And Left You Bruised, and Ruined
Title: and left you bruised, and ruined
Authors: letut & erode
Fandoms: The Mighty Boosh
Pairings: Mostly gen, hints of Howard/Vince
Word Count: ~10,600
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Minor violence, hinting at accidental self-harm, some minor language.
Disclaimer: Not mine, never happened, completely fictional.
Summary: People are more perceptive than one would want. Howard wants to live his life without ruining anyone else's, Vince hates secrets, and the Moon just wants to talk.
Notes: Written for werewolfbigbang. Thank you to our unaware cheerleader and spirit animal shotgunteacup, and thank you to lisaroquin for the gorgeous art ♥
The first time Howard hears it, he’s ten years old, and he has been a werewolf for eight months. When he thinks back on it, he realises he probably should have heard it long before.
It starts as a sort of humming. Someone thinking on a song they can’t quite remember or forget, random and out of tune.
Howard climbs out of bed and sneaks down the hall into the bathroom. In the bathroom there’s a window from which, Howard has figured out - the way small children always do - that you can use to climb out on the roof. He grabs his dad’s robe, shrugging it on and rolling up the much too long sleeves. It’s cold outside and Howard’s feet seem to resist for a moment before he plants them on the cold bricks. When he reaches the top he stands there for a minute, listening, robe whipping in the wind around his legs, like a cape, and Howard entertains the notion that he is a superhero.
“-still think, Mars, is a cun-” the voice says, distant and rather faint. Howard looks around him, wondering why he went to the roof. “It is closer, I think,” the voice says and Howard looks up. There’s nothing above him, barely any clouds, even, just the moon, two nights away from being full. Howard is reluctantly awed at being able to tell.
“Who is it?” he says, shouting really, but his voice is being drowned out by the wind.
And then he can see the moon as it appears to rotate and then there’s a face in the sky. On the moon.
Well, part of the face is missing ‘cause it’s not full. Howard’s teacher told him it was because the earth was in the way, but Howard isn’t so sure he believes her.
“Woah,” Howard gasps and almost takes a step back before remembering that he is on the roof and that it would be a very, very bad idea.
“When you are, the moon,” the moon says, the fucking moon - Howard usually doesn’t swear since his mother says that bad things happen to you if you do and Howard doesn’t want to think that a monster appeared out of the dark and bit his childhood away from him because he called Marie in his parallel class a bitch, but since it’s in his head he can’t quite stop himself, can he? - and the moon sounds sort of hesitant, like he can’t quite remember the words he wants to use, “you can talk, and, all the special boys, and girls can, hear you.”
Howard blinks at him, can you call the moon a he, and doesn’t quite know what to say.
“Sometimes, when I am bored, I say filthy, things, to Margaret Thatcher,” he says with a grin and Howard scrunches his nose up. “I want to make her blush, but, she never does.”
Without another word, the moon rotates around again. Howard sits up there for ten more minutes, waiting, before the cold gets to him.
***
The Zooniverse is doing rather less than well. Rather a lot less than well.
It’s doing extremely poorly, to put it one way.
Knowing that your Zoo is circling the drain might depress most men. Then again, Bainbridge isn’t most men.
The thing that Bainbridge has learnt about Zoos is that if things look bad, you can just say the barracuda had an unfortunate run in with a lightning bolt and then re-inhabit the pond with the almost extinct three headed bass/dolphin. Thus, as tragic as it is, the weevil’s cage is empty due to the sudden and unexpected appearance of a rouge Zimmer frame, and Bainbridge has his eye set on something extraordinary.
“Dixon, old friend, as much as I agree that it would bring an unspeakable amount of visitors to the park, I hardly think ‘Werewolves’ exist,” Mr. Carling says. He’s an old adventurer, just like Bainbridge, both possessing the seemingly natural flair for dramatics and massive moustaches. Bainbridge smiles .
“Carling, dear old fellow, do you remember three years ago when I said I’d gotten a tip about underwater bumble bees?” he says with a superior and amused twitch, barely hidden under his moustache.
“Well, yes-”
“Then I can only assume that you remember that you told me something similar that time as well?” he presses on, barely without pause, running over Carling like a Range Rover would a piece of half rotten carrot.
“I did, but-”
“And then I can safely rely on that you remember how I found them in a river in Canada,” Bainbridge says, taking - what would be for anyone else if it didn’t imply the possibility that he might lose - a victory sip of his chocolate cream frappuchino. With extra cream. Currently clinging to his ‘stache.
“True. But werewolves are a myth. Fairy Tales. Complete hopscotch!” Carling says, reasonably.
“I swear, Carling,” Dixon says, pointing a finger at him. “You‘re no fun anymore.”
“That implies I was ever fun.” Carling swats the finger out of his face good-naturedly.
Bainbridge chuckles into his other glass, containing Scotch, the frappochino cup taking a rest on the desk.
“Alright, I am curious,” Carling admits. “What have you got?”
“A lead,” Dixon says and taps his nose, much like a man with a secret.
“I got that.”
“A potion. I got it from a golden shaman. If a werewolf takes one sip, it shall have a strong reaction,” Dixon says, looking that special combination of smug and calm.
“So this is the part in your brilliant plan where you shove it down random pedestrians’ throats, hoping you will manage to find a monster from myth?” Carling hums, pleasantly.
“Not exactly,” Bainbridge says slowly. “This is the part where I’ve already found one since Fossil mixed the potion up with liquid sweetener, poured it in my coffee, and then one of my employees stole my cup.”
Carling blinks at him. “Are you saying you’ve found an actual werewolf?”
“I do appear to be saying that.” Bainbridge points at nothing in general.
“And it’s an employee of yours?” Carling asks dubiously.
“Isn’t it perfect?” Bainbridge chuckles. “It’s almost too perfect.”
