Life With A Werewolf

The Night Charles Went Crazy

          Getting to know all of the mythical creatures that are alive and somewhat well in and around your area is a daunting task. One I personally am not really all that well equipped to handle. I’m a bit anti-social. Discussions is a task left to others when they’re strangers and sometimes even when they’re acquaintances. I’ll follow along and nod when appropriate, but I tend to not offer much in the way of the discussion itself if I don’t know them that well. I must admit that I can be a bit judgmental at times as well, deeming others to be of less intelligence than they actually are – especially if they catch me on a bad day.

          That is just a very wordy way of saying I quietly judge my neighbors. In that, I hardly think I’m alone. I know it’s not the most honorable of practices, and the judgements I proclaim upon others usually ends up being incorrect in some way or another. However, occasionally, people have raced to prove me right.

          We used to have a resident here by the name of, well we’ll just call him Charles after the guy on MASH. He had a large house, a beautiful wife, an expensive and gorgeous car. His features were chiseled, he enjoyed working out, and never in all of my many days of knowing this guy have I ever even seen a hair misplaced on his head. His blue eyes held the cold look of vapid vanity, one that always seemed to be looking down on you as you spoke to him. If you were lucky enough to engage him in conversation, he would try to use words in the discussion that were purposefully too big to match what he was talking about. I’ve never seen someone use a four-syllable word to talk about getting diarrhea from a bad taco before I met this guy.

          You’d think that hearing about his expensive Mercedes Sports car, his obviously overpriced haircut, the expensive manor in which he kept literally everything including his yard that I hated the guy. However, you’d be wrong. Cause Charles had just about as many braincells in his skull as a Ken doll. And nearly every discussion with him always ended up in his own humiliation, something that he never seemed to catch on to.

          I caught him outside of the liquor store one day, for example. He had a scowl on his face. A look that was either extreme concentration or constipation. I wasn’t sure which one. He stood next to his sports car, staring at the front door of the store. I pulled up next to one of the two parking spaces he took up with his car in my econobox special, got out and stopped in front of him for a moment. Pausing to stare at the door with him, me in puzzlement, him in that extreme constipated concentration. “What are we looking at?” I asked after a few moments.

          “I swear, how can they call themselves a liquor store if they do not have the appropriate prefunctions of such an establishment,” He grumbled.

          See what I mean? Who the hell talks like that! Like he wants to sound more intelligent than he actually is. I tilted my head in confusion, like Crash has done so many times at my jokes. “I’m sorry,” I asked.

          “Oh, it’s my wife, Nancy,” he said, “I got to get a bottle of champaigne. You see, me and her were attempting a romantic rendezvous last night, and I apparently wasn’t up to the task, so to speak. So, I’m trying to apologize.”

          All I had in my head then was that image of smiling Bob and his sad neighbors from the commercials years ago. I didn’t want to know anything about his “romantic rendezvous’” or anything else! Yet here we were discussing his lack of ability to perform in the bedroom. Who else in the world would talk like him? He’d tell you that he has “Asperger’s”, but even people with that condition understand that no one else wants to hear about their diarrhea or impotence problems! That conversation ended with me giving him what I hoped was a comforting pat on the shoulder, then entering the establishment to replace the bottle of liquor I’d borrowed from Crash. It was interactions like that one that made me think Charles was just weird. That is, until I finally saw his tail.

          Now, my understanding of things is still somewhat dim, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t happen to get all of this correct. However, the more I’m exposed to Crash’s insane life and werewolf tendencies, the less traditional tricks of the mythical work on me. So, where as you might see Charles as just a quirky, self-absorbed vapid neighbor, I was finally seeing Charles for what he really was – a troll. He was working out in the yard as he does, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts and a smile as he mowed the lawn. He does this because, according to him, ‘you kill two birds with one stone. Lawn gets mowed. I get tan.’ Of course, I told him “you also get itchy,” which lead to a lengthy discussion on what really makes someone itchy. According to him, it’s something to do with pheromones. A ‘chemical’ he’s ensured he’s not susceptible to. When I told him that explanation was nuttier than a squirrel turd, he looked at me as if I had the largest wart on my nose.

          “Squirrel turds aren’t nutty.” He stated, “what are you talking about?”

          A few days later, me and Crash was discussing our strange neighbor, and his tail, the lawn mowing incident, the works. “You see,” Crash held his coffee cup out in front of himself while he was pontificating, something he does from time to time, especially when he’s about to say something profound, or what he thinks is profound. “Charles is what’s known as a hulderfolk.”

          I head tilted at him. “A holder what?”

          He chuckled, in that gruff tone he gets. Crash was close to changing into his ‘night uniform’ as he calls it, to go on patrol or scent mark trees or scare small children. To do whatever it is that he does. “It’s a type of troll. They’re the nice ones. They look almost like people. Sometimes gorgeous people. Though their tails give it away.” He then went on to explain to me that they’re actually quite dangerous if you’re not careful around them. “Don’t get them angry,” he warned me. “They’re not smart. They try to act smart, but they’re not that smart. And, they have no problems attacking or killing humans they think are getting in their way or making fun of them.”

          Now, I know what you’re thinking. And you’d be wrong. This time, it wasn’t my fault! Seriously, I learned my lesson with the lawn gnomes. Crash said stay out of the way, I stayed out of the way. I didn’t talk to Charles anymore other than to say hello in passing, and had never even seen his wife Nancy in weeks. I didn’t want anything to do with them or their peculiar brand of crazy. So, literally you cannot blame me for Charles banging on our door at four in the morning, growling and muttering.

