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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 |
| We don’t get door knockers. No door-to-door sales people. The local Mormons leave our particular house alone when they go door-to-door recruiting. There’s no cult on the outskirts of town but if there where, I know they’d just give our little house a wide berth. It’s the natural thing that comes with living a werewolf that you grow to enjoy. You don’t have to worry about dealing with those modern annoyances in life. Afterall, no one wants to piss off a werewolf. Even if they don’t know about werewolves, there’s a subconscious thing about it. People seem to naturally know not to bother us. But that doesn’t mean we don’t get accosted when we’re out and about. Every one of us living here has a story about how someone stopped us and asked “can you get Crash to look into this?” Sometimes, (usually trolls or ogres), will give us WAY too much information when they stop us. For these people personal privacy simply doesn’t exist. After all, everyone has sex, right? And pooping is something that everyone does. So, if someone wants to combine those acts, well, why wouldn’t your neighbors want to hear about it? In detail? In Wal-Mart? In front of the children’s toy aisle? With a mother staring horrified onward clutching her kids ears while this complete stranger goes into every excruciating, disgusting detail to you so you can accurately describe the problem to Crash? Honestly? I’d rather have the Mormons. At least then I can tell them no thanks and shut the door. Plus, they don’t give us creepy, graphic stories at random. But it’s one of those little details of life that you have to go through when you live with a werewolf who also works for the local government. One such occurrence happened at a local fast-food chain. It was one of those places that lives in the fast food strip that exists in every small town in America. It’s practically Americana at this point. It happens like this: you get one McDonalds in the center of town. And like a rash, Burger King springs up. Then before you know it, you got a Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr a chicken finger place, a Chicken sandwich place, a Rally’s/Checkers, a buffet of some kind, all crammed together on the same strip of land running through the center of town. The guy behind the counter looked to be normal enough. Tall, broad shouldered, friendly smile. He was wearing a name tag that said ‘Mitch’ on it. He handed my food to me, then gave a subtle sniff before telling me, “tell Crash I said hi. And he still owes me that hunt.” Two things ran through my mind at that moment. First was, how in the world did this complete stranger know I lived with Crash? Second was, do I stink? When I told Crash what happened that night, he grinned. “No you don’t stink. No worse than any normal human, anyway. And that’s just Mitch. He smelled my scent on you.” “I mean, how,” I asked. “I bathe every day. Wear clean clothing. We don’t sleep in the same bed, we’re not screwing, so how is this guy smelling anything on me?” “First, you’re lucky we’re not screwing, I’d break you. Second, you live in my house! The scent is all over the place. Think of it as a cost of membership in my pack. You get to smell more like an awesome werewolf, instead of like a stale, boring human.” “I don’t think you’d break me, I’m more durable than I look,” I grinned. “After all, I took that Camaro almost dead-on the hip.” Crash laughed. “Yes, and you needed to go to the hospital afterwards. See? I’d break you.” We laughed and the conversation moved on, going into work related things for him and writing related things for me. From there, it didn’t really come back up until a few weeks later when we were back in that same town, this time looking for a part for the dryer. They laughed and hugged, greeting each other like long lost friends. “When are we supposed to party?” He said, his own voice going loud. I guess it’s a werewolf trait to forget their volume? Crash smiled. “Soon. How about this weekend? I have a night off, we can make a night of it. A few beers, and stalk some game through the woods just like old times.” They promised each other they’d get together, then Crash grabbed his food tray and mine, said his goodbyes and came back to our table. “It’s been too long since I seen that guy,” Crash said. “Party?” I asked. “Oh, he means hunting. We’ll go stalk some game. Probably deer,” Crash replied, unwrapping his burger. I head tilted. A trait I picked up from him. “Oh? Werewolves hunt deer? I thought you hunted people.” He smirked. “Only those who go crazy do that,” he replied. “Most just want to live their lives. Pay their taxes, raise their kids, you know same as you.” “So, deer is more fun to hunt than people or something?” I asked, picking up a fry. He shrugged. “Well, deer is more of a challenge. They don’t stomp through the underbrush like you. They’re smart, they hide, they’re a heck of a lot faster. They’ll even try to walk upwind and avoid you.” A