In The Shadows of the Moonlight

Diary-
She’s at it again, running around with thoughts of our wedding, while I lie on my deathbed. Well, maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement; I feel a bit sick today, that’s all, though I’m not letting Florence on to it. She’ll only worry. She’s already running away with herself, planning things for the wedding. She’ll bankrupt us at this rate. She’s thought of at least fifteen more things that we ‘simply have to have Teddy!’ but I haven’t the heart to tell her we can’t afford them. Or maybe I won’t tell her, diary; maybe I’ll just put in extra shifts. She’ll complain about the lack of time we have together, but it will make her happy, and that is worth it for me. I can’t believe that it’s almost been a year since we found each other. It is hard to imagine the days beforehand, how lonely they were. I-
Look at me, I sound like a lovesick puppy, and I suppose I am. I used to watch other couples and be almost sickened by their sugar-sweet mannerisms to one another. Yet I find with Florence the words just aren’t sweet enough, they don’t manage to capture what it is I want to say. But things are not all sugar and roses in truth. I am getting sick.
I am usually proud of my health, diary. I have always had a healthy diet. Yet, I’ve noticed over the last few weeks things have begun to slip.
I’ve gotten short of breath, and if anything, it seems to be gotten worse over the last few days. It’s as if I’ve become lazy or unfit, and everything I do leaves me gasping for breath. On top of this, I find myself going through bouts of vertigo, which is strange, for I have never before suffered from such symptoms.
Florence says I have been working too hard, that I should stop and take a rest now and then, but how can I? I need every spare moment I have to work overtime; how else am I to pay for her wedding otherwise?

Diary-
Things are getting steadily worse. Maybe worse is an exaggeration, I don’t know, but I know I am definitely not well. My dizzy spells have been getting stronger; I almost threw up after getting out of bed this morning. It felt like the earth spun beneath me and I was looking down as if from a great height, yet I was just sitting off the edge of my bed. On top of that, I have this constant dull pounding behind my eyes, like my head has swollen behind my skull and my brain is pushed for space. The light seems to make it worse, even behind sunglasses. Every beat of blood through my veins, every movement I make, seems to add darts of lightning to the mass of dull pain swirling around my head.
It is a good job I thought, once the ground had stopped moving, that Florence had not stayed over. She never would have let me go to work if she had seen me this morning, hunched up and gagging as I tried not to vomit. I probably just have a fever. My skin has that faint sweat sheen to it that you get when you turn hot and cold every few minutes, and my limbs are shaking like mad. I felt horrible, utterly horrible; I still do in fact, writing this now. I didn’t want to go to work, I just wanted to curl up and not exist. I had no appetite, and certainly no drive to do anything, which is odd for me, because I usually can’t settle unless my mind and hands are busy with something.
But another odd thing happened again today, diary. I noticed all my nails have grown brittle, some even snapped off, right at the edge of my skin, making my fingers sore. As if I needed any more pain today. It must be some side effect of whatever sickness I have.
My teeth too, are joining in on this list of things going wrong with me. They ache, something terrible if I’m honest, like there are too many teeth in my mouth and not enough room for them. The gums are sore and it feels like one good bite could shatter my teeth, leaving nothing more than a mouth of broken stumps or shards of tooth.
My hair has gone funny as well. It is thicker than normal, and continues to stay oily no matter how many times I wash it. I even resorted to using Florence’s shampoo, but it didn’t work. I think it’s longer too, like it’s grown an inch in one night. I must be going delirious, diary, this can’t be right. I even thought at one point that all the hair on my body had changed. The hairs seemed thicker somehow, coarse like a wild animal’s.
I styled my hair back, trying to hide its sudden change in texture under a sleeked back style. Florence does not like me wearing my hair back, but I would rather have her disapproval than her worry; she does not need to know I am ill, or rather how ill.

Diary-
They sent me home from work. I am still no better. If anything I am worse. The dull pounding behind my eyes now resembles a drill burrowing through my brain, sending shoots of lightning through my nerves at every opportunity.
My fever has gotten worse; my skin now has a faint grayish tinge, which made me look like a corpse as I took the bus ride home. People took one look at me and moved as far away as they could from me.
I feel awful. Everything I try and do seems pointless. I feel pathetic. My limbs shake beneath me like I am a feeble old man, and my eyes are red and sore. Any and every type of light sears through them, scotching them it seems.
