Author's Note: Full Moon isn't the happiest story, but I think it's a story that anyone who's ever felt depressed and alone can relate to. I think it's a story for those of us who got bullied in school, for those of us who feel invisible even in our own homes. 

Full Moon is there for those of us who've wanted to give up countless times, who thought that the world could never get better, and it's there to remind us that all it takes is just one, sometimes two people to light our paths with love. The world can consist of mostly darkness, but if one or two people are there to turn on the light, then that's enough. 

Full Moon is also, of course, dedicated to all LGBT people. Although I'm not a guy or gay, I hope you can find yourselves in this story and find comfort if you're going through hard times at the thought that it does get better. Even though it's a fantasy/werewolf story, many of the themes of bullying, loneliness, depression, and parental negligence are very real. 

If you've ever felt like anything I just described, please feel free to share your experience, as well as any comments or criticisms you have of the story. And if  Full Moon touches you, please consider giving it a vote. 

--

PART 1:

DANA

There was nothing good in the life of Ernest McClain. Nothing that made him happy, nothing that a teenager could enjoy, and certainly nothing all that peculiar either; nothing that could be seen, at least.

They say that what makes a person brave is not lack of fear, but being afraid and yet going against your fear, challenging it, to support a cause or people in which you believe. As said before, from the exterior, Ernest had nothing to be remembered. Pale skin, freckles, mid-long auburn hair and sad gray eyes, average size, and rather slim, mostly dressed in baggy clothes. Nothing extraordinary. He was a rather average student, going more towards the bad side of the class than the good one. Nothing surprising in that either. At the approaching age of sixteen, he had never even kissed a girl or had a girlfriend, but maybe there were reasons for that as well. Needless to say that, from the exterior, no one would have paid any particular attention to this young boy. Except that Ernest possessed something very peculiar, something which not many people knew about, and that one difference in him would make him stand out in History. To whom would he stand out? Ah, now that's something quite different, and soon enough, you will know. You will know the whole story, and see him like almost no one else saw him.

But can you handle the truth? Not everyone can...his mother certainly didn't, and I'd let you ask her about it herself, but you might have trouble doing that.

After all, she is dead.

--

Ernest perked up violently, making a few people in the row before him snicker. He had once again fallen asleep in class, and awoken the second that...well...he couldn't remember, but it certainly was a peculiar dream now, wasn't it?

He dully passed his hand through the hair covering his forehead, sighing. It was crazy how little sleep you needed as a kid and, all of a sudden, once reaching teenagehood, you could never get enough of it. He tiredly crossed his arms on his table before laying his head on them, glancing blankly to the side and at nothing and everything. Quickly enough though, even if he tried to stay awake, his eyes closed by themselves once more, inviting him to return to the realm of dreams.

"Attention class!" the teacher suddenly shouted, making him bolt upright. "we have a new student. Her name is Dana Byrne, and she's from....uhhm, excuse me, where did you say you were from, honey?'

"Ireland, Madam!" the girl replied cheerfully.

"From Ireland! And she's just moved here, in our peaceful little village and to take part in our school! I do hope that you can welcome her and help her find her place among our community, which I'm sure she will do!"

"Yeah right! GEEK!" shouted a brunette in the front row. The other students all started laughing, as the girl's smirk became almost as wide as her cleavage.

"GINGER GEEK!"

Ernest curiously observed Dana. She was a pretty redhead, with slightly curly, decently long hair, lots of freckles on her face, and green eyes which reflected nothing short of extreme intelligence. Ernest calculated her to be a few centimeters shorter than him, more or less. The Irish girl was dressed in pink-purplish tones when it came to the upper part of her body, and for the pants, they were a simple beige, accompanied by sneakers of the same color.

Ernest looked around the classroom, and saw that there were two empty seats left, the two of them next to other girls. He shrugged and decided to go back to sleep, when he was once again startled by someone's voice.

"Hi!" It was the girl. She was widely grinning and glancing at him rather teasingly.

"She looks like an elf..." He thought to himself.

"Hey," he answered. Ernest had never been good at making conversation or at socially interacting.

"People in your class don't seem to be very warm towards strangers now, do they?" she pondered aloud, seeming rather perplex. The simplicity and innocence of the question made Ernest grin against his will.

"Yeah, they aren't exactly a cheerful bunch," he admitted. She turned to him even more, her grin increasing.

"I'm Dana, as I'm sure you've heard, but you? What's your name?"

"Ernest."

"That's a pretty name, I like it."

"Uhh...thanks?" Ernest wasn't sure what to say to this. He was also startled by the compliment. He never had gotten many of them, especially not in the recent years, quite the contrary. Insults and mockery seemed to flow and prosper more than anything else. Speaking of that, he vaguely heard a girl whispering in a reproachful, disdainful tone of voice, how the new girl was sitting next to the class freak and punching bag. The brunette with the cleavage just laughed, shrugged, then said that a geek and a freak would make a very handsome pair.

