Dante the Werewolf: Part Five (special preview)

Rain fell heavily upon the old tin roof. I can remember the sound so clearly, especially when I am half asleep. I was curled up on an old sofa that smelled like ass and dog with an old crocheted throw draped over me. It was the coziest I had felt in a long time. I was warm and sheltered and filled with stolen beer. My mother had found that old shack, which was a hunting cabin that was maybe used once a year. My mom took the bed while I slept on that old couch.

“It’s fine,” I told her. “The couch is probably less used.” I don’t know why I said that. She was just going to take the bed anyways. Sh always took the bed.

“Alright, baby. If it’s fine, it’s fine,” she laughed.

At that point, we had been on the road for a couple of weeks and we had slept in the car. Mom had taken the back seat while I slept with the passenger seat leaned back as far as I could. That sofa was the first time I had a comfy bed in so long. I was enjoying it, and I was already preparing to have to sleep in the car again.

Through the rain I heard my mother’s footsteps coming from down the hallway. She walked out into the room I was sleeping and stood there staring out the window. I continued to feign being asleep. If she was drunk I didn’t want to engage her, and if she wasn’t she was going to want someone to talk to while she did. But she stood there for the longest time just looking out the window I suppose.

After a while she came and sat down in the armchair beside the sofa, and I continued pretending I was asleep. Maybe if I was lucky I would just fall asleep. My mom shifted in the chair, taking in a deep breath and letting it out in a sigh.

At that moment in time I was the same age my mother was when she had me. At sixteen she gave birth to me in the bathtub of someone’s vacation home. I had often tried to imagine what that must have been like for her. Growing up, she had been raised by a feral werewolf pack, even at a young age she learned to be strong, to be vicious. I don’t know if she knew who my father was, but for whatever reason she had me and never turned around. It had always been us, maybe someone else for short bursts of time, but we were always the constant.

“Werewolves can’t settle,” she told me. I was so young when she said this. I remember I loved cereal, but I hated milk. So she would toss me loose cereal over a table top to eat and make fun of how my tiny hands snatched things up. We made a game of it, I would be Godzilla and she would make voices for the cereal bits, aka people, I ate.

“We don’t have that luxury. People find us out. People hate us. This world is dog eat dog for a reason baby.” She blew out that clove scented smoke and sighed. “We got each other, for a while at least.”

“A while?” I asked.

She turned and smiled at me, young but aged beyond her years. “You remember that day we were in the woods?” She leaned closer to me, tapping her sharp nail on the table top. “We saw that mama bird flying away from the nest with her little babies trying to follow? Remember that?”

I nodded.

She flicked a blue ring of cereal at me. “Remember how she never came back? But some of the babies did?”

I nodded again, feeling anxious and queasy inside. I never really ate blue things again after that conversation now that I think about it.

“Sometimes mamas have to leave their babies, because its good for ‘em.” She leaned back in her chair with a big smile. “But not all the time.”

“Why?” I asked.

She tilted her head to the side, sighed deeply and pouted her lips out. She took another drag from her clove cigarette then blew the smoke out up at the stained glass fixture over the kitchen table.

“Nature I guess.”