A "Wolf", a Girl and Her Grandmother

The Observer's eyes had no whites; they were simply two glowing red points in the dark. His face, which a human might describe as unmistakably wolf-like, was covered in luxuriant red fur. An elegant, black-tipped nose — moist with his breath — and a long lipless mouth with a double row of white teeth completed his visage.

His ancestors had been sentient parasites who swam and glided through the dense atmosphere of their home world in search of the huge and dumb prey beasts they used as hosts. They were free, and not slaves to gravity; unlike these damned humans.

The feeling of having the ground below his feet was nauseating and disconcerting when the shuttle had dropped him into what the locals called a cornfield - it had taken several days for him to acclimatise and to get used to walking on the ground. Thankfully, by then, he no longer felt the painful cybernetic augments and artificial lungs his Science Team had surgically inserted into his body - without them, Earth’s toxic atmosphere and strong gravity would have killed him in minutes.

But, he was also thankful that his flat, boneless body remained manta-shaped as it had been on his homeworld, still covered in the same gorgeous red fur as his head. Six pairs of evenly-spaced grasping legs growing from the sides of this furry mantle — each one tipped by a sharp ivory claw — had been modified for locomotion thanks to implants in his joints. Perched on these limbs and raising his flattened, muscular mass off the ground, he looked like a red-furred version of one of the big, hairy sheep dogs the humans raised to guard their livestock. That, or a shaggy, red-furred wolf, so long as he took the trouble to retract his numerous feet beneath his pelt and mantle. At least, from a distance.

He had fooled many humans like this, running along the periphery of their village at night, collecting data that additional cybernetic implants in his brain relayed to the Science Team. Some terrified farmers had shot at him with their ridiculous weapons, but he had no fear - his fur and mantle were tough enough to withstand the force of the measly pellets. He detested the humans and their superstitions, their strange concept of religion and of fearing the unknown.

The Observer envied his colleagues. "How cosy they must," he had told himself. All nice and comfy in their massive ship floating in the stratosphere while he had to endure the cold, the gunshots, the screaming humans who caught a glimpse of him in the night as he collected his data.

Then one day, all communications ceased. Not a single message, not a single beep from his receiving gadgets. Silence.

The Observer was now alone. Perhaps they encountered an enemy scout vessel - he could think of half a dozen cosmic polities that would have loved to take over this planet - and were forced to flee. Or something worse. The possibilities were numerous and all were equally depressing to think about.

Undaunted, he continued his observations, recording the designs of their dwellings, the various species of domestic animals they kept, the materials they used to make their peculiar clothing. And their language, those strange sounds the humans enunciated when they communicated with each other.

If one compared the average human lifespan to the length of time it took for a single drop of rain to fall from the sky and touch the ground, then the Observer's people must live lives measured in torrential thunderstorms and typhoons.

Ten months of that immeasurably long life he had been marooned among the dull humans and he hated it. The Observer hated the village in whose outskirts he was forced to hide and lurk. He hated the brevity and boring simplicity of the villagers' existence. And the smell of grime and organic filth everywhere, both human and animal - those made it infinitely worst.

Then one day, a glimmer of hope. A message beeped into his mind. We are coming. Enemy scout attack. We hid in the rings of Saturn for several months. Half of the crew dead. Will attempt rescue during next Opening in 21 Earth days. Ensure that you have sufficient nutrients to last till then.

The year was - by the arbitrary and primitive system of reckoning time the locals used in that part of the planet - the Year of the Lord, 1808. And as fate would have it, on the brink of his rescue, the Observer was dying. Universe be damned.

The main problem was, quite simply, that the nutrient sacs implanted on his underside had been used up during his months of being marooned. The duration of the mission had been set at six lunar cycles. Ten cycles had come and gone. He was starving to death, on a world he was not meant to exist in.

He was also tired of the pull of this damned planet's gravity; tired of feeling his six furry, multi-jointed legs sinking into fetid mud and stinking animal droppings with every step; tired of his bright red pelt being constantly pummeled with cold rains. Tired of sheltering underneath a covering of strange-smelling leaves and twigs during the day.

But that was all of minor importance. His thick fur, once a bright red, was quickly darkening to a drab grey-black - he was becoming female - the last stage of life for his people. For his people, it happened during the last few decades before death, unless one considered death to be the next stage of one's existence. But that was a question best left to philosophers and thinkers.

At the edge of the village of Alzenau in Unterfranken, an elderly female human lived alone. The Observer had been watching her for several days. He crawled up the wall of her cottage - the effort was painful and exhausting. He could feel the Change happening at the same time - the shifting of internal organs, the slight rearranging of muscle structure, the new reproductive organs growing inside him.

His (or perhaps more appropriately now, her?) people were intelligent hermaphroditic parasites - they attached themselves to the large floating prey beasts of their home world, tapping into their nervous and taking over all functions. They steered the prey beasts to graze and hunt the various cloud animals dwelling in the atmosphere. They slowly absorbed the nutrients from them until the creatures were depleted. Then, once the beast was too weak to feed, the parasite would detach and fly off to look for another prey beast to take over.

They hatched from tubular eggs, grew to adulthood in brood nurseries, lived as red-haired males until the end of their long lives when they became black-furred female for the last few decades. Then they spawned and died.

In her desperation, for she wanted to ensure that her mission would be completed, the Observer was going to attempt the unthinkable. She was going to parasitise a human, at least in theory.

The implants should and augments, though untested in this respect, should enable her to take over the nervouse and digestive system of a human host.

Once she had absorbed enough nutrients, she could go into hibernation at least until another vessel

The old human female was asleep when the Observer entered her cottage, folding and contorting her body silently through the half-open window. She unfolded herself and scuttled toward the old woman's bed.

