The Wolfman Kindly Requests

Genre: Horror -- CW: Blood/Gore, Violence, Death -- About 3,700 Words

Marcie crunches down the gravel leading deeper into the woods, further from civilization, closer to the promise of a wild night like nothing she's ever seen before. The Spearhead is the last DIY venue in Northwest Arkansas, and pretty soon some asshole is sure to file a noise complaint getting it shut down like all of the others. Marcie wants in on some of the action before it's gone.

Lilly's been going on about places like this for years, always talking about how DIY shows were the only way to experience live music, even if you don’t know the band. The way she tells it, The Spearhead is supposed to be the best, the last stand for a culture being washed out of the area by rich geriatrics moving in from cities that can't have any fun. The location doesn't just help the place avoid cop calls, it enhances the experience. Everyone parks on the road, walks through the woods, and agrees to leave their phones in the car. “The Spearhead is for the living,” Lilly once told Marcie.

Two weeks ago, the city announced plans to cancel the party once and for all. Pretty soon, the neighboring forest will be razed, a subdivision erected nearby. It won't be long until The Spearhead, a once mighty symbol of what a house can be, will just be another dull footnote in suburbia.

Marcie makes it to the lawn, steps over some guy shrooming out in the grass and walks up to the porch. During the day, someone could mistake it for any home planted in the woods. Tonight, though, she can already hear the music muffled through the walls. The breakneck beat of a drum solo belts out above growling guitars, someone barking on the mic like a rabid beast.

It's going to be a good night.

When she walks in, two college kids are sitting at a patio table, each with a jar. “This where I get tickets?” Marcie asks.

“It's free,” the woman who answers has a shirt with a pig skull on it, “but we take donations for the artists.”

Marcie drops a five dollar bill into a mostly empty jar, checks the other and sees it's not doing any better. After the two kids thank her, she makes her way through an unfurnished living room of neon mohawks and mullets. At the front, a band ravages the audience. There's no stage, no separation between them and the crowd stuffed into the room like records on a shelf. Lilly's violet pixie cut bangs up and down with a friend.

“You finally made it!” Lilly hugs Marcie before turning to the woman already accompanying her. “Marcie, Evelyn. Evelyn, Marcie.”

“You can call me Eve,” Evelyn shouts over the blast beats and extends her left hand, her right holding a local IPA.

Of course Lilly brought Eve. Lilly's been trying to set Marcie up with her for weeks now. They haven’t met, but she stared at each picture Lilly showed her for too long to hide her interest. She's always talking about how they should meet, but Marcie’s good at making excuses. If she knew that Eve would be here, she probably would have made up another one.

Marcie shakes Eve's hand, compliments the cotton candy stripe in her blonde hair.

Eve points at the IWW insignia pinned on Marcie’s shirt. “I love it. One big union!”

“Thanks,” Marcie's stomach flips. “Are you a member?”

“No. Though, I've been thinking about joining a union since I heard about the strikes in Hollywood.”

“Hey, Marcie’s a secretary for the union,” Lilly says. “I'll go get us more beer from my car, and she can tell you where to start.”

Marcie watches Lilly leave with wide eyes. She turns back to Eve and forces an awkward smile.

“So, whatcha got, union girl?” Eve winks at her.

Marcie’s heart knocks against her ribcage as a guest would knock on a door. She's lucky that the music is booming or she's certain Eve could hear it.

“Well, there's a lot of unions out there, but I believe in the IWW more than any other.” Marcie watches Eve take a drink from her can. “However, we're trained not to organize while someone's inebriated.”

“So, you're saying we'll have to meet up another time? Maybe over coffee?”

Marcie’s heart beats faster than the drummer now. “Yeah, that sounds nice.”

Eve offers Marcie her IPA. “Take it. You gotta catch up.”

Marcie takes the can. It's mostly full, but Eve's slurred words say this isn't her first drink. Marcie flips her head back and gulps down as much as she can. It’s her first time chugging a beer, if this can be called chugging. She’s slow and only drinks a quarter, but she’s never been to any parties. This summer, she's promised to rectify that. No more boring nights staying in, no more ‘Marginal Marcie’ from high school. She’s going to start living like a story. What better way to start than drinking with a gorgeous woman at a hardcore show?

What is she supposed to say, though? Her mom telling her that coming here could be dangerous is the only thing that she can think about. The only danger right now is her lack of conversational skills, she can’t say that she still lives with her parents at twenty three.

Marcie looks at the band and shouts over the music, “So, this is Burnt Avalanche?”

“It's your first time seeing them?” Eve asks.

