07-12-2010, 11:38 AM
Intro: I submitted this for my English midterm and got an A on it. It's based on a medieval French tale called Bisclavret, and my assignment was to write a modern retelling of it. I wanted to create a longer, more developed version of this over the summer but haven't gotten around to doing so yet (I was supposed to be working on this since May. Haven't touched it since I got it back) so any and all suggestions would be appreciated.
The story goes:
Life comes with many ups and downs. You could have all the wealth in the world, its happiness, the perfect marriage, or whatever else you could want. All of that comes with a price. If you let your guard down, a trap door will get released from under your feet, and you fall. Trust no one.
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK.
He felt a tingle along his skin. The air in the office felt stuffy, or was it just him? Damian LaVrea pulled at the collar of his shirt and loosened his necktie a bit. It was Monday, and it was the first day back at work after taking his usual three-day absence. He worked four days a week and took a three-day weekend, never telling anybody where he went. On his organized desk sat a framed photograph of his wife, Ursula, and next to it, a small, wrapped parcel. It was their tenth anniversary, and he smiled.
It seemed to be the perfect marriage. Damian looked forward to that evening’s plans with Ursula. She called a while ago, happy as a bird. They were still in love after a decade of marriage; however there were no children to show for it. It was a bit lonely, but then again they’d got married straight out of college. Maybe this year would finally be the right time, he mused. He stared straight out the window, the view of New York City about him, and sighed. If we had children, would they be cursed, too? He felt as if he was risking his job, but nobody had ever called him out on it. Damian was a valuable doctor at Mercurius Medical Center, one of the higher-ups, and a favorite of the Professor of the board. They couldn’t let him go.
Ursula Bisque didn’t have a strict job schedule as a model, but her husband was rich enough to bring in the money for both of them. People were so envious. “A model and a doctor, all in one marriage. How could I have ever been so lucky?” she asked herself. But she knew Damian disappeared for three days at a time. She never asked, and none of their close friends or relatives asked, either.
Damian got home from work soon enough to find his wife dressed in a Stepford Wife-esque uniform. Not that she was submissive; she had an attitude that models had and he loved her nonetheless. And she wasn’t a homemaker either. Dinner was obviously take-out from one of their favorite restaurants. It was laid out on the table, as well as a candelabra centerpiece, and champagne in an ice bucket.
He shrugged off his jacket. “Baby, you didn’t have to dress up for our anniversary,” he chuckled. Ursula smirked. “I’ve always wanted an occasion to wear something like this. So why not?” She moved forward to take his coat. “Here, let me take care of that, and you have yourself a seat, okay, honey?” Damian refused. “No, it’s fine, babe. I’ve got this.” He draped it over the back of his chair, before the two sat at the table.
“I’ve ordered everything you like. Thought my husband deserved nothing less than the absolute best, especially on our anniversary,” she said, taking note of what she learned from her mama when she was a child. The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, Mama always said. “Thanks, Urs. And I have a little something for you, too,” he smiled. Reaching behind him, in his coat pocket, he pulled out the small gift box that was hidden and slid the box across the table toward his wife. “Open it,” he urged.
Ursula’s eyes sparked. “Damian…my God, you didn’t have to,” she started, tore off the paper, and opened the box. Inside was a diamond necklace with a matching set of earrings. “D, you really shouldn’t have. Oh, I can’t believe this. Thank you, baby!” She reached across the table for his hand. Damian took it, and rubbed small circles on the top of her hand with his thumb. “Yes I should have. You’re welcome, Ursula, and happy anniversary.”
They ate their dinner, and after a while, Ursula paused, a brooding question in her mind. “Damian, I’ve always meant to ask you this, but I never bothered to. There’s just something that makes me curious. I hope you don’t mind if I ask?” He smiled, the mood bright and sensual. “Why would I mind? We’ve been married for ten years. You were always free to ask me anything at all.”
Ursula went along with it. “Okay. Damian, I’ve always wondered where you’ve gone off to every week when you’re not here or at work. You don’t tell your friends, your parents, and you don’t tell me. You’re not cheating on me are you? Because it seems like you are. And if you are, you better tell me right now, and I swear I will serve you with divorce papers if it keeps going on after this,” she rambled.
Damian laughed, and Ursula took offense. “Is that why you’re worried? Why would I be cheating on you? I’ve got the most beautiful wife in the world, and you’re the only one I’ll ever want or have.” He took a breath. “The truth is, Ursula dear, I can’t tell you. It would ruin me. It would ruin us. And only then I would lose you if you knew.”
