“Hi,” the boy standing in your way said. He was several inches taller than you with dark hair and a matching pair of dark eyes. He had a black backpack around his shoulders and a small square-shaped, blue bag in one of his hands. He wore his uniform in such a way that it looked more lax on him than it did on anyone else. His shirt was a bit wrinkled, as well.

You looked behind and beside you to make sure he was really talking to you. You’d never seen him in your life and you had no idea why he would be greeting you. You flashed him a polite smile and greeted him in return before passing by on the other side.

“Hey, wait a minute,” the boy said, breathlessly, as he reached out and gently held your elbow to keep you from walking away. You turned and faced him, wondering what in the world he needed to say to you. “I--,” he began to say. “You were really great in the Art Showcase, by the way.”

You raised your eyebrows at him. “The Art Showcase?” you asked. “You mean the Art Showcase as in three years ago?” You had recited a poem you wrote on the third day of the school wide Art Showcase, and your composition won the first place prize in the poetry category. You were surprised that this boy you’d never spoken to had remembered that.

He blushed profusely and then looked down at his shoes. “Yeah,” he said. “I… I know it was a long time ago, but we’ve been classmates for longer than that and I guess I just always meant to tell you.”

You giggled a little. “So… you waited until 4 PM on the last day of senior year to tell me?”

He shrugged. “I never had the guts to tell you earlier but I guess now that our time together is ending everyone is getting desperate to confess their deepest, darkest secrets.”

You laughed. “And this one is yours?” you asked. “You’re a pretty simple kind of guy, then,” you said and he laughed as though at an inside joke. You switched your notebooks over to your other arm and sighed. “Well, thanks for the compliment anyway… boy-I’ve-never-talked-to.”

“Tao,” he said. “My name is Tao. We don’t have any classes together since you’re way smarter than me and, thus, our paths have never crossed. Makes sense, though, doesn’t it?”

“It sure does,” you said, laughing. “Well, it has been nice talking to you, Tao, and I’m glad that on this last day of school we were finally able to make each other’s acquaintances. Anyway, I hope you have a great summer, and I’m sure you’ll do great in college, too. See ya!”

“Hey, wait a minute,” he said, reaching for your elbow again. He held onto your arm gently, as though you were an egg. “What are you doing tonight?” he asked. This time, you were completely surprised by the question.

“I… excuse me?” you said. You’d never been asked on a date before. Tao smiled again.

“There’s a new restaurant that’s having its grand opening tonight,” Tao said. “It looks really cool, it’s got this weird nautical theme, but I still kind of want to try it out and I was wondering if you wanted to come with me.”

You blinked at his offer, not knowing what to do with it having never received one before. It was nothing like the way you pictured being asked on a date was like. Plus, you’d never talked to Tao before that moment and you didn’t even know if your personalities were compatible enough to survive an entire evening together. You weren’t quite sure about a nautical-themed restaurant either; “nautical” while suitable as a theme for an haute couture summer collection or beer commercial advertisement didn’t strike you as a suitable theme for a restaurant. There was also another question that nagged at your brain.

“Why me, though?” you asked. “Why don’t you go look at your beautiful nautical restaurant with someone else, one of your friends?”

Tao looked up at the sky, thinking. You could tell that he hadn’t anticipated a question like that and now he didn’t know what to say. You sighed to yourself, thinking that perhaps he didn’t really want to go out with you; he was just playing some sort of mind game on you.

“I know it’s really short notice and I’m really late on this,” he said, scratching at the back of his head. “But I’m asking you in particular because… I want you.”

It wasn’t much of a reason at all. But just the thought of being wanted for a change was enough to draw you in. Still, the practical girl that you were, you smiled kindly and regretfully told him that you couldn’t go. You told him that your parents were having a celebratory dinner tonight and that next weekend you were going to start work as a weekend camp counselor. Tao bit his lip and nodded understandingly at your answer. You apologized once more before turning to leave.

Even with your back facing him you could feel his disappointment. At the very last moment, you turned back to him:

“I like coffee,” you said, and Tao perked up at your voice even though he wasn’t quite sure where the subject of coffee fit into the previous conversation. You smiled and shrugged. “I think I might get a cup tomorrow around 11 AM at the coffee house at the corner of 5^th and Moon.”

