Roscoe frowned. “Naw. I don’t wanna cook food fer people no more. Too many painful memories.”
“Sorry.”
Roscoe playfully shoved Darryl. “It’s all good. I’ll go be a bouncer or somethin’. That’s an easy job. You just stand there and scare the shit out of people so they don’t bother causing problems. I’ve been thrown out of bars more than I’ve had to throw anyone out.”
“How much does that pay?”
“Enough to get by. Could help you get yer house built faster.” He held his hand out. “Wanna let me stay on that little strip of sand you got?”
Darryl grabbed his hand and shook. “You got it.”
The beach scene shifted, and a half-built house stood behind two tents close to the water. Darryl was seated up on a high lifeguard chair surveying the crowded waters, but Roscoe was nowhere to be found.
“Ready for a shift change?” a male, human lifeguard called up to him.
“Yup,” Darryl replied, jumping down from the chair. “I’m gonna get baked. Anyone seen Roscoe around?”
“He’s out of jail?”
“For now. We’ll see if he stays that way.” He gripped the handle of his lifebuoy and made his way to the tents. The leftmost one had a pair of furry legs sticking out of it. Darryl bent over to grab Roscoe’s ankles and pulled the unconscious werewolf across the sand toward the water. The moment a wave crashed into them, Roscoe yowled.
“Oh shit! The tide’s too high!”
“The tide’s not high. You are,” Darryl said, slapping Roscoe’s face a few times. “You can’t keep doing this, dude. Every time you say you’re gonna get clean, I find another bottle of pills. You said you’d help me with the house, but evenmymoney keeps going missing.”
Roscoe spat out water, a strand of seaweed dangling from his bottom canine.
“Everything’s fine. Just need a little something to help me sleep at night.”
“A half a bottle of hydrocodone is not a little something. This is getting serious, and I don’t know if I can keep this up. I love you like a brother, Roscoe, but I can’t handle this.”
“Everything’s under control.” He reached into the tent and pulled out a bottle of pills, then poured them into his hand and tossed them into the water. “Ain’t gonna take those no more.”
“Great. Now the sharkmen are going to have an opioid problem.”
“You still on about that? There ain’t no sharkmen.”
“I saw one!” Darryl’s eyes went wide as he held out his arms. “He was about as big as I was! I tried to wave him down, but he panicked and disappeared into the water.”
Roscoe narrowed his eyes. “He panicked, you say. Huge muscley monster with two rows of teeth ran away from a werewolf?”
“Who is also huge with one row of equally sharp teeth and glowing eyes. Hell, I’d be scared of me.”
“Yer crazy.”
“He was hot. If I see him again, I’m gonna swim after him.”
Roscoe yawned and crawled back into his tent. “Good luck with that.”
“You’re gonna sleep all damn day?”
“It was a late night. Gotta get up in five hours fer work.”
The daylight faded. I stepped forward only to end up in a pawn shop. Roscoe pacing outside with a guitar case in his hands, and Darryl’s story played out in real time. He froze in the entrance, his eyes wide and body trembling.
He looked around the empty shop before making his way to the counter. The pudgy balding man behind it eying Roscoe suspiciously.
“Need a loan,” he said, sliding the guitar across the counter.