Ernest grimaced, embarrassed, before turning his head aside. Dana was looking in the direction of the two mean harpies, and had most likely heard every word. Not all that awesome for a greeting.

"I wonder what they'd taste like," she pondered, tilting her head like an owl. Ernest couldn't help it this time and burst out laughing. The remark had been strange, but it was a particular sense of humor to which he was somehow familiar.

"Probably poisonous!" He answered. Dana joined him in his laugh for a while, until the teacher glared at the two of them, ordering them to quiet down. Dana instantly stopped, and so did Ernest. The snap of the teacher's voice had reminded him who he was and what his personality tended to be. Rarely did the boy exchange more than one or two sentences with his peers, and here he had almost talked more to this new girl in fifteen minutes than to his classmates in a year. They remained silent until the bell rang, and by then, any of this alien gayness that had briefly hit Ernest had disappeared. He was back to being his reserved, shy, silent self. The boy was practically sure that Dana too had changed her mind, and realized her mistake of engaging conversation with the school outcast. Just as he had finished putting all of his stuff into his bag and was ready to go, he felt her hand seize his arm. Ernest turned around at once, startled.

"What do you want now?!" he thought, annoyed and confused. Truth was, he felt uncomfortable, and almost sad that she had talked to him, that she felt so forward with him. No one ever touched him. So how dare she?! How dare this new girl, this stranger, be so different?! How dare she make him feel this way?! He was alone, no one liked him, everyone shunned him, fine. He had gotten used to it after all these years, it didn't hurt anymore. But she didn't seem to naturally sense the thing that everyone else felt. She was treating him as if he were anybody else, and the feeling of actually being liked was so shocking, he hadn't felt it in so long...

Ernest tried to pull away from her, but she wouldn't let go. Dana was surprisingly strong for her rather thin structure.

"I have to go, I have class I-" he started.

"You're a Were, aren't you?"

"What? You mean, aware? Aware of what?"

She smiled at him.

"No, not aware. A Were." He blinked confusedly, his heart racing, and his gray eyes stared into her shiny green ones.

"What do you mean?" he almost whispered. Her grin widened as she tightened her grip around the handles of her bag.

"You're..." She whispered the words, and Ernest gazed at her as she walked away, skipping and humming cheerfully.

--

He avoided the girl all day. She didn't make any attempt to try and talk to him, but everytime he looked around, he found her to always be in his surroundings. Sometimes reading a book, sometimes searching everywhere with those perplex green eyes of hers-

"Like a cat..."

or simply sitting down on a bench and singing to herself. Many people pointed and laughed at her, but Dana didn't seem to care. The girl was obviously lost in her own little world, and Ernest was even starting to wonder if she maybe wasn't just a little bit nuts.

"Of course, only a lunatic could like someone like me..."

The day went on like any other day, apart from that. His back hunched and his head lowered, he didn't say a word to anybody. He didn't even protest when Yoan and his gang spilled his lemonade on his head and slammed his face in his plate. He just stood there, stoic, eyes blankly scrutinizing at the table as pieces of his lunch slid off his forehead. Everybody laughed, as always, and just like every single time, a teacher came and shouted at them to stop. She said that they were cruel for laughing like that, and that it wasn't funny at all. Ernest perfectly knew that, deep inside, the teacher really couldn't care less anymore and knew that there was nothing to be done. She'd much rather Ernest would simply change school, so that she wouldn't be obliged to do the military part of her job just as much.

To pass time, when he wasn't busy daydreaming, he wrote a lot. Poems. He liked poetry, truthfully. Mostly Haikus, though he occasionally wrote long pieces as well.

Out of all those which he had written, this one stood out as his favorite:

A treasure the moon,

Perfect loving mother of our wolves,

Howls in the night.

Ernest was busy rereading this from his little Haiku notebook when all of a sudden he heard a soft, puzzled voice interrupt his daydreaming.

"Why, that's beautiful..!" Dana murmured. The redhead was leaning over his shoulder, casting an admiring glance at his short poetry. Shy as he was, the boy did nothing but blush, and quickly snapped shut the tiny blue notebook which had become his sanctuary to the outside world. Going as rapidly as possible, he attempted to put it back in his bag and walk away, but Dana seized his arm before he had the chance.

"What do you want?!" the boy asked, exasperated.

"Let's hang out together after school...if you want to," she suggested.

This time his eyes downright widened. Hang out?! With him?!

"I...I can't I...I just can't!"

His mom.

"I'm sorry." Her eyes saddened, but she gave him a slight smile.

"Oh okay...well that's fine then. Maybe some other time."

