Life With A Werewolf

Pent Up

          Werewolves are certainly human. Until their absolutely not. One example of this strange dichotomy happened when me and Crash were playing video games one day. I remember it was a racing game of some kind, probably one of the Gran Tourismo games or it's ilk on one of the other systems. The style of driving was meant to be as real world as possible, to give you as serious of a drivers experience as could be had with a controller in your hand. So, of course me and Crash were using it to play bumper cars.

          "Gah! Get back here!" Crash shouted, as I drove away on some beautiful course with lots of open spaces. I remember there being lots of dirt, thin scrabbly pieces of grass struggling for survival in its digital world of a virtual punishing sun, and of course lots and lots of tire smoke.

          "Ha! Eat my dust!" I shouted, trying to push and shove him off the couch with my shoulder, while clutching my controller in both hands. The vehicle on screen, probably a Mopar beast of some kind, continued to squeal tire smoke as I twisted and wrenched its way through scenery that was never intended by programmers to be used as a race track.

          We at some point in the game had determined that using the track was cheating. Why? I don't know, something about asphalt tires being used on asphalt was too easy for our little game. Or something. I'm not sure. Alcohol was involved, that much I do remember, so really whenever we get in these little things of drinking and gaming, strange rules come out and honestly, almost anything goes.

          It had been a late Friday night that capped off one heck of a week for both of us. I did just deal with the whole ordeal of the gnomes and the mess left behind by the Larry, the stone dragon. Apparently, Larry knows how to throw one heck of a party, but cleanliness is not high on the list of any dragon, especially a stone one. It took me hours to clean up the shattered remnants of the hats, stone fruits and vegetables the gnomes were "growing", as well as the brownish blackish stone pile that I'm going to go on believing was a weird sculpture Larry liked enough to leave behind and not something else entirely.

          For Crash, it was a week of something he absolutely hated: office work. I knew by now that the centaur boss and other characters I created for my head canon was far from Crash's reality, but someone was certainly riding him hard about something, that much I could tell. Hence, the whole game of virtual drinking and driving that we had going on. Or as we called it: "Drunk Bumper Cars."

          Like I said earlier, we had no actual rules for the game itself, making most of the stuff up on the fly. However, we did have drinking rules. If you lose, you take a drink. If you win, you take a drink. The loser has to also drink with the winner. It was a simple game that was getting us both drunk. Since neither of us was planning on doing any actual driving it worked out well. That is it did until Crash began to grow hair.

          I'm not the most observant of people. Heck, my entire head could be set ablaze and it would take me several hours to even notice. However, even I could see the dark hairs that started to grow down his arms from his shirt.

          "Uh, Crash," I asked, pausing the game for a moment.

          "Yeah," he asked. Twitching his fingers absent-mindedly. His finger nails had nearly grown into claws, but he wasn't at the point of extreme pain, yet. A point of changing I had only heard through my bedroom wall, and had no interest in seeing in real life.

          "You're uh....changing." I said, feeling like an idiot.

          "What," he cried, stumbling a moment as he got up, then walked over towards the bathroom, and looked at himself in the mirror. I could see a bit of a muzzle beginning for form on his face, but nothing terribly permanent yet. "Oh shit," he grumbled, stumbling towards his bedroom.

          "What should I do," I asked. I was concerned. After all, I'm sure that Crash has been through this change hundreds of times before and was more than used to it by now. However, for me, it was the very first time I was seeing it first hand, and was at a loss for what I could be and should be actually doing.

          I heard the screams. And cries. I had never witnessed the shift in real life, but I knew it was a painful ordeal, something that was survived more than lived or enjoyed. To me, it always seemed like syphilis. Sure the itching and burning and pain can be horrendous, but look at the upside! I mean, if you can find one.

          Crash tossed his shirt in the dirty clothes hamper in his room. his chest and stomach had a lot more hair on it than before. "Get me another beer, I guess," he mumbled as he walked back into the living room and picked up the game controller.

          "You're not going to need, medicine, or towels or something," I asked.

          "Nah," he replied. "I'm just pent up. I'll have more body hair and things, but I won't go full wolf. I'll probably change next week for work."

          Pent up. He said he was pent up? "You mean, like a horny teenager?"

          "Well, kind of." He shrugged.

          "I'm getting beer, I'll be right back." I said, walking towards the beer fridge we kept on the back porch. It got me away from things for a moment, giving my brain time to think. When I returned, I tossed him one.

         He popped the top with a fingernail that was rapidly becoming a claw and sighed. "The chemicals that cause the change in us weres builds up in our system if we don't change enough. Then our bodies begin to force a change. Wherever we are. A lot of fun dealing with it when it happens and you're say, in the middle of an operation or something."

          "So, you're a doctor." I said dumbly.

          He took a long drink out of the beer, then smiled. "Out of all that, you got that I'm a doctor?"

          It was my turn to shrug. "I dunno. What else am I supposed to get out of that?"

          "Look, the thing to remember is, that if I don't change. I will," Crash said, then took another long drink.

         Yeah, whatever that meant. I popped open my beer and took a drink while I thought. So werewolves are basically like horny teenagers, only with shifting forms. This leaves all sorts of things to the imagination, parts of which I'll leave to the worse parts of Deviant Art and Tumblr to picture. I don't really want to. And he didn't call them werewolves, but weres. Where there more than one type of were out there or was it just short hand for werewolf? Did they have a club or something? What was the secret handshake to get in their club? What if I wanted to be secretary of the werewolf club and not president? My mind was running away with itself again. It does that from time to time.

          "So, are you like, extra aggressive or something," I asked, trying to get my brain back on track.

          "No, I'm not. I'm still me. I won't go randomly attacking anyone, and besides if I did they'd take away my pension," he said, then took another sip and set the beer down. "Are you going to keep playing?"

          "I dunno," I said, "are you going to keep changing?"

          "I dunno. Does that even matter?" He picked up a controller and stared at me awaiting my answer.

         I looked over at him, and shrugged. I guess it didn't. He wasn't screaming in agony yet. I grabbed the controller and unpaused it. "Okay, fine." I said. "But no more bumper cars. This race we do completely in top gear. No other gear allowed."

          "Deal," he grinned. Crash didn't completely shift that night. He did so a few days later, going in for 'the evening shift' as Zack and
Kris called it. He came home later covered in usual muck, and a bit of blood. I didn't ask, he didn't tell. It kind of works out well right now. Though, I know there will come a time when he has to tell me more about his job and the other part of his life. Whenever that happens, whatever day that is, I'll be ready.

         I'm sure he has horrific stories. But it can't be any worse than some of the tales I've heard from my former co-workers. My battle buddies. The men and women whom I served with who may only talk about those things after heavy amounts of alcohol, in the quiet moments when the night is slowly losing its fight to the dawn.

         When that time comes for Crash. I'm ready. I'll listen. But for now, I'm content to play drinking contests with ridiculous rules. To have prank wars and strange meals. I'm content to have a friend and a room mate. I'm content to have family.