“Oh,” Tao said, still confused as to where this was headed. “Okay. That’s nice.”

You laughed a little at his slowness. “I like that coffee house,” you said. “I can never be sure just who I might meet up with there.”

Tao looked hard at you and then smirked. “Yeah,” he said. “You never know.”

“Here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life--,”

“Poe,” Tao said, interrupting the rhythm of your recitation. You rolled your eyes and turned to glare at him. His eyes, upside down, looked over and smiled at you. You could tell that he was feeling quite proud of the reaction he was getting from you.

“Is Poe the only poet you know?” you asked. Tao looked up at the sky, thinking and then nodded surely. He laughed.

“Well, alright, you wrote it then?”

“No, I didn’t,” you said, laughing. “But it is one of my favorite poems and I have referenced it more than one while in your presence. I thought my own boyfriend would know it by now.”

“I was too distracted by your beauty to pay much attention.”

“Shut up,” you said, though you blushed at the comment anyway. Tao tilted his head so that his forehead bumped yours. Despite having been dating for almost a month and having passed the touch barrier, having his skin against yours was still a strange sensation to you. It was one of those days that were just beginning to become hot and humid as summer approached, and you and Tao decided to have a picnic in one of the surrounding parks.

It was such a short time to spend with someone and still feel so strongly toward that person. But being with Tao was a revitalizing experience. He made you feel good about yourself; he made you want to be a better person not just for others, but for yourself as well. Over the course of almost a month that you spent with him, you were learning more and more about him, and what you learned only attracted you more to him.

In the world full of nastiness and evil that you’d known almost your whole life, finding someone as innocent and kind as him gave you a spark of hope. He was your quiet need and the comfort of your old griefs.

Pushing yourself off the ground you turned over and hovered over him, with your face over his. Tao’s eyes had been closed, but sensing your shadow passing over him, he opened his lids and looked up at you. The moment his eyes locked onto yours, you knew what was coming next.

This was your fate, this boy. And you lowered your lips down onto his, not caring that you were in a public park or that people were watching or that you’d never kissed anyone in your life. And below you, his lips reached up, lunging for yours. You heard his breath catch and felt his smile against your mouth.

But as suddenly as it had started, Tao turned his face away. He shot up into a sitting position, clutching his arm and wincing through his teeth.

“What is it?” you asked, shuffling over to his side and wanting to see what was hurting him. But he grabbed his arm away from you and just hunched over until his forehead was nearly touching his knees.

“What’s wrong--?” you asked, but he just looked over at you with bloodshot eyes that stole your breath.

“Where’s the blue bag?” he asked, in a brusque whisper. You spied the blue bag in question at the corner of the picnic blanket. You reached for it and handed it over to him, not quite sure what he needed it for. He took the bag from you.

“I’ll be back,” he said. And he stood up and ran toward the small building which housed the restrooms at the edge of the park, leaving you feeling confused and scared.

A month passed. The news on television was beginning to scare you. An obviously-panicked news anchor stood in a dark alley, surrounded by bright yellow police tape and forensic scientists. He was almost yelling the news into his microphone. Another mutilated body was found in the dark places of the city. This time, it was a young girl, about your age. No one could tell who she was, though; her face was (for lack of a better word) chewed up and her body looked like raw meat marinating in her own dark red blood.

“Who is it this time?” Tao’s voice said from behind you. You turned to him, standing behind your couch, and his eyes looked mournfully at the screen.

“A young girl this time,” you said. “Whoever is doing this, I hope they stop him soon.”

Tao looked down at you, equally as mournful. Then, he sighed and instructed you to turn the TV off or else switch it to another channel. You put on a movie instead and invited him to join you on the couch. Tao took the little blue bag and went into the restroom down the hall, yelling down a promise to watch the movie with you in a minute.

There was a time, before you really knew Tao, when he said that his crush on you had been his only secret. But that little blue bag seemed like a deeper secret still. You couldn’t help but feel slightly betrayed at his secrecy. Betrayal starts not with rumors, but with secrets.

You knocked on the door a third time, heavier. You stood outside on the porch for what seemed like an entire ten minutes and no one had come to answer the door. And yet, you could see through the window, an over baking with 15 minutes left and the TV tuned to the sports channel, a soccer game on TV.

