Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #34: Werewolves Again: "The Girlfriend"

 

Lon Chaney, Jr., as the Wolfman

Writers are like anyone else. They can get on a "kick" and they can get stuck on a theme. I had written the story "Wolf Moon," a science fiction story about werewolves marooned on a planet who manage to get free (see Dave's Anatomy #32). And werewolves were on my mind. I would not say I got obsessed or was on a kick. But the theme of werewolves is fascinating. Once, while watching an old movie on TV where Lon Chaney, Jr., is undergoing the transformation to his wolf-self, an aunt of mine, who, as far as I knew, was no great fan of horror, and happened to walk in and see that little segment of the movie. She told me, "I always feel sorry for the Wolfman. He doesn’t want it [the transformation] to happen, but then it does and he can't stop it." Maybe that's the essence of why we find werewolves fascinating (I would say this applies to vampires too). Something happens you did not ask for and cannot control. You fight against it, you take precautions against it, but eventually it gets the better of you. Kind of like life, right? But werewolves bring in the horror element.

In the story, "The Girlfriend," boy meets girl. So far so good. Sabrina plays violin for the city symphonic orchestra. She meets Wayne and likes him, they begin to date and develop an intimate relationship. Everything about him checks out—except for a few anomalous matters. Once a month, usually around the time of the full moon, he is unavailable. Wayne works for a prosperous firm that designs and builds various kinds of structures. Sabrina can see how he might travel a lot, though sometimes his absences are disappointing.

Sabrina is chosen to play the solo parts in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D, a difficult piece that, if she executes it well, will advance her career. She practices diligently but Wayne says he has to go to Europe when the concert is scheduled. She asks if he can negotiate the trip because she wants him to be there to see her perform. He insists he has to go and apologizes. Sabrina performs a flawless and powerful concert. Her friends throw a party for her, but her happiness is dampened by the fact that Wayne could not be there. She reconciles her feelings. After all, he has a good job and it makes demands on him. But when he meets one of Wayne's friends from work, she finds out he was lying. The friend tells her he was at work all week long. He did not go to Zurich.

Sabrina is angry, to say the least. The following exchange takes place:

“Why did you lie to me, goddamn it?” I hissed at him, my face red. “Tell me the truth.”

When he did not reply I added, “Are you seeing someone else?”

            “If you’ll come over tonight I’ll try to explain.”

“Explain? Explain what? Maybe you can call up your other girlfriend. Hell, we’ll have a ménage a trios.”

            He put up his hands, looked side to side, and spoke.

            “There was a reason I lied to you.”

            “It had better be a damned good one.”

            “It is. Come over tonight and you’ll find out all about it.”

            “I don’t know, Wayne. I’m not sure I want to hear your fucking explanation.”

            “If you don’t, don’t come. But I want to explain it to you, Sabrina.”

Sabrina struggles with it and then decides to go. When she get to his house, his sister, Constance, meets her. Wayne is nowhere to be seen. Constance takes Sabrina downstairs. She suddenly finds herself enclosed in a small glass booth. A glass wall separates it from an old basement that has been redone, the windows sealed, all the furniture removed. Sabrina is suddenly seized with terror, thinking the two of them are psychopaths who lure women into a soundproof area and then . . . well, who knows what? Constance assures her this is not the case.

Sabrina sees Wayne. He stands on the other side of the glass, turns and opens the window shade to the full moon, and begins the painful transformation to a werewolf. She does not believe in werewolf legends and thinks they them "ignorant, superstitious myth from barbaric eras in human history." Experience teaches her how wrong she has been.

A technique in writing effective horror is to make the supernatural real. In the old movies, Lawrence Talbot (the old werewolf) and Tony Rivers (the teenage werewolf) always manage to keep some clothes on for the sake of modesty. But this is unrealistic, and the transformed Wayne rips his garments to shreds. Sabrina is terrified but tells Constance she wants to watch. She does not want to leave him. She manages to endure seeing him in his animal form.

Afterwards, Constance tells how her brother became a werewolf. Constance falls asleep as Sabrina contemplates where their relationship will go. Would she be willing to help Wayne through a dysfunctionality she had not imagined really existed? She thinks she will. The story ends with her contemplating the difficulties she will face.

