, but my family was involved. The hunter who claimed having the encounter with bigfoot was an uncle of mine from my father's side of the family. And it turned out he didn't just have a story and corroborating pictures. He had a trophy too. He had bigfoot's hand. And it was convincing. First time I saw him after that episode: coming up the back steps of his house, the night before a family reunion. He met us at the door, put out his hand to offer an introductory shake, and, practical joker that he was, what he held out for me to grasp was his severed hand bigfoot trophy, and I wasn't really paying attention, and the light was bad, because it was all coming from behind him, and he was just sort of a silhouette standing in the door. And God! Did I scream? I jerked my hand free; jumped back so hard I lost my balance and fell off the doorstep. Cut myself on the damn thing. It has long hooked claws like something you'd use to reap the fall harvest. Uncle Pat just laughed and laughed at that. "You should of seen the look on your face," he said. Him doubled over and slapping his knees. I said, "You stupid fucker." And dad getting on me for that. "Michael! Is that any way to speak to family?" "My God!" I spat. "I'm bleeding here!" And Pat laughing so long and hard his face got to looking like a blood blister. "That was priceless," he guffawed. "I never seen anything like that before." This comment from the man who shot bigfoot. He showed me what I shook hands with. "Now ain't that the freakiest thing?" he said. It was freaky. It was like a human hand, except thicker, and more heavily muscled, and tipped off with those dagger claws, and covered in coarse black fur. Not that I was paying much attention to it then. All my intellectual energy at the time was directed at coming up with insults and curses to apply to my Uncle Pat. And my mother and father both heaping reproach on me for it. * That's what Uncle Pat got for all his heroism in confronting bigfoot: a couple of pictures and a story he sold for five thousand dollars, and one priceless reaction from his nephew. The one time he got to talking to me about the thing, he said, "It was big and black and scary, and it was coming for me, howling and barking, and I had a gun, so I shot it. It was still twitching on the ground, so I reloaded." I said, "And you seriously think it was bigfoot?" He said, "The location was right," tossing back a long swallow of Rolling Rock. "And what else could it have been? You seen the photos. It don't look like nothin' I've ever seen before." "Why didn't you bring the whole body back?" "It was heavy. We was way out in the woods. I figured the claw was good enough." "Have you shown it to anyone?" "Like who?" "Someone who could maybe identify what kind of animal it came from?" "Yeah. Course I did that." Another swallow. Adding nothing to his credibility. "And?" "They couldn't tell me nothin' I didn't already know." "What'd they say?" "Said it was from some 'species unknown.'" Making index and fore-finger quotes in the air with the hand that wasn't wrapped around the neck of the bottle. "Like I could'n'a told them that." "Species unknown," I said, not bothering to conceal any sarcasm. "Yeah. Why? You got a better suggestion?" * Not then. I do now. Werewolf. I thought it would have to be alive though, to infect me by scratching. I guess you learn something new every day. * If someone had asked me before-hand what I thought it would be like, I would have imagined it to be something like a recurring nightmare. Once a month, maybe waking up feeling disoriented, exhausted, like I had been running a marathon, tasting blood in my mouth, and discovering blood on my hands and all around me on my bed-sheets. But it's not just a metamorphosis of body, occurring once a month, coinciding with the cycle of the moon. The change is considerably more profound than that. The wolf within me is only a physical manifestation that one day, true. But the mental and spiritual changes that the claw-scratch wrought on me are constant. I have the body of the predatory animal only once a month; I have his mind and soul always. And werewolves prey on humans: simple fact. But not just hunting and killing at whim. Calculating. The human population is like a bush that needs pruning. Thinning out the herd; singling out the sickly and the weak, and the aged and the crippled. That's not necessarily the way I would choose to do it. I think it would be a lot more fun to get a hold of something young and energetic. But the notions of choice and free will don't mean what they used to. A more important word now: instinct. * So: I see people, I meet them, I categorize them. Sometimes, like with a homeless beggar, smelling of liquor-vomit, and living in a discarded refrigerator box in the alleyway, or with an emaciated prostitute shaking from withdrawal, and scent of infection-discharge like a groping tendril from beneath the hem-line of her mini-skirt, it's