Bewere the Night

THE WERE-WIZARD OF OZ by Lavie Tidhar

EXT. EMERALD CITY—DAY

Emerald City. A dark and dangerous place. City blocks tower above mean streets and open sewers. The sky is the colour of blood. There are winged monkeys circling slowly in the air, searching for prey. Under a broken street lamp stands OZ, smoking a cigarette, his fedora pulled low over his eyes. His face is in shadow.

OZ:

Emerald City.

OZ:

Shit.

OZ lifts his face. The light of a passing car illuminates them. He is unshaved, and his eyes are red.

OZ:

It’s always dusk in the Emerald City.

OZ:

Even in the middle of the day.

Oz is thirteen, just entering puberty, when he begins to discover the changes to his body.

The way his voice drops several octaves unexpectedly, becomes a growl that makes guests’ hair stand on their arms. The way the moon pulls and stretches at his limbs, curves his spine, makes hair grow everywhere.

Learning to shave is embarrassing, the blades break and finally he has to go with a barber’s razor, and when he cuts himself the bleeding stops in seconds, the wounds heal—too quickly. At school the kids make fun of hairy boy until he growls and shows them nails like claws and then they stop and after that they mostly keep away from him.

Puberty is confusing, he gets a hard-on every other second, it seems, he has hormones raging through him and on full moon nights he wakes up and doesn’t know where he is, and he is naked, and covered in feathers and blood.

Oz lives in a small town where nothing much is going on, somewhere in those featureless plains of a sometimes-Americaland. Mostly, Oz goes to the movies. Alone. He sits close to the screen, in the first or second row where no one else likes to sit, and he watches movies in the dark. There’s the smell of popcorn and years of spilled Coca Cola on unwashed carpets. There’s the smell of wet hair, and a hint of blood. Kids make out in the back row and the attendant goes around with a torchlight and the smell of grass on his clothes.

Everyone leaves Oz well alone. Which suits him fine.

He watches horror movies and romantic comedies and family dramas, fantasies and sci fi and adventure serials. He watches sequels and prequels and the things that come in the middle. He watches Wolf with Jack Nicholson, which is kinda boring (but Michelle Pfeiffer makes him hard), and Teen Wolf with Michael J. Fox (an 80s classic, but he secretly prefers Doc Hollywood), and An American Werewolf in London, but to be honest, even though he won’t admit it, he prefers romantic comedies. He loves Four Weddings and a Funeral. He just wishes there was someone like him in it. Nodoes romantic comedies about werewolves.

Because that’s what he is, he is beginning to realize. He can no longer deny the changes. When he takes on the wolf shape he feels alive, free, strong. He loves to run, for miles and miles, snapping at the wind, scenting for prey. He loves the taste of fear in a chicken’s heart when it’s taken. He toys with it, listening to its heart beat, smelling its fear before jaws close shut with a snap over the creature’s thin neck.

He does okay at school and he does better on the football field but it’s not enough, and besides people are beginning to talk. There’s mention of pitchforks, not as an agricultural tool but as an instrument of maiming. Nolikes a teenage werewolf. Especially not the fathers or uncles of teenage daughters.

EXT. EMERALD CITY—DAY

OZ stands outside a bar. The sign, in flashing neon light, says, SHIFTER’S CORNER. He growls softly to himself and goes inside.

INT. SHIFTER’S CORNER BAR—DAY

The bar is dark, the lighting red. The counter is long and made of hard wood, scarred by cigarettes and fights. The few drinkers turn to look at OZ, then turn back, quickly. Behind the bar is a solitary figure. OZ walks forward, sits on a stool.

OZ:

Gimme a Jack on the rocks, Billy.

The bartender lifts his head and we get a good look at him. His face is very long and very pale. So are his fingers. His entire seems stretched, devoid of blood. There are bandages trailing from his arms, his neck. He stares at OZ, not moving.

OZ:

What’s the matter, Billy? Missing your mummy?

The bartender’s impassive face nevertheless registers a look of fleeting pain. Silently, he points at a sign on the wall. It says: NO MUMMY JOKES. OZ shrugs.

OZ:

Just gimme the drink, Billy. I’m good for it.

