Life With A Werewolf

War Stories

          I have a rule about war stories. I don’t repeat war stories unless the person who owns that story gives me permission to do so. Even then, I’m not likely to talk about it. Simply because, it’s not my story to tell. I’ve heard my fair share of these kinds of stories. IEDs. Friend stepping on a landmine. Schoolkids being used as human roadblocks. Those images and scenarios that stick with you, and demonstrate the depths humanity can and will go to at times to bring a version of hell to life here on earth.
          I am not relaying those stories here. Those stories belong to those individuals who lived them and I’m not going to betray them by stealing their thunder. Instead, I’ll tell a story that I do have permission to tell. One that shows even werewolves can have those moments of weakness, doubt, and pain.
          Crash came home that morning in a mood. Normally when Crash comes home in “wolf-mode” as I’ve called it, he starts to shift back to human, will maybe grab a cup of decaf coffee or something then go to sleep. This day was different. A thunderstorm was pouring down Armageddon upon our little county. The rain formed puddles and streams in our yard, pooling and pulling in directions that grabbed leaves and loose grass and twigs toward ditches and the forest.
          Crash stepped through the door, soaking wet. He went to the shower, and shook himself off, his fur slinging water droplets every which way. When he had gotten himself reasonably dry, he toweled himself off as best as he could, then came back in. Dry, but still very much dark. At this point, I’d already poured him a whiskey and gotten myself a glass as well. It wasn’t a time to drink alone.
          He took the proffered glass, and took a small lap at it, werewolf version of a sip. His ears were folded and his eyes downcast in the worst bout of depression I’d ever seen. Picture your dog when he looks as if he was thinking over all of his life decisions, all of the bad ones. That’s the look that Crash had on him then. The weight of the world had dragged his nose, ears, and tail to the floor, and he wasn’t fighting back.
          “I messed up,” he sighed. He looked out to the woods. “Look at me. I’m strong, quick. I can almost leap over the second floor of this house. Yet, I still couldn’t…” he drifted off for a moment, his face scrunching up in pain.
          I put my arm around him as best as I could. He didn’t say anything for a bit, just sighed and said, “let me tell you how this happened.”
          “It was an ordinary assignment. Just a simple stalk and check. I sniff around the property, make sure nothing is going on and disappear before the homeowner ever knows. A cop was called over thank to a nosey neighbor who kept close tabs on all the comings and goings of the couple and noticed that for the past week or so their habits had changed. Instead of going outside to do the yardwork every Saturday or so for a couple of hours, the man seemed to avoid it. A new guy showed up and did it every day. It looked as though he had lived there, never leaving the house and even sometimes driving the man’s car. When the cop went to check, he said the woman seemed nice enough, the husband to, but the new guy and their relationship just felt, ‘strange.’
          This new guy was massive, neighbor’s words, not mine. He had this wife beater on, showing off these huge arms of his. Cop was pretty green, didn’t know the ins and outs of what we did as much as the more seasoned officers, so instead of reporting it back like he should have, it was an almost end of the shift thing. So, it was almost midnight when I got the report.
          The home sat in the middle of a new suburb being built. Blue paint, white shutters. A literal white picket fence. The all-American dream, being lived out by a couple whose only crime was running into the wrong person. I could see a light on when I went around back. Stepped by their perfectly selected patio furniture for their perfectly landscaped lawn. It was more than cared for, it was cultivated, sculpted. Looked like a work of art. That was my first clue of what I was dealing with.
          You see, minotaurs have their own way of doing things. Part of their religious expression is in lawncare and gardening. It’s part of the way they give back to their deity so to speak. Another part is being outdoors. When I was told that the new guy was always outside and seemed doing something, I should have raced over immediately. But I don’t know if it would have been soon enough. Their religion also dictates that being outside is better than being in, so they tend to be outside almost all the time. Plus, minotuars are always nice, pleasant creatures.
          Still, it just didn’t click when I ‘clocked in’, I guess. Or maybe it did and I knew it was too late? Who knows. Second guesses. Regrets. These are the things that destroys a werewolf. Silver bullets and second guesses.” He took another sip, then set the glass back down on the counter and stared out at the storm.
          “I don’t try to destroy property. It makes it messy with paperwork, which is I can’t stand doing, and leaves a bad impression of what we do. So I walked over to the sliding glass door in the back and just lifted it off the rails and yanked it open. It slid open easy. The scent of copper and fear hit me like a sledge hammer when the door opened. When I stepped through the door, I heard a snort from my left. Looking over, standing by the bar that separated the kitchen from the dining room was him. His fur was as dark as mine, with gold glowing eyes. His horns glistened with red blood dripping down.
          A thick growl built in my throat. I twisted and was hit when the guy charged me, horns down. I crashed through an expensive dining table behind me. Tables don’t splinter like they do in the movies. They crack, snap, and break. Jagged edges slicing into you like knives. He lifted his head, and thrusted it down, on top of my head, stunning me. Then he stood, his tail swishing a bit as he walked away, a chuckle in his throat. “I knew you’d come,” he said. “I told them you’d be here. You’d be far too late, but you’d be here.”
