sorry about the indent problem
sweatdrop when i coppied it from my word doc., it didn't take the indents with it. again, i appoligize
Forever
It made me mad! He was doing it again! He had me pinned! I struggled to get out from under him. It didn’t help that he was made of stone. Literally. We called him Garth. ‘We’ being my sister and I. Garth had a rather deep voice, and he kinda’ clicked when he spoke. You would click too if your mouth was a beak.
We had gone up to the top of the church, like we had been doing every night for the past 6 months and 29 days (Don’t ask me why I’m counting, you will find out later). For some insane reason, Garth has recently developed this liking to surprise attacking me. Well, not really attacking me, just surprising me and pinning me to the ground. It’s getting kinda’ annoying …I mean really, if you think about it, you would be rather annoyed too if every night, you were levitating along up the side of the building, going to see the beings that had no friends before you, and one that just happens to be the biggest, attacks you and pins you to the ground. So, there I was, pinned to the ground, with 237 pounds of rock pretty well sitting on me.
“Get offa’ me, you great behemoth!”
He started to laugh.
“Don’t you compare me to Behemoth.”
“Fine, you great hippogriff!”
“Come on, Garth. Get off.” That was my sister, Elizabeth, Liz for short. She had come up right behind me. She knew I didn’t particularly like being flipped over. It made me feel vulnerable.
“Aw, come on kid! Can’t I have some fun first?”
“Garth, just because, technically, you are 368 years older than us, doesn’t mean you can pick on us.”
“Come on kid! Keep count! It’s 369!”
“I don’t care! Get offa’ me! You’re starting to crush me!” That was me.
Only then would he ever get off. The others just chuckled.
“How would you guys like it if I pinned you to the ground till sunrise?” I asked, “Then who would be laughing?”
They stopped laughing and just smiled at me.
“Aw, come on kid. Can’t you take a joke?”
“Not when you crush me every night! Liz! Why are you so quiet? Why aren’t you trying to stop him?” Then I realized something. Every night, Liz lets me start up first.
“Liz!”
She ran to hide behind Garth, playfully.
“You knew he was gonna pounce on me?!”
“Well, yeah. I thought it was sorta’ obvious…”
I smacked my forehead.
“Well duh. I know that, but why don’t you try to stop him?”
“Well, why don’t you just levitate farther away from the building?”
I turned my back on the gang.
“Because that would be too easy…”
“So, in other words, you hadn’t thought of that.”
“Why don’t you keep your mouth shut?! Don’t forget, I am older than you.”
“Only by 7 minutes!”
“Ladies, ladies, keep your trousers on. Fine, if it really bothers you that much, I’ll stop. Why does it bother you that much, anyway?”
“That’s a subject for another night. Right now, we are wasting moonlight.”
I looked at Liz. She looked at me. She knew what I was talking about.
We all looked up. The nearly full moon was almost directly over head. That meant that the night was almost half over. I got the shivers. ‘Only one more night!’ I thought to myself. Liz saw my face lighten a little. She slowly and non-obviously came over to me.
“You know that tomorrow’s the full moon, don’t you?” she whispered.
“No, dipstick, I hadn’t noticed.” I said, sarcastically, back in a whisper.
“You know we have to tell them some time. Even though we’ve kept it secret for 6 times already, I don’t know how long it will last. Even though their heads are made of rock, they might be able to figure something out.”
“I realize that!” I hissed.
Everyone looked at us.
“What do you realize, kid?”
“Ah…nothing.” I said.
“Ok…”
I turned to Liz.
“We’ll talk about this when we get home.” I hissed.
It kind of made me mad. How many times had I told her not to talk about that in front of anyone? I looked at all the stone figures sitting in the moonlight. I walked over and planted my seat next to Garth’s massive butt. I sighed. He must have heard, because he put one big paw around my shoulder.
“You ok, kid?”
“Not really, but thanks for asking.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Ok.”
I suppose, when you get to know me, you learn not to try to console me when I get moody. ‘I have to tell them eventually. Well, Garth at least. I don’t even know if I’m coming tomorrow. Probably not. I haven’t been.’
