Beware The Wolf Pt10: The Origin of Ruin

Damon isn't feeling so good after his encounter with Brutus. It's nothing a little breakfast and chat wouldn't fix... 

---

Damon watched the motorcycle and rider scream away down the dirt access road, feeling a mild sense of shock. “What…” he said out loud, to no one, as the late hour meant Tanny River Metropark was inhabited by only woodland creatures. “Fucking dammnit! Fucking shithead! Fucking stealthing BBBH asscunt!”

He pulled his phone out, angrily intent on finding one of the postings about the rumor so he could slander the ‘weirdo who dresses like a wolf’ as a sexual predator. He was just finding the posting on a local subculture message board, when his intestines gurgled. “Great. Fucking great. Maybe if I go shit his cum out, I won’t get wolf AIDS or what the fuck ever.”

Damon looked around; a nearby sign announced that just up ahead was the main parking area for the park. There would be a vehicle gate, but he was on foot. He set off, hoping that even if there wasn’t a bathroom, at least having a shit next to a bathroom was preferable to the woods. I’ll probably wipe with poison ivy if I do that.  They probably just have vault toilets anyway. I could kick the door open on one of those. I have heavy boots.

‘Just up ahead’ was a very short drive for someone in a car going twenty-five miles per hour; it was enough of a walk that Damon didn’t get there. Not only was it dark; and there was a fork turnoff for park maintenance that would have been obvious if it hadn’t been dark; he also felt worse and worse step by step. He wandered down the maintenance turnoff in his confused illness, and then wandered off the dirt road proper.

Sweating and feeling viciously nauseated, he fished in a jacket pocket for his THC vape pen and took a big hit. Too much of one, as his throat started to clutch in on itself and he coughed into his arm. I fucking swear, every time I get a buffet salad, he cursed to himself, then looked for somewhere he could sit down as his legs felt weak.

The drug only settled his stomach somewhat, and just as he sat down on the ground against a tree, he burped and some bile came up. He spat and took a deep breath, heart starting to thud as a weed high started to hit him. I will not fucking throw up. I will not fucking throw up. I will not fucking throw up.

Damon’s near-emetophobia was a dice roll in the galactic probability that governed his and everyone’s life. Unbeknownst to him, profuse and sudden vomiting was a sign of dire consequences that only one other living person knew about at the moment. In the moment, refusing to vomit gave him a chance to observe nature in the raw, as a small animal began to approach him. There was little light out due to the partly cloudy skies and new moon, though Treetown’s light pollution and his adjusted eyes let him see the outline of a small canid as it cautiously yet brazenly approached him. What the fuck are you, are you a coyote? All those fucking neighborhood notifications about coyotes eating babies, and now one’s gonna eat me.

The animal was too small to be a coyote, and its tail too bushy. The red fox crept closer and closer, while Damon just held still, trying to calm his desperate, near panicked need to breathe harder and harder. Damon slowly shifted, and reached for his vape pen again, though his hand shook uncontrollably. His confused fingers knocked his wallet out of his pocket and it landed with a thwap on the tree root next to him.

The fox paused for a moment, then continued moving forward, before darting the last couple of feet and snatching the leather billfold in its mouth. “Hey hey hey what the hell!” Damon yelped, and the vulpine quickly turned to scamper off. Damon jumped up to his feet and lurched after it, but his degrading state did him in. He lost his footing and fell forward, and in the moment of time-slow-down, he decided to reach for the fox. He succeeded, at least in grabbing its tail, while he otherwise crashed down against a tree stump that jabbed him hard in lower right rib. The only thing saving him from being impaled was his smartphone, though he had bigger things to worry about.

The animal let loose an absolutely awful screech and curled around into a ball, then bit at his hand in several places. He flung it aside, where it stood and gaped its jaws at him while chattering irreverently before successfully scampering away.

Damon looked down at his hand, which felt as if speared by hot pokers. There were several puncture holes in his sleek leather glove; he pulled it off his hand and found matching marks in his pale skin. As he rubbed at his hand, blood welled up out of them. The sight of it made his heart flop in his chest, and an oncoming faint narrowed his vision. He hunched over and tried to stick his head down between his legs, and the urge to vomit rose and rose. While clasping his hand to try and get himself under control, the back of it felt slimy. He looked down again; not only was he bleeding, but there was a dark patch where he’d smudged his other gloved hand, with white in the center. He flexed his hand and the darkness moved around the white - bone. What the hell what the hell what the he-

He threw up hard, the impulse so uncontrollable that he couldn’t even gasp between bouts. Pain erupted everything in his body at once, and as he writhed around on the ground, it blotted out everything, even consciousness.