-
Howard blinks at Bainbridge who’s sitting on the other side of the desk. “I’m sorry?”
“You heard me, Mister Moon,” Bainbridge points. “That’s a rather ironic name, isn’t it?”
“No it’s not, it’s just a name. My name. Howard Moon,” Howard rambles, smiling a strained smile. “And I’m just as human as you are.”
“Well, I have often wondered if a man as brilliant as I could actually be a mere mortal human, but until I can gather the evidence for the opposite, it would seem that you are more special than I,” Bainbridge laughs.
“I don’t believe in werewolves, sir.” Howard says firmly, looking Bainbridge straight in the eye.
Dixon considers him for a moment before pointing at him. “You stole my coffee, did you not?”
“Uh..”
“Tasted strange, didn’t it? Not quite right. Made you feel sick, didn’t it?” Dixon says, taking in how Howard squirms in his seat, pulling at the uncomfortable green uniform. “In fact, I saw you throw up behind the bird house.”
“I-” Howard starts but cuts himself off again, no doubt because he didn’t know what to say.
“It was a shaman juice. Made to detect werewolves,” Bainbridge explains and takes a childish delight in how Howard flinches, like he’s going to stand up but can’t quite make himself do it.
“So?” Howard snarls, sounding angry and tricked, both of which he is. “It could have been anything, shamans love conning people. Just ‘cause I was sick after drinking it doesn’t mean I’m-!”
“That ugly bird hanging around you didn’t notice it when I put it in her canteen. And Fossil thought it tasted delicious. In fact, after you accidentally drank it I’ve given it to all the employees in the park. And some of the animals,” Bainbridge says pleasantly, bending down to bring out a purple bottle from his desk drawers. “But I’m not an unfair man; anyone can have a bad day.”
Howard stares at the bottle where it’s sat down on the middle of the desk, hands clenched around the armrests.
“Go on then. Have a sip, keep it down, and I shall bother you no more.”
“I’d rather not, thanks,” Howard says, scowling at nothing in particular, perhaps just the situation.
“Why not?” Dixon asks with feigned confusion. “If you’re human it’ll taste quite good.”
He eyes the bottle for two more seconds before taking a mouth full.
-
Five minutes later had Howard hulking into the bin, Bainbridge handing him a box of Kleenex.
“You’re a stubborn man, Mr. Moon,” he says, peering over his desk, elbows braced on the polished surface. “You could have just said; Why, yes sir, I do have the bad habit of transforming into a wolf-man every full moon. You figured me out, good on you sir!”
“Thought I might be able to hold it down, actually,” Howard says, whipping his mouth before spiting once more in the bin.
“Stupid boy, only humans can do that. Toffee?” he holds out a tin filled with wrapped sweets. Howard takes one with the air of someone who would very much like to refuse on principle if it weren’t for the foul taste in his mouth. “Now, would you like to live in the zoo?”
Howard opens his mouth, probably to say something along the lines of, ‘I already live in the zoo, you berk’, when his eyes widen.
“What?” he says, horse, like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. “Tell me you are joking.”
“Joking? I should think not,” Bainbridge scoffs. “It’s a most brilliant business plan.”
“Since when is putting a man in a cage a brilliant business plan?” Howard asks immediately.
Bainbridge flaps his hand, his voice airy. “I won’t be putting a man in a cage.”
Howard flinches as if Dixon had just reached across the desk and slapped him. “I’m, I’m not-”
“Human? Yes, I know that,” Bainbridge says and unwraps a fat, golden toffee. “Think of it this way; no bills to pay, no work to do. No friends hounding you - no pun intended - with stupid questions. All you have to do is sit in the cage and growl and look fierce once a month.”
“That sounds, to be honest, quite horrible,” Howard says, shaking his head.
“And that sounds, to be honest, rather rude,” Bainbridge says with a raised eyebrow. “I’m offering you something good here.”
“Something good? How do you figure that?” Howard asks sceptically.
“Fame; it certainly is what it is,” Bainbridge says grandly. “A chance to be in the spotlight! And it will definitely be more than fifteen minutes.”
Howard looks as if he is about to protest and Dixon sweeps in; striking it down before it’s grown. “You’ll be known all over the world. People will know the truth about your kind.” Bainbridge leans forward, pointing across the desk at Howard with both hands. “The truth comes out and the money comes in. All you have to do is sit in a cage and be who you are.”
Howard looks at him sharply at that.
“This isn’t something that I am, it’s just something that happens,” he says, “and I despise every second of it. But I can’t get rid of it and that’s something that I’ve had to face, and the only thing that makes this existence bearable is that every day when I’m free from it I can lead a normal life.”
Howard’s breathing is laboured after that little rant and he licks his lips tentatively before adding, “As normal as life can be, nowadays.”
Dixon blinks at him. “So, that’s a no, then?”
“Yea- Gods, yes It’s a no,” Howard splutters incredulously.
“That’s a bit of a let-down, to be honest,” Bainbridge says with a sigh and points at the door. “Well, you can go then.”
Howard hesitates for a moment before standing up. He hesitates once more at the door, seeming to contemplate asking ‘so, that’s it?’ and then opens the door.
“Do tell me if you change your mind, Mister Moon,” he says, just as the door slams shut.
-
Three days later, Howard Moon quits his job at the Zooniverse, taking his little slip of a girl with him.
The same day, Bainbridge acquires the plans to the city’s water system.
***
Howard is just shy of eleven and he’s sitting curled up on the sofa in the living room, picking on an old scab on his knee. He doesn’t remember getting it, just remembers waking up in the basement that mum has stuffed with pillows, and feeling the pull in the skin on his knee as he tries to stand.
“When you are, the moon, you are very big, and round.” Howard looks up; his dad is sitting in the armchair next to the sofa, reading a book about Jazz legends.