“Tao, I know you’re in there!” you yelled through the wood. “I can see the television, now stop being such a coward and come talk to me. You have some explaining to do!”

Tao had been nowhere to be found for almost the past week. Not a single call or text or email, and he had even forgotten that you’d invited him out to eat with your family the other night. Normally, you were a forgiving person, but ignoring you and disappearing with no explanation was unreasonable to you. And you wanted to know what he was up to with all his secrets.

Finally, the door opened, but instead of Tao there was another tall man in thin glasses and a hairline plastered with perspiration. You widened your  eyes at him, seeing that he wasn’t Tao and that his right arm was bleeding profusely from a cut that ran almost the entire length of his forearm.

“I’m not interested in whatever you’re selling,” he said breathlessly and was about to shut the door on you.

“Wait!” you said, sticking your foot in the doorway to keep it from slamming on you. “I just want to see Tao.”

At this the man’s face drained of color. “He’s not here,” he said, and you couldn’t tell if he was lying or not.

“Isn’t this where he lives?” you asked. The man stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind him. He held your gaze with a frantic expression.

“You must stay away from this place,” he said. “Tao is not here--,”

“But you know him, don’t you?” you asked. “Please, sir, I’m his girlfriend, and I just want to know what’s happened to him. He disappeared for a week, he even stood me up and I know he would never do that. Where is he? He’s hiding something from me and I want to know what it is.”

“Are you here alone?” the man asked. “You should go home.”

Maybe he was right to worry that you’d walked here alone. The string of murders was growing more brutal with every report and the great manhunt for the murder drew in more and more policemen every night. A girl like you was not safe by yourself. But Tao was important to you, and you had to know what he had to do with this.

The man gave you another sharp look and then retreated back into the house, slamming the door so hard that it simply ricocheted off the lock and swung open a crack. In the house, you heard the man’s heavy footsteps becoming fainter. You peeked through the crack and saw him disappear into the basement.

You considered yourself a good girl who would not enter a house she was no welcome in. But desperate times called for desperate measures. Pushing the door open, you stepped onto the carpet. The only sounds were the TV. You couldn’t even hear the man’s footsteps anymore. But determined to find out the truth, you walked over to the door at the furthest corner of the room. This door, too, was hanging open by a crack. Peering through and down the stair shaft, you only saw blackness.

You felt your heart in your chest beating loudly. Dark places were not your favorite. But you reached into your pocket and fished out your cell phone and turned it on, using it as a makeshift flashlight. Your footsteps echoed as you descended slowly into the darkness. But as you neared what seemed to be the bottom, there was a very dim orange light. And with the delicacy of a falling flower petal, you stepped into it.

You found yourself in what appeared to be a laboratory. There were white mice behind glass panes, containers of strangely colored liquid, stainless steel countertops, computer monitors and other scientific tools. The room seemed harmless enough; it simply reminded you of a school chemistry lab, only larger and much more intricate. But why was something like this housed in such a place?

The ear-splitting crash and the blood-curdling sound of a growl like two knives grinding together on your right shoved you and you fell to the floor. You hit your back against one of the cupboards sending a few vials of chemicals falling by your side. You heart picked up. The snarling continued. A sound like a screeching hound sent a shockwave through you. And when you looked up with your breath hitching and your eyes wide, a rush of thrilling panic rippled through your body.

A werewolf. That was the only thing it could be, that massive creature with a hairless muzzle, baring its teeth like prize knives. Almost ten feet tall, its limbs were long and gangly and sprouted fur that did little to hide the wolf’s odd, uncanny resemblance to an adult human. And worst of all were its eyes, black and bottomless as the abyss and twice as cold.

The hideous animal stood and struggled against steel bars that separated it from you. Still, its arms were thin and long enough to slip through the bars and just barely scratch at the fabric of your jacket. You grunted and struggled to push yourself as far from it as you could. Its immense paws strained against the bars, snarling and growling at you. Its breath smelled like ashes mixed with the scent of blood.

Hot tears were streaming out your eyes by now and your throat was going tight from screaming. Suddenly, a pair of arms jerked you to stand upright and pushed you back toward the stairs. The wolf followed you until the steel bars prevented it from going any further, and just as you disappeared up the stairs, it let out a long, haunted howl.