easy to know what categories people fall in to. Sitting at the bar in McGruder's with Toby, was one of those easy times. I knew he had to be killed; simple. It wasn't disturbing for me to think about, even with him being a friend and all. Animals aren't much burdened by conscience or thoughts of morality. Here's morality for you: I was going to kill him for the benefit of the herd. He was contaminated. Unfit. Shouldn't reproduce. He'd even said he wanted to die. And besides, he was just using up resources that could be better put to use by others. One of his resources that could be better used was Jai-Lynn. For the better part of a year, ever since my contact with the claw, I had not thought about sex at all, or almost not at all. Unusual to be a teenager libido-less. I thought it was probably just something werewolves didn't need to worry about. But then, the past month, it had become a dominant consideration; an almost constant distraction. And I think I knew why: Springtime. It was mating season. I was ready for it, and smelling her on the stool next to me, I knew Jai-Lynn was ready for it too. I kept finding my eyes drawn down to the sight of her bare stomach and her belly chain, hanging from the dainty gold loop that pierced her navel. There was a tattoo of a hummingbird there too, just above the last button of her jeans. And once my eyes were that far it was just a natural thing to let them wander along the lines of those jeans and let them come to a natural stop where they would: the fine female shape of her backside, so well defined against the dark maroon leather of the bar-stool. She caught me looking, but seemed pleased that I had noticed her. Her eyes got darker; pupils flaring, broadcasting excitement. She said, "We should go, huh?" Toby said, "Go where? It's early yet. I hardly had anything to drink." "I don't know," she said. She wasn't looking at Toby when she spoke; me. "Go somewhere. There's got to be something going on somewhere tonight." So downing the last swallow of my beer, and getting up from the bar; fishing the car keys out of my pocket, there were two things I knew: I was going to have Toby for dinner. I was going to have Jai-Lynn for dessert. * She gave me directions. She, sitting in the front seat, wedged between Toby and me, so close I though I was going to frenzy. My heart racing; I could feel my pulse, throbbing in my hands against the steering wheel. "Turn here," she said. "Go on up to Highway 21 and take it northwest." God. She was taking us out of town. Outside, the sun was setting; red-orange fireball, making the sky every color violet to yellow. And the clouds were slate gray, but burning at the edges where the sun touched them, like coals in a fire still glowing heat. I looked at her, and she gave me a smiling, knowing look. Toby said, "Isn't that how you get to your parents' cabin?" He looked tired: eyes heavy-lidded, holding his head in his hand, elbow crooked against the passenger window, slouching low in his seat, like a man without a spine. She nodded, humming agreement, "Mmm-hmmm." Coy. I didn't mean to sound worried, but I did, asking, "How long does it take to get there?" Because I didn't want to hair-out while driving. She said, "It's such a beautiful evening. You should open the windows and let some air in here." Then she leaned over me so she could thumb down the window switch and it went down, electric humming, and cool spring wind came roaring in, blowing her hair, so it brushed my face, and caught in the corner of my mouth. I asked again, "How long to get there?" She said, "We should get there right before the stars start showing." The timing was going to be sensitive. "Why?" she said. "Is there something you need to do tonight?" Suggesting things with her voice. Playing with me. "No," I said; saying it too quickly. She smiled at me. * "What a view," said Toby. We were in the driveway to Jai-Lynn's father's cabin, parked right alongside it, and now standing outside the car, and looking down the side of the mountain, at a landscape of pine trees sloping away beneath us and lit up silver white, because the sun was down, and now the moon was up, full and bright, and I was thinking I'd never seen it so big and beautiful, and there was a feeling inside me that I knew... The Night, exciting. Jai-Lynn said she was going to look for the fake rock with the spare keys to the place. "It's off this way," she said. "I'll be right back," vanishing around the over-lapping log corner of the cabin. I could hear the blood rushing in my ears. There was a feeling like an itch, deep down inside my chest; something I could never hope to scratch, and building in intensity. Somewhere further up the slope, a dog, or wilder, loosed a howl, and it's song of longing came down, like a siren on the edge of town. It made chills go through me, and worse... It's a little like having a hot oil massage, the turning. Like hands, rubbing; probing deep into