Lycanthropy is no joke, I can tell you. I know it sounds all kind of romantic, or intriguing, or whatever, but the reality – for me at least – is very different. For me it started with difficulty in peeing – I could only pee in small little spurts. And no, it wasn’t a prostrate problem even though I am a man in my late fifties. Whenever I went out I kept having to stop every few minutes to piss on different objects. You know what I mean – car tires and larger-than-average rocks and dustbins and lampposts and things like that. I got in trouble for this a number of times, I need hardly tell you. Ended up in the local police station a good few times, got a number of verbal warnings and even had an interview with a psychiatrist. Who listened carefully to me and wrote things down. What a jerk. Those guys really piss me off.

 

Then the next thing was that I stopped being able to go out during the day. I grew super-sensitive to sunlight – it hurt my eyes. I ended up developing full-blown photophobia, which turned out to be to my advantage. Going out only after midnight changed things for the better as far as getting pulled over by the law was concerned. There are less people around to notice if you piss on a car tire at three in the morning. And the one that do generally pretend not to have seen…

 

And all of that was only the beginning of my troubles. There was never anything spectacular, nothing like what you see in the movies, only lots of annoying frustrating little problems with my behaviour. Itches that required scratching at length, the desire to lick my own crotch excessively, the ungovernable urge to sniff dog’s arses whenever the opportunity arose. Being perennially fascinated in crap and piss wherever I came across it.

 

I have already mentioned that I couldn’t go anywhere without having to stop every two minutes to take a piss – neither could I walk further than a few yards without having to sniff and snuffle about the ground for the slightest trace of someone else’s piss. When I go by one of those little alleys where the local winos are inclined to go relieve their bladders it can take me half an hour or more to pull myself free. I need hardly say that I find this deeply demoralising (not to say embarrassing) – this sort of thing is just not the life I had in mind for myself. It’s no way to spend one’s time…

 

Intellectually speaking I was starting to notice degenerative changes too. I no longer had any interest in reading science-fiction novels – my life-long obsession. Instead I took to looking out of the living room window at people going by and growling at the back of my throat if I didn’t like the look of them. This I did as quietly as possible as I had already had the dog warden around a good few times acting on the complaints of the neighbours.

 

I keep having strange dreams these days. I dream that I am chasing fast-running furry little creatures though fields. Running them down. The chase excites me beyond measure and I often wake myself up by the strange yelping noises that I am prone to making at these times. Sometimes I even manage to catch one of them and I feel its warm soft furry body between my jaws. It struggles to escape and this excites me even more. It excites me to fever pitch. I close my jaws in delirious satisfaction and feel the hot blood gush forth, and then I wake up – full of strange intoxicating passions that I cannot even begin to explain. It is as if I have drunk of a wine that no man ought to taste. A maddening wine.

 

More and more frequently, I find myself wondering – am I a man who thinks he is a dog, or a dog who thinks he is a man?

 

Embarrassingly, I also find myself being attracted to the local bitches, finding them – against my own will – charming and alluring to the extent that I can barely restrain myself from leaving the house in hot pursuit of them. I live in dread of the day when I am no longer able to resist their charms. I need hardly say that this is not a road I particularly want to do down.

 

Nobody ever tells you about these unpleasant – of not downright sordid – details. You don’t hear about this sort of stuff in the movies. Trust me – the people who make those films are full of crap…