They were avoiding me at work, I could tell. I saw them looking at me and darting away quickly when I caught them staring. Then the manager of all people suggested that I go home. Like I was turning up to work drunk or incontinent. Well, diary, you can understand how annoyed I was by this. Me; always first to start and last to finish; the one who was always the first to accept more overtime. Me, the hardest worker in that god-forsaken office, thrown aside like an old dog. I may be sick in body, diary, but I am sick to the heart after treatment like that. I’d like to see how they finish the next presentation without me doing the work, huh?
This illness is beginning to get to me. I don’t normally voice such feelings like this. I will go and sleep it off, I think. Florence will be around later; someone from work called her, thinking I was at death’s door, so no doubt she’ll make a fuss.
‘Teddy,’ she’ll shriek, ‘you’re working too hard. Teddy, you’ll burn out.’
It’s no good her nagging, I’m doing this for her. If she wasn’t so bloody high maintenance-
I am not right. This is not me; I will sleep this off.

-That bloody woman, waking me up when I am trying to sleep! Doesn’t she know how to knock?
I am still no better diary. My nap was interrupted by the whirlwind of lavender perfume and annoyance that is Florence. She brought flowers, for god’s sake. As if flowers are going to help anything.
‘But Teddy,’ she says in her high voice that cuts through my pounding headache, ‘Flowers always make things better. You’ll soon be right as rain, I know it.’
Really? Does she really? Funny, over the last year she’s never once mentioned her doctor’s degree to me. She must have just forgotten that little nugget of information.
She came in like a cold breeze, throwing everything up around her. She pulled up cushions, opened windows, checked my temperature, never mind that I was asleep as she came in, or that I was trying to rest in the dark, oh no, in comes Dr Florence with her flower medicine, like a sugar-sweet tornado.
I hate being ill. Its like your body has staged a mutiny against you. I want to get up and leave this stuffy flat, now filled with the cloying scent of flowers. They burn the back of my throat; doesn’t she know that? How can flowers help when they send me into agony?-
I have thrown them away. To hell with her disapproval. My throat burns, and I want them gone.
Things are no better with me after my interrupted nap diary. My back is swollen and throbs constantly; the only relief I can get is to stoop forwards, hunched over like an old cripple. Even my clothes don’t fit anymore because of the swollen mound, and the sweat from my fever makes my shirt stick unpleasantly to my skin. I have not looked in the mirror; I’m sure I look terrible. I feel like some gruesome monster from an old story. Even Florence withdrew from me when she saw me; so much for in sickness and in health right? It’s funny how the prettiest of women have the ugliest colours underneath, isn’t it?
She has opened the curtains again; does she not know how much it pains me? Every shaft of light sends lightning through my tortured brain, blasted woman.
I closed them after she left, grumbling under my breath. I noticed then just how ill I’ve become as I saw my reflection in the window against the evening sky. Even the simple task of getting up and walking about my small flat has left me breathless; the air feels too thick, I feel like I’m breathing in thick treacle. Hunched over, I went to the small bag that Florence left for me.
‘Now try to eat something, Teddy,’ she told me, waggling her finger at me like I was some naughty child while she was here. ‘You won’t get any better if you don’t, will you?’
Like it’s my fault I’m ill. I didn’t choose this I hope she knows that. Who would ever ask for this? To watch their body fall apart while their mind is trapped inside.
The bag Florence has brought me was pitiful, to say the least. There were tins of soup, a few packs of meat, and some throat sweets. How is that supposed to help? Maybe Dr Florence knows something I don’t.
Diary, just listen to me. I sound as old and bitter as the man my body thinks me to be. I shouldn’t take it out on her; she’s only trying her best. I feel bad now for being such an ogre to her. Looking back it was probably my extreme change in character that put her off me, not my illness, for I am very rarely out of temper. I’ll have to make it up to her when I am better.
I am still too tired to eat. I can feel my arms and legs tremble from low blood sugar, but I can also feel the sickness in my stomach too, and I know if I tried to eat anything I would just throw it back up again.
My eyes itch, diary. I think I will call it a night. I hope tomorrow will be better.

Diary-
Things are not looking good. I am afraid, more afraid than I’ve been for a while. But more than that, I am nervous; I do not think this is a normal illness.
