A Canadian Werewolf in New York

Chapter One

THIS time I woke to find myself sprawled naked in the grass, my shoulder nestled in a shrub and the coppery aftertaste of blood in my mouth.  It was a cool morning, but humid, the unmistakable scent of the Hudson River hanging in the air.

     I pulled my aching body into a sitting position and checked it over for injuries.  Apart from the usual scrapes and scratches there was a nasty looking wound on my thigh.  It hurt no more than a bad bruise, but it looked like a bullet hole.  I ran my hand down the leg and stuck my finger inside.  Yes, indeed, it was a bullet hole, the slug nestled just about an inch deep.

     At least the bullet wasn’t silver -- now that I would have felt.

     Okay, so to sum up my situation, there was a distinct taste of blood in my mouth -– human blood -- and a bullet wound in my leg.

     What the hell have I done this time?

     I took a look around me.  The park I was in was on the Hudson; that I could tell from the scent of the water.  The early morning mist revealed beautiful Lady Liberty to me in teasing glimpses, and, in the distance I could hear the distinct patter of a pack of joggers heading away from me.  Okay, so this was Battery Park.  I was on the south western tip of Manhattan Island.  And since I was currently a guest at the Algonquin Hotel in Mid-Town, getting three quarters of the way across this island, bare naked was going to be one hell of a chore.

     Uncovering the mystery of what exactly I’d been up to during last night’s full moon, would, of course, be another.

     But I was a mystery writer after all; and was usually able to piece it all together upon examination of the evidence.  My memories as a wolf were scattered and non-linear snatches of smells, sounds, tastes, feelings and sights, not often available to my human conscious mind.  Trying to piece them together in my conscious mind often gave me a migraine.  I’d always thought that perhaps that was how I’d preserved my sanity.

     Unfortunately, with my growing popularity as a mystery writer, it was becoming easier for people to recognize me -- at least in human form, that is.  Finding a picture of myself scampering about the city butt naked on the cover of the tabloids was not a pleasant thought.

     Was it time to move out of New York?

     No, after all, growing up, reading the Spider-Man comic books, I’d always wanted to live here.  So I was living my childhood dream.  In my dreams, though, I’d been the wall-crawler, swinging around the city rooftops and nabbing the bad guys -- I’d never dreamed that I would be one of the monsters that Spider-Man often faced down, like that astronaut who, wearing a moon rock on a chain around his neck was afflicted with the curse of the werewolf -- something to do with wolves and the moon, I guess.  But other than the concept of a full moon and werewolves, it never made sense to me.  After all, everyone knows that being bitten by a werewolf is the way that a person becomes inflicted with the curse.

     For me, it was a chance encounter with a wolf on a camping/hitchhiking trip through Upstate New York that led to my lycanthropic affliction.

     The wolf had leapt from the bushes at the side of the highway just as a car came around the distant bend.  With a failed attempt to abort the attack in mid-leap, its teeth nipped at my upraised right arm as it landed on me, the teeth barely sinking below the surface of my flesh.  I fell back onto the road with the weight of the wolf hitting me on the chest, and the wolf quickly bounced off me and across the highway, rather than tear out my throat in one single gesture.  I’d later learned that wolves do not kill for sport, but for food and for territory.  I must have been an attempt at food that night, because if the goal had been to just kill me, it would have been over.  The goal to consume me wasn’t something the wolf could do with the car approaching, so it simply aborted the attack and ran -- likely on to find a bird, rabbit or squirrel.