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Adventures In Living With The Mythical |
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A military veteran is adopted by a werewolf and brought into his pack. Insanity ensues. About "Life With A Werewolf" Life with a werewolf is a dramatic blog. As such the characters in this blog are not real but maybe loosely based on real people. The situations represented are not real but maybe loosely based on real things that have happened in my life. There are a multitude of ways to view life, this is simply one of the ways I have chosen to view mine. Updated Every Friday unless I can't or don't want to. If this is your first time reading this...start here: https://www.writing.com/main/books/entry_id/1040400-Welcome-To-The-Pack My book, "Dreamers of The Sea" is available now on Amazon: https://a.co/d/0uz7xa3 |
Hey everyone, it's Crash. Jason says hi, he'll have an update on Friday. He wanted to make it about Nashville drivers and wanted to call it 'Crashville', but I told him that wouldn't be a good idea. This is late. I know. I hear that from my bosses all the time about my paperwork. I've been wearing fur for the last few nights. It's going to be another night or two like that before I'm done. The house is starting to look like it has black carpet. I'll be happy to spend a few days in skin, let me tell you. The adventure? Well, I'll let Jason tell you about that. Sometimes you humans get too nosey, I'll tell you that. Anyway, have a good time everyone. Jason will tell you what's happening. I have to shift for my shift. Busy season is early. Peace, love and flea bugs, Crash |
| My recent bout in Facebook jail had me wondering about Crash and the other mythicals. Do they have their own social media platform? Is there one exclusively for those monsters and creatures that goes bump in the night? I wonder what it would look like. My mind pictures a Facebook clone, with an endless scroll of memes and joke videos about humans. Crash of course had different ideas. “Of course we have our own social media,” he smirked. “Why do you think we scent mark everything?” There was other jokes, but they all pretty much fell along these lines. He’s called it everything from ‘Full Moon Fever’ to ‘peebook’, which got a giggle out of me, I must admit. “If we did have our own platform, it probably would be just us complaining about each other, to be fair,” Crash said. “You humans are like puppies. We can’t stay mad at you for long.” That sort of stopped the conversation. I still don’t know what that actually meant, and I’m sort of afraid to ask. I’m sure there’s a Discord server or Telegram group out there for the mythical kind. One that would probably avoid me, even to this day. More than likely due to not wanting their drama being plastered all over this blog. Cause, you know I’d do it. And I know you’d be as interested as I am in it. There’s just a strange sense of drama and comedy to reading about vampires arguing over who’s turn it was to have the Johnsons over for dinner, or a troll family complaining about the minotaur couple next door spending too long on their garden at night. That’s half the fun of this blog, after all. I understand it actually doesn’t have much to do with me. I’m not even the star of it, really. Which gives me the freedom to post about the random and weird things that I see out and about. Random things like, Elouise and her new walking partner, Gary. Elouise does enjoy fitness and outdoors, I’ll give her that. I can’t really go that far anymore, especially as far as those two are capable of going. I’ve gotten up to around the block though, so that is technically progress. Even though some days it feels like I’m progressing backwards. But Elouise in the morning walks with Gary, chatting it up about just anything that really comes to mind. There must be some sort of southern specialty to just have conversations about almost nothing. I don’t know how one could do it. I hope trouble isn’t on the horizon, but I have noticed a couple things happening. First, yard sale season is upon us. More and more people in the neighborhood are showing up with lawn gnomes. I’m not sure what to say about that. It’s started on opposite sides of the town, with one side blue hatted gnomes and the other red hatted gnomes. I’m almost reminded of the old tactical war games people used to play on the NES. I’ve got a trip I’m taking next week, so I’m glad I won’t be around for whatever hits the fan. Hopefully whatever happens will be done by the time I get back. But what are the chances of something major happening in this town without me getting dragged into it? There’s