Archive 111 Werewolves

only about encounters with the vicious, cryptid dog man. Here is a legend about how a dog man probably comes into being as a result of the apathy of the very society we live in and certain dark forces we know almost nothing about. I grew up in a part of Mumbai, India that has always identified themselves as nastis, meaning non believers, non believers in everything from the great gods to the damned devils. But something happened in this

quaint town that crushed this belief to blunt yards. My town is located on the outskirts of the National Park, so close to the woods that it gets preposterously chilly, especially at night. Outsiders find it eerie, but to us it just means that ice cream lasts longer. I was employed for the longest time but managed to get a job as a postman thanks to my childhood friend Tahas, who works as an accountant at the local post office. Postmen get designated zones in which they have to deliver.

Lucky for me, I got to sign. The area where Tahas and I have lived all our lives is on the outskirts of the National Park. Unlike in foreign trees, Indian postmen do not get vehicles for delivery and have to deliver mostly on foot. I didn't mind that. I thought it would help me shed the extra pounds that I had put on while I was unemployed. But delivering posts turned out to be a thankless job. To pull my spirits up, I would plug in my earphones and try to bob my head to the sickest beats on

the way to the houses. It seldom helped. Now, I would often cross our town's colorful marketplace, where I was always greeted by this cute little black and white Streek dog I called her Patchy. She would jump in glee and put her four limbs on my hips because she knew I carried in my shirt pocket the tastiest roasted chickpeas a form of healthy energy replenishment. In case I got really tired, which was often, but I would still give her a handful of chickpeas as it was extra

extraordinarily amusing to see her relish the snack. She'd nibblely licked my hand clean in a matter of seconds, but made sure that her teeth never hurt me. Patchy was undoubtedly the highlight of my day, the smile in many miles of misery. One morning, I got an earfull at the post office for having a delivery backlog, and I was given an ultimatum by my superior to finish off all of the deliveries by the end of the day

or else he would fire me. I was not ready to face the demons of unemployment again, so I was hauling ass across town to deliver the backlogged post and new post. I was rushing past the marketplace when I heard a bark from across the street. Oh no, not today, sweetie, I thought, no time for doggy loving when your ass is on the line. But the black and white qutie barked again and gave the cutest smile. It was enough to make a heart of stone melt, and mine is

merely made of tender. I reached in my pocket for her favorite roasted chickpeas, and her ears perked up, and I know she was salivating in anticipation. Patchy darted across the street, and in a flash, a sedan just steam rolled over her out of nowhere, the horrid yelp. It is an imprinted scar in my memory, like a third degree burned passers by. I tried to stop the car, but the reckless ass sped away. I didn't care for that. All I cared for was the highlight of my day,

and she was just crushed under its wheels. I ran to her and sat down on the filthy road where she laid, and she looked surprisingly fine but motionless. So I lifted her head in my palm and it felt wet, but it wasn't blood. It was her brains. One side of her skull was missing and her brain was spilling out and in shock. I sat there with the dog in my arms for the longest time. My buzzing phone jolted me out of the days. It was my supervisor.

I hope you're done with most of your deliveries. Report back to me at six pm on the dot, hopefully with your post bag empty. The fact was I had barely started for the day. I laid Patchy back down and wiped her brains off my fingers with my handkerchief, and I looked around for help. I was lucky a nearby shop owner was already on call with the authorities. He gave me a nod, and I'm not proud of it, but I left the beloved street dog and I rushed

to complete my deliveries. I had lost one worthy thing in my life, and it made no sense losing another. I ran, and I ran like the wind, even though my appalling fitness allowed me only to move like a slow breeze across the marketplace many times. But Patchie still lay there in the middle of the street. This is what often happens in my country. The authorities don't give

a shit about us, much less a dead dog. And then the late evening heat scorched her dead body to the point where it began to emit the odor of decomposition. I covered my nose with my handkerchief until I realized I was inhaling Patchi's brain off of it, and I shoved it back into my pocket. I couldn't help but just go on with making my deliveries. The deadline of six pm flew by as if in seconds. I made deliveries into the dead of the night, and I was

cursed by sleepy homeowners. And still I was unable to finish all the deliveries. It was impossible with the backlog. My crazy supervisor called me to the post office at that hour, only to fire me and take away my ID card in the remaining post letters. I phoned my friend the post office account at Tahas, but even his pleas to the supervisor didn't help. I was having the worst day of my life. I was dejected and defeated, and I walked home alone. The chill, the fog from

the National Park crept in once more. Crossing the marketplace, I dreaded seeing the dead dog again, but she wasn't there. Thank god, the authorities had picked her up for a decent burial, I thought. I walked up the druid, desolate street and shop shutters down. Not a sound but that of the wishing wind. I saw a shadow moving down the street. It went past the light of the street lamp and appeared beneath another. This time it was not a shadow, but because it was clearly lit, my eyes widened.

