by Michael Dunn
Once inside, Suzie practically ran to the kitchen to call Tony. He wasn’t at home, so she tried the shop.
“Yeah, one second.”
Suzie heard over a muffled receiver as one of the mechanics said, “Hey, Tony, your wife’s on the phone.”
Suzie heard the other guys laughing and a couple seconds later, Tony took the phone.
“Hi Suzie.”
“Tony, I’m home. Are we still on for dinner tonight?”
Tony cleared his throat. “Yeah, they know you’re coming. Um, I’ll be off in a half hour and I need to clean up, so maybe in an hour and a half or so.”
Suzie wanted to go sooner, but she would have to wait. “Okay, I’ll be ready.”
Suzie stayed on the line as Tony was hanging up, and heard Tony’s boss, Ed Tallfeather, pat the boy on the back, and say, “You kept it brief, told her what she wanted to hear, and sounded as obedient as a puppy. Yep, it sounds like you’re ready for marriage.”
Ed and the other mechanics laughed, and then the phone went dead.
2
Tony drove his father’s truck home from work. His mother was cooking dinner for an extra person that night, a person who would be watched carefully by everyone else in the community. Tony knew his mother, along with everyone else, wasn’t happy about this and probably more than a little scared. Hopefully, tonight would be the worst of it, because Suzie would practically have to live here for now on.
Tony washed the daily grease and grime off as quickly as he could, then he dressed in his usual T-shirt and jeans.
Tony asked, “Mom, is dinner almost ready?”
Eunice nodded with her back to her son like she was afraid to face him.
“Mom, is everything ok?”
Eunice turned slowly to stir a pot on the stove, keeping a profile to her son, and Tony saw a tear fall down the side of her face and she was visibly trembling. She wiped the tear away quickly as if it was never there.
Tony stopped and stared for a moment and thought, You’d think I was going to pick up the devil instead of a wounded teenage girl.
“I-I’m going to go and get her now.”
Eunice nodded. It was a dutiful nod.
Tony nodded once, and left the trailer without another word. He got in his dad’s truck and saw from the rear window people were outside their trailers, including Robert Bordeaux, and watched him leave for Suzie’s.
3
When Tony pulled into the Keaton’s driveway, Suzie ran out the door like this were another school day. She hopped in the passenger side of the army green 1962 Chevy pickup and slammed the door shut. The contention started the moment she slammed the door.
“Hi,” Suzie said, as apprehensive as her boyfriend.
“Hi,” Tony forced a smile and a nervous laugh. “They’re expecting us.”
Suzie nodded. She was shaking.
Tony put a hand on hers and told her it would be okay.
“Would you like me to tell you what to expect?”
Suzie nodded. “Please do.”
“Okay, there are a few things I have to tell you about… well, you being, um, well, part of your new condition. As you might have noticed, there’s going to be a few changes. You’re going to be more aggressive for one thing, and your appetite’s going to increase, but your metabolism will be faster to compensate. Don’t worry, like I told you before, you’ll never be fat. There are other things you will notice about your body and your personality, but for now, you have to know about the change.
“During the next full moon, the need to change will come over you so powerfully you will have no choice but to let the beast out. From what I know, the change is going to be painful. You’ll feel your muscles moving and reshaping themselves along with your skeletal structure. I’ve heard the pain is almost as bad as giving birth, but I wouldn’t know. As a natural, my body was preconditioned to handle such a metamorphosis, while your body is going to suffer the shock of surprise. I asked around for you.
“Okay, now because you’re not prepared for this, when you change into the beast, you are going to lose your mind. You’re going to go insane. You’re going to want to kill, and you will, and you won’t remember a thing the next morning.”
“Oh my God!” She gasped. This was too much for her to take. She hoped to God she was dreaming.
“But it doesn’t have to be human,” Tony continued. “It’s not so bad, really. From now on, you’re going to have to come by here every afternoon and learn how to control the change with the other kids. You’re going to be the oldest, but don’t let that worry you, and you’re going to have to practice your exercises longer and harder than the others, because you have the least amount of time, but within a few months it won’t be a problem.”
