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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 |
| Occasionally, I would like an alarm. Something set up above the stove that only goes off when it senses a concoction of aromas and spices. This alarm warn us to sneak out of the house before it’s too late, to push our cars to the edge of the town and drive to the nearest drive-thru as fast as our wheels can take us before we get wrapped up in another ‘werewolf meal’. Crash is an interesting person. His sensitive nose has come in handy on multiple occasions, whether it’s a shortcut for us to play the “is this bad” game with leftovers, or to sense when we have pests before they even make their presence known. It’s an overall boon to us. However, there are times when we have to remind him that yes, despite him having a human side, our tastes do sometimes differ from his, and, just because it smells like it goes together, doesn’t mean he should do it! It was his night to cook. I was glad, cause after the entire gnome business, I was out of commission for a few days while my body recovered. That is a sad side effect of things. I get injured and my body takes longer to recover these days than it used to. With enough massaging, stretching, and exercises that make me feel like I’m closer to ninety than forty, I can usually get life back into my leg, hip, back, and feet so I can feel somewhat normal again. With Crash’s skills around the stove, we had an expectation. We figured we would get his version of Italian. He’d tell us “It’s Sicilian, I swear,” with that smirk that told us it wasn’t. We’d roll our eyes and just go, ‘sure, Crash’. It was usually good though, so we didn’t complain. Sometimes we’d get southern cooking which is what he’s better at, or some European concoction that would work but be a little weird to our taste buds. I have nothing against mushroom risotto per se, but I’m American. My taste buds are American. I enjoy a good cheeseburger or burrito a lot more than I do a risotto anything. Credit where credit is do though. Crash’s concoction, whatever it was, was tasty. Weird, but tasty. It was an almost stewed green and black mass that used to be vegetables of some kind. I think there was a meat in it? But I’m not sure. All I’m sure of it wasn’t a cheeseburger, burrito, or a risotto of any kind. Crash attempted to pass it off as ‘werewolf cuisine’. He stood next to the stove, proud of his creation, a smug grin on his face. “Old werewolf family recipe,” he said. I was sitting at the table, and Kris was standing in one doorway to the kitchen, Zack was in the other. We all gave him a leery look when he said it. Kris frowned at the concoction in the pan. “No it’s not,” he said. “Sure it is,” Crash said, grinning wider. “Is this your usual ‘I threw a bunch of crap in a pan and called it an old werewolf family recipe’ sort of old werewolf family recipe,” he asked. Crash began giggling and blushed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It’s not like he hasn’t done this sort of thing before. As they went back and forth, I remembered an incident a few months ago with a dish he called an ‘old werewolf family recipe’ that I called ‘ground brown.’ There was vegetables in it. There was ground meat in it. That’s as much as I really recall. It was spicy though, so I ate it. The rest of the guys wouldn’t touch it. Not that I blamed them. But, it wasn’t terrible. I’ve had worse. After all, I’ve eaten at a Ryan’s Buffet in the 00s. I could tease him about it, but it’s not like I’ve been perfect in the kitchen. There was the time I attempted to make home-made chili, and grabbed the jar of cayenne powder instead of chili powder. Now, if you’re familiar with the basic chili recipe, it requires two tablespoons full of chili powder. But chili powder itself isn’t terribly spicy. It needs that flavorful, earthy flavor of cumin to give it heat, at least in my experience. However, cayenne powder is a lot hotter than chili. How much hotter? Well, I’m glad you asked. If your recipe calls for, say two table spoons of chili powder which, based on my haphazard searching, is around 15,000 SHU, then you substitute cayenne for it, which is usually somewhere between two and four times hotter than that, instead of having a nice mild bowl of chili, you’ll have a dish that will be guaranteed to give you blisters when you taste test it. It will leave you running and screaming through the kitchen in desperate pain as you try to grab milk, soda, water, whatever is cold to take the fill your mouth with. I won’t say, if after this accident, whether I ended up drinking ketchup straight from the bottle or not. I will say that the guys have never let me live that one down, and I’m permanently banned from ever making chili again. Though, I have used that chili recipe as a threat. Green mush had at least a better appearance than ground brown. The flavor wasn’t terrible. It was, however, strange. Garlic, pepper, some other spices mixed in, with a look that reminded me less of werewolves, and more of a school lunch room from the eighties