The Transformation

Writober 2025: Day Seventeen Werewolves>Response Post

🔗Links in the Table of Contents are Jump links to my responses to each of the challenges
🐦‍⬛This is original work created by Maria L. Berg and this post counts as copyright. All rights reserved.

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Werewolves

These are my responses to the prompt post for Day 17 of Writober: A Howl in the Moonlight

OctPoWriMo

The Spiders of This Lake

Beware the spiders of this lake
I hear they’re drawn to water
like to hide under the leaves
but do not fear or scatter.

Beware the spiders of this lake
They see well when light is low:
their eyes have reflective structure
and reflect a creepy green glow.

Beware the spiders of this lake
I hear they live and hunt alone
but I have never seen just one;
they scare in packs in this home.

Beware the spiders of this lake
They like to sneak inside
seal all your cracks and gaps
or they’ll thrive where you reside.

Beware the spiders of this lake
I hear they grow and hunt and stalk
in the shadows of the moonlight
those giant spiders we call wolf.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

The Disappearance of Forest Ranger Richardson

Ranger Richardson felt responsible for everything that went on in his forest. In the last couple years tent camping had gone way down and campers had stopped requesting backcountry permits altogether. It was about two years ago when he had started hearing stories of aggressive animal behavior especially at night deep in the forest and he had fielded several calls about campers who had not returned home. Then this year he heard some complaints from the campgrounds. But extended field testing showed that there wasn’t a problem with rabies. This weekend, there wasn’t a single tent in the campground closest to the forest. 

He had to do something, so Ranger Richardson left his cozy forest ranger lodge and set up a tent in the campground. It was a quiet night. Too quiet. He didn’t even hear the buzz of a mosquito. The light from the full moon lit up the campground and the edge of the forest. The ranger set up a folding chair and stared into the dark trees, waiting. He must have dozed, because a high pitched scream woke him with a start. The scream came again and again like a metronome. Straight ahead in the trees he saw a pair of reflectively glowing eyes. Then another, and another.

“Hey!” he yelled. “Who’s there?”

The shadows moved like smoke, disappearing behind the trees. No one answered. He waited, silently pulling his flashlight from his belt. He heard branches breaking overhead and saw the glowing eyes in the trees. He shined his flashlight. It looked like a very large squirrel. Ranger Richardson laughed. He hadn’t realized how afraid he was until that moment. 

He turned toward his tent shaking his head, “Squirrels. Really. They’re all scared of squirrels.” Then he felt the weight on his back. It pushed him into his tent. Something scratched at his back he flailed and rolled. He saw something run out of the flap. He zipped it shut.  

“Whoa, they really are aggressive. That was a big-ass squirrel.”

When day broke, he dared to leave his tent and was shocked to see that he was not alone. Several campers had slept naked under the stars and one man that he recognized as one of the backcountry campers who had never checked out of the park, appeared to have a piece of the ranger uniform collar between his front teeth. Ranger Richardson reached behind his head and found the back of his collar torn. 

Halloween Photography Challenge

For today’s images I cut a paper filter of a human turning into a wolf, then I used the panoramic setting on my camera to try to capture the transformation over time. The panoramic function really didn’t want to work with this image, so I feel very happy that I got these two pictures.