Pride Month – Flash Fiction Challenge 1/30

TBC Publishing in the Philippines issued a Flash Fiction Challenge for Pride Month to all their published authors. Here is my entry for June 1, 2025.

Title: Moonlit

Word count (500 maximum): 421

Author: R. Scott Tyler

On this night, the moon’s color and fullness spoke of passionate intensity. Its focus, streaming through the branches, would not miss its intended target. Stirred from his slumber by the moonlight, Lortham stretched, his ears began to tingle, and his nose began to twitch.

He removed what clothing he was wearing and opened himself to the coming shift. It became easier with repetition, and the lust grew stronger with every metamorphosis. He became more relentless in his mid-moon hunting, so obsessed that everything from his previous existence became like a dream. He seldom wandered aimlessly when the fullness of the moonlight came.

This time was no different, except it was. Lortham’s eagerness was at a peak because of the human who had captured his attention before the full-moon period. Running with stealth, on paws woolly and adorned with claws capable of lacerating a path to get to fleshy obstacles, the moon beast was near his intended prey in under an hour. There would only be one chance. It had not been difficult to find a den near the old canal. For more than 200 years, the area had been working class, and the canal, just as old, provided a trade access through the city.

He watched as his focus, Jacob, turned to pull the old door closed behind him and lock it, not noticing the glowing yellow eyes hidden behind overflowing refuse cans in the alley, just a short distance from his home. Turning to the north, as he did every weekend evening, Jacob stuck strong hands in tight jeans and headed for Legends, a hangout for “his kind”. Lortham trailed him until they were within feet of his prepared den, then attacked and struck him in the shoulders with both front paws.

It was more challenging to pull Jacob into the den than Lortham initially anticipated. This was mainly because the shirt Jacob wore kept tearing away, and his jeans were too tight to get a solid mouthful without damaging what was underneath. However, now it was done. Lortham gently mouthed Jacob’s neck, being sure to intermingle their blood. As daylight broke, he used his dirt-crusted fingers to remove the remaining shredded pieces of his prey’s clothing. Everything underneath was undamaged, and as he remembered seeing through Jacob’s poorly covered windows.

He burrowed in close to ease Jacob’s transitional pain and the panting of Jacob’s reforming body. He would stay in the den, feverishly waiting for the next evening’s moonlight and the orgone life force they were sure to share.

Read this and other entries in Facebook at TBC Publishing.