Life With A Werewolf

Absentminded Accusations part 4 - Scrubbing Bubbles

          Dead weight is twice as heavy as regular weight. Anyone who has tried to lift an unconscious or dead body knows what I’m talking about. It pulls, it heaves, it hangs in so many awkward ways and always feels like you’re lifting something that’s twice as heavy. Now, make that weight the body of a werewolf far heavier than you.

          “Oh man, he needs to go on a diet,” Shawn grumbled as we dragged Crash into the bathroom. Both of us had given up on lifting him. He was just too heavy for regular humans. Now, if we’d been involved in dead lifting competitions and tough man contests like they used to play on ESPN before they decided the P stood for politics, then we might have had a chance. But right then?

          “Crash, you hear me? You’re going on a diet,” I shouted down at him as we slid his body into the bathroom. We had decided the best course of action was me grab one arm, Shawn to grab the other and we just lift and pull backwards. Yes, with my bad leg and back. He’s lucky I didn’t fall on him.

          It was a struggle getting him into the tub. In the end we lifted his head and rolled him in, dumping his body at an awkward angle. We struggled and strained, heaving his heavy body up and over the edge of the tub until we Crash finally rolled into the tub at an awkward angle. Thankfully, it was less difficult to arrange him into the tub so he wasn’t laying on his head. But I think that was because he was finally helping us. “Okay,” Shawn asked me. “Now what?”

          “Grab the bag of soap.”

          Shawn took too steps backwards like he was going to follow my instructions. But the confusion on his face reminded me of a toddler trying to get a mystery item for his parents. “I had it when I came through the door,” I half said, half chided.

          “Oh yeah,” he shouted as the light dawned. Then he was gone.

          He came stumbling in a few moments later, bag held aloft like some trophy in a strange internet game show. I snatched the bag from his hands and pulled the bottle of Dawn from it. Looking down at Crash who had gone back into whimpering mode, I said “you better pray you’re just an oil-soaked penguin.”

          Dawn makes a lot of suds. A LOT of suds. When applied to a werewolf who is bleeding profusely from multiple scratches all over himself, the suds come up more pink then white. As we began scrubbing with rags, with green scrub pads, with whatever we could get really, the pink suds started changing colors. Thick, yellow, mucous like puss began to flow, and sudsing up, turning the bubbles into a sickening yellowish pinkish sort of color that at times faded into orange.

          The smell. Oh God the smell. It was the scent of full body sweat sick. Of someone trapped in a bed for two weeks with fever funk mixed with an underlying stench of rot and decay. As the yellow pus began to bubble up, Crash began to shiver, as if a fever was taking over him. “What’s causing this,” Shawn asked.

          “I don’t,” I began.

          Then I remembered. It was one of those powerful punch type memories, as if God or the universe or whoever was trying to tell you something.

          We had been standing outside, in the wooded area. Crash was scratching, showing me the wolfsbane flowers. “Come on,” he said, as he scratched more. It was as if he was getting worse.

          “Shit,” I grumbled. “I have an idea. Let’s get him cleaned up first.”

          Rinsing Crash was harder than scrubbing him. It took several rinses, water splashing all over us, all over the floor, all over just about everything in the bathroom. It really felt like I was scrubbing a dog for a while. We attempted to lift Crash once or twice, but gave up after a while, and tried to dry him off in place. Shawn got paranoid and began wiping up the water on the floor, for which I was grateful to be honest. Cause although may have been comical, it could have been disastrous to fall with several hundred pounds of whimpering werewolf crashing down upon you.

          The werewolf’s eyes fluttered open. He took a couple of heaving gasps, then looked down at the mess. “Crap,” he muttered. Several of the wounds he had scratched into himself trying to scratch at whatever had attacked him was now closing. He stood. Swayed. But stayed up.

          Crash used our help to get out of the bathroom. Then it was off to his bedroom, where we paused.

          “No,” I said, turning him around. “Sleep in my bed.”

          “Huh,” he asked, looking at me. “Wha?”

          “Look,” I said, “whatever’s got you scratching up is obviously all over just about everything in your room. That includes your sheets. You sleep in my bed. We’ll strip your bed and begin cleaning things.”

          He didn’t fight, just grumbled, his ears folded back in distress. He hadn’t been in human form for days now, constantly walking around the house on his time off, scratching at everything. Bleeding all over everything from his constant thick clawed scratching. It had taken countless hours of restless sleep, of sweat induced days, of bleeding for countless hours on end but Crash was finally at the end of his nub it seemed. Worn down to the point where fight had fled him.

          When he collapsed on the bed, he grumbled, but didn’t say another word. And mercifully, he didn’t scratch. “Zack’s not gonna be happy,” I said looking at Crash in my bed.

          “Why,” Shawn asked, looking at me strangely.

          “Cause I have to sleep on the couch now.” He gave me a look of confusion at first before it dawned on him. “Oh yeah! Cause Crash,” he muttered. Now, there was an old movie called “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” that briefly came to mind. And although having Crash wake up in that situation would be hilarious, I didn’t have it in me to prank him when he was like this.

          “Come on,” I said. “You do laundry, I’ll do gardening.”

          “Uh…” Shawn said, then turned to Crashes room, scratching his curly brown hair. “Okay.” He walked into Crash’s room and began pulling sheets. When Kris got home from his job, he’d grumble but he’d help I knew. Zack would help as well if there was anything left to do. And right about then, we needed one of Zack’s cleaning tears.

          Now, among the hobbies I that I do have, gardening is not one of them. However, even me, in the back of my brain understood that if these plants were the things killing Crash, then I would need gloves to rip them up. The gardening gloves belonged to who knows who, but they were in the back of the garage, so they were snagged. They didn’t fit at all, but at least it was something. Then, I went to the woods and began to pull.

          It didn’t take long before I was covered in dirt, mud and lord only knew what and had a pile of these rotten things at my knees. I felt an itch working it’s way inward, an itch I ignored as I ripped up the deadly things. Working my way through, I tore every single flower that even slightly resembled one of the blue belled hated things that Crash pointed out to me earlier.

          The sunlight fades faster in when you’re in the woods. And, although I didn’t notice the light going down, I did notice how dark everything suddenly became. My pocket rang once, and I answered, half huffing, exhausted, but happy about the work that I had done.

          It was Crash’s boss. I’m not sure if I ever revealed his name, have I? Well, he’s not the type to want to be in one of these things. But he did ask if Crash was done with his investigation. To which, I told him some jerk had planted wolfsbane all around the property in the woods and I was cleaning it out. That Crash had almost scratched himself to death and I had to scrub him down and sent him to bed while we wash everything.

          He told me that didn’t happen from Wolfsbane. Apparently, it’s only dangerous if somehow the chemical that they make get under the skin. Even breathing in the pollen, although isn’t pleasant, won’t hurt them. They have to eat it, get it inside themselves somehow. When I told him what Crash had revealed to me about the vampires, I looked up.

          A pair of glasses seemed to glint in the dying light. “I got to go,” I said to him. “And I might be in trouble.”