“Um.” Howard says and his dad looks up, waiting for him to continue his thought.
“Pluto says I am fat. I disagree. I am nicely rounded.” The moon, he guesses, continues. Howard’s dad doesn’t seem to hear it at all.
“Um,” Howard says again. “Is the moon fat?”
Howard’s dad blinks with a half-smile. “No, son. The moon is a non-terrestrial rock.”
“Oh, I see,” Howard says and goes back to picking on his scab, ignoring the grinding sound that he somehow knows is the moon rotating.
***
Jeremy is sitting on a black plastic bag, filled with crockery by the feel of it, biting in to a dead rat, when Howard walks in to his nest. Howard blinks at Jeremy before baring his teeth, growling, going from sort of nonplussed to lethal in a heartbeat.
“You are supposed to be dead,” he says, fur standing on end.
“Oh my, my, my, you’re supposed to be in the house.” Jeremy says, jumping down on the ground. “Behind locks and heavy doors, yes sir.”
Howard seems to swell and his bulk completely blocks the entrance to the rubbish pile, nothing but the greenish light of a torch in a broken bottle to gleam off of the slick fangs, almost dripping with saliva. “I can go where I damn well please.”
“Of course you can, of course,” Jeremy says before adding, voice suddenly deep and urgent. “Don’t monsters usually belong locked up?”
Howard mouth snaps shut and Jeremy swallows thickly, lets out a nervous laugh.
“Not a monster,” Howard says, sitting down in the doorway, looking as solid as an immovable object.
Jeremy sits down as well, eyeing Howard with barely hidden glee. “Then, why do you lock yourself up?”
Howard shrugs, which looks strange on a giant half-wolf, “To be on the safe side. Humans look as if they taste good.”
Jeremy looks down on the rat where he dropped it on the ground earlier. He sticks his syringes through it and holds it up. “Care for some rat?” he asks, giggling nervously.
Howard stares at it, hesitating. “Go on then,” he says after a moment.
Howard’s jaws close around the dead thing in the air, tearing into the flesh. Jeremy watches, frozen grin in place, as the rat in devoured in a matter of seconds.
“Do you know what foxes taste like?” Howard asks casually, cold undertone barely hidden, tongue lapping at his snout.
Jeremy just giggles nervously, feet tensing in case there’ll be a chase. Howard tilts his head, gold eyes looking into yellow.
“They taste like mutton. Like mutton that’s been lying on a waste dump, marinating in the toxic liquids. After that, the mutton has been beaten, till it’s stringy and tough. And then, it’s left in the sun for a couple of days, covered in flies,” Howard’s nose scrunches up. “Almost too bad to eat.”
Jeremy scratches his arm, nerves itching for something to soothe them.
Howard stands up, walking slowly, four limbs moving in harmony. “But I’m not an unfair man; anyone can have a bad day,” he says low and amused, as if enjoying some private joke.
Jeremy squawks, leaping up just as Howard pounces. The crockery bag behind him gets crushed like a bag of twigs as Howard lands on them, missing Jeremy by inches. “Please, mister wolf man! Please don’t kill me!”
Howard chuckles, low and dark, going after Jeremy right away. Jeremy runs through the maze that is the bin bag heap, the hunter after him wreaking his home in the chase. A paradox is almost created as the immovable object becomes an unstoppable force. Jeremy stops as he manages to slink in to a small cave made of black plastic. He listens holds a scabby paw over his snout to stop the nervous giggles that are tickling in his stomach. As Howard tears through the wall, all teeth and claws and golden eyes, the world seems to fall down around them in the form of worn down shoes and half eaten micro dinners. There’s an almost compact wall of compressed rubbish, and Jeremy manages to cram himself into a small crevice. Jeremy presses himself further when he can practically feel the fangs snapping right behind him as Howard tries to fit his head in after Jeremy.
“Ah, come on out, mister crack fox, things were just getting interesting,” he laughs and the rancid smell of his breath isn’t exactly helping Jeremy’s breathing conditions.
“Don’t do this, kind sir. Mister Prince Boots showed mercy on a poor fox, yes he did.” Jeremy pleads, trying to sound as pitiful as possible; a task he doesn’t have to try too hard to accomplish.
“You don’t mention him!” Howard roars, digging his head further into the gap, unsettling the whole wall slightly. “You tried to kill him after he helped you!”
“Please don’t kill me!” Jeremy squeaks before that deep voice returns, amused. “He was too pretty a thing to leave alone.”
Howard claws at the wall, jaws working furiously, but he remains too big. He snorts after a minute of struggling, hot air washing over Jeremy’s back, before pulling his head out of the crack in the rubbish. Jeremy can hear him pacing right outside, furious and waiting.
“That’s why you lock yourself up, isn’t it? He just smells so good and you know you couldn’t resist. Wouldn’t resist,” Jeremy giggles as the pacing slows down.
He can hear Howard’s heavy panting right outside and doesn’t dare look back. “Oh dear me, oh my, that’s why you’re out here,” Jeremy giggles. “Yes, mister beast, if you stay in there you’ll find mister beauty, won’t you? You’ll find him and eat him. Gobble the little piggy up.”
“If I eat you, I won’t be hungry, will I?” Howard snarls, a desperate quality to his anger. “Though you’re barely enough for a midnight snack.”
“Eat the trash, you freak.” Jeremy says, low and mean. Howard’s head is back in the opening, teeth snapping vigorously.
“I’ll have you, you little shit, don’t think I won’t,” Howard growls, dangerous and unrelenting.
Jeremy just laughs hysterically, not thinking that Howard won’t. Not for one second.
It’s quiet for fifteen minutes, but Jeremy knows that Howard’s still there. He’s just wishing that he had his banjo when Howard speaks up again.
“Do you think a fox can become a werewolf if it’s bitten?” Howard asks, dully. Jeremy doesn’t quite know what to say, just hums tunelessly.
