Friday, February 28, 2014

Dunc's Halloween (Werewolf Transformation)

I thought I'd try a little experiment and post a werewolf transformation from a book. Not a comic book or a book with pictures--just words. This is somewhat unusual, since up to now I've only featured pictures and videos.

I decided to make a random selection from my collection of werewolf books and ended up with Dunc's Halloween, a children's book published back in 1992. The cover (which I don't particularly like, aside from the werewolf's face) is below:



The premise: Dunc and Amos are doing some pre-Halloween errands when Amos gets bitten on the butt by a strange dog. The day after, he starts eating raw meat, sleeping on the floor, climbing the stairs on all fours, and chasing cats. Yes, Amos is changing...into a werepuppy. On the night of the full moon, Amos wears a lamb costume to the school's Halloween dance (to lure the werewolf that bit him)--and then the fun starts:

Back in the shadows, some very strange things were happening to Amos.
The moon had come up over the gym, and as they had walked to the door, Amos had come into the silver-blue light.
The changes came slowly at first, almost not there at all.
He crouched a little. Then a little more. And then his ears and nose grew a little. Then a little more. And hair grew on his hands and neck and face. Then a little more. And all of this happened and kept happening until it wasn't Amos standing in the doorway next to Dunc. It wasn't really not Amos, but it wasn't really him, either.
The crouch continued until it was just more comfortable for Amos to be down on all fours, while his growing nose made it easier for him to growl and pant than to talk. It all seemed so natural, and it happened one-thing-to-another until Amos wasn't much like Amos any longer. He looked less and less like Amos and more and more like a kind of rangy cross between a coyote and a dog pound stray...
Dunc turned. "Amos?"
But Amos was gone. He had dropped back into the darkness, flipped his feet to get the tennis shoes off his paws, and set off at a lope, the lamb costume trailing along behind. 

Well-written and skillfully understated. If you guys don't mind an occasional text post, a few will show up now and then, though my primary focus will remain on videos and images. Let me know what you think.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

LOVE IT, man. Please continue posting some....far move vivid with my imagination incorporated. GREAT!

Apuleius said...

Haha, your wish is my command! I have two other fiction books lined up for future posts--I'm glad you liked this one!