I looked up at the sky, it was growing dark, and I only had a few more minutes. I had locked down the ranger station and my cabin home several hours before I had started this monthly hike to a remote location in the park. Every month for the past 7 months I had been repeating this monthly ritual.
9 months ago I had been attacked shortly after sunset on the night after the full moon. An animal had attacked me and although I had been successful beating it off with my walking stick I was left with a savaged leg. I had thought it simply a large wolf and when I had tested negative for rabies put it out of my mine.
8 months ago the night before a full moon as the sunset I felt incredible pain, my entire body felt afire and I thought I was suffering a sudden fever. My skin felt too tight as if too small for me. Then suddenly I howled with sudden sharp pain mingled with terror, and I was no longer human.
To put some myths away, werewolves change not just the night of the full moon, but also the night preceding and following a full moon. The change itself is not pleasurable; it is torturous which may explain why the animal is so thoroughly consumed with the killer instinct. Every moment I am the wolf I am fully aware and conscious of my actions but the instincts of the animal greatly overwhelm any amount of will and thought the human has.
That first night I had destroyed the inside of my home, and had only just barely not succeeded in tearing the door off the hinges and escaping into the night near where people dwell.
The following day I searched the park for a suitable remote location and found my place, a cave deep in the national forest's wilderness, miles from any human habitation and distant enough from where campers should be that I hoped they would be safe.
That night after my change I prowled the area around the cave marking out a territory of my own, noting the smells of other predators, and as I completed my first circuit coming upon the smell of another werewolf.
He burst from the underbrush attacking with fang and claw sending me tumbling with a howl of pain. I got up with a speed I did not know I possessed and turned to face my attacker.
He was large, and darker of fur than I, but his smell my instincts immediately recognized as the one who had attacked me a month before. I was furious and both the man watching and the beast acting were one in their anger.
I attacked slashing with my fore claws driving my adversary back. I quickly had him backed into a tree and as he rose up to strike me with both paws at once I charged forward with jaws open. My teeth sank into his throat and he whimpered pathetically before I tore the meat of his throat out.
The other struggled for breath and then collapsed limply, and as death closed in on it I charged forward. I tore great chunks of flesh from my enemy's flesh and swallowed them in great gulps, soon all that was left was bones, and I felt stronger, more powerful than before.
I resumed my patrol, and did not come upon any other threats either that night or the final night of change for the month.
The strength of the beast was apparent in my everyday self, and the power I had gained by devouring my enemy as well filled me with greater energy and strength than I had ever felt.
In the months following I had killed and eaten two more of my kind, each one making me stronger than I had been before. Every month I increased my territory hoping to find more opponents.
