Life With A Werewolf

Dilemma

          That bottle of booze presented a problem for me. Up until that point I had been sober. I’m not, and never have been a “twelve weeks, five days, thirteen hours, thirty-six minutes, four seconds and counting” sort of recovering addict. I’m more of a “another day survived” type. True, rescuing Sarah, and going through that madness that we went through in Arkansas did help me in one respect: it allowed me to bury a lot of the heartache and self-loathing that I had about that relationship. It was eye opening how cathartic doing a simple act of kindness for her was. The poison got squeezed out of my soul, leaving me feeling fresh, empty, clean.

          But that doesn’t mean every day was perfect; not by a long shot. There was plenty of times when Crash came stumbling through the door complaining of needing a drink and I was very tempted to accommodate him by joining him. Not to mention that drinking is still my natural stress response.

          That’s what the non-addicted doesn’t understand about the addicted. No matter what you’re addicted to, whether its alcohol, drugs, eating, exercise, work, sex, collecting bottle caps, whatever it is: your addiction is your stress response. When life gets hard, it’s that addiction that’s wired into your brain that flashes first. Have an entire neighborhood of crazies chase after you to try and drink your blood? When that fun episode of spontaneous marathon running is over, you’re going to want a drink. Kheid and his stupid lawn gnome brigade decided to shove a ceramic carrot into your tire? You’re going to want a drink. Your housemate werewolf coming home coated in more blood than mud and asks you to help him hose off before he gets in the house (and before the neighbors catch him)? You want a drink.

          That’s part of what addiction is, to be honest. It’s your own brain telling you “This is how we handle this situation. This is how to feel better.” For the past several months now, almost going on a year in fact, I’ve been telling my brain “No, it’s not how we handle this anymore.” Most days it works. Some days, I crave, but never I caved.

          But that expensive bottle of booze sitting out on the front porch with the note on it, written in such desperation, well it hurt. I honestly, earnestly, wanted to tell them yes. But I honestly, earnestly, wanted to keep my lunch down, too. When you see things that are gory or horrific, part of how you deal with it is that you don’t. You don’t talk about it, you don’t think about it, and you certainly don’t put yourself into more gory and horrific situations to add to the fun flashes of memory that your brain will enjoy throwing at you when you least expect it.

          Most of the gang had the same advice: stay out of it. “Don’t forget,” Kris said, as he sipped a cup of coffee in the kitchen, “they’re dead. They’re literally walking sacks of meat with Alzheimer’s. All they know is they miss something. They don’t even know what it is they miss. And come a week or so after Halloween, they’ll be gone for good.”

          That was the general consensus. It was essentially like having a may fly as a pet. The friendship will only last so long. But the earnestness and pain in their plea, the way they were all out literally looking for me, it was beginning to get to me. Yes, I have a heart. A cold lifeless thing that pumps ice water, but it still technically counts as a heart.

          Watching the zombies had become something of a past time for me. In the mornings, I’d grab a cup of coffee, walk onto the porch, and watch them as they fumble and move around among the population, heading in a general direction towards one end of the county. No one ever saw them, or wanted to see them, I guess. Just a general stench of decay, dirt and death, then they moved on. Forgotten just about as quick as they smelled it. The stench written off as a dead animal, or someone passing gas.

          Crash watched with me one morning. It was a couple days after I’d gotten the bottle of booze and the note. We stood out on the front porch, sipped our coffee, and watched as the zombies stumbled, occasionally moaned, and moved outward in an eastern direction. “Seems their shindigs on the other side of the county,” I said.

          Crash sighed, and sipped out of his ‘This is my human costume, I’m really a werewolf’ mug. “Yeah, another cemetery down there. A larger one I think.”

          “You suppose they have a vote or something? This worm for this cemetery, that worm for that one sort of thing?”

          He shrugged, “Maybe. The ones who know for sure certainly aren’t going to talk.”

          “Not without a Ouija board or something,” I grumbled, then took a sip of my coffee. We watched a zombie shuffle. A younger man who must have gotten on the wrong end of a car accident. His leg was dragging in an awkward manner behind himself. He shuffled forward, leaned back onto it, dragged his other leg forward then shuffled again.

          “Is doing a nice thing worth going back to someplace awful,” I asked.

          “Dunno. This a place you’re thinking of staying?”

          “When you go to a place like that,” I sighed down into my coffee. Crash waited for me to continue. “It gets very difficult to leave. Despite how much you may want to do it.”

          “No one says you have to go back,” Crash said.

          “In the service, I figured out the appropriate time to drink.”

          “When was that,” Crash asked.

          “When I was awake.”

          Crash gave me a look. “Jason, you were bad, but never that bad.”

          “It doesn’t ever seem like it is, you know? But I did drink every night. Two beers with dinner. And every weekend. I had a method of drinking Gatorade with the alcohol, so I could wake up without the hangover.”

          He just shook his head. “That is a hell of a thing to go back to.”

          “Yeah,” I sighed. “I know they’re not alive. I’ll make them feel good for a night. They’ll make me go back to doing something stupid.”

          “That’s what’s bothering you,” Crash asked.

          I sighed, then nodded. “My kindness will be for nothing, and I’ll just have a fresh new start on an old addiction.”

          We watched a bit more as leg dragger finally made his way across the road. The man behind the wheel of the truck at the intersection instinctively waited as if he saw him while he crossed. Either that, or the man was busily typing away on his phone for a moment first.

          “Two things,” Crash said. “First, no act of kindness is for nothing. Second, no one says you have to drink.”

          “Crash, I’d be spending an entire night with a group of corpses that used to be people talking to them about the people they used to be. To survive a night like that, I’m going to need a drink.”

          “You know when you describe it like that, you make it sound a bit like a high school reunion.”

          “Yeah,” I said, “and to survive my last one, I had to drink.”

          Crash laid a hand on my shoulder. “No, Jason,” he said. “You don’t.”

          His words stuck with me. The phrase that almost made my mind up was my own, having a fresh start on an old addiction. But his stuck with me as well. No act of kindness is for nothing. Perhaps, somewhere, the souls of who these corpses used to be hear, know, and understand the kindness I’m trying to show them. Perhaps that will make it all worth it.

          But can I do something like that without drinking? That will be one stressful night. You can’t rewrite years of hardwired stress response in a span of a few days or months. It just doesn’t work like that, as much as I’d love it to. Addiction, no matter if it’s alcohol or something else, just doesn’t go away with a little will power and a can-do attitude. It takes daily work to keep in check. Helping them may mean drinking, and that will mean all sorts of trouble for me. I want to help, I sincerely do, but will my sobriety even survive this?