Somewhere in a pause of time there was a small shire, inaccessibly nailed to the middle of a mountain mine. The misted domains of branches drawn as twisted veins on a sky spilled of nightmares, foliage hiding ancient terrors and ghastly lights emerging from the bogs and deep gray rivers. On the plain, beyond withered corn fields sown under the vigilance of ragged pumpkin dummies, and wretched black ravens on the fiery smokes of primitive houses, built from ashy quarry stones piled almost by accident. That was a town inhabited by prisoners not residents. People pinned by tainted fate, impotent of moving to brighter places. Trapped folk fought for survival against the winter and the disease and the famine. Living in the reign of wolves, subject to the penance of its hunger, in the shadow of claws, yoked to the lunar phases. Since long ago when forsaken the taste of farm animals, weary of quietly sacrificing a helpless lode of sheep, the wolves hunted and ate men, in the darkness snared infant maidens to the bushes, left mutilated corpses on sight, the doorsteps dawned marked in crimson red. Beginning an era of fear where the world of beasts had no bounds with the world of men. In the peak of their rule the hordes flaunt power to attest themselves lords of the land, lying bare of absolute dominion acted a heathen ritual each quarter of the season. The jackals stole and devour a baby, tearing the nocturnal silence with malignant bawls, stain the full moon with a drop of blood. To the cradle only returned mangled small hands and chopped feet so the victim’s mothers would be torn by the pain forever, mad of remorse and her good soul twisted by dread and the carrion carried away for so many gone Novembers, so many lives and decades lost.
Then one day a woman holding close to her newborn daughter shouted a desperate prayer to the murky clouds -Why’s the appetite of ravenous teeth must be fed with the flesh of my little one? – Crying she sat on a rock watching the sun dusk behind missing peaks. And then the mighty god of wolves heard the lady’s plea and decided to punish, even if the god of wolves ultimately didn’t really care for the evil of its offspring, just the morbid way its zeal. Violently it took bones from the slain babies, eaten over so many years, and stabbed those on the spines of the butcher tyrants, one carcass splinter on each vertebrae, and from the very moment infused with the skeleton of man became cursed, so they were men and they were wolves howling at the bane. Of a nature split in half… Because only the beast could sleep as the man could barely shut his eyes. Only the wolf feeds and the man is famished to the crust, thirsted his bleed dries and thickens into black oil, alone the man ages and only the beast dies. So damned went thru the centuries, growing bitter fiends, filled of hate, trudging its paws trough all history, although we all know werewolves does not exist, we shun them from the existence. So fittingly turn into sinister eyes watching us from the haze. Monsters and tormentors naked in the night, standing on the hind legs of malformed straw dolls, long arms and hands of lengthy fingers with sharp talons as black iron knives. Tall figures painted on walls, shadows of man with the head of wolf stuck as a mask of tar soaked hair locks hanging. So they stalked breathing in the gloom snatching and gobbling on human prey, summoned by the smell of blood calling, warm on the tongue like slipping from lips, drum pound bursting from their hearts
Long, long afterwards as many lives and many moons went by, was there was a wolf-man marauding the streets of Paris, patiently strolling from Montmartre hill, beneath a dim light the sad silhouette of his low shoulders and the strong neck bent forth an empty fountain square close to Sacre Cour. The firmament vanished stars. Sounded echoes on a labyrinth of bohemian alleys. He arrived at a bridge over the Seine River to stumble on a young woman, an angel of fairy wings pictured on the dream of a stolen kiss, was someone he instantly came to adore as if she had grown of himself. The vicious lustful creature surrendered to her, to a love until the end of the world. But when she finally opened her arms, could not stop being a monster, and saw the precious skin cut by his claws. Horrified and shamed of his own nature ran away, somehow disappeared of all memory. And the rest of the werewolves never knew which was. The one lycanthrope that fell in love… But as the scent of a kill spreads among them like blood on the water and the desire of one is the obsession of all, even when they forgot to no remedy and the picture of that girl fell in the dark side of their remembrances, regardless of oblivion they furiously blindly hunted her, hoping to find a secret the god of wolves left hidden in her eyes, an omen, that in a feast sacrifice they could feel again, feel anything. The killing remorse, despair of looking in the mirror, a relief of the whispers of death… Sad as it is, their wish will come to be.