CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

"Lower the sails, shutter the cannons and drop anchor, ye scurvy dogs!"
The pirate ship stopped in the river.
"We're here."
The pirates scuttled off the boat. Some by rope ladder, some on lifeboats and some just tumbling over the side. The pirates were pretty frickin' pumped to be off the dumb boat.
They immediately busted out some bungs of liquor and also into some of each other's bungs in some consensual, celebratory sodomy.
"All right, all right, all right," said their leader Rumpbeard, shortly after his ecstasy. "That's enough. Let's get a move on."
At this point, the river nymph stepped forward. These guys were interesting.
"Hey, I'm the river nymph," she said by way of introduction. "You boys seem like you really know how to party."
Rumpbeard agreed that they knew how to have a good time but he also wasn't super into sharing his booze.
"So," began the Nymph, "What brings you guys to Hormonetown?"
Rumpbeard was relieved he wouldn't have to share.
"We're looking for a man most peculiar," said Rumpbeard, "Most peculiar indeed."
The Nymph raised an eyebrow. Intriguing! So much better than the soul searchers.
"Go on," she said, "Perhaps I can be of assistance."
"He's said to be handsome. Young seeming, but actually quite old. He's smart, aye, but he's arrogant too. Ring any bells?"
The Nymph yawned. She was over the pirate thing. "This man have a name?"
"Mooseknuckles," Rumpbeard rasped, "Jonathan."
"What are you, a ringwraith?"
Rumpbeard said nothing. He hadn't seen the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
"Yeah," sighed the Nymph, "I know the guy. He was doing some shitty soul searching on my river the other day. Head in town."
"Thanks, m'lady," said Rumpbeard. He felt she'd earned some rum and offered her a small bottle. It was a big act for the pirate.
"I'm a river. I don't really need to get drunk."
"Oh, good. I'll just keep this then."
There was an awkward moment.
The Nymph coughed.
The pirates shuffled their feet a little.
"Well."
"Goodbye."
The pirates lumbered off, the land rumbling under their feet.
That's what happens when a herd of pirate-dinosaurs moves all at once.
Rumpbeard was a t-rex.