It was a dog, and I couldn't believe it. It was black and white. It was Patchy, no doubt about it. But she looked strange, a little off. I felt a lump in my chest and a ball of fear or happiness. I didn't know. How could she be alive? I saw her die this morning. I saw her brains in the road, and I smelled her decomposing body. How could she be alive? I couldn't wrap my head around this. And then she started limping toward the curb. There was a decrepit woman

sitting there. She had white hair and a multicolored surrey. But I couldn't see her face, not that there wasn't enough light. There was. She was sitting under the street light, but her face was complete darkness, as if she were faceless. She stretched her hand out to Patchy and started applying a yellow paste on the dog's head where the skull had broken off. Ah, it's t merick, I thought. Tameric is a local aniseptic found widely in Indian kitchens. She

was applying it to heal the street dog. Maybe I was misreading the situation. The woman was here to help hell. She practically resurrected my beloved Patche using ancient Indian medicines. Still applying the tameric, the woman looked at me. The chill ran through my entire body. My muscles, which were aching after the horrid day, throbbed in much greater pain, and then suddenly relaxed. Feeling strange but relieved. I smiled at her, and she picked up something from beside her.

It was pieces of brain, and she shoved it inside the dog's head. Her entire fist was inside. The dog let out a deafening howl, brandishing her teeth, which appeared much larger than before. And then it struck me why Patchy looked so strange. She had somehow become larger in a matter of hours, but still she was supposedly dead. This is not my Patchy, and this is not a woman, I thought. I gasped out loud at the realization, as

my gut sank a thousand feet. But now Patchi turned toward me and growled as if I was the one who shoved a hand on her skull. I backed up, and Patchy jumped up onto her hind legs, just as the old decrepit woman stood up I waited for the dog's fore legs to come back down, but they didn't. What the hell? The darkness in the woman's face became bigger, as big as a wrecking ball. It seemed as if she had opened her mouth wide, and a low rumble filled the air, and my chest vibrated like a tuning

fork and my stomach I vomited. My ears hurt like hell, and blood ran out of them. The damn dog started sprinting menacingly on his hind legs toward me. The black and white face with ghoulish, shining black eyes and a yellow red head, scowled and drooled. I ran back down the road as fast as I could, not looking back even once, and I dashed into the post office and locked myself in the strange booth. Outside the door, there was a loud bang, and then howls, and then scratching claws.

Why does Patchie want to kill me? I was good to her, I fed her. Now she can't be Patchy. The thoughts plagued my mind all night. I don't remember whether the scratching stopped first or exhaustion consumed me. I was woken to Knox and my supervisor's bossy shouts early the next morning, who locked this room? And what are these scratches? I have important files in here. Relieved, I opened the door for the supervisor and standing behind him was ta Haas. They were shocked to see me and

my clothes were stained. I had shit in my pants due to the fright during the night's ordeal. I hadn't realized it at the time. Tahas took the day off and he took me home and he bathed me and sat with me patiently, even though I didn't say a word to him. He prepared some food and we ate and then he put me to sleep. He is a true friend. Indeed, that evening I said to him, I want to tell you, but I don't understand it myself. There is no need. He said, Let's go out for

drinks to your favorite place. Well that brought a smile to my face and a time that seemed the darkest. Our favorite, extravagantly secret, magical place for locals to drink was the National Park. The park stays shut at night, and so we entered unnoticed from a secluded end of town. We had broken a hole at the bottom of the National Park's boundary wall. And that night, Taos and I purchased our whiskey from the local liquor shop and we entered the park woods. It was serene and quiet and calm,

like this town is always supposed to be. It took my mind off the horrific memories of last night, the dog and the shadow woman, the howls and the yelps. Oh God, I closed my eyes while walking, and a tear fell down my cheek. It was a good thing. It was pitch dark in the woods, so Tahis couldnot see them. What sort of man cries in front of another man? I thought, A manly one, I realized later.

