3)

So yeah, I could in fact feel it as the moon came up.

It was like the room was closing in on me. I had to get up and move around, and I wanted out, really, really, bad.

Nope, not going to happen. I got out of the army because I didn't like being bossed around, and then the police force because I was told one too many times to look the other way. I am not going to be some curse’s little bitch.

Pun. Intended.

I plunked my withered old ass back into the chair and started taking long deep breaths while visualizing the symbol for infinity in front of my eyes.

Don’t know how meditating worked for others, but for me, this is what I did. It worked for me now the same as it did when I was an ill-tempered little brute of a teenager worried about an ever worsening feeling of rage that was pushing me to pop someone in the face just for getting in my way in the halls of the high school if I didn't get things under control.

Worked for me then, and it worked for me now.

The feeling of being trapped kept pushing in from the sides of my head and my bones started to feel...soft, like hot pretzels fresh from the oven. I had to punch my legs because they were cramping up, and almost lost my focus whenever I did.

Next time, remember to hydrate.

Then it just...stopped, and I could hear the howls.

In a basement, behind thick walls, in an area where wolves had been wiped out since 1835.

I had looked that last bit up as part of my research into all things involving wolves.

I guess I could just feel them in my bones. An ancient call that still echoed in the land itself. To run and join in the hunt.

Breathe in, breathe out, lazy eight, lazy eight, loop around and around, and breathe in, breathe out.

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I had an old chaise lounge cushion I had kept since I had space in my attic even after the rest of it went in the trash. It and a sleeping bag made up my bed for the night in that windowless room.

Somehow I slept through the setting of the moon and right past the dawn.

That was the first night.

I woke up with an urgent need to pee, but for the first time in nearly nine years, I had managed to sleep through the entire night.

All those little wounds I talked about that you get as you age without knowing where or when you had got them, all those and even the mosquito bites had healed up.

It didn't hurt, anywhere. I don’t know how long it had been since that had been true.

Plus I felt, not young, but not old either. Just not tired and worn out every single moment.

I still had too much fat on me and was just as out of shape as ever, but I was still pretty happy with what being bit had done for me so far. Even just getting a full night’s sleep for once had made it worth it.

Back behind the doors of what I decided to now dub the changing room, I folded up the chair and set it aside, then took a hunched over stance in the middle of the room, ready to drop down to all fours.

I mentally told myself to become a wolf… nope, that didn't work.

Said it out loud, in various ways. De nada. It also made me feel just as foolish as I had guessed it would.

Tried picturing myself being in the shape of a wolf. Still not happening.

Then, I tried to remember the sensation of being trapped, that warm pretzel feeling in the bones, soft as dough.

Then…

Oh my god, it hurt.

Like being torn apart along every limb, and feeling like you needed to throw up all the way down deep in your bowels.

It fully deserved every swear word there is to describe the pain.

Then my mouth was full of what turned out to be a bunch of filling and crowns I had to... not so much spit, as let it drop out of my mouth as my body was stretching and molding like wet clay under cruel hands.

The good news. My clothing tore up with the change and dropped away. Which turned out to be very good news, since bad news... I lost control of my bladder, and then my bowels. Which had been something that I had somehow managed to somehow avoid my entire adult life.

I wonder what you would call your reverse bucket list. The things you wanted to avoid doing before you die.

And hey, guess what? Taking on the form of a wolf means my sense of smell in the tiny little room I had just turned into my indoor outhouse had just improved by about a hundredfold.

So as it turns out a sufficiently desperate werewolf can turn a door knob.

I mentally marked off on my internal checklist that turning into a werewolf didn't drive me to run out and hunt something down to tear into. While turning back to a human with a normal sense of smell just drove me to try to get into the shower as quickly as possible.

Also. Turning back only hurt about half as much.