thought occurred to me as I looked over at the counter. The werewolf was helping another customer, then. “What’s life like in a wolf’s pack that isn’t working a government job?” Crash shrugged. “A lot simpler for you. A lot more complicated too.” “What do you mean,” I asked. “That Kheid incident for instance? It would have taken longer to get Larry out there. Paperwork, reports, incidents and interviews. The regular police would have to determine that it is, in fact, a supernatural incident and therefor goes into my jurisdiction.” I nodded. “But how would it be simpler?” “That Wal-Mart incident would have never happened. Trolls would just leave you alone.” The conversation kind of died out for a bit there as we concentrated on eating our food. After a while, I glanced back over at Mitch. He had the same jovial grin on his face, working the counter like any manager would, greeting customers with the same award winning grin that some fast food workers seem to have. I know most just have the general face of “I don’t get paid nearly enough for this crap,” but a select few seems to be almost eternally cheerful. It got me to thinking, and well that prompted the next question. “Does Mitch have a pack?” Crash shrugged. “Yeah, why?” It was my turn. “I just didn’t notice a wedding ring or anything, and wasn’t certain.” “Oh,” Crash said. “He’s adopted a family nearby. Their kids call him ‘Uncle’. He’s like the crazy Uncle Ernie from that movie Christmas Vacation’.” “You mean ‘Cousin Eddie’,” I corrected. He smirked. “Well, I don’t know movies all that well.” I laughed. “This coming from the guy that can list the actors in some obscure blood and gore horror comedy like ‘Redneck Zombies’.” Crash laughed as well, “Okay, so I have priorities.” The conversation went on from there, twisting around Crash’s favorite horror actors. The big revelation though was being ‘adopted’ by a werewolf. Apparently Crash had did it to me and Sarah, adopting her through me and I didn’t even know it. Mitch had done the same to this other family. He was even polite enough to go through a checklist kind of to determine if you’ve been adopted by a werewolf. Do you know someone who is jovial and large framed? Perhaps they show up at random times? Are present at every Barbecue and maybe at most important family events? If so, count yourself lucky. Cause you’ve been adopted by a werewolf. Werewolves can’t prevent every tragedy from occurring, but they let ghoulies and other mythical beasties know that you and your family is not to be trifled with. They’ll do this by borrowing certain items and then returning them, or giving you things. You won’t be able to smell it, but it has their scent all over it and in turn will soon be all over your house. This is better than what they used to do in the olden times. As Mitch explained to me one evening while he was waiting for Crash to go “change”, “in older times we’d mark the houses of those we protected physically with our scent.” I gave him an incredulous look. “So, werewolves would pee on your home?” He laughed. “Yeah! Kept the vampires at bay.” “So, what makes you adopt someone,” I asked. Mitch shrugged. “Mutual interests is where it starts. There has to be some level of acceptance there for other people. A slight love of humanity, whether they admit it or not.” I nodded as he continued. “It makes sense why we do it though. Cause loneliness kills. It’s perhaps the biggest killer of werewolves out there. Far more than silver or any curse. Far more than any strange werewolf disease. And it kills just as many people as it does wolves.” That much I understood, from first hand experience. I had pushed everyone out of my life, even tried pushing Crash out, but he refused to go. Instead of taking my distance as a sign of me attempting to work things out, or my own general miserliness, he took it as a cry for help. Without him, I literally would not even be here now, typing this out. Mitch has a similar story with the family he adopted. They knew no one when they came to town. He met them, introduced himself, and helped become the conduit through which they grew to know the entire community. They’re growing to be pillars, owning the restaurant that Mitch works in, as well as working on another one and even have plans to develop a park. All of those things because Mitch more than a decade ago, brought over a tuna casserole when they moved in and ignored their polite insistences when they thought they wanted him to leave and instead helped them unload their moving truck. He also helped later when that ghoul began stalking them, though the family knows nothing about that. If you have that individual in your life. That one person who always has a smile, is always around even when it sometimes feels annoying to have them there, don’t shun them. Don’t lock your door on them or cut them out. Cause they just maybe curing their own loneliness. Or, they just might be a werewolf, and you maybe lucky enough to soon count yourself among the lucky few: those of us who have been adopted into a larger family. And if you’re very lucky, that werewolf may open themselves and their lives to you. If that happens, well, not only accept them, but embrace them. Because you’re about to embark on a bumpy, wild, fun ride. One that has it’s ups and downs, true. But one that has been a blast for me, and one I wouldn’t trade the world for. |