I have stayed home again, I could not bear to tear myself from my flat and inflict myself upon the world. Truth is I don’t want a doctor to see me; I’m afraid they’ll put me away for some kind of medical testing.
It is the middle of the night as I write this. It has been a day I don’t wish to repeat. I don’t know what to do next.
I woke up late in the day after falling asleep in the living room, my eyes burning from the light even when they were closed. Throwing my arm over my face, I stumbled into my dark room, I can see better in the shadows anyway. But now the changes in my body frighten me more than the pain. My back is worse; a large deformed lump now sits between my shoulders; I could barely sleep on the sofa because of it despite my exhaustion. The slightest amount of pressure on my back and shoulders was agony. My dreams too, were plagued with bizarre visions.
I dreamt I was sailing through the night sky silently, watching the world below. Then I was somewhere high looking down, like I was standing on a cliff edge or something. There were other parts to it, I am sure, but I don’t remember them now.
I am afraid, diary; these weren’t the normal half-remembered hazy dreams I am accustomed to. These felt like memories, clear and vibrant, as real to me as my memories of Florence are. I don’t know what to make of it all.
Feeling my back gingerly, I staggered to the bathroom mirror, and saw a monster looking back at me. My back had swollen up to proportions that no human should ever be affected by. Like a sack of rocks, the muscles was raised and knotted. Bruises covered every inch of skin, ranging from dark red through to deepest purple and black. The skin wasn’t broken but was extremely sore. I almost yelped in pain as my fingers gently prodded my shoulders.
My eyes, too, are worse. They seem to be oozing some kind of clear liquid that has dried around my eyes, caking them shut. It hurt something terrible to prise them open, and when I did, I saw the whites of my eyes had turned the colour of sour cream, a sort of murky yellow. My irises had changed too. No longer were they the warm brown that I always liked; now there was no colour, they had become as black as my pupil. There was no difference between the two at all; just a solid disk of jet black in the centre of my sick little eye.
My nails have changed. I told you how they had become brittle and sore and broke off. To my horror this morning, I woke up feeling something sharp on the cushions. With my back bothering me so much, it wasn’t until I came out of the bathroom did I notice that my nails had fallen off during the night; the whole fingernail. They looked like dried up scales from some long dead fish, not the healthy pink fingernails that they should have been. I leant in close determined to see it properly. It had a scrap of flesh attached to it, hanging off at the end; my flesh. Reeling back, I stared at my fingers in horror. The ends of my fingers were raw and bloody, the exposed flesh scabbed over into small stumps as if it had happened weeks ago, rather than hours. Or, I thought slowly, fear trickling down my back, it was as if I had healed quicker than normal.
As if all this wasn’t enough, diary, I discovered clumps of hair amongst the cushions; large chunks, lying around like rancid straw. So preoccupied with my back, and with my eyes so sore, I didn’t look at my face in the mirror. Running back, I stared in horror, seeing that I looked as if I had been attacked by a mad barber; large bald patches shone on the crown of my head, only to be broken by stray tuffs of coarse black hair.
I don’t know about any illness that can strike a man like this diary, and certainly not one that strikes so quickly.
There is another thing that has happened to me diary, but I am almost too ashamed to admit it. I have finally begun to eat again; though I am sickened as to what this illness has driven me to.
Some time after my morning discoveries, as I sat and brooded in the dark, an overwhelming surge of hunger struck me. My stomach let loose a loud roar, and for a split second I was afraid, wondering where the sound came from.
I found myself, without quite knowing how, walking into the kitchen, hunting for food as if in a daze. My bloodied fingers went through everything; every drawer, every cupboard, looking constantly for something to eat. Having been ill for so many days now, and having a habit of eating over at Florence’s, I didn’t have much food at my place; only the bag that Florence left me.
Instantly, I ripped the bag apart, stunned by my ravenous behaviour, but at the time I didn’t care. Spotting the pack of meat, I tore it from the thin plastic covering it, and ate it whole, raw. I felt it slip down my throat, and I heard the roar in my stomach stop. The worst thing, though, is that I liked it. I actually liked it; the feel of the meat, the slight tang as I tasted the blood, the chill as it hit the back of my throat. I am appalled with myself, and as soon as I ate it, I shuddered, wanting to throw up. It was disgusting, unnatural, but it was so good. I wanted more. Eyeing up the tins of soup, I couldn’t help myself.
