Moon Boy

Joe had always known he was different. Since he was young, he had always felt isolated from all the other kids his age, but it was only many years later that he realized what set him so far apart from being “normal”. It was on a dark, windy, cold December night that Joe decided to take a step around the bend in that windy alley that led him into the world where he really belonged.

Joe lived with his aunt and uncle in an ordinary house on an ordinary street, and he went to an ordinary school with ordinary children in it. Maybe it was the fact that this town was so ordinary, Joe often thought. Maybe other towns would have people like me. Joe often dreamt of a world where he would fit in, but in this town that seemed far from possible. Sometimes Joe would take long walks down the dark alleys near his house, just to get away from all the “normalness” of his town. He liked the dark alleys, with their sudden turns and terrors, and weird echos. Oddly it felt like home to Joe, and whenever he heard of those weird echos, he would feel as though it was a voice talking to him, a familiar tone, the same that he heard in his daydreams.

After seventeen years, and about a thousand walks down those dark alleys Joe had never dared to go past on be particular turn in the alley. Some weird excitement or fear or some strange feeling in his gut  held him back, for when he reached that turn, the weird echos spoke louder to him than ever. He would walk up to that point with all his mustered courage, and try to put his foot over the bend and have his knees just buckle, or try to convince himself that something bad would happen to him if he crossed it. Although he avoided it, Joe often thought about what made him so anxious to cross that bend, and tried to convince himself that life couldn’t get any worse, and that maybe this “mini-adventure” might add some excitement to his life.

  It was one of those gloomy days, where the weather was still and gray, and the teachers were cranky and the students were more asleep than ever. Joe was walking back home from school, his backpack slung across his shoulders and his shoes scraping the asphalt, when he decided to take the familiar turn down his favorite dark alley. The grimy floor caked his sneakers in dust as he turned the familiar bends. He kept walking, and this time  quickly reached that bend, the one he had seen so many times before. The echos filled his head calming him, reassuring him, and then causing him fear all at once. Suddenly his heart started to beat hard almost flying out of his chest and he clutched his head feeling faint. Joe ran his fingers through his tangled blond hair blinked his watering green eyes and stood up all at once. He took a deep breath and lifted his foot, and turned, around the bend, an action he had anticipated for a very long time.

He didn’t know what happened then, all he knew was that all the voices stopped , and an eerie chill swept over him. What he was about to see was going to change his life forever. His eyes fluttered open, almost as if by command and he blinked for a while rubbing his eyes and looking around. It was an open ground, almost like  a jungle with weeds and tall, leafy trees. Joe just stood there for a minute, breathing in the smell of wet dirt, and crunching leaves under his feet. He was about to take a step forward when he heard loud steps. They were coming in his direction, but what scared and excited him the most was the fact that they sounded creepily and unmistakably not human.

It all felt like something out of a horror movie, but Joe was not ready to make a break for it yet. He just stood there rooted to the spot trying to look braver than he felt. Suddenly a shadow leaped around a boulder, and a figure emerged. What Joe saw then was the outline of a tall furry creature, almost like a lion, with golden-brown fur. He looked closely than, trying to see its facial features. It had huge canine teeth, dripping with blood, and small, beady tunnel-like eyes. Joe blinked, gulped and looked again, what he saw was unmistakable, and excitement suddenly replaced fear as he took a step forward, because something about this place made him feel accepted, something he had not felt in a long time.
“Hello?”, Joe said. He felt stupid like a small, broken twig compared to this huge powerful creature. More figures emerged some smaller, some more muscular, until there was a pack surrounding him.

Now the excitement vanished and it was about to become the part of the horror movie where the main character screams and run away until something amazing happened. The figures began changing, all at once, until they took the shape of a human. Joe just stood there again, his mouth gaping, and tried to focus on not passing out.
“Hello Joe, welcome home”, they all chorused.
Joe’s knees did finally give way this time, and he crashed to the ground with an astounding thud, sending dust flying in all directions. Joe came to his senses a few hours later when one of the creatures had stuck his head under a small waterfall. He sat up quickly and was given a blanket and a mug of some dark liquid by a creature named Jake. Jake was a tall, slender werewolf who was around Joe’s age. Even when he was morphed as a human, you could see the wolf on his face.
“Listen Joe, there’s a lot you need to know, so I want you to just listen okay?”
“How do you know my name”, Joe stammered.

It was nightfall when he finished telling Joe the story. By the end of it Joe felt terrible. His life had been a complete lie from what he had heard. But what bothered him the most was that nothing had surprised him, as he sat there he wondered what else he knew, other than the fact that he was a half-werewolf who had been abandoned by his parents, and taken in by humans.

Nothing seemed to surprise Joe anymore, but all he knew was that he was never going back to the “normal world” again. This was where he belonged, and Jake soon became a very close friend of his. It seemed that finally, after all this searching, Joe had finally found a place where he fit in.