CHAPTER FORTY

Bilf plotted.
He dreamt up murderous schemes. Falling pianos and anvils, pitfalls and traps. Running Vonce's body through a grid of chicken wire. Cutting the car breaks. The bus breaks. The life breaks.
He conjured bird attacks, dog attacks, piranha attacks. Bombs, explosions. He fantasized about the white heat of the fire he would cause, seeing Vonce's final second in slow motion as the force of the blast tore off his skin like a rotten apple sliding out of a peel. He imagined catching an extremity as it flew through the air, hollowing it out, coating it in shellac and then using it as a cup.
He imagined a sniper's bullet hitting Vonce's head in history class. The class where they'd first fallen in love. Vonce's dumb stupid handsome face exploding with all this brains and feelings.
He cooked up some real mean stuff for Vonce's trenchant junk. Clamps. Caustic lubes, vaginae dentatae. Guillotine-like traps. Thousands of biting ants. Slowly cooking his weiner with a magnifying a magnifying glass.
Just really abusing it.
Oh! And sticking stuff in the dickhole. Definitely that, too.
Bilf thought of all this because it gave him pleasure. None of it would happen, though.
Vonce would die at Bilf's hands but it would be intimate. Personal.
Simple.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Tina's ghostly adventure turned out to be real dull.
Just another instance where Shersh failed to learn anything important from her mother.
Tina made her meatloaf, made a mess trying to eat it (because she's a ghost and has no body), refrigerated the leftovers and then disappeared as she slid up the stairs.
Shersh sighed, went up to her room and rubbed one out. Not because of anything she'd just seen, mind you, just because she was a teen.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Man, Jonathan Mooseknuckles had seemed like kind of an unredemptive douche before but I'm kind of rooting for him now.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Jonathan chipped a couple nails and swole up his right fist in the exchange.
Prepneck lost an eye, most of his teeth, swallowed a cue ball and traded some skin for glass.
He'd be in the hospital for a while and die in about three years, sad, drunk and alone in a gutter. Like all misogynist racists should.
Jonathan, meanwhile, enjoyed a night of no-strings-attached, vigorous, consensual sex with the lady right there in the bar.
He did it billiards style, which is to say balls first. And the other patrons all cheered them on.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The seduction was going EXTREMELY well, thought Jonathan.
He was already horny and turgid and could feel heat coming off her. Laughing. Eye contact. Slightly brushing his junk against her.
She'd brushed first, of course, he wouldn't jump to that part of the game without a signal.
"So," he said, licking the fatty deposits off the rim of his glass.
"I knew it!" yelled the bartender from across the room.
Jonathan ignored him.
"Wanna take this somewhere else?" suggested Mooseknuckles.
She hadn't quite responded when a meaty spatula of a hand swatted the glass out of Jonathan's grip.
"The hell you do!" the hand's owner yelled.
Chairs squeaked. Jonathan stood. The DJ played the "record scratch" .mp3.
"Is you hitting on my woman?!" It was the handowner again.
He was beefy, over tan. Wearing a polo and overalls, improbably. Somehow he had both HGH-fed glamour muscles and a cornfed beer belly.
"I'm just trying to get to know her," said Jonathan.
"Yeah, know her carnally," said the handowner.
"...Carnally," said Jonathan a little too late.
"You think this is funny?!" said the redneck-prep... the prepneck.
"No, it's kinda bringing me down," said Jonathan. His halfsie boner had wilted.
"You stay away from my woman," said the prepneck, pointing a girthy finger in Jonathan's eye. Jonathan could see a callous on his fingertip and surmised it was from playing a Jimmy Buffet/Dave Matthews medley.
"I think she's free to do what she wants. If your relationship's good, what do you have to worry about?"
"What are you," said prepneck, dropping his finger and stepping chest-to-chest with Mooseknuckles, "...some kind of race traitor?"
Jonathan was confused. Yes, she was black. And Jonathan white. But prepneck was also white.
"But wouldn't that make you a ra-"
"IT DON'T HAVE TO MAKE SENSE!" shouted prepneck, "It's racism! It's by definition irrational!"
Jonathan had had enough.
"Ok," he exhaled, "It's gonna get nasty."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Jonathan Mooseknuckles walked right into Shaftholes, a divey sorta bar.
He didn't have Bilf's cock aura, but he had a pretty firm grip on his confidence and that tended to impress bouncers, who generally don't share that grasp.
Jonathan ordered a drink at the bar. "Bloody Mary, extra bloody," he said, winking.
The bartender eventually slid a sludgy crimson glass to Jonathan.
"That'll be $7.50."
"I'm not a vampire," said Jonathan, recycling a joke from earlier.
"Then you're gonna wanna avoid the cholesterol on the rim," shot back the bartender. He then turned into a bat and flew down the bar to the next customer.
"Hey," you could hear him saying in the distance, "Since I just took the shape of a bat and I'm about to take your drink orders, does that make me a 'bat render bartender?'"
It was a pretty weak play on words.
"Please don't tip based on that," he continued, "What'll you have?"
Jonathan tuned him out. There was a woman in front of him.
He was fixated.
She was gorgeous. Black hair, pulled back. Brown eyes. High, round cheeks.
And she was curvy in all the places. Which turned out to be all the right places. If you've got curves, flaunt it.
She was also straight in all the right places. Her teeth, mostly. The edges of her fingernails. Her rectum, Jonathan assumed.
I mean, he didn't know yet. But he wanted to find out.
"Hey, how's it going?" he said, sliding up to her. "I'm Jonathan."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Bilf opened the door and welcomed Vonce into his parents McMansion.
Vonce had momentarily forgotten about the cock aura and found it slightly disarming for the likely difficult conversation ahead.
"What's going on, V?" asked Bilf casually, "The 'rents are out, wanna touch weiners or whatever?"
"Well, yes, always. But there's something I need to say first and then we can decide what's the next step."
Bilf stopped. "Should we be sitting down? This sounds kinda serious. You're not, like, pregnant or diseased or suddenly straight, are you?"
Vonce opened his mouth, paused a moment.
"Oh god." said Bilf.
"Look, I didn't expect it to happen but there was this hot werewolf lady and we just had this junk connection. I know I shouldn't have but I did borf her and I wanted you to know about it A.S.A.P."
"Well," said Bilf. That's all he could manage. Generally the cock aura lured people in. It'd been working since he was three. He had babysitters wrapped around his little ... finger.
So he wasn't used to being let down.
"Well, dang." said Bilf. "Any chance she wants to get in on our action? I mean, we are all hot teens with unbridled libidos and could use some more holes."
Vonce thought a moment. That could be interesting. But he remembered smelling that devlish Mooseknuckles' cologne on Shersharmjorp and decided he didn't need to complicate the storyline any further.
"I'm not sure that's a good idea," said Vonce.
"Well, then get out."
"Okee doke. That's a reasonable outcome. Have a good one."
"Yeah, see you at the Buttsack."
Bilf closed the door on Vonce.
"I'm gonna kill him," Bilf said, complicating the storyline.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Meet Bilf.
Vonce's hunk ex(?) boyfriend. Or maybe they'll work it out? Who knows! You'll just have to read on to find out.
Anyway, yes. Bilf.
Bilf was a skinny, sort of unassuming boy but he had a really cocky aura. And I don't mean confident, although as a teen he certainly had more confidence than he'd earned.
I mean cock. Weiner. Penis.
To be in Bilf's presence was to be in the presence of his wang. You know the type. There's just something about the person that suggests he has a fantastic horn. Like it's calling to you from his chinos. One can almost feel the heat radiating from his beefy crotch oven to the point where you can't help but picture yourself kneeling before him, pulling at the hem of his tighty-whiteys and gripping his meaty dong.
Maybe not even for sex. Just, you know, to feel it or something.
Anyway, Bilf had that kind of an aura and is not something that leads to a well balanced teen.
Vonce rang the doorbell.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Shersh went down to the fridge. All the sweaty man/wolf/vampire porkings had left her dehydrated and hungry.
She pulled out some leftovers from last night. Mom's special, meatloaf. She thought for a moment about how she herself was kinda like this meatloaf, dry and salty. But instead of a bunch of meat stuck together with food glue, she was a bunch of feelings stuck together with heart glue, or something.
Also like the meatloaf, she changed shapes depending on its environment. You could bake it in any shape dish you want. And Shersh had been baked in a human shaped dish. And a wolf shaped dish.
She realized the metaphor wasn't perfect and wouldn't fly in English class as she slid the plate into the microwave.
Now it was starting to look like something she really wanted: steaming hot meat.
Yep. She was horny again. Man! Teens!
The microwave beeped and she pulled out her plate of meatloaf.
And then she nearly dropped it because her mother was standing right there.
Well, more like floating.
"Mom?!" she exclaimed.
Ghost Tina didn't acknowledge her. She just started going through the fridge and cupboards gathering ingredients.
"Mom! Can you hear me!? Mom! Mom!"
Shersh set down her plate.
"Hey, Mom, look at me!" she started doing jumping jacks and flailing her arms.
Ghost Tina just kept collecting ingredients. Beef, tomato, bread crumbs, onion.
Shersh reached a hesitant hand out. She pulled back a moment. What was she doing? Touching a ghost? That's crazy!
But what did she have to lose? She reached forward again as her mother set out the eggs and - GROSS!
Ghosts are cold, sticky and weird.
Shersh immediately regretted it.
And it didn't seem to do anything anyway. Ghost Tina kept going with the ingredients.
Ingredients for meatloaf.
It clicked for Shersh.
"Mom. Are you reliving your last night?" she asked expositionally.
Ghost Tina cracked an egg.
Shersh pulled up a chair.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

