Interview pt.4

Time in the cell is closing. Soon, very soon, the prison guards will cut short the interview with Sebastian “RuWolf” Fang. And it has been 12 hours. But when the leader of the Werewolf Nation speaks, you listen for as long as he is speaking – regardless of how your body and mind are straining.

A prison guard knocks assertively on the cell’s iron door. This is the universe that inciting lycanthropy can bring you – a complete cosmos unintended for normal men, hidden under the most of the world, seven storeys deep and forgotten about except those that keep him here.

“Got FAH-ve minutes, ok,” said a guard in his deep southern US drawl.

It isn’t the prison guards that bother Mr Fang. For them, this palace of the damned is a job like any other. These young men from three corners of the planet could just as easily be working on your car as keeping werewolves in a pen. This job has better benefits and it is, however technical, serving the country – their country, which might just be the stars and stripes and the sickle and hammer at the same time. Some guards are Soviet Russian, other guards are monarchist English, and some are good ol’ fashion republican Americans. They all have values. They all follow rules.

“Ok? Duh ya here me?” yelled the prison guard through the sliding window on the iron door.

Once he sees that the interview is wrapping up, the guard backs off and slides the window closed.

“Not bad kids. They are doing a job,” said Mr Fang when the window is closed.

Part of the dilemma he lives with here in Spandau prison is the fact that he likes his guards. Call it Stockholm syndrome if you must, but what is really going on here and has been since the day Mr Fang began his imprisonment is a mutual respect he shares with the guards. They are both stuck in a place no kid dreams about being stuck in. Well at least no normal kid.

“I have never met a guard in this prison who says to me: ‘thank goodness I am here. What a great career path.’ That would be ridiculous to assume anyone wants to be here. Well except Hess, but as I have said (check the second instalment) he is a bastard anyways and no one likes him.”

When he is told that Hess has his own private room that acts as an open yard and house for him, Mr Fang’s skin seems to tense up. He swallows his words and smiles.

“This is fine. He is 93-years-old. He is still paying his dues.”

As for ever fully paying his dues, there is apparently zero chance you will ever see RuWolf on the streets again. According to sources in both Washington and Moscow they have no desire to see Mr Fang on the streets ever again. They like him just where is and even if that means inciting other werewolves to lash out, who might have otherwise followed the peaceful lead of Mr Fang, they are willing to live with these consequences. An anonymous source within the Anti-Werewolf Forces said that the US government in particular is happy to see the werewolves lash out. It makes them much easier to hunt.

“Lives of a few citizens do not measure up to the future of the planet,” said the source. “We all must do our part in ’87 to stamp out the scourge.”

All Mr Fang can do is shake his thick head when told of the AWWF’s intentions. He remains silent for the final few minutes we’re allowed. When the door opens up, Mr Fang’s face grows more animated if only for a second.

“You must let them know we can’t go on like this,” said Mr Fang calmly. “We must find peace.”

As I turned to ask him what he meant by this, the door shuts and a soviet guard leads me from the room. I venture to ask the soviet guard if he wants to say something to the western world, to become a soviet star in Canada.

“Nit,” is all he says. But the southern American guard pipes up from down the hall.

“Yeah, Jesus, we ain’t got anything against Mr Fang. Shee-ucks, if every werewolf could be like him we would fear no full moon.”

The soviet guard pushes me towards the elevator before I can turn my head and ask any further questions to the American guard.

Inside the elevator I can see the werewolf’s door open and two guards go in. I ask my soviet Spandau tour guide what they are going to do in there.

“Clean,” he says in rough English.

Going up the elevator floor I stare in to the guard’s eyes. I am looking for some sign of fear or contentment or strength. If I could see what these men think of Mr Fang without saying a word, that would give me a fuller picture of the werewolf.

In the guard’s blue eyes I see none of what I expect. I see danger and tension. And I can feel it. Once the door opens to the floor level we pass through a hall with barred-windows and we get a great view of the full moon… I had forgotten how long we were underneath for. It was the crushing heat of morning when I entered Spandau prison. It was now dusk and the full moon was lighting up. I began to scribble the last notes of my voyage in to Spandau prison in a spare notepad I carry in my jacket pocket.

“You must hurry,” said the guard.

“But he can’t see the moon and isn’t that the point,” I reassure the guard. Maybe he lost the point in translation because he says to me again: “you must hurry.”

The tension in his voice rises to a dark level and he asks me to look and not to listen to his words. I can see his body sweat pouring off his face and I wonder if he is sick and needs a bathroom. He tries to speak again but foam bubbles to the edge of his mouth and other guards quickly respond to his failing capacity to usher me out. Still, other guards attend to him as he falls to the ground.

I am quickly led to the Spandau prison gates and am told that the Nazi hellhole is now on lock-down, that it would be in my best interest to remove myself from the area.

The area is covered in shadows and they crawl under the cars and dash behind the trees like secret agents. I wonder who they might be. AWWF? The Werewolf Nation?

A hoarse howl screams from the bowls of Spandau prison. A furious picture is drawn in my head, blood and savagery spreading out behind the iron bars and guns are powerless to stop that picture. Passion and hedonism are the real masters and the hoarse howl yelps louder still.

Listening intently for several hours outside of the Spandau prison, I note the navy blue sky and its dim stars and dominant moon fading away with the early morning dawn. You can’t get this view if you are Rudolf Hess, or “RuWolf” Fang or a prison guard.

Yes, from the inside it all seems to be light years away.