Beware The Wolf - Pt2 - Werewolf Breeding Zone

I saw one of those signs on Etsy that said "Caution: Werewolf Breeding Zone". I first thought "is that where they breed werewolves? Or is that where the werewolves breed you?" Of course that's the point of the sign.  Thus, a different take on Pt 1, more in line with the overall idea of this series. 

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The bar was called The Underworld. That seemed like a really open-for-interpretation name. I guess they were going for dark and gay sleazy stuff, and didn’t want to use The Cell Block or The Shipping Hook or The Loading Dock or The Glory Hole or The Fucking Eagle or The Daddy’s Favorite Helper or The Lavender Blossom or some other trope. Honestly, it sounded more goth than anything. I’d heard about it, though I’d never met anyone who actually went there regularly.

In fact, I usually assumed it was closed. The bar was situated in a weird house on a downtown street, usually filled with retail and offices and second-floor apartments. Maybe it was a house, maybe it was a church, and maybe it wasn’t a business at all. Dark, no real security lighting except a paltry bulb over the front door, no outside door man, no velvet ropes, no lines waiting to get in.

I opened the door and walked into a small, square foyer that had no inside door. The floor was tile, that old and little tile that was reserved for bathrooms and mud rooms, where the grout was guaranteed to get and hold dirt from the last century of entrances and exits. The bar was definitely open for business. Right away, a bar counter ran from the right side of the space all the way back. Facing it from the left were standing and leaning rails, then tall top tables, then open booths along the left wall.

The bartender was dressed to belong, in a leather bar vest over a bulldog harness and a pair of short leather shorts with two lockable zips. He didn’t otherwise look like a tough gay male; he was a redhead and had short bristly curls and a British Royal Family scruffy beard.

The crowd was small but distinct. Older, leather daddy types alone; a few booths of younger and more animated people. The digital jukebox played modern dance hits and disco classics. Gay Bar Men have terrible taste in music.

I felt instantly out of place. I’d decided the name suggested slightly punky, so I’d put on a gray fine mesh shirt, a ratty and hopped-up leather biker jacket I couldn’t close, black pleather pants that I’d gotten specifically so I could get them messy in public and not actually ruin them, and Corcoran military boots that were high-calf and laced up with some jewelry chain I’d bought in colors to make the BDSM pride flag. That sounded like a cute way to send up the famous hanky code; compared to the room full of dour black leather and hot-bod clone harness gear, it just looked outlandish. Driving gloves for my hands, though; who didn’t like a nice pair of italian leather?

No matter. I got a drink from the bar - just a double shot of bourbon on the rocks - and wandered around. A few more people filed in after me, and it only took those three to make the place seem actually busy.

I had a mission. Sure, I was at a gay bar, so I wanted to drink, and probably find someone to fuck, and at least gawk at or be gawked at. I can’t think of any other reason to go to a gay bar, especially not a leathery gay bar. The real mission was a rumor I’d heard.

This gay bar had a monster living at it.

I tried to explore, and found the bathroom easily enough. It was a regular bar type of bathroom, and not full of glory holes, or even enough space to do nasty shit without seriously pissing off people who seriously had to just piss. There was also a back room, although it wasn’t being used by anyone at the moment, and the way some tables and junk was positioned, it maybe wasn’t intended to be used by anyone.

Or, dumb brain, it’s supposed to look like a haphazard place you’re not supposed to be in, because that’s where it’s hot to fuck. No one was hot to fuck in there, so I went back to the main room and lingered.

For hours. I’d arrived at peak Friday Night, which didn’t actually get any busier nor did it empty out appreciably close to the time to leave. I was terribly bored, though I didn’t really mind sitting and watching people. None of them really gave me much attention unless I stared too much, except for one older man who was dressed more like Lemmy from Motorhead than a regular gay guy.

About half an hour before closing, I went to go to the bathroom and he got up to follow me. Before I could actually get into the bathroom, he gave me a tap. “C’mere,” he said, and motioned to the backroom.

Without the lights on proper, it really was dark and dangerous; if I wasn’t wearing army boots, I’d have broken a toe by kicking a riser box that was painted black. No one heard because of the loud thud and thrum of bass from the jukebox.

