The Introduction that will never happen

An Uncomfortable finding of themes in ‘The Wolves of Charlotte’

Draft 2

By: Chase L. Currie

“It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

It has taken me some time to understand the why for this story, and normally, I wouldn’t have gone looking for it. In truth, I didn’t too much go looking for the why in any of my stories. I believe there are many whys for every story, and stories can be about more than one thing or theme. You can have a story about love and still have death in the background as a theme. Or a story about death and have the joy of life as a theme under the main thought of the story. I believe this to be the case because life is much like this. When I have lost friends and family members, my days have been painted in gloomy emotions, but love, joy, and many other subjects were still found in those days. Those days were not the sole domain on one topic of my life.

                I believe this should be the case for your writing as well.

                I have read that Stephen King doesn’t look for a theme of his story until he goes back to edit it. The first draft and rightful so is simply him telling himself the story. This is true for all writers. Once the first draft is done, then you can go back to find the themes within the story.

                I have done the same, it has taken me some time to find the theme, but it is there. I found it on a walk the other day.

                The Wolves of Charlotte at first glanced is a story about a middle-aged man named George August, going back to his hometown to say goodbye to a childhood friend. The friend Jordan Rouge had killed himself. While at the funeral of his friend, he runs into the love of his youth, Maddie Thann, who simply ran away one day with her brother Grayson. George had never stopped loving Maddie but knew he would never see her again.

                He let her go all those years ago. He moved on and moved out of the city. He went to the other side of the United States, try to make it as an artist, failed, and works as a store manager now. The only good thing about his life is his girlfriend Lauren Michelle, who he plans on marrying soon.

                Until the phone call about Jordan comes ringing.

                Then he finds Maddie had come back for him. She still loves him. He still loves her. They fool around thinking it would be a fling and nothing more, but soon Maddie’s life catches up to them. Maddie and Grayson, unknown to George at the beginning of the story, are werewolves running away from their Alpha, Trent Salem, and his Pack, and a werewolf hunter is chasing them all.

                George is tossed into the middle of this world he never knew was real; he believes it was only in books and movies, but like all myths or fairy tales, there is some truth in them. It just happened to be a truth George wasn’t ready for in his life.

                No one is ready to know the monster under their bed is real; no one but the monster.

                As I was writing this story, I had no real idea what the theme was going to be outside the fact, werewolves, like animals, simply acted on their nature. It is much harder for a werewolf to control their urges for an act. If they want to hunt, then they do so. If they want to make love, then they do so, no matter who the person is, they simply want and act.

                Along the way, in this story, I started to notice I wrote a Bonnie and Clyde tale with werewolves in it. I was satisfied with the story being a retelling of the most fabulous outlaw couple in history. The twentieth century’s Romeo and Juliet myth we have all come to love. Like all good Shakespeare tragedies, it ends in death, and I was sure my story was going to be along the same lines.

                I didn’t think I needed to dig any deeper into the themes or meaning of the story. It was done. I was done thinking about and wanted to move onto my next work.

                But like I said before, on a walk, my mind started to question the whys of The Wolves of Charlotte.

I told my dad I was writing a story about werewolves. I explained to him the Hunter in the story, Moses Tozier (yes, the last name is from a King novel) was a part of this group called the Twelve. The Twelve are believed to be descendants of Nephilim who survived the Deluge. They carry with them halos, which allows them to fight against evil by blessing whatever object they are holding. If Moses is carrying a shotgun, then it is a sanctified shotgun. If he holds a knife is burning with righteous powers. Why does this matter? Well, the only way to kill a werewolf is with blessed silver. The standard sliver will not kill a wolf, might hurt them, but then again, getting shot or stab would hurt anyone.

                I got this idea from an old rule in D&D about how to kill a werewolf, blessed silver being the only thing to kill it, and felt it was a great rule to bring into my world. I set rules for all my stories of how the monster’s powers will work. It keeps them within a box and the power not too grand, allowing ordinary people a way to fight back.

                My dad said to me after I told him all this, “I hope you don’t make the werewolves the good guys.”

                “I won’t,” I told him, and I didn’t. And yet, the main characters, the ones we followed most in the story, are the werewolves. None of the wolves in the story are good people. Maddie selfishly wants George in her life because she knows “that death is the wages of sin,” as Bonnie Parker puts it. Maddie knows the long run will only end in one way, death for them all, but she can’t let go of George. Grayson, he doesn’t care about George, but the old friend allows him to start his Pack, something he wants to do. Trent and the old Pack want revenge at any cost, which is mostly their lives.

                They are not good people because they are not people. They have killed and tortured across the world, not caring one second about anyone else other than their kin.

                Then what about George? He is an average person running along with wolves, is he a monster? He did cheat on his girlfriend, someone he planned on marrying, but he also believed the one would never come back. You know, that one who got away? What would you do if they came back? It was Maddie for him, she was the one. She did come back just with blood dripping from her hands. He still goes with her after finding out the truth.

                Does that make him a bad man?

                Maybe, I’m not sure. It does make him unlikeable, but evil like the others? I don’t know.

                But I know what I did with, George. I see why he is there. Not merely to have someone new to the world for the reader to go along with, but to show the reader it is easier to fall for evil than to do the right thing. Doing good is hard; doing evil rather in the form of sin or evil actions is far easier to do because it is in our nature to do such things. We have to fight to be good.

                George fails.

                He couldn’t overcome his nature at all.

                The only good person in the whole book is Moses, and to everyone else, he is the monster. He is the evil hunting them. I mean, he is trying to kill them. It is his duty to do so. I like Moses a lot, but I also based him off my brother-in-law so that I might be a bit bias on the matter.

But he is essential to the story because as much evil that is in the world, there is also good there too. As Gandalf said to Fodor, “There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil.” Moses is the other force at work. As much as evil is always one step ahead of Moses or seem to be able to run wild in the world, he is trying with all his power to stop it. He chases the monsters under your bed as much as the monsters chase you.

                He even remarked to himself how much they are alike. Where the werewolves must hunt because it is a part of them, Moses being one of the Twelve, must hunt them because it is a part of him. What he is trying to say there is when good, men or angels or God, sees the will of evil acting then it much do something to act against it. Evil is always on the move to kill and destroy, but so is good on the move to stop it.

                At least, I hope it is in this world and not just in the world I have written in these pages.

                I do hesitate to tell you the themes I have found in my story. I don’t want to paint your reading of it in the same light as I see it. I want you to find your meaning in my story, but this is what I have found in the story. I did not set out to write a story about the condition of human nature; I simply wanted to write a retelling of Bonnie and Clyde as werewolves. A road trip story with a lot of blood and horror along the way. I want to have fun with writing a story, but it changed into something more.

                Even if you don’t find anything more profound in the story then a silly tale of werewolves, I hope you enjoy it. I hope you fall in love with some of the characters and can’t wait to see what happens to them. Some of them will make it to the end, others will not be so lucky, but you will have to read to find out what happened to them, my dear reader.

“You've read the story of Jesse James

of how he lived and died.

If you're still in need;

of something to read,

here's the story of …”

-          Bonnie Parker ‘The Trail’s End’