John Wolfstone-The Book

Cafeteria confrontation

A few hours later, John was sitting at a table, eating his lunch, a sandwich made with some leftover venison from the other night. He was sitting alone, as usual, in the cafeteria. Then again, with his reputation, everyone avoided him, both teachers and students alike. However, today became somewhat different.

“Can I sit here?” said a young female voice.

John looked up and saw the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was human, with no trace of non-human blood, or magic, in her. She also looked to be in her early to mid twenties.

“Sure,” he said, scooting over, so the woman could have a warm spot. “I could use, and welcome, a bit of company.”

“Thank you,” the woman said, sitting down on the spot where John had moved from. “The teachers’ table over there was full. I was going to sit down next to that harpy, but she said that the spot was taken by a, how do I say this, a naked chameleon friend of hers.”

At this, John looked up and saw Janus smile at him.

He chuckled and said, “No offence Miss, but that seat was, at the very least, empty then.”

“How can you tell?” the woman asked, as she looked back at the table, and realizing that there wasn't even a plate at the spot.

“I know Janus," John said. "She’s a very good friend of mine. Of course, given how you are human, and how I’m mostly human, she probably thought that you’d be more comfortable with me than with the others.”

“What do you mean by mostly human?" the woman asked. "You look human to me.”

“Looks are not everything,” John said, turning his head and turning it into that of a werewolf and back into that of a human. He then laid his hand on the table and grew it six times its original size, before shrinking it back down.

“What are you?” the woman asked.

“Complicated,” John said, turning back to eat his sandwich. “My parents were both half human, with my father being part werewolf and my mother being part giant.”

“And you can turn into both?” the woman asked.

“Yep," John said, as he took a bite out of his sandwich. "I even got a combination form as well, but I try not to use that very often. To say it scares me is an understatement. However, despite what I am, and sometimes act like, I’m normally a decent person. Then again, given how my parents raised me to treat everyone as equals that can be understandable.”

“Well, um, do you ever, uh, eat humans?” the woman asked, nervously.

“Well, I’ll be honest," John said. "I have. I think it to be the most delicious thing I have ever eaten. However, I’ve only eaten human flesh as part of a meal once, and that once was enough for me. I became very sick when I realized what it was. After that, I avoided it as much as possible, which was relatively easy because my parents rarely ate humans themselves. Then again, they tended to buy up young humans that were in the stockyards and give them second chances.”

“So, how come people say that you are dangerous?" the woman asked. "You look like a nice guy.”

“Once again, looks are not everything," John said. "They are correct to say that I am, highly, dangerous. Almost everyone in the school is afraid of what I could do to them. This fear of me comes from what I did when I went to school here as a student, and what I did during my first year as a teacher here.”

“Well, what did you do?” the woman asked.

“Let’s just say I had a reputation as a troublesome protector," John said, as he looked at the woman. "Basically, I’d be the troublesome student that the teachers would watch, instead of those with poor grades or didn’t get to class on time. I assaulted several teachers, including the principal, when they tried to ‘discipline’ problem students. Then, in the fifth grade, I killed a teacher who tried to fail me and another student. At that point, every teacher feared me, all except one, Janus. I saved her life in the seventh grade when a senior attacked her when she tried to protect me from him. Because of him, Janus’s one wing was broke, and several of her ribs had been fractured. However, the damage I gave him would have killed him, if my kick hadn’t, by chance, sent him straight into the nearby hospital. Well, everyone was shocked by what just I, all by myself, with only one kick, had done. The guy’s parents tried to claim me as theirs, so that I would be ‘properly’ punished. Thankfully, my parents came to an arrangement with them, paid the guy’s medical bills and I was placed under a teacher’s supervision. However, the problem then was to find a teacher willing to take me. Thankfully, Janus came to my rescue, again, and offered to take me and become my warden, as it were.”

“You owe a lot to her,” the woman said.

“Yes I do," John said, as he looked back at Janus, and smiled at the harpy. "In fact, I became a teacher because of her.”

“So, can you tell me why the school still fears you?” the human asked.

“Simple really," John said, as he looked back at the human. "The gym teacher tried to fail a student of mine, so I persuaded him to change his mind, by doing the Heimlich maneuver on him, to get that student of mine out of his stomach. However, he didn’t like being forced to change the student’s grade from failed to just passing, so after school he tried to attack me in front of everyone. Of course, as you can probably guess, we had need of a new gym teacher when I was done with him. The guy’s in a wheelchair now. As for the students, two won’t look at the flagpole during the Pledge of Allegiance, and everyone else, who had seen what I did to them, can’t get the picture out of their heads when they look at the flagpole.”

“Why?" the woman asked. "What did you do to them?”

“Well, the two had been sneaking around during lunchtime, eating students, when I caught them and forced them to let the other students out of their stomachs," John said, with a low sigh, as he remembered what he did. "After that, given that the ‘sexual education’ class was going on, I tied them in a certain position that I thought was fitting, and tied them to the top of the flagpole, where everyone could see those two young men, practically, giving each other oral.”

