I was fifteen when my father was knighted and we moved to an estate near the castle
I began working in the court as his squire. The months speed as I learn. I sharpen swords and shine boots; I listened to the servants stories of court gossip and political intrigue. My favorite though was the court magician who talked about lightning and planets. I knew each constellation in the night sky. I was sixteen and my father was killed. The older ones were afraid of me then. All the boys in the castle met in front of the blacksmiths forge after chores were finished. We fought each other sometimes one on one, other times in piles of bodies and limbs. Black eyes, split lips and broken knuckles were common. In fact a visiting duke once noticed out loud about all the servant boys having black eyes. They were badges of honor of course, worn with pride.
Sometimes we would sneak into the cellar and drink ale. I was a boy without a care in the world until I turned seventeen years of age. One night I escaped the castle with my bow to hunt. A storm came off of the sea, I had not noticed it rolling but it struck with fury. I was lost and soaking wet and the cold was setting in. Lightning flashed and I could no longer see the moon.
Something attacked me. I remember nothing of it except waking later leaned against the castle wall. No marks on my body. I became violent and detached. I shattered the jaw of a boy one afternoon. All the court laundry girls were watching us from the windows, and he cursed my father. I was blind with rage, and it was beautiful. I never felt so alive in my life. I could smell the sweat of the boy as I slammed a right hook into his jawline. I could smell the blood and it's sensual dripping warmth on my knuckles. It took every bit of strength not to lick it from my hand. I dreamed of it that night in my room. It's aroma melded with the memories already as clear as a painting in my mind. Each detail elongated and dramatized with a feral edge.
The dreams were haunting at first, but I soon relished them. I dream of the moon first always reflecting in the lake brimmed by ancient pines. Then I was chasing a deer or a rabbit through the brambles and down old paths that only beasts know. Then, the taste of warm blood in my mouth, the pulsing of lifeblood beneath my teeth.

In my dream I watch the phases of the moon cycling through the dark. Until, on the full moon. I was lying in my bed, hoping for the pleasure of the dreams again. I was warm all at once and colors began to brighten. Then it seemed as if daylight were pouring in through the window although surely it was the moon. I gazed at her. Until within me the locks began to break, and it seemed as if chains were falling from my being. Until blackness, so infinite and complete filled with the most terrible and beautiful visions I had ever experienced.
I could taste everything in the universe and I watched the wind blow through the pines from a tall rock rustling the needles into a symphony of movement and sound. Such beauty I have never known. Then a golden flash between the trees.
An old buck moved through the boughs. I tested his scent on the wind he smelled of earth and roots. Then I am chasing him.
Into a clearing he staggers as I toy with him. He breaths deeply, his sides heaving. I can see his hot breath as a cloud in the cold air. Then his cry, and the spray arterial. The taste of life.

I awaken leaned naked against a pine. Claw marks adorn the trunks of the great trees around me. Deep claw marks as if a bear...
I was terrified
I was alone

I work in the stables. I lock myself away and I feel guilt  for the pleasure of my dreams. As if they were tangible sins.
Then the kings daughter visited me and asked about the foal that was born earlier that morning. She was curt and spoke down to me. My chest was hot. I was nervous that I would insult her and be executed. We watched the newborn stand next to its mother. I thought she was watching me from the corner of her eye, but her next words proved me wrong."How dare you look at me, slave."
She returned the next day, and the next each day she seemed more angry than the last. She and her handmaid wanted horses readied for a ride. The king arrived and I dropped to my knees in fear. "You boy will protect these girls as they ride."
The hole in my chest fills with melted iron, as the young princess thanks her father with a kiss on the cheek. He leaves and my anger is complete. She will have me killed; ****** girls will probably ride directly down a hill and break a neck. Then who shall be blamed

They controlled the horses in a strangely feminine manner. Their sweet purring to the horses made them flick their ears. Their light touch turning the great beasts with ease. Such beauty I had never seen. Their delicate figures like full bloomed flowers and the hanging tassels of silk blow in the wind. Her scent...unmistakable.
She watches me.

The night before the full moon I was slipping into the beauty of the dreams. Sleep pulled me downward, and suddenly a small rap on the door.
I fully expected guards upon the other side. They somehow had found out I was the beast and Would cut my head from my shoulders.
My heart races as the door opens. A shadow slips inside as I crack the door. It pushes past me. The scent...
She stands in the moonlight of the window with dark eyes piercing. Thank the gods it was not a full moon.
I light a small lamp with shaking hands and she slides towards me, removing her dark cloak showing her nightdress. The curves of her body...not left up to the imagination against the silk.
My head swims, and the beast inside me growls deeply. She pushes herself against me, but my mind races to the headsman's axe, to the kings eyes.
I push her away and hand her her cloak. Telling her it was much too late for such foolishness.
I am a slave after all...

