by Night, H. T.
“Corona? That’s further south than me. Is that the only bar of its type in the area?” I asked.
“And what type would that be?” Dave asked.
“I wasn’t saying it was a gay bar. I mean it wasn’t.... was it?”
“No, definitely not a gay bar.” Dave shook his head as if he had been asked that question before.
Dave seemed like a legit fellow and I thought he would be a great guy for me to ask some insider questions. “Hey, do you have a minute?”
“I’m free for a bit,” Dave replied.
“Would you like to get some coffee?”
“Sounds good. Is the little missus asleep?”
“The ‘girlfriend’ is sound asleep, and the kinds of questions I have are not exactly in the need to know category for her. There’s a coffee shop around the corner.”
So, I left my apartment and locked it up really well. I hopped into Dave’s Mazda and he drove us a total of .2 miles to Che’s coffee shop.
We parked and headed into the fancy coffee shop. Che’s coffee shop was a typical establishment out here. The owners tried so hard to be cool and hip that they usually miss the mark completely. We both ordered a cappuccino and sat down in the very back far away from the other patrons so no one could hear our conversation.
“So what’s up, Kyro? You do want to be called Kyro correct?”
“Yes. For now, that is the name I want to go by when I’m among Carni company.”
When I said the name Carni, Dave eyes lit up and he smiled.
“Was that your first reach out?” Dave asked.
“Reach out? Hey man, I didn’t do anything with anyone,” I said jokingly. “I would especially know if I going around giving reach outs.”
Dave looked at me as if he wasn’t sure if I was kidding or if I was really that stupid. The funny part is I had no idea what he meant by reach out. So I said, “What exactly is a reach-out?”
“It’s when a newly made werewolf looks to meet up with his or her own kind for the first time. We gave it a name awhile back because everyone does it as some point in their Carni journey. It’s like your coming-out party.”
“Again, with the gay references. I’m beginning to think Carni and gay are equally exclusive.”
“We have our gay werewolves as does any subculture, but Carnis tend to attract all types, races, and classes. We’re just as gay as any other group.”
“Good to know. You never know when your wanting to take up a bat for the other team.”
Again, Dave how no idea of what to make of my humor. I was keeping him rattled and that was the way I liked it. Why I liked it that way? I had no clue. I decided to cut Dave some slack and just answer his damn question. “It was a reach out in the classical sense.”
“Okay, good. Then I’m glad we talked. It’s kind of my thing to help newbies along.”
“Can I ask you a question Dave? Did I have a neon sign on my back that read ‘American Werewolf’?”
“American werewolf?” Dave laughed. “No, there was no neon sign.”
Note to self, ‘American Werewolf” is a badass name. I looked across the table at Dave in this suburban coffee shop and asked the obvious question that was on my mind. “How did you know I was a Carni?”
“It’s not that hard, Kyro. When you have been one as long as I have been, it’s not that hard to do.”
“As long as you? How old are you?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Dave said.
“Try me?” I answered eagerly waiting his response.
“505 years old.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I wish I was. But sadly it is true. I’ve seen it all. I was one of the first back in the day.”
“One of the first? How did it start?”
“No one knows for sure, but the consensus is a lot of things went wrong or right at the same moment to create such a species.”
“So no one knows for sure. That’s our history? A blank fucking page?”
“Tommy, our species is young. There aren’t even a thousand of us worldwide. We’re still making our own history. Who know? You might even become the George Washington of the Carni race?”
“No thanks, he was a slave owner. I’d much rather be Abraham Lincoln.”
“Fine, you can be our honest Abe. Right there on the Carni Mount Rushmore will be your grill years from now.”
I laughed. It actually wasn’t that bad of an idea. I kept studying Dave’s face closely.
“Why are you looking at me so funny?” Dave asked.
“I’m just pretty blown away right now. It’s not every day you meet someone who is over 500 years old.
“I’m the same as everyone else.”
“It’s just when you put your my pants on, you’re sticking 500-year-old legs through the pants, one leg at a time.”
“You never stop, do you?”
“The problem is when I stop that is when the world grows cold.”
“So you’re ornery for the good of mankind?”
“I do what I can?” I kept staring at Dave’s face and laughing. “I’m telling you that you look fresh. It’s as if someone just opened you up out of a 21-year-old man package.”
“I was 21 when I turned. Very good, Kyro. Do you have any other hidden skills?”
“That’s why I’m here talking to you. I want to know if I do or not...have, as you say, hidden skills. I have a lot of questions about what I have become.”
Dave switched gears and got a little more serious. “I bet you do. Imagine how I felt, discovering everything for the first time all by myself.”
“Tell me everything you’ve learned in 500 years.”
“I can’t exactly tell you everything off the top of my head. Why don’t you ask me questions and we can go from there?”
I stared at Dave and my first burning question was the following: “What do I give off that makes it obvious that I am a werewolf?” I asked.
“It’s not a smell or even an attitude you possess. It’s purely sociological. The bar last night is designed to be pretty uninteresting. So unless you’re a drunk, and the verdict is still out on that with all the double shots of tequila that you had last night. But the only reason like a guy like you would stick around last night with all those dull and uninteresting people were that you were seeking to find some answers.