“I told you to go home!” the man bellowed at you as soon as you were back onto ground level. You were still crying at this point, however. In truth, you were in hysterics.

“What was that!? It tried to kill me, it was squeezing through the bars! There’s a monster in the basement!”

“Calm down,” the man said, more gently this time, and he took a blanket and put it over your shoulders. “You’re in shock, sit down a while--,”

“There’s some kind of a creature down in your basement, I am so sorry, I didn’t mean to--,”

“Shh,” the man said, and before you could even do anything else, you had wrapped your arms around the man cried into shirt. Your heart was still beating like a motor, and you couldn’t stop this fear from going on and ading every single part of your body. You were paralyzed almost, terrified of what you’d just seen. What could it be?

The basement door opened once more after what seemed like three or four hours and the man in the dress shirt stepped out once more. He looked at you with a coffee cup in your hands, and he sighed. “You can come with me now,” he said, and then turned back into the stair shaft.

You hesitated at first and then you slowly rose and followed him with shaky steps. Down the stairs, your heart kicked up again, and images of the horrendous, nightmarish creature flashed through your mind again. You entered the orange-lit room a second time. The steel-barred cage was empty now, and the man was at a table in the corner of the room. On the table there was a body, a young man dressed in what looked like hospital garb. You recognized your boyfriend.

“Tao!” you exclaimed and rushed over to the table where he lay, unconscious. You bit your lip to keep from crying at the sheer sight of him. You placed your hand over his and lowered your head to his chest. His heart was beating, steadily, and you let out a sigh of relief.

“What’s wrong with him?” you asked, your voice shaky. You pushed his hair out of his face and touched his cheek. The man beside you sighed.

You cannot tell anyone about what you saw here,” he said. You looked at him, widening your eyes.

“What did I see here?” you asked. The man looked at his shoes.

“Tao is a little different, my dear,” he said, looking then at his patient on the table. “That creature behind the bars that tried to attack you? That was Tao.”

You in a breath. “What are you talking about? No, Tao is here, I’ve got my hands on him now--,”

“It was an accident a very long time ago,” the man said. “His father and I were pioneers in a new branch of genetic engineering called Lycanthropy Engineering. The idea was more or less an exploration of the concept of incarnation. Preserving human souls in the bodies of animals for later transplantation. We started with things like rats and bugs at first, but they weren’t working. Eventually, we figured that larger animals were more suitable. Then they shut us down.”

The man reached behind him and brought out Tao’s blue bag. He opened it and inside was what looked like small radio. But connected to it was a rubber-wrapped tube connected to a syringe. The man brought it over to where Tao’s left hand was. He patted the area around his elbow a bit and finally found a vein. He injected the strange yellow liquid into his blood stream.

“He was just a toddler back then, maybe two or three years old. Walked into the lab one day and got into the one of the capacitors. We didn’t know he was in there.” The man stopped and examined yours and Tao’s face for a moment. You couldn’t believe what you were hearing.

“We were experimenting using wolves back then,” the man continued. “First thing that happened, his dad tried to help him. He ended up killing his father instead. There was no way to reverse it, but after further study, I found a way to repress it. Still, every now and then, at random hours of the day he could just transform into a werewolf hybrid. And when he turns back to human form, he won’t remember a thing.”

You looked down at Tao, who still looked peaceful in his sleep and pitied him. How could someone as nice as him be subject to such a fate as this? A scientific accident turned him into a shape-shifting monster. You remembered the news on the television and his horror, it dawned on you that he was the killer. And he might not even know it himself. That was why he carried that blue bag with him everywhere, and why he ran away from you that day at the picnic. That was why he disappeared on some nights and why he sometimes appeared with mysterious cuts and bruises that he never explained to you.

That was why he kept secrets from you.

When Tao reappeared later that night, he was fully dressed in a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt. He looked around the room once before his eyes finally came to rest over you. Overjoyed at seeing him, a bright smile lit up your face which Tao could only weakly return. He took a breath and then walked over towards where you sat on the couch pretending to watch soccer.

“Well, now you know everything,” he said.

