Mad of the Moon

It was near the mid-point of the lunar cycle. Eric’s favorite, but he kept that fact to himself.

His parents had always warned him about it. Endless lectures on safety and self-control, his mother terrified that a single misstep would expose them to the outside world, and his father’s stern expression as he delivered the lectures. It just made Eric all the more curious about what effect the full moon would trigger.

Twenty years old and enjoying a spring break away from Princeton, an outsider would say that Eric Branch had made it in life. He certainly had a different view of the situation, however. The Ivy League was just another cage, a made-up social club that he needed to show the world how “normal” he was. Even worse, he was a scholarship student, a fact that his douchebag fratboy classmates never failed to rub in his face. Even into his sophomore year, Eric had made few friends on campus and even fewer professional connections. Some nights, when he was mindlessly staring at one of his half-a-dozen textbooks, struggling to study while some jackasses were drinking and yelling a room over, a familiar impulse pushed out his more rational thoughts. All he had to do was look up at the full moon and his tightly wound existence would finally uncoil.

It was 7:30 at night, and the full moon was nearly complete. Eric’s parents were upstairs watching the movie “Field of Dreams”, one of their favorites, and it was merely the first in a marathon they had planned for that night. How his mother loved Kevin Cosner, becoming so invested in every word and bodily twitch. His father begrudgingly tolerated it, so long as she kept her reverence in the realm of fantasy. He did genuinely love the movie, though. Surely they would both be attentive to the film to notice their son slipping out of the house.

Eric’s gambit paid off. Throwing on a brown jacket over a black sleeveless shirt and dark grey jeans, he carefully made his way to the door, slowly pulling it open and exiting the house. To be extra careful, he walked a few blocks away from the house, making to sure keep his head down from gazing at the sky. There weren’t a lot of people outside that time of night, aside from a few errant joggers and dog walkers. They paid Eric no attention as they blissfully passed him on the sidewalk. 

Despite getting quite a bit of distance from his house, Eric decided to keep going to the local park. When he reached it, it was eerily quiet and empty of activity, just as he had hoped. With nothing surrounding him but the chirps of crickets, Eric felt a euphoria that he had never even tasted in the two decades of his existence. Finally, he looked up to the moon.

*

Emily Brock was sick of bonfires, but she was also a loyal friend.

That fact was all her roommate Kate needed to drag Emily to a “full moon celebration” deep in Wildwood Park. About fifty other Harrisburg residents between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four were waiting for them. Surrounding the controlled inferno, the young adults had brought kegs, cups, and coolers. Emily quickly noticed more than a few partiers holding joints. Some were making out. The rest were dancing like brain-damaged idiots. 

“Cheer the hell up, bitch. This is fucking awesome,” Kate said as she squeezed both of Emily’s shoulders. 

“Between the 200 ppm of weed in the air and the dance school rejects, this is so much better than just getting plastered at Enigma’s,” replied Emily as her eyes rolled. 

Kate’s strained optimism morphed into a disappointed scowl. “One, no one knows what ppm even is. Two, you know dance was my childhood dream. Three, if you don’t pull that stick out your ass, I will throw you down right here, right now, and do it myself.”

With a resigned shrug, Emily nodded along. “Well, under threat of public sexual assault, I pledge to have as much fun as humanly possible.”

“That’s the spirit!” Kate shouted with a resurfaced smile.

One hour passed, and despite a rather graphic threat of bodily harm, Emily had fallen egregiously short of her promise. The most she could muster was to lazily shake in her body in an embarrassing sequence that met the minimum threshold that could be defined as dancing. Kate had downed several cups and was playing tonsil hockey with a random chick against the tree, a sight ignited more than a spark of jealousy in her dejected roommate.

Staring directly into the fire, Emily felt oddly contemplative. The embers at the base gently rose like heaven-bound sparks while letting out a soothing crackle. It was inexplicably mesmerizing and inviting as if her previous reluctance to join the makeshift was being retroactively erased. She fought the urge to diagnose the feeling, as her psychology studies had gradually trained her to do. It had been so long since she just, “lived” in a moment, and allowed her feelings to simply exist without excess scrutiny. In the now, without a toxic boyfriend or judgemental mother, Emily was having some genuine fun. 

Eyeing Kate with a different girl on the other side of the bonfire, Emily signaled for her attention. When her roommate noticed, the newly enthusiastic partier threw a raised thumb for all to see. Kate produced a wide grin and made a heart with her hands. Seeing her friend’s vicarious joy almost brought a tear to Emily’s eye. Such trite sentimentality would embarrass her any other night. For another moment, their mutual gaze remained locked despite being yards apart. 