Marcie nods.

“Lilly's always talking about you, I assumed she had dragged you to a show by now.”

“She's been trying since she discovered them,” Marcie takes another swig.

“What held you up?”

Marcie shrugs. “I don't know. They're great! I can't believe they're the opener.”

“They can be pretty unreliable,” Eve explains. “When they're on, they're on. Their guitarist is pretty erratic, though. I hear he makes them cancel a lot. Sometimes, he even cuts shows short.”

“Why don't they get rid of him?”

“Look at him!”

Marcie watches the band play, really taking them in for the first time since arriving. The music is fantastic. All of the performers are vibrant, but the guitarist is something else. When she looks at him, she could swear he's on a stage instead of the hardwood floor of a living room. He commands the crowd without a word. His hands dance on the fretboard, pummeling the crowd with a beatiful sonic assault. Marcie’s never been to a local show before, but she's seen concerts in arenas - still, this is the first time she's felt that a real live rock star is in front of her.

The guitarist hangs his head as his playing drifts away from the song. The rest of the band grimace at each other, and stops playing. He grabs his microphone and shouts, “Party's over.”

The singer puts his mic on the stand, but everyone can hear him anyway. “Come on, man,” he shakes his head at the guitarist.

The guitarist is already putting up his instrument. “Can't keep going,” he groans through clenched teeth.

Marcie and Eve make eyebrows at each other.

“One more song,” the singer says into the mic. Some people whistle, some stomp their feet, but most of the crowd chants for one more.

“Finish the set,” someone hurls a longneck at the guitarist. He keels over in pain, shouting like he's been stabbed. People jeer at him, call him a drama queen. Marcie steps forward, unsure what she could do but still concerned. What if he’s having a heart attack?

Eve shakes her head. “Hopefully the next band plays longer.”

Marcie watches the guitarist launch to his feet. He looks up, screaming louder than the whole crowd. The audience goes silent as cracking fills the air. His bones are shifting within his body. Muscle and sinew emerge from his tearing flesh. Among the bloody thew, thick strands of hair reach out and cover his body. The guitarist picks up his instrument and slams it into his amp. The singer puts a hand on his shoulder, but is tossed to the other side of the room.

As the singer goes over her head, Marcie sees the guitarist turn around. His ears have become pointed, flicking at the murmuring audience. Knotted fur covers his face. From a wolf’s snout, he bares his fangs: each tooth a hunting knife, each claw of his massive hands a razor. The beast slashes the band’s power source, sparks lighting a fire. Flames race from the power source to the guitar and the wall all around them. The bassist backs away into the crowd, but the drummer stares on with a gaping jaw, not even looking at the flames. The wolfman tosses the scepter of embers that was once his guitar through the wall and into the woods. Its sharp eyes stare into the drummer’s soul, then flick away at the audience. When its eyes dart at Marcie, she can’t tell what’s behind them. Fear? Wrath? Something worse?

With one last look at the crowd, the wolfman leaps through the hole in the wall as if being dragged.

The crowd panics, screaming and scrambling over each other as they rush out of the place. Someone pushes Marcie to the floor, beer spilling out. Her IWW pin splashes into the puddle of IPA. Eve pulls her up and pushes Marcie against the wall, keeping them as close as she can to avoid the stampede. Marcie watches as a kid in the crowd, no older than seventeen, falls on the floor. He reaches out, tries to get back on his feet, but only gets trampled in the panic. No one helps him.

Marcie looks away and sees flames flash across the wall toward them. She tries to push Eve out so they can escape, but the stampede won’t give them any space. Surely, it only takes a few seconds, but it feels like a lifetime before everyone is out. She pushes away from the wall just in time to avoid getting burnt. She kneels next to the kid. His breathing is labored, barely wheezing out of his lungs. Marcie lifts his arm over her shoulder, and Eve takes the other side. The house starts to collapse as they drag him to the door. Lumber crashes through the roof, almost crushing the three of them.

When they reach the yard, the kid between them collapses. His once heavy breathing has disappeared. Marcie rolls him over, checks for a pulse and finds nothing. She punches down into his sternum, pumping his heart to the beat of a disco song just like she was taught in high school. Eve tells her that it’s no use, but she keeps going, screaming for him to wake up.

“He’s not coming back,” Eve says.

Tears fall onto his shirt. He looks all wrong, covered in his own blood from being crushed under everyone’s feet. His bones are all broken, the fingers of his right hand twisted like the roots of a tree.