Your bright smile disappeared and you uncrossed your legs. “Yeah,” you said. “I guess I do.”

The two of you stood facing each other for a long time, before Tao got on his knees and placed his hand on yours.

“Sorry I didn’t tell you,” he said.

You half-smiled. “I guess I understand why you didn’t,” you answered. It took the Lycanthropy scientist several more attempts to convince you that what he said was the truth. It was still hard to believe that the frightening creature in the dark basement that tried to kill you was your loving boyfriend. It was even harder to believe now that he was human again and kneeling right before you.

You took a deep breath and focused on his face. “Did you kill that young girl in the alley last week?” you asked quietly. “The one on the news.”

Tao widened his eyes, and then sighed as he took your hands again. He ran his thumb over the back of your hands. “I didn’t want to,” he answered. “I didn’t have any control over that, I wasn’t trying to kill her. Believe me, __, I really wasn’t--,”

“I believe you,” you answered. “This is just a lot to take in on one evening.”

Tao smirked. “This is for me pretty much every evening,” he said, and then his small smile disappeared. “__, I understand if you don’t want to be with me anymore--,”

“What gave you that idea?” you asked. Sure, you knew that the situation was no infinitely more dangerous, but that idea hadn’t even crossed your mind.

Tao’s eyes widened in surprise yet again. “You know what happens to me now, don’t you?” he said. “Mr. Lee… he tries to cage me in on the times that I don’t get to the antidote in time, but who knows how long the transformation could last? Sometimes it’s a few hours, sometimes all night, and sometimes, like most recently, a whole week. I don’t want you to have to put up with that. Don’t you want a normal boyfriend? Why me?”

You looked at Tao and shrugged looking around the room. “Well, I don’t want anyone else,” you said. “I want you.”

The transformations continued throughout the summer, and you tried hard to support Tao as much as you could throughout his ordeal. It suddenly struck you that perhaps he’d been alone with this for so many years. The murders stopped as the Lycanthropy doctor learned to strengthen the antidote and find better ways of keeping him caged in whenever such episodes did occur.

In the winter, however, the attacks got stronger, and the antidote’s effect weakened bit by bit. One night, after an attack, he came home and he had been shot.

“Shouldn’t we take him to a hospital!?” you yelled. The man continued rushing over the lab, grabbing tools and bandages he might need.

“Too suspicious!” he yelled. “They’d kill him! No worries, I can treat him.”

“But he’s been shot, for God’s sake!” you screamed, cradling unconscious Tao’s head in your hands as he lay, once again, on the stainless steel table, bleeding from the gunshot wound from his shoulder. The scientist, too, was bleeding from a slash in his side, inflicted by Tao while still in wolf form.

Despite the hysteria, you were thankful that Tao had such a caretaker, who put up with the countless wounds and cuts and bruises to give Tao the chance to live as normally as possible. Suddenly, however, Tao began to stir in your hands. You looked down at him, and you could hear him growling lowly, a deep guttural sound from his throat.

“Mr. Lee!” you cried out. “Hurry!”

The man looked over at Tao and saw the young boy beginning to bare his teeth, the muscles in his arms beginning to spasm. “It’s happening again,” he said with dread. “__, get away from there!” The man went to one counter and quickly grabbed a syringe with the yellow liquid.

Tao’s eyes shot open and they were bloodshot again. The blacks of eyes dilated until they filled up the white areas, too. Before you could even react, his hands had shot up at you and wrapped themselves around your neck.

“Tao!” you yelled trying to pry his finger from your throat. But the more you struggled, the tighter he squeezed until you thought your neck might snap and your throat collapse. His hands seemed to sprout claws as you felt something sharp cutting your skin and with the last breath you had you let out a scream.

The scientist was by your side in an instant and he jammed the syringe into Tao’s veins and pulled his hands from you. You fell onto the floor, coughing and sputtering, gasping for air. The skin around your neck was tender and hurt even when not touched. You felt a little blood dripping down your collar bone.

“He cut the skin behind your neck,” the scientist said, pressing a towel to your wound. “But at least he didn’t penetrate it. That was lucky; he could’ve paralyzed you or killed you even.”