and nineties where you were never quite certain what was going to be on your plate, you just knew that if it wasn’t the square pizza, it probably wasn’t going to taste good. The more I think about it though, the more I believe I’m starting to get the gist of this ‘old werewolf family recipe’ gag. I honestly don’t think he’s lying. Well, not completely, anyway. Werewolves do have a much more sensitive nose than we do. Perhaps in the course of cooking, he was taught to use his nose to compliment certain flavors that maybe very mellow in the food itself. A zucchini is a zucchini is a zucchini, to a point. But if one plant happened to get a couple doses of someone’s spilled soda out in the field, then perhaps it’s produce comes out sweeter than the other. Not sweeter to us, but perhaps to him. Then if that happens, maybe Crash happens to buy it at a market one day, takes it home, and then uses his ‘old werewolf family recipe’ – I.E. if the plant smells just a hair sweeter, you put more garlic on it to enhance...well something. I’m not sure. Crash could of course just be winging it and messing with all of us. It’s not like he hasn’t done this before. Remember when I asked for classic ‘werewolf’ music from his culture, and instead I got all sorts of rock and metal songs about werewolves? I got what I asked for technically, though not what I meant. It would be classic Crash to tease us with this stuff. Making food that was, albeit edible, but just this side of strange enough to make us go ‘what in the world’ one more time with that confused look on our faces. The same reason that dads like to make those corny jokes or mom’s will occasionally break out the baby photos when you bring that special significant other over, or tell those embarrassing stories. You have to actually love someone at least somewhat, to subtly torture them in such ways. Crash could be doing this to tease us, to give us that mild torture that can only come from true family. I’d like to believe that, and in some ways I do. We are our own unique blend of family, but we’re family. All survivors of sorts of one way or another glued together with time and circumstances. Bonded together with the blood and scars between us. But, I really do think he does it cause he enjoys the taste. Enjoys teasing us, and at times doesn’t have the time or occasionally the cash to go out and get something better. After all, just because he’s a werewolf doesn’t mean he’s immune to being worn out from working nights, then days. Or days then nights. Or literally running from one side of the county to the other and back again for the sake of one case of his or another. We all get dog-tired sometimes and literally want to do nothing more than just hit a drive thru, go home, and veg in front of the television watching something with corny jokes and mindless violence. He has the unfortunate side effect of being, well, a werewolf. So, hitting a drive thru in the morning after one of his night shifts isn’t all that possible. No, not even if he hit up Mitch’s place of business. So, I don’t really blame Crash for getting creative and crazy on the occasional recipe. Whether it’s the strange concoction he calls Italian, or the ground brown, or the creative ways to have vegetables, it’s understandable that he will occasionally put on his culinary thinking cap and create a strange new recipe that some would think God never intended to exist. If it doesn’t taste terrible, I’ll still eat it. After all, I was in the military. But still, I’d rather have that alarm. |
| Crash wanted to keep the throne as a Halloween decoration. Valyur said it was tainted and should be destroyed. I agreed with him, but not out of some runistic or gnomish thing but because I just thought it was gaudy. It looked like it had been pulled right out of a Motley Crue video from the eighties. All that was missing was leather pants and hairspray. It took Valyur a bit of time to recover his compsure afterwards. I let him cry himself out, though at the time no one understood exactly why or what I was doing. “I’m sorry,” Valyur said then. “You meaties must think me crazy. It’s just you see, Kheid Falkirk was…” he gasped, and bit his lip like he was going to cry again. “He was your child,” I finished for him. Everyone looked at me. “He’s the only one who called him Falkirk. He’s the only one who treated Khied with mercy, and he had plenty of shots to kill Khied earlier with his pistol, but didn’t ever take them.” Everyone nodded in understanding. Kris and Sean helped each other to the door. Zack was lifted by Mitch and huddled along. I slowly pulled myself into a sitting position. “Meaty,” Valyur said to me, “I owe you.” I waved a hand at the dust. “That was perhaps the hardest thing anyone has ever had to do. We’re even.” Valyur shook his head. “My family has wronged yours. Repeatedly. I will stay here until I make it right.” I stood and stretched. Then braced myself against a tree as my bad leg reminded me that it didn’t like all of this work. The gnome, I’ll give him that attempted to hold me up, but it was laughable at