| 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. |
| Things have been a little less hectic lately. That’s something I’m not quite used to anymore, but it is nice to drop back into a routine that doesn’t involve a troll trying to kill you or zombies taking you to a Halloween festival of their own. I get a chance to slow down and enjoy the finer things in life. And there’s really nothing finer than sitting at the kitchen table by the window and watching the sunrise. I know some people would prefer Caviar and an ivory-white beach on some completely nude French island somewhere, but me? I'll take this sunrise. When I was in the service and could run, running into the sunrise was one of the few things that I enjoyed about that job. Running into the sun in formation with other people doesn't sound like a lot of fun. However, there was a lot of freedom in that. The wind in your lungs and on your face, the feeling of the pavement beneath your shoes, and of course, the stunning view that you always got every morning with every run. Some days, that was the only enjoyable part of the job. Now, running is pain. After a few steps, it shoots up from the heel to my hip and flares up there for a while before settling into its nice home in my back. Heck, long walks along ivory-white beaches in French nudist colonies are pain these days. As much fun as casual nudity is, it would be ruined by that aching, searing reminder that I’m injured. So, the closest I can get to recapturing that feeling of morning freedom is pretty much the kitchen window, a good cup of coffee, and the sunrise. The window doesn't face Crash and his path back toward the house. So, a lot of times I don’t see him when he gets home. That morning he was already in human form when he got through the door. It was rare but not unheard of. There are times when being in his larger, hairier form makes his job more difficult. Like when more diplomacy is required than growls, threats, bites, and howls. As he trudged inside and began making his evening cup of old man decaf, he let out the most God-awful burps I’ve ever smelled. When I say this burp stank, I mean it. The stench wafted from his side of the kitchen towards mine, peeling paint from the walls, curling tile, staining anything white a sickening brownish-green color. Birds fell from the sky at one whiff of this. Plants withered and died. The president nearly called a national emergency because of it until he forgot what he was doing and called for an ice cream cone instead. The power of the stench and the revenge of whatever meal the werewolf had eaten the previous night was immediate and apparent. "Oh, God!" I cried, trying to fan the stench away from my nose. "That is just awful!" Crash made a face, and said “bleh, that tasted a lot better last night.” Then he looked at me with another of his pearls of unique werewolf wisdom that will only ever apply to him. “Remember, if you bite it, you have to taste it.” That had me thinking about Crash’s little nuggets of wisdom. On the rare occasion, he has a sour stomach, we'll get the odd "must have been someone I ate" of course. But there are also always others. Those sayings and phrases that really could only apply to werewolves themselves and their unique culture. Things like: “Werewolves can’t get electrocuted. We just get new hairstyles”, or “never eat someone you need or like”. Crash has a whole collection of these things. I honestly don’t know where he gets them from. One would have to think that somewhere out there is a “Poor Richard the werewolf version” or something that every werewolf mother reads to their little pups at night before putting them to bed. However, someone by now would have seen a book like this. Wouldn’t someone have come up with something like that sooner or later? I'd collect them all in a book of my own if I wasn't afraid of Crash getting in trouble for it, or him getting angry at me over it. So, here are a few that we've collected over these past few days. One's Crash is particularly proud of, (like that 'if you bite it, you have to taste it' one) and ones he didn't even recall saying at the time. They're in no particular order here. “If it tastes terrible in the night, it will taste even worse in the morning.” This was said one morning after getting terrible indigestion from whatever or whomever he ate the night before. I didn’t ask, not because I was afraid of the consequences, but because I was afraid he’d tell me. Which, in a way, I guess means I was afraid of the consequences. Hey, I’ve never claimed to make sense. It took me the longest time to understand one of his lesser-known favorite sayings ‘makes as much sense as marking a skunk.' Werewolves have been