I could not sleep
but the dreams slipped in anyway
Like leaves in the wind they twist and float
Pulling me into their strange likeness
I am enthralled by the the scent of a nightdress
And the warmth of a body pressed against me
In moonlight I am bathed
My hands with blood soaked

She does not visit me at the stalls, and I do not see her face peaking at us from the tower window as we wrestle in the courtyard.
Inside me a strange ache at her absence. I drink ale that night and stumble to my room. The door I forget to lock, and the windows swung wide.
So cloudy
I could not stop
The feeling so pure
I could not banish it

She was found by her handmaiden in pieces around the bedroom. Her white night dress shredded and stained scarlet.
Twenty dead soldiers, each with their throats torn out or their heads smash in. As if some bear they whispered...
I was found naked out in the wheat fields covered in blood. They followed the trail straight to me.

*He stands before the king making his statement
Explaining how he was attacked by some beast
Only two months 'ore. He explains how he could not control.
The king shakes with rage. A black cover is brought to hide his face.
He goes quietly to the block and death. His body burned to ash

There is a body floating in the water of Lake Michigan again, but no one is willing to fish it out.  There is a body floating in the pond near my subdivision again, but everyone already knew that anyway.  
        I am sitting eighty miles away, overlooking a city that is not mine, thinking about how the moon outside my window is the same moon that you can see from down below in your partially frozen-over dirt bed.  I am thinking about the vampire that sits in his apartment, chugging two-to-three bottles of blood a week, and wondering if he is haunted by the same ghosts as I am.  
        It’s taken me eighteen years to realize that I was infected with a different variation of his curse all along—I am less human and more lycanthrope than I would like to admit.  I am not like you, I am not like him, I am my own breed and that terrifies me.  (There are black cats prowling in my heart and fragments of mirrors in my liver and salt that bleeds from my heels when I walk.)
        No matter how many rabbits’ feet I tie to my keys, how many dreamcatchers I put above my bed, how many cloves of garlic I hang over my door, I am never able to rid myself of the chill that goes hand in hand with the phantom you left here.
        Mother, I think I killed a man two full moons ago and I haven’t been the same since.  I threw his body into the lake and watched him drift out into the unknown, watched the kraken drag him down, watched the water spew him back up like a cork.  And now I need you to make your way back to the land of the living to sit by my side.  I want you to cut off my head and make me a trophy animal.  Create a rug from my fur.  Eat my organs and freeze the rest for winter.  Use me for your own survival.  I just want to be helpful.
        I want to be everything the vampire was not but my fingers are breaking from holding on too tight.

                                                               ­                                          I should let go.

I hate zombies
they are the infantile enemy
the foe against which there is
    no guilt
the essential
        human
questions of right of wrong
  of morality
never apply to the cerebellum-craving
undead.  It's us or them
   hunt or be hunted
   **** or be killed
they are enemies that fail to
      challenge
   our notions of what it is
   to be us
give me a werewolf any day
or rather - any moon
the tortured lycanthrope
   forces the protagonist to
choose to **** because
    unlike zombies
there's always
   a chance
   however small
   that a werewolf
can find
redemption

Somebody call Ben Affleck
We got phantoms in this *****
This endless haunted mansion
Their presence pervades
No company
In this lonely labyrinth
Only phantoms
The only figures resembling humanity
Are the corpses of those before
Who couldn't navigate this torturous structure
And of course, the masquerading phantoms
My soul they aim to puncture

I tried closing my eyes
But I just kept running into walls
I tried sleeping through it
But I just sank deeper into the basement
When I attempted to join the phantoms
You were there
You waited until I was hanging there
On the rope
And eviscerated everything
Lycanthrope
The rope in shreds
Your heart then fled
Leaving me alone again
Lying in my exhausted blood
The phantoms sensed my desperation
And took advantage of my disorientation
So I ran to the darkest recesses of the basement
To retrieve my blindfold and sledgehammer
But is my hammer powerful enough?
Will visual impairment abstain the trickery of ghosts?

