Muse of March Contest, "Lycanthrope".

Yes! But then when does one decide to? The Castle wall's were bereft of Warmth and the nearby bushes seemed to surround and tower over it. You have to know I was bound both physically and metaphysically.

The community had found me unfit for communal living and had me banished to a location miles from civilisation and all that I knew to be home.
My curse was contagious and no one was going to have me contaminate the community, Vermin that I was.

The bite of a canine had made me the object of derision. But While I roamed the antediluvian, bedraggled maze of a castle, listening to Forest animals howl and giant, towering, human looking trees sway in the wind, thoughts about the time we spent together kept my sanity.

I would stare at the reflection of the Moon through the cracks in the dark, damp walls while I thought of her milky skin and how she regularly emboldened me.

She, Lenore had a Part to play in every little detail that made up the tragic tale that was My life. Her's Was a man who had deemed ostracism a punishment suitable for an already dying man.

You were all there when he said "He"ll go over with madness in a forthnight, His mouth frothing and his flesh marred by the marks of his Nails, Surely there's no better way for an unlucky fellow like him to end".

I was bound, gagged and bundled. Positioned Farther away from the men who carried out my sentence like the dog I was and transported me to the "Castle".
I felt certain that the community head had bidded his time. In my head I could hear my friends, family saying "In a fortnight maybe, if he doesn't die of hunger first, he'll die of madness, no one gets the bite and survives a night longer".

I hadn't wanted to survive. Perhaps if i had died, it would have prevented the tragic occurrence.

Lenore fed me during those weeks.
Kept me alive with the sureness in her bright Eyes. I hadn't expected her to Come the first few nights after my banishment. I had thought that what we had shared would end with the hand I was dealt with. Would end with the Curse..

She had arrived wearing a cloak with several food supplies hidden in her spacious garb. When i heard the footsteps, I quickly assumed that it was the beginning of the end and surrendered myself to the possibility of death.

Delirious as I was, I recognized the presence of my lover albeit her cloak or my ill state of mind.
Perhaps it was the way she walked, perchance it was the food that came along with her and the fact that my senses recognized the possibility of salvation.
Or was it that my senses had started to develop beyond what was considered normal....

Lenore and I made counting out loud while we consummated our love our favorite thing to do. I was a parasite to her special brand of hope those first weeks.
At first, we had barely made contact during that first week you see, It was quite hard to feel comfortable in human skin after the incident at the Community Court.

She was there too. And You? You were not absent at the event that marked the beginning of the end. And While they Chanted, "Dog! Dog! Enemy of ours and a denizen of the cesspits.
What did you do?

I didn't know how she managed to walk the distance every other day. While we had secretly courted when I had been an unhexed member of the community, it had been our little joke, speaking about how she was frequently stifled by the demagogue that was her Father.

After I was bitten however, I was starved for absolution. Our jokes had seemed a prototype for surrealism. It was what it was, we both agreed. Nothing could be done about it.

The wicked thing was, I had begun to notice certain changes. The tweeting birds atop forest trees seemed to be just across my ears, the walls of the castle seemed a little brighter at night and I had began to experience hot flashes and regular doses of bone shaking Fever.

I informed Lenore of the symptoms the first night she had found me drenched in sweat, shivering and paradoxically, desperate for warmth.
She had warmed several other parts of me, Eager to rid me of my sickness.
And That had signalled the end of it all.

Still that was not before I began to howl along with forest animals. It was then I drew my conclusion. My body was enduring it's transformation into some otherworldly being, Some kind of accursed creature doomed to roam the earth. The hair on my skin seemed to have tripled in growth, and the Curse seemed also to come with a special need for onanism.

I avoided Lenore when she arrived at the Castle, failing to trust my new self around her. Much like a voyeur, I had stalked around the maze, hiding behind walls as her light steps graced the castle and she softly called my name.

That night, she had left a note I would not read. If she came back i thought, with the note unread, she would know that I now despised her almost as much as i despised this thing I was becoming.
She was certainly mad I thought! Who kept indulging in things that would lead to their death?

And so I hatched a scheme, one that would lead to my death. I had nothing to fear, I had thought, Oh so Wrongly!

It had been more than a fortnight since I had seen Lenore in the castle walls. Her note was where she had left it, still unread. Hopefully, she had now become permanently disinterested.

That night, I came out of the castle walls amidst the Multi-limbed trees and the faint but promising reflection of the moon. I could barely spot the Castle from my vantage point, the trees and nearby bushes seemed to tower over it.

Still, after awhile, as the sky began to increase in brightness, my skin began to feel tighter and It certainly Began to feel as if my tongue had had it's last taste of water months ago.
That was untrue of course, but the symptoms had begun to render me delirious.

I climbed agilely, into the castle walls, ready to set my plan in motion. Terribly Certain that I would be unable to if the curse took over, stole away the remains of my sanity and the essence of my humanity.

Reaching for the sharpened stones, I bled both my wrists.
I have to Confess that it was the most I had felt since my last time with Lenore.
I could feel my mind reclaiming its peace as my blood began to stain the floors. Soon, my body began to shiver, almost as if fighting some inner war.

After a while however, the shivering stopped and my eyelids yielding to the blood loss, began to droop.

