Werewolfing. 4

Chapter Four

“Wait, what?”

He’d explained it to her twice already, in garbled words in hushed tones. He was afraid even then, hidden by the abandoned warehouses and shrouded by half-dead weeds.

Seb sighed, and repeated the same foul-tasting story. When he finished, everything was quiet - everything aside from the gentle, insistent rain. It wasn’t a nice kind of quiet; it was the kind of quiet that fell over the woods before the deer was shot.

“And that’s why he smells so bad?” Tanvi asked, watching the stranger with something close to disgust. It was true - he stunk of dog and unwashed human, a smell even detectable by feeble human noses, made worse by the humid rain and the cooling wind.

“Probably,” Seb shrugged, watching the stranger nose around the base of the other factory. He trotted around, ignoring Seb and Tanvi as he explored. He’d been like that all morning.

“So,” Tanvi smiled and looked up, into the clouds. They hung like soggy wool blankets, stained the same grey-silver of Seb’s pelt, “is he going to stay for good?”

“I don’t know.” he lowered his voice, “I… I kind of hope not.”

“Yeah.” Tanvi nodded. They’d been visiting the abandoned warehouses every weekend since Seb had arrived, sometimes as pretend wolves and other times as pretend people, always alone and always together.

“What’re you doing for full moon?” she asked, still watching the stranger.

“I don’t know,” Seb shrugged, “don’t particularly want to do anything. But Riley’ll make us,”

“You could always come over to ours,” Tanvi said, laughing at Seb’s expression.

“No. It’s awful,” Seb growled. He’d been over once before, invited by Tanvi. Her family’s full moons were the most miserable affairs Seb had ever been through - her family locked themselves up in the basement like zoo animals, under the premise of keeping themselves safe. There was nothing to chase and nowhere to run. Seb had spent the entire night pawing at the door, dreaming about the forest he could’ve spent the night in. It was so bad that taking Tanvi to the new vegan shop and having her make fun of him was preferable to a night locked in the basement.

Tanvi kept on chuckling, “too late,”

“What? No. Over my dead body,”

“Riley and Tiffany talked to my dad earlier,”

“No!” Seb leaned his head back against the wall of the factory, “I hate it. Why the hell would anyone put themselves through that? Do you never want to just howl and play and run?”

“Well, yeah,” Tanvi said, “but I can do that with you at the weekend. I don’t mind it, even when I first started it,”

Seb shrugged again, and let his mind imagine what it would’ve been like if his real parents, his werewolf parents, hadn’t given him up. Would he too lock himself up every full moon? Would they run a family business, like Tanvi did? Or would they be wild, free to their every whim?

Seb sighed, inhaling the richer scents the rain bought. He spotted a new, unusual, enticing smell that lay below all of the other usual ones. Underneath the petrol, the fumes, the cooking smells, and the scent of somewhere faraway on the wind, was a delicious smell that he’d never experienced before. It was good in a way that could’ve been a food way, or perhaps a home way.

He pushed himself to his feet and followed the smell. He could hear Tanvi following behind him. Seb followed the smell through the scrawny undergrowth and the cracked concrete. It was as if an earthquake had struck and humanity had fled, leaving their warehouses and their concrete yards to ruin. It was if, Seb thought bitterly, that the world had been so badly hurt that only beings who weren’t real people and weren’t real wolves could live. Only the unholy in-between could live in that dying world.

Okay. Time to stop thinking, Seb. He followed the scent across the factory yard. The stranger was already at the fence, nose poking through to get more of the scent.

“You smell it too, right? What do you think it is?”

Nothing. The stranger didn’t even turn around. Seb looked at Tanvi, making an exasperated gesture before he gave up and headed back toward her.

“What about you? What does it smell like to you?”

“It smells good. Maybe… Spices from home?”

Seb nodded, “’kay.”

"What does it smell like to you?"

“Something good..." He trailed off and watched the stranger, who was still at the fence.

"He's... weird," Tanvi muttered.

"Yeah... I’m going to take him back and try to get him to shower,” Seb huffed and accepted her hug, “you’d better be joking about tonight.”

-

She hadn’t been joking.

And the stranger hadn’t showered. Seb had tried to coax him into it as best he could, but he’d just been stared at with that unnerving demon-stare, and then he had the audacity to go and scrounge food from the kitchen before they left.

Tiffany kissed Riley goodbye while Seb poked Juana’s muzzle. The stranger hung around awkwardly by the truck until they’d finished. He sat by the window on the backseat - precisely why Seb chose to sit in the front -, and stared out at the city for the entire journey like he’d never seen a human settlement before. Seb zoned out as Riley asked the stranger questions in the hope of some kind of response. She gave up soon after.

Tanvi’s restaurant was on a street with a busy, filthy road running by it. They all lived in the flat above - all seven werewolves, and their dog. Their cramped building was just like all of the others in the row of launderettes and Polish food shops, an island in an ocean of fumes, takeaway packaging, and dog faeces, darkened by the permanent half-light of the clouds and the drizzly rain.

Inside was warm and cramped and loud. The walls were painted the best shade of earthy red on the spectrum, decorated with elaborate, swirling patterns that Seb had never managed to find the beginning or the end of. Raucous laughter and exotic herbs filled the air as more meals were bought out and set down on tables.

They took a seat with the people waiting for their takeaway, greeted by every member of Tanvi’s family as they hurried to and fro with new foods and orders. They handed the restaurant over to faithfully ignorant human workers every full moon - and that night was no exception.

Tanvi slipped through the door to the kitchen and into the waiting room, taking the seat next to Seb. She smirked.

“I bet you can’t wait,”

“I want to die. This is going to be awful,”

On Seb’s other side, the stranger was growing restless. He fidgeted and wrung his hands, paying unusually close attention to people as they talked. Seb glowered and turned back to Tanvi.

She stretched, “I can feel it already.”

Seb could feel it too. It was a strange, warming, tense kind of feeling in pit of his stomach - times better than pain he’d had before yesterday’s shift. As the sky outside the window darkened, the coils in his stomach drew tighter. A burst of adrenaline surged through his veins, but he couldn’t tell if were the imminent transformation, or the sight of Tanvi’s father pushing his way toward them.

He was an enormous mountain of a man, with a grizzly beard and greying hair. He almost made the ground shake when he walked. The skin around his eyes crinkled as he greeted Riley, pulling her into a huge, jolly hug. Seb would’ve compared the man to Santa - that was, if the rather serious conversation about not getting too close to Tanvi didn’t spring to mind whenever Seb laid eyes on him. It hadn’t been an enjoyable chat.

“It’s a pleasure, Riley, it’s a pleasure,” his accent wasn’t as perfected as Tanvi’s. The lilt of a faraway place probably wouldn’t ever leave. “Are you ready?”

She nodded, “yes, we’re ready. Thank you again, Rahul,”

He held the door open for them. The corridor was dark, and Seb could almost smell the damp of the basement. Dread curled like a cobra in the back of his mind. He wrinkled his nose and started to follow after Riley and Tanvi’s countless brothers, sisters, uncles, and aunts. He shut his eyes and inhaled perfume and cologne, and Riley’s shampoo. No wet dog. No unwashed human.

The stranger was gone.

Jesus Christ. He is going to be the death of me.

Seb faltered and stopped. He couldn’t just leave him, could he?

No, he couldn't.