the muscles along your back and shoulders and thighs, and the heat, penetrating. I shuddered at the onset, like being scared at the movies; feeling the hair sprouting along my back. I sank to my hands and knees, and felt the slow- wrought transformation of my hands into claws; steadily, my hands, cool on the surface of the ground, grass beneath my palms, turning into something heavy and hot, claws, digging into the earth, and the sensation of the grass being muted by the growing presence of my coat of fur. I heard the seams of my coat starting to give way, starting... and then they ripped out entirely in one quick tear, and my chest swelled, lungs full of air, muscles, five times my own, rippling and expanding outward. I felt a growl, building in the back of my throat. Toby said, "God, what was that? Did you hear that?" Transforming, I was hidden by the car, Toby on the one side and away, and me dropped down on my knees and close on the other. Standing back up, I was revealed to him. Animal, I towered above the roof of the car, another foot taller than I was as Michael. Toby slipped and fell, back-pedaling away on clumsy feet that he couldn't make move quickly enough. He said, "What the hell?" Air shuddering in his lungs; wide white terror around his eyes. I jumped over the car and was on him. He was short work. He, screaming parts of words, but mostly just the raw noise of horror. He yelled out my name once; called for Jai-Lynn. Then I was pinning him down, one fore-claw on his face, and the other on his thigh. I plunged my snout down, teeth slashing, into his soft belly, and pulled up with a mouthful of his jacket and T-shirt... and skin... dangling intestines like pasta noodles. His warm blood felt good, filling my mouth. His screaming got suddenly a lot quieter, a lot more hoarse sounding. I dove back into him, deeper this time, closing jaws on something hard and resistant, pulling up, feeling like I was snapping the links in a length of chain, one by one. And it was like somebody had found a switch in Toby -- the way to turn him off -- because when I came free, teeth clenched around vertebrae, bone popcorn interlocking like puzzle pieces, he stopped: no more shouting, no more twisting, no more struggling. The sudden silence was eerie. It was like the mountain was waiting for something else to happen. And I had never been nervous in that form before. Now here I was, hunched over my kill, with all my enhanced senses, like an alarm tripped, screaming a warning. There was a smell. I suppose it had always been there, but I had paid it no attention until then. The only way to describe it is as a threat, and it is difficult to describe the way a threat smells. Like a "No Trespassing" sign, in a kind of Braille that you read with your nose. * Until I saw it, in all its eye-witnessed technicolor, gore-glory, it had never occurred to me why Jai-Lynn would smell so good, even compared to other horny, pheromone-blaring teenage girls. I went, slow and cautious, around the corner of the cabin that she had disappeared behind, and there she was, half-transformed, writhing on the ground in a silent agony that I recognized all too well. This was her first time turning. I remembered my first time: like having my flesh burned away by acid; bones feeling like molten candle-wax, glowing hot as they grew to give frame to the beast; teeth elongating, edge-honing, like fingernails scraping on a blackboard, but in my mouth... Thinking then: If Jai-Lynn was a werewolf, and this was her first time turning, and she had not been touched by me, then she must know of another one. And if there are three, there are probably many more than three. And having the instincts of an animal, specifically wolf, there are probably ways of communicating one's territory. Things I had never done, or never understood, or never seen a need for... I was thinking that if a werewolf had marked his territory, it would smell a lot like a "No Trespassing" sign in a kind of Braille you read with your nose. And I knew I was on the wrong side of the sign. But running away was the furthest thing from my mind just then. * The way we communicated was not with words anymore. I had never attempted to pass on meaning to someone else in the shape of the beast, but I had known speech was impossible: the mouth and vocal cords and tongue were simply all wrong for it. What we spoke was a language infinitely more complex than words. Now, it was not merely a voice I needed to project with, it was my whole body. There were still vocal tools which could be used: growls, yelps, barks, but now with emphasis on tone, rather than the content of patterns in the sound. A voice could still plead and warn and beg and threaten, but not with words. The body now was the biggest asset in making desires known to one of my own kind: posture and size, and so many subtle nuances in regards to what degree a head was lowered or raised, and how long eye contact