They
were going to kill me. They were going to hunt me down and pull out all my
innards. That's what grandpa said. But grandpa was like that. Kinda blunt and
always to the point. Well, a point he wanted to make. Other times he was pretty
vague. He had been a big influence on me when I was careening into my teenage
years.
He
wasn't really my grandpa, though. He was just some old man who had lived down
the road but he had been a wolf shifter too, just like me, and he told me that
was what they did to shifters without a pack. They killed them. I didn't have a
pack. But it wasn’t my fault. It wasn't like I was kicked out or chose to go it
alone or anything. My parents adopted me and I never really even knew I was a shifter until I was twelve. And
until the old man told me, I never knew I was supposed to even have a pack.
But
man, shifting? I thought I was going crazy that summer. I know I was acting a
little weird too because I heard Mom whisper to one of her friends I was going
through some major hormones. Yeah, right! Fuck! “Horror-mones,” more like. That first
time I shifted totally through me for a loop. I ran as far into the woods as I
could get, thanking God we actually lived in the country at the time, following
some crazy need to be as far away from people as I could get. And I shifted. I
had no clue what was happening to me, my body contorting and changing. It
didn’t exactly hurt or anything, it just felt incredibly strange, like…letting
loose, letting go. Once I was shifted
fully into my wolf form I felt free for the first time in my life. It felt so good! I ran for hours. I killed
for the first time too, a small rabbit. I
saw it and I chased it and I caught and killed it. I drank its
blood and then I ate it.
Then
I threw it up.
Fuck.
I
never killed again.
But
even so, I was kind of proud.
The shifting part? I didn't
understand it. But I loved it. I spent a lot of time in the woods that summer. I
think my mom thought I was probably "discovering myself" in a
far different way then I really was. No, I was learning how awesome it was to
simply run.
That was when I met the old
man.
He had just made a kill himself
and was muzzle deep when I ran right into him. I knocked him over and we both
rolled. He came up snarling and snapping, blood and goo hanging from his fangs.
Scared the hell out of me. I ran
so fucking fast I had burn marks on my face from the crap I must have plowed
through on my way out of the woods. I know he chased me but I ran far
faster.
No
one was as surprised as I was when later that same night he showed up, in human
form, at my front door. Oh, I knew immediately it was him. I could smell him. He
told me later he tracked me right to my house. He seemed to think I was stupid
or something to allow for that.
He
introduced himself to my mother, said he was a neighbor and simply decided to
"get to know us". Turned out he lived just down the road. He eyed me
a few times, almost feral-like, until my mother told me to get my ass into the
kitchen and introduce myself. Fuck, I was scared! I didn't know anyone
else could do what I could do and suddenly here was another human who was also
a wolf? How much fucking sense did that make?
Of
course, it didn't make any sense I could do it either, but two of us? It made it that much more believable that I wasn’t insane
and it may sound crazy but I wasn’t sure which was worse. Being insane and
hoping I would grow out of it someday or really
truly being able to turn into a wolf.
Being
twelve the world just shouldn’t be that complicated.
Mom
invited him to dinner a whole lot after that, said she felt sorry for him. Besides,
he told some pretty tall tales. She said he reminded her of her old man, my
real grandpa, who died before I was adopted, so I just sort a started calling the
old man ‘grandpa’. He never once corrected me.
And
he told me about being a shifter. Nope, we were not the only ones. There were
plenty of “us” out there. He told me all kinds of things, even about shifter
rules and shit. A lot of it I forgot, but some stuck with me, like the “they will kill you if you don’t have a pack”
thing. He said it was why he rarely shifted anymore. Seems other wolves can
smell you and track you. You have to be careful. Yeah. I get that now.
“But
why kill a wolf without a pack?” I asked once.
“Because
the alpha will look at a lone wolf as being competition for leadership. Alphas
are fucking crazy that way.”
“So
why wouldn’t they just make me a part of the pack?”
“Still
could be a threat.”
I
laughed. Yeah, me, a threat. I had been tiny back then. Even now, I stood all
of five foot six, weighed maybe hundred ten on a good day under my mop of
platinum hair and I’ve seen my wolf. Although
I think I am a very pretty color, one I don’t think is normal for a wolf, I’m
the same kind of “totally not impressive” there too. He asked me about it once,
my wolf’s color, right after we met.
“What
the fuck color are you, boy?”
“I…I
don’t know…white I guess.”
“White
my ass. Your…like a blue silver…or a black silver. Shimmery, like a ghost. I’ve
never seen that before.”
“Is
that…bad?’
“Probably.
Color like that’s intimidating. Alpha would probably kill you just because of
that.”
Fuck.
I wanted to ask more but I was already feeling anxious about the no pack thing,
already starting to look over my shoulder, vowing I would never shift again.