“Will you even come tomorrow?”
I looked up at him.
“Why wouldn’t I come?”
“You never come on a full moon.” He turned his head and looked down at me.
“Oh. So you’ve noticed.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed. Why don’t you ever come on the full moon?”
“Can’t we talk about this later?”
“Why not now?” he asked calmly.
“I’ll tell you, but you can’t freak out and you have to promise to still be my friend.”
“Well, naturally. Why wouldn’t we be?”
“I don’t care if they don’t like me,” I gestured to the rest of the gargoyles, “I care if you don’t like me. All I have left is you guys and Liz.” Tears came to my eyes.
“It’s ok. You won’t lose us. Why don’t you ever come on the full moon?”
“Well it’s because-“
I looked up. I gasped. The sun! It was starting to rise!
“Garth, you have to go!” I pointed up.
He leaped up, unfurled his wings, and took flight, calling as he went, “Guys! We gotta hit it! The sun is nearly up!”
We heard screeching. They all scrambled to their positions, just as the sun poked over the horizon. I found Liz. She was on the other side of the roof.
“Wow. We were lucky,” she yelped as I walked over, “How did we not notice?”
“I don’t know… I just about told Garth.”
“You what?!”
“It may seem crazy to you, but he cares about us. We can trust them, you know. It’s not like he’s gonna tell anyone. Who’s he gonna tell if he did?”
“Yeah, you have a point.” She yawned. “Let’s go home before it gets any lighter. You know what happened last time.”
“Agreed. Let’s go.”
Last night, we left at a reasonable time, only 4 o’clock in the morning, but the moon was still up and, I guess, someone couldn’t sleep. As we were flying home, someone must have seen us. It was all over the newspapers the next morning. ‘UFO’s! They Are Real!’ was the major headline. Of course, then, it was all over the news. People were all abuzz about it. Even in America! Liz and I were famous. I thought it was kinda’ funny, though, that people thought that we were aliens. ‘They try not to fly when they can be seen, you simpletons.’ I thought. Hey, and come around a lot and their family never gets caught.’ When we got home, I told Liz to never mention that again in front of company, and that if I wanted people to know about my condition, I would tell them myself. She started to say something but I had stopped listening. She realized that I wasn’t listening, and simply ‘harrumphed’ at me.
“I’m going to go to bed and I advise you to do the same.”
I went upstairs, got undressed, put some pajamas on and crawled into bed. I wasn’t tired, even though it was already 6:47 AM and the sun was already half way up. Soon after, I heard Liz come up and go down to her room at the end of the hall. So, there I lay, in the light, thinking (miracle, I know). I finally got to sleep. It was a fitful sleep, and I wasn’t really restful. I dreamed about that night, 13 years ago.
I was just sitting there, at the table, coloring. I was at the table in the kitchen because our carpet was white and Mom didn’t want me to accidentally color on it. Liz was at a friend’s house. I thought she was supposed to be home soon, but I couldn’t tell time yet. I was only 3. I knew that the little hand was in between the 7 and the 8 and that the big hand was just a little past the 7 (I know now that it was 7:36). It was raining hard. The power flickered. I got up from the table to go to the living room. I was scared, I was only 3. Just as I put my hand on the door, I heard an awful scream. It came from the living room. I burst in. There, on the floor, was Mom. Around her was a pool of crimson liquid. It was blood! Straddling her mangled body and gorging itself was a creature. Large, white, hairy, terrifying. I screamed. It heard me, raised it’s large, blood-stained head and started stalking towards me on all fours. I couldn’t move. I was so terrified that I couldn’t move. It reached me. It shoved its muzzle into my stomach. I couldn’t help it, I giggled. It turned and did the strangest thing just then. It stood on its hind legs. I had heard of wolves, especially since we lived in the country. I was warned not to go out at night, for fear of getting attacked. So, with that information, I thought the creature was a wolf. That confused me. It walked over to Mom, stood over her again, and was lowering its muzzle to eat its fill.