"Ye...yeah," he stuttered. "maybe..." Following that he escaped once more, away from school, from his classmates, and his own feelings. But most of all, away from this girl who knew what he really was. A monster.

--

School was now over, and everything was dead silent in his mother's car. Ernest was busy scrutinizing the outside landscapes through the window while his mother focused on the road, lips pinched tightly together and remaining silent. She never asked him anything, not even how his day was. In fact, the boy wondered if she'd spoken more than two sentences to him since his first time, at the age of six. The teen shuddered at the memory.

His first time...so painful...frightening...

He didn't utter a word to his mother. After all, he was used to getting shunned completely, and to the lack of words. It was the sound which was disturbing, especially the one her mother would have to hear tonight. The same one she had to go through every single month.

Finally they reached the house. Deserted, huge, old, and lost in the middle of nowhere, it really did look like a haunted mansion; pretty ironic when you considered who lived in it. They never received any visitors, and were only two in this gigantic, sinister house. Ernest knew what he had to do. Taking his backpack, the boy silently climbed the stairs in the living room to then turn to the right, entering a medium-sized, entirely bare room. He sat to the floor and pretended not to have heard his mother, locking the door with chains, three different types of locks, and we'll pass. The walls of the room had been lacerated viciously by a creature so terrifying, so powerfully evil, that the town people would just rather behave like it didn't exist.

Submissively the boy started his homework, and God knew he had a lot of it to do. Once he was all done, Ernest lied against the wall, letting his mind drift to various thoughts, most of which were unconnected. He closed his eyes, picturing the small pond in the woods, late at night, when its color became as black as ink and all the luminescent insects hovered around it. It was quite a nice sight, that it was, and often when he'd had a rough day (which tended to happen often) or when he needed to rid himself of whatever dilemma, the boy would go and sit next to the water and think. He would watch the bugs and the night owls, listening to the noises they were making and trying to make one with Nature.

Slowly unbuttoning his shirt, although it was quite cold, he approached his window. His mother had hammered huge planks all across it, preventing even light from entering, except from a tiny little hole. He pressed his face against the small cavity, briefly seeing the dark night sky, the stars and...

His eyes widened. There she was.

Full Moon.

He staggered back clumsily, before falling to the floor. As soon as he crashed, a shriek of pain escaped his lips, and as he tried to weakly get up and take off the rest of his clothes, he found that he didn't have the time. His eyes snapped open, the pupils dilating. At a tremendous speed his body transformed, and he became taller, muscles also erupting from his frail arms. His clothes ripped open, and fur started to sprout from his skin, a pelage just as dark as his hair. His nails grew up to the point when they became sharp, black claws, his teeth also increased in size, becoming pointier. His face was now completely distorted, his nose became a muzzle, his eyes were bloodshot, and his ears grew, also getting covered in fur. His tailbone grew to a full size, wolf tail, and all this time his exclamations of pain only grew, except now they became chilling roars which left his mother huddling under her bed sheets, frozen with terror at the idea that he would break down and launch at her, her own child. The mutant wolf formally known as Ernest took a few steps back before launching himself at the barricaded window. Not getting any results, the beast repeated the same action one, two, three times, until finally both the planks and the glass behind it broke down under the werewolf's weight. He found himself rocketing through the sky, for he was elevated quite high, but thankfully for him, the earth was shaped into a hill, and so his landing wasn't quite as rough as he rolled down through the bushes and trees. Eventually able to get back on its paws, the wolf started dashing through the woods, leaving its house behind.

Part of his human spirit still remained, and as the terrifying beast let out a few plaintive cries, the human inside was crying, miserable that the curse had once again caught up to him. He ran as fast as his paws could carry him, barely even touching the ground. The other animals all fled to hide, for there was no beast as fierce as the werewolf in these woods. Finally he reached the cornfields and, exhausted, slowed down his pace before coming to a halt.

Eat. Vengeance. Killing. Must Start Killing. These were the thoughts obscuring his brain, and as he tried in vain to push them away from his conscience, they clung there, not giving another option but to follow them. The wolf in itself wasn't much of a violent animal, but combined with the spirit of human beings, you obtained a horrible killing machine, constantly seeking to appease its violent tastes and desires.

"NO! I don't want to I-" a howl coming from his own mouth escaped him, cutting through his thoughts and reasoning; following that he sprinted, panting savagely. The smell of meat was overwhelming, it was absolutely everywhere. In every single angle there was some poor, innocent creature which he could kill to calm his thirst for blood. The werewolf slowed his pace before crouching down. He could hear something (or someone?) getting closer. Before it even came to his sight, he knew that there was a man in the woods, in his late middle ages, who was accompanied by a cocker spaniel.

"You ain'tgonna last long, puppy." He licked the top of his muzzle, already tasting the dog's blood. Ernest was almost trembling with excitement at the idea of ripping its throat open.

