A Werewolf in Cleveland

By Ernest Porter

The inner-beast of one’s subconscious mind, according to Sigmund Freud, however hideous and grotesque, needs, necessarily, to be made more transparent to us, or it will direct our lives and we will, wrongly, call it fate. Fear is the pain arising from the anticipation of evil, be it fear of failure or fear of success. Fear is the enemy of us all. A Werewolf In Cleveland is a tour de force exploring a character who from page one is compelled to cope with an unrelenting inner-beast that ultimately escapes into reality to destroy her life and identity. As a horror aficionado, I have been an unwitting student, for decades, of every variety of inner-beast imaginable, from vampires, rampaging lizards and underwater beasts that rip us apart with iron jaws, to aliens from distant worlds that threaten to steal our planet. I dare say that I am an expert on the inner-beast; that metaphor for fear of the unknown. “Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,” from “13 Ghosts,” 1960, directed by the legendary Mr. William Castle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665562485

Ernest Porter

Ernest Porter grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and graduated from Glenville High School. Ernest soon began studies at Columbia University in New York City. Although he did not graduate from Columbia, he earned Associate of Arts and Associate of Science degrees, at Cleveland’s Tri-C Cuyahoga Community College (Metropolitan Campus) where he was designated a National Dean’s List Scholar by then acting Dean Of Students, Dr. Larry Brisker; a designation that ranked Ernest in the top one-half percent of all college students in the United States for his actions to advance the cause of aspiring Tri-C students who wanted to become physicians. He is a proud member of The Organization of Black Screenwriters, based in California, and still resides in Cleveland. He writes Sci-Fi and horror.

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© 2022 Ernest Porter. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/13/2022

ISBN: 978-1-6655-6249-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-6248-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022911262

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter One

One dreadful moonlit night in London, England, in a hot and dank corner of an immense greenhouse, a horrified Michelle Rénee Kimberly, three-years-old, leans forward on the handlebars of her tricycle.

The little girl shivers, uncontrollably.

Rena is cute with dimples to match. She squats low, hides under a long row of blossoming Calla Lily Flowers... from a werewolf!

Rena (Ray-nuh) sobs, pitifully, as the over nine-foot-tall lycanthrope extends a sharp claw, rips the little girl’s forearm, and forces blood to spurt out of her like wild-fire.

A pulsing wound forms on Rena’s forearm.

The wound glows... then, slowly, closes!

Not very far from where Rena hides, the towering beast grips Baroness Karen Kimberly, Rena’s mother, by her throat.

The werewolf crushes Karen’s delicate throat with its powerful jaws!

The Baroness Karen Kimberly flops over, forward. She is fatally wounded.

Her eyes bulge, almost out of their sockets, as she is gripped even more tightly in the werewolf’s maw.

The Baroness struggles to get one last glimpse of her daughter, Rena, before she dies.

From somewhere deep inside of her, Rena’s sad moans, intensify. They become syllables. The syllables become words:

Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!

The hairy, pointy-eared, werewolf laps The Baroness Karen Kimberly’s pretty face like a slab of bacon.

It breathes its foul breath all over Karen, nibbles her soft delicate white flesh like a wild coyote gnawing a bone.

In a single flick of its power, the werewolf destroys what Mother Earth took over three decades to create.

The werewolf cackles!

The once beautiful young female, donning long tresses of golden blonde hair, ceases to move or to struggle.

Rena sees her mother die!

She hears her mother breathe her last breath before dying!

No, mommy! Don’t go!

The crazed white lycanthrope, dripping saliva, rears its grotesque head at the moon. It glares beyond the glass greenhouse, totally, depraved.

As the rabid werewolf howls against the starlit night sky above the greenhouse dome, a glint of something possibly human, ripples across its demonic brow.

As if in a trance the beast speaks.

Its voice is deep and hollow.

Karen?

Gradually, the werewolf’s voice becomes more human.

It speaks softly this time.

--My love--

Tiny hairs on the monster’s face melt away, revealing Baron Henry James Kimberly, 35, handsome, with a widow’s peak.

As The Baron Henry James Kimberly leans over Karen’s corpse, a crescent moon-shaped scar on his neck, pulsates under the moonlight.

He weeps as he embraces Karen.

The Baron brings Karen’s emaciated, lifeless form, close to him. He looks at Karen in abject disbelief; arches one bloodshot red eye, aghast at his own fiendish destruction.

As Baron Kimberly lays Karen, gingerly, onto the greenhouse floor, a black-spotted petal from an Oncidium orchid, dances in the air, gaily, like a ballerina, its arms flung out wide.

The orchid’s thin yellow petal floats through the warm greenhouse air like a drunken butterfly.

It zigs and zags... in slow motion.

Lands, as gentle as a dove’s wings, onto Baroness Karen Kimberly’s cold, lifeless, breast.

The Baron Henry James Kimberly, all the while, has witnessed the petal’s fateful descent.

He staggers back and slowly draws a shiny silver dagger from a scabbard, hidden beneath a row of Philodendron.

The Baron stabs himself, through-and-through, stains the yellow petal with his werewolf’s curse.

The man-beast looks up and howls, piteously.

The Baron Henry James Kimberly collapses in a lovers’ embrace beside his wife, Baroness Karen Kimberly. The couple is now wrapped, eternally, in each others arms.

Their lovers’ eyes point up at a starlit sky and a fading moon, barely visible, above the greenhouse roof.

Two stringy legs wearing bright red stockings and high-polished black boots, move forward, inexorably, towards The Baron’s lifeless body.

Even in death, Baron Henry James Kimberly clutches the dreadful silver dagger, tightly, in his clenched fist.

A soft, hazy white light, showers the glass greenhouse. It frames an elderly woman, 85, bow-legged and toothless.

The wizened woman with gray hair to her waist, kneels onto one knee and pulls the silver dagger out of The Baron Henry James Kimberly’s balled-fist.

Her gray eyes sparkle bright as Sunday as she glares hard at the full moon reflected in the dagger’s crimson glow.

With thoughtful deliberation, the old woman shoves the shiny silver dagger back inside its rusted scabbard.

She cocks one of her hairy, pointed ears, towards a dark and desolate corner, beneath a row of Calla Lily Flowers.

Hush, little one. I am here now.

Chapter Two

It is twenty-nine-years later. Michelle Rénee Kimberly is fast asleep in bed.

She is experiencing a nightmare.

The bedroom spins around and around. Suddenly, the room stops spinning.

A full moon rises up, suddenly, dead-center of Rena’s landscape bedroom window. The moon flashes bright as day, on Rena’s face, as she dreams.

In her dream, Rena sees a long row of Philodendron bending in a gentle breeze outside the decorative facade of Case Western Reserve Medical School.

For those among you, I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting, I am your instructor. My name is Michelle Rénee Kimberly. This is Endocrinology 203.

Inside Case Western Reserve Medical School, adult Rena is momentarily lost inside of a cavernous lecture hall, behind a tall podium that hides everything except Rena’s face and neck.

Rena possesses a disarmingly charming Shirley Temple Black look, with dimples.

Today, she would rather be anywhere else, but here.

And it shows.

Rena smiles, perfunctorily. She shuffles a stack of index