Turning the Tables

This is for the regular Monday Flash Fic run by Helena and Brigham.

I sniffed the air as I walked along the landing. There was only one intruder, and he was feeling confident and... what was that? Anticipation. Excitement. He was looking forward to this.

As I rounded the corner to look down, the intruder had just started climbing the stairs. Whatever he was, he was no ordinary human, but he didn't look entirely like a wolf either. The arms and legs weren't so very different from my own, but the head was a grotesque caricature of a wolf. The lips were drawn back in a snarl of rage, and the creature's eyes and inch-long teeth gleamed in the light of my torch.

I remembered what Malcolm had said: not all werewolves were like Juan Pablo, totally indistinguishable from wolves in their shifted form. Some could only manage a partial shift. This one looked like some kind of nightmare hybrid, and it was coming at me fast.

There was no question of staying where I was. There simply wasn't room for Malcolm to maneuver. Not with these low ceilings. "Get out!" I shouted, then "window!" just to make sure Malcolm knew this wasn't the time to take the civilised route out through the front door.

By the time I reached our room, Malcolm had already jumped through the glass. I vaulted through, but wasn't quite quick enough. The intruder was right behind me, and moving fast.

I felt him grab me in mid-air, and sensed myself begin to react on pure instinct. My body was tearing into a million tiny pieces, and I was able to squash the urge just long enough to coil in midair, bringing the werewolf round me so that I landed on top.

Malcolm was a few yards away, having shifted on his way down. By the time the intruder was on his feet he was staring up into a gaping maw of four inch long razor sharp teeth. The bitter scent of self-recrimination rolled off the werewolf. We hadn't jumped through the window to escape him; we'd jumped because the bedroom was too small for Malcolm in his shifted form.

The intruder was so focused on his own foolishness, and my boyfriend's sudden increase in size and toothiness, he didn't see me give in to my own urge to shift.

A sharp snort from Malcolm was enough to send the intruder back on his ass, where the nine-inch claws on Malcolm's feet became more immediately apparent.

I began pulling myself back together, and turned to face them as I rose up from the gravel. Malcolm's head feathers fluffed and fell in inquiry.

"I think you made your point," I said. "He's not the scariest monster around."

Malcolm shrank back into his human form, the feathers withdrawing into the skin and dark hair sprouting to take their place. "Neither am I babe," he said, looking at me pointedly. "Oh, and you missed a few." He nodded at the gravel around me. I was surrounded by a seething mass of driver ants heading towards my bare feet.

The werewolf stared in increasing horror as my ants began crawling up my legs, gradually merging into me as they moved. Then he looked up, eyes bugging. "Seriously? You're a freaking army ant shifter?"

"And my boyfriend is a Utahraptor dinosaur," I said. "You werewolves are so passé."

555 words.