The Cure

Today’s the day I change. No! Seriously, I am so over being forced to lock myself up every full moon. Especially after last week, you would never believe what happened. I was about to start locking up a few minutes before the full moon, when my grandma decided to pay me a visit. Since she owned the little place I call home, she decided to let herself in with the spare set of keys she insisted on taking from me. As for what happened next, doesn’t quite require any explanation. Grandmas and wolves are not a good combination, especially when you’re a werewolf. Well, at least now I own the place.

              Now you know why I need to find a cure, and there is only one creature who can help me and that is a witch. They are just as hard to find as some other old lady willing to fill the vacant position of grandma in my life. Lucky for me, I know someone who may be willing to help me find a witch, Peter. Peter is the leader of a small group of goblins. He and his group were all forced to mine right below Count Dracula’s mansion for blood pepper root, which is the root of the spiciest peppers in existence. When Dracula became a vegetarian, he decided to start eating the roots of blood peppers. It’s not relevant to how I’m going to find the cure so let us proceed. I went to Peter’s cave, just off the south coast of Transylvania, and managed to pull a few strings until he agreed to help me. He never wanted to have to see my face again. We hitched a lift on a dragon. A few days later, we arrived in Scotland.

              Peter suggested that we should spend the night at his cousin Oliver’s hotel known as ‘’Macbeth’s palace’’. We did so but regretted it instantly. The entire hotel smelled of moth balls and garlic. We decided to leave before breakfast as we could only imagine what atrocities would be waiting for us at the breakfast table.

We made it about a mile away from the hotel, when we heard the thundering sound of hooves pounding the cobbled road. It was Peter’s Cousin, Oliver. He handed us a letter with no name on it and galloped off. We opened the envelope to find a little note saying ‘’travel to the witches shack’’ written in a neat golden handwriting.

That is exactly what we did. A few full moons later we were smashed on the back of the head by some fairly smelly creatures. I suddenly regained consciousness as an old woman was wafting some foul scented mud in my direction. I stood up, knees shaking and realised that the old woman seemed to be blind. As I took a shaky step forward, there was a crunch under my foot. Looking down I saw a skull which was about two thirds of the average size of a human skull. The old woman didn’t turn her head in my direction. I was about to continue when she smiled and picked up a doll. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach as I confirmed in my mind that she was a witch. She gingerly held the doll there in her hands for a few seconds, until with one fluid movement she dropped the doll on to the floor. I screamed as I fell to the floor like a boulder. She stayed still for a few minutes as I struggled to breathe, then she told me that voodoo dolls are tricky little things. Your friend Peter resisted and paid the price she said. She picked the doll up and put it back on the shelf as I regained control of my movements. ‘’Let’s talk’’ she told me.

After we had a talk it all made sense, well sort of. Anyway, the witch’s name was Catherine, and she was going to turn four hundred and twelve that same week. She knew I was travelling to find a cure, and she almost had all the ingredients needed; but she needed a dragon’s egg to complete the cure. She told me where to find the last colony of dragons and that I had better hurry if I wanted to get an egg before they hatched.

I arrived at Buckingham palace that same day. It had been abandoned for centuries, or at least that’s what I’d been told. There were dragons circling the palace and occasionally swooping down to pick up some poor prey. There was a zombie at the entrance but no other visible life-forms. I hurried down along the dungeon passage to find the secret entrance. After a few good hours of searching, I found the right waterfall and walked right through it. There, on a pedestal was an egg that seemed to be glowing walked up to it, mesmerized, picked it up and started walking back the way I had come. That is when all hell broke loose. The floor, walls and ceiling started to crumble. I ran and didn’t stop until I was back in the open air outside the palace. There were at least four dragons after me. So, I did the normal thing to do, I ran. Okay, it wasn’t the normal thing to do but it was definitely the most instinctive thing to do.  Three of the dragons lost interest in me, but one remained and kept up the chase. I arrived at ‘’the witches shack’’ and at once gave the egg to the witch and went to hide in the far corner. The dragon roared as the witch went to greet it.

The dragon left the shack. And the witch told me we need to wait for the egg to hatch. The next day the egg hatched, I know this because I woke up with a small rabbit sized dragon biting my nose. The witch picked up the dragon and put it on the counter near a cauldron that appeared out of nowhere. Catherine lit the fire below the cauldron and started chanting what sounded like her spell. ‘’Frogs tongue, blood pepper root, a wizard’s curse, a demon’s horn, a wolf’s howl and a dragon’s child’s hair.’’ Now we need to leave it to set, so that it will be ready for you to drink it on the next full moon.

The following month, Catherine took me to a little shed before the full moon started and chained me up. She left nothing to chance. I was bound by my arms and legs and after putting a muzzle on me we waited for the moon to rise. She waited an hour after the moon was up and then gave me the cure. It worked almost instantly, reversing the dreaded, horrific, monthly process. Within seconds I was human again. I went back to my old home, yes, the one where I had eaten my grandma and lived the rest of my life as a normal human. A totally transformed human, convinced that no more change was required!