“Fyxenwolf, is it called that, you think?” Howard muses gruffly. “Maybe you’re too small. One bite and you bleed out.”
“I miss my mansion,” Jeremy says, feeling so very, very small.
Howard pauses but sounds urgent when he says, “You want to go back, don’t you?”
... “Yes.”
“You want your big mansion, with all your upper class friends and all your servants,” Howard says, the sound of him shifting suddenly loud in Jeremy’s mind.
“Yes. I do. I really, really do,” Jeremy agrees.
“Come out, then,” Howard says silkily. “Come on out and you can go back. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
“You’d let me go if I came out there?” Jeremy asks, feeling dubious at best.
“Why not? I don’t want you around me and what’s mine,” Howard says, his voice low and unreasonably reasonable. “I don’t care if you go back to the high hills of leisure or into my tummy.”
Jeremy doesn’t believe him, of course he doesn’t. But he wants to.
And in the end, that’s all Howard needs, really.
Jeremy shifts, shifts, barely a movement at all, and suddenly there is a large hand, with claws for nails, digging into the clothes and skin on his lower back.
Jeremy yowls and kicks and buries his fingers in the bin bags, but he might as well be sleeping for all the good it does. Out he comes, hanging six feet up in the air from one of the hairy hands which he had not noticed Howard possessing, staring wide eyed into a golden abyss of fury. He tries telling himself that he can’t feel the tips of Howard’s claws burrowing into his spine.
“Hello,” Howard says, giving Jeremy a leer that shows of miles and miles of white fatality.
Jeremy lets out what sounds less like a giggle and more like a sob. “Oh, oh, hello.”
Jeremy is slammed to the ground and the claws withdraw from his skin and it hurts, oh, it hurts. The coppery tang of his own blood is heavy in Jeremy’s nose and he sneezes which makes the muscles in his back tense and he squeaks like a chew toy.
Maybe that’s what he is now, Jeremy reflects. Just a mangy drugged up chew toy that belongs to a beloved Rottweiler called fluffy. Only, Jeremy is most likely the kind of toy that eventually stops squeaking.
“Let’s have a look at you then, hm?” Howard says from somewhere behind him and high up above. Before Jeremy can even think about getting his feet in under him he is lying flat on his back with a much too big hand pressed across his throat and shoulders. “I don’t quite know where to start, see.”
Jeremy tries to cough but the pressure on his windpipe is so unyielding that all he can manage is a wheeze in response to Howard’s musing.
“Do you think,” Howard says, sounding almost sincerely curious, “I can fit all of you in my mouth at once?” Howard opens his mouth almost impossibly wide and a wave of foul smelling heat washes over Jeremy who shuts his eyes, wondering if this is it. He opens them again at the sound of jaws snapping together. Howard looks thrilled as he stares down at Jeremy. “Though, I hardly think I can process you once I change back. And it’s probably not pleasant to throw up a whole fox.”
“You don’t want to eat me.” Jeremy rasps, small paws trying to find purchase on the giant hand.
“No?” Howard asks, the gold gleam in his eyes screaming, want to bet?
“If you did, you would have done,” Jeremy states and Howard regards him coolly. “You don’t have to do this.”
“What do you think you know?” Howard snarls, hand pressing down that bit harder. “What would you have me do? Leave this stinking pile and going into the house? Just mill around until I get a glimpse of shiny boots and a whiff of hair product? He is mine. He may not know it but he is mine. And if I found him, I’d make him, and everyone else, know who he belongs to.”
Jeremy’s vision almost fades as he finds it more and more difficult to draw breath. Howard leans in a bit more and looks into those flickering yellow eyes. “So, yes, that is why I lock myself up; to answer your earlier question. But I was distracted and almost didn’t make it back home in time today. Forgetting to bolt the door properly is a stupid mistake that I haven’t done for years. But what is a restless wolf supposed to do when presented with an opportunity to leave that awful little room? Stay? Heh, don’t think so.”
“So you came out here,” Jeremy giggles, an action that hurts but he can’t stop himself.
“It’s a rather pungent smell in here, isn’t there?” Howard says, sniffing the air pointedly. “I’ll never smell him from in here. I’ll just eat you and then run around in here for the rest of the night, exploring.”
“You don’t need to kill me to explore. No sir, feel free,” Jeremy says, trying to shake his head.
“I do,” Howard snorts, amused and filled with some kind of inhuman emotion. “I do feel free.”
Jeremy whimpers as a hot stripe is being licked on the side of his face.
“My dad said that the last words we say have to be perfect. No matter what kind of stupid things we say in our lives we can erase all of it by saying a perfect thing last.” Howard says, leaning in close. “Do you have last words?”
Howard waits for a minute before pressing down harder. “Know what? Fuck it. Last words are a terribly human concept. And I’m not even human. I’m better.” He cackles before throwing his head back and howling to the sky. It’s a rejoicing and a foreboding sound, reaching far and wide to places Jeremy won’t get to see anymore.
As Howard descends, giving Jeremy an eye full of the last thing he’ll ever see, Jeremy tries to think of the perfect last words. He speaks over seven languages. He knows French, German, Greek, Gaelic, and even Latin. He can quote Shakespeare, knows Dante, and he knows the lyrics to most every dance song they play in the night clubs. He has been so much and yet not enough. But then, isn’t that how most people feel at the end?
Yes, he speaks a lot of languages, and then there’s the language that speaks him. The one that comes from within, whether he wants it to, or not. So, in the end, he doesn’t have to choose the right words after all.
“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you dead, you and your little prince!” Jeremy shouts, low and brutal, and then everything goes white, and red, and then finally black.
In the morning, Howard throws up red fur and bits of raggedy clothes, and tries to forget the things he does to himself to stop him from doing it to the person who matters more.