OZ slaps some money on the counter. The bartender nods and reaches under the counter for a glass. He makes OZ a drink and pushes it towards him.

OZ:

I’m looking for a girl, Billy. A missing girl. Goes by the name of Dorothy.

The bartender shrugs. OZ takes a sip from his drink and lights up another cigarette. He stares at the bartender meditatively.

OZ:

In this city, we’re all lost.

OZ:

Right, Billy?

The bartender shrugs again.

He loves detective movies and noir and Casablanca most of all. He loves Bogie. Werewolf in a Women’s Prison makes him wake up at night, sweating, with the sheets all damp.

There’s this girl at school …

She lives with her uncle and aunt. They have a farm. It’s not a very successful one. They grow tobacco, but the season’s been hard. Her name’s Dorothy. She’s hard, she has the eyes of someone who knows what poverty is like, and hardship. Her parents are dead. They say her uncle beats her up. For all that, Oz thinks she’s radiant. When she smiles—if he can somehow make her smile—it transforms her completely, the way he is transformed. He wants to be her full moon. He wants to watch her when she changes.

They meet secretly. Oz’s parents don’t approve of farmer trash and her uncle doesn’t approve of Oz, or any other boys for that matter. They make plans.

Scram. Leave this town. Disappear. Across the vast featureless plains, towards the coast, east or west it almost doesn’t matter, only it does. There is only one place for dreamers, one place that is a magnet, drawing you inexorably towards it.

The city.

The city.

Where everything is possible, and dreams come true.

EXT. THE EMERALD CITY PROJECTS—DAY

There are people sitting outside on stairs, not doing anything. Smoking, talking. Listening to the game on the radio. Boys stand at street corners, dealing. Cars go past slowly. Were-girls in short skirts and hairy legs wait, hopefully.

OZ comes striding into the frame.

WERE-GIRL:

Hey, Corn-fed! Wanna have a good time?

OZ doesn’t break stride.

OZ:

No, thanks, fur-ball.

WERE-GIRL:

Fucking were-rat.

OZ goes to a group of boys. They are all half-transformed, and growl when they see him.

WERE-BOY:

What do you want here, Daddy-O?

OZ:

I’m looking for a girl. Name of Dorothy.

WERE-BOY:

Take your pick, old man. Take any girl you want. Or any boy.

WERE-BOY

They’ll all be your Dorothy, for a price.

OZ reaches over and grabs the boy by the throat, easily lifting him off the ground. He growls, and his face shifts and lengthens, becomes that of a wolf.

WERE-BOY:

Shit, man!

OZ throws him against the wall. The boy crumples down and shifts, becoming wholly human.

OZ:

Well? I’m waiting.

WERE-BOY:

Dorothy, Dorothy … was she hooked up, man? She’s that wannabe-actress chick who got hooked on emerald dust, right? Shit, I know her. Everyone knows her. Why didn’t you just say so?

OZ growls. There’s a growing pee stain on the boy’s trousers.

WERE-BOY:

You should ask Tinny. He’s dealin’ the good stuff. The rainbow dust. If anyone should know it’s him.

Oz runs through the quiet fields on a night of the full moon. His tongue lolls out as he runs. He grins.

Miles and miles of quiet fields, with nothing but scarecrows for company. His wolf-mind dreams of bright lights and crowded streets, a gourmet restaurant and a take-away menu rolled into one, both buffet and a-la-carte. His human mind dreams of the ocean, and the sound of the waves as they break against the shore, and moonlit walks along the beach. He has never seen the ocean—only in movies.

She waits for him at the agreed place. They are on the boundary of her uncle’s farm. A barn, and she is waiting outside, in the cold, puffing on a cigarette. His wolf-nose picks up the smell keenly. Her aunt and uncle disapprove of smoking, as they do of most things. It’s why she does it, even though he tells her it’s no good for her.

But Dorothy doesn’t listen to him. She doesn’t listen to anybody.

Dorothy is going to be a star.

The city. Their shared dream is joined, entwined. He bounds towards her, jumping over her and they roll on the ground. He changes as he rolls, become a large and naked young man. Dorothy giggles. ‘You’re funny,’ she says. He licks her face. She pushes him away.

