At that moment unwanted memories filled his mind, each one growing more and more hideous. He saw trees -- tall trees surrounding him on all sides, but after that nothing but fog. And then, as if the devil had taken a broom and swept it away, the fog parted, and in among the sinister swirls, he saw -- my God, was that a dead body? To push it out of his mind, he turned and hurried through the bedroom door, and over to the bar where he kept his alcohol. Grabbing clinking bottles and glasses, his hands shook while he poured one drink after another, and downed it as if alcohol was the only thing that could set his world right again. The strong drink seemed to give his brain a jump start, and he remembered running along a city street and seeing the reflection of himself in a store window. No ... no he was wrong. It wasn’t him, it was the crouching animalistic shape of a man -- with claws, teeth -- oh, my God, it was him!

As he stood upending his third drink, he suddenly felt a throbbing pain in his hand. He looked down and saw that the scratch the little wolf cub had made was still pink and swelled just like it had the night he was bitten. It had been days. Days of doctor’s visits, medicine, pills, and miracle-working salve that should have had it healed long before now. Fear, and a possibility so frightening he couldn’t believe it, flooded him inside. Moving quickly, he slammed the glass down and hurried into the bathroom and began tearing at his bloody pajamas until he stood naked. Slowly he lifted his gaze and looked toward the head-to-foot mirror, and gasped at what he saw.

It couldn’t be him.

But it was.

He looked like a hybrid of both man and wolf, covered with blood. A man so raw and primal that something -- he could hardly describe it -- had taken him over. To his eyes he looked like a growling, snarling, feral man-slut that gushed with an untamed, blatant, sex appeal. His long white-blond hair that hung down past his shoulders trembled with animalistic rage, and his eyes, green with gold specks, sparkled with evil. His lips were lush and full, and his teeth perfect, but his body, his mouth, and his five o’clock shadow was smeared with blood. This stranger he saw in the mirror caused a flurry of pictures to unfurl in his mind, and the next thing he knew, he remembered where he’d been earlier that night.

He saw himself cowering against the side of a building.

He saw fleeting, disjointed pictures of dark streets, heard high-pitched screaming, and suddenly he was in a struggle until he felt the deep penetration of his teeth into someone’s neck.

When he tasted the strange elixir, all warm and spicy enter into his mouth, it wasn’t blood as he knew it, but an exotic wine such as he’d never tasted, and he had to have more. He sucked madly letting it bubble into his mouth, and run down his chin, his neck, and over his clothes until he felt full of this sparkling cider the world called blood, but he called wine.

And then when it was all over, he saw himself racing away. Running! Running! Through the gray steam hissing from the city’s gutters, darting across a dark street, caught in the bright headlights of cars that skidded on their breaks and honked their horns at his bloody sight. Up one street, and down another, he continued to run until he slammed inside and stood there safe in his home, his den, his lair, his hutch.

Now, after the shower had washed away the telltale mud and blood, he looked down at his wound that before was swelled and throbbing, and saw nothing but a small scar he’d expected to see before.

And then he knew.

He must be under some kind of curse or spell, and it had to have something to do with the wolf cub. Was it that simple, or was there much more to the story? He lay naked in bed for several minutes until he finally fell asleep, his mind emptied of everything except that wolf cub and the poison he carried in his claws.