PART II
Authors: letut & erode
Fandoms: The Mighty Boosh
Pairings: Mostly gen, hints of Howard/Vince
Word Count: ~10,600
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Minor violence, hinting at accidental self-harm, some minor language.
Disclaimer: Not mine, never happened, completely fictional.
Summary: People are more perceptive than one would want. Howard wants to live his life without ruining anyone else's, Vince hates secrets, and the Moon just wants to talk.
Notes: Written for werewolfbigbang. Thank you to our unaware cheerleader and spirit animal shotgunteacup, and thank you to lisaroquin for the gorgeous art ♥
The first time Howard hears it, he’s ten years old, and he has been a werewolf for eight months. When he thinks back on it, he realises he probably should have heard it long before.
It starts as a sort of humming. Someone thinking on a song they can’t quite remember or forget, random and out of tune.
Howard climbs out of bed and sneaks down the hall into the bathroom. In the bathroom there’s a window from which, Howard has figured out - the way small children always do - that you can use to climb out on the roof. He grabs his dad’s robe, shrugging it on and rolling up the much too long sleeves. It’s cold outside and Howard’s feet seem to resist for a moment before he plants them on the cold bricks. When he reaches the top he stands there for a minute, listening, robe whipping in the wind around his legs, like a cape, and Howard entertains the notion that he is a superhero.
“-still think, Mars, is a cun-” the voice says, distant and rather faint. Howard looks around him, wondering why he went to the roof. “It is closer, I think,” the voice says and Howard looks up. There’s nothing above him, barely any clouds, even, just the moon, two nights away from being full. Howard is reluctantly awed at being able to tell.
“Who is it?” he says, shouting really, but his voice is being drowned out by the wind.
And then he can see the moon as it appears to rotate and then there’s a face in the sky. On the moon.
Well, part of the face is missing ‘cause it’s not full. Howard’s teacher told him it was because the earth was in the way, but Howard isn’t so sure he believes her.
“Woah,” Howard gasps and almost takes a step back before remembering that he is on the roof and that it would be a very, very bad idea.
“When you are, the moon,” the moon says, the fucking moon - Howard usually doesn’t swear since his mother says that bad things happen to you if you do and Howard doesn’t want to think that a monster appeared out of the dark and bit his childhood away from him because he called Marie in his parallel class a bitch, but since it’s in his head he can’t quite stop himself, can he? - and the moon sounds sort of hesitant, like he can’t quite remember the words he wants to use, “you can talk, and, all the special boys, and girls can, hear you.”
Howard blinks at him, can you call the moon a he, and doesn’t quite know what to say.
“Sometimes, when I am bored, I say filthy, things, to Margaret Thatcher,” he says with a grin and Howard scrunches his nose up. “I want to make her blush, but, she never does.”
Without another word, the moon rotates around again. Howard sits up there for ten more minutes, waiting, before the cold gets to him.
***
The Zooniverse is doing rather less than well. Rather a lot less than well.
It’s doing extremely poorly, to put it one way.
Knowing that your Zoo is circling the drain might depress most men. Then again, Bainbridge isn’t most men.
The thing that Bainbridge has learnt about Zoos is that if things look bad, you can just say the barracuda had an unfortunate run in with a lightning bolt and then re-inhabit the pond with the almost extinct three headed bass/dolphin. Thus, as tragic as it is, the weevil’s cage is empty due to the sudden and unexpected appearance of a rouge Zimmer frame, and Bainbridge has his eye set on something extraordinary.
“Dixon, old friend, as much as I agree that it would bring an unspeakable amount of visitors to the park, I hardly think ‘Werewolves’ exist,” Mr. Carling says. He’s an old adventurer, just like Bainbridge, both possessing the seemingly natural flair for dramatics and massive moustaches. Bainbridge smiles .
“Carling, dear old fellow, do you remember three years ago when I said I’d gotten a tip about underwater bumble bees?” he says with a superior and amused twitch, barely hidden under his moustache.
“Well, yes-”
“Then I can only assume that you remember that you told me something similar that time as well?” he presses on, barely without pause, running over Carling like a Range Rover would a piece of half rotten carrot.
“I did, but-”
“And then I can safely rely on that you remember how I found them in a river in Canada,” Bainbridge says, taking - what would be for anyone else if it didn’t imply the possibility that he might lose - a victory sip of his chocolate cream frappuchino. With extra cream. Currently clinging to his ‘stache.
“True. But werewolves are a myth. Fairy Tales. Complete hopscotch!” Carling says, reasonably.
“I swear, Carling,” Dixon says, pointing a finger at him. “You‘re no fun anymore.”
“That implies I was ever fun.” Carling swats the finger out of his face good-naturedly.
Bainbridge chuckles into his other glass, containing Scotch, the frappochino cup taking a rest on the desk.
“Alright, I am curious,” Carling admits. “What have you got?”
“A lead,” Dixon says and taps his nose, much like a man with a secret.
“I got that.”
“A potion. I got it from a golden shaman. If a werewolf takes one sip, it shall have a strong reaction,” Dixon says, looking that special combination of smug and calm.
“So this is the part in your brilliant plan where you shove it down random pedestrians’ throats, hoping you will manage to find a monster from myth?” Carling hums, pleasantly.
“Not exactly,” Bainbridge says slowly. “This is the part where I’ve already found one since Fossil mixed the potion up with liquid sweetener, poured it in my coffee, and then one of my employees stole my cup.”
Carling blinks at him. “Are you saying you’ve found an actual werewolf?”
“I do appear to be saying that.” Bainbridge points at nothing in general.
“And it’s an employee of yours?” Carling asks dubiously.
“Isn’t it perfect?” Bainbridge chuckles. “It’s almost too perfect.”