known to use scent markings for different things, such as claiming ownership. Since a skunk already smells, and uses that smell as a defense weapon, putting your scent on it to claim ownership makes as much sense as well, as marking a skunk. The scent will be lost and you’d just end up stinking. “Blends in like a skunk in a trash can at a sewage plant”. He's used this when talking about something he doesn't like going with something else. Like if a lead singer of a band he's not fond of plays with another band he doesn't like. Or when the farmers relative to our town decide it's the day to spread manure on their fields, and we're throwing out rotten food or something the smell will, well, blend in I guess. Or when someone wears a shirt that is just weird and disgusting, and they're not that pretty of a person to start with. I've heard it used in both scenarios. Crash isn't forthcoming on where it came from, though he says he knows the original story. He ain’t talking yet. Ah well, maybe one day.” “Don’t go getting your kibbles and bits stirred up.” Kibbles and bits are a euphemism for a male werewolf's uhmm…ahem….family toolbox shall we say. And this one is in general telling someone not to get too worked up over someone (if you catch my drift), though I've heard him use it as well in the same sense we used to use "Who pissed in your cornflakes?" “They’re all kibble and no bits” You'd think we'd hear "they're all bark and no bite" more, but Crash prefers this one to the latter. Knowing what ‘kibbles and bits’ are, you can get some idea of how this one came into being. This one is usually talking about someone who is all swagger, no swing. All bark, no bite. Someone who talks a big game, but doesn't have the gumption to back up the words. It intrigues me to think that out there somewhere is an entire werewolf family, composed of individuals who use these phrases back and forth all the time. Friends who are werewolves tease each other with these phrases and sayings. A werewolf girlfriend telling her boyfriend 'you're all kibble, no bits' on their date after their first kiss when he's a tad reluctant to go much further, either because of nerves or because of uncertainty. Those are all the ones I’ve collected so far. This may seem a bit frivolous, but collected sayings and phrases are part of a culture's flavor. It's the salt and pepper of a people. These few collected nuggets of wisdom give us a tiny glimpse of a subculture that is werewolves. Perhaps one day we'll get more. I know I wouldn't mind seeing a version of Poor Richard with Crash. Maybe 'Poor Crash's collections of life lessons and nuggets of wisdom' or something? I don't know. I’ll think of a different title sooner or later. Right now, I’ve got to get out to the garage. It’s one of Crash’s rare days off. We’re working on his Cadillac today, as well as possibly trying to clear out a strange infestation. Apparently, some of the tools that we regularly keep around in there have taken on a more ceramic quality to them. Instead of a regular hammer, we now have one that resembles one used by a certain type of statue. Could Kheid be back? I don't know. Let's hope not. |
| Well, January was the frozen month at home, so we sort of bunkered down while we waited the weather out. In truth, I mostly bugged Crash about how he remembered things happening and compared them with notes of my own. Even Sarah, for her credit, was willing to throw in a bone here and there, so to speak, so we could piece together the story as much as we could for it to be as accurate as possible. As I was gathering the information for that, I also started a little side project. I’ve collected a few questions for Crash to answer, in an AMA style thing. Now, this is something I’ve never done before. I’ve never done an AMA, much less on this blog. I’m still getting used to Crash reading it and seeing this thing, to be entirely honest. It’s like writing notes about your teacher while your teacher is reading them over your shoulder. Only in this case, my teacher is a werewolf, I already know that, and technically have been telling the entire world what’s been happening. Doing this is especially strange since he’s currently in my room, “getting his steps in” on his smart watch. Nothing more strange than watching a werewolf walk in place while answering questions. Were you always a wolf (born)? Oh, yeah. Hmm, maybe this could be if he ever thought of himself as some animal? Yes. We’re all animals. Did you ever play sports? Which ones? Tried to. You know there’s some places that tell you you’re too big to play football? I played baseball. I’m not very good at playing baseball. But I can throw a bat a long ways. Do you have any artistic talent or enjoy any of the arts (music, painting, dance, etc.)