CRY WOLF: By Tonia Brown
Thursday, April 15th, 2010LYCANTHROPY CONTESTANT
One June morning, Butch Jenkins went off his gourd and pushed Doc Keener through the windowpane of the Tool Shack. Butch then leapt after the Doc onto the sidewalk, where he snatched the sawbones up by his tender throat. It took a few moments of watching the older man shake the Doc with rag-doll ease– Doc jumping and twitching like he had ten thousand volts shoved up his pants while his face turned the exact shade of his denim overalls– before someone got the bright idea to step in and put a stop to it.
“Come on, Jenkins,” David said. “Let him go.”
It was David’s store, and although he had already called the law, it looked like Butch might do some real damage to the Doc before they arrived. David stepped through the busted storefront, calculating to himself how much it was going to cost to replace. He grabbed Butch by the shoulder and tried his best to pull the wild man from his prey.
Butch, who had to be in his eighties and never let a sunrise pass without the assistance of a cupful of Kentucky rotgut, was a rock of muscle under David’s hand. He ignored David’s pitiful attempt to stop him.
“What did you do to me?” Butch growled at the man dangling from his grip.
Having long since passed out, Doc couldn’t answer; his tongue protruding obscenely from his mouth, his eyes rolled back to whites made ten times brighter by the robin egg hue of his face.
“Let go of him!” David yelled, pulling on Butch’s shoulder.
The Doc’s body fell to the pavement with a sickening crunch as Butch did as asked. David stood his ground, unsure whom the madman planned on attacking next. Clambering to his feet, hunched and growling and gasping for breath, Butch turned to face the growing crowd.
“Jenkins,” David said. “I don’t know what— Holy Mother of God!”
David, not a man taken to using the Lord’s name in vain, swore it aloud when he got a gander at Butch’s face. The older man was a sheet of hair, from chin to forehead, with cold feral eyes staring out. It wasn’t just an unkempt beard. No. Butch bore a thick fur from cheek to cheek.
“Look what he did to me!” Butch screamed, then tossed his head back to let out an ear-piercing howl.
David’s blood ran to ice as he stared into the maze of Butch’s gnarled fangs. As if that weren’t frightening enough, the man’s ears flattened against his face as his jaw bubbled and stretched to an impossible length, drawing his whole skull into a snout-like shape. Dropping to his hands and knees as fur spread across his swelling arms, Butch screamed and howled in agony, while a melody of cracking bone and tearing skin backed his tormented blues.
David was just wondering what in the hell to do when Larry offered the obvious solution.
“He’s a monster!” Larry shouted. “Git him!”
The distinct clack of metal on metal rang out as the crowd readied their weapons, then opened fire. David leapt for cover, but not before taking three shots to the thigh. It seemed like an eternity of gunfire, barking ricochets of explosive slugs flying one after the other into the riddled body of Butch, ending only at the sound of approaching sirens. But it was far too late for the law to handle it.
It, whatever it was, had already been handled.
By the time the men emptied their guns, all that was left of the thing that used to be Butch Jenkins were scraps of flannel and flesh and fur. Sure enough, Doc was deader than a can of ham, so no one could ever be sure exactly what had happened.
Whatever it was, it didn’t happen fast enough for the trigger-happy men of the sleepy southern town.
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©2010 Tonia Brown