—

Damon awakened in the early morning light of dawn. The forest was sideways; no, he was sideways, lying on the ground. He dimly remembered horrific pain, vaping so much he threw up, and a completely ridiculous thing about a fox stealing his wallet.

Something was nearby on the ground, a sideways and very ugly bird with black feathers and a bald head. Is that a fucking eagle? Wait, that’s not an eagle. They’re majestic. The bird picked at a pile of entrails. Oh jesus that’s a vulture, did I fucking pass out next to some dead thing? What a fucking dumbass I was, going after that weirdo I read about. I ate some weird stuff downtown, then got stealthed by a jerk, and I only got on his bike because he had such a cool… outfit…

Damon sat up and the vulture flew off, as did several nearby crows that seemed to be waiting their turn. His head ached and throbbed, and as he moved it around, felt heavy. He reached up to soothe himself and banged his hand on something. “Oww! Why does everything have to hurt all of a sudden?” He tried again and rubbed at where the throb came from. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit I fucking fell on something it’s fucking stuck in my brain!” He squawked, to exactly no one. He’d wandered fifty yards off the park’s maintenance trail, and was now on the edge of state land. He had no idea of any of that, only that there was no regular human sounds around.

He pulled on the object that was stuck into his head, and it didn’t budge. After four tugs, he felt around again. It was definitely stuck into his head, though his skull and flesh curved upwards a slight bit before ending and leaving just a hard surface. He reached up with his other, ungloved hand; his bare fingertips felt smooth hardness, and a tap resonated in his head while sending a quiver from near his scalp.

While fondling the unknown protuberance, he batted against his ear, then felt at it. It stuck out just below the object, forced to project sideways. It was also furry. His heart flopped in his chest. What the hell is going on? He dug in his pocket and pulled out his smartphone, intent on using it as a camera. Instead, the glass and metal slate had its screen smashed into shards, and the chassis was bent and split apart, as if something had inflated inside of it. He could still look at himself in the dark, splintered glass, and his reflection was incompletely formed of a horror.

He felt for his face; his jaw was elongated, the end of it was his nosetip and rubbing at it made him want to sneeze. He could smell his hand, and the dirt of the ground, and the leaves, the tree behind him, the offal that had enticed the carrion birds, berries on a bush nearby, several types of flowers he could remember from his childhood, and the distinct smell of urine coming from under where he sat.

His face was furry, as was his neck, and the parts of his chest that he could reach without getting under his coat. He felt dirty and there were some bits of gore and grossness on his body, but more than that, his clothing was damaged. His jacket had ripped at several seams, though not enough to fall to pieces, and his PVC pants had blown their seams as well as featured several gashes that looked like an animal had slashed him. He remembered the fox; this animal would have been much larger.

His gloved hand’s glove was ruined; his bare hand was furry as well, black furred, with black clawnails instead of normal fingernails. He grabbed at his leg; the spacing matched. He’d slashed at himself. He opened up the damaged arm of his jacket; his arm was covered in black fur past the wrist and then red the rest of the way. He looked down at his chest and stomach; beneath his mesh shirt, white fur.

Damon’s body horror was exactly equal to a sense of extreme vigor, so much so that it forced him to accept what had happened as well shit, no wonder I felt bad. He was hungry, desperately so, and stood up. What the hell, I feel taller. He looked down at his legs; he’d removed his boots at some point, and the cuffs of his damaged pants only went partway down. Instead of bare feet, he had hooves. Cloven hooves, at that; black hard material, two on each foot, and what would have been his heel was now almost a foot off the ground. Oh shit, no fucking wonder.

He sniffed at the air and smells exploded in his mind, including one that he could recognize strongly as ‘breakfast’. He started following after it, stomping through the woods with the eloquence of a bull in a china shop. I gotta eat. I gotta eat so I can stop fucking swearing to myself when I find out I have six nipples or some shit like that. The smell strengthened, and mixed with the grassy-skunk odor of cannabis. A hint of the smoke, but mostly just the stench of a grow-op.

The smell led not to a large operation in some pole-barn greenhouses with armed security guards, but a small cabin in the woods with a dilapidated couple of shed-like outbuildings. The cabin didn’t have any broken windows, but it didn’t look lived-in. There’s no way someone lets all that crap grow around their house. The roof’s got stuff growing on it! Nonetheless, it smelled like a traditional breakfast of bacon and eggs and fried potatoes.

