His hide wasn't covered in fur so much as scales.
The only flesh he consumed was when his scabs rubbed off on his pillow and he unwittingly ingested them in his fidgety sleep.
If he awoke stained with blood, it was from where he had vigorously clawed at his nettling skin during the night.
He wasn't restricted to howling by the lunar calendar, for his lesions throbbed night and day.
The sole shape shifting was the slow collapse of his face as the ulcerations burrowed into the cartilage.
The medicinal silver bullet of the pill was failing to slay his condition.
Taken from the flash fiction collection "28 Far Cries" available from Amazon
11 comments:
I do like a short short. Nicely done, Marc.
Wow, so visceral and descriptive! You have such a way with words.
It's true. Someone should slap all these moaning werewolves and point out it could be worse.
It's just as you tweeted - genre and not-genre, both and neither!
Deliciously creepy stuff Marc, a great "ewwww" to start my day. :)
Horror in real life. I think I'd rather be lupine once a month than have lupus always.
Ugh!!
Flesh-crawling stuff.
For some reason it put me in mind of the guy with 'Spots' in Stephen King's "Thinner".
So horrific because its realistic. I enjoy the comparison. :)
Sadly, some transformations go on far, far too long.
Neat. You played with my expectation and used one to highlight the real horror of the other. Works for me.
It's pain, vivid and horrid that your words evoke. The realism is well delivered in so few lines.
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