Chapter 4
Simon
Lydia really has been a very good girl for me.
She deserves all the pleasure I give her and more.
Sending her home at the end of the day with a warm ass and a pussy full of semen becomes a ritual for the two of us over the following weeks.
She works, I work, I fuck her when I want to, or when she needs me to, rinse and repeat.
It’s not a relationship in the traditional sense.
I have not taken her on any dates, which is a pity.
I want to do that very badly, but I know we are both being watched.
Veronica Valentine is invested in this workplace romance in ways she should not be, but for now she’s off my back, and that is letting me pursue a few other angles under her nose.
Eventually, however, she calls for me. I go, because refusing to see her would cause more trouble than whatever she has in mind, I can be sure of that.
I do not like the corporate overlords I work for, but as I do not currently have funding for a lab with billions of dollars of equipment, I need to occasionally dance the way the powers that be require.
Veronica is a smart woman. Possibly the most dangerous woman in North America. She’s the sort of person who always knows the answer to a question before she asks it. That means I pay very special attention to both what she is asking, and what she hasn’t thought to ask yet.
The first question comes before I have even sat down in her office.
“Is she fertilized yet?”
Strange way to ask the question, but okay.
“Possibly. Hard to tell until she tests.”
“She’s too human about it,” Veronica says. “Make her more animal. We need to see how the product works.”
“That would be illegal,” I deadpan.
“It would be. Which is why this conversation isn’t officially happening,” she responds.
“We’ve spoken before about your extracurriculars, Dr. Seek.
The technologies you should be noting for the company, but keep for yourself.
I have turned so many blind eyes it’s starting to become untenable.
I might have to report your actions to the board… ”
There it is, the cold jaws of the trap closing.
She’s aware of at least some of what I am doing, but I doubt she knows all of it. She may even know none of it. The thing with people like this is they get a reputation for omnipresence that they sometimes leverage even when they have nothing.
“Pickleball?”
“Don’t be flippant with me,” she says. “You’re well aware of what you’ve been doing, of the experimentation you’ve engaged in, boundaries crossed.
Z-Corp ensures that its tech is not leaked.
You are under observation always. This was spelled out in your contract.
I expect you to hold up your end of the deal, Dr. Seek. ”
“Of course,” I say. “If you did have me under surveillance, you’d know I have been doing just that as enthusiastically as possible for a good long while now.”
She nods. “That’s why I’m wondering why we haven’t seen a pregnancy test yet.”
“Not everybody catches on the first month. Most people don’t,” I say. “We have to have patience.”
“I can be patient,” Veronica says. “But I want to see results.”
The woman wants my firstborn. She’s like a witch out of a storybook. But I refrain from saying that. Instead, I make some comments about achieving results and get the hell out of her office.
The truth is I am not under observation always.
I am under observation sometimes, in some ways.
I know where they watch. I know how they watch.
And I know what they watch. Email, messages, social media.
They have cameras, drones. Sometimes they tail me.
But there are ways to disappear always. On forest walks, for instance, where nobody is around, and where technology is left long behind.
* * *
I am deep in the woods now, off the beaten trail where I will not be disturbed.
The red vial has been burning in my hand for what feels like hours.
I’ve tried little shifts before. Tonight, beneath the blood moon eclipse, I have decided to take a more significant and pointed dose.
Turning mice into chickens is one thing.
But turning a man into a real beast for as long as he wishes to be… that would be a true triumph.
I think I can do it. And not like I did the first time I tried this in the lab. I’m not going to wake up in a pile of broken beakers this time. This time I’m going to maintain full control while in animal form, and take my human form again when I want to.
What I have in my hand now is one small drink for a man, but a giant step for our species.
I uncap the vial and wait. There is no turning back now. This is the point of no return. As with all my little self-experiments, there is nobody else who can be given the medicine besides me. And there is nobody who wants to take it more than I do. So why wait another moment?
Because something is happening high above in the celestial sky. I haven’t picked this evening by accident, nor was the location in any way random. An eclipse is due to turn the full moon blood red, and I want this to be the moment I make this transition.
Sure enough, the eclipse begins right on time.
It’s something of a miracle that we can predict such things with so much accuracy.
We little humans have done a masterful job of taming the wild outside us, and inside us.
We have turned these once mystical events into predictable photo opportunities.
I want to use the energy for something more.
Above the trees, the moon begins to turn crimson in soft streaking motions that grow fuller and darker with the rotation of the planets.
I decided on this date because, frankly, I love drama, and because this moon is linked with the beast I wish to channel, the creature whose DNA swirls in the brew before me.
As the moon glows red, I tip the vial back and drain the contents into my mouth.
For a moment, absolutely nothing happens. Then I begin to feel a tingling sensation much like ones I have felt before when the formula wasn’t quite right. I hope I don’t melt. With as much I have taken in that dose, I might become nothing more than a human puddle.
I look at my hands in the moonlight, cast in red.
I see them darken with hair that spurts forth from my follicles.
It is the first of many changes that happen too rapidly for me to catalog personally.
Fortunately I have a very old-fashioned camcorder set up, which is recording to a memory stick that I will be able to review later on a laptop with no internet access.
My plan is to shift, then shift back. I don’t want to be in animal form for too long. I have work on Monday, after all.
At a certain point, I lose track of the changes, along with the concepts of work and Monday.
It is right after my hands become so large and powerful they astound me, and right before my face erupts into a furred muzzle.
Later on, when reviewing the footage, I am sure I will be slightly horrified at what it really means for a human to become a wolf.
In the moment, there are flashes of pain, electric bolts of lightning, and a growing sense of freedom.
I take to my paws and I run, all four feet propelling me through the wilds in a way no human form could ever hope to. Two legs now seem laughably weak. These four powerful limbs of mine could do anything.
I am teeth on legs. I am hunger charging through the undergrowth. I am a creature free from the fetters of human consciousness.
I break through the trees and find myself at the edge of a cliff overlooking a great canyon. Above me, the moon is still red. I feel her pull. My head turns up, my jaws unhinge, and a howl comes from deep inside me, a primal sound belonging to the moon as much as it belongs to me.