? I do. In all weird things I find interesting stuff interesting. Even messed around with finger print portraits for a while, using different finer print paints to do a portrait. Did it for an art class. Even did some paintings with my claws too, get some interesting effects. Though I’ll never share how I got those effects…or did I just share that? What do you do to have fun? I do music. Took piano classes. Picked up odd instruments. Got invited to tour with a bluegrass band playing the washboard, cause I played the washboard at a party. Still don’t know why I didn’t take them up on it. Do you have favorite books or movies? Lots of them. I like werewolf literature, even though a lot of it is horrible. I don’t get into werewolf romance stuff, a lot of that is horrible. But I like the classics, like Stephen Kings “Silver Bullet”, “Hunter’s Moon,” and an older one titled “The Hairy One’s Shall Dance.” I also like HP Lovecraft. Do you believe that UFO's are real? Well, yeah. Anything you can’t identify as flying, is an Unidentified Flying Object. (Jason: I think they mean aliens.) (Crash: That’s no way to talk about them. They’re just misplaced.) The supernatural in the blog takes on a more natural presence despite the associated dangers of the uninitiated (Thinking specifically of the garden gnomes here). Would Crash say that normal people just ignore the presence of this underlayer of life, or are there active efforts to keep it secret? A combination of both. Because some of them have beliefs they shouldn’t be seen by humans for different cultural reasons. Others its just easier for day-to-day life to just not be noticed as other than a normal human. It’s been taken as a general rule as you don’t make it super publicly known. Do werewolves date? If so, do they care in what form (human or transformed)? Yes we date. Whether if its in our transformed form it generally depends on the relationship and who we’re dating. And forgive me if I have missed this if explained in the blog, but how did Crash get his nickname? Or is that his real name? It’s a nickname, and part of that depends on which time. In grade school I totaled a bicycle and a BMW. And walked away from it. Kept it through high school. Then in college I totalled my buddies S-10 car surfing and walked away from that. So, after that I just accepted it. |
| Walmart indeed has all the supplies you'd need to make homemade C-4 and other fun explosive devices. What's more, they wouldn't bat an eye if we purchased all of the things in their necessary quantities to make such things, as long as we did it properly. But making explosives takes time and that was a luxury we could not afford. The things we did get however made it look like we were playing a real live version of that old game, "Which three or four items would you buy at Walmart to shock the cashier?" A taser. Garlic, both garlic powder and in the squeezable tube. Snake shot for my pistol. A pair of pliers. The elderly woman who was ringing us up didn't even blink. "Looks like one hell of a party," she said, then gave us our total. "Vampire hunting," Sarah said with a smile. She gave Sarah a knowing wink, then said, "good luck." As we made it to the car, I said, "Now think. Where would they be?" "Is this plan even going to work," She asked. There was genuine fear on her face. She wanted reassurances. Promises. Something that had been ingrained in me to never give. Don't promise what you're not certain you can deliver. It's one of the first things I learned in the military. You don't say, 'It's going to be okay', and you never say 'you'll get out of this alive'. You say, 'we're doing everything we can.' You say, 'help is on the way', then you give them an order to distract them from their impending doom. The look in her eyes screamed she needed me to hold her. To hug her. To tell her, 'everything will be alright.' Instead, I began to drive the car out of the parking lot. 'A bad plan is better than no plan,' I said. "You know how to fill those?" I pointed at the ammunition with my thumb. She gave me a weary sigh and said "I think I can figure it out." Distraction. It does work from time to time. Using the pliers, she pulled off the plastic caps on the snake shot one at a time. Then, dumping the pellets out she put inside each cap a mixture of powdered and diced garlic. After which, she stuck the caps back on each round and wiped them clean. It took her a full clip of ruined rounds before she got the hang of it. Good thing we bought almost four hundred rounds of it. She filled as many as she could, then after getting the first couple of rounds backward in the magazines and having to pull them back out, she started to fill the magazines properly as well. "Not gonna get a lot of shots out of this," I grumbled. "It'll probably gum up after the first ten rounds or so." She sighed, then looked at me. "So we only need one?" "No," I replied. "Do them all." After all, distraction. Besides, I couldn't quite tell if we would need them. Sarah directed us in a somewhat meandering direction towards a trailer home out in the middle of nowhere. Trash had been strewn all over the property, shoved between the smattering of trees that were scattered across it. There were some obvious half-hearted attempts at making booby traps, but aside from a few pits with