A215 - Weekly Writing Challenge 2.

Write a vignette using 'we meet again' as your prompt. This may be interpreted however you wish. There is no minimum/maximum word count but you should remember that a vignette is not a story; it is a snapshop, a slice of life. A vignette does not have a plot, it focuses on one scene and tells us something important about the character/s we use.

VIGNETTE

I'm going out tonight, I don't know if I'll be alright.

The song sounded repeatedly in his head as it had done for weeks now. Greg stood at the window, looking down on the street he had once loved. He tried to steady a mug of tea in his shaking left hand while fresh blood seeped through the bandage on his right. Somewhere inside his being he still knew what he was about to do was wrong. As the boys began to gather around the bench in the park across the road, he made a final attempt to see them as people and to forgive them for what they had done to him. The old Greg would have blamed the government, the parents. His efforts were useless. He was not that man anymore.

I won't fight for a cause, don't want to change the law, leave me alone, just leave me alone.

The usual chorus of raised, aggressive voices floated up to his flat, accompanied by the vicious barking and growling of several terriers – abused, damaged monsters that were once innocent pups. It was too late for them now. Greg felt anger he never knew he was capable of. He had stopped shaking and was beginning to feel excited. He looked down by his foot at his own dog, which had started to writhe and yelp on the floor, its eyes begging him to stop the pain. The guilt he had felt all day vanished with the arrival of the deadly rage within him.

Concrete jungle, it ain't safe on the streets.

Greg looked back to the kids, now bathed in the bright glow of a full moon. His dog had gone quiet. When Greg faced it, he was elated by what he saw and was certain he had made the right move. How could anything this beautiful be a mistake? The human blood that ran in its veins had reacted with the moon and the animal was transformed. Though no bigger than before, it now stood on two legs, towering over Greg. Its eyes were completely black and new, white, enormous teeth protruded from its wet mouth at all angles, forbidding it from closing. Greg yelled with pleasure as the beast drew a long, rumbling breath and emitted a deafening howl that seemed to shake the entire building. He briefly noted that the neighbours must have heard it but then remembered that they would be thanking him in the morning when they could walk to the shops without being spat at or mugged.

The monster knew its master and was hungry. Greg grabbed his keys and set off for the second time that week to reason with the thugs who had driven him mad.

Concrete jungle, animals are after me.

This is taken from a short story I never really got to finish. At the time there was a news report about teenagers using dogs as weapons and I thought I would take that a step further and have them trading in werewolves. I wanted to describe the grim world that these kids are raised in and the acceptance of their way of life, the lack of help available to them and their rejection of the little that is there. Just as a vicious dog is usually brutalised by its owner, children are affected by their upbringing and environment. I can't say this is the kind of story I usually write but I couldn't get the idea out of my head. Enjoy!

I forgot to mention that in this story it is the human blood that infects the dog, tainting an innocent creature with the evil of humanity, rather than the traditional human getting bitten by a werewolf, therefore becoming one themselves.