Chapter 37: THIRTY-SEVEN

Gone forever Knock-knock-knock “Come in,” Lucas responded. It was evening time, and he didn’t feel good at all, he’d taken a shower multiple times, he even tried shaving off his chest but the hair grew back immediately, with nothing left to do, he went back to lie down. As if things couldn’t get any worse, the pounding in his head resumed, pounding louder and faster than before.

Amelia poked her head through the bedroom door.

“Dinner is ready, Lucas. Come and eat downstairs,” she said.

“I’m not hungry.”

“But you haven’t had anything to eat since you returned this morning.”

“I’m not hungry,” he repeated vehemently.

Amelia had had it. It was time to let him have a piece of her mind.

“You bail on your kid during the special times in his life, even on his birthdays, you can’t even spare him up to an hour to play with him, and now you refuse to eat with your own family. What has happened to you? This is not the Lucas I used to know. This is not the Lucas I thought would make a great father.”

He listened to her voice laced with tears, if only she knew. If only she knew what he was passing through at this point, she wouldn’t be saying those things to him.

She stood near the door and waited for a while. When she got no response from him, she left.

Upon hearing the sound of the door close, he let out a silent curse and came down from the bed a bit distorted, wearing his slippers and taking slow steps out of the room and down the stairs. The thud of his footsteps on the ground matched the pounding sounds in his head.

He entered the kitchen were Amelia and nanny were seated at the table and Bambi was in his high chair, playing with his food.

Amelia let out a horrified scream upon seeing the creature that had just entered into the room. The creature was half-Lucas, half-Erasmus, but more of Erasmus, as his whole body was covered in thick fur even though he still wore his clothes and was still standing straight like a man.

Amelia rushed over to Bambi and carried him in her hand, gripping her son tight and covering his face in her chest so he wouldn’t see his father, nanny could only sit down and watch, the horrified look on her face mirrored the one on Amelia’s.

What happened? Why were they looking at him like that? What happened? What’s wrong with him? He wondered. He reached for one of the kitchen drawers and brought out a pan where he could see his own reflection. The pan in his hand dropped when he realized that the terrible dream he had last night was not actually a dream but the reality. He recalled every single word Susan said to him, and his heart laced with nothing short of fear.

Bambi’s face was still buried in his mother’s chest, but he’d already seen his father before his mom covered his face.

“Mommy? Why d-d-does daddy look like the b-b-big b-bad wolf? Is he g-g-going to eat us?” She could feel the little boy trembling in her arms as he spoke.

Lucas tried reaching his arms out to them, tears began to choke his throat too but he managed to speak anyways.

“It’s still me Bambi, daddy would never try to eat you. I don’t know what happened, but it’s still me.”

As he tried walking slowly towards them, Amelia screamed again, grabbing a knife on the table behind her, and pointing it at him protectively.

“DON’T YOU DARE!!! DON’T YOU EVEN DARE TRY TO COME NEAR ME OR MY SON!!!” Her voice rang loud through the kitchen, and Lucas halted the minute she let those words out. The knife hadn’t touched him but the words cut through him deeply, making him bleed invisibly.

This was his first shift, he couldn’t control it, it was normal like this the first time for every werewolf, but humans wouldn’t understand. And there right in the kitchen, Amelia and nanny watched as Lucas disappeared and Erasmus took over for the very first time, all the clothes on his body ripped off as he transformed. When the transformation was complete, he howled, welcoming his new cursed form.

Amelia had seen enough for one night. She looked around for her wallet on the kitchen table, and grabbed it as she spotted it still holding Bambi on her other hand, and then she said those last words to him before disappearing through the kitchen back door, she didn’t take anything else with her.

“Stay the hell away from us. If you ever dare come near me or my son, I will kill you,” as soon as she spoke, nanny stood up, trying to reach out to persuade her.

“Amelia, I think you’re taking this too far…” but Amelia didn’t listen; she held the knife towards her too, and nanny stopped in her tracks, not wanting to hurt herself. Amelia didn’t want to stay a second more here. This whole marriage has been nothing torture for her, it’s been torture for her since the day she moved into this house, it’s been torture for Bambi too, and now her newly wedded husband... of course she should have known that in the end, he would turn out to be nothing but a dog. She walked out of the house with her son, knife and wallet in hand and never looked back.

Lucas struggled with the shifts in the kitchen but when he was finally able to put Erasmus away; it was already too late. The sound of the car crash was heard immediately they left outside, Amelia and Bambi were gone forever.