She scoffed. “Damian LaVrea, I am your wife, and we vowed when we stood at that altar ten years ago that we wouldn’t keep any secrets from each other. Come on, I tell you everything. What’s on your mind that’s so bad that it has to keep you away from me for nearly half the week? Baby, you know if there are any problems, I’m always here for you.”
He sighed and took his dinner napkin off his lap, placing it on the table. Leaning back, he was trying to figure out a way to word this properly so as not to scare her off. “Ursula…I’m a werewolf.” When he saw the I-can’t-believe-it expression on her face, she replied with an, “Excuse me?” Damian spoke again. “I’m a werewolf. I don’t know how I got cursed like this, but it’s those days that I’m gone that my transformation happens.” He started explaining the process to her. “I drive off to Connecticut and get myself lost there where nobody can find me. I have to follow my wolfish instincts, live like an animal. It’s hard, and I wish I didn’t have to do it. But my hands are tied, Ursula. I have to do this week after week. I can’t stop the change.”
Ursula gulped a bit of her champagne down. “And…what happens to your clothes?” she asked. He was always dressed in expensive business clothes, but every week, at least one was stained with dirt by the time he got back home. Damian replied, “I don’t fit them when I shapeshift. I run around naked.” Ursula wanted to know more. “So where do you keep them?” He shook his head. “I can’t tell you. If anything were to happen to my clothes, and I don’t have them, I won’t be able to change back into a human. So this is one secret that you’ve got to let me keep, Ursula.” His tone was serious. His wife pressed him on. “Come on, no secrets. It’s our anniversary, can’t you give me that? I love you. You know I do, and I’d die if anything terrible happened to you.”
Damian closed his eyes. This wasn’t going to go well. He knew it in the feeling of his gut. “There’s an abandoned old chapel, in the city of Ridgehaven. In the crawlspace underneath, I dug a hole and kept my clothes there until the three days are up and I can come home again.” Ursula couldn’t believe the story she was told. Shallow as she was, she wondered how she let this monster sleep with her for ten years. She even made love to it many times over those years, and the thought of it made her sicken. She thought herself lucky to not have children with Damian, but her mind jumped to another thought. Now how am I going to get rid of my husband?
They finished their dinner, and by the time Friday came around, Damian tried to reassure his wife that he was going to be okay and that nothing between them had changed, really. After he’d left, Ursula stood in the middle of their kitchen, biting her lower lip, and leaning her back against the kitchen sink. She had to get out of the marriage. Now. She thought of her husband’s co-worker, Gabe Madison, a younger doctor, who kept checking Ursula out whenever she visited the medical center to bring Damian’s lunch every once in a while. She left a message on his voicemail, insisting that Damian wanted him to come over to speak with him about some matter about work.
Gabe arrived at the Bisque-LaVrea residence later that evening, and it wasn’t long before Ursula pounced on him, kissing him all over, and Eric didn’t hold back, either, kissing her back. She lied to him. “My husband left me. Packed his bags and went off because he was cheating on me with some other woman. You’re the only one I can turn to right now.” When she let go of him to catch her breath, she explained even further where he would usually be hanging out, which was another lie, and told him of the fact that Damian kept his clothes under the crawlspace of the chapel. She instructed Gabe to get Damian’s clothes there, as revenge, which wasn’t a very bright idea, but Ursula wasn’t very smart either. She just had to get those clothes away from there.
Gabe drove up to Ridgehaven and did as Ursula instructed him to do, and got the hell out of that state as soon as possible. Damian didn’t know what happened until Sunday night when he returned to his hiding spot to find that his clothes went missing. Howling, he realized that he’d been betrayed by his wife. There was nothing at all in his past as a werewolf for numerous years that hindered his regard for his hiding spot under the crawlspace, and all of a sudden it was gone.
Gone for an entire year, after a missing persons report was filed, and Mercurius Medical had lost one of its best men. Gabe was promoted and given Damian’s job, while he eloped with Ursula. She never took either one of her two husbands’ last names, maintaining her independence and the fact that she was a model who would usually be known by her maiden name.
It wasn’t long before the Professor of the medical group took his sons on a trip driving around Connecticut in a pick-up truck. Damian, in his wolf form, easily recognized the Professor he had worked under for so long and ran towards him, trying to move like a human and act like he wasn’t going to harm the Professor.
The Professor was amazed by this, and being in a medical group, he also studied the science of evolutionary biology, thinking that this wolf was quite a specimen to behold. It acted human, and didn’t look like it was going to hurt him or his family. The Professor was about to leave, but the wolf followed him. Wanting to research the wolf even further, he got it to sit in the back of the pick-up truck, and still it, oddly enough, sat like a human.