“We have to go,” Eve shakes Marcie’s shoulders. The fire has spread to the surrounding woods. It traps them on all sides except for the gravel path to the road. There, Marcie sees the crowd running to safety. She’s being dragged toward the mob by Eve. She looks everywhere through blurry eyes, but the wolfman is nowhere in sight.

“Wait,” Marcie pulls Eve to stop her.

“What are you doing?” Eve panics. “That thing is going to be here any minute.”

“It was covered in fur,” Marcie says. “It couldn’t have gone through the forest fire.”

They look down the path where the crowd went. Pretty soon, they erupt in a frenzy of screams. Underneath the sounds of terror, the squelching of flesh and crunching of bones echoes through the woods. Marcie also hears the unmistakable slosh of a creek in the forest.

“We have to go through the woods,” Marcie says.

Eve shakes her head. “We’ll suffocate in the smoke if we don’t burn to death.”

“There’s a creek nearby. I can hear it.”

“There’s no way of knowing which direction it is.”

“Listen,” Marcie takes Eve’s head in her hands, looks her in the eyes. “We were just in a small room with a lot of loud music. If I can hear running water, that has to mean it’s close.”

Eve cups her hands behind her ears. “I don’t hear it.”

“What else can we do?”

Eve turns her head toward the sound of everyone getting torn up. She looks at Marcie and nods. The two run behind the house, as far away as they can get from the gravel. They can already feel the heat of the flames, smoke burning into their nostrils as they get closer to the forest. The raging embers are too bright to look at without blinding herself. Marcie closes her eyes, clutches Eve’s hand, and ducks into the woods.

Her skin screams, the fire all around them eating away at Marcie’s flesh. The flames crawl up her hair, consuming each strand until they tear at her scalp. The burn is unbearable, every inch of her trembling in agony. She can barely believe that pain like this exists. Then again, she just saw a man become a wolf, so she’s going to have to keep an open mind.

She tries to focus her hearing through the pain, tries to drown out all of the sound: shouts of terror, the roaring of fire all around her, the awful rhythm of a beast tearing through its living dinner. Then, the distant howling of the wolfman erupts through the trees. It’s guttural, yet not completely animalistic. Some part of the man is in that howl still screaming in pain.

She pulls Eve with one arm, feels through the burning fire with her other so they don’t collide with any trees in the dark of closed eyes. Water, water, water, she thinks. Finally, she picks up on the sloshing again and rushes toward it.

They splash into the creek. Marcie submerges herself head to toe, lets the water wash away all of the chaos around her. There’s nothing underwater, no screaming, no pain, no fire. She wants to float, let the creek take her downstream and find wherever it leads.

She lifts her head out for air. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. She opens her eyes and finds that some of the embers have jumped from the treetops over the creek. Worse than that, all she hears is the fire and the water, nothing underneath. No screaming, no howling, not even one cricket scratching its legs. All that’s left is herself, Eve, and the wolfman somewhere in this burning forest.

She looks out through the trees on the other side of the creek, the fire not yet strong enough there to blind them. Beyond the woods, the road glimmers in the moonlight. She knows if she follows it far enough, she’ll eventually find her car.

“Come on,” Marcie says.

“What if it’s out there?” Eve asks.

“Then we’ll see it.”

Marcie crawls out of the creek and crouches. She rolls the ball of her feet across the foliage. The flames are quickly descending the trees toward the ground. Her eyes dart all around, trying to stay mindful of the fire, the obvious places the wolfman might hide, and any twigs that might snap under her feet. Eve carefully follows her path to the road.

She wonders what happened to Lilly. She never believed in God or any sort of higher power, but Marcie considers praying that her friend left when the carnage broke out. She imagines Lilly seeing the fire spreading through the woods and racing away. She wouldn’t even be mad that Lilly hadn’t come back to save them. How could she fight a forest fire? Or a wolfman, for that matter? Not that she knew about the wolfman, but even if she did, Marcie just hopes that she’s safe. She doesn’t believe Lilly would have just left if she saw the fire, but imagining the most likely scenario would crush her.

At last, they make it to the road. Marcie sighs and looks around. She’s not really familiar with this road, can’t really tell which way her car is parked. Standing still will probably get her burned alive, though. She picks the direction that feels slightly more correct and starts walking.

“Hey,” Eve says. “If we hadn’t met, I probably would have followed everyone else and become werewolf food. Thank you.”

“You saved me too,” Marcie says. “I would have gotten trampled if you weren’t here.”

“Trust me, we’re more than even.” Eve huffs. “My mom asked me to stay home tonight. I wish I listened.”

“You live with your parents too?”

“Yeah. Can’t find a good job as an art major.”