also something else. Crash got a formal letter. Labeled from The Rodriguez Clan. He’s set it on the mantle and refuses to open it. I’m not forcing him to do it, either. Certain wounds you don’t walk over. He’ll talk about it when he’s ready. If he’s ever ready. I’ll be there for him when that happens. It’s about all I can really do for this, I think. Speaking of, yes, I’m taking a trip next week. The first official vacation I’ve had in quite a long time. In my marriage most of my vacations were spent swimming in the bottom of a bottle. That’s not exactly a good way to spend one. You forget most of it or end up sick for it. Sarah I’m sure has more than one story about it she could tell about me being ill from alcohol instead of taking her somewhere. Speaking of Sarah, her dad says she’s talking about doing the AA thing or rehab right now. Hasn’t done it yet, but is talking about it. Which is stellar news. Her talking about it means she’s thinking about it more and more. That means sooner than later she’ll be getting the treatment she needs. Not a long one this week, and I apologize for that. Things have been mostly quiet, a rare calm around here. Zack, Sean and Kris are all doing just fine. Not a lot they’d want me to discuss on this blog, but they do tell me to tell everyone “hey,” so, “hey” from the gang. Crash has agreed to type one up in my absence. That is the one thing I’m afraid of. Crash is going to be doing a blog post. I have seen his spelling. I apologize in advance. He won’t tell me what it is, but only says “if I can get the time, they’ll enjoy it.” So, that could mean either the intricacies of werewolf scent marking, how to best stalk your prey under the new moon, or a random rant on why they don’t make controllers more durable. I have no idea what it’s going to be. But good luck. I hope everyone has a good one. If you see me wandering around, just give me a nod, I’ll know what you mean, and nod at you back. And Crash, try not to put in too many comma splices please. I do that enough as it is. |
| Sometimes life is not laid out so neatly. We go through our individual adventures; we suffer through paying bills and doing laundry as we struggle to get to the day or two we’ve set aside for our respite. The things we know we deserve at the end of a long, hard work week. Sometimes though, those things we deserve just aren’t what we thought they would be. For me, that respite used to be alcohol. It was my poison of choice that had become my personal reward for not killing anyone on my job, even though at times I may have felt that they deserved it. But the problem with choosing such a thing is that it has its own teeth. The reward becomes a punishment of sorts, a means of hurting yourself for your own survival, as strange as that sounds. It no longer is the treat for doing a job well done, for existing and living in this plane of existence. It slowly usurps you from your own personal throne and becomes your king. It’s that way with any addiction, though. Whether it be food, porn, drugs, alcohol. They become your lord and leader. You become their willing servant, struggling at the foot of a beast that quite literally does not care about you. It cannot. Because it is little more than a ball of pain, doubt, anguish, anger, and good feelings brought on by chemical bliss: whether from the drugs and alcohol or from your own dopamine levels spiking to as you feed The Beast. The hardest thing for someone who has struggled to the other side of such a creature, who has usurped their own throne and tossed aside the addiction king, is to witness someone else you cared for, or have cared for in the past, go through the same thing. Sarah was a love. She wasn’t the love of my life by any stretch of the imagination, and that was half the reason we split. But I’d be lying if I said she wasn’t a love. I cared for that woman in a way I hadn’t for a lot of people. Same for her. She cared for me. A pain of a thousand mistakes and fights still sit between us like an ocean. Still waters on top, but death lies beneath the placid surface. We’re Facebook friends. Acquaintance buddies. The same type of individuals who can love and meet and greet each other over awkward chats and gentle touches of ‘good to hear from you’ and ‘glad you made it’ and ‘we should meet for coffee one day’, though neither of us ever actually want to. Thing is, though, if anyone deserves to struggle, it’s Sarah. I don’t mean that in a mean way. I mean that in an honest, sincere, wish she had never gone through any pain way. She spent months living with another being inside her head. Feeding off of her. Using her as food, bait, drug mule, whatever