Rise of the Leatherwolf, Pt. 5

What am I doing? I don't know. Slowly writing. Feeling like I should squeeze out my "Attachments" cyborg-fox novel series. Something something something. 

Here, have the next bit of Rise of the Leatherwolf.

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Henry once more awoke in a mess feeling like death warmed over. Unlike the previous time, his exploits were not recorded in dried spunk splattered all over a cock-sleeve jackoff toy haphazardly embedded in the ass of a mannequin purchased from a store closing liquidation. Instead of lying in a pool of his own vomit with his dick out and a can of ethyl chloride nearby, he was curled up in the bathtub in a cold mess. He quickly scrambled and stood, looking around the bathroom.

The toilet was full of ghastly entrails and blood. The sink held a wooden box whose contents now lay haphazard and used in the porcelain basin. The floor held more of a mess, black slime and congealed blood and heaps of black material. On closer examination, they were his boots, leather pants, and leather jacket. All of them were torn and absolutely drenched with heinous fluids. A worse mess lay out in the main room, a big mess of the same gore that lumpily filled the toilet bowl. 

Disoriented and grossed out enough to heave but full of nothing to heave, Henry yanked the shower curtain shut and turned on the water. The blast of cold jolted him alert, and he shuddered beneath it until the pipes banged and hot water burst forth. The bath water ran ruddy, then clear. He grabbed a bottle of universal shower soap and squirted it onto his hand.

Then he dropped the bottle and screamed, the sound husky and bellowing. 

His hand was slightly larger than it had been before, and his fingernails were replaced by black claws. The undersides of the fingers were black leathery skin; the rest was covered in short, black fur. The pelt continued up his arms, over his chest, and over the rest of his body that he could see. He threw the shower curtain open and slammed the bathroom door shut to look in the full mirror that hung behind it. His face was unmistakably canine, mouth stretched into a muzzle with a black nose-pad, teeth pointed and fanged, irises egg yellow, ears transplanted into triangles atop his head. Thanks to the shower, he looked like a wolf who had been dunked in water. His skin scrawled and he shuddered, shaking the water everywhere and leaving him looking more like he’d fallen into a vat of pomade.

As Henry stared at his newly lupine visage, his downstairs neighbor banged on the ceiling and yelled out. “THIS IS THE LAST FUCKING TIME YOU’RE GONNA FUCKING WAKE ME UP!” Henry ignored it and hastily moved The Box out of the way, ran the sink, and dunked his face in cold water. He pulled up and stared in the mirror. Still a wolf monster. He yanked at some of the fur and his ear, which pulled nothing off and only hurt. 

More pounding. “God fucking shit I don’t care what your fucking problem is,” he snarled towards the floor, and promptly bit his tongue. The pounding did not stop, and he realized it was actually someone knocking on the door. 

“Yoo-hoo, Mister Schenke, I have something special for you!” A muffled voice called from the outside stairwell. “Dammnit, Henry, if I have to break in there and call 911 I’ll be pissy because I have to stand out here in this foul-smelling stairwell. It stinks. Did you know it stinks out here?” 

Henry stepped out of the bathroom, stepped in the mess on the floor, and swore to himself. He reached the front door and made sure it was locked, deadbolted, and chained. “Steven, shut up. You’re gonna piss people off being loud.”

“Seems like you’re already doing that, as there’s an eviction notice on the door. Also, please open the door. Did I mention it smells out here?”

Eviction notice. Henry vaguely remembered something about seeing it when he’d come home the night before, but that set of memories were crushed by the weight of his current gruesome appearance. “I uh, I’m not really uh, appropriate.”

“That hasn’t stopped you before. For example, the mannequin.” To this, Henry growled in response, and there was a few seconds pause before Steven continued. “Did you get a dog? That seems irresponsible considering the eviction notice, but I suppose it explains the smell.”

Despite his current state, Henry felt surprisingly clear-minded and immediately hatched a plan to let Steven in while not immediately exposing his physical state. He undid the door chain. “Look. You’re gonna follow some instructions, alright? It’s a surprise. You’ll like it. I’m gonna unlock the door, and you’re not gonna do anything for fifteen seconds. Get out your fucking stopwatch.” With every word, speaking was less like tangling his tongue around his teeth and more natural. “Then, you’re gonna come in and shut the door and lock it behind you.”

“I knew it! You have a dog. No, wait, you have immigrants! You’re doing human trafficking for cash, aren’t you? Fine. I’ll play.” 

Henry unlocked the door completely, then retreated back into the bathroom and shut the door to just a crack. Then he waited. After several seconds, the door opened and Steven walked in. Steven turned and locked the door, then turned back to the room. He immediately recoiled, slapped a black-nailed hand to his mouth, and ran into the kitchen to throw up into the sink. 

“You! You’re the source of this horrible smell!” Steven croaked after spitting, then scrubbed his face with cold water. He picked up a dish towel and soaked it, then covered his mouth with it as he walked back into the main living space. “Did you kill someone? Did you kill and disembowel someone and just leave the mess all over the floor? Are you going to kill me? I’m quite a goth but that would be a little too ridiculous.”

“You wouldn’t believe what happened if I told you,” Henry said from behind the bathroom door.

“Considering there is a pile of… I don’t know what, but I’m pretty sure it was alive at some point, in the middle of the floor, what could you say that’s more unbelievable?”

“That mess used to be me.”

“Aaah, a ghost!” Steven said, mock surprise muffled by the wet towel. 

“Worse.” Henry then opened the bathroom door and stepped out. Steven’s reaction was to simply look at him. “I used the stuff in the box.”

Steven squinted, and dropped his towel. He approached Henry and inspected him. “Is this some wild prank? If anyone I know was going to buy some werewolf suit on the internet and then buy a bunch of pig parts and strew them around his apartment instead of paying rent, it’s you.” He prodded Henry in the chest, then looked at the smudge of unrinsed muck on his fingertip. He sniffed it and gagged. Then he pulled on the fur, over Henry’s pec, then his upper arm, then his ear. 

“Oww.”

Steven pulled harder.

“Oww, you fucker!” Henry snarled, and punched Steven in the shoulder. The impact hurled Steven off his boots and onto the floor just inches from the pile of gory remains, where he lay heaving for breath. “That’s my ear! Don’t pull my ear off!”

As Steven regained his wits, his sallow nauseous complexion went heart-attack ashen. “You… you used the stuff in the box? Like, you used it on yourself?”

“I carved some fucking glyph onto my chest, poured a vial of blood on it, and smacked some wolf skin on top. Yeah. And uh, it worked. Now I’m a monster.”