Lycanthrope
A flag of triumph loomed in the horizon, brandished by victorious sunrays, proud of asserting their melting power. They had finally dealt the coup de grace to an unrelenting foe: the glacial age. From a cracked ice block, desperately resisting the torrid sun, the last lycanthrope in the area waited in patience for his icy prison cell to thaw. After a hundred years of imprisonment, he was still alive, staring vacuously at the white mantle of ice extending across from him. His formidable metabolism kept him alive, even in those dire circumstances. Natural selection had been tough on his species. His entire horde perished, plagued with an unknown disease.
He was the last one in the vicinity, but not for a long time, he thought. Soon he would break free, and soon he would find another hunting horde to team with. Month after month, he began to feel life stirring inside him. His coagulate blood turned, little by little, into a molten flood and ravaged all his vessels, issuing, in the wake, mind-signals to rap out the command of breaking loose. The endeavor proved successful. At last, lycanthrope was free, and ravenous.
Against the buffeting blizzard, his stalking senses stood firm. They pushed him almost instantly towards a wandering prey: Homo Neanderthal. He chased him in the past, and he was amply satisfied of the taste of this kill. Neanderthal’s limited intellect was unmistakably reflected in the primitive weapons he used: stones, logs, ropes, etc. What a joke! lycanthrope thought. Suddenly, he bared his fangs and pricked up his ears at the barely audible thread, approaching more and more. Because of the assaulting snowflakes, carried by the wind, his eyes proved grossly incompetent. All his chances to fill up his empty stomach relied on his olfactory acute sense.
Famished and reckless, he followed the scent brought by the blizzard without shaping a plan. He could no more fight off the hard pangs of hunger. The scent brought a satisfying piece of news: there were two Neanderthals to kill. He thrust ahead, armed with his remaining energy. And once at the appropriate distance, he charged at his prey. He pushed a deafening roar to intimidate them. His jaw wide open lunged at the neck of the nearest. The surprise attack could almost be a surprise if the second Neanderthal stampeded in terror. However, the second reacted immediately and ran lycanthrope through with a spear.
Surprised, lycanthrope fought vainly to stop the spurting blood. He released at last the bleeding neck he took hold of, when he felt another puncture on his back, made by a stone knife. How could that be? he wondered. He fell to the snowy ground, thinking his worthless life would be spared, but he was sadly mistaken. The prey turned into a relentless predator, using its spear again and again to perforate his body. Lycanthrope soon died, bleeding from every orifice.
What he took for Neanderthal was actually someone else. Lycanthrope ran across the worst predator on the planet. He met Homo Sapiens: a new species coming from the South–from a continent called Africa to Europe–a species that hunted down Neanderthals to extinction; a species that wore Neanderthal’s animal hide clothes as a prize of war; a species that would later exterminate lycanthrope and make its existence a part of its folklore rather than a part of its actual history.
