Lunacy

Lunacy


Jack Martin was aware on some level that he was dreaming. Unlike most of his dreams, he was just a spectator in this one.
He was floating in the vacuum of space, motionless. Before him was Earth, sitting in space, frozen in time. Each time he had this dream, he was able to see more of it.
This time around, the Earth started to fall, drifting downwards toward a chasm of black space.
The thought appeared in Jack’s head that it had been drifting downwards for some time. As it descended, it began to fall more rapidly…. Suddenly a knobby, inhuman, lithe black hand wrapped around the Earth…
Jack opened his eyes. He was disoriented for just a moment, then realized he was in his bedroom. He had never grown used to waking up in the rural Idaho house, though he had lived there for over six months. He rolled over in bed to look at his clock. It read 2:26 AM.
He rolled off his bed and stumbled into his bathroom. He snapped on the light switch and looked into the mirror. Bags were growing beneath his brown eyes. His light hair was tangled and knotted.
He turned on the faucet and washed his face in the warm water. The dreams were now happening not once a month or week but almost every night. He had seen an expensive psychiatrist about them, but he only gave some junk about about childhood experiences and stress. Jack quit after one session. He sure didn’t have any childhood experiences about floating in space, and he was under very little to no stress right now. Since his grandfather had died, giving Jack nine hundred thousand dollars, he’d been living simply.
He had no experience with the out of the ordinary and the unusual. He had lived a simple and basic life, playing it on the safe side for a vast majority of his life.
Jack turned to the window and opened it. Surely all he needed was some fresh air. Glaring at him through the screen was the full moon. Oddly enough, Jack couldn’t seem to turn away…. Jack passed out and as he collapsed, his hand brushed the light switch, and the changes that began to happen could not have been seen.
Once more, Jack was floating in space with the falling Earth before him. Once more the black hand wrapped its inhuman digits about the Earth. The hand tainted all it touched. Fires sprang up all over the globe. The oceans began to boil. Suddenly a massive wolf rose up and bit the hand. A greenish brown liquid squirted out and spattered onto the wolf’s silver-gray coat. The jaws of the wolf dug deeper into the hand, and it released its grip on Earth. The wolf leapt up toward the owner of the hand, which was out of Jack’s line of vision. Slowly his vision grayed and the battle between the wolf and the owner of the hand began to fade…
Jack awoke once more to total darkness. His first thought was
Something’s wrong
and nothing else. There was only
Something’s wrong
He suddenly felt immensely strong. He stood up and groped for the light switch. It clicked on. This time what Jack saw in the mirror made him scream.
He was no longer human. His head was now completely lupine, though larger than any dog he had seen. From his newly acquired snout abnormally large canines emerged. Thick, flowing gray, white, and silver fur had sprouted across his body. His clothes were ripped and torn, for his body had grown huge. He had humanoid arms, but with larger muscles than he had ever had. Claws sprouted from his fingers. His legs were built like a wolf’s, with large paws at the end. A tail had sprouted from his back.
He tried to scream once more, but it emerged as a strange yelp.
This is just a dream, horrible dream, bad dream
Jack dropped to the floor and curled up. His fur served as a thin mattress against the cold linoleum. In minutes, Jack slept again.


Jack awoke to the sound of his telephone ringing. He opened his eyes and saw no snout on his face. He breathed a sigh of relief. But the events of last night came rushing back to him when he saw gray hair scattered across the floor around him.
“Dog hair…” he said quietly. Then the thought shot through his head like a hot knife.
Wolf hair. My hair.
The phone rang again, so Jack got up, and dashed to the phone. Among scattered papers and phone books, the ringing phone lay. He picked it up and said “Hello?”
“Hello Jack,” said a mysterious female voice on the other end.
“Who is this?” he asked as he took a broom into his bathroom. He intended to clean up the mess he had created.
“That’s not important,” the voice responded “You need to leave. Now.”
“What-” Jack was cut off.
“You need to burn your house down. Use gasoline. You need to destroy all evidence of your transformation. Then-”
“Whoa! Slow down! You want me to do what?!”
“Do it and come to Los Angeles. When you get to the airport, a payphone will be ringing. Pick it up. Go. They’ll arrive soon.”
“What? This is-” Click- the line went dead. Jack sighed and hung up the phone.


8 miles down the road….