Soon we were drinking and smoking heavily, reminiscing about how we used to score on girls and all the mischief we would gravitate to, and we laughed and laughed. A haunting image came screaming back to me, that of the decrepit woman shoving her hand inside Patchie's head, and I stopped laughing. Though Tejas could not see my face, he could sense something was wrong. Do you hear that too? He asked me. Hear what? The faint sound of hoofs

thumped the ground. The thumping increased as if there were hundreds of animals approaching and we could not decipher what they were. The woods were laden with ferocious leopards infamous for claiming many innocent lives. Run whispered Tajos, and we took off at a sprint, blind and in the opposite direction, leaving all our booze behind. I crashed into the thick trees and I couldn't see a thing, but I could

feel fear like water up the nose. Tahis helped me up and we darted through the thicket, bruising ourselves with whips from the bushes. But then we heard approaching hoofs from this direction as well, then the left, and we ran towards the right, and something surrounded us. The thumping was so loud that Tahas and I huddled together and we sat down, waiting for an inevitable stampede. The hoofs sped toward us, but stopped merely a centimeter short, and wind gushed past as dust filled the air to a

stifling point, and then everything went silent. We couldn't see a thing. With trembling hands, I lit the flashlight on my mobile phone, expecting to see a leopard or a panther or a wild boar, But no, what we saw were deer, hundreds and hundreds of deer like mannequins, standing paralyzed in fear. What were they petrified of? Was it us? Well, that was unlikely. I couldn't understand, but I hope that they weren't scared of the same thing I ran from

the night before. I reached for Ta Hoos's hand. It was frigid, much colder than mine, and we slowly stood up and started squeezing past the deer, making sure not to touch and alarm them, and we heard footsteps. They were bipedal something heavy beneath which twigs and branches snapped like crackers. Whoever or whatever this was, stealth was not

its tactic. Fear was its tactic. I tugged at Tehos's shirt, indicating him to be still, and then a loud thud, as if something jumped into the crowd of deer and between us. Chaos ensued as the deer ran helter skelter, slashes and growls and yelps and pounding hooks filled the night. Warm liquid sprayed over us from all directions, and I still remember the metallic taste of blood in my mouth.

Something was slaughtering the deer ruthlessly, and I shined my flashlight in the direction of the pandemonium, and beyond the carnage of the bleeding dead and scurrying injured, we saw it me for the second time in Tahas for the first, and standing on its hind legs was the dog Patchy. The dog had become grotesque and taller, nine maybe ten feet tall, still with the yellowish shade on its head and a throbbing brain poking out with vicious claws and incisors,

and its muzzle was covered in blood. It saw us and shoved aside the deer in our path, and it curved its lips ominously back when it looked at me, almost like a smirt has pulled me back. But I was trampled down by the running deer, whose hoof snapped in my right forearm in half. But I somehow managed to stand back up despite the piercing agony. The sinister dog growled at Tehos and he charged. Instead of running away,

tey Haas too, charged at it with clenched fists. The dog opened its mouth wide and I pleaded with tey Has to stop, but it was too late. Nick cleanly bit Tajos's head off as swiftly as plucking out flowers. Just when did life leave his body? I don't know, because even without his head, his clenched fist delivered an almighty punch square to the dog's muzzle, but it didn't affect the dog at all. It approached me slowly, and the gore and shock of my best friend getting brutally

beheaded made me freeze where I stood. It spat my friend's head at my feet, all slimy and bloody and cut up by the dog's incisors. The dog started bending and letting out steamed breath onto my bloody face. It smelled horrific, like the right of many bodies that had just slain before my eyes, and it went past my face below and poked its chin at my shirt pocket.

I didn't understand it first, but when I noticed the crunching sound coming from my pocket, I realized that the dog wanted the roasted chickpeas within I'd carried it to chomp on while having drinks with Tahas. This monster, this monster wants roasted snacks. Perhaps a part of my cute little patchy was still alive inside this insidious, abhorrent, despicable creature. With my working left arm, I fished out a fistful of roasted chickpeas and I threw it to the ground.

