GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: BROTHER

BROTHER

He was seventeen when the call came.

They said it was a miracle—finally a matching donor, with a perfect heart. My parents cried tears of joy. I just stared at the carpet. I didn’t know what to feel. My big brother Danny had been sick for most of my life. Dilated cardiomyopathy, they called it. His heart was too weak, too big and just not good at being a heart. For years, I watched him fade—pale, tired, sometimes blue-lipped and wheezing after walking upstairs. But then came the transplant and then came the change.

He came home from the hospital glowing—with an immediate change in everything about him. Never before had I seen him like this in my eleven years of life. In a week, he was running. In two, bench-pressing things in the garage that used to make him gasp just looking at them. The doctors were baffled, but thrilled. They said it was the fastest recovery they’d ever seen. “A complete turnaround,” they said. “Like a new person.” And he was.

Danny was different. It started subtly with small things I noticed. His laugh got louder, eyes darker, his walk more intentional and his confidence stronger. He used to sleep a lot, now at night I’d hear him pacing in his room, back and forth, back and forth, long after everyone had gone to bed. He’d mutter sometimes. Sniff the air. It was odd. But nobody noticed besides me.

Then came the dog. I found Bailey in the backyard on a Wednesday morning before school. She didn’t greet me as usual when I got up and I went looking for her. When I finally found her, she was torn apart, like something had exploded inside her. 

My parents told me she must’ve gotten hit by a car and dragged herself home or it was a coyote. I didn’t argue, but I’d seen the fence. The deep scratches and the fur stuck in the wood. Whatever got her had teeth. Big ones. I wasn’t stupid. Neither were they.

That weekend, a neighbor was found dead in his kitchen. Face gone. Like it had been peeled off with claws. His insides were gone, eaten out by some animal. More coyotes were blamed and bullshit ensued. All the coyotes I’d ever seen were ragged, hungry looking things, no bigger than a Husky and I doubted they could do that to anyone.  

Mom made us stay inside for a few days. Said it was probably a wild animal. “Maybe a bear,” Dad offered. But we both knew that made no sense. Not here. Not in our neighborhood.

And Danny? He didn’t say a word about it. Just kept growing stronger. Faster. Weirder.

By fall, people were whispering about missing kids. Dead livestock. Cows gutted in the fields. Blood pooling in the ditches. The police said it was a pack of coyotes. Some of the idiots I went to school with blamed it on aliens. The town put up flyers offering rewards for the coyotes. 

Danny watched it all with this blank, almost bored expression—like he’d seen this movie already and knew how it ended.

One night I stayed up, hidden under my blanket, clutching the iPad. I waited until I heard his window slide open. Then I crept down the hall and peeked out mine.

He was in the backyard, hunched over. And then... he changed.

I didn’t want to believe it—my brain screamed at me to run—but I kept watching. His spine cracked and popped, stretching his frame. Hair sprouted like wildfire across his back. His mouth—no, his snout—split open into something that didn’t belong on a human face. I saw his hands become claws. Saw his eyes, glowing like dying suns. 

I don’t remember sleeping that night.

The next morning, I confronted him.

He was calm, sitting at the kitchen table, spooning cereal into his mouth like nothing had happened. I walked right up to him and slammed the silver chain down in front of him. He laughed. Picked it up. Nothing happened.

"You think I’m a vampire or something?" he said, eyes twinkling.

“You’re a werewolf,” I said. “I saw you.”

He didn’t answer. Just stood up and punched me in the chest so hard I flew backwards into the fridge. He stared down at me, like he wanted to say something, but turned and walked out.

That night, I locked my door. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t sleep. Then, I heard something stirring outside just after three in the morning. I took my iPad and propped it up on my night stand and hit record.

I heard the crash before I saw the window shatter. He came through it like a missile—glass everywhere, claws out, fangs bared. He was going to tear me apart.

I scrambled back into the corner of my room, holding up the only thing I had left: a photo.

It was the two of us. At the lake. Before the surgery. He had his arm around me, grinning like the sun was inside him. I held it out with shaking hands.

His body twitched. The monster froze.

And then it let out this horrible, guttural howl—like it was choking on its own grief—and bolted through the hallway, crashing out the back door and into the woods.

The next morning, he was human again.

He didn’t remember anything—until I showed him the video.

He cried. He said it must’ve been the heart. That whoever donated it must’ve been... infected, cursed or freshly bitten. Whatever it was, it wasn’t natural. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. He didn’t want to be this thing—this monster.

“I need to find out who gave me this heart,” he told me. “I need to know what I’ve become.”

“I’ll help you, you’re my brother,” I said.

He hugged me. Told me he loved me and thanked me for being so brave and strong. But that night, he was gone. Vanished without a word. That was eleven years ago.

I’m twenty-two now, just graduated from college and I’ve been working a boring office job all through school. I’ve saved up a lot of cash and I told my parents I’m taking some time off. 

They think I’ve moved on, but I haven’t. Not really. Not since that night. Not since I watched my brother turn into a nightmare and then disappear into the darkness. 

Since then I’ve become something of an expert on the subjects of lycanthropy, werewolf lore and shapeshifting. A day hasn’t gone by that I haven’t wondered about him.

And yesterday... I got a message. A photo and a video.

It was blurry and grainy, with poor sound quality—taken on a trail cam in the Catskills. A dark shape—tall, hunched, eyes glowing. But it wasn’t the image of the creature that made my blood run cold, it was the audio from the grainy video. The haunting, tortured howl that I played over and over. The very same one that pierced my soul that night in my room, eleven years ago. It only belonged to one person, one beast—one brother.

So I packed a bag. I’m headed upstate. I think I’ve found him.

And if I’m right, I’m not coming back until I do.

Art and story by Hal Hefner.
Produced by Catmonkey Studio