Without thinking of it, I stabbed the tin with a finger, punching a clean hole through the thin metal, despite the previous soreness after my fingernails dropped off. As the cold soup spilt over my fingers, I raised the tin to my mouth, like a parched man in the desert, and drained the tin dry. Thick and congealed, I felt the contents slip down my throat, making me shiver from the inside out at the cold slimy feeling. I couldn’t help myself, it felt as good as the raw meat. Within seconds of the first tin, the second followed the same way.
Since then, diary, I have sat in my room, alone and afraid. I don’t know what is becoming of me. I don’t know if there is something wrong with me.
You see, and I have never told anyone else this, I was adopted at birth; the man I thought was my father told me as he lay dying in hospital. You can imagine my shock at finding out such a thing, but more so, when after researching my past, I discovered that no one knew of my parentage. I had been abandoned at birth, left on a doorstep of the hostel that took me in. I came from nowhere, it seems. I only tell you it now, diary, because my dark thoughts have turned to my past. What if there is some twisted illness that plagues my genetic family? I have no idea who or what my parents were, or where they came from. I don’t know if they all suffered from this illness or not. Was that the reason I was abandoned? Did they fear I would get sick too? I have too many questions, and not enough answers diary.
The only thing that seems to bring me comfort is the moon.
The moon I could watch all night, listen to its silent voice for hours on end. It’s like a long lost lover, who knows everything about me, calling me from across the sky.
It calms me, and for that I am grateful, for I have been anything but calm over these last few days. The moon, at least, does not shun me, or shy away from my affliction.

Diary-
The moon has gone. Nothing is calm anymore.
I must have fallen asleep by the window. Florence woke me up. I scared the life out of her, I think.
She came in with her own key, swam into the room like a plastic bag on a breeze, and started tidying up. She went to the window where I sat, not seeing me in the gloom, and threw back the curtains.
She screamed. So did I.
The bright sunlight, pure and undiluted hit my face, scorching through my eyelids. Such agony I have never felt, diary. I screamed, raising my bloodied hands to my face and ran half blind, to a dark corner of the room.
Florence, not realising I was beside her, first screamed in shock, then in blind fear. I must have looked a deformed monster to her, because her scream was better than any actress in a horror movie I’ve ever seen. Her whole face when white in an instant, and her feet froze before jerking suddenly as she ran for the front door. She hasn’t come back since.
I don’t care. I don’t miss her, and I certainly don’t miss the noise she made.
After she was gone though, I knew I had to act. The neighbours would have heard the screams, so, despite the brightness, I hobbled across the flat, shutting the front door. With my face and eyes hidden under a rag, I staggered back to the windows, wrenching them shut again. My back is worse than ever; it has transgressed from a swollen muscle, becoming something else entirely.
Starting behind my neck, the deformed mass has made the skin on my back bubble up, almost seven, eight inches above my spine, I can’t tell how much for sure as it is difficult for me to move. But it runs down the length of my spine from the base of my neck between my shoulders, to the small of my back above my hips. The height of the swelling forces me to hunch and stoop forwards, and I an unable to stand up straight.
My feet too have changed. As if to combat my new irregular weight, they have become longer and thinner, arching up like the foot of a werewolf man I once saw on a movie poster. Instead of toes, I have claws, and the bones in my foot stand out in relief, underneath strong muscle and tendons. I find that I can no longer walk like a man, instead walking on the balls of my feet, quick and light, as if ready to jump or pounce in an instant. Like my fingernails, my toenails have fallen off and a new nail has grown now instead, both on my hands and feet, but it is not a normal nail. The nails are dark grey, almost black; they look like polished slate. They are strong, very strong, and they grow to a natural point like the talons of an eagle. I almost cut myself when Florence startled me; I am not used to having my hands end in razor sharp points. They are longer, too. Instead of starting at the end of my fingers, they start on the back of my fingers, just after the middle joint, and grow down my finger, curling over the end slightly. I look like an animal with claws.