I put Sisyphus to shame
With the determination I utilize to demolish these walls
But the phantoms are devious
They ***** new facades
Thicker, sturdier, with odder textures
I destroy them all the same
It just takes a bit more time
And time means nothing
To a man who's sole purpose is knocking down walls
And cowering from apparitions
Yet a man means nothing
To a time ruled by phantoms

We were running together, side by side
Slapped by fat droplets of midnight shower
Which burst upon touching our pale foreheads
And streamed as tears down the sides of our cheeks
We drank in the presence of each other
As the wilted trees around us, the rain
Letting the poison ivy scratch our legs
While we escaped from those in people's words
With all the venom coursing through our veins
You untied your hair; it streaked behind you
Blacker and more beautiful than the night
I still remember - I can still hear it
The way our ragged voices would unite
As we sat upon the wet, shining grass
Tilting our heads back and howled at the moon

The werewolf cried electric tears
for he was too tall for the carnival ride.
As all of the vampires were having fun
the werewolf howled and cried.
The carnival by the light of the moon
looked like candy electrified.
The werewolf bought fried dough
  and balloons
  but was otherwise denied.

gnawing

at my lapel, you beg for me to stay

you push me further onto the pavement on Lexington
and your hot breath

glistens on my neck.
“you’ve changed,” I say,
as your eyes lose colour and hair sprouts behind your eyes

I used to sit on your chest and
paint your body with my favourite

colour
and you would carry me on your back
so my feet wouldn’t be wet when it rained

but since the full moon
you hover above me while I sleep
and your hairy

hands feel foreign on my body

and here, on Lexington, my new silk dress is ruined

no more thrashing
no more howling
no more public indecency on 29th and 9th

“you’ve changed,” I say,
as I heave you off me
and grab my bag off the floor

On a night like this, of full-moon bliss
Of the midnight winds and collecting mists
I remained, forevermore
Chained, to the floor
A victim of joy’s…goodbye kiss

In a dungeon I lie, hidden from the sky
A shadow untamed with vile red eyes
I waited, I hungered
Without proper slumber
In my mistress’ pit, awaiting time

It was from lust and desire to fuel and empower
For whom she wishes for me to devour
I restrained, she teased
I grew hard, to please
The widowed Countess: my dark sire.

Though my story may seem bleak
But not to those, whom morally weak
A tale, a fable
However which label
Entitles this to civilized freaks

I moved from town to town, home to home
In search of a life wherever I would roam.
At last, I came
To an estate of name
Belonging to a Countess of ancestral Rome

Countess Donatella, eyed my work and demeanor
From afar I could tell, I sensed, I smelled her
Her scent, so tempting
Was she attempting…
To allure my beastly form into something beneath her?

One night she called for me, alone in her quarters
She treated me to delicacies from rich exporters
She asked my name
I said none, I refrained
“Mysterious and Strong.” She said in order.

She walked over, to the silk on the bed
Colored in gold and shimmering red
Curling her finger
To me, and eager
“Remove your clothes” the Countess said

I did as I was told. I abide her command.
She seduced like a mistress of the eternally ******
Caressing my skin
Licking my chin
And instructed me to please her demands.

My strength increased as I ripped apart her dress
“Yes, my dear, rough and brute.” She stressed
My *** throbbing
Her head bobbing
She turned into an animal I could not resist

Through the night our lust ignited
Into a furious intoxication, organs united
A symphonic ******
Winds, rain and thunder
Matching the sweltering copulation benighted

In the glow of after, past the ****** she gathered
Breathing deeply she said, “You are mine. I am master”
For too long, I thought
I was ridden of what I sought
One to counter my thirst for lust, the tiring caster.

For many nights I swooned, I pleasured her in ways
No other human could fathom or reclaim
My art was of the flesh
And her succulent *******
Feasting like the dog of Hell’s fame

But in this time I feared
For my secret was severe
To show, to hide
My inner design
Of nocturnal savagery that is devilishly revered.

It was upon a warm night of *******
That the moon left me horrified and shaking.
I ran from the master
To evade disaster
Of displaying my transformational awakening.

I trampled in the woods and screamed into the night
The beast of the void howled under the moonlight
I ventured, I hungered
Awaken from slumber
A slave to Lycanthrope, a feral disease of might

The Countess’ workers hunted; “A monster!” they deemed
But I killed many before I was to be seen
Ripping, tearing, slashing, eating,
Guts, bones, skin, feeding
My viciousness, my curse, my bane and dream.

After my episode of moral slaughter
The workers found me curled in a fetal posture
I would have been killed
But the Countess, sealed
Me away in the cryptic tomb of her father.

