Lance Wei Character Story Blurbs

by K9Lupus

Lance"s Hospital Stay/First Transformation

When I finally came to in the hospital, my consciousness floating within a sea of sedatives, the doctor calmly explained me opening my eyes was a miracle in and of itself. I was battered and bruised from head to toe, bundled in casts and braces restricting my movements like a sad marionette doll. Not that I wanted to move an inch anyway. The pain was already leaking through the swill of drugs the hospital staff had given me.

He had never seen a more vicious animal attack in his career, the doctor had said. My jaw had been shattered–again–alongside my broken collarbone and right hand and wrist. A half-dozen broken ribs stood as lousy guardians for my pierced lung. Claw rakes littered my arms and legs. Then there was the bite, a craterous wound and void of jagged, remnant flesh at the side of my neck. Just thinking about it nearly sent me into a panic attack right there and then, my hazy thoughts flashing back to the gaping maw and the flash of fangs preceding its creation burdened upon me. The doctor said only an inch or so had separated me from life and death. With how I felt then, I thought he was being awfully generous.

However, over the next month, my therapeutic progress and healing had progressed at a rate which stunned my attendants. The most severe wounds had stitched themselves nearly closed, and the broad splotches of bruising had reduced enough to give me back a modicum of humanity. When I was well enough, they asked me questions about the attack. All I kept telling them was, “It happened so fast, I didn"t get a good look.” But the truth was I had seen far more than I ever dreamed of wanting to see.

I remembered entering the bar wanting to stir up some nonsense after a long day in the truck. There was a small group of four guys in the corner; I had taken on worst before. I got a few drinks in me and was off to the races. They looked to be some kind of New Age group, and I don"t remember exactly what I said to get them riled up, but they answered, saying I wasn"t worth the trouble and they had places they needed to be. I have my ways though. Soon we were going at it, fists flying until we tucked out of the bar. I"ve learned most bar owners don"t give a damn about what happens, as long as it"s taken outside.

We rounded our way to the back alley at the edge of the nearby woods, and that"s when everything went south. Before I knew it, I was being pummeled from every which way. There was a ferocity to their attack that continued building with an almost unquenchable vigor. Animalistic growls and grunts accented their wide, wild swings at me, and a pair of those monsters–for I couldn"t in good faith call them men at that point any longer with their increasingly bestial appearances– dropped forward onto their hands and prowled toward me with a flare of wildfire in their eyes. There was no bravado to be displayed here anymore. It was clear to me that I was now prey, and all the while, the full face of the moon stood witness over my incredulous discovery that the lines between man and beast were not as clearly distinct as I had once thought.

Everything past that point was a blur to me, but I would get more clues as to what had actually transpired almost a month to the day of me being brought into the hospital. The night staff had already left my room so I could sleep, but there was no way that was happening tonight. All over my body a terrible anticipation was bubbling beneath my skin. My thoughts were racing, and my hands and feet trembled with a worrying, almost otherworldly energy. I dragged myself out of bed and over to the bathroom to splash some water on my face –anything to calm myself down.

But I had barely crossed the threshold when the first racks of pain seized me. Scattered bolts of feeling ricocheted along my spine and rumbled out to my limbs, flashes and surges of wild strength desperately scouring for footholds within the frail confines of my body. My heart pounded in my throat as I crumpled to the ground. I was now broken on the outside and from within as my spine lengthened and my arms and legs distorted themselves away from truly human approximations. My head swept up a few inches from the ground, enough to catch sight of the lengthened, inhuman arches of my misshapen feet alongside the sprouting clumps of ragged fur across my calves.

"I"m becoming like them", I thought with unfettered horror as fresh bursts of pain gripped my head in a vice. The cracking of my broken jaw and face brought to life the first fledgling hints of a canid-like muzzle, and I tried to scream, but no sound emerged beyond a bubbled gurgle. I fell back completely to the bathroom floor, forcing my thoughts to attend to anything beyond what was happening to me right now. My mind flashed again to the night of the attack. But the creatures that had injured me then were much further gone to this surfaced beast, this–wolf–than I was right now. And with the last ounces of clarity before my mind blanked out to the searing pain, I thought that perhaps this struggled effort was all my battered body could manage in trying to stay alive and not die.

I didn"t want to die like this.

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Lance Story 2 – Werewolf Fun

When the vice grip of full-body pain had finally subsided and left me a stranded creature between man and beast, I slowly navigated my way back to clarity through my questions which rang out through my flooded thoughts still hyped on adrenaline with a dull, practiced throb. Where am I? I am in my Changing Forest just outside town. Who am I? My name is Lance. What am I? A werewolf, until morning’s light brings me back.

The time following my transformations found the majority of my previous cognitive faculties intact. I could still reason and plan and consider in the ways familiar to me back when my hands and feet didn’t touch the earth as paws or my face hadn’t elongated forward into a primal visage capable of bringing down prey to satiate my hunger. But there was something more as well which eluded my grasp during such times.

On the nights I was relegated to being my new self, I couldn’t shake the feeling of a silken curtain of vines and wood bark, of fungi and broad-leafed ferns draped over my thinking. It crept in when I ran in long, loping strides across the forest floor feeling the churn of my limbs beneath me and the heavy heat of my exertion rolled free past my lolling tongue. Time narrowed to the present, and worries which existed in the future or informed from the past were dulled. Some would call these feelings wild instincts or mindfulness. I called them Gongxi, a deep congratulations awarded to myself in celebration of the fullness of life.

And fully nestled within my new shape, I would seek out adventures and delights of which I would have never considered back in my original form. When I was human, the hustle and bustle of society brought me feelings of connections with the world. When I was a wolf however, those connections were inherent and unbreakable, ancient and powerful, and the more I explored the world in this way, the more I saw myself in the living traces of all things struggling to survive.

As I sniffed around the scent signposts of trees and tumbled around in the splashes of earth and water, tense thoughts flared in the back of my mind. I briefly considered as I stared up at the night sky on my back at its countless array of stars piercing the dark like the fragile gemstones of the universe’s dreams if it was exactly this lack of inhibition, this full-hearted delving into the wildness of my spirit brought forth by my inhuman transformation, which was driving the growing clingings of the wolf to my original form. The differences were thankfully benign for now, but I couldn’t shake the thought that perhaps as I gave in to feeling that this means of living was not only tolerable, but had a merit of its own, that I wasn’t inadvertently accelerating my own condition.

However, as I inhaled the network of scents from the hearty spans of grass to the late-budding bloom of a flower in the distant fields, I knew that this indulgence came with irreplaceable benefits. It was exactly these moments which allowed me to endure the other hardships waiting for me once the fur receded and I was thrust back into the whims and waves of human living. This shared existence would be one of balance maintained and determined by my own will.
I would face the consequences of my actions tomorrow for today was the only thing which truly existed.

My ears pricked to the quiet rustle within a bush nearby, and I flopped over onto my feet, eyes trained toward the rapid shuffle and bounding of a small, grey form. The grumble of my stomach was mighty, and without a second thought I gave chase toward my potential meal and my active role within the cycles of the world.

END

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Some more story blurbs exploring concepts related to Rotting Hound"s Chinese-American werewolf character Lance Wei! You can see the inspiring commission images created by Rotting Hound here:

Lance Sketch Page 2
Lance Sketch Page 3
Lance Wei - A Spectrum Of Life

Please check out more of Rotting Hound"s amazing work over at: Rotting Hound"s Twitter Page

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K9 Lupus Commission Info

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