My skin has changed colour after the fever broke. I suppose it was only to be expected, right? Everything else has changed, so why not my skin too? The fever broke sometime yesterday, after Florence left, and the colour has drained from my skin, leaving me grey and lifeless. I think my skin has shrunk too; my hands feel like they’re in gloves two sizes too small. It’s even worse around my back, like the slightest movement will tear me in half. I look like a corpse. A hideous, deformed corpse. If I sit still long enough, I could almost convince myself that I was dead, apart from the raging pulse beating inside my head; I don’t feel a pulse under my skin anymore. Maybe its too thick.
These changes, I don’t think they are symptoms diary. I don’t think they are going to leave. I think I have changed for good, though what good there is in this I have no idea.
My skin itches so much, as I sit and write. Its like a thousand ants are running over every part of me, like each of their legs is a sharpened needle, a thousand stabs and jabs tormenting me with each second. Argh-

Diary- I don’t know what to write. I have changed. I am more than I ever thought- these changes, this illness that struck me; it was not a curse, but a blessing. I am no longer just Teddy, the office slave; I am something so much more.
I couldn’t help but scratch. As I was writing, it feels like a lifetime ago now- I couldn’t help it. I had to scratch, all around my back it burned like fire, screaming at me until I gave in; one moment of weakness, I couldn’t help it.
I shiver at the thought of what happened, but seeing myself now, it was worth it.
With my razor sharp nails, I forgot just how fragile my old skin was under them. In my haste to end the burning torture that burnt over me, I went wild and tore at the back of my shoulders, determined to sate the plaguing itch.
To my horror, my nails cut deep through my skin, cleaving long gouges in the thick swollen flesh.
As my nails cut, I screamed, but it seemed that this was what my skin had been waiting for. I felt the skin across my back spilt at my touch, ripping apart like torn cotton as it followed my spine downwards.
Horrified, I staggered around my room, trying to put my skin back together again, to hold it in place as it fell off around me, but it was no use. Starting at my back, my skin split across my body, the tears running across me like lightning, splitting my apart like a wet paper bag. I raised my hands to my face, only to see the loose skin fall away like dead grey leaves of flesh, hanging lifelessly in my elongated clawed hands.
I nearly went mad. Horrified as I had been over the last few days, everything became too much, and I felt myself slip and balance on the brink of insanity.
But then my back straightened, and I realised what had made me stoop. I have wings, diary; wings of such a glorious nature.
As I stood for that first time, a tremendous calm washed over me. Like a balm it soothed me as nothing else has in my life. Everything felt right. Rolling my shoulders, I turned and saw my wings behind me unfold. Strong and proud they suppressed that of any bird a mortal has ever seen. These wings could rival an angel’s. Tall, they stretched up to the ceiling and spread out either side of me, longer than my body was tall. They are more natural to me than the movement of my arms; they are a part of me.
They join between the top of my shoulder blades at the base of my neck, reaching down to the small of my back. Like a proud eagle, I stood in my flat, marveling at the sense of power and grace that swam through my limbs. In the window’s reflection I saw myself, diary, for the first time in my life.
My skin, my true skin, underneath that false layer of flesh, is a light grey ash colour, with the nails on my hands and feet a darker, polished grey. My eyes are all black, and are sharper than any vision I could have ever imagined. Even my muscles have been transformed; each limb is strong and proud.
I have pulled back the curtains now, diary, and I am about to bid you farewell. I have a bigger part to play now. I leave you with these last words from Teddy, a man who wasn’t much.
The full moon shines above me, the mother of the night. I can hear her call, hear my blood cry for her silver touch. My heart races; I am alive. My wings twitch, impatient to join the night. This is where I belong; the ruler and master of the sky. I can see the world below me, bathed in the shadows of the moonlight. Such a wondrous sight I have never seen before. I’ve jumped up from my balcony, onto the roof of this small block of flats with ease, it must have been at least two stories high, but it was effortless. Everything is effortless now; the power that runs through my veins is like liquid fire. The world is waiting for me, the moon’s bright light calls to me.
Forgive me diary, this is where we part.

The diary fell unnoticed to the floor. A shadow passes over it, a gust ruffling through the pages.
A large figure, dark against the night sky, swoops down off the roof of the building, soaring on the wind. It circles once around the roof gracefully, then takes a steep dive, racing through the moon washed city. As it passes the moon, its silhouette is seen.
Taller than a man, the figure sails through the sky, its large wings stretched out either side of it. As it passes the moon, it disappears against the shadows of the night, never seen or heard of again.