Madeleine Armstrong
When my son Harry was born covered in golden fuzz, I’m not sure why I was surprised. I thought he’d be like my wife – normal – but instead he took after me, and my father before me. His first full moon loomed, a spotlight on my worst fears. When the big night came, I took him and three raw chickens into the woods, bare January branches no match for the Wolf Moon, luminous in the indigo sky. He shrieked. Transformed. Baby skull thickening, muzzle elongating. Fangs, not milk teeth, pushing through his gums. Claws crescenting from raw nail beds. All I could do was hold him close while he shredded my chest, howling at the unfairness of it all.
Just when I thought I might be getting a handle on it, he started school. The other kids called him a freak, a weirdo, Hairy Harry; said he couldn’t play their games. The Hunter’s Moon, an auspicious day; he damn near snapped off one boy’s arm. Not his fault, extreme provocation, yet shame swallowed me as I loped the old school halls, which still reeked of piss and fear. Met the headmistress’s cold stare, her disgust at our kind. Her neck scrawny as a bird’s. I bit down on my fangs, sat on my claws and agreed to their behaviour plan. That night, beneath a canopy of clasping branches, my son asked why he was different. My own dad denied his wolfish nature, threw me out into the cold, alone, his face bone white as he watched from an upstairs window.
You’re just like me, I told Harry, and we howled at the cruel moon together.
Madeleine is a Pushcart Prize-nominated author who has won the Hammond House short story prize, and been published in mags including BULL, Frazzled Lit, Hooghly Review, Literary Garage, Mythic Picnic, Punk Noir, Temple in a City, Trash Cat Lit, Underbelly and Urban Pigs. She lives in London.
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