Suzie’s mouth dropped as Tony asked the impossible. “A few months?”
“Yes, the rest of us had years of prior preparation, but I’ll be there. I won’t let you go through this alone. You realize you don’t have a choice. You have to do this. You have to learn control otherwise…”
Suzie was trembling and speechless. “Otherwise what?”
Tony sighed. “They’ll probably send someone, possibly JP, to kill us.”
“Great,” Suzie whispered under her breath.
“You’ve always been a good student. Just because your life depends on it, should not make it any less difficult.”
Yeah, right, Suzie thought.
“So, I guess I’ll be seeing a lot more of you, won’t I?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Tony said, keeping his eyes on the road ahead.
You did this on purpose, you bastard! Suzie thought.
It was Suzie’s first time at the Paradise Trailer Park and although hardly an expert on trailer park communities, she didn’t think it looked that bad. The trailer park was small, elliptical, with about twenty mobile homes. Off Bray Road, it was a half-mile dirt drive to the secluded, oft-forgotten community.
As she rode into the trailer park, Suzie felt she had walked on the surface of a whole new world filled with awe and fear and understanding. This trailer park was not merely a place for lower middle class residents in front of a patch of woods where people went in, but never came out. She became aware, like puzzle pieces connecting together inside her head, this trailer park was a hideaway community for werewolves and all of the residents kept its dangerous secret. JP, as well as the others, changed during the full moon, like the legends said.
With every second, the nightmare became more and more real. When they hit a bump on the dirt road, Suzie jumped and looked at her boyfriend’s driveway and it finally sank in. Tony lived there too and that made him…
Suzie gasped with her back to the door, because it wasn’t until that moment Suzie was actually terrified. Her werewolf boyfriend was bringing her to his wolf pack for dinner, but no, she wasn’t going to be dinner like this was some old “Twilight Zone” episode. Tony was driving her to meet the pack, to her new home, because she was now one of them.
Suzie looked out the back window of the truck and saw the road that led to the normal world. She felt like she was leaving her normal, human self behind, and with every rotation of the tires, the monster inside of her was getting closer.
Suzie was more nervous to meet the Brandners than Tony was meeting her parents, even though none of the Brandners wanted her dead. Her new gifts might have given her a new personality, but overcoming shyness, which had been a root staple of her conditioning since early development, was not one of them. It would take more than an infectious bite to cure her of that.
Tony pulled into his parent’s driveway, stopped and got out of the truck. Tony took Suzie by the hand and led her inside his home to meet the parents. Both teens were shaking.
“Hi, um, we’re here,” Tony said, and exhaled harshly as they went inside.
Gard and Eunice stood together in the living room waiting for them.
“Dad, this is Suzie. Suzie, my dad.”
Gard Brandner shook Suzie’s hand
and Suzie understood where Tony got his looks, because Gard was an older v ersion of his son. What distinguished father from son, aside from a twenty-year age difference, was a neatly trimmed brown beard and moustache. When Gard shook the girl’s hand, he was polite, courteous, but cautious, as they all would be, uncertain how this new addition to the community would react in time. There was much riding on this young woman’s shoulders, not the least of all the lives of his son, his family, and the community.
“And this is my mom,” Tony said, and Suzie shook hands with Eunice Brandner.
Both women exchanged a nervous ‘hi’ and hid behind their respective partners.
After a tense, awkwardly quiet moment, Tony gave Suzie the grand tour of the place lasting a mere minute and a half, but it was enough to break the nervousness.
She got a glimpse of Tony’s bedroom, and aside from a few clothes on the floor, the room was neatly kept. There was a turntable next to some brown, faux wooden, second-hand speakers on top of his dresser. A basketball was placed like a bookend next to the speaker on the left. His double bed was unmade. There two posters on his walls – one of Jane Fonda as “Barbarella” and the other was the band Steppenwolf. Suzie noticed his closet door was open and its contents (clothes, shoes, board games, etc.) were neatly arranged.