-
Howard blinks at Bainbridge who’s sitting on the other side of the desk. “I’m sorry?”
“You heard me, Mister Moon,” Bainbridge points. “That’s a rather ironic name, isn’t it?”
“No it’s not, it’s just a name. My name. Howard Moon,” Howard rambles, smiling a strained smile. “And I’m just as human as you are.”
“Well, I have often wondered if a man as brilliant as I could actually be a mere mortal human, but until I can gather the evidence for the opposite, it would seem that you are more special than I,” Bainbridge laughs.
“I don’t believe in werewolves, sir.” Howard says firmly, looking Bainbridge straight in the eye.
Dixon considers him for a moment before pointing at him. “You stole my coffee, did you not?”
“Uh..”
“Tasted strange, didn’t it? Not quite right. Made you feel sick, didn’t it?” Dixon says, taking in how Howard squirms in his seat, pulling at the uncomfortable green uniform. “In fact, I saw you throw up behind the bird house.”
“I-” Howard starts but cuts himself off again, no doubt because he didn’t know what to say.
“It was a shaman juice. Made to detect werewolves,” Bainbridge explains and takes a childish delight in how Howard flinches, like he’s going to stand up but can’t quite make himself do it.
“So?” Howard snarls, sounding angry and tricked, both of which he is. “It could have been anything, shamans love conning people. Just ‘cause I was sick after drinking it doesn’t mean I’m-!”
“That ugly bird hanging around you didn’t notice it when I put it in her canteen. And Fossil thought it tasted delicious. In fact, after you accidentally drank it I’ve given it to all the employees in the park. And some of the animals,” Bainbridge says pleasantly, bending down to bring out a purple bottle from his desk drawers. “But I’m not an unfair man; anyone can have a bad day.”
Howard stares at the bottle where it’s sat down on the middle of the desk, hands clenched around the armrests.
“Go on then. Have a sip, keep it down, and I shall bother you no more.”
“I’d rather not, thanks,” Howard says, scowling at nothing in particular, perhaps just the situation.
“Why not?” Dixon asks with feigned confusion. “If you’re human it’ll taste quite good.”
He eyes the bottle for two more seconds before taking a mouth full.
-
Five minutes later had Howard hulking into the bin, Bainbridge handing him a box of Kleenex.
“You’re a stubborn man, Mr. Moon,” he says, peering over his desk, elbows braced on the polished surface. “You could have just said; Why, yes sir, I do have the bad habit of transforming into a wolf-man every full moon. You figured me out, good on you sir!”
“Thought I might be able to hold it down, actually,” Howard says, whipping his mouth before spiting once more in the bin.
“Stupid boy, only humans can do that. Toffee?” he holds out a tin filled with wrapped sweets. Howard takes one with the air of someone who would very much like to refuse on principle if it weren’t for the foul taste in his mouth. “Now, would you like to live in the zoo?”
Howard opens his mouth, probably to say something along the lines of, ‘I already live in the zoo, you berk’, when his eyes widen.
“What?” he says, horse, like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. “Tell me you are joking.”
“Joking? I should think not,” Bainbridge scoffs. “It’s a most brilliant business plan.”
“Since when is putting a man in a cage a brilliant business plan?” Howard asks immediately.
Bainbridge flaps his hand, his voice airy. “I won’t be putting a man in a cage.”
Howard flinches as if Dixon had just reached across the desk and slapped him. “I’m, I’m not-”
“Human? Yes, I know that,” Bainbridge says and unwraps a fat, golden toffee. “Think of it this way; no bills to pay, no work to do. No friends hounding you - no pun intended - with stupid questions. All you have to do is sit in the cage and growl and look fierce once a month.”
“That sounds, to be honest, quite horrible,” Howard says, shaking his head.
“And that sounds, to be honest, rather rude,” Bainbridge says with a raised eyebrow. “I’m offering you something good here.”
“Something good? How do you figure that?” Howard asks sceptically.
“Fame; it certainly is what it is,” Bainbridge says grandly. “A chance to be in the spotlight! And it will definitely be more than fifteen minutes.”
Howard looks as if he is about to protest and Dixon sweeps in; striking it down before it’s grown. “You’ll be known all over the world. People will know the truth about your kind.” Bainbridge leans forward, pointing across the desk at Howard with both hands. “The truth comes out and the money comes in. All you have to do is sit in a cage and be who you are.”
Howard looks at him sharply at that.
“This isn’t something that I am, it’s just something that happens,” he says, “and I despise every second of it. But I can’t get rid of it and that’s something that I’ve had to face, and the only thing that makes this existence bearable is that every day when I’m free from it I can lead a normal life.”
Howard’s breathing is laboured after that little rant and he licks his lips tentatively before adding, “As normal as life can be, nowadays.”
Dixon blinks at him. “So, that’s a no, then?”
“Yea- Gods, yes It’s a no,” Howard splutters incredulously.
“That’s a bit of a let-down, to be honest,” Bainbridge says with a sigh and points at the door. “Well, you can go then.”
Howard hesitates for a moment before standing up. He hesitates once more at the door, seeming to contemplate asking ‘so, that’s it?’ and then opens the door.
“Do tell me if you change your mind, Mister Moon,” he says, just as the door slams shut.
-
Three days later, Howard Moon quits his job at the Zooniverse, taking his little slip of a girl with him.
The same day, Bainbridge acquires the plans to the city’s water system.
***
Howard is just shy of eleven and he’s sitting curled up on the sofa in the living room, picking on an old scab on his knee. He doesn’t remember getting it, just remembers waking up in the basement that mum has stuffed with pillows, and feeling the pull in the skin on his knee as he tries to stand.
“When you are, the moon, you are very big, and round.” Howard looks up; his dad is sitting in the armchair next to the sofa, reading a book about Jazz legends.
“Um.” Howard says and his dad looks up, waiting for him to continue his thought.