This story was published in Lightning Flash--now defunct, no archive. 

For information on the books I've written, check out my Writer's Page. 

For a great Christmas stocking stuffer (for adult stockings), get a copy of ShadowCity. In a dark world, the light within you is all you have. 

I would love to see your comments.

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #31: "Wolf Moon," Writing About Werewolves

If you write paranormal fiction, you will eventually deal with werewolves. Some really high-up people wrote about them. Rudyard Kipling had a story called "The Mark of the Beast," where a British guy defiles a Hindu temple and turns into a werewolf; but the other British guys torture the priest and he turns the guy back to a human. Great colonial story! Frank Norris, a socialist writer from the turn of the century wrote a story called Vandover and the Brute, about a businessman who periodically turns into a werewolf. So some major players in the world of literature took the genre on.

For me, it was movies starring Lon Chaney:  The Wolfman, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, Abbot and Costello Meet the Monsters. Later came The Howling and, of course, that classic, An American Werewolf in London. Maybe the best one of them all was the 1957 film, I Was a Teenage Werewolf starring Michael Landon. I had never tried to write anything but then the idea for a mixed genre story came to mind and I started composing "Wolf Moon."

Michael Landon as a teenage werewolf

Werewolves, like vampires, are tormented by what has happened to them. They don’t' want to be caught up in a life that turns them into a monster, but they don't know how to get out of the situation. So they are lost, tormented souls who are very nice guys sometimes, but when the full moon emerges, watch out. There's a scene in Abbot and Costello Meet the Monsters where Bud is tied up by Dracula. Lawrence Tabot shows up to rescue him, but just then the full moon comes out from behind a cloud and he transforms scene. Bud is okay and at the end of the film Talbot the wolfman plunges into a lake after getting his vengeful hands on Dracula, who has just transformed to a bat.

"Wolf Moon" is the story of a group of alien slavers who capture some Terrans living on a remote planet. The captain of the ship is a little puzzled over them. They are the only humanoid inhabitants of the planet. They live in small houses and have modern accommodations but no communication equipment and supplies that look like they have been dropped off by a government or other agency. There are many more men than women.

The crew of the ship wants a woman and he gives them one. They plan to take her to a house on the planet they have landed on to refuel. The full moon on the wintry world makes the night bright, but the minute the crew of three drags the woman outside, she rips them apart and disappears into the frigid landscape.

The planet is part of the Italian League. In my sci-fi universe, there are still nation states on Earth and some of them maintain colonies. Italy is one of these. The Italians tell the slavers they need to leave at once, threaten to kill them if they won't and tell them the Terrans are werewolves. The captain doesn't understand the word, though he recognizes the word "wolf" in the compound. When he comes back on board, the other Terrans have escaped. They send him out to find the woman, saying they can't go out in the moonlight themselves. When he asks if this is a religious restriction they laugh at him. He finds the woman in a cave. She attacks him and tackles and scratches him before he is able to stun her with a blaster.

He wraps the naked woman in his coat and carries her back to the ship, wondering how she has survived the cold and wondering why, when he first saw her, she looked like a bear or some other upright-standing animal. The other Terrans care for her. Their leader tells him he will be required to take them back to their home planet. They also notice a scratch on his neck.

The captain is a Housali, a race with blue skin. The physician among them wondered if he will transform, but their leader reminds her that some of their numbers are not Terrans but come from other planets. She wonders if he'll have blue fur and starts to clean his wound. The ship is sealed up so no moonlight can get inside, but the Housali feels a wild stirring in his blood—something savage he had never felt before. He knows it lies outside, waiting for him, something frightening but also oddly appealing.

The journal in which this story was published is defunct. It does not have an archive. I've been marketing it to other journals, but with no success so far. 

A scary non-werewolf tale, Le Cafe de la Mort, 

is available from Amazon. 

 See more titles on my Writer's Page.

I would love to hear your comments!

What's your favorite werewolf movie?

Where did the legend originate?

Werewolf is from Anglo-Saxon, but the legend goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. 

Revision note!  A journal called Grey Matter will be printing "Wolf Moon" in the near future.