They moved on to a quick glimpse of the parent’s bedroom. It was a golden brown in the fading sunlight with a queen-sized bed topped with lion colors as the decor. There were black and white pictures of Tony as a baby on the walls, which Suzie found adorable.
Tony led Suzie by the hand back to the living room, easily the biggest room in the mobile home, which wasn’t saying much. Suzie’s expectations of the place were wrong. Her conjectures were of holes in the walls affronted by tacky pictures of Elvis had been disproved. Eunice Brandner was a great amateur interior decorator, but one would not know by looking at it from the outside. The Brandners had a nice home. It was small, but it was neat and well kept.
Mrs. Brandner had a keen eye for arranging plants and furniture, Suzie thought. Come to think of it, many of the trailers around the Brandners were well kept.
However, as Suzie was promptly learning, that was the way of things in the Paradise Trailer Park. The surface appearance was all smoke and mirrors, and she soon learned the art of deception was a greater weapon than the claws and teeth they all possessed.
“I love how you decorated the place, Mrs. Brandner.” Suzie said, with true earnest in her voice.
Eunice beamed and happily launched in to an explanation about how she chose the color schemes. Tony let out a diplomatic sigh of relief his mom and his girlfriend got along. Tony and Gard took no interest in the conversation and watched TV.
Eunice Brandner was a good cook, and served a pot roast in honor of their special guest. There was not much speaking at the Brandner dinner table and Suzie believed that must be quite normal. However, there was a looming question: could this rich, little girl keep our valuable secret?
4
After dinner, Tony led Suzie out of his parent’s home. It was time for the big, bad, red-haired girl to go home. As they were heading to the truck, they found JP leaning under the basketball hoop and smoking a cigarette.
“Have you told her what she’s become?”
Tony shook his head. “Didn’t have to. Nancy Drew here already figured it out.”
“Does she know what she’s in for?”
“I’ve told her.”
“I’ll kill her for you if you want me to.” JP wanted to sound hard and cold. He convinced Suzie, who clung tightly to Tony, but Tony was not convinced. He believed JP had not quite convinced himself either. “It’ll be easier on all of us, especially her, if I do.”
“No thanks. Let me ask you, if this had happened to Kristen, what would you have done? Killed her without hesitation?”
“Yes,” JP said. His answer lacked any hesitation, which made Tony believe he was telling the truth. “Yes, I would! Tony, she’s going to be in pain. She’s not natural.”
“Oh, and we are?”
“We were born this way. Our bodies were preparing for the change from the beginning. Does she really know what she will become?”
“Yes.”
“Tony, if you want, I’ll do the honors for you.”
“That’s quite all right, really.” Tony stayed calm, but ready in case JP tried anything.
“It’s no problem. Suzie, let me do a little impression for you. It’s a cross between Lon Chaney Jr. and you.” JP turned away and pulled up the collar on his shirt trying to hide his face. He looked up at the new moon and spoke in an overly melodramatic tone.
“No, God, please, not again.”
He then pulled his shirt over his head then began to shake, snarl, and contort. Then he whipped around facing Suzie with the face and claws of a yellow-eyed, white wolf then snarled, “Boo!”
Suzie screamed and hid behind Tony trembling and bawling. She held onto his right arm so tightly he thought she might pull some skin off. Tony was not amused.
“Why did you have to do that?”
A second later, JP looked human again. “Somebody had to because you’re too chicken-shit to do it! Were you going to wait until she started changing and saying, ‘Oh Suze, by the way, I forgot to mention the consequences of your recovery and miraculous survival is you are now a werewolf? Yeah, honey, sorry about that.’”
“No, that’s why she’s here tonight!” Tony turned away from JP. “Suzie, are you okay?”
She wasn’t okay. She was a mess. She was crouched on the ground, crying and shaking holding onto his leg. Tony lifted her up and she wrapped her arms around him holding him tightly. This was too real for her. Before now, she understood the change only on an academic level.
