Scratch #1 (2004)

One night… likely one with a full moon… Zack was beckoned into the woods by an internal urge.  He feels sick… nauseous… suddenly, the transformation begins… his mouth juts out… his teeth grow pointy and large.  Smells grow more vibrant… a deer is on the horizon… instinct kicks in… the poor deer never had a chance.  In case I’m being a bit too obtuse, what I’m tryin’ to say is the kid turned into a werewolf.

He wakes up in his human state the following morning.  He is laying next to the eviscerated deer, and tries to come to grips with his actions of the night before.  He feels an itch in his malformed right “paw”, and wanders further into the woods.  What he wasn’t prepared for was how tired his body would be from last night’s activity… and so he slumps over… passing out in sight of a tiny cabin.

A woman and two children discover Zack’s body, and after noticing his deformity, decide to take him in.  This is an interesting scene, as we don’t get all that good a look at the boy’s saviors.  We mostly see them from behind… and while we do kinda get to see the woman’s face, it is mostly covered by her hair.  Zack wakes up and he and we get an eyeful of his rescue party.  It’s a pretty staggering sight… they are all physically deformed.  Zack feels comfortable… and hopeful, for the first time in a long while.

Morning comes, well two-days later… and with it, a whole bunch of backwoods yokels.  The creepy sheriff and a bunch of hillbillies are outside of the cabin, accusing the woman (Miss Sage) of abducting a young girl who had recently gone missing.  Sage is steadfast in her innocence, and we learn that at one point in the past, she herself had lost a daughter.  This ain’t good enough for the yokels, as one of them chucks a rock at her big-headed “son’s” big-head.

The sheriff is done negotiating and prepares to storm the cabin in search of the missing girl.  By this point, Zack is up and stirring again… and he’s not too keen on the small-towners invading his newly-found safe place.  He puffs out his (bare) chest and tells them to beat it.  They notice his hand-paw, and decide that discretion is the better part of valor.  As they depart, the sheriff posts a notice for the missing girl to a nearby tree.

We now shift to a brief cameo of a hulking monster with a bunch of eyes.  It carries a sack… presumably one that contains a living human… perhaps even the missing girl.  It walks past a tree with the missing girl poster, and tears it down.  The poster, that is… the tree is fine.

With all the excitement having died down, we get a quiet moment between Zack and Miss Sage.  She reveals that she came to town as a physical therapist… sent by the government as a public relations ploy… because this area had suffered a Chernobyl-style radiation bath, which led to a bunch of deformities and what-not.  When the funding dried up, she stayed out of moral obligation.  She shares that her deformity was with her since birth, and not a result of radiation.

Outside, the children see the eyeball monster chowing down on some livestock.  Zack “Scratches” up and lunges into action.  He yells at the beast to let the girl in the bag out… to which, the voice from the bag agrees… but, not with much of a sense of urgency.  She also calls the grotesque critter “Gloop-Gloop”… so, we will too.

So… Gloop-Gloop, he ain’t all that impressed with our teenage werewolf… He grabs him by his teeth, and slams him into the ground… at which point, he returns to his boyish figure.

In the distraction, Miss Sage tries to rescue sack girl… but gets a whack for her troubles.  Zack tells Gloop-Gloop “hands off”… but appears not to be able to change back in his werewolf form to punctuate his statement.  We are… [to be continued…]