I felt terrified and also aroused enough to not bail out immediately. Thankfully, this tough as nails type guy didn’t want to kill me or flay me or even do something non-consensually. He actually didn’t want to do anything to me at all; instead, he wanted me to jack him off while sticking fingers in his mouth. That’s what fancy Italian leather gloves are for, when you don’t have a fancy car or bike but you are in a gay bar at 1:45 AM. Not just fingering around in his mouth, either. He wanted me to fingerbang his throat. “Don’t worry, I won’t throw up.” Those are big words from someone who’s been drinking beer all night, but he was good for it even if he gagged over and over and over until slobber poured down over his grizzled lips and matted his biker-point beard. He also came like a stallion, all over my pant leg, then helpfully got down to slurp it up before I even entirely realized it’d happen.

He had to piss and leave, and that was fine with me. I felt weird and warm and fuzzy and vindicated that my trip to a bar based on a stupid rumor was at least now something I could tell my friends while were taking bong hits and playing Gartic Phone.

Now the place was emptying out. I took a piss, and then afterwards, slipped into the dark back room. It didn’t seem to be the real storage space for the bar, because there was a door that led somewhere leading from the bar. There also didn’t seem to be a normal alarm system; no motion sensors with little red lights, no obvious camera devices anywhere, and just to be absolutely sure there weren’t any cameras, I slipped out my own little secret camera.

Remember, I thought there was A Monster living at this bar. I came prepared. It was a super compact point and shoot from yesteryear, digital, still perfectly working. I’d taken it apart, ripped off the IR filter (well, carefully chiseled it off), and found that it was perfect for checking for cameras. To work at night, they needed to either be heat-sensitive - way too expensive - or have near IR blasters. You can see some of those as dim red lights, though some are just outside what humans can see. Not digital cameras. They can see into time itself, man. Or at least they can see the light from the IR blasters. And there were none.

There was, however, a door at the back of the back room space. It was hard to see because it was so dark even my adjusted eyes couldn’t see a black-painted door with a black door knob next to a black-painted wall. Bad news, it was locked. Good news, the door jamb was pretty loose, and it was locked with just a knob lock, and I had one of those flat metal multi-tools in my wallet. Part of it was a right-angle hook whose purpose in life was apparently for just this kind of action. I carefully and silently twisted the knob as far as the lock let me, then stuck the hook in, twisted it side to side, and bingo! I caught the sloped edge of the old plunger or whatever that part of a lock was called, and could pull it open enough to get in the door.

Meanwhile, the bartender - seemingly the only employee - was starting to close up and didn’t seem interested in checking the back room. Likewise, this door didn’t seem to be used for anything, as there had been something heavy in front of it, that riser box I’d kicked. Maybe it was just a closet.

Or maybe it was the stairs to the Upstairs, because the bar building was obviously at least three stories. It was definitely the stairs. I carefully closed the door behind me, then started up. Unfortunately, it made nasty creaky noises. Fortunately, the jukebox was still going, and no one would hear a few creaks over hyperpop neurobass.

The top of the stairs featured another door, and this one was not locked. The building looked to be three floors from the outside, and the top floor I expected to have cathedral ceilings. It even looked like an old church from the outside. This was not the top floor.

I was unprepared for what I found on this interstitial floor. It looked as if someone had started to turn the space into living quarters and then stopped. Wall framing was in place, and some of it was covered in old plaster lathe, while other parts were bare drywall, and the rest just bare wood. There was wiring - some old and terrifying knob and tube, some modern fat white cables - and a similar mix of copper and steel plumbing and modern PVC. If I had to guess, someone had started renovating it into about three small apartments, and then stopped. Then, someone else came along and decided to just turn it into an artist loft or maybe a drug den, and then didn’t even do that to completion.

It smelled. I can’t easily describe the smell; it wasn’t a horror smell like death, but a wild animal smell, sweat, and sex. There seemed to be one entirely functional bathroom, though its walls were actually just heavy white plastic sheeting, the type put on a flat roof to seal it. Shower, toilet, sink. Another bathroom had a rough squat toilet built over the drain, though curiously with a bidet sprayer next to it. The workmanship for the two shitters was not consistent in any way.

