Life With A Werewolf

Gnome Garage Fight

          Strange things have been happening in the garage. Last week I went to change my oil in my Topaz and the wrench I needed wasn’t there. Instead, there was this strange, tiny ceramic wrench in its place on the wall, on a small ceramic hook that somehow held its own in the ancient pegboard. Other tools had been slowly replaced as well: a hammer. A saw. Nails had become giant and ceramic. As if something was changing them or swapping them out for something else. Something that might have had red beady eyes hidden behind a ceramic pair of sunglasses. When I saw this, a cold chill ran down my spine as I remembered the previous year. The spring where I nearly lost my mind and freedom to those tiny pointy hatted terrorists.
          I made my way, with a steady, yet dignified…. yeah, okay so I ran shouting Crash’s name the entire way. Through the kitchen, past the bathroom, on towards his bedroom. “Crash!” I shouted bolting inside, slamming the door behind me.
          He was laying atop the covers, still in werewolf form. His tail hung limply between his legs, hiding his dignity, (thank God) since he had taken it upon himself to sleep naked. Of course, he probably hadn’t counted on a half-scared roommate barging in and interrupting his rest. “What,” he groaned. His first set of eyelids were partially peeled back, revealing a second set beneath that he was staring at me through.
          “That’s kind of creepy,” I muttered.
          “Well, I’m a man-eating monster, what do you expect? And what do you want?” He grumbled. “And don’t even mention me being naked. This is your fault for barging in.”
          Well, he had me there, still I looked down and blushed. “Okay,” I grumbled. “Sorry. Maybe I over-reacted a bit.”
          “What, did the neighbors get a gnome,” he asked.
          “Our tools are becoming ceramic.”
          He sighed. “They’re exchanging tools. Cause they’re building something. And that means we have an infestation in our garage.”
          The garage is a detached three car garage that sits next to the property. There is quite a bit of stuff stored within it in the rafters and in the corners. Like most people’s garages, we tend to store things we hardly used within them. Christmas and Halloween decorations, for example. Those strange tools and appliances that only seem to do one thing, and that being something you don’t even need or care about. Strange relics from the past that you don’t like enough to keep in your bedroom, but don’t dislike enough to throw out.
          Since we had five adults in the house our pile had grown to being quite big. Large enough in fact that it was plausible for a creature as small as a lawn gnome to hide, building their little projects here and there, and then…I don’t know. Sell snow cones? Launch cat turds at the old troll house and blame it on us? I had no idea what they were making, but I knew it could be nothing good.
          “I’ll call, Larry,” Crash mumbled, and began fumbling for his cell phone on his night stand. I nodded and walked out, heading back towards the garage.
          Look, I’ll admit to being freaked out by lawn gnomes now. Thanks to Kheid and his unholy brood of ceramic psychopaths, I don’t ever want to see another stone hat or vegetable again. However, at that moment in time, I looked at them like I looked at wasps. Let’s say you have a massive wasp nest on your property. You have one or two options. You can either stare at it and hope they don’t sting you, or you can get poison or pest control or something and remove them.
          I know, I know. I can hear a thousand pest control professionals out there shouting at me “don’t do it! Don’t do it!” But, of course, I did it.
          I backed Old Betsy out of the garage first, figuring she could be out of the line of fire. Then slowly began to pull items back out of the massive stuff pile. I worked through the Christmas decorations, past the Halloween stuff and over the old weed eater that Crash swears he’s going to get working someday. (No, you’re not! Throw it out!) There was a blue tarp hidden in the corner. Beneath which I could see the tiniest ceramic foot sticking out.
          “No, you don’t you little,” I shouted, then threw the canvas back. Something hard hit me in the head, knocking back onto the floor.
          When I awoke, Crash was standing over me, now in human form, holding back a laugh. “Are you alright,” he half-chuckled.
          “I’d rather have squirrels,” I groaned, then grabbed an offered hand to stand up.
          I had a black eye from…something. And my face they painted with rosy cheeks, eye liner, and red lipstick. Crash said when he arrived they were putting a pointed hat on my head, but he managed to scare them off. “I came out here to help,” he said. “Larry told me he doesn’t do garages. But if we flush them out in the open, then he’s happy to have another buffet.”
          I pointed at the canvas in the corner. “They’re working on something back there. I think they intend to take out Larry with it.”
          Crash nodded, then walked over and pulled the canvas back. Something struck him in the face, sending him flying backwards, and landing on his backside. I winced in sympathetic pain as he sat up, shaking his head. “Did they build,” he began, then climbed to his feet, and looked again. Shaking his head. “They built a trebuchet and a ballista.” He said, in amazement.
