The big kids tell us small kids about the werewolves of Camp Emerald Lake. About how it’s super easy to turn into one. All it takes is meeting it in your dreams. Over the first week of camp, it’s all anyone can talk about—in the mess hall, during swim lessons, while on flora and fauna photo hunts, when constructing pinecone bird feeders to send home to our folks. I hate all the talk. Only because I don’t understand the fuss. But the girls from my cabin ask the big kids what attracts a werewolf. And Nancy, whose dad is a Marine, which we decide gives her inherited authority, says we need to leave raw meat under our cabin stairs.

So, Bonnie and Katrina and Meg steal hamburger patties from the mess hall freezer. And even though Nancy never advised it, Bonnie decides it can’t hurt if we eat some too. Marry us to the meat. We divvy up portions and pop them in our mouths, and I can’t help but feel it tastes like the end of a AA battery (though, don’t ask me why I know that). It’s Katrina who has the nightmare first. Because that’s what it ends up being. In it, the full moon swelled like a spider’s egg sac in a starless sky. There was a baying too, somehow both far away and under her skin. It gurgled at times, full of woebegone guts and melancholy blood.

None of us believe her the morning she tells us, but she says, come and see. And we gather around her in the corner of the cabin like she’s a toasty fire. She pulls up her nightgown. And between her legs is a poof of brown, bushy hair. It’s not real, one of the girls says. Katrina shouts that it’s as real as church, and she lets us take turns patting it. It reminds me of Brillo. Maybe not as rough, but still strong enough to scrub a plate. After that, all the girls are desperate to be werewolves, so the big kids tell us it has to be a fresh kill this time. Bonnie says her brothers are manly men with pickups and callouses, and they taught her how to chop wood with a small axe and use the sun as a compass and set traps for God’s small creatures.

So, she shows us how to do that last one with a few simple supplies: some yarn, a forked stick, a wicker basket from the arts and crafts center. And her trap is the real deal, 100 per cent fool proof, because we catch us a baby bunny. Nose wriggling. Eyes alive with the fear of death. But now that we have the bunny nobody wants to kill it until Megs grabs it by the ears and swings it against a tree. It’s brutal, but fast. We cut its throat with a Swiss army knife and take turns sucking its blood. We giggle because it looks like we’re wearing lipstick. We get real silly and blush our cheeks with it too, and for some of us it’s the first time we’ve worn makeup.

That night, we’re skeptical because we know the big kids like to mess with us small kids, but when we go to bed we do so with our fingers crossed. Whispering lispy prayers to the star dust. When we wake up in the morning, it’s worked. We all have our very own tufts. And on each of our beds are dark stains in the most beautiful of patterns. Like the ink blots the doctor showed me in his office those days after mom passed. Luna moths. Galaxies gobbling other galaxies. Pelvic bones exploding like rotten fruit. He showed me the patterns because I didn’t want to talk. And when I did talk, all I did was scream. But I don’t want to scream anymore. Not when I can howl. That’s what we do when the moon’s as swollen as our moms’ bellies were with us. And if you go out into the darkness, you’ll see us there—not as girls, but as silhouettes against a perfect moon—with mouths open, ready to take a bite.

L. Soviero was born and raised in Queens, New York but has made her way around the world, currently laying her hat in Melbourne. She has been nominated for Best Small Fictions on multiple occasions and a Best of the Net, and has been longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50. Her story “Lucy Ignores Death” was spotlighted in the 2021 Best Small Fictions anthology. Her recent or forthcoming work can be found in Cloves Literary, Janus Literary, and Emerge Literary Journal. A more comprehensive list of publications can be found at lsoviero.com.

Content warning: childhood SA

I told my parents there was a monster under my bed. I asked them to look. Instead, they complained of sore knees and bad backs. The trip to the floor and back was too far for their joints to make. They told me it was probably nothing, just a lost Barbie doll, or an old LEGO brick. I decided to believe them.

Then the scratching started. They told me it was just the floorboards settling, or roaches, or mice scurrying to and fro. They said don’t worry they’d set traps in the morning.

I decided to believe them, but then my bed began to shake. They told me it was possibly an earthquake, or termites chewing at the bedposts. I didn’t need to worry.

I struggled to believe them when I heard a voice in the dark. My parents blamed the radio and the neighbors’ loud TV. I told them it knew my name. They said they didn’t have time for this. They were tired. Didn’t I know how late it was? Didn’t I know how hard they worked? It was just my imagination. They’d deal with me in the morning.

They said similar things when I told them how dad’s friend, Uncle Simon, kissed me hard on the mouth. His teeth scraped mine. They said he probably just missed my cheek. I should’ve turned my head. Or I turned it the wrong way. I decided to believe them. So, I didn’t tell them when it happened again at the 4^th of July barbeque, at the pool party, at my birthday… I just needed to keep turning my head.  

Then the voice beneath my bed spoke again. My name, my name… rang in my ears. Its voice was scratchy, like a smoker’s, like Uncle Simon’s.

I pulled the blanket over my head. I plugged my ears with my fingers and squeezed my eyes shut. Maybe it would stop if I just turned my head. So, I tilted and bent trying different angles, like the antenna on my nana’s TV. She called them rabbit ears. I imagined myself as a bunny burrowed in the blankets of my bed, safe and sound.

My name, my name still scratched in the dark. No, it was just my imagination.

In the morning, I yelled for my parents. They showed up with mugs of fresh drip coffee and the sleep washed from their eyes. My mom had removed the rollers from her hair. I watched as they looked for me in the closet, under the blanket, out of the still closed window… never where it really mattered—nowhere even close.

From under the bed, I watched their fuzzy slippers shuffle toward the door. I tried to yell again when they shrugged and left the room. The monster put a claw over my mouth. It shook its head and looked at me with its many pitying eyes. What good would it do? I knew this to be true, so I decided to stay here in the unending dark.

Brianna Johnson’s stories have appeared in Cosmonauts Avenue, Gigantic Sequins, The Molotov Cocktail, Wigleaf, Kenyon Review, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, and elsewhere. An alumna of the Tin House Summer Workshop and Hurston/Wright Weekend Workshop, she is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee with work longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50. An MFA graduate from The University of Tampa, she teaches college English in Orlando, FL. Visit Brianna online at her website, on Twitter, and on Instagram.