“All right,” he shouted, his attention pulled back to the bar as he filled another order.
I stepped out the front door, slipping through groups of people crowding along the sidewalks of downtown. Everyone was so loud, and there were so many strong smells, which only further exacerbated my pounding headache.
I arrived at the bus stop and noted a pair of glowing eyes leering at me from the blackened alley across the street. The clock on my phone read a quarter to ten; I’d have at least twenty minutes to kill until the next bus arrived. It was unbearable. Every car driving by left a trail of noxious exhaust that had me in coughing fits, and the drunk people stumbling along the walkways were even more unpleasant.
Sitting on the bench, I slumped over, resting my head in my hands. A large body sat next to me, and I got a whiff of a familiar dog-like odor. It was another werewolf—brown this time, wearing a pair of ragged, frayed jeans and nothing more.
“I remember my first night,” he said, pointing up at the full moon peeking between the skyscrapers. “I didn’t know what was happening, and I wanted to rip everyone’s heads off just to make the world shut up.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t think like that anymore since hitting my full-turn, but everything was a little harder to control back then.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
The werewolf paused and narrowed his eyes. “Are you looking for a roommate?” He reached into his pocket, grabbing a wrinkled piece of paper.
I put up my hand to stop him. “Not really, no.”
“You sure? It’s hard for us to live alone. I—don’t have a job right now, but I can pay you in other ways. I can get you a nice-looking kuu, too.”
I stood and slipped into the straps of my backpack. That last part confused me, but I wasn’t about to ask. I just wanted to get away from him. “Sorry, no.”
“Did another one beat me to it already?” He clicked his tongue, sighed, then stood and walked away, his tail tucked.
“What the hell was that about?”
I awoke to the sound of loud knocking, having fallen asleep minutes after arriving at the apartment. My body ached even more, and I was running a slight fever. Of all the weeks I could have gotten the flu…
With a groan, I dragged myself out of bed and hobbled across the room before squinting through the peephole of the front door. I couldn’t see much other than what looked like a sheet over a huge standing lamp.
“Who’s out there?”
“Roscoe,” he grunted. “Hurry up and let me in before someone gets suspicious.”
I opened the door, revealing the ridiculous disguise. The grimy sheet he wore barely covered anything, just his head and most of his upper body. His tail and furry legs still showed. This was how he planned on not drawing attention to himself?
“What the hell is this?” I asked as Roscoe tried to push his way past me, but I shoved him back. “Did you walk all the way here like that? How can you see anything?”
He removed the sheet and held up a plastic freezer bag full of what I suspected was weed. “Of course I didn’t. That would have been stupid,” he said, pointing to his snout. “Plus, I don’t need to see nothin’ when this works just fine.”
“When you said you were good with disguises, I thought you’d actually put some effort into them.”
A man walked alongside the building at the other end of the hall toward my unit, so I pulled Roscoe inside and slammed the door before locking the deadbolt.
“The last thing I need right now is the police showing up,” I shouted.
“You know what you need?” he asked, tossing me the small plastic bag he carried.
“I don’t smoke,” I said, handing the bag back to him.
He crossed his arms. “C’mon. It’s good shit, and there’s a prize at the bottom.”
I narrowed my eyes while staring down at the now open bag. After feeling around, I pulled out a roll of cash secured with a rubber band.
“What’s this?”
“The deed to my beach house,” Roscoe replied before making his way to the fridge.
