CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Once again, Mr. Snuffles saw everything.
He was a rabbit, so his vision in the dark was pretty good. And he just felt comfortable in earthen holes.
In fact that eyesight, coupled with the fact that he was neither giving nor receiving a faceload of wolf junk let him see something the wolves had missed.
There was one more moleperson. She'd been hiding under one of the many piles of molecorpses.
She slid her way out now and slowly, carefully made her way toward the rabbit.
Mr. Snuffles twitched with excitement.

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 FIFTEEN

"OK, now that roll call's finally over... any questions about science?" said Miss Professor to the class.
Nobody spoke.
"Nobody. No one cares what you think."
Nobody shut up.
Willow raised a hesitant hand.
"Yes, Willow?"
"Um, not that I'm a werewolf or it has a direct influence on my nightly activities," she said, laughing a little to show the class the VERY IDEA of such a thing was ridiculous, "But, um, what's the deal with the moon?"
"The moon?"
"Yeah, you know. The, like, night ...sun?"
Miss Professor sighed. "It's a big rock that orbits the Earth in space."
"Excuse me, Miss Professor?" said that first douche from earlier.
"Yes, douche?"
He ignored it. "Why waste time explaining the concept of 'moon' in a high school biology class?"
"I was done, douche," Miss Professor spat, "And, douche, I'm not here to debate the philosophy of education, douche. That's a different class. Douche."
The douche looked down. The rest of the class looked at the douche.
"Douche." She said again.
"It's not pronounced 'douche'!" he finally snapped. "My name is Douché!"
"I don't see an accent mark."
"That's because we're talking out loud. If this were written in a book, say, or on a blog, it'd be there clear as day!"
"Douche!" Professor shouted, "Principal's office!"
Douché sighed. He knew what he had done.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Geez. That's a dumb name, too. Sorry, I'll try to do better.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"Sorgum, Jumper," said Miss Professor.
"Here," said another dweeb.

We're close to the name now, scout's honor.

"Sprigblatz, Quizfish,"
Ugh. That's no hero's name.
"Here," said another stupid testicle.
"Tree, Willow," called Professor.
"Here," SAID THE WEREWOLF.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

But, I mean, she didn't go in looking like a werewolf.
This whole time she's been a human looking person. Face, fingers. Coat. I don't know you've probably got an idea.
Oh, red hair. Are you thinking red hair? She doesn't have it, but she's the kind of <strike>person</strike> werewolf who always thought she could pull it off. "Tilda Swinton ain't got nothing on this," she'd think to herself, "I'd rock the ginger look."
Anyway, she sat down in her classroom. One of the science ones.
All the teens were there in the classroom doing their stupid teenage bullshit. Unpacking bags, passing notes, finger-banging.
The teacher walked in. Miss Professor. She looked like a badass, or as much of a badass as a teacher can look. But remember that Indiana Jones was kind of a teacher, too.
Miss Professor sat at her desk.
"All right, kids," she said, snapping a piece of paper, "Stop doing your dumb teenage bullshit. You two, stop finger-banging. Tim for roll call."

This is the part where we find out the werewolf's name.

Miss Professor snapped the paper again.
"Ahem," she coughed.
The tension was palpable.
"Miss Professor?" said a particularly douchey looking boy, "Why do we all feel tense?"
Miss Professor just looked at him. And by the way she looked at him, all the other students knew that she too thought he was a douche.
"Ahem," she said, "Agraplotz, Aloisius."
"Here," answered some doofus.
"Blargrophinsunston, Zarp. Ugh, that's a stupid name," Professor said, correctly.
"Here," said the idiot with the dumb name.
Teens suck.
"Ugh. There's two of them," she said, "Blargrophin- You know," Professor interrupted herself, "I'd think these names were completely made up if I hadn't divorced the jackass who gave you them."
No one in the class spoke.
"Nothing to say for yourself, Zarp?"
"Well, you kinda say it a lot, Mom," said Zarp.
She stared at him.
"Miss Professor," he corrected himself.
"That's better," she said with a punctuational cough. "Blargrophinsunston, Zorp"
"Here"
Professor looked disapprovingly at the dumb shit who said it. She coughed again. She does that a lot.
"Blargrophinsunston, Zurp."
"Here."
"God you three are intolerable.

It might take a while for this whole "name" thing to play out. Let's check in elsewhere.

