My Best Friend's a Werecat

"My Best Friend's a Werecat" written by TheDarkCat97
I plan on retiring - and surrendering - my position as the desk manager at GameStop over to my protégé John Clark next week, and now it seems to be the best time to write this confession of the double-life an old friend lived these past three decades, as he climbed up the New York social ladder, all the while concealing a dark part of himself. I doubt anybody will believe this unusual account. It will surely be dismissed as yet another work of magical realism, horror or fantasy.

It all began in 1984, when Fredrick and I arrived in Gatesville, North Carolina, with an associate's degree from the West Virginia Community College, with a dream of becoming a journalist, and enough saved from my job in the Diner to live in a tiny studio for a month. I applied with every newspaper, restaurant and grocery store in the region, and managed to find freelance gigs with some small papers and some part time bagging jobs. On the way home from a night of bagging, I came across what looked like a tan-ish cat, as I was crossing the street from the D-line train station. I had always been fond of pets, having cared for a bunny and a dog as a child, and this cat had short luxurious hair, so I felt disposed to pet it. As I approached, I noticed a wild gleam in its eyes, but Fredrick pushed me out of its path. It rushed at his outstretched hand and bit it. He was lucky in that it's teeth only scraped the sides of his fingers, and he didn't lose any bones or limbs. The cougar, as indeed I clearly realized that it was a cougar when I saw its teeth, lost interest in my friend after this scrape, and skipped away gingerly, as if he had just had a rough tumble with a college buddy. His hand was bleeding, and we rushed to his house to disinfect it, thinking all-the-while that it was unacceptable for people in modern society to let wild animals run wild in the middle of Gatesville.

Fredrick went to sleep that night with a bandaged hand, and he got a rabbis shot on the following morning at the Gates County Hospital as a precaution against rabbis. His hand didn't get infected, and the cuts started to heal nicely, so that he had practically forgotten about the incident a couple of weeks later, when we were walking home as usual, noticed a full moon above us and gave a short growl at it under his breath.

The growl came out like a lot of cats do, and he was embarrassed about it immediately. I looked around, but the street was abandoned. We walked a bit faster and was soon back in our house. He had taken notes on the Peanut Festival earlier that day in his sketch pad he gotten from Dollar General, and now he had to type the hand-written notes down and add some descriptions to make the sketch into a college article that was due on the following morning. He sat down at his small desk, took the cover off his typewriter, and began writing the first draft. This was a time before computers, so we usually typed drafts, read it, made corrections with a pen on it, and then typed the final draft. As he typed, he began to notice that he was writing as if he had suddenly developed a learning disability. Fredrick saved that first draft and check it occasionally to remind himself never to write on a full moon:

The National Peanut Festival (NPF), the United States' largest peanut festival, is held each fall in Dothan, Alabama, to honor peanut growers and to celebrate the harvest season. "It's a guufff guuffff rrrrr/'fairgrounds are located on Highway 231 South, three miles south of the Ross Clark Circle. The festivities include games and amusement rides on a large midway, animal acts, agricultural displays, an outdoor amphitheater with live music concerts by national recording artists, RrrrrlAaaf! Uuuuuph! Prrrrraaafff!

He rolled the page out of the typing machine, and tried to look at it under his dim lamp to figure out where he had made mistakes. As he squinted at the first few words, he suddenly he started clawing on it, ripping it to shreds as he studied the text. I saw this, and became a little concerned. I asked him if he was alright, and he said that he's fine, and that he just got a little disoriented from the long hours of paper work.

Later that night around one o' clock in the morning, I woke up to get a glass of water, and noticed that the front door was wide open, and Fredrick was nowhere in site. I believed that he began sleepwalking, and ran out to find him. No luck. Until, as I stopped nearby the abandoned courthouse till I heard something I did not want to hear. It sounded like a cat growling and hissing. But, in my own words: the snarling sounded deep and gutteral, like a grizzly. I did not dare turn around, but the sounds were so spine-chilling that...I had to look. There, I saw it.

Right beside the courthouse, under the porch light. Was a six-foot-tall beast that has the head and hind-legs of a big cat (mostly a cougar), and a body of a man. It looked at me with glowing, neon eyes, and hissed. It then made it's advance towards me, and that's where I made a dead bolt back to the house as fast as my legs could carry me. I can feel it's hot breath behind my neck, but that made me push harder and made me go even faster than before. I ran so fast that it would put an olympic gold medalist to shame. I slammed the door behind me and locked everything; the windows, the doors, and even closed the blinds. I ran and hid in the bedroom closet, and that's where I found it...Fredrick's torn and tattered pajamas. I thought, Holy fucking shit... Could that monster actually... No... No...It- It couldn't be... C-Could it be...Fredrick?

I-I pushed that notion aside, it couldn't be Fredrick, it couldn't. He's not the type of person who scare people to death like that. When has he ever? It could've been some guy in a cheap costume for all we know. But... It didn't look like someone in behind some mask. It looked real, just when I was running...I got a good look at it, and it looked real... It's mouth open wide as it screeched, revealing rows of sharp, long fangs.

As morning came, I heard knocking on my door. And I looked to see... Fredrick. He was naked and looked desperate. He asked me why he woke up in the Millpond just down the road. And... I just looked at him like, I can't believe what I'm hearing. I sat him down, and told him what I saw last night. He didn't believe it at first, but after waking up at the Millpond, he did eventually agree. I looked up the description of the monster from last night on Google, and this came up:

"Werecats (also written in a hyphenated form as were-cats) are creatures of folklore, fantasy fiction, horror fiction and occultism that are generally described as shapeshifters who are similar to werewolves, except that they turn into creatures that are based on some species of feline instead of being based on a wolf."

This made me even more concerned about Fredrick than ever! I soon told him, and he was at a loss for words. I just can't believe that my best friend; the same person that I went to middle school with, was now a werecat! More and more encounters with a feline biped; being similar to the bigfoot having a cat head, tail, and paws, began to widespread and soon enough, the news got envolved.

Now I'm in Fredrick's room typing away on my laptop, he's already gone, no doubt he turned into a werecat again and ran out. I don't know when he'll be back, I'm just glad he didn't kill me like the rest of the cattle he devoured. I think it's for the best that I keep this a secret, it's for the better. He keeps telling me that being a werecat is no too bad, besides, it's like being a furry... Except blood thirsty and menacing.

It's only a matter of time before he get's back tomorrow morning. Hell, he could tell me what he had killed or aten. Because now, he's not right in the head. I think the Ailuranthrope (or the feline therianthrope) has broken him. Rendering him to tiny pieces.

There's no use hiding from the truth.