• Art walked to the outskirts of the town in which he lived and looked back behind him, pausing for a brief moment to take in the scenery before turning his attention to the sky. There were probably a few hours left, maybe slightly less he guessed, before he needed to be far away from this place. In all fairness, he thought, it shouldn’t really make as much of a difference as it felt. He had few friends, most of which only called upon him when they needed something for themselves, no family to care for and vice versa, and most definitely no girlfriend to waste away his time with, though the latter wasn’t from lack of trying. He was beginning to assume that he didn’t appeal to women anymore, and was slowly getting used to the idea of being a bachelor.

    He pressed on down the street, occasionally letting his feet drift into the puddles left behind from the thunder storm the night before. For the most part that was the reason why he had put off leaving until today. The weather over the last few days had been terrible, but even if it had been raining again he wouldn’t have had much choice but to go now. There are some things that you can’t stop from happening just by putting them off, and this was one of those times. As he walked past the last few houses and off the main road taking a detour though overgrown woodland, he caught sight of himself in a puddle. It made him recall something someone had said to him earlier that day. Art bit his thumb for a few moments while hiking lost in thought, trying to recall precisely who it was he had talked to that day that said such a peculiar thing, out of the spur of the moment likely, not remembering for several minutes. Then he had it: Evan. Evan was one of the few people who talked to Art on a regular basis, thinking more into it Art wondered why it took him so long to realize it was him who said it. Evan usually made weird and wonderful remarks to Art, encouraged or not, but this one was so unlike him, so completely random that Art remembered having to search Evan’s eyes for any secrets he may have stumbled across, secrets that Art wanted no one to know, to cause him to say something so odd. It seemed innocent enough with hindsight at least. Art realized it must have been about midday several hours earlier when the sky was a little clearer, though the sun was still behind a cloud providing shade for the pair while they were out picking out fruit from the market place.

    “Hey,” Art said looking up, expression slightly dazed. “I have a question for you.”

    “What?” Evan looked back at Art, stopping his aimless walk around the market.

    “Well, you know a lot of useless information,” Art smiled and carried on speaking, “why is it that people always use the full moon at night in stories for dark magic and stuff like that?” The question came to mind as a passing thought when Art noticed the shadow of the full moon that can be seen during the day becoming visible through the clouds. “I mean the moon is there during the day, you can see it if you look hard enough.”

    “I’m not sure” Evan relied plainly now staring at the apples with a bored expression before turning back to Art, “I think it goes back to Pagan stuff where the sun would stop the evil coming out because the light is all holy and crap.” He waves his own theory off, clearly showing that he believed nothing of the sun being holy himself. He picked up an apple and inspected it for bruises. “Or it could just be that the moon is a mirror that you can’t see well enough during the day.”

    “A mirror? What the hell are you on about now?”

    “The moon is a mirror. It shows everyone’s inner self” he said looking up at Art, quickly adding “supposedly.”

    The sudden snap of a twig brought Art out of his day dream and back into the woods startled, looking around to figure out where he has walked so absent mindedly. Most other people would by this point be hopelessly lost, as it isn’t common practice to walk around in the woods when the town outside has so much to offer, but Art was apart of the minority of people who frequently enjoyed walking though such places to clear his head, so much so that he made it a priority to at least once every month, and as a result had a pretty good idea of where he was and how far he had travelled. He was a good distance away from the town but still not quite at his destination, thankful at least that his feet took him in the right direction while he was on autopilot. Checking his bearings twice over in his head to be sure of where he was he began to walk on again, this time at a brisker pace than the relaxed one he took before.

    By the time Art emerged from the other side of the woods it was almost dark, the sun disappearing over the edge of the horizon. In front of him laid out was an open field, stretching on for miles ahead reaching as far as the eye could see. Nothing but the encompassing trees broke the vast shades of luscious greens which the grass grew in apart from at the end which you could see, if you looked hard enough, the beginning of a small lake hidden by the trees cutting everything off from the surrounding regions.

    Art wasn’t the type of person to enjoy solitude, rather he hated it. It was something he had learnt to deal with over the years. After moving in he found this spot rather quickly where he always watched the sun go down. In those brief moments he thought about everything and anything, while he still could. Taking off his backpack and laying it beside a tree trunk, he stood up straight and watched the last few dregs of sunlight disappear and finally let the darkness settle in, turning the sky a brilliant indigo blue.