Damon checked the front door, and it opened with just a twist of the knob. No rattle of bells, no electronic chime, no alarm system, no rigged shotgun blast.  No sounds came from the inside of the house save for the purr of a refrigerator and the rhythmic clack of a wall clock, and the delicious stench of sustenance made his mouth water so much that he drooled all over his chin. He flicked his ears around; indeed, no one seemed to be home. No creaks from upstairs, no toilets flushing, no shower, no washing machine. If someone actually lives here, they must’ve eaten and gone out.

The house was small enough that he could reach around from the living room couch through the kitchen doorway and grab the edge of the stove. Inside the kitchen was a stairwell that led to a basement - he didn’t open it but sniffed and picked up earth and mildew and a musky smell he couldn’t quite identify. Another door led to a stairway up, probably to a cape-cod bedroom. The sink was littered with dishes, a cast iron pan on top smeared and burnt with the remnants of the breakfast. God dammnit I hoped this was some fairy tale where some witch left a meal out to entice wary children. I’d eat the meal and eat her, too.

The refrigerator did have food in it, though, and he opened a plastic keeper box to find some poorly-made but edible chili mac. He devoured it, shoving his face - his snout - his muzzle - around and slurp-chewing at everything. Eating felt strange but the less he thought about it, the less he struggled.

Once full, he decided to check around the house again to see just what mistake he was making. Living room, dining nook, kitchen, broom closet, and a half-bath that was small enough to have been built into another broom closet. His intestines rumbled, and unlike the night before, he felt a very normal post-meal urge to go to the bathroom. He walked into the small toilet and stopped dead as he stared into the mirror. While it was a bit dirty, it was whole and mostly flat unlike his shattered phone screen.

Damon was very clearly now a fox-man. Ruddy fur, a smear of white down from the underside of his snout and his entire chest and abdomen, small charcoal dashes behind the white at the end of his snout, with a black canine nosepad. His eyes were no longer human but vertically slitted and autumn leaf yellow.

He was also very clearly more than a fox man. His ears were black and had migrated to the top of his head, though forced sideways by black horns that came up, curved around to the side and forward, and then scooped slightly more upwards to points. Likewise, the two-two cloven hooves on his feet, which despite technically being his toes, felt completely normal to walk around on.  His clothes were indeed ruined. I look like some fucking movie monster! This is awesome. This is awesome like awe, not awesome like great. Not great like… fuck there’s someone in here.

“Alright man who fuckin’ busted in here and ate my leftovers,” someone said, sounding not particularly upset. Damon turned his head and leaned back to look out of the bathroom just in time to see a bedraggled middle-aged man with scraggly long hair and denim clothing. He held a three-tine garden weeding trowel in a work-gloved hand. When he saw Damon, he stopped dead in his tracks.

“I was hungry,” Damon said, although now that he had a bit more wits about him than when he woke up in the woods, the words came out more like “Ahwuh hhungy,” and he bit his tongue. “Aahw!”

“Don’t you do a thing, man, don’t you move a fucking anything,” the trowel-wielding man said, and adopted the universal ‘getting ready to rumble’ posture.

“I gotta shit,” Damon said, which was very true, and increasingly unavoidable. Like before, it came out mumbled as, “Ahgah shissh.” This time, he did not bite his tongue. He then turned his head back and reached to pull the door shut.

The man stomped forward and stabbed him in the neck.  “I said don’t move!” Then, “Shit,” and he pulled the trowel out, which pulled Damon’s head to the side, banging a horn against the door frame. A tremendous arc of blood fired out of Damon’s neck, and he reached up to grab at it.

“Unngh, the hell,” Damon said, and crumpled down to a hunkered-up ball, clutching at his neck.

In a panic, the man stabbed Damon in the back, under his left shoulderblade.  Damon felt his heart flop in his chest, then flop again, and then he just collapsed forward onto the floor. Instead of fading out to black as his heart stopped from taking a two-tine stab wound right to important bits, his vision went speckled and he just kept staring at the floor.

After a few long seconds, the man kicked Damon hard. Damon felt it, heard it, and could not move to respond. “What the hell is this?” The man bent down and grabbed onto one of Damon’s horns and pulled it around, but no matter how much he messed with it, nothing detached from Damon’s head. “God damn thought these shrooms would catch up to me someday. What a fucking mess.”

The man spent the next five minutes stomping around aimlessly, rambling to himself in the confused anxiety of someone who had just killed someone else along with the shock of having killed something else. Then he used his foot to move Damon around, and started pulling on his arm, then his leg, to try and move him. “Hell you stink! Whatever the hell you are. Guess you really had to shit, huh.”

