First Turnings
WD February Flash Fiction Challenge — Day 25
If you are not a Medium member, click here to read this. However, consider joining Medium. It’s full of talented writers of every sort. I think you will thoroughly enjoy it.
This is my Day Eighteen entry to the Writer’s Digest February Flash Fiction Challenge. The prompt is to write about someone experiencing something for the first time.
Coming of age doesn’t happen all at once, it’s a series of events, mile stones that mark our aging. In the United States, we look forward to our 16th birthday and getting a driver’s license, or maybe turning 18 and officially becoming an adult. Again, turning 21 might be the big one, when we can go order an alcoholic beverage in public.
From my experience, you can put a lot of weight on any one of these events, and then be let down by the reality. For example, getting your drivers license, but not being allowed to drive around with your buddies, because your parents are afraid you’ll get distracted and have a wreck.
Or turning 18, and gaining the right to vote, but then being saddled with the responsibility of voting. Oh, and you can also be held accountable for you actions, and to boot, you can go to war and die on a foreign battlefield.
For some, there are even more layers atop these aforementioned age markers. If you are Catholic, there’s Confirmation, and First Communion. If you are Jewish, and male, there’s your Bar Mitzvah or your Bat Mitzvah, if you are not. Are you of Spanish descent and female? There’s a quinceañera to look forward to.
Me? I am from an Italian family, a family of immigrants only three generations back. I grew up nominally Catholic, and speaking no Italian, with the exception of a few swear words I’ve heard my grandparents use, and the names of some traditional dishes we make on the holidays.
Did you know that the earliest example of man-to-wolf transformation is found in the Epic of Gilgamesh as far back a 2100 BC? No? How about this then? The werewolves you might find familiar, first appeared in ancient Greek and Roman texts.
I know what you’re thinking, that was a complete non-sequitur, only it’s not. It’s not just an odd little tidbit I am offering to you. It is critical to this idea of coming-of-age rituals and milestones. My family brought over more than just language and traditional recipes when they came to America. We also brought a family secret. Some call it a curse. Others see it differently. I haven't made up my mind yet, but will soon have the opportunity to decide for myself.
You see, my family are therianthropes, to use an academic term. Many cultures have these people — I think it’s fair to use the word people — using different words, such as metamorph, skin-walker, and mimic, to name just a few. Some can transform into various animals at will. Some don’t have a choice.
I don’t really know much about these other therianthropes, I only know about my own family and the burden we carry. We are a particular form of therianthropes. We are lycanthropes. lupos mannaros in the tongue of our forefathers, werewolves in English. For as long as anyone can remember, going far back into history, my family have transformed from human to beast.
That has never been an easy thing to hide, but these days, in the middle of Suburban America, it’s become very complicated.
With this burden comes many downsides — uncontrolled killing being probably the biggest one. Losing one’s mind for several hours once a month, is another. No matter what you tell yourself when you are in human form about what you will or will not do, it’s out the door once you’ve transformed. Getting caught and perhaps killed, are definitely other downsides high on the lists.
What you may not know is that there are also some upsides. For example, although dogs are rather short lived, compared to humans, werewolves are the opposite. We have a high capacity for pain and a very strong immune system and tend to live to be very old, like over a century old easily.
We also tend to be highly intelligent, like Mensa high. I don’t know this for certain, but I believe a very high percentage of Mensa members are therianthropes. I do know with certitude that many Blue Zones harbor werewolf populations. I bet you didn’t know that, did you?
Another little known fact is this — the therianthrope gene is passed from mother to son, or at least, that is our understanding of how it words. It’s not like there are lots of scientists openly studying therianthropes. Can you imagine asking for grant money for that research? It would be a career killer.
No, it is tradition that tells us it is the mother that carries the gene, but it is the son who expresses it. If my father is a werewolf and my mother is not, I will never experience the Turning, as we call it. But if my mother carries the gene, even if my father is not a werewolf, I will most likely turn. Some people inherit the gene and never turn. We don’t really know why.
For the most part, only males express the gene, but even that is not a hard fast rule. Historically, there have been very few exceptions, my sister, Bella, being one of them. She turned the night before her seventeenth birthday. I have tried to get her to tell me what it’s like to turn, but she has always been rather private and turning has only made her more so.
The Turning — and we capitalize it like that, when talking about your first turning — takes place somewhere between your 16th and 17th birthday, although it really is different for each person. A few have turned before 16 and some as late as 19. But, as a general rule, it happens somewhere between getting your driver’s license and turning 17.
My 17th birthday is in six weeks, and between now and then, there is a full moon. Oh, did I mention that the Turning is connected to the phases of the moon? You probably already knew that because all of the books and movies that deal with werewolves. Strangely enough, they got a lot of things right.
Let me clarify something. Werewolves tend to become great amateur astronomers, as so much of our life hinges on what lies over our heads. One thing we know that you might not know is this, an actual full moon only takes place one day a month. You might look up in the sky and say there’s a full moon on anyone of three to five days, but only one of those is actually a full moon. That’s important because it is only when the moon is completely full that the turning takes place.
Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, some therianthropes can transform at will. Werewolves cannot. Our turning is completely involuntary and only takes place every 27.2 days, when the moon’s orbit carries it opposite the sun. With that knowledge, there’s so much we can do to mitigate the worst outcomes of turning.
That is, when you know to expect it. For a youngster who has never turned, the first Turning can spring on you out of the blue. Most tragedies associated with werewolves these days happen when a werewolf turns for the first time.
We have a plan for me, a fairly good one. We didn’t have a plan for Bella, of course, since no one expected her to turn. Now, that was a terrible, bloody mess that required lots of bribes to cover up, and Bella having to flee the country. She’s living now in Montenegro, as they do not have an extradition agreement with the U.S.
My mother is a pharmacist. and the plan for my Turning is simply to knock me out using a powerful sedative, before moonrise. We’ve been doing it every full moon since I turned 16.
My mother administers the shot and I spend the night in a steel cage set up in the basement. The room is reinforced concrete, so it is very strong and sound proof, as well, which isn’t really necessary, as we live on a very large estate and have no neighbors within earshot.
Will it work? We don’t know for sure. It is so far, an untested theory. Bella left the country rather quickly after the slumber party she attended went so horribly wrong. She never had the chance to turn again with us.
We are not close to anyone else with this malady, as our wider family, including grandparents, lives far away and my father is not a werewolf. We’re not privy to what others do. We are aware that some do nothing. They turn and let nature run its course. That’s just not us.
As for our plan, there are questions. What dose will keep the werewolf at bay, and not harm me? We don’t know. What tensile strength do the steel bars have to be to contain a werewolf? We don’t know. It’s not like you can look it up on the Internet. So the tranquilizer is a gamble, and the cage is, too. Neither has been tested. They might work great. They might not work at all. Only time will tell.
The next full moon lands on March 25, practically a full month away at 2:00 in the morning. I have no idea what it will be like to turn. I don’t even know for sure that I will turn. If I do, will I be contained within the cage and basement? Will I sleep through the night? Or will I break free and go on a killing spree? I don’t know. But come March 26th, I’ll let you know how it went.
Wish me luck!
If you enjoy my writing, consider becoming a Medium subscriber and catch all my writing, as well as many other writers found there. You can join Medium here. No matter what your interests are, Medium is a great place for readers. It costs only $5 a month (less than a cup of coffee) and you can read as much as you’d like! Besides, when you sign up, your membership fee directly supports me, Michael Huff (@huffhimself), and other writers you read.
Finally, if you enjoy my stories, consider getting on my mailing list. You’ll be notified every time I publish a new one.