It was a pretty rigorous pipe-cleaning.
Shersh was really enjoying the sexuality she was discovering. They breathed in ecstasy a moment as a sort of denouement.
"Did you learn that from your mother?"
Shersh did not respond.
"Oh, right. Insensitive. Sorry."
Mooseknuckles got up, dropping the panties he still held clutched in his fist.
"Welp." He said, "I gotta go."
He put on his pants and cape and opened the window.
"Oh," he turned from the windowsill, "Have a grapefruit or something. Your Ph is off."
He was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Vonce caught up to Shersharmjorp in the woods beyond the wretched athletic fields.
"Shersh," began Vonce, "Shersh, I've had the genital hots for you since the first time I saw you. Back at the gym. I just knew that you're special. A sweet and sincere soul. And the connection we felt is real. And the doggy style boning was real. And super hot. And I've never felt as close to any one as I do to you. And that includes my boyfriend, Bilf, and man is he going to be confused! and anyway I just want to say I think we can make this work."
At least, Vonce thought he said all that. But then he remembered they were both still wolves and wolves don't really have language and while they can speak, it takes some effort.
So what he said came out as more of a mewling whine.
Vonce turned humany again and waited for Shersh to do the same. She did, eventually, but she took her time. She knew who held the real power here.
"Wow," she said, "You really do have an annoying, high-pitched whine. Like a bitch."
Vonce looked down.
Dang.
"But that leather jacket is still totally hot."
Vonce sighed. The moment was gone.
He changed tacks.
"Hey, what was that bummer Principal Pocketwatch had to tell you?"
"Oh, nothing, really. Just that my mother was brutally murdered."
"Harsh."
"I know, right? Hey, you weren't in biology. How'd you hear that announcement? Superheightened werewolf senses?"
"Oh," explained Vonce, "he said it to the whole school, remember?"
"Oh, right. Yeah."
"That seemed comically cruel."
"Yeah, like something out of a satire or something."
"Anyway."
"Anyway," Shersharmjorp shifted her weight to her other leg. Vonce shuffled some leaves.
"So..."
"You know," said Vonce, changing tack again. He was like a regatta captain with this damn conversation, "You might want to work some more citrus into your diet. Your Ph is off."
That was the superheightened senses.