they wanted out of her. Live through that for a while and tell me if you don’t come away with a few problems afterwards. But on the other side of the coin, if anyone ever deserves to NOT struggle, it’s Sarah. She spent years married to me, then spent all that time being enslaved to a pair of creatures doing lord knows what to her. Things I’m honestly too afraid to ask about. When you’re in that sort of situation, you’re going to come back with a few scars. But those scars shouldn’t conquer you after you have survived. Because, after all, you were strong enough to survive. The Beast may have supplanted you on your throne in life. But you were strong enough to take that throne back. Whatever mistakes and pains you’ve had in your life because of what was controlling you, you still have that. How do you get that through to someone who has started down a spiral, one that you, yourself have fallen down a time or two? That’s the dilemma that’s faced me in our last conversation. I won’t detail everything, but I know her father is worried about her. She does seem a bit more haggard than she used to. Speech is slurred, glazed over, that sort of thing too. All the classic signs I know and have come to hate. It would be better if it was Kheid. If Mitch the vampire had made his way down there again. If The Nobility was behind it. If, if, if. A creature with nasty power and a devious mind. A monster of a person with venom in their bite and death in their breath. A creature I could easily defeat for her with a John Wayne smirk and a Robert Downy Jr one liner. But it’s one thing to have an enemy you can physically fight. A beast with fangs and claws, with muscle, will and determination. That’s easy enough for anyone. It’s another thing when you’re fighting yourself. You find the punches you’ve been throwing is at bare concrete. The pain you feel is from your own mind: from mistakes that creep up inside and tells you how horrible of a person you are because of decisions you made way back when. Because you didn’t know the things you believe you should have known or did the things you should have done. The poison as I’ve grown to call it. Make no mistakes, it is a poison. It twists your mind into thinking darker things about yourself. It twists your personality into a more inward, darker, meaner creature. One unrecognizable by friends and family. One unrecognizable by the world. A self-hating thing that only seeks its own destruction. A mission that The Beast may succeed in if you’re not careful. I’ve made my life these past several years into being the person that sticks their noses in other people’s business. I solve many situations or at least attempt to solve situations of others who cross my path. I do so with, well, bluntness. Stupidity. A loud mouth. Lots of luck. And on occasion, bullets. But this is one situation that I simply cannot fix on my own. I do know the day is coming though. I’ve told Sarah this. She was mad at me. Mainly for pointing out her drinking. We were on a zoom call together, catching up a bit. Her idea. One born by two new friends she made: Jack Daniels and his buddy, Lord Calvert. “Who the hell are you to judge me,” she slurred. It’s best to not engage drunks. I’ve never done what’s best. Her eyes were floating, they were so glazed over. Red. Speech was dragging one word into another. Who the hell was I, indeed? “I’m an alcoholic, that’s who,” I snapped at her. “Remember? I was sober I think one day of our entire marriage. And baby, it wasn’t our wedding night.” “You’re nobody, that’s who,” she spat. “No, I’m the drunk that was your husband. I’m the alcoholic that knows why you drink, the one who is smart enough to know that the reason why you’re drinking, is not. Your. Fault.” She stared down for a moment, instead of at the camera. At the screen. At me. “I know,” I continued, “one day it will happen. You’re going to be cleaned up. Smiling. You’ll hold up your six month sober medallion to me.” She chuffed. “That’ll be the day.” “It will,” I said. “It will be the day, I say congratulations. The day I will tell you two words you never heard me say at all during our entire marriage. Until then.” And then I signed off. It hasn’t made an effect. Not yet. There is two stages I’ve found that must occur before someone is ready to free themselves of The Beast. That first stage is admitting that there is in fact, a Beast. The second stage? Actually seeking help. Without those two stages, no amount of interventions, no amount of arm twisting or handholding makes much of a difference. The first two steps in dethroning The Beast is admitting there is one, and seeking help in getting them abdicated. I