          I scratched my head. “The giant roman crossbow thing?"
          I got a dumbfounded look from Crash. “Yes, the giant roman crossbow thing. And the giant slingshot thing.”
          “I guess to take out the giant flying lizard thing,” I groaned as I stood. “What are we going to do.”
          Crash raised all the doors to the garage. “Get rid of them,” he said, and began slowly moving things outside. We started with the Christmas decorations, then a few things we’ve meant to throw out. As we slid the first few items around to get room to move the medieval siege weapons, something hard and round hit my shoulder.
          “Ow!” I cried, then looked down. “Crash,” I said, “It’s one of your sockets.”
          “Incoming!” He shouted, and more sockets and wrenches began to fly downward towards us. There was a table by the wall that had more junk on it. Crash cleared that table, and set it up as a shield for us to hide behind. The table rang out with a thwack, thwack! as larger sockets and wrenches crashed into it.
          “Keep them busy!” Crash shouted.
          Here’s where those snow ball throwing skills really came into play. I had the strange image of kids outside their houses having a snowball fight behind snow forts in the thick of winter. If things weren’t so deadly, it might have even been fun. But as I began to advance my attack, they somehow managed to get ahold of the screw drivers, and started throwing them. For my effort, I grabbed as many tools as I could and began to throw them back. There was a lot of clattering, an occasional cry, but nothing else, really.
          Crash was banging around in the back and soon returned wielding a shovel with a metal handle, wielding it like a barbarian would wield a battle axe. But we weren’t the only ones with plans. As Crash came running back from the far wall of the garage, the ballista went off, and a 2x4 struck Crash in the chest.
          He made an “oof” sound, then fell backwards, falling to the floor. The 2x4 clattered behind him. What did I do? Well, I certainly didn’t cry out his name in shock and horror and stopped what I was doing to check on him. No. That gets people killed and really only works in the movies, where they have that magic “war buddy’s hit so they can’t hit us now” spell. Since I didn’t have that “war buddy got his so they can’t hit us right now” magic, I kept throwing, trying to keep their heads down as I worked my way slowly back towards him, till I could grab his shirt collar and pull him back towards the table, dodging missiles as I went. Some would call that heroic, I guess. I say it was just luck and a calculated move on my part, counting on their bad aim.
          For any human being they’d have to go to the hospital right then. But for Crash? “Those bastards,” he growled, standing up. Racing over towards the siege weapons, he kicked them over on their sides, then stomped on them, snapping boards and ropes. “I’ll get you!” He shouted, then started banging the roof with the shovel.
          Ceramic feet clattered and scraped against rafter boards. CLANG! CLANG! The shovel rang out as Crash beat it against the roof. I was essentially doing the same thing with my 2x4, banging upwards in as many varied places as I could. My efforts were to try and break them up so they couldn’t regroup and counter-attack. We ran through the garage like mad men trying to catch a squirrel, banging, shouting, occasionally dodging a socket wrench or a screw driver.
          Finally, Kheid, showed his face. He snarled threats at us in gnomish, that although I understood, can’t really print here. Let’s just say he told us to go do something disgusting with feces and sexual relations. He stared out from the ceiling at us, glaring one last time before he ran off through the door. We chased them through the yard, as the gnomes shouted, fleeing in shouts of terror as they ran towards the woods. Kheid was in the back. He stopped at the entrance to the woods, and took off his glasses, glaring his beady eyes at me. “This means war,” he growled at me in gnomish, then disappeared into the woods.
          Me and Crash stood at the entrance of those woods, huffing and puffing, Crash with his hands on his knees, me with my hands over my head. We stood there for a minute as our heartrates slowly fell down to reasonable levels. “Great,” I huffed. “Now we got a mess to clean up.”
          “No,” Crash said, “You got a mess to clean up. I got to get to sleep. I work in the evening, you know.”
          I nodded, not bothering to argue. “Are you going to catch Kheid and his brood,” I asked.
          Crash shrugged. “I’m waiting till I go in before I tell Larry.”
          “Why,” I asked.
          “Well,” Crash said with a smirk, “he’s done it to me. So, payback. Plus, I think a dragon should occasionally have to work for their food. And third, cause I don’t want to fill out a report. That’s going to take hours. Right now, I want to sleep.”
          “Fare enough,” I said, walking towards the garage as he went inside. Clean up took far longer than I wanted it too, but at least it’s done now. Topaz’s oil change can wait till tomorrow. Zack, Sean and Kris will just have to wait before they get their turn in the garage bay. Besides, I’m not exactly going to do nighttime car maintenance. I think you understand why.