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From The Wild by Whitley Strieber (first released April 1991):
Skimming through an old favorite. Please forgive any typos.
Excerpt from pages 6-7:
"As a boy in Texas he had watched the night sky, the racing moon, and dreamed his dreams of the wild. There was one dream he would never forget. Even though it had happened when he was eleven, it was still vivid in his memory.
"In this dream he had been a wolf. He had been awakened in the thick of night by an amazing, intoxicating odor. His eyes had snapped open and his whole body had been quivering. The moon had shone down like the eye of some wild god. Waves of fierce pleasure had surged through him, deranging his senses, overwhelming his childish fear of the dark.
"He had leaped out of bed, unlatched the screen window with fumbling, desperate fingers, and rushed off into the night. He remembered scuttling across the porch roof beneath his window, then leaping into the moon-silver air. He'd landed as gracefully as an animal on all fours. Then there were dew-damp leaves slapping his face, and the pulsing, rushing of a beautifully muscled body, his heart breaking with obscure passions of overwhelming power, odors of the night filling his brain, intoxicating him -- then, for the first and only time, he was alive.
It was like leaping and crawling at the same time. The world was transformed by a great white magic, the moon spreading its glow everywhere, and he was happy, all the cares of a dull childhood gone, and he was suddenly free in the night and he threw back his head and shook his body and he howled out the piercing joy that filled him blood and bone and soul.
"Then he was awake. True, his pajamas were covered with grass stains and there was a dried leaf in his hair. True also, it was seven o'clock in the morning and he had a math quiz to look forward to. He had gone off to school, smell of paste, math exercise book, the classroom shades drawn against the glory of the morning sun. But forever after, he had wondered if perhaps, for a little while in the dead of night, he had been a wolf. It was truly an intoxicating thought, a delicious thought. Man into wolf. Running. Howling. Leaping on the quaking innocent.
"But he had never really escaped that classroom he entered on the morning after his magic, and now the caged wolf's eyes mocked him for it. And he thought, You, are you a man who became a wolf, locked in there now?"
Excerpt from pages 6-7:
"As a boy in Texas he had watched the night sky, the racing moon, and dreamed his dreams of the wild. There was one dream he would never forget. Even though it had happened when he was eleven, it was still vivid in his memory.
"In this dream he had been a wolf. He had been awakened in the thick of night by an amazing, intoxicating odor. His eyes had snapped open and his whole body had been quivering. The moon had shone down like the eye of some wild god. Waves of fierce pleasure had surged through him, deranging his senses, overwhelming his childish fear of the dark.
"He had leaped out of bed, unlatched the screen window with fumbling, desperate fingers, and rushed off into the night. He remembered scuttling across the porch roof beneath his window, then leaping into the moon-silver air. He'd landed as gracefully as an animal on all fours. Then there were dew-damp leaves slapping his face, and the pulsing, rushing of a beautifully muscled body, his heart breaking with obscure passions of overwhelming power, odors of the night filling his brain, intoxicating him -- then, for the first and only time, he was alive.
It was like leaping and crawling at the same time. The world was transformed by a great white magic, the moon spreading its glow everywhere, and he was happy, all the cares of a dull childhood gone, and he was suddenly free in the night and he threw back his head and shook his body and he howled out the piercing joy that filled him blood and bone and soul.
"Then he was awake. True, his pajamas were covered with grass stains and there was a dried leaf in his hair. True also, it was seven o'clock in the morning and he had a math quiz to look forward to. He had gone off to school, smell of paste, math exercise book, the classroom shades drawn against the glory of the morning sun. But forever after, he had wondered if perhaps, for a little while in the dead of night, he had been a wolf. It was truly an intoxicating thought, a delicious thought. Man into wolf. Running. Howling. Leaping on the quaking innocent.
"But he had never really escaped that classroom he entered on the morning after his magic, and now the caged wolf's eyes mocked him for it. And he thought, You, are you a man who became a wolf, locked in there now?"