That face, Emily thought. After knowing Kate for two years, she could pick out her audacious grin from the crowd of thousand people. Though they were supposed to be just friends, Emily focused on her friend’s face like a long-lost lover. She was mesmerized and intoxicated by the wide smile. 

Until it disappeared. 

In a split second, the grin falls from her face, and a new expression paints the canvass. What? Emily mouthed from across the fire. Kate’s mouth was open and her eyes had bugged out, flashing confusion and fear. No, terror. A nearly identical face was being made by the woman she was next to. As well as multiple partiers looking in her direction. Something’s wr0-

Darkness. Silence. Pain.

*

Eric left the first prey alive. She’s been roughed up, but not fatally. No, he just needed a demonstration for the rest of the victims-to-be. Mere moments before, they had irreverently danced, drank, and fornicated to their heart's desire. Now in the dead silence, all their eyes locked onto a massive creature that should not exist. Possessing a humanoid body covered in gray fur and a pronounced jawline bearing chalk-white fangs, a mere glance would reveal this was a malicious abomination of bloodthirsty intent.

Feeling the moon’s intoxicating light penetrating every cell in his body, Eric roared toward the horrified herd of dead meat. As soon as they tried to run, the werewolf wasted no time evidentiating the superior speed of his species. With an instantaneous blur of movement, three of the prey are torn in half at the waist. A fourth, some loser in a tiger onesie, stood numb beside the monster. Eric stared her down, a nonverbal dare for the meat to show some survival instinct. Instead, she screams, so he opened wide and devoured the prey’s entire head. Spitting out an eyeball, the beast selected his next target and attacked with a frenzied furry. 

The screams, a rapturous melody that threatened to bring Eric to his knees, carved indomitably through the night and indelibly in his memory. Freedom was not an executed whim, a stroll outside the house, nor a revelation of secrets. It was Heaven Incarnate. So much repression, so much aggression. When Eric had stared up at the lunar body, and endured the pain of his bones shattering and rearranging, all the careful nuances of an adult mind receded as a primal instinct took control. 

Deep down, he knew that the morning would be filled with doubt and regret. He knew his careful plan would likely be discovered by his parents. There would be panic among them. A screaming fight or three. A call to move across the country to evade any prying eyes.

And Eric didn’t care.

*

Emily’s vision faded and reasserted itself, drilling her brain with white and yellow flashes. Her chest hurt. Her legs hurt. Her ribs hurt. Most of her, just, hurt. As the psychology student fought to make heads or tails of her visual sense, a sharp copper taste interlopes on her tongue. Noticing that nearly drove Emily to retch, but her more rational instincts interrupted that impulse. Having studied the brain extensively, she quickly deduced that she had experienced a concussion. Traumatic brain injury, her catastrophic thoughts speculated. If she didn’t get medical attention as soon as humanly possible, the damage could be permanent, rendering her an invalid or worse. That thought quickly spiraled into traumatic memories of her younger brother, which was exactly when Emily screamed at her subconscious to shut the hell up.

Finally, she could see clearly. She was on the ground, facing sideways upon her left arm. Surrounded by grass, and feeling it tickle her bare skin, Emily realized she was still at the bonfire. The once calming inferno had been snuffed out, as her eyes only detected moonlit darkness, and there was not a sound but chirring crickets and grasshoppers. Trees were just a few feet away, which meant she had to be facing away from where the rest of the party had been. Mustering her diminished strength, Emily turned her body to face the opposite direction. As she did so, she attempted a request for help. “Help!” she screams. “Somebody help-”

Her shout cut off when she had finished fully turning her body. The fire was indeed out, and surrounding the pit was a macabre assemblage of corpses and severed limbs. Emily’s heart pounded the wall of her chest with an uncommonly violent intensity. The rapid blood flow was accompanied by a needed surge of adrenaline. Ignoring her injuries, Emily got to her feet and surveyed the surrounding carnage. All around her were body parts, and even the few bodies that were more or less in one piece were mutilated beyond recognition, bearing shredded viscera and exposed bone. “Kate,” she whispered.

Ignoring the blood that stained her clothes and covered her body, Emily shambled across the cadaveric clearing and prayed for the first time in her life. She could not find Kate among this butchery. Kate had escaped, safe and sound. They would laugh like they always did. They would pretend this day never happened. Because she and Kate would be okay. 

An ambush from behind ceased her search. A blood-drenched hand covered her mouth, which caused Emily to scream against it. “Shhhh,” she heard in Kate’s unmistakable voice. She’s alive, the silenced youth realized as she turned around to confirm it. Emily found her roommate’s scarred visage. Three long, bloody claw marks covered the left side of her face and what remained of her eye. Smothering a sudden scream, Emily finally shed a tear for the first time that night. From her right eye, Kate did the same. 

