Though Bloodfang appears nowhere on our subject’s birth certificate, using his online alias will save his family much embarrassment. He liked to think he was a wolf and though it sometimes stretched her patience his mother usually indulged him. Describing his behaviour in full would bore, if not disgust, most readers, but recent events are informative.





As Easter approached in 2019, Bloodfang and his mother went shopping at the local mall. Besides their normal groceries they bought food and medicine for Bloodfang’s ailing grandmother, who lived in a nursing home on the other side of town. While waiting in line at the butcher, Bloodfang looked at the meat on display and started panting and salivating. His mother noticed and told him to stop. Bloodfang growled at her so threateningly everyone else in the shop turned and stared.





“That’s enough,” said Bloodfang’s mother. She gave her son a shopping bag. “It’s time you learned to act your age. I want you to walk to your grandmother’s, give her this bag and explain why you’re late. Then you can find your own way home.”





Without a whimper Bloodfang left. The road to his grandmother's passed a heavily forested nature reserve that triggered his most wolfish instincts. Bloodfang stopped to sniff the air and saw a brightly coloured egg on the ground. He picked it up and saw it was chocolate wrapped in tinfoil. Bloodfang could not resist this temptation. He had barely finished eating when he saw another egg a few steps away and another deeper in the forest. He forgot about his grandmother and followed the trail of chocolate eggs, and as he ate he told himself he was a fearsome hunter indeed.





When the trail finally ended Bloodfang realised it was late and he was completely lost. He could not retrace his steps as he’d eaten every egg he’d found and put the wrappers in his bag out of respect for the Wolf Goddess he’d adopted on DA. Bloodfang sniffed the air again but it made no difference. He pulled out his smartphone and was just about to call his mother when a twig snapped, prompting him to turn.





Bloodfang almost dropped his phone. A horribly mutated rabbit had appeared among the trees. “What big ears, teeth and claws you have,” he thought, but kept this to himself because his friends on Tumblr had warned him about body shaming. The monster showed no such restraint. It sprang forward, grabbed him by the throat, and disembowelled him with one kick. In his last moments of consciousness Bloodfang had the awful realisation he would never be a wolf.



