Into the Night

Ash and the Angel

Ash lay before him with his lover hanging limply in his arms. He was alive, but barely. When on trial, it's often necessary for the one on trial to give in his words a summation of the events. It's necessary to hear the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

With blood on his hands, he spoke with more sincerity than the past few decades allowed.

"Werewolves aren't created by a bite or a ritual, we're born just like humans. As such we have parents and we're inoculated to their beliefs early on. All higher level creatures have to accept the fact you're heavily influenced by your parents. However in conjunction with that, as a werewolf there's this isolation imprinted on us. While you look human, you are not and you're constantly reminded of that. You live by your pack and die by it. It's all you have, and you're told that everyday.

If you're lucky, the curse skips you and you become a caretaker, family assigned with dealing with us when we shift during the full moon. They make sure we're caged and that we're supplied with enough meat to tide us over. Life for them is fairly uncomplicated and they marry whoever they want and lie about their occupation.

However if you're not so lucky, if you're like us, you find yourself raised in the Church of Lycan-Arns. Our closest religious comparison would have been the Westboro Baptist Church, except we oppressed our own kind and deemed all humans, even the worst of criminals, superior to us by default.

At the head of the church was Joseph Arns, a charismatic patriarch of a small east coast pack. He claimed to receive visions from the angels, that they begged him to rid the world of the curse he was plagued with. That the world was becoming more and more corrupted with the presence of monsters, specifically werefolk since we compose over half of the monster population.

At the time there was this unspoken self-hatred amongst our kind. We hid and lived savage lives. Due to that, building a flock was next to effortless for him. Before he could grasp the amount of influence he garnered he was at the helm of a religious movement, with blindly devout followers such as my mother and father.

We weren't only separated from the world of humans, we were cut off from other werewolves. They were considered impure, holding their curse with pride instead of as a burden. Not only that, we were taught that we are abominations, but through prayer our curse would be lifted. That we could see the same heaven as humans.

These weren't your average prayers. They'd take about a week and we'd recite them day and night. Until you couldn't stand any longer. It was in a language unknown to all but the church itself and its appointed lycan-saints. Knowledge was their power and we were too trusting.

The saints, however, had it the worst.

At an early age they're chosen and promptly separated from the rest of us. It's to keep them from being tainted by us. Then they proceed to undergo an unending regiment of intense prayer. They're cloaked in silence with only their own voice to keep them company. Neither their prior friends or family are allowed to see them once they're chosen. Not that they mind, they're too honored to have been involved in the process.

Only Joseph Arns and his bodyguards have any contact with them.

They'd pray for us all day, asking God to lift the curse. And from our perspective, God seemed to listen. There were years when we wouldn't turn during the full moon. That only reinforced our beliefs and made us feel special, on the path to finding a cure.

Like anyone raised in a cult, I believed with all of my heart. It filled my soul to have a purpose in life and to know that I was doing god's work. Doing so by burning down other pack's house, raiding their farms, and destroying their property.