Between Wolves and Leeches

Chapter 2: Rude Awakening

I was running around the park, it was the same park next to work but somehow different, or maybe from the past? or rather another reality or I don't know - parallel dimension?

In this fairy-tale magical garden, I was a wolf and I was happily running and rolling in the grass with the other wolf, who, as often happens in dreams, I simply knew was my mom. I was so happy. My mom (even though she was a wolf like me) talked to me. I knew it was supposed to be something important, but most of her words escaped me completely, I didn't want to worry about anything, I was a magical wolf! and I was happily making mischief with my magical mom!

“Mom, mom! Play with me! look! I am a wolf!” I screamed with excitement, in ‘wolf voice’ (which in that mystical reality, was making complete sense in my mind)

My wolf mom then started to run away so I gave chase!

At one point, Mom jumped into a large hole in the trunk of an old pine tree and I carelessly jumped after her, regardless of the darkness...

The sun's rays woke me up. I opened my eyes and blinked. My pupils dilated.

"Where the f**k am I," I thought, looking up at the blue morning sky above me. I tried to move on the hard, uneven surface and only an instinctive grab for coniferous branches saved me from falling about a hundred feet! I was in a tree! At the very top! In the crown of an old pine tree in the park near work!

"What a f**k!" Terrified, I clung to the branch from which I had almost fallen. I froze, my muscles completely rigid. As seconds measured in my heartbeats passed into minutes, I slowly got a little accustomed to my predicament since I wasn't falling and there was no sign that I would. I've never had any particular fear of heights, but fuck... this was about a hundred f*****g feet above the ground, so I guess I was allowed to be nervous. Over time, I calmed down from the initial shock enough to be able to start analyzing my situation.

I was completely naked and covered in dried blood that probably wasn't mine because I didn't see or feel any wounds. The branches I was now holding on to with all my might were covered not only in blood but also in pieces of flesh as if some predatory bird or something had a buffet here…

“Wait…”

I focused my gaze on the shreds of meat hanging from the branch below me. A scalp of pale skin hung from the bloody piece and ended with… human lips!

“f**k f**k f**k!”

Whatever I ‘thought’ had only happened in my nightmare had actually happened.

My mind was frantically trying to find some rational explanation, but it was hard to argue with the facts. Because how could I explain climbing up a nearly hundred-foot pine tree, naked and covered in gore? Or the presence of 'human pieces'?

And it wasn't even like I had some convenient gap in my memory; the problem was that I remembered exactly what had happened, I just wanted to delude myself that there was some other explanation...

However, I knew very well that I hadn't fallen naked from some plane or helicopter, right into that tree crown. I also knew that I hadn't been kidnapped and brought here by a wild beast, a swamp monster, or a werewolf...

No...

I was the werewolf myself!

And although I tried very hard not to remember, to deny it, it kept coming back to me what I had done. I had killed those assholes, torn them apart, piece by piece, some slower than others.

And then...

And then I tasted their meat.

The thought of it suddenly made me feel sick and I threw up. I quickly pulled my face away from my ‘work’ not only out of disgust but also out of fear of seeing something I didn’t want to see, like a human finger…

"What happened to Jess? In my frenzy, I had completely forgotten about her, was she okay? Or?... I hadn’t hurt her, had I?"

I didn’t remember that.

At least a few hours had passed since my unexpected supernatural rampage; it was the next day already.

"Had anyone seen me? Were the police looking for me? Did Alice already know I hadn’t returned to the dorm?"

So many questions, no answers.

I started to carefully look around the park. From ‘my’ treetop I had a pretty good view of the area.

"I couldn’t just 'sit' and stay on the tree, right?" On the other hand, I was naked and covered in blood, so maybe it would be better to wait until the evening?

"But then I’d be naked again in the evening…"

No, I had to get down from this pine, I had to get going!

"But how could I get down from here in… well… in this form?" I was a strong, athletic seventeen-year-old, but still, just a five-foot-tall gal, and the climbing wall was never my strong suit…

"Well… I got up here somehow, so I have to be able to get down."

I was even wondering if maybe I could just jump down since I am a werewolf after all but when I glanced down a hundred feet, I didn’t feel like trying my luck just yet… Instead, I glanced at my hands and the nearest branch and started planning my descent.

I had a pretty good start, but literally five feet down, I already faced some problems: I couldn’t reach the branches or I had no way to grab them. Damn, I didn’t have that much strength in my fingers alone to support my whole weight! That's why I sucked at climbing...

"Even if, as a werewolf, I could tear people apart in my bare claws..."

Then I slipped and started falling. I stopped another seven feet down after I managed to grab a tree trunk.

‘Grab’ wasn't the right word; my fingers simply grew hard claws that dug into the old bark. That was truly a supernatural grip but it was still a close call since I broke a nail!

"Well, I am probably not in Superman's League any time soon. But a werewolf is probably more likely a Spider-Man-level hero... or villain," I thought.

I looked with fascination at my two hands, which literally, in a few heartbeats, had become more massive, I glanced at my arm. My bicep had grown twice as big! I had also gained much more body hair than a young gal like me would be happy to have, but overall, I liked the strength and fitness of this altered 'me'. At my age, without steroids, I could never dream of a midriff like that...

"I am f*****g ripped!"

I still didn't look like the beast I had been yesterday, but this 'form' (I guess that's the best way to call it) was definitely better suited to descending without belay and naked from a hundred-foot pine tree without having any experience in it.

"So I can not only transform into a furry meat grinder but also into this intermediate form," I thought as I overcame the branches on my way down. When I was about halfway through, I felt confident enough to start taking bolder jumps. I slowed down when I noticed someone walking under 'my' tree.

I crouched down and froze without moving.

