Werewolf

U. M. Celovska is a transgender writer and editor from a small town in eastern Ontario. She studied at McGill University, before settling in Toronto. For 15 years she struggled with mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety, before finally turning a corner. She is now happily working on rebuilding her life. This is the first (but hopefully not last) time her writing has appeared in publication.

Author Comments

I wrote the first draft of this story in an anxious panic before attending my first horror writer's group meet-up. "What if they make me write a story about something mundane, like werewolves?" I fretted, "I can write a story about werewolves. I'll show them."

I wanted to keep the writing style very simple and more stream of consciousness to reflect the narrator's more animalistic perspective. Conversely, I wanted to avoid a simple wolves=good, humans=bad Manichaeism, so the wolves do their part in escalating the conflict. Note that the narrator doesn't consider their humanity to be monstrous until after they have committed these acts.

The escalation is not all in actions either, a lot of it is in each side's understanding of the conflict. The stories each side tells influences actions in a vicious cycle These interpretations of events cast long shadows extending forwards and backwards. In fact, after this horrible conflict the narrator "retcons" every instance of transforming into a human as monstrous, where before they felt like prey.