{"sf1_id":1044806,"sf2_id":null,"title":"Wolfentraum: One","author":"Aux Chiens","words":4060,"posted_at":"2016-07-12T08:36:00.000Z","tags":["Germanic","Lycanthrope","Male","Norse","Transformation","Werewolf","esoteric","nazi","racism","rich","roanoke","shapeshifting"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1044806-wolfentraum-one","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/view/1044806","image_url":"https://www.sofurryfiles.com/std/thumb?page=1044806\u0026ext=.jpg","description":"","content":"Under the cloud-murk he moved towards it\nuntil it shown above him, a sheer keep\nof fortified gold.\n_________ Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney\n            Siegfried Stone wondered if history\nwould record his every move these few days he would be in Roanoke - unimportant\nminutiae to try to comprehend the incomprehensible, as they did to Oswald in\nDallas - like his dinner, that early afternoon, at the expensive steakhouse across\nfrom the big skyscraper.\n            Perhaps that perky, friendly\nwaitress who was so attentive and sweet - they would interview her, in her\nhushed Franklin County accent would she recall him, how nice he was, how\ncharming he was, the evil he was about to commit unthinkable with his manners,\nhis charm, but how it all made sense, that feeling she got she couldn't shake,\nnow it all made sense, oh Lord...\n            On his plate was prime rib -\nexceptional, but he'd never tell a soul, he was loathe to praise anything\nexcept his family, his kind, himself - he took his knife in one hand, fork in\nthe other, and stabbed it to steady it before making the cut...\n            ...a spurt of blood erupted from\nthe meat, lashing his face with liquid crimson.\n            He blinked, offguard but\nsteady.\n            By the kitchen he saw that the\nwaitress was staring at him, on her own face written the breathless, primal\narousal of Red Riding Hood face to face with - him. A big, bad wolf.\n            They made eye contact - he\nsmiled at her, the blood a soft drip down into his curving lips, softly,\nsinisterly, the only way he could smile, like how the Serpent smiled at Eve as\nshe bit into the fruit - she could only bear it for a moment before she laughed\naloud, an explosive sound of feral, unguarded sexual excitement, her face went\nred, with her own blood, and she turned away and ran into the kitchen,\nhumiliated. \n            He chuckled to himself.\n            What a charming little thing.\n            He'd spare her.\n            His dinner was taken alone,\nthe steakhouse - Frankie Rowland's, supposed to be the finest establishment in\nthis wretched valley town - suitably hushed, the people were nothing like the\npulsing, writhing grotesquerie that he had been subjected to last night.\n            The people here might remember\nhim - but the people there most definitely would. \n            Those that lived, survived -\nthey would recollect how they never saw it coming, no hint, no clue, that their blood would be splattered on his\nface like the steak on his plate, running down his claws, slathering his teeth.\nThe terrible new world they were forced to live in was just as much of a shock\nand a horror as seeing what he really was, what his family was...all the time\nthey had to prepare, all those times they never listened to his family that one\nday there would come a reckoning, and so still the surprise would be fresh, the\nterror eternal.\n            The waitress did not return to\ngive him another glass of cabernet, and Siegfried had to switch to water with\nthe carafe she had left on the table - he noted with another small chuckle that\nhe had freaked her out too hard, made things entirely too awkward...it was time\nto go.\n            He wiped his face off with his\nnapkin, finished his prime rib, rose, donned his long jacket, threw some cash\nonto the table so the waitress could keep her change for the trouble - a nod to\nthe host at the front of the restaurant and a discreet Thank you, have a good day and he was gone, out into the street\n            Now he could saunter, looking\nabout him, out the door and to his right, at the skyward-sweeping lines and\nshapes of the bank tower now above him, reaching desperately yet futilely\ntoward Heaven - he would contemplate his place in this Commonwealth, in this\ncountry, in this universe. \n            They called the structure that\nhe beheld by many names since it had been here very long, a quarter-century at\nbest: Dominion Tower, First Union Building, Wachovia Tower...soon it would change\nagain. But the name one uses for it is very telling: the building has changed hands so many times that one can know\nthe age of the person, when they moved to Roanoke, how well they know their own\ncity, all by what they call this place. The name of the\nbuilding ultimately gives an identity not to it, but rather he or she who knows it by whatever name they call it,\nand details the history of themselves in the city, how well they know they know\nRoanoke and how well Roanoke knows them. The neon signage at the top of the\nstructure is easily replaceable - but the memory of what it was, what it used\nto be, stays forever. \n            Why had Siegfried chosen this\nplace, this Roanoke? Were there not other places - bigger, better, more\nexciting places - to reveal himself to the world? Places where he would get\nmore attention, where he would have more impact?