Like a werewolf, Phil went crazy on full moon nights seeking fights. He prowled bars, hard-eying male patrons, goading them into anything-goes fistfights, which he always won, as if the powered-up moonbeams made him unstoppable, like a lycanthropic creature of the night.

Foolishly, a humped-back old man, bent with age, picked a fight with Phil, who told the foolish, probably drunk geezer he’d get killed fighting him, a younger, stronger man who never lost a fight. The old man, insanely confident or with a death wish, called Phil a lowlife coward. With that insult, Phil had no choice but to set the old fogey straight and show him the folly of fighting an unbeatable foe half his age.

The cocky old man set the terms; in the alley behind the bar, they were to fight under the moon’s full, bright light. Seconds after they strode into the alley, an unmanly scream shrieked through the night, preceding an eerie silence. Then an unholy howl, sounding like something out of hell, echoed in the alley and shattered the silence, terrifying all who heard it. And Phil never made it out of that alley, his corpse bloodied and in shreds.

Bob Boyd