was maintained. Ears: how they pointed and turned, stood up or laid back. Fur: how it raised with intense emotion. Smells: so many hormones secreted now, it was as if a nose could read another's aura. And though I had never tried to communicate before, the instinct to read the signs was deeply ingrained in me. Jai-Lynn, metamorphosis complete, was before me now, smelling so good, and postured so submissively: shoulders rounded down, and her ears laid back. She was darker than I was; I had thought my own fur was black, but compared to her I was only gray. And while my own shape and form tended towards large and brutal, her's tended towards a longer, sleeker look; I was almost a full foot taller than she was as a man, but we were practically eye to eye now. She raised her eyes up to me, and what eyes they were: not in a way of human beauty, but wolfly. They were nearly white, but with a hint of blue, glacier colored, and like at the bar, her pupils were wide. She made a noise, high-pitched, from the front of her mouth, that seemed to beckon to me. And then she turned, presenting her backside to me, and it was all too clear what she meant for me to do. * I tell you this: humans have it better that way. Werewolves apparently have no interest in the pleasure aspect of such a conjoining. It must be only for the purpose of reproduction with them. There was no thrill in it, no feeling of ecstasy, no afterglow. I just jumped on her; thirty seconds later it was over. I felt a tingling, compressed nerve pins and needles, and then ejaculated. It was like I wasn't even involved in it; more like watching a test tube overflow with some kind of chemical reaction in a science lab back in school. And that -- the actual payoff -- was over in less than six seconds. My disappointment was huge. I might as well have just stuck a turkey baster into her and given the ball a squeeze for all I got out of it. Afterwards, far from satisfaction, all I noticed changed about me was that I was no longer thinking about sex, and how good Jai-Lynn smelled. It was like I'd had a mild headache going into the moment, and now it was gone. I can't begin to explain how maddening it was. I wanted to swear, but was lacking the mouth to pronounce it with. Then, chores finished, Jai-Lynn was running away. Galloping off into the woods. And she was fast. Much faster than I was. In mere seconds she was well out of sight, and I was following behind guided only by the lingering scent of her. * There was a sort of clearing near the peak of the mountain, trees crowded out by jutting formations of rock that gleamed white in the light of the moon. I reached the clearing, aware of how much more densely packed the "No Trespassing" signs had been on the way there. I was near the heart of that unknown other's territory. I heard a sound, low-rumble growling, punctuated by coarse barks. The owner of that voice was enraged. But more: the owner of that voice was close. I topped a pile of boulders, springing up lightly, landing coiled and tense on all fours. And down the far side of those rocks, there he was. He was hunched over Jai-Lynn, his gritting fang mouth just inches from her face. He had his fore-claws buried in her arms, and I could smell open flesh blood. He was reprimanding her, and it was easy to know why; I was so recently spent in her. She had gone to him with signs of infidelity emblazoned on her behind. I watched for only a second, waiting to see how serious the situation was, and then he was biting her, fangs wrapped around her muzzle, drawing blood, tearing across her, and she yelping, pain and fear, and I was reacting. I jumped down on him, coming in from an angle enough where I expected I would be able to knock him clean off her, and succeeded in doing that. But my God. Viewing them from above, it had not occurred to me how much larger than me this other male was. He was immense. His chest, so much broader than mine, his arms so much thicker... but he was older too: he had silver- gray hair streaking through the hair at the crown of his head and along his ears and down his back. And I had the thought that maybe I was faster, and took some hope from that. I grabbed him by the throat. Locked my teeth around him and bit down hard; with all my might. Fang needles sinking in, blood spouting up around them, splashing on the roof of my mouth, flooding as I made contact with his throbbing jugular. But he was so much stronger than I was. He pushed me off. I did not relinquish my hold on him, but came off, with the ripping of his flesh around my mouth. I landed feet down, ready to spring again, and he was reeling; staggering, with a blood fountain jetting out the side of his neck. I charged again, but this time he was able to bring his claws up between us in time. He caught me by the face, and I could feel his meat hooks around my muzzle and under my jaw and tearing into the skin below my eyes, blinding pain and black bubbles in