2313, March 12th. That was the day that our world was served a curve ball, the day of the Curse.
A disease, created for anti-biological warfare study was smuggled into the hands of a radical terrorist faction. It was kept secret from the world, an antithesis to its effects already developed, and it was believed to be a non threat.
Twelve days after its disappearance, there was a terrorist attack on a large subway station. Mass hysteria followed, no survivors were found, and the subways were soon put back into operation. A week after the subways reopening, an entire train was emptied of life. Signs of struggle were everywhere, things left behind ranging from briefcases to child strollers.
Another week and a second train was found devoid of all life.
The subways were closed, and thousands of volunteers scoured the dark tunnels for the missing people.
No one expected what was found.

The panic that flew from the subways was almost epidemic, people telling of creatures covered in fur yet bipedal as men, faces of teeth and claws of wolves. It was as if the great Werewolf myth had come true. The subways were sealed; the entrances covered over with concrete and framed with barbed fences. Families were in an uproar, worry for their missing sons, daughters, husbands and wives silenced by the claims of the volunteers.
But sealing the subways was not enough.

A skyscraper’s basement was breached, and the creatures poured forth like water from a dam. Men, women and children alike were caught by the monsters and carried away back down to the dark tunnels; the screams of those caught echoing from those dark halls like an endless loop. The werewolves’ ranks only grew with each captured pure human, and the toll was rising swiftly. Eventually something had to give.

One day, a series of helicopters flew through the streets of the once proud city, and soldiers wearing very heavy protective gear set foot on the pavement. Gas grenades were shot into the subway tunnels, the streets fumigated with a thick chemical.
The ‘cure’ had arrived.
Those who had been infected the longest were put down as they could not control their minds or actions any longer, having devolved down into a state of pure instinct. The rest were given their senses back by the ‘cure’. They were stuck in their werewolf form, trapped forever in bodies of fur, tooth and claw. Their ability to spread the infection was removed by the ‘cure’, and each one woke strapped to gurneys in a hospital wing unaware of how they got there.

The year is now 2330. Remember how I mentioned that children were amongst those captured? Yeah, I was one of them. I was about three at the time; stolen from a stroller by a savage creature almost thrice my size. My mother was with me; I remember her screaming as we were dragged into the darkness, away from the subway train we had been on. We were bitten, my mother somewhat more viciously than I was, and eventually succumbed to the disease that we survivors have come to call the Curse.
My real mother had been weak willed, and she was amongst the Werewolves who were shot for being too feral and dangerous, unable to be reasoned with. I, at the time of her death, was being cared for by another female adult. Alma Heathrow, the female I have come to call my mother, is a loving and very caring female Werewolf. She was a recent convert, still in partial control of her senses, and she happened upon my infant self crawling weakly in the darkness, my mother off cavorting with the Alphas and leaving me all alone in the cold. Alma took me into her arms, calmed me, and warmed me with her new, thick fur. At first I didn’t take to her well, my young self yearning for the scent of my now absent mother, but, according to her, I eventually calmed and slept in her embrace.

When the ‘cure’ was released, Alma didn’t bother to run and hide as others had; she was certain that if we were to die, that she would have rather died protecting me. If ever asked, she tells of how she sat in the tunnel, cradling me in her arms, and only looked back calmly into the faces of the soldiers who looked her way, and how, when she woke in the hospital, she demanded to be shown to her baby boy, calming only when I had been put in her arms.

I got bullied a lot growing up, as did the other Cursed children, though I tended to be bullied by them as well. ‘Abandoned by a bitch’ was a common insult I had to endure, snide remarks about how my real mother had run off to get laid rather than care for me, and it always hurt. I remember running back to Alma one day after school in tears, asking why my mother had abandoned me. The truth was harsh, but… it was better for me to be told by Alma than by finding out through bullying at school.

Life was hard for us, Al… mum having difficulty finding work because of what we were. Money became slim. It wasn’t long through my school life that I no longer brought lunch. Soon after that breakfast was in question. At the age of eight, we were lucky if dinner was nightly.
Mum had to borrow money from her parents to keep us going a few times, and she even considered selling our home.

Eventually the unions rose up to defend our kind, claiming that equal rights with exceptions were not equal. For a whole month the protests became more and more intense and almost escalated into full blown riots before the government came to a conclusion. We were given back the rights we had lost so easily, each of us acknowledged as a human being, despite the Curse.
Soon after this, mum managed to get into a high profile job, and for the first time in our new lives she was earning enough to properly enable us to survive.
It wasn’t long after this that I truly felt guilty about my life. Here I was, living under the roof she owned on her pay check when I wasn’t even related to her. I had created expenses, had to be fed, cleaned, clothed, and made her life difficult… It was odd that, at the young age of thirteen, while other kids were out having fun like the world is a happy place, I had managed to feel the weight of my own life on my shoulders and came crashing down to cold, hard reality.
I felt… heavy.

Despite her protests, I managed to get a boring everyday job at a local supermarket stocking shelves. I wasn’t trusted fully with any fresh produce, much to my discomfort, but I did well enough with the packaged goods. Frequently it was my job to handle frozen stock, as most of the other employees detested going into the freezer, yet my thick brown fur kept me well insulated against the cold.

Love is another complicated facet of our existence. We’re still human, and therefore can still form strong relationships. We… don’t get what could be considered a fair go by normal, uninfected humans however. Quite a few divorces happened in the months that followed our return to society. Mum wasn’t married before her turning, and she didn’t seem to show any real interest in men in the years that I have lived with her.
I… dated a human girl for a short while during my high school years, a girl called Rachael. She was a friendly and quite attractive girl, curving in all the right places, but after about three months of seeing each other, one of the more cruel school bullies beat me into splitting up with her so that he could date her.
While she was disgusted that I’d let him have her, she seemed to understand that it wasn’t exactly my choice.
It might have been the black eyes and bruised ribs…
I’ve not dated since then, not even inside the cursed population. Mum says it might be a fear reaction because of how severely I had been pummelled, and I guess I’ll just have to agree until I can find a more legitimate explanation.

In March our home was targeted by ‘puritans’ who considered the Cursed to be the Devil’s agents sent to destroy those with faith and corrupt the world. Our front yard was set ablaze, windows smashed… we were thankful they didn’t throw Molotov Cocktails or manage to break into our garage and destroy the car, but the damage had been done. We were terrified, had gravel put in to replace the lawn, and added reinforcing to our windows and doors.
Our lives just weren’t meant to be happy ones, it seemed.

At school, I have managed to make some friends, out of place amongst the rest of the kids there though we are; together we’re fascinated by knights of old, the code of chivalry that they followed and their way of life. We’ve made a little club for ourselves based around our favourite tale.

I wish I could tell you more about my life, and the difficult times that my kind has endured, but, for now, I have to go; my mother and I have been invited to a company function and we don’t want to be late.
Oh, by the way, my name is
Lancelot