best, like a three year old trying to help his drunk father to the couch. “Thanks,” I said, moving my leg slowly. “It will work itself out.” “The guys may not want you around,” I said. “No offense, but they just spent time as a gnome against their will. Crash was nearly killed by one. You may bring memories up they don’t want.” “Ey! And that’s why I gotta stick around, meaty. Cause they need a good gnome to make up for the bad one.” I shook my head, figuring Crash would put his foot down and that would be the end of it. However, Crash seemed to agree. “Besides,” Crash said. “Technically, this is all your fault.” We were in the kitchen. Crash had taken a shower and was holding his coffee cup as he stood in the doorway. I glared at him for a moment. “Why is this my fault?” “It was your bad joke that started all of this. You’re the one who had to buy a lawn gnome.” I gritted my teeth. “It was supposed to be a joke, and it was going to be funny.” Crash smirked, “well, if you say so,” he said. “I just think if you want to have weird lawn ornaments, there are better things to get. Like werewolves for instance.” Of course, he’d say that. For Crash, it always went back to werewolves. “What about Zack, Sean and Kris,” I asked. “I bet they’d hate the lawn gnome.” “What,” Zack asked, shocked that I’d even suggest such a thing. “I love Valyur. Don’t you dare get rid of him.” He came in from his bedroom and stepped into the kitchen for a drink before going back to his room. “And yes, Kris and Sean feel the same way.” So, that is how we ended up with a blue hatted gnome. He sometimes moves around. He’ll sleep beneath a tree. Garden on occasion, or clean up. The red hatted gnomes, well Mitch still hunts them, but now it’s for sport. Larry doesn’t care of course, that dragon tells us to just leave him some for dinner. Things around here are getting back to normal. My leg still hurts but I can walk on it. Crash goes back to jogging with Elouise who said she ‘misses all the good stuff’ when it comes to our adventures. “Next time tell them varmints to wake me up. I’d love to play.” Valyur for his effort puts up a brave front. But on occasion he’ll stand beneath the moonlight and weep softly. I can almost hear it in my room, since he likes to stand on the corner at night. I’ll go out there occasionally, and sit with him. Listen to old stories of Falkirk before he turned. “You know he used to love you meaties.” He told me one night. “He liked to sit below the window so you could see him.” The way he explained it, Falkirk wanted to help us so badly. I suppose that’s where he went wrong, in a way. You can desire to help someone so much, that you do more harm than good, and you can even end up destroying them. I guess that’s what Kheid’s banishment was supposed to teach him. I do wish he listened when everyone kept telling him that. |
| I stood glaring at Kheid as he sat upon his throne. He glared back his strange throne bringing him almost eye level. The gnome king raised a single glowing hand and I felt power pulling and pulsing through my flesh as I started to rise off the ground. The gnomes around us cheered and shouted. I felt like a pinata at a kids birthday party. The gun in Valyurs hand barked once. Every gnome ducked, including Kheid. I stood my ground. I’ve heard plenty of gunfire before and had been expecting his. “You said I bring the meat sack, you’d release my clan. So where’s my clan ya bastard,” Valyure shouted. Khied lowered his hand, and I lowered to the ground, staggering a moment, but stood my ground, my skin itching and burning. Laughter went up for a moment as I did so. Calls of “he’s starting to feel it alright,” and “We’ll make a gnome of ya yet, meaty!” came up from the gnomes crowded around the circle. I ignored those and glared at Kheid. “Okay, Lavrishk, release his clan,” Kheid called over his shoulder. Lavrishk chuckled as he raised an arm. There was a sick smile on Kheid’s face as several kitchen trashbags were dragged to the circle and emptied. Pieces of pink, white and blue ceramic were dumped out in neat piles. Dust drifted up through the winds into the night sky. “You bastard! I’ll kill you, you rotten cracked bastard,” Valyur shouted. “Why? I’ve kept my promise. They’re released. I released them from this mortal coil. Perhaps next time you’ll choose your words more carefully,” Khied said, then laughed. “If you like, I’ll let you change your hat. Join a winning clan for a change.” His face took on a more somber tone for a moment. “Would be nice to fight beside you again, instead of against you. We had fun together once.” There was a moment there, one I didn’t catch, but I could hear in Valyur’s voice as he answered, “Ey. But you ruined that, didn’t ya?” I hadn’t been told the plan, but I could sense it. There was a single moment I was to wait for, one that I knew naturally would come. Valyur would make his move first, and then I would act after. But I kept looking over at the once great Mitch. The one who had stood by our side during the Nobility’s attacks. The one who helped us and had visited for barbecues and