have faith in Sarah, though. It will happen. May not be next week. Next month. Or even this year. But soon, she’ll see it. She’ll tear down The Beast out of his throne, and kick it out of her kingdom. She’ll send that creature away in the paupers rags it came in. When that day finally comes, I’ll tell her those two words that I owe her. I’ll even give her four more: I’m proud of you. Cause on that day, I truly, truly will be. I know the price of that revolution. The pain and struggle of it. I know the anguish it can carry with it. But I also know, that beneath all of the grit, all of the pain and anguish, is a prize that truly makes the fight worth it. The prize is yourself, your true self. Sarah will get there, I know. I have faith in her. |
| Sometimes we all need a little adult supervision. Whether we’re standing on a rolling chair to reach that item on the top shelf, racing through the house with our birthday suit flapping in the breeze so we can grab that pair of underwear and towel we forgot for the shower, or something else, we need that person there to tell us “Hey! Not smart!” Usually, for me, it’s Crash who fills that roll. I try doing something incredibly dumb, and he’ll place a heavy hand on my shoulder and say ‘dummy, you’re gonna get yourself killed.’ However, this time it wasn’t me, it was Crash. And amazingly he didn’t hurt himself, even though he tried to blow himself up. It started a couple weeks back. Crash was on day shift after the whole Rougarou business. After a major incident like that, you know the kind that normally pulls me in to some crazy adventure that gets blabbed about on here, he’s put on day shifts to handle paperwork, destress, that sort of thing. Apparently, there was some incident that no one ever really talks about but in hushed tones of a werewolf working too long and going feral. Crash had decided, in his infinite wisdom, to burn a brush pile. It had become more brush than pile with weeds growing through the middle, a ring of dead leaves around it, and enough dead limbs and twigs to hide a good portion of the trees from visibility. The first step of course was to kill the weeds that grew in the middle. And naturally, you’d use the old, varnished gasoline to do it. After all, it isn’t like it’s going to blow up now, is it? He doesn’t say exactly how much he used, but will still chuckle and say “don’t worry, it was only a few gallons.” He figured there was rain coming, so in two weeks’ time, he’d just come and burn it. The gas should be gone by then, right? Right…. Unbeknownst to Crash, there was a mole tunnel right beneath the brush pile. The gasoline pooled inside the tunnels, becoming a natural pipe bomb. It stayed through rain and shine, waiting, like a lingering demon, to unleash its hellish might from just one foolish man, or werewolf’s, spark. Crash began transitioning back to nights after a couple weeks. There was only one or two nights left, and he decided that burning that brush pile would be a good way to spend the evening. So, as the sun began to dip, Crash shifted, grabbed a lighter, and went outside. He began his prep work, grabbing a fire extinguisher, a couple of water buckets, the works. He didn’t get a water hose though, cause it wasn’t like it was going to be a big fire. I was inside, working on another story that would be summarily rejected by another magazine, when I heard it: Boom! Zack was asleep by then, and he could sleep through almost anything. Sean was still at work, and Kris beat me outside by about 3 seconds. When we both arrived, we could see a raging fire that reached to the heavens. It looked as if we were giving a Viking funeral to a forgotten king. A very crispy werewolf stood in front of it, an embarrassed grin on his face and ears, holding an empty water bucket. “Well, I got the brush pile lit,” he said and grinned. Now, Crash wasn’t completely stupid. After all, he did have buckets of water and a fire extinguisher nearby. A water hose was soon hooked up as well, and Kris and me spent the better part of the next hour evening wetting down the surrounding area to ensure the fire didn’t spread and become our neighbors problem instead of just ours. The mole hole provided just the right amount of air and compression to make a decent sized fire bomb. It was a miracle none of us were out there with him. A miracle that in the two weeks’ time that gasoline sat, we didn’t have an errant spark from one of our other neighbors, or something else to set it off without us being out there to watch it. A miracle that Crash was alive. His only protection being his very species. It was also a miracle that we didn’t kill him. “You moron,” Kris