They make out in the hay, in the dark barn. She makes him cum with her hand. Later, they just lie there, in the darkness, and she says, ‘I wish a tornado would come and take me away from here.’

He wants to be her tornado. He says, “I’m saving up. I’m working two jobs.”

She laughs. “How much money can you make on a paper round?”

Which hurts, but he doesn’t say anything.

“We need to make enough for the city,” she says. “It’s not a place we can go to just like that.”

He is restless. “I want us to go soon!” he says, and she laughs. “Patience, my wolf,” she says. But he knows she is equally restless.

INT. BARBERSHOP—DAY

OZ walks into the barbershop. There is one customer, a SCARECROW. TINNY stands above him with shears.

SCARECROW:

Just a trim, please, Tinny.

TINNY turns when he sees OZ.

TINNY:

What do you want, hairy? A full buzz cut?

TINNY laughs. The SCARECROW turns around to look.

SCARECROW:

Oh shit.

The SCARECROW tries to get up, but TINNY’s heavy hand presses him down in his seat.

TINNY:

Noleaves until the Tin Meister’s done with them.

OZ takes in the scene calmly.

OZ:

I’m lookin’ for a client a yours. Young lady name of Dorothy.

TINNY stands still.

TINNY:

What’s she to you, furry?

OZ:

Enough with the slurs, tin face. She got hooked on your shit, and she got hooked bad. I know that much. And now she’s missin’. And I’m going to find her.

TINNY:

Good luck to ya, pal. Now get out of my barbershop.

OZ calmly puts a cigarette in his mouth. He smiles. He reaches into his pocket and takes out a box of matches. The illustration on the box is of a tall soldier with vivid-green whiskers. Oz strikes a match against one of his claws. He lights the cigarette, puffs out smoke, and tosses the match at the SCARECROW.

SCARECROW:

For the love of Glinda! Help!

The SCARECROW goes up in flame like a bundle of dry hay on a hot summer’s day. His screams fill up the shop. The fire spreads. With two quick steps OZ is right beside TINNY. His claws reach out and grab TINNY by the throat. There is the sound of metal being scraped.

OZ:

I’m listenin’, metal-face.

TINNY:

You’ll pay for this, wolf-man.

OZ:

Spill it out.

OZ’s claws tighten over TINNY’s throat, easily cutting into the metal flesh.

TINNY:

Okay, okay. Let go!

The flames are reflected in TINNY’s face. The SCARECROW burns and screams but neither man pay him any attention.

TINNY:

She got hooked on rainbows and emerald dust, and couldn’t pay.

TINNY:

So I sold her.

OZ:

You did what?

TINNY:

She knew what she was doin’, man.

TINNY:

No one’s innocent in the Emerald City.

TINNY:

Not even you.

OZ:

Who’d you sell her to?

TINNY:

She would kill me if I told.

OZ:

I’ll kill you if you don’t.

TINNY nods, as if agreeing—then suddenly launches a frenzied attack on OZ. The two grapple with each other in the burning barbershop, with OZ flickering in and out of human and wolf shapes. Finally he subdues TINNY, his claws closing in on the man’s throat.

OZ:

Tell me!

TINNY gurgles.

TINNY:

Club Wicked! Look for her at Club Wicked.

TINNY:

If the monkeys don’t get you first.

OZ’s hands press on TINNY’s throat, and press. The man shudders. Then, gradually, he falls still.

Summer is filled with days that seem to never end, a heat that lies over fields and town, filled with daydreams and unfulfilled desires. Oz is working hard—he had abandoned the paper round for working at the local garage, fixing motorcycles, and walks around in grease-stained overalls. He likes the job. You know where you are with machine parts, the way they fit together, the way they can be cleaned and polished and made good again. But Dorothy won’t see him and it’s breaking his heart. Sometimes he sees her, going with this boy or that one, in their cars, at night. She’s wild and she’s never been so beautiful to him. He confronts her one night, and she laughs at him. From her dress, she pulls out a roll of notes. ‘This is what it takes to get me to the city,’ she said. ‘You do your part, and don’t worry about mine.’

Under full summer moons he haunts the fields, his blood aflame. He comes to the place where the cars park at night, where the couples make out. It’s just another bit of flat land, with nothing to distinguish it. He howls at the moon and the people inside the cars shudder and lock the doors. He sniffs for her but doesn’t find her.