hang outs. Who had invited us over to his own place for holidays and the odd birthday. That Mitch was broken, his ears folded back in defeat. He was reduced to being a pack animal for a sadistic lawn gnome. I knew I was going to ruin some great plan, but I just couldn’t take it anymore. It was perhaps the smoothest draw I’ve ever done from behind my back. Such a draw can be a bit awkward if not practiced. Yet, I’ve never drawn from that position faster despite my many attempts to practice it afterwards. No one saw my movement. Not until my pistol barked a single time. The look of surprise in Lavrishk’s face as the hole appeared first, then cracks ran down his entire body. I snarled “I keep my promises, Lavrishk,” as he cracked, broke, then shattered. The pieces broke down into smaller ones until there was nothing but colored sand. There was a single beat of shocked silence. Then Mitch gave a lone long howl of freedom and rage. All the other gnomes backed up from him a step at a time. “Someone get a grip on that bastard,” Khied shouted, then raised his hand. It glowed an eerie, sickly yellow light as he began chanting. I wasn’t sure what he was saying, but I felt a tightness in my chest. My arms felt itchy, as if they’d been covered in dried mud. I gasped, and fought for control of my own body. For Mitch, it was payback time. Gnomes chased after him, attempting to grab his harness while he slashed, crashed and smashed every one he could get his claws on. Some gnomes ran screaming, others chased after the reins, hoping to control Mitch the way Lavrishk did. My roommates, still ceramic, could only stand and watch, unable to move. Khied still had control of them like he did of me. My arms would not cooperate. My skin burned as if it was on fire. A fire that slowly began to enter me, enter my lungs, my very veins. I felt my pulse slowed as if filled with sludge. My heart chugged, aching, trying to force the sludge through hardening veins. Khied still had me, and if something didn’t happen soon, he’d have me forever. *** Crash was suspended in the air. He felt power draining from him, as if his very life force was fleeing his body. Surrounding his circle was three gollums, each one stood with their arms held wide, chanting in a gutteral language that started to become clearer to him. The werewolf felt a single line of power draining from him. A second line of power wanted inside of him, waiting for him to be almost dead; drained of any ability to fight. Crash concentrated on that first line of power, and operating on instinct, gave it a single hard shove. *** The rune circle glowed bright for a moment. Khied staggered. For one fleeting moment I had control of my right arm back. I twisted it, aiming it down towards Khied, but before I had a chance, a smaller pistol barked fire behind me. Khied dived off his throne, one of the elongated leg bones behind it cracked. “Face me like a gnome ya bastard,” Valyur shouted. It was a war of ceramic. One ceramic werewolf, one blue hatted gnome, and one human prisoner vs what looked like dozens, possibly hundreds of red hats. Rocks were flying, some pelted me, not that I could feel much at that moment other than the pain of Kheid. Mitch was smashing as many as he could. Several gnomes had climbed onto his back and gripped the reins, though none of them knew how Lavrishk was controlling the werewolf. Mitch shook and swayed, as he swiped and threw others. There was pain in his eyes, but it held a glint of triumph. Khied was ducking, and running, still trying to chant, still trying to change me, but couldn’t finish. Every time he’d start, Valyur would fire off another shot and force Khied to jump behind a gnome or duck behind his throne and then begin again. Other gnomes attempted to help, of course. But Valyur didn’t seem to be running out of bullets in that altered pistol. I wasn’t sure how he was doing it, and wasn’t in a position to ask. With all of the chaos and fighting, Khied had forgotten something important; something he’d forgotten before. He had forgotten to watch for dragons. *** It happened almost too quick for Crash to keep up with. Larry swooped down, and dive bombed each gollum one at a time, exploding through them in quick succession. Crash later told me he wasn’t certain if Larry was pulling something out of them, if he was using an energy source of some kind or what. He could have been sneezing on them for all Crash could see. But whatever had happened, it was FAST, and angled so that Crash would be covered in mud. Crash fell with the last gollum. Larry, in one of his last runs at the final gollum, who didn’t even bother to turn around and defend itself, had also broken the rune circle somehow. The werewolf looked up, but could only see leaves and branches in awkward muddy piles. Larry had flown off. *** Valyur may have had unlimited ammunition, but I on the other hand, only had eighteen shots. And I had just used one of them. Good news was that it would only take one clear shot to destroy Kheid. Bad news was that Kheid was hiding behind just about everything and everyone, so