Bite

         The dog is barking again.

         I lay awake, close to midnight.  I want to sleep.  I wanted to sleep last night and the night before.  I have a lecture in the morning.  The dog has kept me awake every night for a week with his ceaseless noise.  Whose dog is it, and why does he let it bark like this every night?

         Something must be agitating the dog.

         I roll over to lay on my right side, putting my back to my bedroom window, hoping to shield myself from some of the noise.  Take a deep breath.  The dog’s barking fades slightly, as though the dog were getting farther away—or as though my mind were drifting from its body’s point in space.  I’m tired.  I wish I were asleep.  With the sound fading outside, I find my mind relaxing and coursing through memories and possibilities.

         My lecture tomorrow.  I haven’t read the assigned chapters from the textbook.  What had the professor said in the last lecture?  Oh, yes.  I remember.

         “Man believes what he wants to believe,” he had stated.  “Man creates explanations for what he does not understand.  So man creates superstitions.”  He grins hardly to himself.  “Also known as religion.  Religion is biased towards culture.  Culture is built upon environment.”

         I remember the look on the professor’s face as he paused dramatically, his glasses resting low on his pointed nose, and his sharp, beady eyes peering fiercely from student to student in the lecture hall.  He is a short man, with long, gray, matted hair.  His self-image is swollen with superiority and awareness of intellect.  He is cold and knowledgeable.  He closes the large textbook in his hands and takes off his glasses.

         “There is no God,” he states.  He walks slowly from one side of his stage to the other.  Never dropping his eyes from the students, hoping that someone will dare to refute his statement.  “There are no gods.  There is only the environment.  And there is man.  There is man who desperately wants to believe that he is special.  That his existence means something.”  He pauses again for dramatic effect.  No one refutes.  He grins again and holds up his textbook above his head.  “And the same men who wrote of God a thousand years ago wrote also of werewolves and vampires.  Are there any here who, by chance, believe in vampires or werewolves?  Or… God, for that matter?”

         I want to say something, but I don’t.  I know I don’t have the intellect to argue with him.  To me it is not so difficult to believe in something simply because academia doesn’t understand it.  To me, there must be other ways of gaining knowledge.

The professor opens his book again.  It’s the class text, Myths and Legends of Medieval Europe.  Replacing his glasses on the tip of his nose, he says, “Your assigned reading will be chapters thirteen through seventeen.  On Thursday we will be discussing the roots of legendary monsters in the human psyche….”

         The dog resumes its barking once again, and I am dragged miserably out of my half-sleep.  I breathe deeply and sigh loudly.  I get up and go over to the window.  As I approach my window, the barking becomes louder and wilder.  With two fingers I part the blinds to peer into the dim shadows beyond the street lamp’s incandescence.

         I wonder what the dog could possibly be barking at.  A raccoon?  Maybe a cat?  From my vantage point I can vaguely make out the neighbors’ backyard a few houses down, where the dog jumps up and down, barking madly.  The dog is facing my direction.  There must be something in between the dog and myself that is causing the agitation.

         Tonight, I think, is the night to find out what this barking is about.  I put on some old basketball shorts and a t-shirt and stuff my feet into a pair of sneakers.  Soon I am outside, surprised at how refreshing it is to breathe the cool night air.  I look up at the sky and see the bright, pale moon.  It’s almost full tonight.  It must be later than I thought; the moon is already low in the southwest sky, small and distant.

         Now I turn my attention to the dog.  It hasn’t ceased to bark wildly since I first went to my window.  I move as quickly as I dare, while still trying to maintain an air of casualness, in case there are any onlookers wondering at the dog’s noise.

         I draw closer to the dog, but as I do, a strange feeling overwhelms me.  It’s carnal, primal, and fierce.  It wants to take over, it wants to dominate my will, and yet it is my will…  It’s within me, and yet it’s before me.  I can’t see it, but I’m drawn closer to the dog behind the fence, barking as though it had gone insane with terror and ferocity.  A strange conviction washes over me and at once I am certain that the dog is—and has been—barking at me.  A shadow passes over my vision blocking the moon’s pale gleam.  I can’t see anything, but I can feel….

         Sharp pain is diving deep into my flesh, just where my neck joins my shoulder.  It’s searing, maddening.  I want to scream, but I can’t make a sound.  I want to pull free of its awful grasp, but I’m stuck.  My blood is warm; it’s rushing down my chest.

         I lay on the ground, conscience ebbing, instinct seeping into all my senses.  I hunger.  I thirst.  I lust.

         I run.

         I run faster than I’ve ever run.  Past houses and cars and down alleys and lanes.  I’m in a forest.  Trees fly past.  I see the sky’s pale glow.  Shadows part before me.  The moon is incessant, feral, and penetrating.  Like me.  I feel life stirring and fleeing before my presence.  I do not fear.  I have no pain.

I am fear.

         The smell of living blood pervades my senses.  There is a large squirrel ahead of me.  It’s fast, but I am faster.  I feed.



         The professor stands at the front of the class.  He begins his lecture weakly (I’ve never noticed how weak he is!), using frail intellectual phrases that lack substance.  Ideas hanging on logic and reason, without any real understanding.  For the first time I realize that the professor knows nothing.

         I can’t take it any more.  I walk down the aisle towards his podium.  He watches me with uneasiness in his eyes.  As I get closer, I can smell the fear.  He doesn’t know what I’m about to do.

         And how could he?  How could he have known I was going to grab him by the shoulder and by the top of his head, pulling it back to reveal his vulnerable, scrawny neck?  And how could he have had any idea the intense pain that would overcome him as I sink my razor-sharp fangs into his soft, warm flesh, releasing the carnal blood in his veins, sending it flooding down his chest?

         He struggles.  He wants to scream, but he’s overcome with shock, as I was last night.  He’s paralyzed.  The other students watch in horror, unable to believe what’s happening.

         I resist an urge to devour him wholly and I pull myself away quickly.  He staggers and falls to the floor, his eyes gaping wide at me, his mouth a silent scream.  I turn and run out the door and away from campus as quickly as I can.



         I am laying awake in bed again.  I think about the events of the last twenty-four hours.  I do not know where the Beast came from, or how it became a part of me.  Maybe it always was a part of me.  I do not know.  Perhaps in time I will learn.

The dog is barking.  So loudly.  So frantically.  Smart dog.  It knows.  It always knew.  I wonder what it will do when I go to visit it tonight, to silence its barking for good.

I will go running tonight.  I wonder if I will meet the professor in the woods. I wonder what he will have to say now.