Despite what the scientist said, you weren’t feeling very lucky at that moment. You couldn’t even hold your head up from the pain. You lay down on the couch and rested your head on the arm rest. Tao was in the basement, and the door was locked in case he had another episode. They seemed to come in smaller gaps, now.

“Is there really no way to help him?” you asked, and the man froze for a minute. Then, he shook his head. You wanted to cry.

As his strength grew, Tao’s transformative attacks were harder to control. The murders on the news started up again when he broke through the steel cage. He avoided you more even when he was back in human form.

“Where are you getting all these injuries?” You yelled, demanding an answer from him. Tao just kept his back to you and hung his head low. The purple bruise on the right side of his face was still visible in the dim light of the dining room. “You can’t expect me not to worry,” you continued, bringing your voice to a gentle whisper. “With everything that I know about you, you can’t expect me to just sit here while things happen to you. There were policemen shooting at you, for God’s sake!”

“Do you think I wanted this?” he said. “I didn’t choose to be this way; someone chose this path for me before I was even wise enough to know what I was getting into. But it does happen, and no matter how many times I transform, fifty times, a hundred times, a thousand times, I will never, never come to terms with killing people.”

He pursed his lips and then finally faced you. Tao’s expression was sad as he looked up, and his right eye was framed by a nasty bruise. “Please just leave it alone,” he said. “I don’t want to drag you into this, but if you keep coming back to me, I may not be able to help it one day. I already know where my life is going, and it’s someplace I don’t want to take you.”

Resting his elbow on the counter, he lowered himself onto a chair at the dining table.  He released a small laugh and then looked out into the middle distance: “I don’t even remember what they looked like,” he said. “It’s a pretty move, don’t you think? To kill someone and not even know whether they were male or female, young or old? You’d think that if you were going to kill someone you’d at least acknowledge that they existed at all. But when I come back from my wolf form, I literally remember nothing.”

You’d never seen Tao this way before. Then you thought to yourself that perhaps he was right and you’d never really understood him. You accepted him but you didn’t understand. Understanding was connected to logic and reasoning. But up until that moment, you had never known Tao’s reasoning. Now you knew why he was so hell-bent on helping people, why he wanted, in any way he could, to save lives. He was a wretch and he’d been digging this hole for almost a decade.

How torturous it must have been, you thought, to lose all control of your body and your mind and to be forced to murder so many. And yet the Tao you knew would never hurt anyone. Hell, he apologized to chairs and doors when he bumped into them. The Tao you knew was the boy who kissed your hair and played practical jokes and held your hand.  But at the same time, the Tao you knew wasn’t the whole Tao. And love required wholeness.

“I don’t know what to say,” you said, and Tao looked up at you with a cynical smile.

“No one knows what to say,” he said.

You took the chair and sat down across the table from him. It was almost dawn by now. The windows behind him were turning pale blue as more light began to fill the sky. “What do you want, Tao?” you asked him. “I know you didn’t choose this, but what would you choose?”

He brought his hand up to touch the bruise on his face and then winced at the shock of pain. “I want,” he began to say and then paused a moment to think. “I want a college degree. I want to teach wushu to little kids at that studio on 6^th street. I want to travel around the world and meet people and talk to them. I want a house away from the city, with a green lawn and a basketball hoop. I’d put that near the street so the neighborhood boys could play on it, too. And I want you.”

You smiled sadly, seeing how simply he wanted those things and how impossible it was for him to get them. College degrees, wushu classes, basketball hoops, and, in his own mind, even you. You took a deep sigh and folded your hands on the table.

“Everything’s okay, Tao,” you said. “At least for now. You’re not a wretch like you keep making yourself out to be. That wolf you turn into from time to time, that’s not really you. I know who you are, and I know that that thing that kills people at night isn’t you. We just… have to find a way to keep it… repressed--,”

“We?” Tao asked. “__, please--,”

“Yes, we,” you said, leaning forward and wrinkling your eyebrows. “You let me in on your secret, Tao, and now I’m just as responsible as you are for anything that happens to you. Don’t worry about all those people who were killed, I’ll worry about them. But, damn it, Tao, I’m not going to let you keep on like this on your own.”

Tao looked up you, widening his eyes a bit and then turning away. You swallowed a lump in your throat.