"And the owner's...it wouldn't be fair to just leave him dogless, after all..."

"DON'T KILL HIM!" his human conscience cried out. "Not the dog, not the man...leave them both alone! You're not even hungry!"

"I know. It's the killing I'm after, not the eating," the werewolf in him contested, amused. It was fun whenever the human conscience tried to put up a fight, especially since it never won. The beast flattened itself even more against the floor, preparing to leap. Shouldn't take too long now.

--

Jacob Green groaned angrily, aiming his flashlight randomly inside the dark, oppressing woods.

"Now where did that stupid dog run off to again?!" he complained, grimacing as his foot fell into a pile of mud. He vaguely heard the cocker barking, and so accelerated his pace. He didn't want to stay out for too long. His daughter and son-in-law were visiting with their newly born little girl, and he had been crying of joy upon seeing his granddaughter. Had it not been for that idiotic dog, he'd still have been there celebrating. All of a sudden, Kicks had started sniffing the air before running away, as if possessed, barking madly. And now there Jacob was, looking everywhere for him. Oh the joys of having a pet.

"Kicks? Kicks! Where are you?! Come here boy! Kicks?!" He turned around, his heart racing. He thought he'd heard a plaintive yip coming from behind those bushes. Slowly, fear turning his stomach, the man took a few steps towards that direction.

"Kicks..?"

--

Pardon the pun, dear reader, but Ernest was the one getting his kicks out of the instant. Ripping the poor thing into pieces, the werewolf gulped down with extreme pleasure (and at the same time, extreme revulsion) what was left of the little dog, its teeth sinking through the flesh. Annoyed, he put a paw over the animal's carcass, trying to get a good grip out of the dog's intestine, which kept slipping out of his mouth. Eventually, the beast perked up his bloody muzzle, his head slightly twitching to the side as he listened attentively to the dog owner's voice.

"Another one bites the dust."

--

Jacob's heart was thumping inside his chest. Cold sweat was clinging to his body. The poor man aimed the flashlight in every direction, trembling.

He had heard the dog screech in pain. Something was wrong. The man called out to his dog one last time, before hearing the rustling of the leaves inside a bush located on his left. A brief memory of all the horror movies he had watched came back to him, where all these idiotic people stayed and almost waited to get killed.

"I'll go look for the dog tomorrow," he thought, taking a few steps back. Quickly enough he started to sprint through the woods, random branches slapping him across the face. Breathing heavily, trying to ignore the cramp making his body beg to stop, Jacob accelerated the pace when he heard a big thump and the noise of someone -or something chasing him. Cold sweat was now trickling down his jaw, his back, and violent quivers of fear were agitating his very being. The woods had never seem so oppressing, so endless and terrifying, and he ran faster and faster. Jacob was now shouting for help, his soul filled with terror. For the very first time, he felt like he could touch Death with the tip of his fingers.

The sight he saw when turning around almost made his heart stop on the spot. A wolf, he was being chased by a wolf. No...it wasn't a wolf. It was a fucking monster, a gigantic beast, which only vaguely resembled a wolf. Almost the size of a horse, its eyes gleaming with a purely malevolent light, the beast was barely a few meters away from him, and with every second that passed it was catching up. Jacob shrieked even louder before looking straight up. At the last second he avoided knocking himself against a tree. His breath was running short, and the man felt a vicious cramp torturing his stomach.

"Oh God please, please..."

Finally he exited the woods, the wolf-like creature still on his tail.

"There's the house! I'm almost there, almost the-"

He never reached it. The monstrous canine leaped forward, its teeth sinking inside Jacob's back. The man screamed in both terror and mortal pain as blood gushed in all directions. The two fell to the floor, and for a few minutes everything turned red. For a few seconds, every person in town kept on doing their nightly tasks, unaware that a man was dying, unaware that he was being ripped to pieces. No one would ever truly know how Jacob had put his hands up, vainly trying to protect his face from the werewolf. No one would know how the creature had almost entirely chopped off his hands before digging its teeth inside his cheek and tearing it open. Nope, no one, apart from Jacob's family, they could vaguely imagine what his suffering must have been like. Unfortunately, when they made their way to the crime scene, it was already too late. What had once been an extraordinarily kind and cheerful man was now reduced to a bloody corpse, no more alive than the pool of blood which had made its way under Jacob's body. Jacob was no more a "he". Just like his killer, the man had become an "it".

--

Just like no one that night knew about the horrible deed which had been committed, nobody knew about the boy. It was now dawn and he was crying. Hidden deeply into the woods, trying to cover up his bloody self and all of his shame. He would have to live with his conscience, live with the knowledge that he was a monster, an atrocity of nature, a murderer, until the next time, until she'd come back.

Full Moon.