          Trolls have their own language. What I heard was literal gibberish. Words and entire sentences without consonants. Others without vowels. A whole heap of banging, and snarling. Crash was gone, doing whatever it is he does for his job as a werewolf. Zack was asleep, and he sleeps like the dead at times. I didn’t think the other two upstairs had the ability to back me up on this, and I wasn’t about to ask. I didn’t bother calling the cops, either. What would you say in a situation like that? Hello, officer I’d like to report a troll banging on my door?

          I exited the house by the side door, pistol in my hand, lowered at the low ready. It’s a position held with your firearm that allows you to destroy a target quickly, without having to draw it out of your holster. This target being one very large, angry and snarling troll. He was wearing a pair of boxer shorts, with a tail snaking down one leg. It resembled something like a cow’s tail. His eyes seemed to glow with rage. He turned to me, glaring, his perfectly shaped nostrils flaring.

          I raised my weapon once, then lowered the pistol back down for a moment. My finger was near the trigger but not resting on it. Resting your finger on the trigger after all is a great way to cause incidents. “Buddy, right now you got two options. A, you leave my property now, and don’t try this shit again, or B, you’re dead before you hit the ground.”

          We stood there, glaring at each other for a few seconds, my pistol held at the ready, my finger close to the trigger, his arms down by his sides, grasping at the air as he heaved in anger. “It was you, wasn’t it.” He snarled, taking a step towards me. “You destroyed it. You ruined it. You, filthy, human.”

          “I have no idea what you’re talking about. One more step, and I’ll,” He grinned at me, then took another step. From that point onward, it was automatic. In the service I had a tendency to aim for legs first if I was shooting to wound. A shoulder wound has too much potential to be fatal. A bullet hits a bone and goes in a direction that destroys lungs, heart, liver, all manner of things. A leg wound bleeds like hell, but they have a greater chance to live through it, usually provided they get a tourniquet in time. Like I said, I liked Charles. So, I was willing to sacrifice a belt to the cause.

          The shot rang out as a loud pop. I expected lights in neighbors’ windows to turn to light up, people to look out. Cops to be called. None of that actually happened. The bullet penetrated his leg, I could see a small puff of blood in the street light. But he glared at me, and began sprinting towards me. I fired four more rounds, this time into his chest, before he reached me, slamming me into the ground and knocking the pistol away. “Now,” He glared down at me. “I make you pay.”

          “For what?!” I groaned. “I didn’t do nothing.”

          “You insulted my wife. Hurt my wife. You attack her. I attack you.” He reached up with a large fist to hammer down on me. My training told me to make space, to bridge out so I could get room to maneuver my way out of this deadly situation, or perhaps even reverse it. But before I could do any of that, a dark furred blur slammed into the side of him.

          One moment I was about to be pounded into hamburger, the next Crash, in wolf form was snarling over the troll, a clawed hand/paw thing holding his throat. He growled a low guttural growl, one that sent chills down my spine.

          Charles blinked a couple of times. “But he attack Nancy. Violent, filthy human. He attempted to foul her with his hands, his,” The low guttural growl cut him off in mid-sentence.

          “Your wife is fine.” I heard Crash say.

          “But she was she’s,” the troll began. Crash cut him off.

          “She’s having an affair.” Crash growled. “Who she’s cheating with, you’ll have to get it out of her. You come here again; you forfeit your life. Do you understand?”

          The troll nodded. I honestly thought I saw tears of fear in his eyes. I walked over to my pistol and picked it up, then went back inside. I hadn’t seen or heard from the troll again. Nor did I see Crash again for another few hours. Over the next few days, things got strange around the troll house. Words were exchanged. Threats made between each other, not many of which made much sense to us regular folk.

          Crash came in, human form that morning. He stood in the kitchen wearing a torn-up pair of jeans and held a ceramic mug that read This Is My Human Costume”. I made a couple jokes about how you know your old because you drink decaf before bed. He smiled politely, then went finished his coffee and went to sleep.

          The troll incident bothered me for a while. I had no idea why he fingered me as the adulterer or rapist or whatever. Crash still hasn’t given any indication as to why he’d think that. Was she cheating on him with a human? There has to be more humans than us in this area, right? Sure, the town is a little strange. I get that. More than once I’ve seen centaurs and minotaurs. Of course, there’s the werewolf and the vampire we met, who technically doesn’t live in this town but I still count. Now the trolls, both of whom seemed to have moved on. I don’t look too hard at the red stains around the house. The police aren’t asking too many questions either, and I’m not trying to do their job for them.

          In life sometimes there are no clear resolutions to things. I may never see Charles again. If I do, we will not speak of that night or the bullets I put in him. We may do little more than nod at each other in passing. I’d love to know more about his wife, Nancy, and who she was seeing on the side. To know if they got divorced, if they separated, forgave each other, or if she’s planted out back in the rose bushes. Perhaps maybe even get to know the person dumb enough to break up the marriage of a troll. After all, that long tail is a dead giveaway, and tricks or not you’re going to notice that thing sooner or later, especially when it’s rubbing your inner thigh.

          However, right now, once again I am forced to be content with wondering what happened and what might have been. To let my imagination run wild and try to answer these questions for me. Crash has never been one to talk about a “case” as he calls it. Whatever that means. Maybe he’s a werewolf Columbo? Solving crimes in a raincoat at night. Although a werewolf in a raincoat would give me images less of Columbo and more of some sort of cursed flasher.

          The Columbo thing is a fun image and one that gives me an idea for a character. I might write it down or let it go. I don’t know yet. We’ll see.