Not only because I was now in the form of a muscular, probably 6-foot-tall ‘wild’ woman with sharp claws whose legs and armpits had never known a razor or wax…

But also because I was still naked!

About ten feet below me, a woman in her twenties had just walked up to the trunk of the large pine tree I was sitting on. She looked like someone who had been running, she was wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt.

I swallowed hard.

“Maybe I should reveal myself? Ask for help?”

“What if she runs away?”

“What if I’m being chased? and the police are looking for me or I don’t know… ‘men in black’? I’m some kind of monster…”

“Maybe I should jump her? Take her clothes…”

“And what? Leave the girl naked in the park?! What a f**k, Ada? What an actual f**k of a thought that even is?”

Thoughts were swirling in my head while the girl below me looked around conspiratorially, then unbuttoned her sweatshirt and threw it on the ground, then untied her pants and took them off too. Now, remaining in her boxers and t-shirt, the woman began to jog away from the tree, and I quickly lost sight of her behind the bushes.

I froze, not believing my luck. Was this really happening? Somewhere in the back of my mind, something was screaming that this was too good to be true and that this girl had definitely left it for me. But the temptation of having clothes and not running around with a bare ass was too strong to ignore at this point.

"And what was I supposed to do anyway? Wait, naked in the tree? Since this girl knew I was there anyway?"

I decided to act. I energetically sped up my descent from the tree, but when I was less than ten feet from the grass, I was taken aback by the sight of my claws.

“How am I supposed to change back to my normal form? Should I just think about it?” I thought and checked. Suddenly, my hand began to shrink—that is, to return to a completely human shape.

"Okay, so I've got this under control," I thought, smirking involuntarily, and after a moment, I landed quite gracefully on the grass, right next to the abandoned clothes that I immediately threw on.

My ‘benefactor’ was definitely larger than me; the sweatshirt was still too big but manageable, but the sweatpants were so long that I had to roll up the legs. But I didn’t care too much about how I looked; the important thing was that I wasn’t naked anymore!

“You ready now, yes?” I heard a woman’s voice as my ‘benefactor’ peeked out from behind the bushes. She was indeed a tall young woman, easily 6 feet tall. She had a rather tense, alert posture.

I straightened up.

“Um… yeah, thanks…” I said nervously, not really knowing what else to say. The woman nodded and then glanced at the tree.

“Made some mess, not good, not safe; we need to go now.” She said, her accent a bit strange, then she turned and started to walk away.

I stood there for a moment, not really knowing what to do. I didn’t know this girl, although she seemed to know about me.

“Does she really know something? Or is she just some gal still high after Friday night drug fest, and I read too much into it? Maybe her being here is just a massive coincidence?” I stood there and thought, but the girl was already starting to disappear from my sight, so I had to make a decision quickly.

“Hey! Wait!” I shouted and ran after her.

When I caught up with her, she just turned her head towards me, never stopping.

"We run now."

So we did. And quite fast, especially since both my guide and I were barefoot. I myself ran regularly so it wasn't a problem for me even though I had my pants rolled up and my partner, who was a head taller than me, had much longer legs.

"Um... where are we running?" I tried to start a conversation.

"Safe-cave," the woman replied.

"A 'safe-cave'? What kind of slang is that?" I thought. It sounded a bit... well... 'werewolf-like' but I still wasn't sure. Maybe I was really running after some crazy junky woman, only imagining that she did show up to help me, maybe I was totally mentally insane myself?

In total, we could have been running for about twenty minutes, and we were already in a completely different part of the park when my guide stopped and crouched down by a sewage manhole.

"You have to kidding me..." I thought, but quickly bit my tongue when I saw the woman stick her finger into the hole in the metal lid and, in one swift movement, send it flying as if the cast iron lid didn't weigh 150 pounds at all but 1.5 at most!

I spent about ten hours a week in the gym myself, and I knew what was possible. The woman in front of me was in a T-shirt; I saw her arm and her biceps. What I just witnessed was not humanly possible! This was supernatural strength!

The woman, completely unconcerned about her feat, just looked at me expectantly.

"Jump in; I have to close this behind us." She said, waving the 150-pound iron disc ostentatiously as if it were nothing.

I don't know if it says anything good about my mental health and my ability to distinguish right from wrong that such a show of superhuman strength from a complete stranger managed to convince me that I had done the right thing by following her up until that point, but hey, apparently that's how a werewolf newbie thinks!

I went inside. Luckily, it wasn't a sewage canal but some other utility tunnel. I lowered myself down a cast iron ladder a few feet and stood in a corridor where I could stand upright. My guide nimbly entered after me, balancing the iron cover in one hand and closing the manhole behind us.

That way I found myself in complete darkness, only to hear the woman landing next to me. Suddenly, a pair of ominous yellow eyes lit up in the darkness as my taller companion looked down at me.

I think I instinctively stepped back.

"You're scared, pup; don't be."

"I'm not scared," I lied a little... "I just can't see a thing," I noticed instead, but when the hand of the woman I didn't see met mine, I reflexively jumped back.

"I know, pup, you awoke now; you will learn to see, but you can hear and smell. Come, and hold my hand."

I took her hand and slowly began to walk in the total darkness, After a few minutes, my senses were actually starting to sharpen, and my steps were becoming more certain, even though I still couldn't see.

My guide was definitely not the talkative type, and we traveled in silence.

Maybe the enveloping darkness was starting to play tricks on my mind, but at some point, I got the feeling that there was also someone else in the tunnel besides our pair.

"Good instincts," my guide said.

"Is anyone else here?" I asked.

"Yes, a packmate, no fear, pup, you are safe now" she replied, and then I heard the clank of an old metal door. My pupils narrowed as I suddenly noticed a flickering light and the smell of burning candles reached my nostrils.