She extended a clawed limb over the snoring old womans forehead. Then she launched tiny, whipping tendrils from the claw tip, gently tickling the pores on the old woman's before they sending them burrowing in.

The old woman, as Universe would have it, had a granddaughter who visited her often. The girl arrived later than anticipated, but given the deplorable conditions of human roads, this was not unexpected. “Grandma? It’s me.” She walked in and shut the door, first removing her soiled gaiters, then her red cloak. She hung her cap on a metal hook nailed into the wall.

“How are you, Grandma?”

As she walked towards the bed, she froze.

Grandma was sitting up, dressed in her usual shift and nightcap. Heavy woolen blankets covered her up to her neck. Breadcrumbs lay all over bed as if she had been gorging on entire loaves of bread. Her darkened expression was terrifying. He eyes bulged as if invisible claws held her eyelids wide-open. Her mouth was pulled back in an unnaturally wide grin, like a child trying to mimic the death-smile of a skeleton. Her ears were stretched out and appeared to twitch, like a dog or a cat. Under her blanked, something large was moving around her midsection.

The girl’s eyes were moist, her horrified expression accompanied by tears of shock. She could not look away. Terror did not hold her frozen, fascination did. She wanted to keep on staring.

The Observer — legs curled around the old woman’s midriff under the blanket, filament tendrils penetrating into her nervous system — used her vocal cords to speak, gently coaxing her mouth to form sounds, borrowing her voice. “You have something for me?”

The girl forced herself to nod at her grandmother, “I … I have some fruits, cheese, cake and wine for you.” She pointed to the basket.

Excellent, she brought more food. The floury thing was calory-dense but nutrient poor. These would do.

The Observer - wearing Grandma like a suit - nodded and her twisted smile stretched even wider, eliciting a gasp from her granddaughter.

“Thank you. My child.” The Observer had dug into the old woman’s psyche to harvest the words and grammar for their language. "Come here and give me the basket."

The silly girl kept on staring at her grandmother’s strange, contorted face. “Your ears, what big ears you have.”

The Observer was getting impatient. The old woman's terrified consciousness was fighting back. The Observer's expected the girl to notice her grandmother’s aberrant behaviour anyway.

The Observer managed to force the old woman to say, “The better to hear you with, my child.” It was a silly response, but when talking to primitive humans, one never knew.

“I … I don’t believe you. Your eyes are so,… I mean, what big eyes you have.”

The Observer forced Grandma’s lips and throat to produce a reply through gnashing teeth, “The better to see you with, my child.”

This time, the girl took a step backwards.

Alright, this is getting annoying. Her screaming might attract others. Might as well parasitise her to shut her up.

The Observer disengaged from the old woman’s nervous system, retracted tendrils from her spine and crawled out from underneath the heavy woolen blankets like a dark ghost rising from its shroud. The old woman slumped backward on to her pillows, slack-faced and unconscious.

The girl screamed, as expected.

The Observer leapt at the girl and extended her tendrils. Penetrating the tender skin in a thousand places, they were fine enough to reach into his nervous system without drawing a single drop of blood. There was no pain, no sensation. Until the Observer took full control and felt the flows and counter-flows of thoughts - images, sensations, sounds and smells.

Suddenly, the Observer felt the metal. The shocking sense of intrusion, the heaviness of the sharpened blade, the agonising pressure of her fibrous skull being split apart by a bloody primitive axe. She felt the sudden rush of cold air on her bared tissues, exposed nerves firing in mad bolts. And blood, frightening amounts of her blood, oxidising to a vibrant green in Earth’s atmosphere.

She released her hold on the girl, withdrawing flailing tendrils, and realised what had happened: during the link; someone else had entered the cottage. The intruder had an axe (yes, that was the name she had drawn out of the girl's memories). Such a simple implement, a metal tool to chop wood, now being employed as a weapon of defense. By sheer coincidence the male intruder had swung the metal blade into the weak spot at the base of the Observer's skull.

As her synapses died, the Observer, dropped to the ground. Her black mantle flattened out and drooped, many legs splayed out in a threatening display. She tried to extend one wicked-looking claw at him, attempting to parasitise him. She stopped halfway and dropped dead on the floor of Grandma's cottage.

One day later, after receiving reports of a bizarre wolf-creature attacking a local woman and her granddaughter, mayor of Alzenau in Unterfranken sent men to investigate. They came upon the tiny cottage in the forest, shocked expressions beneath their helmeted visages as they surveyed the strange carnage.

Part of the wall by the door was covered in sprays of odd green blood layered with vile gobs of heaven-knows-what-else. The putrefying beast, a black wolf with a strange, flat body and too many legs, lay dead inside the cottage. There was an axe in its head and it smelled repulsive.

They found the confused old woman at the back hugging her visibly-shaken granddaughter. They claimed the beast had entered the house and “eaten” the grandmother while she slept. As the men stared at them in disbelief, they continued narrating the strange tale. “The beast pretended to be my grandmother, speaking to me with her voice,” said the pretty girl who was eighteen years old and unusually tall. “Then it tried to eat me.”

She told them how a woodsman who was passing by had heard her screaming. He then rushed in and killed the creature with an axe.

The soldiers politely offered to help them with the foul task of cleaning up the cottage. “And the body?” asked one grizzled old officer. “Burn it,” said his superior. “And say the Lord’s Prayer while you’re at it. That thing must be from Hell.”

Many years later the people of Alzenau in Unterfranken still chattered about the girl in the red hood who found a strange, talking wolf that had eaten her grandmother.

Chatter became gossip; gossip became myth; myth became legend.