“Gotta be easier than creative writing jobs,” Marcie tilts her head.

“At least this will make an entertaining story. You know how much werewolf art is out there?”

“I don’t know if I’ll even tell my therapist about tonight.” The two stare at each other. Eve’s flesh is molten. Black chunks of skin flake over bleeding crimson streaks like rolling lava. Still, Marcie’s heart races as she looks into her eyes. “You don’t look too bad for a woman who’s just crawled through fire.”

“I should have hopped on the barbecue a long time ago,” Eve chuckles.

Marcie shakes her head and keeps walking down the road.

“Sorry,” Eve says. “My dad made everything a joke when I was a kid. Humor is how I keep him alive.”

“What happened?”

“Pancreatic cancer.”

“I can’t imagine,” Marcie shakes her head. “I’ve never seen anyone die before tonight, not even my grandparents.” She looks at the stars in the sky. “I guess it makes sense that you’re having an easy time keeping it together. Thanks. Without you, I’d fall apart.”

“You’d keep going,” Eve says. “You walked through fire.”

“You did too.”

“Only because you asked me to. I never would have thought about that thing being at the end of the path. It was crazy, but smart. I like that about you.”

“You’ve only just met me.”

“Lilly talks about you a lot.”

“She’s been trying to get you to go out with me too, huh?”

“She never told me you were so bold!” Eve gasps through a smile. “You know, I’ve been looking for a roommate so I can move out soon.”

“Buy me dinner first,” Marcie jests. “Then we can u-haul.”

“Okay. First we get coffee, then we unionize my workplace, then dinner and a lease,” Eve jokes. “Sound good?”

Before Marcie can come up with a witty agreement, the wolfman leaps out of the woods. Blood greases down the fur all over his body. The snarling hulk of muscle must have rolled around like a dog in the guts of its victims. The only traces of the man he once was is its bipedal stance.

Marcie steps in front of Eve. It doesn’t matter if this monster is twice her size, she’s not going to watch anyone else die tonight. If the wolfman has a problem with that, it can tear through her for all she cares. She’s not going to go down without a fight, though. As soon as it makes its move, she’ll bite back, claw back, twist its balls if she has to. When all is done, the wolfman might still be alive, but it will know pain because of her. Hell, she walked through fire. She won’t let herself cower now.

The fire has caught up to this side of the forest. Embers float out across the road to the woods on the other side. The spreading forest fire doesn’t matter to Marcie, though. Not even Lilly and Eve are on her mind. All that exists in the world are the wolfman’s eyes staring into hers. They’re locked in an unending, almost meditative stare like the climax of an old martial arts film.

The wolfman growls. Bloody spit oozes from its mouth. It opens its hands, claws ready to slash into her. It rears back, a tail flicking out from behind it.

THUNK.

Before Marcie realizes what’s happening, the wolfman falls over on the road. The crumpled hood of Lilly’s 1999 Toyota Corolla is on the other side, the airbag already deflating. Marcie rushes over to the front door, unclicks Lilly’s Seatbelt, and shakes her awake from the knockout.

“Wha- who are you?” Lilly blinks.

“It’s Marcie,” a tear forms in her eye. “I got burnt.”

“What was that thing?” Lilly asks.

“Guys,” Eve points at the wolfman, now stirring back to life.

“We gotta get out of here,” Marcie says.

“I think my car’s totaled,” Lilly groans.

“Over there,” Eve shouts. “I can see my truck.” Eve tosses the key to Marcie and tells her to start the truck while she helps Lilly over.

Marcie rushes to the black pickup and hops behind the wheel. The engine growls to life like a mother bear protecting her young. The aggressive rampage of Clutch’s A Shogun Named Marcus blasts through the stereo. Marcie watches as the wolfman limps towards her friends, blood and slobber dripping from its mouth. She pulls the truck closer to the girls. Eve puts Lilly in the backseat and then crawls into the front.

“I love this song,” Marcie says.

“I have tickets to see them in the fall,” Eve says. “Wanna tag along?”

Marcie nods then stares back at the wolfman. She turns the volume all the way up, rolls down the windows, and revs the engine as loud as she can. The wolfman’s ears fold back and it cranes its neck away exactly like Marcie wanted. She backs up slowly toward the raging forest fire behind them, then floors it toward the wolfman. It leaps into the woods, a broken leg collapsing under its own power, and its coat of fur immolates. Marcie watches in the rearview mirror as it desperately rolls in the fire.

“Do you think he was still in there?” Eve asks.

“I think he should have stayed home,” Marcie says. She speeds down the road, as far away from the fire as she can get.