“You really did that to them?” the woman asked, her eyes practically bulging out of her head.

“Yep," John said "I really did that to them.”

“Well, at least I know why no one wants to sit next to you,” the woman said, starting to get up.

“Wait,” John said, as he grabbed the woman’s hand.

“HANDS OFF YOU MONSTER!” the woman shouted, slapping him across the face with her free hand.

At this, the entire lunchroom turned their heads and looked at them. They had never seen anyone hit Mr. Wolfstone and get away with it.

However, John just let go of the woman’s hand, the handprint on his face starting to swell, as the woman walked away with a huff. As John watched her go away, he sighed, unhappily, as he lowered his head and conversation resumed. He could hear the students talking about what they had just saw, that a woman, a normal human at that, had hit the most fearsome teacher in the school and gotten away with it.

A little while later, Julia came in and saw him, sitting alone, with a large red handprint on his face.

“Are you all right?” she asked sitting down next to him, with her own lunch.

“I’ve had worse kid,” John said, as he gingerly placed his hand on the bruise. “I remember one time I broke my tail, while I was in my werewolf form, because I was fooling around. I couldn’t retract it back into my body, when I tried to go human. Of course, everyone in the first grade thought that it was funny to see a human with a wolf’s tail, with a splint on it. Then there was that time I had fleas. They kept me up all night, itching and scratching at them, until my father, with the help of my older brothers, forced me to take a flea bath. Then there was that time that a witch miscast a spell and my hair caught on fire. It took a month to grow back, in both my human and werewolf forms.”

Then he chuckled, until the woman from earlier came back to the table, saw Julia, grabbed her hand and said, “Come with me Julia. That man is nothing more than a monster.”

As the woman started to pull her away, Julia managed to slip her hand out of the woman’s grasp and said, “No Miss Janelle. John is not a monster. He saved my life and took me to his home and took care of me. He is more human than those humans that sold me to a stockyard.”

With that, Julia wrapped her arms around John’s chest, looking at Miss Janelle, as if daring her to pry her arms from John.

Once again, the entire cafeteria turned their heads to look at the scene. It was highly unusual for someone to say that a non-human was more human than an actual human. While there were humans who were reclassified as non-human, the reverse had never happened.

However, Julia wasn’t paying attention to this as she continued to speak out in favor of John.

“He’s a good man,” she said. “He’s nice, kind-hearted, helpful, considerate and more. He helped reunite me with my real family, was there for me when I said good-bye to my real mother, kept me safe when he almost lost control of himself, asked my uncle, his best friend, a wizard, to put a barrier on my room to keep me protected and even more. So if you want to call him a monster, go right ahead Miss Janelle. However, I know, deep down inside, he is more human that any other human I have met, maybe even more than you!”

At this, everyone gasped. To call someone a human was to imply that they were weak, and thus was considered an insult. However, this little girl had called the most fearsome teacher in the school a human, as if it was a compliment of the highest order.

At this, John just chuckled and said quietly, “From the mouth of a child, the greatest of wisdom is spoken.”

He then looked at Miss Janelle and said, “I wouldn’t try arguing with her. As a teacher of Philosophy I can tell that her argument carries a lot more weight than anything you can come up with.”

“But you’re not even human," the woman, Janelle, said. "You're just a monster passing for a human.”

“You know, my father once told me something," John said, as he cleared his throat. "‘Your race is only what a person is, that con never change. However, the things that you do will determine if you are a man or a monster.’ So tell me, is a person who takes care of a child, that is not his own, a man or a monster?”

At this, Miss Janelle just walked away, in a bit of a huff.

As conversations resumed, John looked at Julia and smiled.

“What am I going to do with you?” he said, with a chuckle. “Disobeying the orders of a teacher is a sure way to get you into trouble.”

“Maybe,” Julia said. “But I couldn’t just let her say those nasty things about you.”

She then gave him a hug, as he carefully wrapped his arms around her, not caring who saw.

As the rest of the day went by, John could hear people whispering, in the classroom, in bathrooms, around the corner, everywhere.

“I heard that the new human teacher punched him.”

“Well I heard that he’s taking care of a human girl.”

“Well I heard that the girl called him human and he kissed her for it.”

“Is the girl his pet?”

“No, she’s the niece of a very powerful wizard.”

“Well I heard that she’s made Samual Redblood her pet.”

“That’s nothing; I saw Justian and Tawna get ready to fight him when he tried to take Julia’s seat.”

“Maybe they are her slaves.”

“Yah, that really makes perfect sense.”

“She must be a witch or something, especially since Mr. Wolfstone is friendly to her.”

“He could be scared of her power.”

“No he isn’t. That girl has no magic in her. If she did I’d sense it.”

And so on.

By the end of the day, everyone was giving him strange looks, faculty, staff, teachers, students, they all looked at him funny, much as if he had suddenly grown a second head or tail.