CHAPTER NINE

It's later now. The next day, probably. And with different characters. In a different place.
"I'm so much like this river," she said, hands in pockets. Looking out over a river.
"Always the same. But also always changing."
The river was beautiful. A serene spot for an angsty teenager to come and consider her feelings and things and also swat bugs. That las part wasn't a draw, really, but tended to happen out of necessity.
"If there's a perfect metaphor for the things I'm going through as a teenager, it's this river," she said, "And if it's not this river," she went on, "It's that I'm a werewolf. Ugh! I'm always dealing with things. Oh, river, if only you could hear me, you'd understand."
"Bullshit!" said someone who we didn't know was there yet.
"Who said that?!" shouted the werewolf, "I didn't know someone else was here yet!"
"It's me," said a beautiful woman dressed in a flowy blue gown. She had deep blue eyes and a blue tinge to her hair. Blue sandals on her feet. Long lacy blue gloves on her hands.
She was really committed to the whole "blue" thing.
"Who are you?" asked the werewolf.
"I'm the river nymph. This river is essentially an extension of me and vice versa.
"Hence the blue," she explained.
"Hence the blue," said the now-awed werewolf.

Awed as in astonished. Not odd as in strange. She'd always felt a little of odd. Out of place. Like she didn't quite fit in in regular-
"I'm gonna stop you right there," the river interrupted the narrator's kinda messy joke.
"Huh?" said the werewolf.
"You need to stop. You're not special," said the river to the werewolf's face.
"Excuse me?! I'm a were-"
"I don't care. For millennia I've been here and literally every single fucking person who has come to this god damn river has felt lost, out of place. Different."
"Oh. It sounds sad."
"No, it's exhausting. And stupid."
"Oh, but I'm not stupid. I'm a totally unique-"
"Fourteen," interrupted the river again. She's awfully interrupty.
"What?"
"Fourteen fucking teen werewolves have stood exactly where you're standing."
"Oh, I-"
"And that's just this decade. I've also seen ten vampires, three lizard people and once, the Loch Ness Monster. Not to mention the drifters, ex-cons, soul searchers and artists - don't get me fucking started on the fucking artists."
"You sure swear a lot," observed the werewolf.
"God damn fucking right I do. I'm a fucking river. What're you gonna fucking do? Stop drinking my damn water?"
"None of this is really helping me."
"It's not supposed to. I do not care about you at all."
"Geez! What if I just kill myself?!"
"I hope you do. There's a whole river in front of you. Jump in and drown. I'll flush your shitty corpse into the sea. Then you're Poseidon's problem."
Nothing from the werewolf.
"That's what I thought," the river said, spitting at the werewolf's feet. "Now don't you have somewhere else to be?"
"Oh, dip! School!" The werewolf ran off.
"Pussy," the river said, merging again with the water.

CHAPTER SIX

"Oh man, that was so good. My privates are so slammed," she said.
"Yeah, I know," he said, vampiricly, "I've been practicing with, you know, like, books and movies and props and such."
"And such?" she asked, askingly.
"Yeah. You know, well, like straps and things."
"Oh, OK," she said with her mouth.
"Do you know my daughter?" she continued, "She's a werewolf. I'm Tina."

CHAPTER FIVE

Later that night, they did.
Although they didn't touch them together so much as they just slammed 'em into each other like an overactive kid with two matchbox cars.

CHAPTER FOUR

"Oh man. Being a secret vampire is so hard," he thought. But she couldn't hear it; he was just thinking.
"That woman is totally hot looking," he continued to think in his brain.
"I hope that sometime we could touch together our bits."
He approached her.

CHAPTER THREE

"Who is that?" she thought to herself, "Oh, that same sexy teen I always see.
"I hope he notices me this time."
She looked in the mirror nearest her. She was in a gym. There were mirrors all over the place.
But not "weremirrors." Not, like, werewolves but instead of turning into wolves you turn into a mirror and that's the real reason you shouldn't break mirrors.
Regular mirrors.
"Ugh," she thought to herself, "I feel so plain. I wish that hot boy had a terrible secret. Like he's secretly a vampire so I could share with him the secret that I'm secretly a werewolf and we could talk and make out and maybe find love in this crazy messed up world and also maybe he could squirt fluid inside me.
"I just want him to have a secret," she thought.

CHAPTER TWO

The werewolf had money now.
Now she had to figure out how to turn that into a thing to fight her werewolfism, her lycanthropy. The desire in her to be a feral, wild animal. To hunt. To stalk. To sniff out prey. To howl into the night.
To throw off everything human. To peel back the skin of civilization and pulse like a heart.
So she fought it.
"Ten hamsters please," she said.
"Weren't you in here last week getting hamsters?"
"No, that wasn't me," she said, laughing cutely to try and make the clerk think of something else. Laughter, probably, or jokes maybe.
"No runts," she said as he selected the rodents.

CHAPTER ONE

The werewolf put the guitar on the counter.
"What do you want for it?" the cashier asked, like there wasn't a werewolf in front of him.
"I dunno, a hundred bucks?" the werewolf guessed.
No one knew she was a werewolf. She just looked like a person. Like a average ass person. Hair, shoulders, eyeballs.
Just a person.
"We can probably do a hundo," said the clerk.
 "I'm not a werewolf," she said.
"What?"
"Oh. ...I'll take it."