NOT A CHAPTER, A PICTURE

This is a rough draft. You are more than welcome to submit your own or to modify this version.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The door opened again.
Shersh looked back past the still thrusting Vonce, kind of hoping it'd be Jonathan.
It wasn't.
It was the gym teacher, Ms. Sack, and a whole bunch of kids.
"Hey!" yelled Sack.
Shersh ran off, leaving Vonce to ejaculate into the air. He then took off too.
"Come back here!" shouted Sack again, "We'll find you! There's only, like, 30 werewolves in this school!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Shersh turned.
It was that strangely alluring, leather jacket wearing new boy, Vonce. Vonce Wolfer.
"Hey, sup," said Vonce. Damn, he was cool, too.
Shersh started to get all humany again but Vonce just looked at her. "No," he said, "You look hot like that."
And then HE turned into a wolf! WHAT!!!
For Shersh that was pretty dang sexy. Sure she'd never had a convo with him before or gotten his digits or smelled his hair but, dang, man. So assertive and sure of himself.
Plus the leather coat stayed with him as a wolf. That coat was really working on her.
Vonce approached and they circled each other a bit. They sniffed butts - Vonce had eaten chicken nuggets and coke and maybe, like, a lilac plant? Or used scented toilet paper? Or maybe he just took care of his b-hole. He's a werewolf, after all. Butt sniffing and butt brandishing are part of the life. Shersh was suddenly self-conscious about her butt.
But Vonce seemed to be pretty into it, judging from the snorting and how he'd occasionally bump his nose into her, cool and wet and soft. Like what sitting naked in a dewy mushroom patch must be like.
Butt sniffing complete. This Vonce thing really seemed to be happening.
"So..." said Shersh.
"I couldn't help but notice you," said Vonce sexily, "Not like in a stalker way. But in the way that I've got heightened senses cuz I'm a werewolf.
"Also, you're the only other thing in this gym."
Shersh thought a moment about the shiv-wielding hamster, decided not to mention it and was also glad Vonce had entered when he did. She'd been about ready to put her sensitive nose in primo shiv-stabbing country.
"I noticed you, too," she said, "Because you came in here as a person and turned into a wolf."
"Being a wolf suits you," he said, "I've never seen such a fine, clumpy spring molt, "he nipped playfully at one particularly large clump on one of her haunches.
Was this really happening?
Shersh had always dreamed of hot teen gym sex.
But she'd also always dreamed Jonathan Mooseknuckles.
But here was this hot wolf man. Who was interested in her.
Oh yes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