“Well, I guess I gave that off because I didn’t know where to begin and last night was my first reach out.”
“I know it was. Your cherry was visible a hundred feet across the bar.”
“My cherry.”
“Your reach out werewolf cherry, Kyro. Is that too visual for the guy who has made it a point to try to shock me at every turn in this conversation?”
“Touché, Dave. No one at the table talked about being a werewolf.”
“What’s there to talk about? Eventually, you run out of things to talk about. It’s like everything else. We don’t need to put you or ourselves on blast volume about it. God only knows who is in the bar at any given moment.”
“You say ‘we’ as if you’re in on the inside with those guys?”
“I am. But it isn’t guys. It’s one guy. Marcos is the only person you needed to meet last night.”
“You’re turning out to be a pretty valuable commodity.”
“You’re not aware of it, Kyro,” Dave continued. “You came into Daniel’s Den of Lions last night. Everyone who is anyone in the werewolf community was at that big table last night.”
“But you just said that Marcos was the only important person?”
“That is exactly my point. The most important person was gushing over you all night. What happened last night was priceless. You couldn’t earn that much Carni equity if you kicked a different Mani’s ass every day of the week for a year.”
I laughed. “Sounds intriguing. A lone werewolf versus 365 vampires in a year. I’d need a bigger ego for that kind of challenge. And a lot more health insurance.” An
d boyfriend equity with Maya, to pull that one off, without her freaking out on me.
Dave smiled, as if he had heard my thought. “The boss labeled you a bad ass. Of course you will have some haters, but most of us are impressed.”
“Impressed. There’s nothing to be impressed about.”
“You’re an MMA fighter. That’s as good as it gets for a Tandra. Now, throw in that you are one of us. A Carni? Well, that is the cat’s meow.”
“Cat’s meow? You are old school, aren’t you?”
“I’m telling you, it’s rough. Sayings and slogans come and go, and I remember them all. The other day, I said ‘Where’s the beef?’ in a fast food restaurant and everyone looked at me like I was crazy.”
“Where’s the what?” I asked.
“Oh, my God. That was just 1984!” Dave laughed out loud.
I looked at Dave and I had 101 questions for him. I decided to give him the biggest one first. “Dave, what are the advantage, other than immortality, to being a werewolf?”
“You’re about 15 percent stronger in your human form.”
“Fifteen percent,” I asked. “That’s a weird number. Who came up with that?”
“No one did. It’s more than 10 percent and not quite 20 percent. So we came up with 15 percent. We didn’t put NASA’s mathematicians to work on the equation. It’s just information we have gathered through our lifetimes.”
“Are there other things we can do?”
“What do you want to do?” Dave asked, curious.
“It’s just seems that vampires have it really good. They turn into birds and can fly. I’d seen some fly even when they aren’t birds. They seem a lot quicker and stronger than we are.”
“I guess it’s the law of the Triat. Vampires have no part of the day. They can’t function on any level during sunlight. Could you imagine how bad that would suck?”
“I know firsthand how bad that sucks. I had a good friend who was one.”
“Was one?”
“Well, he still is. He went away. He was pretty ostracized by his own kind.”
“That’s the way they are. They are savages. They call us dogs and beasts, but we are still human except for three nights in a month. Even then, we have no clue what happens to us.”
“That never changes?” I asked. “I was hoping the more I turn that eventually I’ll start remembering things that I did on four legs.”
“You’ll start to remember more things as time goes by. You see things in your human form that remind you of something you experienced as a Carni. That is always evolving. It actually gives me hope that someday we will have cognitive thought.
I had more questions for Dave so I threw him another one. “This is my biggest question,” I said. “How come no one knows about us?”
“Regular folks know about us. Why do you think their folklore is so accurate? They have some facts wrong, but they sure as hell can draw us and even act like us if necessary. Look at Hollywood. They got some of it right, anyway.”
“Carni are commonly seen?”
“I wouldn’t say commonly. We only turn at night, so more often than not people think their eyes are just playing games with them. But, they have seen us. Have you noticed that all Bigfoot sightings are in the wilderness?”
I looked at Dave and had no idea what he meant by that. “What are you saying?”
“We are Bigfoot,” Dave said plainly.
“Holy shit. We’re Bigfoot? Werewolves are? Are you kidding me?”
“Nope. All of the Bigfoot sightings have been werewolves.”
“How come the pictures look more ape-like?”
“Because only the sightings are at night. We often contradict the actual eyewitness original story. After one of us is done telling about what we fictitiously saw, we have the guy 8 feet tall and a friend of Tarzan.”
“Wow. I’ve seen some folks be pretty adamant on those discovery channel shows,” I said.
“Luckily, most of the sightings are by people who aren’t the brightest or the most sober when they have seen us. When that happens, we let the crazies have at it. They see a blur and for some reason, they think something that large creature has more human qualities and the closest thing to human is an ape. So they say they saw an ape creature. And werewolf becomes Bigfoot in their minds.”
“You said there are almost a thousand of us. Where does everyone stay?”
“Marcos’s other business is a luxury Carni kennel. It’s really high priced, but he has some really rich folks who make their monthly pilgrimage to Anaheim and camp in his junkyard.”