I couldn’t get one clear shot. Mitch crawled his way into the circle, clawing and dragging half a dozen or so gnomes with him as he did so. There was a line of shattered gnomes trailing behind him, other gnomes grasping the reins, attempting to chant, though none of them new the proper words or even what power to tap into. They pushed and shoved against each other as they pulled back on the werewolf, each vying for control. It reminded me of a bucket of crabs, each one pulling the other down who was to escape. Valyur had stopped trying to chase Khied, and instead was tapping into those very same runes. He was pushing his own power into me as Khied was. At some points, I was gaining more control of my limbs than at others. Excrutiating pain doesn’t even begin to cover what I was feeling at that moment. Things growing alive, then dead. My heart racing as if almost freed, then slowing as if dying for the last time. I managed to fire a shot at Kheid, but only hit his throne. My shot did a whole lot more damage than Valyur’s did though, cracking big chunks off. Anger flashed into Kheid’s eyes as I took aim and shot it again, cracking more chunks off. I was running on instinct and desperation, but I think my goal was to anger Kheid enough that he physically attacked me so I could shoot him and be done with it. But through my shooting, the shouting, the fighting and chaos no one noticed when the first gnome disappeared. A second was gone. Then another. Then a fourth. It was when Zack was thrown into the ring that Khied finally took notice. “How,” he shouted, staring up into the sky. “How?” Kris and Sean had been tossed into the rune circle next. All three lifted themselves up and began racing towards me, a look of anger on their face. “Get him, get the meaty,” Kheid shouted as he danced from one foot to the other. They grabbed my limbs, and each one began to turn me. The way Kheid had been hiding before was literally with my own body. Whenever I’d get a clear shot, he’d turn me so I’d have to shoot through my leg or my foot to get hit him. I was unable to twist myself, or move my legs anymore, and could barely move my arms. Kris, Sean and Zack grabbed my pistol arm and pulled, twisting me around to face Kheid. They dragged me towards the gnome, an angry look on all their faces. Kheid looked over at Valyur with smug satisfaction and said, “that’s why your kind always loses, Valyur. You do not know the value of a good slave.” The smug look fled for a moment when he said, “we’ll join sides again, when you finally see I am right.” It was point blank range. I guess Kheid thought he was being given my pistol? He reached down for it and was actually surprised when I pressed it to his head. “I always keep my promises,” I snarled through my teeth, and pulled the trigger. I’m told Valyur leaped out of the circle. In truth, most of the gnomes did, fleeing as if their very lives were at stake. I couldn’t see any of that. I couldn’t see Mitch laying within it, almost dead. I couldn’t see anything but Khied. It was like what happened to Lavrishk, but bigger. Lines of power radiated down his body in cracks and fissures. They started small and began widening further and further. The power drained down from Khied, pouring into the ground. It fed into the circle which fed it back into each one of us. There was a flash of blinding yellow light, then Khied lay on the ground, gasping. Shattered hands literally holding his head together as his body slowly crumbled into dust. “So close,” he gasped, tears in his eyes. “So close.” I wanted to stand up. In truth, cause I am this cheesy, I wanted to stand over him, say ‘some motherfuckers are always trying to ice skate up hill,’ then stomp on him. But sadly, life isn’t an action film. I didn’t have the strength. I laid on the ground, gasping. My heart racing as if happy it was pumping blood again instead of the sludge it had been pumping before. Sean and Kris just held each other, happy to be alive and human again. Zack staggered for a moment then fell on Mitch, who grumbled, but put a paw over his shoulder, like a large, protective bear. Valyur walked to Khied and stood over him. “Kheid Falkurk. You have committed crimes against man, gnome and nature.” His voice broke for a moment, then he said, “Your crimes are too great to stand,” he paused. There was genuine tears in his eyes. “And so…” his voice broke again. “I must now sentence you to…” He couldn’t finish. Kheid raised a single hand. There was almost a smile on his face as he said, “I’m glad it was you.” Valyur gripped Khied’s hand. Light flashed, from Kheid into Valyur. Dust drifted from Kheid’s hand first. Then painted porcelain. Then he crumbled into a pile of dust on the ground. It occurred to me then the source of Valyur’s tears. The source of his reluctance to smash Kheid during the gun battle earlier, and perhaps through a thousand other chances that he had gotten over the past several days. I didn’t say a single word. I simply rolled over and gave him my shoulder while he wept. |
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