Super Moon

Word count: Approx. 1,200
Notes/Warnings: mentions of drug use.
Summary: Written for the prompt(s): I heard something on the radio about a super moon but I never expected to see. . . .

Liz and I were on her parents’ back deck in the suburbs of Lenape Landing, stoned off our asses, and talking and staring up at the sky. This was the night of the super moon, which I’d been hearing about on the radio, and it was indeed huge. So huge, it seemed like I could reach out and touch it with my nerveless, tingling fingers.

“Hey, Charlie . . . Earth to Charlie. . . . “

It took Liz a few times to get my attention, and when I looked over at her, she seemed unusually agitated. I frowned. “Whazzup, playa?”

She rolled her eyes and whapped my arm. “Where’d you go, just now?”

“To the moon, Alice!” I grinned. “To the super moon.”

Liz snorted and rolled her eyes again. “Eh, it ain’t so super.”

“Is, too.”

“Is not.”

“Too.”

“Not.”

“Yuh-huh.”

“Nuh-uh.”

I blew her a raspberry and she flopped back on her deck chair, crossing her arms. “If it’s so super, where’s its cape?”

I opened my mouth to respond then shut it. She had me there. But one thing she couldn’t deny was: “Still, it’s really pretty.”

“All moons are pretty, Chuck.”

“Not as pretty as this one.”

“Ever see a blue moon? Or a harvest moon?”

I gave it a few seconds of thought then shook my head. “Dunno. What do they look like?”

“Well, a blue moon appears to be blue, hence the name. While a harvest moon. . . .” Liz trailed off, frowning. Then she started scratching at her arms hard, furiously, rolling her shoulders and shuddering.

“Dude.” I shuddered. “Quit it. You look like a junkie.”

But instead of stopping, Liz began scratching her tank-topped torso and mostly bare legs, too, just as furiously, leaving red welts that showed up even on her dark skin. I felt a tickle of unease and worry. “What’re you doing?”

“Charlie, I—” Liz keened suddenly, loud and long, and it turned into a long, low groan. She rolled into sitting position, swinging her welted legs over the side of the deck chair and trying to push herself to her feet. She almost made it then sat back down with a grunt and a whine. “Charlie . . . have to . . . get inside . . . help me. . . .”

“What? What’s wrong?” I asked, genuinely worried now and already standing up to do as she asked. “Gonna puke, or something? I swear, if Kevin laced this shit with something—”

“No, it’s not the weed, I—” Liz looked up at me when she took my hand. As I pulled her to her feet, I noticed something: her eyes, normally a brown so dark it was black, had turned a baleful, wild yellow.

“Jesus, Liz, your eyes—”

“Get me inside,” Liz commanded in a voice gone two octaves deeper than her already low voice.

Starting to freak out, now—buzz completely gone—I nodded and noticed something else: her palm was warm and damp, and the muscles of it seemed to be twitching and writhing against my own.

“Your hand is—is—” I began as she staggered on wobbly legs toward the glass doors that lead into her parents’ house. We managed a few feet before she collapsed. I barely caught her before she hit the ground. Without thinking, I scooped her up—it must’ve been fear of what was happening to her that gave me the strength, because she isn’t particularly light and I’m not particularly strong—and carried her back to the chair. I sat her down and she moaned again, her eyes closed.

“I’m calling 9-1-1,” I said finally, digging my phone out of my pocket. I had just hit the emergency dialer button and was about to hit send when Liz opened her yellow eyes. They were pained and panicked, and she said: “No.”

“But there’s something really, really wrong with you, Lizzie!” I said, panic raising my voice two octaves. “We have to—”

“I’m not sick . . . Charlie. I . . . changing,” Liz gasped out and every muscle in her face . . . shifted. Moved. Seemed to writhe under her grey-brown skin. “Changing.”

“No shit!” I exclaimed, backing away from her, finger still poised over the send button. “Your face is—”

“Charles.” Liz slumped in the chair and her voice was still unusually deep. “I know . . . it looks weird . . . and scary—ah!” She doubled over in the chair then fell out of it, onto her knees. Suddenly there were loud cracking sounds . . . like bones breaking. I winced and kept backing away.

Because I’d seen enough movies, good and bad, where something eerily similar happened, and I was putting the pieces together: muscles writhing, eyes turning a different color, bones breaking and . . . reshaping. . . .

My best friend was turning into a—a—

“Werewolf,” I breathed, dropping my phone in shock. And Liz groaned, nodding her now misshapen head.

“Parents . . . werewolves,” she husked out, her words garbled and mangled by a maw full of long, sharp fangs. “Thought . . . I was a . . . Latent. That I’d . . . never change. Didn’t happen during puberty . . . thought it . . . never would.”

She hung her head and arched her already curved spine, causing muscles to creak audibly and bones to make awful splintering sounds. I started backing away again and Liz threw up a shaking, shifting arm.

“Please, Charlie,” she begged, tears rolling down her warped face. The normally round, cute, girl-next-door features had been rendered long and pronounced. “Don’t . . . don’t leave me . . . alone. . . .”

And the fear in her voice—my usually fearless best friend’s voice—stopped me cold.

Whatever else she was, she was my best friend. And she was scared and in agony.

Swallowing my own fear, I forced myself to take a step forward. Toward her.

“What can I do?” I asked.

But Liz, now beyond words—beyond anything—merely shook her head then hung it. She started scratching at herself again, whining and moaning, and occasionally glancing up at the super moon with terror. In turn, it shone down on her, on us with complete and utter indifference to our situation.

“I’m here,” I repeated calmly enough, despite my shaking voice, moving closer and closer to her, till I could smell a scent, musky, but sharp. Pungent. Like wet dog and blood.

Till I was close enough to notice how pronounced the changes were becoming, and how loud the crack and creak of bone and muscle was.

And sooner, rather than later, right before my incredulous eyes, there stood before me, among the tattered remains of Liz’s clothes, a large brown wolf, whining to itself and growling as it stretched a long, solid body. It was easily the biggest wolf I’d ever seen—not that I’ve seen many.

“L-Liz?” I asked tentatively, and it looked up at me, ears swiveling forward, yellow eyes uncanny and intelligent. I swallowed. “Are—are you, um, okay?”

The wolf blinked at me then snarled, its body coiling like a spring.

It leapt.

END