Were!Henry drabblings
Was feeling for some whump and still had the writing inspo so… I took the opportunity!
1702 words, slight body horror
Enjoy!
It was a quiet evening at Baskerville Hall. The sun had just set as Henry Baskerville sat in the main hall, his eyelids starting to get heavy while he was dreaming away with a book. A little bit of bedtime reading was… nice. He had not been feeling so well the last few days, despite Watson telling him that he could not find anything wrong with him upon examination. Still… Henry had felt… uneasy as of late. He did not quite know why, but he was restless. He had not been sleeping well, either. When night fell, the young lord could not help but stare out of the window, looking out over the moonlit moors while a sense of… fear crept up on him. He did not know why he felt frightened. There was just a feeling of terrible things to come whenever he looked out on the moors at night. And yet, he could not keep himself from doing it.
This was exactly why he had taken out a book before bedtime. He hoped that it would make him sleep a bit better. Just a few moments of quiet during which he could decompress from the day before he would go to bed. For now… he had the feeling it worked quite well, actually. Watson had shown him some of Holmes’ case reports that he was working on, so he was quite enthusiastically reading through those.
He smiled faintly while he did so. He hoped that the detective would come to Dartmoor soon. His… his presence was calming. It reassured Henry that things would be fine, just like when he had saved him from that tarantula. The nobleman shivered. He was in desperate need of reassurance. He felt like something was wrong, and yet he could not pinpoint what. Holmes would be able to tell what was going on, Henry thought to himself. And even if he couldn’t… then the fact that he was there would already help the young lord greatly. He… just needed comfort, really. This apparent plot to kill him… this… restless feeling he had been suffering from… none of it felt right. And yet, the nobleman felt like he could not talk about it to anyone.
Henry let out a sigh, before yawning and stretching his muscles. If he was going to keep on reading for any longer, he would fall asleep right then and there. The thought of spending the night in a large chair did not seem very comfortable to him… he would go to bed.
The young lord sleepily rubbed his eyes, putting Watson’s record on the table before him before standing up. He let out another yawn. He finally felt tired after all these days of going to bed nervous. It was a welcome change. He walked over to the staircase, a faint smile on his face.
…He froze in place though, as a wave of pain suddenly rushed through him.
…His heart.
Henry let out a gasp, his body keeling over as he clutched onto his chest. It… it hurt. His heart was pounding with such an intensity that it frightened the young lord. Why would his arteriosclerosis start acting up now of all moments…? He had not overexerted his body at all the last few days… he had been completely calm before it happened… so why did it hurt so much?
But then the young lord’s eyes widened in terror as he realised that it was not just his heart that was causing him pain.
…His hands were suddenly cramping so strongly that his entire arm tensed up.
Breathing heavily, Henry looked down at them, crying out in fear as he saw what was happening to them. His… his fingers were stretching out and curling up. His nails were getting longer and sharper by the second. But the thing that terrified the most was the back of his hands. The hairs there were getting thicker and longer by the second.
Was that… fur that was sprouting from his hands…?
The young lord whimpered loudly, seeing the brown hairs spread all over his fingers as his hands were starting to look more and more like claws. In a panic, he felt around the rest of his body. The… the fur was starting to appear there, as well. His breathing was getting faster and faster as he stumbled towards the Hall’s front door, gasping and wheezing loudly as he felt his feet cramping up too, his toes now feeling painfully trapped by his shoes as they grew in size while he desperately reached for the doorknob.
…What in God’s name was happening to him…?
Regardless of all that, he needed to get out of here. He could not let anyone see him like this… with all this going on. It was hideous. On the brink of hyperventilation, Henry staggered outside, his feet hurting more and more until they burst out of his shoes. The young lord let out a cry of anguish as he saw them. They… they were also completely covered in brown fur by now, his toes having contorted into razor-sharp claws. They were getting unbearably uncomfortable to stand on. The young lord had no choice but to run on them, though. He needed to get away.
It did not take long for him to fall down on his knees though, his heels stretching out as he let out an agonising wail of pain. He bent over, leaning on his elbows and grabbing his head as he began to grunt heavily, squeezing his eyes shut. He could hear the sound of fabric tearing as his legs stretched out even more and his spine began to contort, his back arching up and ripping his dress shirt to shreds as he grew what felt like… a tail. It lashed about violently as his breathing was starting to sound more and more like snarling. He felt the fur starting to grow on his face too now, his ears contorting into a pointed shape as hair was sprouting all over them as well.
Why… why was this happening to him? Why was he in all this agonising pain, and why were all these things happening to his body? This should not be possible… and yet, Henry was experiencing it clear as day. It… it was unbearable. Every passing second, the young lord could feel his body contorting more and more, and he had no idea what was going on. It… terrified him. Tears streaming down his face, the nobleman leaned on his hands again, his eyes widening in horror as he realised that they could not even be called hands anymore. They… they were paws. Terrified beyond belief, the young lord cried out into the night in an attempt for scream for help.
That… did not quite happen, though. Not a single word left his lips. Instead, the noise that escaped him was a bloodcurdling howl. Henry froze in terror as he heard it. Eyes widening in sheer fear, he covered his mouth with his paws, horrified by the noises he was making. To his horror though, that was not his face that he was feeling anymore. It was stretching out, the young lord yelping out in pain as he felt his skull deform. Panting as tears streamed down his face, he pushed against his snout as hard as possible, desperately hoping that that would make it all stop. It… it had to stop. He could not bear this. It was downright torturous. He… he had just wanted a quiet night of rest and sleep… not this… this agony… What was happening to him?
He slumped down to the ground, whining pitifully as he opened his eyes with look of misery. He felt… tired. So… very… tired… He looked back at the hall, knowing that he could not possibly go back there while his body looked like this as his vision was starting to get… blurry. He was starting to feel dizzy… the world was spinning all around him as he began to drift away more and more.
To his terror, though… he felt his body starting to move while he was on the brink of slipping away. What… what was going on? That… was not him directing those movements… what was happening…
Then, everything went black as the werewolf clenched its teeth and snarled, angrily roaring out into the night before it ran away.
***
When Henry awoke again, his head hurt… immensely. It felt as if it had been hit by a bag of bricks. As soon as he opened his eyes again though, he froze up in terror. He… he was lying in a bush near the Hall, his body stripped of all clothing as he lay there, shivering. There… there was something stuck in his mouth. The young lord felt around his lips in a panic, breathing out a sigh of relief as he felt that his face was just as it had been again, but that relief soon vanished as he saw the blood that his fingers had wiped away from his lips.
What… what had he done…?
His panic did not simmer down in the slightest as he felt in between his teeth, eventually pulling out some small, fractured bones and a piece of grey fur. Henry whimpered in anguish as soon as he saw it. What… had happened last night…? All those things he had experienced… they could not be real… right…? It must have been a severe heart attack… it must have been… he had simply panicked and imagined things that weren’t there… yes… that was it… Everything… everything was all right…
…But why was he here outside, then…? And why was he completely naked…?
As soon as he realised that he had no answer to those questions, the young lord covered his face with his hands and wept. Did… did that mean that all those things… that horrible transformation… had happened? What was going on with him? Why did no one warn him of this? And most of all… how was he supposed to deal with this all…?
“…Help…”, he softly whimpered, sobbing bitterly as he shivered in the cold. “…Help… What’s… what’s happening to me…?”