Damon’s heart abruptly thudded and he gasped. Now that he had control over his body again, he felt a blinding urge to attack and flee. He spasmed and rolled around, then lurched for the man’s leg and bit his ankle.

“Ahhh shit shit shit!” The man staggered back and fell onto the sofa.

Damon stood up and felt immensely powerful, though also confused. He felt at his neck; there was definitely a wound there, but it was already closed. Blood had sprayed all over the living room, some as far away as the opposite wall over behind where the man was now sitting in shock. “What’d you stab me for? I just had to use the bathroom!” This time, he said his words much more clearly, though his tongue still tangled up with his teeth.

“What are you? What are you doing here? What’d I do? What’d I do? You died, I stabbed you and you died, I checked, no pulse, no b-b-b-breathing.”

“What am I? I don’t know! I woke up in the woods like this! Although my name’s…” As he spoke, Damon realized he had a unique opportunity. He could explain himself, which seemed to go down one path that pulled him back into his sleazy doings back in town. Or, he could explain his current situation, which he knew very little about. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

When Damon didn’t approach him, the man slowly relaxed, though he then picked his leg up and looked at his ankle. It was bruised in several places, though didn’t appear to be bleeding. There was only one small hole through the heavy denim of his pants leg. “You can’t remember?”

Damon shrugged. “Nope. No idea. I could smell food and I just, wandered over here, I guess. Who the hell are you? This house looked abandoned.”

“Hey man, that’s not cool, I let nature do her thing.”

Shit, this guy’s a regular Tommy Chong burnout. “I’m not sure if that’s a good idea,” Damon said. Despite clearly remembering what had happened the night before, Damon had not yet thought the obvious thought as to why he had transformed into his current state. “Don’t stab me again.”

“Okay, okay,” the man cringed, as Damon took a step forward. “I’m sorry I do all kinds of shit man! I’m sorry! I just, I gotta, you know, I gotta make a living.”

Damon squinted. “What kinds of,” and then he used the pause for effect, “transgressions, are you guilty of?” He tried to sound as pompously, darkly authoritative as he could. His toothy muzzle made it all the easier, as the slower he talked, the easier it was to avoid drooling on himself.

“Drugs, man, I make drugs, can’t you smell it? I only grow a little weed, I do bigtime shrooms and stuff, I do uhh chemistry shit too sometimes, like popper and GHB. Stuff that’s easy. Not like meth or crack or whatever.”

Damon snorted. He intended to growl and huff, though a snort sounded more appropriate and felt more natural. “Well, then your punishment,” he said, and chuckled at how stupid it sounded, though the effect was more sinister when it came out of his bestial visage, “Is to serve me. And I will make your harvests wild.” Damon had no concept of what this entailed; it just sounded cool in the moment.

The man looked broken, completely agog at him. “Uhh. Like… I’m no, you know, I’m not christian or anything. I mean-”

Damon stomped forward and grabbed him by the shirt, then tilted his head so one of his horns prodded him in the forehead. “LOOK AT ME. Do you think that I’m of this Earth? Obviously some insignificant little shit gave his body for me to use.” For a split second, Damon wondered if indeed he was abruptly possessed by a demon. Instead, he just felt sexually aroused by the thought of throwing around infernal beast power, whether or not he actually had any. “And I clearly made some upgrades. Now. I have fed, and I am filthy.”

“I uh, I have a bathroom? I mean a tub? Upstairs?” The man pointed.

“Run it for me,” Damon ordered, and then followed the man upstairs. While the house was jam-packed with stuff, it wasn’t nearly as messy as the unkempt outside. The bathroom was serviceable, although there was no shower portion of the tub, and the ceiling would have made it impossible to stand up in the bath even if there had been a sprayer.

Once the tub was partway full, Damon pointed to the bedroom that lay beyond. “Now, I require something else to wear. For now. Leave me to my bath,” Damon said, and dismissed his abruptly-found attendant. The man quickly left and closed the door; Damon peeled out of his ruined gay-bar attire and sank into the bath. The water level rose precipitously, until it gurgled into the overflow.