I was left to suffer in the underbelly of my sins.
Shadows and demons moaning like the wind
My master kept me
Protected me
In her care I would no longer win

Now I lay, waiting for the my master to show
So the door above me will open and glow
The white orb
That will mourn
The lives I have taken, eaten and in my intestines flow

The tomb dungeon unlocks, creaking loudly with rust
The master, the beautiful Countess that I must
Please and satisfy
Penetrate, rectify
The punishment that was bestowed by the just.

“So you are known by many names.” She utters
I look up at her with eyes of thirst, my lover
“You are unique.
So much to keep
For myself, my beastly treasure and no other.”

She walks to the shadowed wall and pulls down a lever
And stands in front of me, **** and forever
A pale seductress
Her eyes focus
With mine, for I wait for the power that was severed

“Now I will be pleasure by that of a beast, that of a god.”
She says as she massages my erecting rod
“Now, my dear.”
As I hear.
“Enter me and leave me in pleasurably awe.”

With the chains around my wrists, ankles; my neck and waist
She mounts me in the moonlight space
Our sweat collects
Drips and specs
Glossing her pale skin and my ever changing face.

I stare into the moon as I ******, my moans of pain matching her voice
She yells from the seismic endurance, her dooming choice
To unleash my monster
With blood thirst conquered
No, it is not, it is her, growing with every other screaming voice

Moans of pleasure soon turn to moans of distress
The wolf of the night is coming, no less
My teeth protrude
My mind feuds
With reason and passion, where blood replaces the mess

My fur is black, my claws like steel
My fury is lustful, the deeper I feel
The Countess is in fear
I ignore her tears
And devour her, ravish her, take her skin and peel

Her lovely face is first to go, once flawless now disfigured
I tear her arms from her body, her liver in my teeth lingered
Blood, tears, flowing juices
Guts, gore, nail amuses
The laughing jackals and demons in a Hell for me that’s bigger

There is no more Countess. No more Donatella, nor master
The moon reflected in a red pool of suffering disaster
Of the ******* monster in our wake
Of the true one she had forsake
In the whims of lustful pursuit with death proceeding faster

Through the lubrication of excessive blood and ****** fluids
I slipped and broke from my chains and fled from the ruins
I remained the beast
Through the forest at least
And return to the woods, away from the her influence

I left the Countess estate as I arrived
Homeless wanderer who survived
Another full moon night
And devil’s sight
Of my life forevermore, the way of the morally derived

Where my nightmares are revived …

…Beyond my human disguise.

You're the knight
I'm your steed
There are signs
I can't read
There are things
I can't be
The choir sings
When you see
An engagement ring
Will set me free

But you turn into a beast
And I'm your prey feast
So I hide in the crease
Between best and least
Between sinner and priest
Between molasses and grease
I hide from a monster
That looks like a lobster
Mixed with a mobster
Using a humanoid claw
To impose martial law
To avoid my small flaws

You were my Goliath of reliance
Until we collided with defiance
And I didn't know how to cope
With a lycanthrope

You're a mixture of Jackie Chan and Jackie Kennedy
You're in between human man and human centipede
You walk through the quiet land as I hide in the trees
The hourglass empties as the sand tickles like fleas
You're a monster unreal
When this way I must feel
You have the power to give or take my heart
And you've used that power from the start

You're a Tyrannosaurus rex
When you flex
You're a scarab beetle
When you're evil
The combination of the two
Is the reason my anxiety grew

You're a demon
That can ****** loneliness
You're the reason
I've become a bony mess
When I get things off my chest
To expose my organs
And you call it just fun
So I realize you're the one
From the emotions you take
And the emotions I can't fake

So meet me in the shed
And give me Pumpkinhead
To forget the blood I've bled
And the taste of mud I'm fed
So you can be my monster
I'm not worth

Your heart has turned dark
Your eyes blinks a spark
Your breath almost stinks
The awful smell of your skin
Makes my head spin
This momentary night
As the sky is beamed alight
The moon shining over you
Sprinkling the magical dew
You climb on the peak
To embrace what you seek
I've grown too weak
With no energy to speak
My powers, I've lost
This kind of death is the worst
But you, trying to revive me
To how I was, I again can be
The approach of midnight
I'm holding on tight
My breathe fading slowly
Around none, I'm lonely
A vigorous howling cry
My throat has gone dry
I felt dragged under the moon
The magical dew showered soon
On my body which was torn
And a new me, was born...


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