She played with the hamsters.
The gym was always free during third period, so she'd bring in a hamster, get all wolfy and chase 'em around.
She didn't generally care for eating them but the thrill of the chase was too much to ignore.
OK, yes. Sometimes she ate them. The taste of rodent fur is pretty nasty but there is a particularly satisfying crunch.
She tried not to eat them, though. She always felt bad.
"That was a mean old thing you did, Shersh," she'd think. Although she hadn't done it with her new name yet. But she assumed it'd probably go like that.
She was just playing with one hamster today. Bouncing and leaping. Snorting after the thing and drinking with delight every petrified squeal.
Oh, and this was a good one, too. A cunning little bugger. A tiny, furry wizard of zigs and zags. Adept at knowing exactly the right moment to dart under the bleachers or skitter into a u-ey, sending Shersh sprawling as her paws lost traction on the waxed hardwood floor.
Shit. What time was it? Ok 5 more minutes and -
Where'd it go?
Shersh sniffed around. The thing was nowhere. She listened but only heard the tick of the wall clock reverberating through the gym. That and, somewhere, a leaky faucet.
She sniffed the floor, trying to discern the scent of hamster foot from sketcher and reebok tread. Was that it?
Oh, she was onto it now. Trotting after the rodent's trail. The water fountain. Of course. Hiding behind the fountain.
Shersh approached slowly, gathering herself up to spring on the hamster.
She inched forward. Tensed her stomach muscles. Held her breath. She leaned around the corner, mouth open an... nothing.
No hamster.
OW! Something bit her tail. She turned quickly, whanging her head off the fucking bubbler. Broken. Stupid.
It was the hamster. Holding her tail like corn on the cob and just going to town.
Dang, hamster.
She snapped her tail, launching the creature toward her mouth and... was that a tiny knife?
The hamster had made a little hamster shiv!
She dodged the flying rodent and managed to give it a little nip on the butt as it completed it's flight plan.
The hamster turned its landing into an effortless drift under the bleachers.
Shersh was about to put her nose under there when the door opened.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The bell rang.
Miss Professor shouted a reading assignment out to the class as they packed up their books, left apples on her desk and resumed finger-banging.
Shersh spilled out into the hallway and slinked off alone toward her locker. The day had been wearing on her. Miss Professor's naked hate, her douchey classmates and the whole murdered mother thing was a real downer.
She needed release.
Supernatural release.
She exhaled in front of her locker, dialed in the combination.
The box was there. Always was. Always there when she needed it.
Her fix.
She looked down the hallway. The last students were slipping into their classes. The last door shut.
She crouched over the box and traced one cardboard flap.
Something stirred inside.
Inside the box and inside her teenage body.
It wasn't an animal stirring in her body, though. Well, maybe a metaphorical one. Desire. Hunger. Yearning. Freedom.
Release.
The animal inside her that needed to be uncaged, unshackled. Let loose to carve a wild canyon on the surface of humanity.
She slowed her breathing. Not yet. Patience.
Open the box.
Ah, yes.
The hamsters.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Detective Fart regretted one decision in his life: changing his name.
He thought about this while going over those grizzly murder files.
He had changed his name as a younger man in his home country.
Whoa. He'd forgotten how gross this case was. Organs everywhere. Skin in tatters.  The pile of human loaded potato skins. Gross.
Fart had changed his name because the word was cool in his native language. Aggressive. A little dangerous. Just... cool.
But that was before he learned English. And his former name, it turns out, would've been pretty cool in English.
Now, this was interesting, thought Fart. Pretty gross, chaotic corpse... but on the neck... two tiny neat holes.
Could this have been the work of two people?
Fart exhaled. Should've stuck with Thunderpunch.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

This chapter starts with a person monologuing, but we don't know who is speaking yet. Mysterious, hmm? Intriguing!
"A queef," the speaker began, "Is a pussy fart."
"That's what I figured," said the other mysterious conversational participant.
"Yes, I know. I chose the word carefully.
"You see, 'queef' is one of those words... you can just tell what it means. It has that feeling, you know?  'Fuck' isn't like that. 'Fuck' is good, you know, it's visceral. You can picture fucking. But there are different kinds of fucking. Fuck can be angry, aggressive, joyful, weird. And so using 'fuck' can invoke any of those feelings.
"'Queef' only means the one thing.
"I'd like to think that there's some language, maybe a tribe those linguists care about in Papua/New Guinea, where 'queef' means something benign. Like 'butter' or 'read a book.' So then if, say, one of those tribesmen came to America and went to a juice bar in the early afternoon in Los Angeles, they'd hear something like "Oh man, my husband took me from behind this morning and I totally read a book at bikram. Like a huge book."
"Miss Professor?" asked Douche or Douché or whatever.
"What, Douche?" Miss Professor exhaled.
"While queefs have a loose biological connection, I question the value of this rant in a high school biology class."

Douche was sent to the principal's office.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

"That took too damn long," Miss Professor said with tears in her eyes as Shersharmjorp entered the classroom. "So we got ice cream," she rubbed her temple, wincing from the ice cream headache.
"Where were you?"
S-jorp looked around the classroom. Everyone had ice cream in front of them. Every color of the rainbow. And all the toppings: cherries, sprinkles, whipped cream, salt, bananas, pickles, more ice cream, hot fudge, butter.
This would be an OK way for Shersh to forget about her mutilated mother for a bit.
"My mom died. Can I have some ice cream?"
"We're out. Sorry," Miss Professor stared at Shersh. They weren't out, she just didn't want to share any more.
"Sit down, Willow."
"It's Shersharmjorp now."
"That's ridiculous! Why? What?"
"I changed it just now, in the hallway."
"Your parents must be disappointed in you," her words hung in the air. Miss Professor realized the depth of that insult in this moment. She leaned in, grabbed Shersh by the shoulders and looked deep into her eyes.
"So disappointed."
The loudspeaker crackled again.
"Oh, Shershmajrop?" It was Pocketwatch, "I forgot to tell you how they identified her. She'd been skinned and the patch with her tramp stamp of two arms with bulging biceps with tribal tattoos fisting her gaping vagina was found covering her eyes.
"So crazy!"
The loudspeaker clicked off.
Shersh looked out at her classmates.
Zarp coughed into the awkward silence. He always had to make it about himself.