“Pluto says I am fat. I disagree. I am nicely rounded.” The moon, he guesses, continues. Howard’s dad doesn’t seem to hear it at all.
“Um,” Howard says again. “Is the moon fat?”
Howard’s dad blinks with a half-smile. “No, son. The moon is a non-terrestrial rock.”
“Oh, I see,” Howard says and goes back to picking on his scab, ignoring the grinding sound that he somehow knows is the moon rotating.
***
Jeremy is sitting on a black plastic bag, filled with crockery by the feel of it, biting in to a dead rat, when Howard walks in to his nest. Howard blinks at Jeremy before baring his teeth, growling, going from sort of nonplussed to lethal in a heartbeat.
“You are supposed to be dead,” he says, fur standing on end.
“Oh my, my, my, you’re supposed to be in the house.” Jeremy says, jumping down on the ground. “Behind locks and heavy doors, yes sir.”
Howard seems to swell and his bulk completely blocks the entrance to the rubbish pile, nothing but the greenish light of a torch in a broken bottle to gleam off of the slick fangs, almost dripping with saliva. “I can go where I damn well please.”
“Of course you can, of course,” Jeremy says before adding, voice suddenly deep and urgent. “Don’t monsters usually belong locked up?”
Howard mouth snaps shut and Jeremy swallows thickly, lets out a nervous laugh.
“Not a monster,” Howard says, sitting down in the doorway, looking as solid as an immovable object.
Jeremy sits down as well, eyeing Howard with barely hidden glee. “Then, why do you lock yourself up?”
Howard shrugs, which looks strange on a giant half-wolf, “To be on the safe side. Humans look as if they taste good.”
Jeremy looks down on the rat where he dropped it on the ground earlier. He sticks his syringes through it and holds it up. “Care for some rat?” he asks, giggling nervously.
Howard stares at it, hesitating. “Go on then,” he says after a moment.
Howard’s jaws close around the dead thing in the air, tearing into the flesh. Jeremy watches, frozen grin in place, as the rat in devoured in a matter of seconds.
“Do you know what foxes taste like?” Howard asks casually, cold undertone barely hidden, tongue lapping at his snout.
Jeremy just giggles nervously, feet tensing in case there’ll be a chase. Howard tilts his head, gold eyes looking into yellow.
“They taste like mutton. Like mutton that’s been lying on a waste dump, marinating in the toxic liquids. After that, the mutton has been beaten, till it’s stringy and tough. And then, it’s left in the sun for a couple of days, covered in flies,” Howard’s nose scrunches up. “Almost too bad to eat.”
Jeremy scratches his arm, nerves itching for something to soothe them.
Howard stands up, walking slowly, four limbs moving in harmony. “But I’m not an unfair man; anyone can have a bad day,” he says low and amused, as if enjoying some private joke.
Jeremy squawks, leaping up just as Howard pounces. The crockery bag behind him gets crushed like a bag of twigs as Howard lands on them, missing Jeremy by inches. “Please, mister wolf man! Please don’t kill me!”
Howard chuckles, low and dark, going after Jeremy right away. Jeremy runs through the maze that is the bin bag heap, the hunter after him wreaking his home in the chase. A paradox is almost created as the immovable object becomes an unstoppable force. Jeremy stops as he manages to slink in to a small cave made of black plastic. He listens holds a scabby paw over his snout to stop the nervous giggles that are tickling in his stomach. As Howard tears through the wall, all teeth and claws and golden eyes, the world seems to fall down around them in the form of worn down shoes and half eaten micro dinners. There’s an almost compact wall of compressed rubbish, and Jeremy manages to cram himself into a small crevice. Jeremy presses himself further when he can practically feel the fangs snapping right behind him as Howard tries to fit his head in after Jeremy.
“Ah, come on out, mister crack fox, things were just getting interesting,” he laughs and the rancid smell of his breath isn’t exactly helping Jeremy’s breathing conditions.
“Don’t do this, kind sir. Mister Prince Boots showed mercy on a poor fox, yes he did.” Jeremy pleads, trying to sound as pitiful as possible; a task he doesn’t have to try too hard to accomplish.
“You don’t mention him!” Howard roars, digging his head further into the gap, unsettling the whole wall slightly. “You tried to kill him after he helped you!”
“Please don’t kill me!” Jeremy squeaks before that deep voice returns, amused. “He was too pretty a thing to leave alone.”
Howard claws at the wall, jaws working furiously, but he remains too big. He snorts after a minute of struggling, hot air washing over Jeremy’s back, before pulling his head out of the crack in the rubbish. Jeremy can hear him pacing right outside, furious and waiting.
“That’s why you lock yourself up, isn’t it? He just smells so good and you know you couldn’t resist. Wouldn’t resist,” Jeremy giggles as the pacing slows down.
He can hear Howard’s heavy panting right outside and doesn’t dare look back. “Oh dear me, oh my, that’s why you’re out here,” Jeremy giggles. “Yes, mister beast, if you stay in there you’ll find mister beauty, won’t you? You’ll find him and eat him. Gobble the little piggy up.”
“If I eat you, I won’t be hungry, will I?” Howard snarls, a desperate quality to his anger. “Though you’re barely enough for a midnight snack.”
“Eat the trash, you freak.” Jeremy says, low and mean. Howard’s head is back in the opening, teeth snapping vigorously.
“I’ll have you, you little shit, don’t think I won’t,” Howard growls, dangerous and unrelenting.
Jeremy just laughs hysterically, not thinking that Howard won’t. Not for one second.
It’s quiet for fifteen minutes, but Jeremy knows that Howard’s still there. He’s just wishing that he had his banjo when Howard speaks up again.
“Do you think a fox can become a werewolf if it’s bitten?” Howard asks, dully. Jeremy doesn’t quite know what to say, just hums tunelessly.
