“You! You’re demon!” the woman said pointing at me. “Somebody catch him, he’s a horrible monster.”
Her friends laughed and raised their drinks in the noisy crowded atmosphere.
She continued harassing me and calling me all sorts of names.
“I can see it with my new eyes!” she bellowed while Bad to the Bone blared over the speakers.
I hadn’t the faintest idea who she was, and as getting into a fight in a bar with a mean drunk 'Jenny' on a Friday night was not my idea of fun, I decided to call it a night. Her verbal attack was surprising, but everyone could see that she’d had one too many drinks. At first, I thought she was just flirting in a weird drunk kind of way, but it soon became obvious that she was serious. I don't know what led her to this outburst, but I wasn’t going to stick around to find out.
“Get help!” I quipped as I placed a token on the bar and made my way out the door.
Outside, the air was crisp. Who wanted to be cooked up in a smoky bar anyway? Why do we feel the need to hang out in such places instead of being out here under the stars?
The moon was full in the clear sky, and the air smelled of the sea, bejeweled with the lights of the boats shining bright around the marina.
I was walking along the seawall beside the boats when the lights went out in a flash of stars.
A throbbing pain crashed like tsunami waves on the side of my head.
I felt the ground hit my cheek.
Or was it the other way around?
At some basic level, we’re all instinctual animals. We coat many of those instincts with an air respectability- in speech, appearance, or manner- but in the proper context, instinctual behaviours arise without our conscious control, and we simply act. At that moment, my instincts told me there was immediate danger, so I rolled to the side with my hand up in front of my face.
There was a thud where my head used to be as some heavy object struck the cement.
“Demon!”
My blurry vision came into focus.
“Jesus!” I said grabbing the side of my head. “What the hell, lady?”
She was holding a baseball bat.
“I know you’re a lychen- lychen- a werewolf!” she said pointing the bat at me.
I staggered back a couple of steps, trying to regain my balance. My skull began to throb in the spot where she had whacked me.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” I told her, “but you have crossed the line.”
“You don’t scare me, demon! I can see with my ocular implants exactly what you are.”
“You’re drunk. Go home, or better yet go back to the bar and have another drink to calm down.”
She stumbled forward. “Don’t tell me to calm down.”
“You’re making a fool of yourself.”
She raised the bat, and the swinging momentum carried her forward. Swinging and kicking, she crashed into me.
We stumbled to the ground like a multi-limbed creature.
She got in a few good punches before I was able to subdue her with the weight of my thighs between her legs, and the grip of my fingers on her wrists that pinned her like a butterfly to the ground.
Her breath smelled of Pina Colada.
“Settle down, or I’ll call the cops!”
She began to cry.
“Fine!” she said between sobs, “have your way with me, demon. Enslave me to your will! Ravage me like a wh-“
“Woeh, Lady. There’s not going to be any ravaging tonight. I told you already. I’m not whatever you think I am.”
I stood up and grabbed the baseball bat then began to walk away.
“Go back to your friends and forget about tonight," I told her, "consider yourself lucky I don’t call the police.”
“That bat belongs to the bar!” she shouted.
“I’ll bring it back tomorrow.”
"Wait! You didn't tell me your name."
At home, I took a couple of aspirins and iced the injury that had manifested as a bump on the side of my head. Thankfully, my longish locks covered it, so it wouldn’t attract too much attention.
I decided to go to bed early that night. I squeezed some paste on my toothbrush, and withdrawing my fangs, I began to brush them carefully.
A werewolf! Imagine that.
She was lucky I wasn’t hungry. That Pina Colada would’ve tasted very exotic.
I shook my head looking into the mirror. I got the feeling that this new pesky breed of humans, able to detect different wavelengths with eye implants, was going to be trouble for the likes of me.
It was time to make some calls.
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| X | InLeo | NFT Showroom |
