werewolf scattin' in the dead oooofff niiiiiggghhtt

Matt here. First draft. Very tired. Long day. You can read about how it started here. Please excuse typos n' such.

 

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4:45 am. Phone screeching a Nightwish song I used to like until I set it to my ringtone. Now I've Pavloved myself into associating that song with debt collectors and phishing scams. I'd change it, but then there would just be two beloved songs I can't stand. Either that or my ringtone would be a song I already hate, which isn't exactly a win either.

 

The screen advised me that the caller was Skittles. I cursed under my breath and, against my better judgment, tapped the green button.

 

"Mornin', Skittles," I grumbled. "What's going on?"

 

Skittles, excited as always, shouted "WEREWOLF SHIT, HOMIE!" and I nearly threw the phone as I flung my arm away from my newly-traumatized ear. God, I hate when people call me. I could still be sleeping if he'd just texted.

 

"Did you just say 'werewolf shit?' That wasn't werewolves, man. That was just furries, remember? I even wrote it up."

 

"Not werewolf, Matt. Werewolf *shit.*"

 

"You're.... you're calling me because you found supernatural doggy doo?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"At not-quite-5 in the morning?"

 

"Yeah. You gotta come see this!"

 

"I thought we were friends, Skittles."

 

Ultimately, he convinced me to drive down to Dalton, because the shit he found was "actin' funny." I've never seen shit act like anything, and it seems that maybe early in the morning is the best, worst time for me to lean into the "there's a first time for everything" mantra.

 

I ambled my groggy ass on up the wooden steps to his trailer's front door and raised my hand to knock when I heard him laughing out back with some other people, so I ambled my groggy ass back down those steps and went to the back.

 

Skittles sat between two women at a steel barrel fire--exactly the kind you're picturing when you think of literally any movie wherein characters are at Rock Bottom™ in an alley--and they were laughing and passing a bowl. The fire dancing on his face actually kind of made him look a little menacing, until he smiled widely and offered me a beer.

 

"No thanks," I replied. I'd been stung in the past by Skittles's obligation-filled, transactional demonic contracts he'd dressed up as hospitality. "I gotta drive back here in a bit."

 

He put the Stella Artois back in the cooler. Damn, I thought, that actually would have been awesome. Here I am--with a dead-end grocery job and a weird side hustle--and here's Skittles, with a couple ladies around a fire under the stars with a cooler full of beer, somewhere nearby, an alleged pile of werewolf poo with a proclivity for "actin' funny." It's not that the grass is greener on the other side--it's just that ya gotta develop and cultivate an appreciation for the grass you got.

 

"Lemme show you this werewolf shit," Skittles beamed, prying one woman, a short redhead, off his left arm as he stood up. The other woman, taller and blonder and wearing a Beatles t-shirt, smiled at me and said "Show it the moon."

 

By this point, I'd long ago hoped this was all just a fucked up dream. Seems like the kind of thing my brain would do before a morning shift at the Shitty Kitty. Still, it didn't take long before I realized this was all definitely all too real, and that I can't make this up, even and especially if I'm unconscious.

 

Skittles stepped up on the stoop that he insisted on calling a porch and, holding one hand back toward me as if to keep me safe in case a voodoo doodoo was going to fly at me and threaten to end me from the trailer, he opened his back door and peeked in. Suddenly, I felt this was getting a little Covert Operations-y.

 

"It's still here," he scream-whispered. I barely had time to wonder how many contradictions are contained in the meatsuit that calls itself Skittles before I heard something wet smack the floor.

 

"Cool," I replied, "but like... why's it in your house?"

 

"It just crawled up in there."

 

The short redhead nodded at the fire. "Sho nuff. We watched it crawl up in there. It's why we be out here."

 

I closed my eyes. I counted to six, because I couldn't quite make it to ten before my face started letting words fall out of it without my brain's permission.

