The Beast Within – Lure of the Wolf
Last modified on 2012-01-15 14:51:55 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
About the book
There’s something primally awful yet fascinating about werewolves, isn’t there? Academics may suggest that the werewolf represents our true Id, the dark part of the human psyche that is bloodthirsty and violent, blah, blah, blah. I just think they’re kinda cool and scary. When Graveside Tales was looking for werewolf stories, I sent them “Lure of the Wolf” and it’s published in The Beast Within.
“Lure of the Wolf” is available from JMS Books as an e-story and is currently in The Beast Within, a print werewolf anthology from Graveside Tales.
An excerpt from the book
A four-step footbridge rose over the tiny stream that trickled through the property. Vivian plopped down on it with a sigh, then tugged off her shoes, her knees creaking. She rubbed her callused heels.
I’m getting old. Lugging those realpaper books around and being on my feet all day is killing me.
She dangled her toes in the foot-deep stream. The icy water helped soothe the ache in her pudgy feet. A soft breeze from the north pushed her gray hair off her forehead.
She counted the smooth stones at the bottom of the streambed. She’d learned it from a yoga teacher ten years before, back when she was still willing to get on the floor and do stretches in front of other people. Clear your mind, count something universal and eternal, let it all go…. At two hundred and thirty three, the dirty smell of rot made her look around.
The werewolf stood ten yards away from her, upwind, its nose buried deep in salmon-colored azaleas. It faced away from her, golden pelt looking rich and oily. Its shoulders were broad, the deep chest and wide back looking enormous. Nearly two meters tall, its clawed hands drew up a flower-loaded branch to its face. Vivian thought she heard it inhale deeply.
He likes the flowers, too.
The werewolf stood on broad wolf-paws, claws curled into the oak leaf mulch, its legs shifting a little to balance its enormous torso. Those long legs could run up to thirty miles per hour, according to the Xenospecies book she’d read long ago.
Vivian’s heart lurched like a jumping frog. She gasped.
The werewolf whirled around to face her. Shredded leaves and azalea flowers drifted to the ground. Vivian’s face and chest flushed—yes, clearly a male werewolf—and its large ears swiveled towards her. His mouth opened, long white canines gleaming in the moon’s light. He had orange eyes that stood out from his golden fur like volcanoes.
He can hear my heartbeat. He knows I’m scared.
Vivian heard his snuffle, saw his wet nose twitch. His red tongue lolled out of one side of his mouth—why Grandma what big teeth you have—then slurped to the other side. He gave a snarl, so low and vicious that Vivian’s entrails cramped.
She took a deep breath, torso shaking. “Do you like the flowers?” she asked.
The werewolf reared back as if she’d wielded a whip, bounded over a six-foot-high shrub with a graceful leap and was gone. Torn leaves drifted to the ground.
Vivian stayed on the footbridge for a bit. She pulled her numb feet from the cold water, grimacing as she stood up. She was halfway home before she realized that her pants were damp, warm with urine. She showered, changed into her flowered nightshirt and tugged her bed socks on, smiling to herself.
Buy Lure of the Wolf at JMS Books
Out of Joint
Last modified on 2012-01-15 14:51:55 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
About the book
Mitchell Tanner, an ex-convict struggling to get his life back on track hasn’t faced his family in year. Not since his conviction, not since his move to Indiana, not since moving in with his half-sister. When he attends an uncles’ funeral in Tampa, old hurts come back to slap him in the face. Take a journey to a tropical paradise … where sometimes paradise is just an illusion.
This story was a finalist for the 2010 Florida Review’s Editor Choice Award and an Honorable Mention at the 2007 Writers in Paradise competition. It appears in the author’s print collection, Out of Joint and Other Stories.
Purchase at JMS books or at Amazon
An excerpt from the book
Mitchell Tanner steered his twelve-year-old Altima into the funeral home parking lot, found a spot beneath a dying magnolia tree, and lit a joint. His frayed shirt sleeves pulled back to reveal barbed wire tattoos curled around each wrist. He left the lugging engine on and ran the AC against a Tampa October that pressed down solid as a slab.
Florida. Fuck.
In his rearview mirror, groups of people quick-stepped over steaming asphalt. The rain had made his final miles down from Indiana a maddening octopus of slow traffic, back-tracking, three fender-benders, and one street closed because of a sinkhole. Tampa’s northern outskirts had mutated into a clean, shiny exitworld suburbia of Wal-Marts and Starbucks and McDonald’s. But the city’s inner core along Florida Avenue was the same. Peeling paint in vivid shades of turquoise, mustard, and tangerine flaked off shotgun bungalows. Black burglar bars guarded every window; a half dozen kids screamed in yards; old men on front porches smoked home-grown.
On the street corners lurked the young men: black, Hispanic, mixed, not a blond in sight. Bandanas on their heads, gold grills on their teeth, and cell phones in their hands. Tanner let his gaze drift over them, their chests puffed in their muscle tees. They glared at him as he drove through his old neighborhood, and Tanner wondered if he knew any of them from before.
Probably not. Five years in Raiford and three years in Indiana had wiped away Tanner’s Tampa. These guys were in elementary school when he was last arrested.
Tanner crushed out the joint. He grabbed a pack of Big Red gum from the eight in the center console and stepped into wet air. Sweat popped on his neck and chest. He spent a few seconds struggling with the three-sizes-too-small sports jacket his sister had lent him. “Tim won’t care. He left it here so it’s mine now.” The navy polyester was darker than his best-kept khakis; it was no suit but it would have to do.
He tugged down his shirt sleeves, trying to cover the prison-blue tattoos. Tanner wasn’t sure about his shirt collar; should he leave it open or button it all the way up even though he had no tie? He glanced at the people filing into the funeral home. All the other men wore ties.
The shirt collar was too tight around his neck; his hours on the weight bench had sculpted his body. He unbuttoned the collar and walked inside