      *

The hunger. The rage. The thrill of the hunt.

All three had been sated, and for Eric, there was nothing left but the aftermath.

Still in his werewolf form, he knelt before a cliffside as he contemplated the full moon once again. There was no remorse but vicarious grief. He had known none of the humans he had slaughtered, yet they were still people. Individuals with lives, lovers, and families who never see them again. A single tear escapes his eye. No less but no more. Regardless of the evident tragedy, it had been an honorable hunt. An ancient tradition dictated by nature, shrouded by the illusion of civilization. They had their chance, and they had failed. Eric was stronger, faster, and crueler. A part of him will always wonder what they could have done with their lives, but this bloodbath was his birthright, and he will never apologize.

*

First responders arrived about twenty minutes later. Both women were rushed to the hospital. After their wounds were treated, Emily and Kate endured a battery of questions from detectives and reporters, few of which they even could begin to answer. Five days in the care of superb doctors and surrounded by distressed family members had done nothing for their shared shellshock. No matter how hard she tried, Emily could not recall what had happened when she stared across the bonfire. But Kate could.

Against the doctor’s orders, Emily dragged her recovering body and IV drip to Kate’s bedside. Whatever seeing her friend might have brought evaporated as their conversation turned to that night. She reassured Kate that she did not have to relive it, but the teary-eyed survivor had to tell her story. Learning Emily did not remember what happened only emboldened her need to get it all out.

“I-I saw you,” Kate enunciated. “Across the fire. You were smiling. And then…. And then…” Hot droplets streamed from her remaining eye as Kate trailed off. Emily held her hand, a long-practiced rite that had always been used to share strength. “It was behind you. It was so big. Those eyes…. I don’t ever want to see them again. I can’t. Please.”

“You won’t,” Emily reassured, both knowing that she had no way of keeping such a promise.

“I thought it killed you. It was so fast, nobody had a chance. We ran, we ran as fast as we could. It didn’t matter. I hid behind a bush, but it found me.”

Letting go of her IV, Emily used both of her hands to clasp Kate’s. “You survived.”

Kate slowly turned her head to face her friend. “Why?”

Emily had no answer. Before she could think of one, the doctor entered the room and ordered the standing patient back to her bed.

*

Much to his surprise, Eric’s parents never noticed his nighttime departure. When the news of the massacre broke the next day, they had their suspicions of the perpetrator but spent little time dwelling on them. There was no need to ask questions that the Branches did want a definitive answer to.

That very night, he visited the hospital where the two survivors had been taken. Between the press and police officers, few noticed he had come to visit. Unfortunately, it also meant he could get a glimpse at the lives he had spared. It took a few days for things to calm down enough for him to glimpse one of them.

This woman had brown hair and green eyes. He recognized her as the first person he had ever attacked. Her name, according to the news, was Emily Brock. With a concerted effort, Eric managed to stay outside of notice. But irrational impulses made him question this approach. He could so easily have murdered this woman without a second thought just three days before, and yet now, he could not imagine looking at her the same way. On one hand, it was an artistic fascination. His violence had forever altered the course of her life, so he wanted to sample the fruits of his labor. But on the other, with one glance at Emily’s face, this would-be victim of Eric’s ensnared her attacker with a sympathetic magnetism.

After three days of visiting the hospital, he could tell the staff were becoming suspicious of his presence. Tonight, the fifth night since the slaughter, would be the last visit. Emily Brock, and her friend Kate, had to become ghosts at the back of his mind. In a week, he would be back at Princeton and over hundred miles away from this mess. The memory of the event could help Eric cope with his sense of alienation, but only the physical sensations, not names or faces.

With just a little charm toward the front desk attendant, the beast-turned-human took his final trip to Emily’s hospital room. A few glanced at him, but the nurses, attendants, and surgeons were all far too busy for any awkward interaction. No, he was unbothered and unfettered. 

Then, when his goal was a mere few yards away, Eric caught a glimpse of Emily, struggling to get back to the room while holding her IV and being assisted by a doctor. Before a moment passes, a precious one that could allow him to devise a sensible next move, Emily looks up.

*

The man, barely twenty feet away from Emily, matched her intense stare.

She could not fathom this behavior but made no effort to change it. The doctor assisting her back to the room glanced at both of them in confusion. Gripping her IV, Emily stood upright and unflinching. The stranger, having acknowledged her gesture, advanced forward undeterred.

Emily had no idea what he wanted. But she had to find out. Her life was never going to be the same and she knew this man had the answer as to why. Standing before her, he extended a friendly hand. “I’m Eric. Eric Branch.”

“Emily Brock.”

“I know.”