\n            Perhaps it was because that,\nfor all his worldliness, for everything that an education at Mr. Jefferson's\nCollege in Charlottesville and the deep-pocketed wealth of centuries of\nexploitation and despoilment could give him - he still could not get out of his\nhead, still, the impression of\nRoanoke from when he was a boy, before the darkness of his destiny occluded\nwhat little innocent spirit he was born with.\n            He was so small, and Roanoke\nso large - he had seen this building, which\nhe would always know as the Dominion Tower, and it had impressed him,\nimpressed him deeply and permanently, this magnificent stone behemoth aching\ntoward the sky...\n            The Virginian late October - a\nweek, exactly, before Álfablót - came unexpectedly cold even for an afternoon,\nand Siegfried pulled his coat closer to him, putting his chin down to his neck\nbut his eyes ahead, taking in the city that was his first taste of\ncivilization.\n            So it would be here - this\nlittle town that fitfully dreamed of being a city, called Roanoke - it would be\nhere, it would be where it all began.\n            Cars came by him, pedestrians\non the other side of the street, unaware of him, his presence. Would they\nnotice him? Would they recognize him - in the future?\n            He lifted his head to the\nstreet, to the pure Autumn sunlight that came crystalline over the buildings.\n            He blinked as the phrase came\nback to him: in the future.    What future, anyway? The constant reassurance\nwas that it was his, his family's...his kind's. \n            But was it?\n            Siegfried, his family, those\nlike him, were discerning creatures that saw white color on the flesh but no\nspecial gift, no special privilege - outside of his own kind he was far more\ncomfortable around those that shared his lack of melanin, diversity and\nmulticulturalism was an acquired taste he could not savor, and so in some\nquarters he would be called racist and\nstill others supremacist. The former\nwas a mere quibble, a preference - the latter was a plain fact. \n            Yet it was the feeling of\nsupremacy not over any one group, but against a whole swathe of humanity that\ntranscended all of its polychrome, who were not like him - he, who had wolf's blood run deep in his veins.\n            Empathy for humans - white,\nbrown, yellow - was a country forever undiscovered for him and his people.\nHumans had done them terrible wrongs in the past - persecuted, tied to stakes\nand burnt alive, tortured in ad hoc courts\nof injustice across the European continent...the memory ran long. How could it\nnot? So like the first time you see a skyscraper, so like the flames of the\nbonfires his ancestors in agony writhed in, it was seared into him forever.\nEvery human being would have his amercement unrelenting and terrible in the new\norder he, Siegfried, hoped one day soon to create. For - across the sea in the\nNew World some of them, a bare few, had escaped, carrying with them the old\ncustoms and the old ways and hoping, one day, that ever eluded them, to live in\npeace, to be pack, family, and clan, without the prying eyes and intangible\ndemands of what Europe once was. \n            America - liberty, freedom, democracy: concepts so noisome and\nawful it was as though a door had shut in Hell, and from the upthrown infernal\nbrimstone came forth the whole of this nation.\n            All this was illusion. There\nwas no justice, no democracy, no liberty - only the brutal way of might making\nright, only the shedding of blood to acquit guilt, real or imagined...only\nstrength, and strength alone, to rule and to reign. \n            And if this was the philosophy\nof the Fascist then - so be it. Not all that long ago did relations of his\nreveal themselves as the Werwolf for\nHitler, whose first name, Adolf, had\netymological roots in people like Siegfried, wolf-of-the-land - great leader as he was, he still remained an\nAustrian mountebank, the spawn of peasants, an industrious murderer, little\nmore. Could he ever fathom the secrets that Himmler dare tried to stir up? Of\ncourse not - he was a puny human, they all were. And while Siegfried was born\nlong after the Werwolf fought and\ndied for that imbecile with the pencil moustache - the disgrace would be ever\nfresh.