railroad spikes sticking up out of them, there wasn't anything I was concerned with. Besides, I didn't have to worry about sneaking inside. Especially since as soon as our wheels touched the dirt road leading towards the diner, the look of fear in Sarah's eyes changed back into the blank look I saw on her in that diner. "Far enough, moron." She growled. "Is that you Leeroy? Why only this far?" I asked, pointing up at the hill. "What if I made it this far?" "What if my brother sawed off your werewolf boyfriend's arm and ate it," she said. "First, he's not my boyfriend, and second, I'll tell his replacement to shit on your doorstep." She motioned with the gun while grumbling about how disgusting werewolves were, and lead me up the property, towards a metal building near the back. That's what was going on outside her mind. Inside her mind was a completely different story. Sarah's mental keep wasn't a castle. Hers was a car. She felt safest in her father's automobile as a child. She took road trips with him constantly. It was a connection they both maintained, and during the marriage would still do the occasional road trip to this random meet-up or convention or whatever. For months the monster drove with her trapped in the trunk of her mental vehicle. Completely away from everything. It had taken a sheer force of will, and a reminder from me to break her out of that, to give her the will to shove the monster onto the street. She was given control of her mental car, but when she got within a certain range of the toxic twins, something opened the driver's door as if it was unlocked and violently shoved her aside and took the wheel. The creature she would tell me later resembled much of the one I described for my mental keep. Tall, thin with white skin, red eyes, and long claws and fangs. She no longer had control, but unlike last time, wouldn't, and couldn't be locked in the trunk. Outside the windows was the world, the movements her body made. The monster did not move toward the glovebox of the vehicle, didn't even look at it. Just let the seat back and stomped the throttle grinning out the windows as it assumed full control. Sarah did her best to stare out the windows as well, avoiding every thought or glance towards that glovebox. If the creature wanted to, it could have ripped the glovebox open, and torn through the contents. Then Sarah would have been done for. And with Sarah gone, all our hope would have been gone too. She watched as I walked in front of her, pretending to be scared. She was trying in vain to not think about the glove box in front of her. Which is really hard. You ever try and not to think about something? The harder you try to not think of something, the more you end up thinking about it. It runs through your mind, tantalizing you. Teasing you. Especially if it's something horrific. The more you try to not think about it, the worse details you end up imagining by accident. Which is exactly what was going on for Sarah. The more she tried not to think about the glove box, the more it ran through her mind. So much so, that images of it began to flash in the rearview mirror of her mental car. So, as we reached the metal side door of the building, the creature inside her said something like "what's in the glovebox?" And made a reach for it. At the same time, I opened the barn and flicked on the lights by the door. Crash was wrapped up in a chain that was coated in silver. Pretty poorly coated, I might add. Something had melted down cheap silver and poured it over the chains. They weren't thick, but the burning and weakness he got every time he tried to break them made escape impossible. I tried not to look at the bloody instruments near him, though there was a handful of household tools there being misused as torture implements. He was chained to a pillar of some kind, near a beaten and bloody heap in the corner must have been the sheriff. I didn't know what could cause a werewolf to shift back to human, whether he did it voluntarily, or if he was just dead, and I didn't want to contemplate it. Crash was still in wolf form, weakened, terrified. When he saw me enter, a look of despair crossed over him, as if he'd just been defeated. The meth heads were nowhere to be seen. "Shit," I growled. Inside Sarah's mind, the creature placed a claw on the glove box, at the same time Sarah pressed her hand to it, clamping it shut. It glared at her, red eyes that seemed to pierce right through her. "You cannot deny me," It snarled, and a thick black fog began to fill the car. "This place," she cried, "is mine!" Outside, I walked forward a couple more paces, standing in the center of the room. My arms were still up. Sarah was holding the pistol on me. A sick smile was on her face. A tear or two streamed down her face. It was as if inside she was battling against the world, and the world was winning. "Sarah," I said. "Don't," she whispered. The pistol shook in her hands. "Do," Leeroy said. Or was it Mitch? I could never tell. "Kill that moron." He entered the room, walking towards