“What are you doing to Mommy?” I asked the creature. I didn’t really expect an answer. I knew it couldn’t tell me. Besides, it was rather obvious what it was doing. It looked over at me, then down. Somehow, I got the feeling that it was ashamed. I walked towards it, Mom, and the blood pool that was starting to grow. The creature was making a mess. It started to growl at me as I came nearer. Real low at first, like thunder in the distance. At first, I thought it was the thunder. Then it kept going, so I finally stopped. Then, it attacked me. I was thrown back from the force and it had me pinned. It had its massive front paws on my shoulders, with its hind paws on either side of my ankles. I was doll-sized compared to it. It lowered its muzzle once more. It sniffed my body, top to bottom, and lingered around my neck and shoulder. I felt its warm breath and its needle-sharp teeth puncturing my shoulder blade. I screamed once again, and it let go. It jumped off, scuttled off to the kitchen, and I heard a crash. As blackness was filling my vision, I heard the door open, and a shriek that I knew had to be Liz coming home.
I had relived that night many times, considering I had been part werewolf for 13 years. As soon as I had been able to come to terms with ‘my curse’, as I call it, I told Liz. Naturally, since Mom was, well, gone, and Dad was never in our lives, Liz was all I had left. We both knew we were special (we always had been), and had honed our skills for years. When we were still small, but old enough to, we ran away. We had honed our skills to the point that we could produce nonliving clones of ourselves. We had already learned how to cook, and we faked our deaths. We found an old, abandoned house out in the middle of the country, and fixed it up ourselves. We had never thought of relatives or anything. Mom never talked about them, so we could not find them, nor would they likely want to meet us. So, Liz and I have been living here. We fixed up the outside as well, to look like a new house, so no one would come to tear it down and find us out. We never went to school, but we got books from town. We altered our appearances so no one would find out we were still alive. We had home-schooled ourselves for a while, still practicing our magic, when we decided to quit formal schooling. We only went out at night now, except to get groceries, which was not often. I guess you could call us owls. We slept during the day and practiced magic at night.
We decided to head into town one dusk. The sun was totally below the horizon, but there was just a little light, so that things were still barely visible. We were flying around a church, when we saw things move all around the edges of the church. We landed on the roof, 6 years and 30 days ago, now. Well, the rest is history. Liz and I met Garth and the rest of the gargoyles. We developed a curiosity immediately and have been going to see them ever since.
I must not have really been asleep, because I heard Liz go downstairs. ‘Must be time to get up.’ I thought. I barely rolled myself out of bed. I was still tired. I looked at the window. Well, at the curtains. It was just barely getting dark. ‘Wow,’ I thought, ‘Liz is up early.’ I didn’t want to get up. I did, though. I dressed myself in ripped jeans, a T-shirt, and a black sweatshirt. I then followed suit, and went downstairs. Liz was at the table, eating breakfast.
“You didn’t possibly make me any, did you?” I asked.
“Num. I ud I?”
“Without your mouth full, stupid.”
She held up a finger, then swallowed hastily.
“No. Why would I?”
“…brat…”
“Whatever.”
So, I made my own breakfast. I looked out the window. ‘Good, it’s cloudy tonight.’ That meant that the transformation might not happen. I was rather relieved. It was kinda painful. I had learned from experience that I would not transform if the full moon’s light totally did not fall on me.
“I’m going to see Garth tonight with you.” I announced.
Liz nearly choked on her breakfast.
“Are you sure?!”
“…Yes. I am. Garth and the gang need to know. We had better go up and get dressed. We should probably be going soon.”
I looked at Liz in a rather forlorn way. She knew I was not going to change my mind, and we finished our breakfast in silence. It was getting dark. Liz went upstairs and got dressed, and we walked out of the front door. I locked it with one swish of the finger. We left and got to the church to find a large pack of gargoyles waiting for us. Liz went off to wrestle with the others while Garth and I went off to talk. Thankfully, it was still cloudy. We sat down on the side of the church opposite the moon, that way, if the moon did come out, I could not look at it and the light would not hit me.
“Are you going to tell me now?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m getting there.”