my left eye. Halted, my teeth gnashed at the empty air before his face. He swung me by that hold, brought me around him, like a bull missing the swirl of red cape, and threw me, hard, into rocks, like a pillar. I hit them sideways, along the back quarter of my ribs on my left side; heard a sound, rapid snapping, like a chain of firecrackers, and felt each one pop, pain explosion, and knew my ribs were broken. I sank to my knees, and then he was on top of me, with his fangs, cruel depth, high along my shoulder, near my neck, and there was nothing I could do but go down, face first, into the dry brush grass, the full, crushing weight of him now on my back. It was Jai-Lynn that saved me. She hit him high and knocked him off me, jarred him hard against the rocks, giving me enough time to get back on my feet. And dancing around him, she distracted him long enough for me to get in close and grab him by the throat again. But this time, I just held him by that hold, and used my claws to do the damage: digging into his belly with them, punching in as fast and hard and deep as I could and raking outward, twisting, opening him up like a sack of flour; him bleeding out, innards unspooling and landing in a steaming pile at his feet. Jai-Lynn joined me then, tearing into him from behind, and our claws met in his chest, separated by only the thinnest gloss of his blood. And we did not stop until he was tatters. * When he had been dealt with... when the threat of him was gone... the adrenaline started to go down... and the pain started to rise. Like the sun, burning off an early morning haze, forging the world in a new clarity. That pain, like a chorus of hammers, ringing on iron, my body, and hitting from every direction at once. I swayed drunkenly on my feet, put out a hand to steady myself against the rocks, but quickly came to know there was nothing else for it but lying down. So I went slow, easing myself down, bit by bit, clinging to that rock for support. I coughed, and saw red spatter darkly on the ground; felt thick wet on my lips. Then finally, I was down. I rolled over on my back, facing upward at Jai- Lynn: concerned eyes, and perked up ears, petulant whining from the back of her throat. Her posture suggesting she wanted to come nearer to me, but showing restraint in keeping away. She was afraid for me. That is good, I thought. I am very badly off. She should be afraid. And then was sleep. It was dark and dreamless and good. * I woke, and it was daylight, and I was Michael again, and the pain in my chest was far, far less than it had been. Similarly, the cuts on my face felt much less severe. I felt them, gingerly, with the tips of my fingers, and felt not the scabbed- over gashes I expected, but only lines of puckered flesh, that were already closed, with very little scabbing. I had never before been injured in beast form; perhaps I was a fast healer. I sat up, surveying my surroundings. Not far from my feet, only about a yard away, the dried blood, matted fur, carnage leftover of my foe of the previous night. And naked, in a curl beside me, with her head pillowed by her arms, was Jai-Lynn. Of course, I was naked too, but I wasn't thinking of that, because my own naked body was never anything I had looked forward to seeing. The bites along her nose and mouth, that the other had done to her, were small white irregularities, almost totally healed, and certainly too small to detract any from that beautiful face. I reached out a tentative hand, toward her shoulder, wanting to touch her; make sure she was real. Her eyelids fluttered, blinking open, probably sensing my movement. Her eyes, blue and sleepy, quickly jumped into focus. She smiled at me. She said, "You're all right." I was getting an erection. Actually I had woken up with one. It was impossible to hide. And why bother with hiding it? Here was someone handy to use it on. I said, "I'm better than all right," suggestively. I rolled off my back and crawled towards her, licking my lips. "It'll be better this time," I said. "I promise you." But she blocked me with her hands, and somehow, things had changed between us. Last night, when she had wanted me so bad, was it all because I was part of the means by which she hoped to achieve this end? The destruction of this other? "What about the others?" she asked. "Who?" She got up, pulling me to my feet alongside her. She said, "They were all at the edge of the clearing last night. They wouldn't have left without knowing the outcome." Her walking out from the shelter of the rocks, dragging me along by the hand. "What are you talking about?" "There." And she pointed. A gathering of people. Naked as we were. In the early moments of waking: sitting up and stretching, rubbing their eyes. Three women and two men. They were, just as Jai-Lynn had said, at the edge of the clearing; two trees between them and us. I said, "Who are they?" And Jai-Lynn, "That's the pack. You're their new leader."