 

"A pile of shit," I started, speaking slowly to ensure I understood this all correctly, "crawled... up the stoo--, uh, up the porch... and under your door... and is in your kitchen."

 

"Yeah. A pile of werewolf shit." Skittles, with the clarification.

 

I rounded on him and met his eyes.

 

"Skittles," I asked him, point-blank, "did you shit this out? Have you seen a doctor yet?"

 

"Nah fam. This is werewolf shit. I'm not a werewolf. I'm just a Black dude." The women heard him and giggled at the fire, passing the bowl even in the temporary absence of their host. "Just a Black dude!" they bantered between themselves.

 

"How do you know it's werewolf shit?" I finally asked him.

 

"Lemme show you."

 

He widened the door at the back of the trailer and entered the kitchen. I followed. Before I closed the door, the Beatles-clad lady shouted "SHOW IT THE MOOOOOON!"

 

"She keeps saying that," I said, after making sure the door was actually securely shut. "What the hell is she on about?"

 

"You'll see," said Skittles, as he lifted the neck of his shirt over his nose.

 

Sure enough, there was an enormous pile of wiggling, amorphous shit on Skittles's table. The floor was a huge mess, presumably consisting of things that had previously been on top of the table, but that the wiggly shit had decided would be more at home on the floor, knocking it over like a pissed-off cat.

If there are words in English to describe the smell of this kitchen, I do not want to ever learn them. Usually Skittles's entire abode smelled like whatever the hell "Money House Blessing" is. The incense from the dollar store. I do not have a good sense of smell, and this would make the most seasoned coroner gag behind his mask and possibly throw up into it. I followed Skittles's example and covered my nose with the neck of my t-shirt.

 

Skittles pulled out his phone and showed me a Google Image search of the moon.

 

Then he showed it to the wiggly pile of shit, which suddenly violently screeched and hissed, its amorphous form constantly changing and rearranging, backing away from the phone as Skittles kept pushing it closer.

 

I could hear the Beatles-shirt lady laughing outside, her favorite werewolf-shit parlor trick having been fulfilled. She probably felt like you do when you show a friend the first episode of a TV show you loved, but then you're disappointed they're not as into it as you are. Except that that example is a TV show and this is a powerfully-smelly malodorous amorphous and apparently somewhat alive blob of shit.

 

"This shit's a werewolf!"

 

"Maybe it just doesn't like light," I said. Here, this whole time, I thought I'd driven down to Dalton to see a pile of shit that had exited a werewolf, but it turns out it could be the first lycanthropic feces ever discovered. Dalton, Georgia: Carpets, Racism, and Literally the Shittiest Cryptid Possible. Tourism's gonna go nuts.

 

"Nah--check this out!" Skittles again whisper-yelled, and to my horror, sank his hand down into the shit. The shit screamed and exploded, then the exploded pieces of shitpile started wiggling to a point in the center to coagulate into its regular shitform.

Skittles held up his hand like a victorious gladiator and pointed to his rings with his other hand. "Real silver."

 

I checked my watch. 6:32. I should never, EVER have my pants on before 7 am. Rationality having been established to have absolutely no place whatsoever in how this morning is going to go, I decided it's totally fine for me to be angry at this shitpile for getting me out of bed and into pants this early.

 

"I'm not gonna lie, man, I've never seen this before," I told him. "I'll talk to Bo, but she's going to think I just got too high again. Oh, I'll get a video."

 

"They," he corrected me.

 

"Shit, yeah--sorry, they. Thanks man."

 

"All good. Anyway, you can't. It doesn't show up on a camera. Just looks like a ghost flingin' shit around off the table."

 

"No, of course not, why would it," I muttered under my breath, hands into my pockets. "How mad would it be, you think, if I took some of it with me to show to Bo?"

 

"You smell this?" Skittles gestured in a circle to his kitchen. "Please take the whole damn thing. Lemme get you a tupperware."

 

"Got any Febreze?"