    The moon is a mirror. It shows everyone’s inner self. Supposedly.

    It started out with a pins and needles feeling in the palm of Art’s hands and the middle of his feet, the speed of the feeling spreading though his limbs depending on whether or not this was the first or second time that Art experienced the sensations nearing the full moon. This time he left it three days, managing to subdue himself up until this point but now falling victim to the powerful twinges moving up his arms and legs, starting to burn in his chest. Art stumbled forward onto his knees and doubled over in pain groaning, shutting his eyes wishing for it all to be over. But it wasn’t over – it had barely begun.

    The tingling started to throb as every part of him hurt, his fingers first starting to twitch in pain. He clenched his fists, trying to deal with the agony, fists shaking, when his fingernails suddenly sprung out into points, lodging themselves into Art’s fleshy palms. He cried out and immediately opened his hands ripping them apart staring down at the many holes made in his now bloody claws. His hands trembled more uncontrollably with a stab of pain sprouting through his arms without warning, moving up into his head. Art’s eyes flew open and rolled back in an instant, the whites of his eyes glistening now that the moon shimmered brightly in the night sky.

    Art’s screams started to cease as the beast within took over blanking out his human side. His bones were popping and clicking now all at once, cracking apart, shifting from human to canine rapidly following the bloody and grotesque example set by his hands.

    Art found that if he tried, really tried, to resist at this point he could keep his mind alert up to the point of his ligaments and muscles ripping themselves away from the bones getting ready to reattach themselves in the correct places. It was the pain in his chest which delivered the final blow. He always assumed that his brain simply went into shock from the strain, or if he held on any longer it would surely kill him. Since then, he decided to let the sensation take over him completely, thinking that the sooner he blanked out the memory the higher the chance he would wake up again.

    The face was always the last to change. Art’s bottom jaw cracked, dislocating itself and stretching forwards with a will of its own, displaying the fangs for anyone to see. The top lip also elongated with his nose squishing down into his face, as if being pushed back. Art’s eye sockets pulled down around his broken nose in a dog-like fashion. The flesh around it started to darken, turning from soft to hard and eventually black at the tip with a shining leathery exterior. His ears, with the aesthetic differences between human’s and wolves, started to peel away from his skull while his ear drums closed themselves off, leaving him death for a matter of seconds as they re-grew, as if cascading up to the top of his head where they would appear again quickly to make up for the loss.

    The crunching and clicking stopped, and in its place was heavy panting. Fur sprouted from every part of him, a brilliant white-grey to match the former boy’s hair colour. The moon that night, as it did every full moon, acted indeed like a mirror, as the beams it omitted left Art’s wolf-like form with an air of radiance and, if anything so deadly could be described as such, beautiful.

    He imagined he would roam the forest and the fields, drinking from the lake on the horizon or hunting for prey which we would never find. He didn’t know, he could never recall the events which passed while embracing his curse. He always assumed that he never killed; he never found any blood, or poor unfortunate victims lying beside him when he woke.

    That was the thing he always found peculiar. It was all like I dream. When the morning came, Art was laying on his back – human and naked – amidst the sweet smelling grass. For a moment, he felt something which made the hold experience, in his mind, at least bearable. As he blinked the sleep out of his eyes he felt so content, so at peace with everything, that it was as if he had died from the strain and the stress. He smiled in his euphoric state, stretching out lazily running his fingers through the grass. As his mind started to collect itself and come back into reality, the feeling faded, and the realization that he was out exposed in an open field sunk in. He had done this a few times now, but every time the feeling of embarrassment and shame came prickling up his neck and down, burning in his chest.

    Art stood up, brushing any leaves or grass off himself. He was damp, possibly from any rain that had fallen during the night, his cropped messy fringe glued to his forehead in strands. He looked around, trying to picture where he was and headed back to where he had left his backpack with his spare pair of clothes inside. The weather this morning was grey and dismal with remnants of fog lingering, causing a chill in the air. Art just knew he would get sick from walking around like this in such conditions but there wasn’t really too much of another choice.

    When he found his belongings he pulled out his clothes and got dressed, straightening out his hair, and looked back at the field. He felt as if in the time here was there he had defiled it somehow. The picturesque view of the open field the lake and the trees always seemed less striking in the morning he thought, as opposed to rather stunning in the late evening when he arrived. But he knew this was silly to think. He turned around and walked away, back home, already thinking about the next time in which he would look upon the field again.