A black Limousine sped down the road toward the target house. Driving it was Agent Don Gordon. In the passenger seat was his older brother and fellow FBI Agent, Will Gordon. And in the back were eight more agents, armed with 9mm UZI submachine guns. There was no such thing as overkill in the Gordon’s book.
“Don!” A voice called from the back of the Limo. He glanced backwards and said “That’s sir to you, recruit. Now what do you want?” he spat at the other agent. He tended to have a short temper during a mission.
“I think I saw…” the blocky agent muttered
“What! What did you see?” Don was screaming now.
“The truck! In the field!” Another agent yelled.
Don slammed on the brakes and the Limo screeched to a halt. “What!! Everybody out!” He looked into the field, and sure enough, Jack Martin’s car was tearing through the soybean field, crushing crops and churning up dirt.
Don leapt from the car and ran around to the trunk. He popped it, reached inside, and pulled out a 50.caliber semi-automatic sniper rifle.
Will let out a chuckle. A man of few words, he smiled and said “Time to try out our new toy.”

Jack had surprised himself in several ways in the last few minutes. After changing into fresh clothes, he surprised himself the first time by running into the garage, and emerging with gasoline. After he surprised himself again by starting his house on fire, he did it once more by jumping into his Chevy and taking off not towards the road, but into the field on the left of his house. He wasn’t sure why he did these things, but the voice on the phone was just so convincing.
He had the idea that he would cut through the field to the nearest road. A strange instinct had told him that the road wasn’t safe. And now he was driving through the field, and glancing at his rearview mirror.
In it he saw a Limo parked at an angle in the road. More than half a dozen agents were running towards him through the field, with some kind of sub-machine gun slung over their shoulders. Two more men stood by the Limo. One was crouching and holding some kind of rifle…
Suddenly the glass behind him exploded inwards, taking the left side of his headrest with it. He leveled the gas pedal to the floor and began to swerve from side to side. Another shot was fired, and his left side mirror blew up, sending shards of glass and plastic everywhere. But after that, no more shots were fired.

Don swore quietly as the target sped over the hill. He called the other agents back to the Limo. They hurriedly jumped in, and Don scrambled around to the drivers side. But Will stood, calmly leaning against the hood, and lit up a cigar.
“No need to hurry boys.” He said around his massive cigar. “We don’t want to make a scene. And plus.” He breathed out a cloud of noxious fumes. “We know where he’s going.”

Part 2

The moment Jack stepped off the plane; he looked around for the payphones. When he saw them he rushed over and waited. When one rang, he snapped it up and quickly said hello.
“1186 Dearman Street.” The voice said. Before he could respond, the line went dead. Jack sighed and hooked the phone back up. He walked outside and hailed a taxi. The driver, a large man with thick black dreadlocks, asked in a thick, slow drawl “Where to mon?”
“1186 Dearman street.” He responded slowly. He had to go on the assumption that the address he had been given was where he was supposed to go.
When the taxi pulled up, and the fee had been paid, Jack walked up to the eastern styled home. Because there was no doorbell, he knocked. A voice emanated from a small black box above the doorframe. “Welcome” it said in a mechanized sounding voice. The door swung inward, and Jack stepped inward.
Inside there was a staircase up to the second level. On this staircase stood the owner of the mysterious voice. She was rather short, but not stumpy. She had deep black hair so dark it seemed to suck in all the light. Her eyes were a similar color, and she was dressed in all black.
“Hi.” She said with a small smile that said I know something you don’t know.
“Come on up. There’s a lot that you must want to have explained. And the others are eager to meet you.”
“Others?” he asked.
She chuckled. “What, you don’t think there’s more than one of us? By the way, my name’s Serra.” She began to ascend the stairs. Jack quickly followed.
“I see you’re fond of black.” He stated.
“Yes. It’s my fur color. When I’m in Wolf.”
She entered the room at the top of the stairs, and Jack followed. Half a dozen other people were seated in the small room. After they had all stood up and given their introductions, Serra began to speak.
“First things first. We” she gestured at all the people seated and at Jack “are all werewolves. Obviously. Now, we can sense when one of us changes, which is how we found you.”
“Okay, but what’s with the FBI?” Jack shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“The fibbies are after us because they see us as a “Threat to society”. But here’s the truth. Several years ago an alien race who called themselves the Cleanse. The U.S. were able to make first contact. They quickly discovered that the Cleanse were a conquering race of war-based aliens. They somehow cut a deal with them, and the Cleanse agreed to land in Asia in three years and conquer it, then leave.”
She looked out the window in the room and continued. “The Cleanse are just as greedy and corrupt as the human race. Surely both of them won’t stay honest. There will be a massive human vs. alien war. And the Cleanse would crush us. There is only one way to win the coming war. Werewolves. Us. We must spread ourselves far and wide as possible.”
“But how?” Jack asked.
“Simple. You see, what we have is a virus, carrying the genes of a long extinct species. If we just bite somebody, they will become one of us. You see, with enough of us on the field of battle, the war will not be hopeless. It’s the only way to save the human race. So. Are you in?”
Jack thought back to all the times he had turned down adventure for the cozy reliability of home.
“I’m in.”