The dog roared and spat right in my face, and I thought I would disintegrate. I took out another fistful of the snack and held it out in my trembling palm, and just like the patchy, I knew the monster nibble and licked my hand clean in a matter of seconds. I thought, surely it would chew off my hand, but

the teeth shockingly never hurt me. The brute licked my face and the roughness of its tongue scratched my skin, and then it grabbed Tahas's limp body between two of its long, skinny fingers and dragged him into the murk, away from the reach of my frail flashlight. I dashed away from among the slain bodies as fast as my

aching body could. The pain was unbearable, to the point that I could see darkness blacker than the blinding wooded night creeping in front of my eyes, and I stumbled out of the hole into the National park's boundary wall and collapsed to the coal numbing ground, and I whirled my eyes to stay open. I had to do one

more thing. I saw the slabs of the wall that we had broken and thrown aside, and I crawled into it on my elbows, the stony glacial earth, cutting deep, grabbing the wall slabs between my left and both hands, and painstakingly sealed the wall. Only then did I allow my knees to buckle below me. But something held me up. It didn't let me fall. I turned to look, and I saw first a multicolored serri and then her face, as dark as a black hole. The shadowy, sinister face

moved as she spoke, you seem hurt. Won't you let me apply some to merit to your wounds? You'll feel better than ever. She put her hand in my pant pocket and pulled out the brain smeared handkerchief I had almost forgotten about, and she swallowed it. The low rumble echoed it once again, engulfing me in waves of misery, and I let out a scream, through which escaped every ounce of my depleted energy, and it drowned in the cackling laughter of the decrepit old woman. As I faded

into the killing night. The town still mourns the death of Tahas's young, brave life. As for me, I try to get by with PTSD counseling to deal with my survivor's guilt. We should have never gone out that night, and especially with all that had happened with me the night before. My hand had healed overnight courtesy of the decrepit woman. I'm still awaiting its haunting repercussions, keeping in mind what that kind of healing has done to the

once lifeless patche my quaint town. And now you too know the story of the birth of our town's dog or dog Woman, to be precise, It is as if I got baptized by consuming my dear friend Tahas. Even though the National Park is now permanently shut and its boundary wall is completely sealed with the dog Man inside, we are not safe. From time to time I see the monster standing atop the tall boundary walls, now even taller eleven feet. Its body structure looks oddly like that

of my dead friend. It lurks in the darkness of the streets and people go missing. I'm sure they're dead, but not me, even though I have felt it stalking me. Now I can't help but accept the fact that there is still some kind of weird bond between me and the killer creature, the monster, the dog man, my sweetie Patchy. The end. Now for the part of the story that is true. The dead dog was really resurrected by that woman. I would see this patchy dog every day on my

way to work. One day, a car ran over its head, crushing a part of it, just like I have stated earlier, And for two whole days I walked past it as it lay on the side of the road, stinking like any dead animal. It had shrunken to half its size than when it was alive. The next day, the body had just disappeared. Five days after that, while coming back from work way past midnight on a one lane empty road, I was stopped in my tracks by a dead dog,

now miraculously alive. I was shivering, and it had become fat again, but its brains were still hanging out. They were glistening in the light. And I saw it walk to this woman in the darkness who was applying to Merrick on its head, muttering something I couldn't hear. When they noticed me, they just stared at me for an eternity. I was so petrified that I couldn't move. I called up a friend, waking him up from a deep slumber. I didn't care. I told him, dude, get your car

pick me up right now, and that he did. But the four minutes he took to reach me felt like ours. My friend saw the dog, but strangely not the woman. I thought maybe he missed seeing her since we were in such a horrid hurry to get the hell out of there, but my friend kept saying that there was no one there. What the hell. I still can't understand how a dead dog can come to life just by applying to merit. Surely some dark forces are at play here.

I really don't know. Now that dog is healed completely and actually acts quite normal. I see this dog every day, but I've never seen that woman again, and I never wont to PostScript. It is okay for you to reveal my name, even if you decide to read out the real part of the story, because fortunately in India, telling

such stories is not frowned down upon. Unreal things keep happening to many around here, and I've told this story to my parents and friends, as they have shared their true experiences with me, and I believe them just like they believe me. If you or your listeners would be interested, I would love to share their stories with you too, but sadly they're not cryptid stories. There are more about spirits, both good and bad.