I looked up. The sky was starting to clear. I looked at the way the wind was blowing. It looked like it would get cloudy again. I sighed.
“Well,” I began. As I told my horrific story, I kept watching the sky. I watched it clear partially and then get cloudy again. Garth just sat and listened. As my story progressed, I looked at him every once in a while. I could barely read the horror growing in his bird-like face. He looked back down at me. I could tell he was genuinely sorry.
“Wow,” he said, “If I had known it was that traumatic to pin you like that, I wouldn’t have done it! I’m so sorry!” If he could have cried, I think he would have started to.
“Don’t feel bad,” I stated, “You didn’t know.”
Throughout my story, I had been less and less aware of my surroundings. I forgot that tonight was the full moon. I stood up, to stretch my legs, and started to walk out from under the eves of the rooftop building. I didn’t notice, however, that the building had a shadow. I walked out. I noticed, too late, that the building was blocking the light from the full moon. I whirled around, not thinking, and stared, full on, into the moon’s glowing, white, circular face. ‘Oh no!’ I thought. I screamed. It turned into a howl. I fell to my knees. Garth was right there. “No! Get away from me!” I yelled.
My hostility must have scared Garth, for he backed away. I didn’t mean to be that mean, but it hurts! There is no other pain that is even close to being comparable! I started howling again and writhing around on the ground. Just as soon as I let out the first howl, Liz was running towards me.
“Dana! I told you that you shouldn’t have come!”
“Get Away!”
She knew I got hostile during the transformation, but never like this. She jumped back and ran behind Garth. By that time, all the others were gathering around. All they could do was watch. They had started to crowd around me in a loose circle, when I started growling.
“Get back! Let her have some space!” That was Garth. At that moment, I thought he would be there forever-and-for-always. I knew at least he would never leave me…
They all backed up, except for Garth and Liz, who backed up, but didn’t go as far.
I finished the transformation. I was unusually tired. I had no way of knowing why, but maybe it was a psychological thing. Maybe I was making myself tired.
I sat up, on my haunches, and let out one last howl. I then laid my muzzle on my fore paws and started to whimper. The howl was not like all the others, and everyone could tell. It was a howl so full of mourning and loss, one would think Liz had died. Garth could tell that I was already grieving for lost friends. He picked up his large, graceful body and come slowly over to me. (By the way, I can’t speak when I’m a wolf, but since I’m a werewolf, I can speak telepathically) When he reached me, he simply sat down. It was understood that nothing would comfort me now, so he didn’t even try. I could tell he was waiting for me to speak. We just sat there, staring at the moon for a while. Finally, I broke gaze and silence. ‘Garth?’
“Yes?”
‘You don’t have to speak it; you just have to think it.’
‘Oh, sorry.’
‘Do you think I’m a freak?’ I sputtered quickly.
‘And why would you think that?’
‘…Well…’
I had to think for a moment. Why would I think that? I hadn’t thought about that. I guess, just because I thought I was…different to say the least. Ok, I’m not gonna lie, I thought I was a freak.
‘So you are still going to be my friend?!’ I raised my head off my paws and looked at him hopefully.
He chuckled and looked back down at me. ‘Do I have to say it. Why wouldn’t I? We, for that matter.’
For the first time in about an hour, I noticed that everyone was looking at us. I started growling playfully, and everyone knew that it was safe to approach me. I got up, nuzzled Garth’s leg, walked over to Liz who rested her hand on my head like an armrest, to which I gave a soft, playful growl, and the rest of the gang came over, which I assumed was to poke and prod and examine. Instead, they just came over to rub my ears (Heaven!), pat me on the head, and to tell me it was ok. The night finally came to an end; I saw the moon set before the sun rose, so, unfortunately, I transformed back before Garth and the gang had to go.
“You’ll always be here, right?” I asked Garth.
“Of course, kid. Why wouldn’t we be?” He looked at me sheepishly.
“Get out of here, you great Behemoth…” I smiled, and he knew I was just playing around. I looked at him, and then, I knew he would be there…forever.
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