Driving back to the Medical Center, the Professor and his sons took the wolf into the research facility of the Center. “I need all my best doctors and researchers here immediately. I may have discovered a new species of wolf,” he emailed out to the entire facility. All who were needed came as quickly as possible, while the Professor showed off his new “friend.” Technically a wolf was a dog, and dogs were man’s best friend.
The wolf was well-behaved, up until the point where he saw Gabe entering the research lab. He growled and ran toward the traitorous man who stole his wife. Oh he knew of how Gabe fantasized about Ursula. Gabe made comments towards the other doctors, and somehow those comments ended up being told to Damian, who hated the other man with a passion. When he started attacking Gabe, the Professor shooed him off, mostly threatening the wolf, and the wolf behaved while other researchers took note of this and its other humanlike actions. Life wasn’t quite as peaceful at Mercurius anymore. Several times the wolf had made attack attempts on Gabe, and Gabe had to be relocated to a different area of the building so as not to feel threatened by the wolf.
Ursula, being the “good wife” that she was, took Gabe’s lunch to work one day, with whispered comments shooting back and forth behind her back about her and Gabe’s affair shortly after Damian’s disappearance. Nobody offered her any sympathy except for the Professor, who took her to the research lab to show the project about the new specimen of wolf. At the time, its vitals were being monitored by lab assistants, who, upon Ursula’s arrival, noticed that something went abnormally high and terribly wrong. Especially when the wolf started growling and tore itself away from the wires that were connected to him and started going after Ursula and attacked her.
She screamed. The Professor had to threaten the wolf to restrain it again. It listened, but wouldn’t stop growling.
“Professor,” one of the researchers said, “this wolf has behaved amicably among people like us. With the exception of Dr. Madison and Ursula here, I’d say it has some grudge against the two of them.” The Professor furrowed his brows, and the researcher continued, but in a hushed voice, while another researcher led Ursula away from the wolf and into a different, closed room. “Ursula Bisque was the wife of Dr. Damian LaVrea, and now she’s the wife of Dr. Madison. Don’t you find it a little odd that the wolf would have a grudge against both of them and attack them, especially with the fact that Ursula married Dr. Madison so hastily after Dr. LaVrea’s disappearance?”
“You’re right. It seems that we’ve got some interrogations to go through. Bring a polygraph to Mrs. Bisque’s room, and send the wolf back into the care chamber.” the Professor concluded. He went into the next room where Ursula sat. “My dear, are you feeling all right?” he asked her. Ursula shook her head and sniffled. The Professor handed her a box of Kleenex, and she took it. “Mrs. Bisque, I have a few questions to ask.” As the polygraph machine was being brought in, the two lab assistants remained in the room.
As the wires were being hooked up to her, Ursula realized she was being brought under a lie detector test. Under intense pressure, she was questioned by the Professor about the whereabouts of her husband as well as her hasty elopement with Gabe Madison. With her crying and her thoughts swaying in her mind, she finally cracked.
“All right, all right, I’ll tell you!” she screamed. “That wolf isn’t just a wolf, it’s a werewolf, and my ex-husband, for crying out loud! That’s Damian in there! He told me of his curse – that he had to turn into a werewolf and leave every weekend. Once I found out, I didn’t want him anymore. How could I live with that, that thing?!” She cried even more. The Professor sneered at her. “Tears won’t help you now, Ursula Bisque. You tell us how we can help Damian now so we can get our top doctor back.” She explained the situation with the clothes, and the Professor instructed Gabe to obtain those said clothes and bring them to the medical center right away.
Gabe was notified of what was going on, and horrified, he had to obey orders, in hopes of keeping his job. But that chance was slim. When he went back to his place and arrived back at the medical center, he thrusted the clothes that were stored in a paper bag toward one of the assistants. When the assistant put the bag in the room with the wolf, now revealed to be Damian, he just sat there until the assistant left, and then proceeded to put the clothes on.
After a while, the group of people heard a knock coming from the door of the sealed chamber that the wolf was in. The Professor opened it and was shocked to see that what Ursula had explained had come true. “Dr. LaVrea, you’ve really been a wolf all along! Welcome home, son,” he greeted. He turned swiftly towards Ursula and Gabe. “As for you two, I never want to see your faces around here again, is that understood? Mr. Madison, you are officially discharged from Mercurius Medical Center. This is not a request, it is an order.”
Damian had his job back, but he wouldn’t take back his wife. Either way, she was married to another man, and he was saddened for quite some time to know that his wife could be so shallow. It would take some time before he found himself again, but the rest of his assets had been returned and he returned to a half-empty apartment. He wanted to sell it, to get rid of the past memories and start fresh. Ursula and Gabe, however, lived a rather unfortunate life afterwards.
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