\n            Taking in a breath - the asphalt,\nexhaust from the passing cars admixed with the the airish October breeze - he\ntook the time to let his face twist in an unreserved sneer, his favorite\nexpression. \n            His was the race of both\nBeowulf and Sigurd, for whom he was named, though the humans who knew the old\nstories would be too dim to know, to understand that - they would deny it, they\nwould deny him, as a physical\nimpossibility. And it angered him - his whole existence was endless fury,\nbottomless anger.\n            This rage that Siegfried felt\nin the strength of his denial was the rage of something far greater than he\ncould comprehend and so he refused to, he refused to question his beliefs, he\nrefused to question the darkness that poured out of the one blind eye of Odin,\nstraight into his soul. All he saw was his own suffering, the heaviness of an\nimaginary crown across his brow, laurels of patriarchy laid daintily over his\nears to rule over others. \n            For the future - as so the\npast, as so the present - belonged not to the mongrel wasteland that America\nhad become, the lowing cattle with their mindless babble in their meaningless\nquotidian existence, but to him, what\nlittle was left of his tribe, the tiny minority scattered throughout the world\nthat, as integrated as they all may now be, would surely still rally to his\nflag and assert their true destiny as masters over mankind.\n            The past is something one\ncannot touch, nor smell, or even, truly see - only in the lonely solipsistic\ntheatre of the mind does it play, and there, like a daydream, it may as well be\na fantasy.\n            And so it was, in the present,\nthat Siegfried Stone was the very last hope of the lycanthropic people, the\nWerewolves - those who had been furry and fanged and were written of in crushed\nawe and wonder by the Nordic bards, crossed the sea \n            It would not be long at all,\nhis father had warned him in growing panic before he finally died, before the\nmindless hatred for his species would reappear in the form of the demand for a\ncleaner and more homogenous demographic hygiene...an overly verbose way of saying\nthey would be exterminated, the final spasm against them.\n            But - not unless he struck\nfirst.\n            He longed to do it, but the\nmoment was not right - he had longed to do it last night at the Hotel Roanoke, he\nlonged to take that fool Lightfoot who was blissfully unaware of the monstrous\nperversity that pulsed just beneath the surface of the town his ancestors had\nstolen and impale him on talons and teeth of justice...but then, even then, the  moment was not right then either. He must be\ncareful, he could not be showy - he would chose his victims one by one, he\nwould let the body count grow over a few days' time...and only when the hour was\ncorrect, would he lure those who would piece the puzzle together. Then could\nthe revolution begin.\n            Still - still how he longed to\ndo it now. \n            He adored the exquisite pain\nthat would come when he directed his hand to turn - the nails would start to\ngrow out, longer, sharper, but he would have to stop, he would bid the muscles\nin his hand to cease even as they seized, he would have to file them back to\nlooking normal again.\n            How badly he wanted them to\nstay the way they were becoming - how badly he wanted to go further, deadlier,\nand let one hand, then the other, accomplish their needed task...and kill.\n            His heart raced at the thought\n- the fantasy of bloodshed.\n            Yet who would be first? Who,\nthe first thrall to swing from his personal branch of Yggdrasill, choked on the\nhangman's rope of his claws?\n            He stopped - he had been\nwalking away from the friendly corners of the restaurants and shops, passing by\nan ugly parking lot, an uglier Greyhound terminal, neither of which had\nbenefitted from the gentrification that was slowly but surely polishing and\nbettering this town. On the other side of the street was a squat brick building\nthat was some sort of outreach center for junkies...\n            ...who often, he had heard\nhinted by those who'd lived here, like to sleep in the parking garage near the\nGreyhound station.\n            It was perfect - a perfect way\nto begin.\n            Siegfried had to do it. What\nwere they always saving in     Germany\nabout Destiny - Providence?\n            It was time.\n            He dashed across the street,\nducking into the parking garage, his nose wrinkling at the unseemly smells of\ngasoline, concrete, the aching odor that buildings like it seemed to give off\nafter so many years.