“Fyxenwolf, is it called that, you think?” Howard muses gruffly. “Maybe you’re too small. One bite and you bleed out.”
“I miss my mansion,” Jeremy says, feeling so very, very small.
Howard pauses but sounds urgent when he says, “You want to go back, don’t you?”
... “Yes.”
“You want your big mansion, with all your upper class friends and all your servants,” Howard says, the sound of him shifting suddenly loud in Jeremy’s mind.
“Yes. I do. I really, really do,” Jeremy agrees.
“Come out, then,” Howard says silkily. “Come on out and you can go back. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
“You’d let me go if I came out there?” Jeremy asks, feeling dubious at best.
“Why not? I don’t want you around me and what’s mine,” Howard says, his voice low and unreasonably reasonable. “I don’t care if you go back to the high hills of leisure or into my tummy.”
Jeremy doesn’t believe him, of course he doesn’t. But he wants to.
And in the end, that’s all Howard needs, really.
Jeremy shifts, shifts, barely a movement at all, and suddenly there is a large hand, with claws for nails, digging into the clothes and skin on his lower back.
Jeremy yowls and kicks and buries his fingers in the bin bags, but he might as well be sleeping for all the good it does. Out he comes, hanging six feet up in the air from one of the hairy hands which he had not noticed Howard possessing, staring wide eyed into a golden abyss of fury. He tries telling himself that he can’t feel the tips of Howard’s claws burrowing into his spine.
“Hello,” Howard says, giving Jeremy a leer that shows of miles and miles of white fatality.
Jeremy lets out what sounds less like a giggle and more like a sob. “Oh, oh, hello.”
Jeremy is slammed to the ground and the claws withdraw from his skin and it hurts, oh, it hurts. The coppery tang of his own blood is heavy in Jeremy’s nose and he sneezes which makes the muscles in his back tense and he squeaks like a chew toy.
Maybe that’s what he is now, Jeremy reflects. Just a mangy drugged up chew toy that belongs to a beloved Rottweiler called fluffy. Only, Jeremy is most likely the kind of toy that eventually stops squeaking.
“Let’s have a look at you then, hm?” Howard says from somewhere behind him and high up above. Before Jeremy can even think about getting his feet in under him he is lying flat on his back with a much too big hand pressed across his throat and shoulders. “I don’t quite know where to start, see.”
Jeremy tries to cough but the pressure on his windpipe is so unyielding that all he can manage is a wheeze in response to Howard’s musing.
“Do you think,” Howard says, sounding almost sincerely curious, “I can fit all of you in my mouth at once?” Howard opens his mouth almost impossibly wide and a wave of foul smelling heat washes over Jeremy who shuts his eyes, wondering if this is it. He opens them again at the sound of jaws snapping together. Howard looks thrilled as he stares down at Jeremy. “Though, I hardly think I can process you once I change back. And it’s probably not pleasant to throw up a whole fox.”
“You don’t want to eat me.” Jeremy rasps, small paws trying to find purchase on the giant hand.
“No?” Howard asks, the gold gleam in his eyes screaming, want to bet?
“If you did, you would have done,” Jeremy states and Howard regards him coolly. “You don’t have to do this.”
“What do you think you know?” Howard snarls, hand pressing down that bit harder. “What would you have me do? Leave this stinking pile and going into the house? Just mill around until I get a glimpse of shiny boots and a whiff of hair product? He is mine. He may not know it but he is mine. And if I found him, I’d make him, and everyone else, know who he belongs to.”
Jeremy’s vision almost fades as he finds it more and more difficult to draw breath. Howard leans in a bit more and looks into those flickering yellow eyes. “So, yes, that is why I lock myself up; to answer your earlier question. But I was distracted and almost didn’t make it back home in time today. Forgetting to bolt the door properly is a stupid mistake that I haven’t done for years. But what is a restless wolf supposed to do when presented with an opportunity to leave that awful little room? Stay? Heh, don’t think so.”
“So you came out here,” Jeremy giggles, an action that hurts but he can’t stop himself.
“It’s a rather pungent smell in here, isn’t there?” Howard says, sniffing the air pointedly. “I’ll never smell him from in here. I’ll just eat you and then run around in here for the rest of the night, exploring.”
“You don’t need to kill me to explore. No sir, feel free,” Jeremy says, trying to shake his head.
“I do,” Howard snorts, amused and filled with some kind of inhuman emotion. “I do feel free.”
Jeremy whimpers as a hot stripe is being licked on the side of his face.
“My dad said that the last words we say have to be perfect. No matter what kind of stupid things we say in our lives we can erase all of it by saying a perfect thing last.” Howard says, leaning in close. “Do you have last words?”
Howard waits for a minute before pressing down harder. “Know what? Fuck it. Last words are a terribly human concept. And I’m not even human. I’m better.” He cackles before throwing his head back and howling to the sky. It’s a rejoicing and a foreboding sound, reaching far and wide to places Jeremy won’t get to see anymore.
As Howard descends, giving Jeremy an eye full of the last thing he’ll ever see, Jeremy tries to think of the perfect last words. He speaks over seven languages. He knows French, German, Greek, Gaelic, and even Latin. He can quote Shakespeare, knows Dante, and he knows the lyrics to most every dance song they play in the night clubs. He has been so much and yet not enough. But then, isn’t that how most people feel at the end?
Yes, he speaks a lot of languages, and then there’s the language that speaks him. The one that comes from within, whether he wants it to, or not. So, in the end, he doesn’t have to choose the right words after all.
“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you dead, you and your little prince!” Jeremy shouts, low and brutal, and then everything goes white, and red, and then finally black.
In the morning, Howard throws up red fur and bits of raggedy clothes, and tries to forget the things he does to himself to stop him from doing it to the person who matters more.
PART II