While it hadn’t been apparent before, Damon’s body was not uniformly furry in the same way. Most of what was colored in fox colors was much stiffer and straighter-haired. There was also a serious change he had not at all expected; instead of his average uncut erection, he had leathery balls the size of large plums, and his cock was ink black, with a ring about two thirds of the way to the base. The glans was mushroomed and somewhat humanoid still, though instead of a slit for a pisshole, the actual orifice was slightly puckered. That, you stud, is a horse cock. You have bull horns. Bulls do not have horse cocks. Damon had not been particularly interested in the excessively bestial side of things, at least in that way, though it was hard to be a gay man and not find out that disappointingly, an anthro bull with realistic genitalia would have an odd and not particularly large penis.

While languishing in bathwater that looked like a crime zone, he reached over and grabbed some of his clothing. His jacket tag read: “horsehide”.  His gloves: “cowhide”. He thought back to what had happened the night before, when he had fallen onto a conniving wild fox and it had bitten him. Are you serious? Everything I touched after I got fucked by that wolf, did something to me? He thought about the wolf, whose name he couldn’t recall at the moment. You complete asshole. You destroyed my life. You turned me into a complete freak. Not even a cool freak like you, a werewolf in a biker jacket, everyone wants that. I’m a fox, a bull, and a horse, all at the same time. Only idiots on the internet who make sparkle-rainbow winged lion bears like that stuff. I can’t go to work. I can’t see my family. I probably can’t walk around town. I can’t do anything.

The water was warm and Damon’s anger energized him. He looked down at his floating shaft, and it responded by swelling up. Soon, despite his attitude, he was fully erect. It rose well over ten inches from his groin. I’m a freak with an enormous cock, bull horns, and cloven hooves.

He furrowed his brows. I turned into this thing because he came in my ass. That means if I fuck someone, they’re going to turn into a monster, too. If I fuck this stoner guy, he’ll turn into something. I’m a sex demon. He chuckled to himself. I’m a sex demon!

“Hey man, I uh got something to-whoa!” The door burst open as the latch had barely latched in the first place, and the denim stoner stumbled in. “Sorry man, that thing doesn’t wo… rk.” He was holding a black-trimmed maroon satin smoking jacket, which could have doubled for a boxer’s robe. The man’s eyes went wide and his hand shook.

Damon rose out of the water and grabbed the first towel he could reach, and while keeping his eyes on the man, wiped himself dry. The ashen towel turned murky red and black from the final remnants of the transformation. He then stomped over - his hooves making a fantastic clomp on the linoleum-over-wood floor - and snatched the robe. He slung it around his body. “Hmm.” He then looked in the dressing mirror, which hung on the door behind the man. The look was very Hugh Hefner, if the famous playboy had been a woodland monster with a horse’s cock. “Very well, for now.”

He then turned to the man and backed him up against the mirror. He reached out and held under his chin; the man’s beard scraped against his fingers. “What is your name?”

“Uhh. Uhh. Rick.”

“Listen to me, Rick. You will listen to every word I have to say. You will obey every word I have to say. And if you do, you will be rewarded. Do you understand?” Damon leaned down, as getting in Rick’s face took an entire head’s worth of height difference. Rick average white male height for the area; Damon had grown in the transformation.

“I, uhh, yeah man. Sure.” Rick tried to resist looking downwards but his eyes kept flicking towards Damon’s groin.

“Is there a problem?” Damon kept his muzzle clenched and curled his black lips back when he spoke.

“N-no, uh, you’re just, kinda, like that thing’s a weapon, man. It’s hitting me in the gut.”

Damon let go and stepped back, moved Rick aside with a push, and walked out into his bedroom. Unlike the downstairs and the unkempt outside, the bedroom was a dark, psychedelic wonderland. Aside from serviceable bedroom furniture of a bed, sitting chair, dresser, there was a gamer-worthy computer desk festooned with angular and multicolored peripherals. The walls were covered in blacklight posters, and while some of them were typical Alex Grey artwork and Heavy Metal-era fantasy babes, a large number of them contained various mythical beasts and creatures, almost all of them male and anthropomorphic. And nude. And aroused.

“Are you…” Damon realized he needed to keep up the act, so he couldn’t talk like his usual profane and irritating self. “Do you fancy men, or women?”

“Chicks are cool but they can have babies and that’s like, I dunno if I wanna go there. Dudes are cool and, I mean, yeah. So I’m bi. Sexual. Bisexual.”

“Interesting,” Damon said.

“So like, uh, what’re you gonna do? With me?”

“Use you,” Damon said, then stepped over and climbed into Rick’s bed. He leaned back against the pillows and crossed his hooved feet at the ankles. “For my own purposes. For now, I am exhausted. Let me rest. If you try to summon help to dispose of me, your potential reward will become a tomb.”

Rick swallowed, nodded, and quickly left the room.