The reason I could see all of this was that it was all lit, barely, by some fantastical LED rope mood lightning. The lighting was red, and had been applied around the place to look as if the walls were cracked and glowing, or slashed brutally by an animal. I started recording a video on my phone and slowly walked around, while bass vibrated up into my booted feet from the floor.

One side of the space was more complete than the other, not in that it was an actual fully formed apartment unit, but that it had storage boxes and belongings around it. Instead of empty walls and weird lighting, there were pictures on the wall. Gay pictures, gay leather pictures, gay leather BDSM pictures starting at Tom of Finland and ending at astonishing strange porn that looked like it belonged on an extreme heavy metal album cover.

Tucked far into the back corner of the partly-built space in a partly-built space was what looked like a bedroom. The un-closed door featured a big novelty warning sign that read, “CAUTION - WEREWOLF BREEDING ZONE” and featured a black on yellow picture of a virile werewolf brandishing its chest. Inside, while there was a mattress on a milk-crate frame, there were also blankets and pillows haphazardly piled up.

Someone was in the bed, while alarmingly brutal industrial music blared from an old multi-piece hi-fi system probably older than I was, and a laptop displayed a brutal and yet glisteningly well-shot bondage porn video. I say someone was in bed because I could see their feet sticking out over the edge, as if they’d sat down and then laid back, one tall boot - just like mine! - on the floor, the other hanging there turned to the side.

I realized I was frozen in place, unable to stop staring. I kept seeing more and more little things. The bed’s occupant was definitely wearing leather pants, and a partly gloved hand was reaching into an open fly or an unhooked codpiece. The other hand held a rag; no, a jockstrap; and was hanging down over the edge of the bed. Fingerless driving gloves, and the fingers were the first indication something was completely wrong. They were sickeningly gray, like a corpse’s. No, they were gray skinned and darkly haired. No, they had black nails that were unusually sharp and probably the reason for the fingerless gloves.

Perched haphazardly on the person’s leather jacketed torso was a small aerosol spray can, and I got a lurching feeling as I recognized “Aces Wild”, ‘spray video head cleaner’, otherwise known as spray poppers, otherwise known as ethyl chloride, otherwise known as sudden cardiac huffing death. A relative of ‘canned air’ gas dusters, it’s a disused anesthetic that people huff because it makes you get all fucked up and slowed down and weird, and can make your orgasm take way longer, but not really, because you’re just fucked up. You can also pass out. You can also die. This particular person wasn’t moving, and it didn’t look like they were breathing.

I couldn’t see their head because it was shrouded in a black plastic bag, not tightly held in place, just loosely over the head, almost as if someone had placed it there to hide their identity. This was a bad vibe. This was a mistake. I’d wandered into some deadbeat’s flophouse apartment above a sleazy bar and that deadbeat was probably dead from trying to jerk off on the wrong side of edge play.

Then they took a huge, sudden breath and yanked the bag off, stared down at the jockstrap, and threw it onto the floor before exclaiming, “son of a fucking bitch!” in a clearly English and not very human voice. They turned and sat up, facing me, face in hands, groaned, then stood up and shook like a dog shaking out after getting wet or rolling in something. What I’d thought was an open fly or codpiece was in fact closed still.

And the face. It wasn’t a human’s face. It was a wolf’s. Not purely a wolf, not like a wild animal’s head transplanted onto a human body. It was a human head that had been turned lupine enough that it was obvious while being indescribable. A thicker and shorter jaw, less of a big facial ruff, less overall fur density.

It was a monster. It was the monster. And it started to approach me. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing in here? Can’t you see I’m busy? Can’t I fucking jack off in peace?” As soon as he snarled out the words, he stopped and sniffed. “You smell like sex. You were fucking someone.”

I backed up right into the wall next to the doorway. “I… I guess I got lost, wandering around-”

He walked right past me and tore the comical sign off the wall. “Do you see this? What do you think it means, huh? Do you think it means this is where we breed werewolves? Or do you think it means where werewolves breed? Huh? Which one of those do you think is going to be better or worse for your slutty punk ass? I could fuck you until you have puppies and you’re a dude so I don’t think I’m gonna have reason to stop for a long time.”

He got closer and closer to me and once I could smell his breath I realized that he was, in fact, not human at all. It smelled like dog breath, like someone who had never brushed their teeth in their life because they were a canine who ate things raw.

So I screamed.