They make up again at the end of summer, and he holds her in his arms and almost cries and she promises she is his and only his, and it was just the summer breeze.

They plot and plan, pooling together their money. Just enough to buy two tickets on the bus going out of town. Just enough to get them to the coast, hire a cheap apartment for a few months. A few months is all it would take, before they make it, make it big in dream town, before they make it big in Emeraldland.

“I love you” he says.

“I love you too.”

They kiss, and she runs her hands through his fur.

“I’m going to be a star,” she says.

EXT. STREET—NIGHT

OZ stands outside CLUB WICKED. The sign, in neon, flashes on and off, next to the image of a girl entwined around a pole. He walks to the doors, where a giant bouncer stands. He has a pumpkin for a head.

BOUNCER:

Sorry, pal. You can’t go in.

OZ:

Says who, friend?

BOUNCER:

Don’t make it hard on yourself, wolf-boy.

OZ takes out a roll of cash, licks his thumb, starts counting.

OZ:

For your trouble.

BOUNCER:

Guess you’re on the list after all.

OZ smiles. The smile on the BOUNCER’s face is, of course, carved in. Money changes hands and the BOUNCER opens the door for OZ. He steps through into the club.

It’s the full moon and his senses are inflamed. He runs through the fields. It is time for them to leave, to go, to abandon this nowhere town behind them, and the plains, and corn fields and tobacco plants. He scents blood, on the wind.

He hears her cry, but softly.

His heart beats fast. He runs, faster than he had ever run.

He finds her in the barn. The barn is locked. The smell of blood drives him insane.

“Go away,” she says—whispers—he can smell her fear. Driven mad, he runs at the doors, again and again, until they fall down. The commotion must be terrible. The farmhouse lights come on.

“You have to leave! Quickly!”

He finds her in the hay, half-naked, bruised. She has a black eye, bruised ribs, angry red marks on her back, as if made there by a belt, used as a whip. He howls, in anger and disgust. She hugs him.

‘They found out,” she said. “They took all the money. Run, before he comes. He has a gun.”

But Oz is no longer human, no longer listening. A wolf stalks out of the barn, a giant silver wolf with sour breath and great big teeth and bloodlust.

A man, a short bald man in an old-fashioned dirty-white nightdress, stands framed in the door of the farmhouse. The light is behind him. In his hands he holds a pump action shotgun.

“Get away from here! Filth! Wild animal!”

Oz growls. There is the distinctive sound of the gun being pumped, a bullet being chambered. “Get off my property!”

Oz charges. The figure in the doorway hesitates, then takes aim. There is the sound of a gun shot.

INT. CLUB WICKED—NIGHT

The club is dark—it is hard to see. there are girls on stage. They are naked. Patrons sit around, drinking. They are mostly winkies, but also some munchkins, humans and weres. OZ stands still, a little disoriented—which is when the MONKEYS catch him.

There are three monkeys, winged, mean, scarred, and grinning. Two grab hold of him while the third lifts a truncheon high in the air. OZ tries to shape-shift but the truncheon comes down, hard, and connects with the back of his head.

FADE TO BLACK.

The gunshot takes him in the chest and he drops to the ground. He rolls, howling with the pain as his extracts the foreign object, spits it out and begins sealing the wound. His opponent recharges the gun.

“You like that?” he shouts, in a voice where fear and glee mix uneasily. “You want some more of that? You want some lead aspirin, boy?”

But lead won’t cut it, not with a full-grown werewolf, and an angry one to boot. Oz rolls over and stands up on all fours. Growling. Grinning with teeth as large as blades. Yes, he wants some more of that.

Slowly, he advances on the man.

INT. CLUB WICKED—NIGHT

OZ opens his eyes. The winged monkeys stand above him, grinning and jabbering in their own, incomprehensible flying monkey tongue. OZ tries to sit and finds that he is trussed up. His eyes focus and he sees a small, elderly woman sitting hunched on a huge throne, her hair in pigtails, an eye-patch over her left eye. In her hands she holds an umbrella.

OZ:

Westerna.

WESTERNA:

Are you really so stupid you thought you could just waltz in here like this was Munchkin Country? Or Kansas?