“I love you,” you said. “And I want to protect you just as much you want to protect me. And, dangerous or not, we can only do that when we’re together. This is our deepest secret now.”

One day you walked into Tao and Mr. Lee’s house. You’d heard along the way that it was actually Mr. Lee’s birthday and you had come with a plant as a present for him. Mr. Lee figured that he now trusted you enough with a key, despite Tao’s protestations that it might be dangerous if you were allowed to walk in anytime you wanted. You unlocked the front door and announced your arrival.

“I’m here!” you said. There was no reply and you figured they were down in the basement laboratory again and couldn’t hear you. So you closed the door and walked over to the basement entrance. They’d given you the key for that, too. As you made your way down, you contemplated walking in while singing “happy birthday”.

But when you finally stepped into the orange-lit room, it was empty, devoid of life. Confused, you began to walk around the room, setting the little plant in the corner. The mice were all squeaking in their glass containers and the steel cage was apparently still undergoing repairs. You swung your arms by your side in a carefree manner until you suddenly slipped when you stepped on something wet.

“Ugh,” you groaned pushing yourself to a sitting position once again. But bringing your hand up, your sleeve was soaked in the liquid you slipped on: it was blood, and the dark red trail of it led back to a body… Mr. Lee’s body. His shirt had been torn open by a set of claws and you could have sworn that you saw his heart in the rawness of his body.

“Mr. Lee?” you said, your breath starting to catch again. The man was dead, the antidotes were destroyed. You screamed yet again and without knowing what else to do, you ran back upstairs, and you called the police.

Without meaning to, you confessed that Tao had been the monster. The police chief didn’t listen to you at first and thought that you were crazy. But when they searched the laboratory, the tall tale was becoming more and more real. Soon, the army of police was unleashed into the night. Now that they knew what exactly they were looking for, they were unstoppable.

“You just stay here,” the police chief said, sitting you down in a chair in his office. “You’ve been through a lot. We’ll take care of this from now on--,”

“You’re not going to kill him are you?” you asked. “He’s just an innocent boy, he doesn’t know what he’s doing--,”

“You can’t defend him, now,” the policeman said. “That monster’s responsible for the death of 34 people in this city. Thirty-four and this place isn’t safe until that monster is dead and gone.”

“He’s not a monster, though!” you said. “I know that boy, he wouldn’t kill anyone--,”

“Thirty-four people--,”

“He wouldn’t!” you yelled. “You don’t have to kill him, you just have to bring him back here and help him. There’s an antidote in the lab, I can--,”

“Thi situation is in our control now, miss,” the policeman said, training his eyes on you. “You can go on saying that he’s an innocent whatever-he-is but he’s nothing more than a dangerous beast. A monster, and just like any monster he needs to be destroyed—,”

“NO!” you yelled, standing up and the policeman grabbed your arms and put you in a seated position again. You struggled against his grip and continued to protest against the killing. The policeman then left you in his office and closed the door with nothing more than the promise that the werewolf would be stopped. They didn’t know Tao, how could they know his disposition. You knew him.

Tao was the first boy to make you feel wanted. The first one to ask you out on a date. He was your hope, your quiet need, the answer to your problems, and the one you loved. And now the police were after him because of you. This had to be some sort of injustice; to be blamed for something you had absolutely no control over. To be killed for it.

You went around the policeman’s desk and scoured his drawers. There had to be something there you could use, something to help you right this wrong somehow. Something you could use to save Tao. In the leftmost drawer, you found the man’s gun. The sight of it drained the color from your face. But when you grabbed its metal handle, you realized what needed to be done. It was your deepest secret. Yours and Tao’s. You were the one who was supposed to protect him, and dangerous or not, it could only be done when you were together.

Your lungs gasped for air as you kept running. It was a humid night and your heart was pounding from the rush of adrenaline as much as from the running. But nearly every cop in the city was out hunting for Tao, and you could only pray that you could find him first. Tao was your responsibility; and you weren’t going to let anyone take him from you.

You skidded to a stop, hearing the distant sound of sirens. Then, you turned and ran in another direction. Where could he have gone? Had he killed another person? Was he hurt? Had he transformed back to human again? A thousand questions ran past your mind as you thought of where he could be, or where he could hide. Suddenly, you remembered that park where you had the picnic, and you felt your heart slowing down, as though it were the only safe place.

