The bell rang. Late, again. Huffing as he ran, thirteen year old Joshua Montgomery ran quickly to get his first hour class. The bus always got to the school late, always. Cursing it, he slipped into the classroom door, zipping to his seat just as his teacher looked up.

“Late again, Josh,” Mrs. Tindale said. “Let me guess, the bus, right?” The young twenty-something year old teacher certainly didn’t have much patience. Josh nodded at her words, but his teacher ignored him and went back to taking roll.

He was like, a minute late. What the hell?

Huffing quietly, Joshua pulled out his math book from his backpack, ready for some pre-algebra. Eighth grade could certainly be a hassle for him, but math this easy was no hassle for him at all. He leaned back in his chair, wiping sweat from his face, pulling his light brown hair out of his eyes and trying to relax. Mrs. Tindale finished taking roll and moved to the front of class to begin.

Throughout the first half of the fifty minute class, everything was fine. Josh paid attention and made sure to take notes. Despite being late all the time, he really was a good kid. His grades for the most part were Bs, and he never really got in trouble (except maybe for being late). He had friends, and his life was good.

Except for the bus being late.

And these flashes of things he hadn’t been so certain about. Odd things. Like running through the woods, paws for feet, howling. Things he had tried to push out of his head, but were starting to get to him. It was all so strange. This didn’t happen while he was sleeping, but while he was awake. Even stranger, he could feel something crawling beneath his skin, trying to get out, and what made it even stranger more so was that he had seen things happen to his skin that he couldn’t explain.

Like when he was doing homework and he felt an itch on his arm. When he went to scratch it, he felt hair. But not just his normal body hair, but something more like a pelt of fur. And when he’d looked down, there had been a thick patch of brown-ish fur on his arm. He’d gasped at it, about to scream, but it’d caught in his throat when the fur, hair, whatever, had shot back into his arm.

He hoped he was just going crazy. Because if he let his mind get to him, and he compared these things with what he had been reading up on, he was going to be oh-so screwed.

Josh scratched at the edge of his notes with his pencil, doodling nothing, but the nothing soon began to take shapes of clouds and moons, of trees and animals. He admitted it, he thought maybe the flashes of howling and running could mean he was turning into something.

Something he’d never believed in. He was a skeptic, and didn’t fall for ghosts and that sort of stuff. But after reading a couple of books from his library about werewolves, out of pure curiosity because of what he was going through, he was starting to worry and even get a bit scared.

Mrs. Tindale’s word floated to him, but he didn’t pay much attention. He kept thinking about all these things he had been seeing and experiencing. It bothered him more than he knew, and even more, he knew that this was all leading up to something.

His attention focused back on reality as he felt an itch in his mouth. Wrinkling his nose, he ran his tongue over the source of the itch. His gums, which was a little odd. But when he ran his tongue down his teeth, he knew something really had to be wrong with him.

Because his canine teeth suddenly seemed to be longer.

Not to mention that when he put his hand up to his mouth to investigate, his nails had grown and were turning darker.

Josh’s eyes widened, and he held back a scream. He blinked, but the sight didn’t go away. What was worse was that he was watching his nails grow thick and black, while hair was slowly growing on his arms.

He looked around at his classmates wildly, but no one was paying attention to him. Mrs. Tindale’s back was turned to him.

He could feel his canines growing, more teeth popping into his mouth.

Gasping in fear, he bolted out of his seat, which overturned, rushed to the door and raced out into the hall. He could hear his classmates calling for him, asking others what had happened, but he didn’t care. He rushed into the boy’s bathroom, which was thankfully empty, and stared into the mirror.

A monster stared back.