OZ shakes his head. He tries to shape-shift, but can’t. WESTERNA smiles.

OZ:

Do you have her?

WESTERNA:

Do I have her? Your lady love? Your darling?

WESTERNA laughs.

WESTERNA:

You poor, deluded fool.

WESTERNA:

I guess every wolf needs a bitch.

From the barn, a scream. “Kill him!”

Later, much later, when they had gone to the city, when the money ran out, when she began working down in the valley, making the money she had always wanted, getting high on the high life, it occurred to him to wonder which of them she’d meant.

But that was later.

He tenses, jumps. His heavy sails forward, hits the man in the chest.

The sound of a shot. Yet he feels no pain. His jaws come down and find the man’s neck and tear.

There’s a scream from inside. An old woman, her aunt, crying. Hitting him—he barely feels her. He tears chunks of flesh and chews and the blood fills his mouth. He swallows, and howls, a terrifying, keening sound that makes the old woman cower away from him.

When he is done he goes outside. She is waiting for him, her eyes wide, her lips trembling. She is flushed. She wears only her thin night dress.

“Oh, Oz,” she says.

He growls and then he is on her, licking at her wounds, his tongue rasping across her soft, delicate skin.

“Oh, Oz!”

He doesn’t know if he is man or wolf. He only knows that she’s with him.

INT. CLUB WICKED—NIGHT

WESTERNA:

I could kill you right now and be done with it.

OZ:

Why don’t you?

He feels sleepy, later, with the feeding and the sex. It’s the first time they had gone all the way. “Get up,” she says. She is already dressed. “We need to bury him. It’s a shame you didn’t kill the other one.”

“She’s just an old woman,” he says, shocked. Dorothy shakes her head. “Sometimes I just don’t know about you,” she says. She had gone through the house, he saw. She shows him what she has—she has taken everything, jewelry and money and the old couple’s bank book.

“We have to go,” she says. “We have to hurry.”

They tie up the unconscious old woman and lock her in the bedroom. They bury the old man in a shallow grave by the barn. With the first rays of light they are at the bus station, waiting.

EXT. EMERALD CITY—DAYBREAK

The three flying monkeys drag OZ outside, onto the street. Wizened WESTERNA follows. Behind her comes a figure he barely recognizes, a woman he had been looking for.

But she is changed.

She wears high-heeled, spiked boots, a short skirt, tank top, gold bracelets, paint. She’s had a boob-job, a nose-job, a tummy tuck and ear reduction and liposuction. She is almost luminous in the light. She looks at him for a long time without saying anything.

OZ:

Dorothy.

DOROTHY:

We had something good between us, Oz, but now it’s gone. The city’s too big and too wild and no two people can hope to stay together when there’s so much to see and do and be. We had something going for a while and it was good—it was very good. But I am not the same girl and you’re the same guy you’ve been, Oz. You’re a small-town boy with a small-town mind and you’ll never make it big. Go back to Kansas, Oz. Go back to your garage and your bikes and your full-moon runs through empty fields. I’ve got a future, Oz, a bright and Technicolor future, and you’ve no part of it no more.

OZ:

Dorothy…

DOROTHY:

Forget it, Oz. It’s Emerald City.

She turns her back on him and, slowly, walks away, disappearing behind the doors of the club.

WESTERNA looks down at OZ with a look almost of compassion.

WESTERNA:

You’ll mend.

WESTERNA:

Young hearts heal quickly.

She nods to her monkeys and they swiftly untie OZ.

WESTERNA:

But don’t ever come back.

WESTERNA turns to leave, her monkeys following. OZ stares after her, making no move to get up.

WESTERNA:

Don’t come looking for the woman behind the screen.

As the sun rises over the sleeping town the bus pulls to a stop at the station. It picks up two passengers.

As it drives away Oz look through the window, at the small town receding behind them in the distance. But Dorothy doesn’t look back: she looks ahead.

Later, she holds him tight. Her smile is dazzling. “We’re going to the city!” she says, almost breathless. “It’s going to be so wonderful, Oz, so—so glorious!”

She seems delighted with the word. The world. He smiles. They kiss. Ahead of them the yellow brick road stretches, like a promise, into infinity.