“His high-class luxury kennel is a junkyard?”
“It’s the best cover. On the outside it looks like a dirty garbage dump. On the inside, it’s a Carni paradise.”
“Is that where you stay?”
“I can’t afford that place. I’m not working, just living on savings right now.”
“He doesn’t give you a deal?”
“You obviously don’t know Marcos. That man and the word ‘deal’ have no business in the same sentence.”
“He seemed pretty generous last night.”
“That’s his thing. It appears he is, but he was serving us the cheapest alcohol he had.”
“Very classy, and I say that with dripping sarcasm. It tasted like Patrón. Oh well. So what do you do?”
“In what regard?”
“When you turn? Where do you go? I need a better set up than the one I have.”
“I have place up north where I go. In a couple of weeks, I’ll take you up there on the next full moon. There’s a Carni-friendly rancher who allows a few of us to roam his property. It’s actually quite nice being able to run free all night. He has no livestock to kill so we just roam the forest and run under the moon, free as, well, wolves.”
Wow. No cage. The thought gave me a thrill. “I have one last question.”
“Go for it, Kyro.”
“Do you have a girl at home?”
“Oh, you’re wondering if I dig women? The answer is yes, but at the present moment I do not have a woman at home. I’m flying single.”
“Up until a year ago, that was the only way I knew how to fly, too, but I met an amazing woman. I have just made the mistake of not getting that kind of thing out in the open in the beginning of a friendship.”
“What happened?” Dave asked.
“He was very confused when I came out to him,” I said with a smirk on my face.
“You should do stand-up comedy.”
“I once did an open mic night and completely froze.”
“I would have paid big money to have seen that.”
* * *
The truth of the matter was that I had no idea how to live without either thinking about or preparing to be a mixed martial arts fighter. Putting MMA out of my life was hard. Josiah seemed heartbroken that I was giving it up for now. He even called his sister a dream wrecker and they had words. I told the kid to back off because it was my decision at the end of the day. He wasn’t buying it. He and I were cut from the same cloth. It was what I had to do to allow my girlfriend to be safe. And keep her happy with me. In my mind, I was confident that this is the right decision. For now.
I quickly learned that you can take the fighter out of the fight, but you can’t take the fight out of the fighter. During the next few months, I tried to play the role as the good and obedient boyfriend. Honestly, I was bored as hell and trying to figure out what to do with all of my testosterone without wearing out Maya in the bedroom. I was used to expending adrenaline and now, without fighting, I felt a loss in my physical being that could not be replaced by working out with no goal of fighting. Yes, even working out became sort of lackluster. Not to mention, I missed the money that I usually made in MMA.
I started taking some classes online so I could get my Master’s degree in Education. California has a lot of red tape if someone wants to be a teacher. Now with the economy so bad, the extra crap they make you do is ridiculous. I was working tow
ard a teacher credential because I’d like to go into coaching. It was my compromise to Maya, the queen of my life.
I did everything Maya asked me to do. I had become the ideal boyfriend. I wasn’t complaining because I was spending most of my time with most fantastic woman in the world. But I had an itch. The longer I went without scratching it, the antsier I got. I dreamed of MMA fights every night, and sometimes woke up lathered in a sweat, as if I had fought in my sleep.
Maya was taking classes, too. She took some nursing classes at Cypress College. I silently wondered if she was doing that to ensure that she would always be able to patch me up if necessary. She got a job doing odd jobs as a hospital tech at Anaheim Hills Hospital. Maya and taking care of people seem to go hand in hand. Our love grew daily, and just when I thought I couldn’t possibly love this woman more, she would do something really thoughtful like organize my DVD collection by genre or make me an awesome mix tape.
When my time of month came around—and coincidentally, it was Maya’s time of the month—Dave had been taking me to that property in Northern California. The brush was so thick and there are just trees for miles and miles. It was a Carni paradise, just like he said. It was a nice piece of private land that had been designated for our kind as a nature conservancy of sorts. The billionaire who owned the property fell in love with a female werewolf and had been helping other Carni for years. It was nice not to be caged in and to be able to run with my own kind, under the full moon, noses to the sky and the wind in our fur. Or at least I imagined that it was fun. It was certainly better than waking up in a cage. I began to love my uncaged werewolf freedom to be myself. With my werewolf brothers. It was almost like MMA, the brotherly camaraderie of it.
Dave and I settled into a routine. Each month, he and I would pack up and head north a day before the full moon. Every time we got on the road and headed north, it always reminded me of the movie Sideways. We enjoyed our road trips, talking about movies, women, fighting, world issues, politics, everything.
Something else started happening while making those monthly trips. I began to develop a lot of friendships with other Carni. This was something that gave security and a sense of belonging. I felt that the tighter a group of friends we had, the better it would be for all of us in the long run. We could support each other and we bonded as a pack. Because there were six of us in all, we called ourselves ‘The Six Pack.’ We roamed the earth by each other’s side when we turned into our werewolf forms. We must have gotten along really well when we turned, because in fleshly forms we had a bond like no other. That old expression, “they had my back,” came to mind.