Could e have gone there? Turning to your left, you saw the familiar path to that particular picnic place. Something told you to go there, something in you told you that was where you’d find him. Taking a chance, you followed your instinct, and walked toward it. The sirens behind you blared louder.

There’s not much time, you thought to yourself, and you picked up your pace.

You found Tao at the furthest part of the park, a place that was walled in and had hedges growing on either side. The werewolf was hunched over, cradling its injured forepaw. Its dark grey fur was matted and bloody. The growling was loud and rumbling, traveling through the earth almost. You stood there, maybe ten feet away, the metal of the gun pressing into your palms. There was only a streetlamp, some ways away, to light up the scene.

You felt a tear dropping down your face. “Tao,” you whispered, and the beast froze and looked at you sideways. It bared its teeth and lowered its head, its ears pushed back. A sudden fear took a hold you, and you fought against its paralyzing nature.

“I know you’re in there,” you whispered again. “Even if it’s not the part of you that I like, I know it’s still you.”

You locked your arms, pulling back the hammer of the gun with your thumbs. It felt like the heaviest thing you’d ever carried. The wolf let out a low growl and faced you, and the hairs on your arms stood on end and your breath shook like birch trees, coming out like frantic white bees. It took every fiber of your being to stay rooted; your heart fought with your mind which, with all its power, was trying to make you run away.

Your mind kept telling you that this wasn’t Tao, that Tao couldn’t be himself and this creature at the same time, and yet seeing him, you knew. This monster, with its hairless muzzle and yellow teeth like rusted daggers; its foaming mouth and the scent of blood; the trail of matted, grey fur and the taste of cannibalism and flayed skin on its tongue; somewhere in this evil there was a boy who was vulnerable and scared and just wanted to be happy with you. He was trapped, and it was your job to free him.

Your vision began to cloud with tears and you blinked them away as you swallowed back your tears. The gigantic monster stalked towards you and you raised your arms, the gun in place. “Do you remember we had our first kiss here?” you asked. “I was trying to make you remember that poem, and you thought it was by Poe.”

The wolf opened its mouth and snarled, sending foamy bits of saliva and the red entrails of its last kill into the space between you. You swallowed, hard.

“It was E.E. s, by the way,” you continued, your voice shaking and your courage waning. Somehow, these were things that had to be said. These were things that Tao had to know. “I carry your heart with me… I carry it in my heart. I am never without it,” he whispered, the weak recitation of your favorite poem. “I fear no fate… for you are my fate, my sweet… and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you.”

The closer the wolf came to you, the clearer its eyes became. You saw no traces of Tao’s eyes in its gaze, and yet you felt him. Deep within that dormant spirit, your Tao was listening. “Here’s the deepest secret nobody knows,” you continued. “Here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide, and this is the wonder that keeps the stars apart.”

The werewolf snarled one last time and it leaped there and lunged at you with its claws drawn and its forepaws outstretched as though to smother you, and your fingers found the trigger and you pulled it. The bullet flew out, aptly aimed, and lodged itself in the wolf’s chest and stole his heart’s beat, and yours as well. And the monster feel down with a whine and howl at your shoes, and you didn’t feel wanted anymore.

“Is this the wolf monster?” the police chief asked. He used to be a handsome, youthful man, but endless, worrisome nights had furthered the years in his face. His lips were turned into a scowl as he demanded the answer from you. You simply nodded slowly, against your own wishes.

You had wanted to lunge out and claw the policeman’s face off. You wanted to scream and yell No, this isn’t the monster. This was Tao. This was a human boy that you met at school, whom you taught to admire poetry; with whom you wanted to start a new life with; a sweet, kind, gentle boy with whom you’d fallen in love. This was Tao whom you shot in the heart, with whose heart was shot along with yours.

But you couldn’t tell him, at least not everything. The stubborn policeman wouldn’t understand. The night was hot, but the metal was cold. It was your deepest secret, and it was the wonder that kept the stars apart. You loved Tao, and you shot him in the heart.

Author’s Note: Okay, I’m sorry if I made this way more angsty than it had to be. It’s just… I couldn’t think of a way to write a story about a werewolf without there being angst in it. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it!