“It’s okay, Suzie. Shhh, everything’s going to be fine,” Tony said and whispered, “Kind of,” under his breath.
“Goddammit! Why don’t you just kill her? It would make it so much easier!”
Tony whipped around and snapped at JP, seemingly towering over his white-haired friend. “Because I can’t live without her!” Tony growled through gritted teeth.
JP took a couple steps back. He was not afraid of Tony, just surprised. He found the one thing that made Tony protective, because not even his love for his car compared to this type of passion or ferocity.
“Welcome to Werewolf 101,” JP said, and walked away. “I hope you pass this class with flying colors. I really do.”
“Are you okay?” Tony asked her again softly.
Suzie nodded as she wiped the tears away. She was still trembling, but clearly better than she had been.
Tony didn’t know what to say. He wished he knew which words to use rather than just showing her. He realized then showing her would be the worst thing for her.
“Did you see JP?” Suzie asked. “Th-that was just a mask, right?” She wanted Tony to say yes, but Tony looked away.
“Please tell me that was a mask.”
“Uh, um, no, it wasn’t,” Tony spoke softly. “It was real.”
Then, in a moment of still, yet horrifying, clarity Suzie stepped back, and understood what she was and what she was going to become.
5
Suzie came home from school exhausted, heavy-eyed, planning on napping for the couple hours she had before yet another relentless training session with Mrs. Roulet. A sleepy smile formed on her face as she reached for the knob, resting her aching body against the door for a moment before walking in. A few hours of sleep sounded great to the tired werewolf-to-be’s mind.
The instant she stepped in, she knew her mother was not going to let that happen. Dee was beaming, standing in the kitchen, with her arms behind her back, practically pouncing on the girl the moment she walked through the door.
“Suzie, I’m so proud of you, dear!” Taking her arms from behind her back, the exuberant mother produced a thick, manila envelope with the words University of New Mexico stamped on it. “It just arrived today!” Dee was practically
jumping up and down with excitement.
Suzie’s drowsiness was chased away by those simple words, her hands groping for the envelope every college bound high school senior prayed they would receive. A number of her friends had already received theirs, and the time between then and now had been killing her. She took the envelope quickly and ripped into the paper greedily while her mother’s faced flushed bright red with a proud smile. Only the first line of the letter was read aloud:
“Miss Susan Keaton, I am delighted to inform you . . . !”
Suzie couldn’t continue, her giggles and giddy screams tearing the words from her throat as she jumped and turned to wrap her arms around her mother, who returned with a squeal and an embrace of her own. Everything she had been working towards since she was a little girl, all her hopes and dreams came together in a neat form letter.
In the midst of celebration, a firm voice tore the two women from their jubilation. “And just what are the two of you screaming about?”
Suzie and Dee turned and were surprised to see Jack standing in the entryway connected the kitchen to the living room. The color was drained from his face, except from his rosy cheeks and the growing strawberry nose that was once only synonymous with Bruce Rivetts. The very image of him was enough to terrify the two women.
Dee released Suzie from her arms and turned to her husband with a sympathetic tone.
“Jack, dear, look . . .” Gesturing her hand to the letter Suzie held, Dee could not stop the smile that crept to her face. “Suzie’s been accepted to the University of New Mexico! We should go out to celebrate!”
“No!” Not only did he look different, but his voice had changed as well almost into a growl.
Both women fell back a step, Suzie’s mouth dropping open in shock. Her father had been such a supportive dad in the past, but she didn’t recognize who the man who stood before her and her mother, he was not her father. It was like he was two different people.
“Have some self-control, both of you. You’re acting like a couple of animals.” Without another word to either of them, Jack turned and returned to the garage.
Suzie’s face had changed drastically from elation to depression. Her father’s words had struck a chord. Her fingers gently traced the folds of the envelope, ruffling the as of yet unread pages concerning the university.
