It all started suddenly. Strange beastly conditions were taking over select humans in a suburban town.
A 16 year old was sprouting an even spread of coarse brown hair all over her body. Elsewhere, a 45 year old married man with kids alarmed his family sick one night, interrupting their deep slumber with long echoing howls. Not far from them, a newborn baby learnt to reject his own mother when, while breastfeeding, she had unknowingly flashed sharp canines and a bovine stare at the poor cub. He’s scarred for life.
For weeks on end, these witnesses, bearing horrified audience to savagery, chose to keep it a secret from the world. While occurring only monthly, the results would last just for one terrorising night and magically disappear by sunrise. The fugly girl assumed it was nothing but her hormones going cray cray on the first night of her period. She simply hid in private till the Sun woke up again. The howler’s family dismissed his dramatics as an exaggerated sign of impending mid-life crisis. He was made to sleep on the couch on those unfortunate nights. As for the baby, his was a single mom. Every time she smothered him with kisses, he would shriek with trauma from the memory of her jungli avatar. It wasn’t possible for his tiny brain to rationalise this aberration, nor had he learnt the gift of the gab yet to call for help.
They all suffered in silence.
Until one night, their city’s Mayor infamously succumbed to a heart attack. When the clock struck 12, he had snuck into his grandmother’s room to wish her a happy 100th birthday. What he found was so shocking, that he dropped dead himself! There- sleeping on her bed was a lookalike of the Red Riding Hood’s villainous wolf. It was even uncannily wearing a floral nightgown.
News spread like a rash and outrage went viral! Poor granny couldn’t even mourn for her grandson’s passing in peace without doctors, priests, nosy relatives and dirty journalists paying her multiple curious and armed visits.
“After the Mayor’s passing and his grandmother’s illness, it has come to our attention,” the Health Minister for the Mathrabhoomi Janta Party said at a press conference, “that the ‘she-wolf’ only make her timely appearance on full moon nights. Medical authorities suspect it’s the result of a contagion passed on from the bite of a feral mutt to a human being, causing this recurring mutation in the RABID-19 virus. Mrs. Mehra exhibits serious symptoms, but strangely ONLY on full moon nights. As for how this inexplicable virus spreads, doctors and experts are yet to find a conclusive answer. Touch, exchange of fluids or blood transfusion have all been ruled out. This ladies and gentlemen, (and others), is a scientific anomaly, We are currently trying to determine who Patient Zero may be and request that people facing one or more similar symptoms, please voluntarily check in at the nearest government hospital and wait for further instructions.”
After news of this press conference went rogue, the aforementioned three victims dutifully turned themselves in, at the All Bharatiya Medical Institute. The 3 freaks of nature were promptly admitted, all to the same quarantine ward, way down in the windowless basement.
And… that’s when all hell broke loose!