shouted at him after hearing about the gasoline. The fire in his eyes rivaled the fire at its hottest and highest point. “You could have killed yourself!” “What,” Crash said with a soft smile. “I was protected. I ducked.” I knew better than to interrupt Kris in a rant like this. And did he ever go off. Crash stood there with his soft sheepish smile, taking everything Kris gave him. He called Crash irresponsible, dumb, called the move childish. I never stopped him and Crash took it because we both knew that he was right. What Crash had done was all of those things. “You realize you almost killed yourself?! What do you have to say for yourself, huh? For what you did?!” Kris stood at the edge of the fire that had now burnt itself down, raging as hard as the flames had, heaving, clenching his fists. Crash looked at him, still with that sheepish grin on his werewolf muzzle and ears and said, “I used no more than five gallons! I promise.” Before Kris could literally skin Crash alive, I pulled him back and patted him on the shoulder. “I got this,” I told him, and began to lead him back inside. “You handle him then,” Kris snarled, then walked back inside, still understandably very upset. I stood with Crash for a while, watching the fire, helping him tend to it. After a while, I looked at him, and sighed, “you scared him you know. And me.” “I was being careful,” Crash said, “I lit it like I was lighting a bomb.” I smirked, “Apt phrasing.” He blinked. “I just never figured that would happen.” Which makes sense. We never figure that when we’re grabbing that quick item from the top shelf the rolling chair will shift and spit out from beneath us, leaving only the counter to catch our chin on the way down. That when we’re sprinting back to our bedroom, our neighbors will pick that moment to knock on the door, or that we could slip in water, and hurt ourselves when we’re most vulnerable. That the gasoline we figured would have been gone and killed the weeds would still be around, pooled, ready to explode. But it happens. The counter almost breaks our neck. The neighbors screech, laugh, then snap photos as we blush like a kid at a recital, trying to cover up the goods. The gasoline ignites like a fireball from a movie set. We’re left hurt, bleeding, embarrassed, and usually, none the wiser for our injuries. Everyone needs a little adult supervision at times. Someone to step back, tell them, “No dummy, that’s not going to work. You’re going to kill yourself.” It’s at these moments though you find out just how much people care about you. It’s in relation to how upset they get. If all they do is laugh and ask you to take photos next time, re-evaluate your friendship. I think Zack though summed it up best when he asked “what did you learn,” in a sing song voice later on. Crash laughed and said something like “that varnished gas lingers.” He did apologize though at least. Promised us all that he’d be more careful. But I guess it shows in some ways why we get along so well. We’re both the right level of crazy and stupid. He attempted to blow himself up in a fire. I attempted to get two vicious proven blood thirsty killers mad at me so they’ll chase me. Zack, Sean and Kris? Well, I promised them I’d keep their dumbest moments off of here. And I’ll continue to do so, as long as the payment comes through. The results of all of this is that the house still smells like singed fur almost a week later. Crash laughs every time he talks about it, but promises to be safer. And that I’m analyzing my own actions. I’m not always the safest at times. But I wouldn’t have poured gasoline on weeds to kill them. I’m too paranoid for that. Cause knowing my luck, some hapless soul would have walked by and flicked a cigarette into the brush pile, even though it was piled at the furthest point from anything on our property. Crash promised to be safer. I perhaps should take his lead and try to be safer as well. After all, I only have one life to live, and no one can age backwards. This pain in my joints does wake me up on occasion at nights now. It would be nice to see eighty and not need a wheel chair. But we’ll see. Knowing my luck, I’ll be in a wheel chair, in a nursing home next to Crash, who will be stuck in his werewolf form for some reason, peeing in one bag and drinking from another. All while nurses check our pulses every three hours and tell us things in singsong voices as if we’re mentally handicap instead of just physically. But we’ll see. It’s best not to plan that far ahead in the future. After all, when we make plans, God, the universe, or whoever, sends us fireballs. |
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