There
was other shit too, like the alpha made all the rules and everyone in the pack
had to submit. I was never any good at playing follow the leader. Pack
initiation was another nightmare and I do mean that, literally. They all get to
fuck you, he said. You come into a pack at the bottom rung and they all get to
fuck you.
Now,
I was only twelve, going on thirteen, but I had pretty much already figured out
I wasn’t into girls. I had a friend at school named Timmy and he and I hung out
a lot. We used to sit up in his room and whack off to pictures in a magazine
Timmy swiped from his old man’s bedroom; pictures of naked big titted women,
spreading their legs, looking kind of sleepy with their mouth’s all open and
shit. Timmy used to be all bug eyed turning those pages and rubbing himself
through his pants until he took his dick out. He would usually stop at the
centerfold and pull it out to full length. By that time, he was hard and
dripping.
“Oh
fuck, Trevor, isn’t that the most awesome sight?” That’s what he would say to
me. Every time. Then he would get real busy, moving his hand up and down his thick
dick, rubbing the shiny pre-cum over the tip and down the sides, just staring
at those pictures. I had to agree it really was an awesome sight, but it wasn’t
the picture I was looking at. No, I
got off on watching Timmy’s dick. I liked hearing Timmy’s moans as he got close
to spurting. I liked watching the way he would jerk his hips in time with his hard
and fast strokes. He would reach down and play with his balls too. I remembered
wondering what it would feel like if Timmy did that to me. Sometimes late at
night I would jack off imagining it was Timmy’s hands on me instead of my own.
Nope,
girls didn’t do it for me. Not that Timmy did either, it was just that I liked
looking at dicks.
But
even so, I wasn’t too keen on having a whole pack fucking me and to tell you
the truth, I didn’t know at that time how they could. I was a guy. There was
nowhere to stick it, is what I thought. I mean, those magazines were somewhat
explicit and were pretty much the extent of my sex education. Girls had a hole.
I still had no idea how any of it would fit and I wasn’t all that convinced I
would want to be putting my cock up inside anyone like that anyway.
But
then at twelve, going on thirteen, the horror-moans were just kicking in so not
a lot of things really ever did make much sense. Still scared the crap out of
me.
“So
gramps, did you ever belong to a pack?”
“Yep,”
he said, “once.” I remembered he smiled a kind of bitter smile. But he wouldn’t
talk about it. Something of course had to have happened to him. Maybe it was
the “whole pack fucking you” thing. All he said was that was why he was living
in “Middle of Fuck, Minnesota”. There were no packs out here, or at least, none
he had ever run across and he had been there since, well, even he couldn’t recall.
Said
he was older than dirt.
I
believed him.
In
fact, I believed everything he told me.
But
life cracks you upside the head from time to time and I seemed to be a favorite
target. The old man got real sick one day and he died. One day he was there and
the next he was lying in a wood box looking pale and…wrong.
He
smelled funny too.
Smelled
off.
He
didn’t have much family, just a man who suddenly showed up who claimed to be a
cousin by marriage. Seemed the old man’s long dead wife was the sister to his
mom or some stupid shit like that. All I knew was that fucker didn’t smell
right either.
After
the funeral he said he wanted to get into the house grandpa lived in. I didn’t
like his attitude but since he was family – sort of – I showed him where
grandpa had lived. He was all business like, going through the old man’s stuff
like he was searching for something, but treating everything like it was trash.
“What
are you looking for?” I asked finally.
“Nothing.”
Yeah,
right.
He
searched through drawers and closets; he lifted the mattress off the bed. He
even checked the floor boards by stomping his feet all over them. I think he
was trying to figure out if they were loose or not. Yep, he was searching for
nothing. My instant distrust of the guy was dead on.
When
he happened across the box that had my name on it he first shook it and when it
made no noise he tried to open it.
“Hey!”
I said. “That has my name on it. Grandpa
wanted to give me that.”
He
harrumphed and only brought it closer to his beady eyes to figure out how to
open it. I reached for it but he batted my hands away. I had no idea what was
inside the box but I sure as hell didn’t want this asshole to see it. But he
managed to unlatch it and open it anyway. “Huh. Empty,” he announced. He closed
it, smirked at me, then latched it again. He threw it at me. “You can have it.
It’s worthless.”
Somehow,
I caught it, fearing it could break if it hit the floor. I looked at the
opening mechanism and realized the idiot had not only latched it, he had locked
it as well. “Hey! You jerk! You locked it! Now I can’t get it back open.”
He
glared at me with a scowl which made the wolf in me cower. I almost whimpered. Fuck,
that would have been embarrassing. But he seemed to lose interest in me at that
point. Then, after making a total mess of grandpa’s house, he left. Empty
handed.
The
County came in and went through grandpa’s stuff too. They had a little more
respect for it but not much. There was an auction mom refused to let me go to
and after the house was empty, they locked it up and a “for sale” sign went up
on the ill kept front lawn.
I
cried all night.
Then,
the next night, I broke in.