\n            The parking garage was a dim\nconcrete cavern strewn with orange-yellow lights, the roar of distant engines a\nconstant ambient din like a far-off cave-monster warning away intruders.\n            Amidst the maze of cars and\ncolumns, one floor and then the next, no one seemed to notice him - he was just\nanother person looking for where he'd left his vehicle.\n            They would never guess he was\nabout to commit murder.\n            He found his victim sitting in\nthe space between a pickup truck and a minivan, eyes picking up a liquid light\nfrom being glazed with some kind of stupor.\n            Siegfried approached his prey,\nstalking it cautiously.             The man was lean and wiry - not much meat. He seemed to be in his late\nthirty's - he was dirty but not filthy, an unruly but short head of sandy,\nbrownish-blonde hair with a full, tawny beard and moustache that seemed to have\nbeen trimmed recently, flecked in places with streaks of grey. He was\nprematurely aged - he had a great scar across his face from his nose to his left cheek, adding to the\noverall affect of being rough and having been\nroughed by life itself. He wore a grey shirt that was so faded one had to\nsquint to read it: Green Bay Packers--1998--Super\nBowl Champs. It had holes in parts that revealed a hairy tummy, the hair the\nsame color as his beard - workaday jeans and ugly, unfashionable shoes\ncompleted the look of a neglected hobo.            But he was the refuse of human society, he had been dumped here from\nsomewhere and he would be doomed to a nothingness and oblivion...no one would\neven remember his name.\n            How ironic, then, that his\nfate would be so important: the first full step to the Werewolf's return at his\nrightful perch.\n            Now Siegfried came closer: \"Hello,\nfriend.\"\n            The man blinked in surprise\nbefore letting out a loud guffaw. \"Well hey there, stranger.\" The man\ntilted his head back and grinned - he seemed to be drunk, completely out of it,\nblissfully and luckily not in this world. \"Why ye'd wanna say hey ta me, I\nain't nuthin special.\"\n            \"Oh, I dunno about that...\"\nSiegfried's expression was still smug, but he could hide no longer the\nwickedness within it. \"How would you like to - be - special?\"\n            The bum jumped to his feet,\nswaying, as he did, uncoordinated - public intoxication at four in the\nafternoon, Siegfried would be doing the world a favor, dispatching this one\ninto the next life.\n\"Whatcha say, now?\"\n            \"Special,\" Siegfried repeated.\n            He grinned again, and\nSiegfried felt a twinge, however small, of humanity - he was all goofiness, all\nrakish enchantment, he did not seem to really know what was going on around\nhim.\n\"Well alright then, sir! I'll do anythin once, yanno - but I gotta ask ya...\"\n            Siegfried was losing himself -\nhe felt his adrenaline spike, his inner primal urges flooding him - he let\nclaws grew enough for the bones in his fingers to, at last, deform and\nlengthen, the inner wolf desperate to be free at last. \n            He flew forward to attack this\nfilthy hobo who would not be missed, in a parking garage between two cars where\nnobody would see or miss him.\n            But he was stopped.\n            He was jarred - terribly,\npainfully - back to reality.\n            He blinked several times\nbefore he felt it: the counter-force against him.\n            The man had caught his punch with\none hand, an unnatural, preternatural strength.\n            \"What the Hell--\"\nSiegfried hissed. \n            \"Now wait a minute - wait\njest a minute, here - I ain't rightly think this the way I's s'posed ta be special there, sir,\" he heard the\nman say, his charm clouded over with a knowingness that belied his appearance.\n\"Yew want me ta suck yer dick for some money, that be fine - but I ain't\nbout ready ta die right yet.\"\n            Siegfried was shaking,\nunyielding in this unexpected match of wills. \"Who - who are you?\"\n            \"Ya can call me\nLucky,\" said the man, his eyes unblinking, a dare, a demand. \"Lucky\nta live on the street. Lucky ta meet such a charmin\nman - like yerself.\"\n            Siegfried's sneer twisted his\nface - his eye twitched, his breaths came in deep and fuming - but he relented,\nhe jerked his hand back, throwing it into his coat, so that no one could see it\nwas struggling to become.\n            There were so many questions\nhe wanted to ask him, so many things he feverishly needed to know - how anyone\nwho was a non-Werewolf could be this strong, how he could have known to parry\nhis blow so effortlessly like that...