her. Mitch (or was it Leeroy?) was right along behind, a train of meth, glassy-eyed and black-toothed smiling, their teeth and very faces almost completely rotted out from the drug. "Don't kill him." He said. "I want him to see his boyfriend and the sheriff die first. Then we feed on what's left." They stood on either side of Sarah, triumph painted on their faces. Shoot him in the leg first," the one on the left grinned, showing off all of his rotten fangs. A mouth full of death and tooth decay. Inside her head, the creature banged and pulled on the glove box. While another outside started pulling on the door handles to her mental car, trying to force their way in. She shoved as hard as she could with her shoulder against the monster in the driver's seat, forcing it back for a second, long enough to grab the object out of the glove box. To this day she never told me what that object was, and I never pried. I know it was something beautiful, memorable, and precious to her. A singular object that encapsulated a time of happiness and purity, the only weapon we have sometimes against the darkness. The creature temporarily recoiled from it, the brightness hurting its eyes. The driver's door to her mental car opened, and with two swift kicks, she shoved the creature out, slammed the door, and locked it. What we could see outside is both Leeroy and Mitch turning to her, a look of shock and anger on their faces. She swung the pistol as fast as she could, and pulled the trigger, right in Leeroy's face. Leeroy gave an unholy blood-curdling scream, falling backward, clutching his face. She turned towards Mitch, who grabbed her arm. She fired anyway, a spray of burnt garlic powder and blackened sizzling diced garlic spread out, causing him to gag and choke. While that was going on, I raced over toward Crash. His ears were pinned against his skull as he looked at me as if I was crazy. "This was your plan?" He growled. I shrugged. "You have a better one?" I started to look for the lock that bound the chain. "It's a key lock," He said. "you gotta get the key from Mitch." Both vampires were gagging, coughing. With lightning-quick slashes, they blindly swung, searching for their target, which was still firing the garlic bullets at them, sometimes at point-blank range. The scent of burnt garlic and gunpowder filled the room. She pulled out the taser, and held it in her other hand, getting it ready as she kept firing. I grabbed a bloody hammer from their torture tools, and the closest thing that I could find that resembled a chisel, a fat flat-tip screwdriver, and began striking the chain next to the lock. It took three hard strikes to break the link. "Get back to the car!" I shouted at Sarah. "Get back now!" I unraveled Crash's chains as fast as I could. He stood, then looked at me. "I got this. Help the Sheriff." The gun in Sarah's hand had two more shots in it, then jammed. I have to hand it to Glock. After nearly a full clip of shoving out half-cooked, half-burnt diced Garlic and Garlic powder through its barrel, it finally jammed. That is one durable pistol. Sarah dropped the pistol and sprinted for the door. She got two steps before Leeroy (or was it Mitch?) grabbed her and pulled her back by her collar. "That wasn't very nice," He snarled. She turned and pressed the taser against him. It crackled and sizzled. But did nothing else against his flesh. He just grinned at her as he threw her down to the dirt, and climbed on top of her. What happened next, was confusing for me for the longest time. One moment, a meth-headed vampire was telling Sarah that he was going to skin her alive, then next, faster than you can blink, its head was missing and its body collapsed on top of her. All of the vampire movies and shows have it wrong. They don't just turn to dust when you kill them or crumple up like burnt paper. The vampire's body began to leak blood over her face. Sarah gave a blood-curdling scream. "Leeroy!" the other vampire shouted in horror. Crash threw the severed head down on the dirt floor and looked over at Mitch, blood dripping from his claws and muzzle. The vampire then looked at me of all people, and snarled, "you're gonna pay!" and disappeared. "What did I do?!" I shouted after him. Of course, I got no answer. Thankfully the sheriff wasn't dead. He was passed out however from whatever they had injected him with. Crash had been injected as well, which is how they captured both of them. Crash, it seems was brought back so they could torture him, probably for fun, which was why we found him the way we did. There is a substance relatively unknown to me or most humans that will incapacitate a werewolf. Neither Crash nor the sheriff told me what it was, and I did not ask them. One of the things I am learning from all of this insanity is that certain things in life we, as humans, are simply not meant to know. The sheriff once he got his bearings and was given a working cell phone was able to call in the "special task force" as he called it to help clean the site up. I'm told that Leeroy was