Still somehow i began to hear fast approaching footsteps directed towards the Castle. It was not death approaching I thought, the voice was calling my name, nearly yelling it in fact.

The thought that Lenore beckoned barely registered in my failing mind. Until I heard her stumble and scream.

A loud shrilling sound it was, or perhaps it wasn't and it was the augmented state that my senses had found themselves in, that made everything sound much, clearer, louder, nearer.

But it was apparently all the motivation I'd needed. I don't remember scrambling and then pausing to lift myself off the floor, ultimately exposing my entire form to the now fully formed moon.

All that mattered in my mind was Lenore, Lenore, Lenore. It was my mind's permanent song as I scaled the Wall and landed on the forest floor with my retracted nail scratching the weed covered soil.

I was in quite a lot of pain. That is all I remember. My body felt like it was ingesting itself from the inside out.

I ran like the mad man I was, tumbling and landing on my four limbs only to begin to run again.

Lenore, Lenore. I kept whispering.

And when I approached her, I knew something was wrong. It wasn't the fact the she was stuck in what looked like a freshly set Animal trap. It wasn't my shaggly, hairy unkempt form, although I suppose that too was a telling.

Lenore would not meet my eyes and It seemed like the perfect excuse for the thing in me to capitalise on. It made me angry. So agitated and so much lacking in control that I began to howl. I did not notice when Lenore had began to attempt to free her leg in a frenzy.

Resolute that she'd rather lose a limb than face whatever her lover had now become.

A zing of electricity went through my spinal cord and I began to transform. My fingers and toe Nails stretched beyond their places on my phalanges. A howl tore through me has I felt my mouth widen and teeth gnash in fury.

My first glance at Lenore piqued my sharp senses almost immediately. There was so much blood everywhere. It smelt like absolution. I could smell Lenore's sweat from her exertion. Her lips were trembling and she kept whispering my name.

But I was beyond reformation. I started with her neck, tearing her veins out and wetting my face with her warm blood, then I dragged her forcefully out of her almost free encapsulation.

A little more time maybe and she would have been free from the trap but lacking a foot.

The creature in me tore at her clothes and slashed at her warm belly, picking out at her organs as I began to satiate my needs.
I drank and drank my fill, certain I would never be thirsty again.

When I woke. I was briefly amnesic. Only, that was until I noticed my "clothes" and what I had brought in to my lair, the castle.
My clothes were barely there and had several rips across them.
It took me a while to process my situation until I spotted Lenore's letter and her shredded clothes right beside it.

I tore at my clothes and yelled my lungs dry. I scratched at myself and used the sharpened stones on my wrists and other Sensitive parts of my body. It didn't take me long to notice that, sooner had I began to bleed before the spots began to heal up.

The marks were drying up and soon enough, there were barely marks to show that I had used the stones on my flesh.

After crying for what felt like a lifetime, I moved closer to where I had buried Lenore's letter. Dug through the soft soil and brought the letter out with my bloodied hands.
I began to scan through.
Lenore had been with child.

I had killed my son or daughter with my own hands.

She had suspected i would become that too, detailing her studies about a plant that might cure my curse. Aconitum, she had written.
"Popularly called wolfsbane".

My tears continued to stain the ink on paper.
They were coming for me, she had felt certain that was truth. The community was starting to suspect foul play and had made terrible plans that would end in my death.

Lenore had wanted us to leave the castle before the occurrence of what she had referred to as "my first moon".

Agitated, disappointed and angered at myself, I began to shred the paper to bits. My mind kept going back to the night before, hearing her scream as I lunged at her throat. My hand's digging into her warm belly and the terrible sins I had committed.

Only then did i remember it.

Scaling over the castle walls, I ran to the spot she had stumbled the night before, careful to avoid any more hidden traps that might have been planted.

In her note Lenore had expressed uncertainty on whether or not the wolfsbane would cure my Curse.
" Seeing that it was poisonous, her words had instructed, caution must be the watchword has a drop more than needed may cause death and not rid the afflicted of the curse".

Kneeling right beside the pit with my Shredded clothes matching the dirt on the floor, as well as the dried spots and clots of blood that imitated a frighteningly realistic gory work of art, there it was, wrapped around a cloth, metres away from the pit where she had fallen.
It must have tumbled out of her cloth as soon as she had fallen.

I didn't give it a thought as i unwrapped Lenore's gift to me. Purple and so beautiful it was. As soon as I had touched it, my body began to weaken with my will dissolved.

I lay down weakly, ears to the ground with the wolfsbane clutched between my palm as i listened to the horse riders approaching the castle, their steady beating on the forest soil synchronous with the thud, thud my heartbeat produced.
I was going to eat it all I thought, eyeing the purple flower's of the wolfsbane. I would poison myself before my kinsmen discovered what I had done.

My lips spoke a prayer, my heart out to Lenore. My hands shook has the soft flowers kissed my lips. Mouth frothing and nail scratching, My body began to fight me.

Death continued to advance, it's beating drums announcing it's presence through the sound of the galloping horses.

I thought I would let go, see Lenore.

Death was fast approaching i knew, still, when does one decide to?

Image was provided by @mdbrantingham
https://steemit.com/contest/@mdbrantingham/contest-the-muse-of-march