\n            ...unless, this man, too... \n            \"That's not your\nname - is it - Lucky?\" He nearly\nspat the last word, the falsehood encased inside it.\n            \"It'll do fer now, won't it?\"\n            Siegfried's pulse pounded in his neck, his whole\nbody a writhing mass of barely-together public decorum. \"And why fucking\nshould it--?\"\n            \"Cuz I knew who yew is - smelt ya on the\nway in ere.\" \n            Siegfried's eyes narrowed - he was not to\nbested, even as, now, his whole being was awash in the terror of being\ndiscovered.        The punch had been one thing, but this was\nsomething else altogether.\n            \"You lie.\"\n            \"I tell the truth - yew real important,\nain't ya?\" He grinned again, his half-lidded eyes full of some inner\nknowledge he evidently found irresistible. \"Last of yer kin, I\nreckon--\"\n            \"Enough. You're a crazy - unwashed homeless\nperson - dumped out of a booby hatch\nand left to stink up the streets.\" His insults were his only offense,\nshould this ragdoll, stringbean man be telling the truth. He spun on his heel,\nstraightened himself. \"Go die in a gutter somewhe--\"\n            \"Stink,\nhuh?\" The man - Lucky - called after him. \"T'ain't I the one stank, boy - it's yew.\"\n            Siegfried shook his head, mortified he had let\nthis go on so long - but his mind was a blank what he could, or should, do\nnext.\n            \"Yew - stink\n- like one o'them big fellas down yonder.\" And then, his voice lowered\njust enough for Siegfried to hear: \"Ya smell like em old boys down where\nthe Natural Tunnel were - name o'Stone.\"\n            At the sound of his family name, Siegfried's\nbowels turned to ice. How could he know something like that? No - a better\nquestion - how could he have blocked his punch, and known that at the same time?\n            Over his shoulder, his face giving away nothing.\n            \"What\ndid you say?\"\n            Lucky's face, naturally friendly though it seemed\nto be, had grown serious - and a little cruel. \n            \"Yew heard me - Stone. Yer kin been round a long, long time - down yonder. Ain't I\nright?\"\n            Siegfried paced briskly back to pull Lucky by\nhis shirt collar so that they were inches apart, face to face:\n            \"Who the Hell are you. Really.\"\n            Lucky's eyes - blue, like Siegfried's, but\ndarker, like an old china plate - darted about, studying him, his face, the\ncontours of his expression.\n            \"Just like yew, Stone.\"\n            Siegfried stared at him. \"The Hell do\nyou--\"\n            \"Yer gonna take me ta where I live,\"\nLucky cut him off.\n            \"You're homeless,\" Siegfried said\nflatly, trying to recover.\n            \"Nuh uh. Live up yonder--\" He pointed with\nhis head, behind him, an unseen distance away. \"Sugar Loaf.\"\n            Siegfried balked. \"That's clear across\ntown! If you really did live on a mountain why the Hell are you all the way\ndown here?\"\n            The man - Lucky - seemed to sway again, the same\nkind of pseudo-drunkenness, but his eyebrows went up, defiant. \"Think I'll\nbe askin the questions from now on there, sir.\"\n            Moistening his lips, Siegfried gritted his\nteeth, feeling a predicament he had never imagined close in around him. \"And\n- if I don't?\"\n            \"Well - ye can either\ntake me there, or - me n'yew gonna have a little talk--\" He grinned - and\nas Siegfried watched, his eyes widening in soul-clenching terror at the same\ntime, his teeth sharpened and grew.\n\"--and everyone's gonna see. Yew\nwudn't want that, would ya Stone?\"\n            Siegfried said nothing back.\nThe time for talking had passed. \n            He gave a small, noncommittal\nshake of his head, the abrupt anxiety of being the hunter captured by the game\ntearing into him as he had planned to tear into Lucky.\n            But now he turned around, his\nface red, blushing with blood like that poor waitress from not so long ago. \n            He was deathly shamed, unable\nto even look at who, now, was his forced-upon travelling companion.\n            He heard himself mutter,\nnumbly: \"F-follow - follow me...\"\n            And then he heard, the same kind\nof numbness, the reply:           \"So\nglad y'asked.\" There was a pause, and then, like he was grinning again as\nhe spoke it, Lucky said: \"I really hope we can be friends, after I what\nwanna show ye...\"\n            Siegfried did not answer - the\npast weighed too mightily upon him as his present, his future, collapsed in\npieces, as the swaying, grinning hobo - fellow Werewolf, the cosmic irony too\nexcruciating to comprehend - followed him, polished and well-dressed in his\nblack coat, out of the parking garage, and back down the street."}