I awake gasping, with a cold sweat pouring down my face, every drop is a painful reminder of my past that I cannot even escape in dream. I throw the thin blue blanket that covers me onto the concrete floor. I tumble off of the bed in a wild spasm. I try in vain to regain my footing, but I fail, slipping back onto the hard ground. I cry out. Not just because the utter pain of my fall, but because my bones are shifting under my skin like thousands of tiny knives, breaking apart and rearranging as they please. I cry out once again, and it comes out as a primitive howl. I know the change is coming, and more importantly I know there is nothing I can do to stop it. Unwelcome memories start to flood my mind of a time when things weren’t always like this, when I had a brother, the brother who’s death I am responsible for. It all started years ago, when I was a young man of twenty, half of the age I now am. My brother, Johnathon, and I owned a good chunk of land, far into the country that was occupied by a small log cabin that used to be our parents when they were alive. They took us there every summer to enjoy everything the wilderness had to offer from the sweet air that scented of pine trees and the ocean, to the ghost stories we told by the fire at night. When my mother died from a very nondramatic case of old age, and my father soon followed, my brother and I inherited the property. we were nothing short of ecstatic to have unlimited access to the place that  entranced us so as children. Johnathon and I moved in to the cabin right away, leaving our apartments in the overly-crowded city, for a nostalgic paradise filled with the scented air and the beautiful ocean that was the very same at that time as it was in our youth. We couldn’t have been more happy… Well at least for a time. Things began to get complicated with our expenses. We found we couldn’t afford the apartments and to own the cabin at the same time, and we soon became almost penniless. I, having more common sense than my younger sibling, wanted to sell the cabin and move back in the city, since living this far out into the wild was impractical. But Johnathon argued that it was the last thing left to hold onto the memory of our deceased parents. I stood firm in my argument, so when I did put the cabin up for sale without his permission, he completely lost it, yelling and screaming, and finally he stormed out. So be it, I thought to myself as the door slammed with such force that the walls shook, shattering two picture frames as they hit the ground. I was fuming with unimaginable anger. How could he even dare to act this way, and not to notice common sense, when it is the most obvious? I pace the house for hours on end, unable to sleep or even think as my blood boiled with rage. Finally, as my eyes grew heavy, and my limbs weak, I collapse onto the couch and drift immediately into a hard sleep. When I awake the sky is as black as a raven’s feathers. I get up to look for Johnathon to resolve the problem between us, but he is not in his bedroom, the guestroom, nor is he in the cabin’s large basement. Panic strikes like a hot poker in my side as I scream Johnathon’s name over, and over again. I get out of the house and know that he must have gone into the woods. But why? I ask myself, because if anyone knows the dangers of the forest it is surely Johnathon and I. I run out into the forest with a strange knowledge that my brother is dead, but without any real evidence to prove it. Still, I scream his name, but no one answers me. I hear the howl of wolves that sends shivers down my spinal cord. They are too close, I think as the sounds come with even more purpose then before.I stop and squint in the blackness of the night, but it is no use because even though the moon is out it doesn’t offer me enough light to see. But I do see something that I wished I hadn’t, and that is a pair of eyes that glow a sickly red colour right in front of my own. The beast makes a face that can only be a smile. I can feel its warm breath that smells of rotting flesh. I try to run, but I cant because I find that my feet are frozen to the ground with fear. The creature leaps off the ground and into the air, its jaws gaping wide, covered in saliva. I hear a loud shriek as the creature rips into my leg, but I’m beyond the point where I can tell if it is me or the monster who made the noise. The pain stops, and the wolf has mysteriously disappeared. I try to muster enough courage to look at my leg, hoping it will not be ripped off or mangled beyond recognition. Finally I look down at my leg, and it is fine besides two large holes where the beast had punctured it with its razor sharp fangs. I get up, but quickly stumble back down, when my bones in my legs, and then in my entire body feels as if they are being slowly ground to a pulp. I roll around in the mossy earth for awhile in utter agonizing pain when I realize that I’m beginning to change into something that I can only describe as evil. What were once my hands turn into giant paws with claws that have the same length and sharpness as knife blades. Unnaturally course hairs grow throughout my entire body. And finally jaw turns long and narrow like some sort of snout. I howl out of denial, self loathing, and self pity, wondering if this will come to an end. But it doesn’t. Every full moon thereafter I change into a dreadful beast, unable to control myself, doomed you might say for all of eternity. Something snaps in my mind. No not snaps, clears away, like some terrible fog, and I am able to see the truth again. I am in a room of concrete, a doctor dressed all in white stands by my side with an empty needle in his hand. I ask him where I am and he tells me that I’m in the asylum for the mentally ill and have been for quite some time now. I ask how long exactly. He says exactly twenty years, and I cant help but to let out a gasp.