Life With A Werewolf

Dodging Zombies

          Why does trouble always find me? Why does trouble follow me around like a lost puppy searching a home? Why does trouble seem to always want me involved to solve it’s issues? And why am I such a damn sucker for all of it? Give me some sad, puppy dog eyes and I’ll always cave. Just ask Crash, who has used it to my detriment on more than one occasion. In wolf form or human, he’ll stick that lip out just so, curl those eyebrows over his eyes, and you can almost hear “hearts and flowers” playing in the background on the world’s tiniest violin.

          The invitation I had received in the mail I politely wrote I “No thank you” on it and dropped it back in the mail box. Part of me hoped that would end everything, but of course that’s not how life works. Especially in my little corner of the world. Can’t simply just say “no” and go about living life. No sir. Instead, they come up to you, give you those sad, dead, puppy dog eyes, and away we go, wrapped up in another crazy adventure.

          In the effort to avoid such an outcome, I found myself, well, it’s embarrassing. But I pledged to not hide this kind of information from you or anyone I’ll go ahead and tell you what happened.

          Our local town has a thrift store. It’s not attached to Goodwill or Salvation Army. It’s just a local run shop that a lady does out of the kindness of her heart. It’s a kind hearted supported place ran out of an old two-story building that looks like it was built almost a century ago. I’ve been frequenting it a couple times a week now.

          I want to go as John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever for Halloween. That means finding that white polyester leisure suit. And if I’m going to find one, I know this is the place to start my search. Nothing so far had proved to be fruitful, but I was hopeful. After all, people in small towns tend to hold on to trends longer than people in the city, relying a bit more on “what I like” versus “what other people think and wear.” You can find unique things being tossed out of closets in small towns. So far, I had found parachute pants, a shirt with puff-out paint on it, slap bracelets, a ruffled shirt that I swear is either from the sixties or the set of “Austin Powers”, and a pair of Doc Martins. But so far, no leisure suit.

          As I was searching through the pile of dead fashion choices and bad decisions, a stench of death wafted up at me that wasn’t caused by the MC Hammer pants or the bedazzled belt buckle. I looked around. One other lady was inside shopping. Though she swayed unsteady on her feet I was quite certain she was alive. Mainly cause instead of groans she asked me “do you smell a dead cat somewhere?”

          She moved on, mumbling something about talking to the owner of the place about it. I turned, and looked outside, and of course, there stood right at the window of the thrift store, a zombie. His pasty white flesh stood in stark contrast to the colorful makeup that was on his face. I could tell he was groaning, but couldn’t hear it, swaying back and forth in front of the window.

          I froze, holding the shirt in my hands for a moment. There was a sad, lost look on his face. One that tugged at my heart strings for a moment, until I remembered the smell. Oh God, the smell. Three-day old roadkill magnified by a billion.

          Quickly, I walked towards the back of the store. The owner was back there in her office talking to the old lady about the smell when I walked by. “Uh, you mind,” I asked, “If I go out the back?”

          “I don’t hun, but why you need to do that?” The owner was a bigger lady, with a large heart and a kind smile. Her cheeks almost dimpled when she smiled, almost like an overgrown cabbage patch kid, complete with adoption papers.

          I smiled back at her, and shrugged. “Saw my ex, don’t want to talk to her,” I lied.

          “Go ahead, darlin,” she said, then continued her conversation. I knew once I was out the door, they’d be searching for this mystery woman that could vex my heart so. Such is life in a small midwestern town. Everyone is friendly. Everyone wants to help. And tell everyone else about it after they’ve done so. You combine that with meth and questionable teenage pranks and you have midwestern life in America.

          Technically the line about seeing a woman I didn’t want to talk to wasn’t a lie. There was a woman. Sure, we hadn’t dated before. Tell you the truth, I’m not certain we ever met when she was alive. But alive she was, no longer. She was now a corpse, standing near the street, wearing an old dirty dress, mussed up hair, and maggots.

          I saw this blushing former beauty as I rounded the old building and started making my way towards the path back to home. She was standing near a curb, in a fairly nice dress with some dark brown smudge stains on it that could only be dirt, and two clouded over eyes, and pale white, dead skin. Thankfully, she didn’t see me as I raced by.

          Midwesterners are curious by nature. They love to know a little bit of gossip about their neighbors especially when that neighbor is alternating between running between buildings, slowing down in the street, and literally doing a high crawl in front of his house to get around seemingly nothing. If you don’t know what a high crawl is, think Rambo. The scene where he’s under the huts in the village trying to get back soldiers? That’s it. That’s the high crawl.

          What my neighbors saw was typical craziness from the crazy house on the street. Lord knows what they even think about us at this point. What I saw was a zombie standing between buildings. A zombie on a street corner, moaning and swaying, staring at me. And a zombie in front of the house, watching the front door, like it was waiting for me to come out.

          That’s why I crawled from the street corner, down the road, across the drive way, to get to the side door. At times scraping my face against the ground, trying my hardest to be low. To be unnoticed. To be ignored. Into the driveway. Passed my car. Up the hill towards the side door. Then I hear the shuffling gate behind me. The low moan of someone trying to say something, but not knowing what to say or even how to speak. The stench of death.

          I stood and ran, yelling the entire way, and slammed the door shut.

          “What’s wrong with you,” Zack asked, yawning. It was his day off at least.

          “Zombies,” I said.

          “They’re going to get you again,” He laughed.

          “No they won’t,” I grumbled, then walked towards the front door to look out. The zombie was gone. As was the rest of them. In their place sat a single bottle of one of the most expensive liquors I’ve seen. Jack Daniels has some very expensive bottles and if you get the right year and make, you can easily spend over one thousand dollars on a single bottle.

          What was left on our front porch next to our mailbox was one of those bottles, with a note attached. The bottle, the note it all was dirty of course and had a feint smell of death. Inside the note was a single word: “Please.”