given a proper burial. Mitch was never found. The long slow process of cleanup had begun. The sheriff's "special taskforce" arrived, and took us back to the sheriff's office. We sat outside, drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups while watching the sunlight as it gently kissed the horizon good morning in a splendid display of gold and reds. "For a moment, I never thought I'd see the sun again," Sarah said. I shrugged. "We all die sometime." She turned to look at me. "You're always like that. What did they do to you in the military?" I laughed, then said "that's my secret. I've always been this way. The military actually toned me down." "So what now," She asked. I sighed, rubbing the back of my head for a moment. "I was going to ask you the same thing." "I can go to my dad's. He has a room for me he told me before, whenever I want to come back." She was staring at the sunrise again, watching the rays play off the surface of the Earth. "I'd need to find a job, I guess," I said, "but maybe afterward, we could," Sarah turned to me then and smiled a sweet, sad smile. "Don't." "Don't what?" I asked. "Just don't." I swallowed a lump that had risen in my throat. "Weren't we in love? Didn't we have some good times? Wasn't there one point you were happy with me?" She hugged me so sweetly then. It was the sweetest, saddest hug I've ever received in my life. "We had fun." She said. "But we were never happy. Jason, you spent most of our marriage drunk." "That was because, the job, you know? The stress and everything." "No, it wasn't." She gave my cheek a gentle touch. "We were both miserable. You wanted out of the barracks; I wanted your benefits. Neither of us really knew each other all that well. We had a mutual physical attraction that had some financial and emotional benefits. But that isn't love." I rubbed my eyes, the world burning for a moment. "I suck at showing it," I said. "But I did love you once. I still care for you now." Then, I turned towards her and gave her my own sad smile. "If you ever need me. You tell me." "Jason," she smiled, "I promise. I'll be fine." "But still," I replied. "I'll be fine." In my hand, she placed a knife that was well-known to me. When my father died, I didn't get much. He didn't own a lot in this world, and what little he did have had been divided up amongst my relatives, my other sibling, and myself. What I got was an old belt buckle, his wedding ring, and a knife. That knife was the most special to me cause it was the one thing that reminded me most of him. Whenever he went fishing that knife came out. It was a small switchblade with a wooden handle. On that handle was an engraving he had done for his father when his father was in the service, of a military dog sitting in front of a flag. I guess his dad was an MP of some sort. But it was something he never talked about, and I hadn't asked. "I hid this from them for months," she said. "Thankfully they never searched my pockets all that well. If they ever saw it they never cared. I never wanted to dump you like that. I wanted a clean divorce, you could have had the apartment, we divide the stuff, and I was going to be gone and out of your life. But Leeroy came along, saw I was depressed said he would cheer me up. I agreed, and before you know it by the end of the day, he had a moving van in front of the apartment and I was happily moving everything out so we could sell everything and I give it to him, despite every fiber of my being actually not wanting to do any of that." "You saved this," I said. "I'm sorry, it was all I could," she began. I cut her off with a long, tight hug. Sure, to the rest of the world, it looked like a ratty old pocket knife with a faded image that now more closely resembled a bear or something staring at a tree than a dog in front of a flag. But to me, it was fishing trips and camping. It was long nights in front of a bonfire learning how to roast marshmallows and make s'mores. It was a piece of my family that I thought was gone. And I had just got it back. After dropping Sarah off at the police station with the sheriff, we decided it would be best to just get a start that day, find a room to sleep in or if need be, sleep in the car again. Since it was an hour after noon before we ran out of energy to drive anymore, we found ourselves at a rest stop sleeping near the highway. The sounds of the trucks passing by on the interstate as we snored away at the rest stop were more comforting than it was the first time we did it. We finally made it home a couple of hours after midnight. I was holding the switchblade in my hands, turning it over with the memories of times gone by in my mind when I felt Crash's heavy hand land on my shoulder. "I know this was hard for you." He said. "I didn't expect you to save me this time. Let's get you inside and get you wasted. I think you've earned it." I smiled at Crash. "It's alright," I said. "You can have the beer, but I don't want any. I really don't need it anymore." |
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