Beware The Werewolf

When man is wolf to man, they will appear. On bloody battlefields, in the wilds far from justice, in violent and neglectful homes, you will hear them howling. Even as they pick up your trail and chase you down, you can’t help but hear the sorrow in their voices.

Despite the name, humanity is not an inseparable quality of being human. It can be lost. It can be stolen. If not nurtured, if not maintained, then it will slip away, and a beast will emerge.

You can do this to yourself. Cut all ties to friends and community. Kill for the joy of it. Start seeing people as just the meat they’re made of.

You can do this to others. Beat them. Brutalize them. Deny them any kindness.

Others can do this to you. They can isolate you. They can hurt you. They can strip away everything that separates you from a wild animal.

Everyone has their breaking point. No one is immune. That’s really how they spread. There’s no curse inflicted by their bite or by drinking rainwater from a wolf’s pawprint. Just cruelty, alienation, dehumanization, delivered unto others as it was unto them.

Bisclavret. Rugaru. Vlkodlak. Bouda. Lycanthrope. Werewolf. You will know them by these names and others, because evil knows no nation. You will forget these names as they hunt you, because fear has a way of reducing us all to beasts.

A werewolf’s nature is fluid, and thus insidious. Each can don the mask of humanity for a time, to hide among their prey or attempt to return to what they’ve lost in spite of every urge pushing them away. Whatever the reason, monstrosity still lurks beneath the surface, hungrier for its imprisonment. Any provocation could let it erupt into fur and claws and slavering jaws.

This condition is not incurable, but the cure does not come easily. Even among werewolves there are many who seek it. You might see them in their search, wretches in rags, hunched by the silver bells they’re made to wear around their necks so good people know to keep away. What they need is simple, yet terribly difficult. They need to be healed, for their wounded souls to be salved. They need a radical form of love that can embrace the wolf at the door and tame it. They need people who can be the lamb to lie down with the lion. Only then will the werewolf’s eyes lose their lean and hungry look, will sharp teeth that grew in where they shouldn’t fall away.

They tend to be searching quite a while. Far more likely for the communities that could cure to them turn them away, or exile them to distant colonies, or purge them like their brethren that give in to their unconscionable urges. These exterminators have a tendency to become werewolves themselves. As has been said, fear has a way of reducing us all to beasts.

Beware the werewolf, lest you be where the wolf emerges next.