          We heal quickly, us werewolves. The pain from the broken boards stabbing through me had already begun to subside. The blood loss didn’t bother me much. I wasn’t even dizzy. The wounds had begun to close and heal already. “You want to see them?” he taunted. “I’ll bring you to them.” Then he walked over and grabbed my foot.
          The dining room slid by, then the hallway. The coppery scent that I smelled when I first opened the door had reached a fever pitch. When we got to that room, I planted my other foot right at his tailbone and kicked as hard as I could, knocking him into it. He stumbled forward, his foot hitting the pool of blood that I knew would be there and slipped. His head crashed through the wall. Standing up, he snorted, then shook his head. “Tricky vicious beast,” he growled. “Angry that I stomped on your pets?””
          He paused a moment, then looked at me. “Do you want me to go into the gory details?”
          “You know, I’ve seen, done and heard far worse,” I said. “There’s no judgement here. You go as deep as you like.”
          He nodded. “They were brutalized. That much I’ll say. Most minotaurs are peaceful creatures. They stay outside more than in, are the ones who will be first to invite the whole neighborhood to a party, are generally mainly vegetarians though they’ll eat meat here or there. But this guy, he was none of those things. I could tell from his laugh, from his stance, from his growl. I could see it in his eyes. Hell, I could smell it on him. He was insane.
          He stomped his foot, then dragged it on the ground, like a mad bull. I stood, my claws in front of me. He bent his head down charged forward. I stood still, prepped, ready. A growl rising in my throat. Everything happened in slow motion. His horns bent down, I jumped, grabbing them, then landed on his back, and wrenched.
          The snap sounded like a board breaking in half. First his neck went. Then, I took his horns. He lay limp beneath me with me holding his two bloody horns in my paws, growling, snarling. “Do it,” he snarled. “Do it for Gaia’s sake. Just do it.””
          He paused again, taking another lap at the whiskey. “Well, did you?” I asked.
          “I already did,” he sighed.
          “Your sentence,” I growled down at him, “is to live the rest of your miserably long life knowing that those you despise enough to destroy will be the ones who are caring for your every need. They’ll be feeding you. Washing you. And making your every decision for the rest of your days. And you’ll have no power to move or hurt anyone ever again.”
          I stood to leave, to call this in. I almost left when I heard a chuckle. “You think I did this because I despise them,” he asked. “No. I did this because I love them. I love humans so much, but they just never love me back. Like that couple. Absolutely adored me until they saw what I was. Now, they can never leave me. They’ll always be apart of me, no matter what.””
          I had a hunch. “He ate their hearts, didn’t he?”
          Crash nodded. “If I had just come earlier. If I’d just went directly there. Would they be alive? If I hadn’t waited. If I had been told earlier. If, if, if. During the waking hours, before the sun dawns. When I’m walking through those woods making my way home after a long, hard day’s night. No matter how much I try, I’ll still have all of those ifs. They’ll always haunt me.”
          We finished our whiskeys in silence, staring out the kitchen window out the porch and the storm. After a refresh of our drinks, we both made our way onto the porch as the rain slacked, then thinned. The drops growing thinner. “Look,” I said, “here comes the sun.”
          Crash gave me a look. His ear twisted in that way as if to say ‘really?’ “You were waiting to say that, weren’t you?”
          I smiled. “Yes. You started it, Mr. ‘hard day’s night.’”
          There was another brief pause as we both watched the beauty of the coming day grow and slowly cleanse a piece of that hurting part of our souls. “Dude,” I said. “You’re a werewolf. You can almost leap over this house. Stronger than any creature I’ve ever seen probably. Faster than my car.”
          He laughed. “You drive a Topaz. Turtles are faster than your car.”
          “Very funny. You bought me that car, remember,” I said. “Still, you can do all of these things. But you’re not God. You can’t be everywhere at once and see everything. There’s still only so much even you can do.”
          Crash nodded. “I know.”
          “But still the ifs,” I asked.
          He sighed. “Still the ifs.”
          “Come here,” I said, throwing an arm over his shoulder. “You see that sunlight over there?”
          “Yes,” he said.
          “That’s what you’ve been for my life. Always remember that. I was literally committing suicide with alcohol. You saved me. No matter what ever else happens in your life. You did one thing right. You saved my life.”
          He smiled, “thank you,” he said. “You know, you saved me too.”
          I shrugged. “All I did was talk to you on the phone.”
          “Yes,” he said. “That small gesture, it meant so much. The small things you do and the small things you don’t do in life matters.”
          I nodded. “True. But if ‘If was a fifth, we’d all be drunk.’”
          “Huh,” Crash replied.
          “You can’t be everywhere, Crash,” I said. “You can’t do everything. Despite all of your natural born gifts, you still can’t save the world.”
          He smiled. “I saved you.”
          I smiled back, raising a glass. “And I saved you.”
          The glasses made a small tink as the collided. “You know, that makes us family,” I said.
          “More than that,” Crash replied. “That makes us a pack.”