by Collins, Tim
WEDNESDAY 21ST DECEMBER
I’ve come up with a great plan to keep Chloe safe during her next transformation - I’m going to lock her in the basement!
I went out to Halfords this afternoon to buy four combination locks, which I’ll use to fix Chloe’s arms and legs to the pipes in the basement. I can then leave her howling safely away for each night of her transformation. And here’s the crafty bit - every night I’ll write the combinations to the locks on the floor in chalk so she can read them when she’s human again, key the numbers in with the tips of her fingers, clean up and get dressed with her dignity intact.
I invited Chloe round this evening to show her the set-up, and she seemed impressed. She’s still nervous about turning into a wolf again, but at least she knows she isn’t going to bite anyone this time. As a liberal and a regular supporter of charities, she was having a moral crisis about eating strangers.
THURSDAY 22ND DECEMBER
My iPod fell out of my pocket in the shopping precinct today, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. In the end, I had to call Chloe and get her to track its scent. It turns out that someone had handed it in at the lost property office of the bus station. Though I’m a sworn enemy of all wolfkind, I have to admit they have some useful skills. If I’d lost that iPod I’d have to use my really old one that you can only fit 20,000 songs on.
After that, we sat at a table outside Starbucks and looked at all the shallow humans darting around with their bags full of consumer goods they don’t need. I sipped a flask of type A-while Chloe necked a pungent can of corned beef.
She’s still worried about her upcoming transformations. I’m sure she’ll get used to them as she settles into wolf life, but this will be only her second lot. I remember being very upset and confused the first time my fangs extended, but I soon learned to live with it.
I asked her if changing hurts and she said it hurts more than I could possibly imagine. That wouldn’t be hard. Although I get headaches when I smell garlic or look at religious stuff, I haven’t felt proper physical pain since I was a human eighty-five years ago. I do get a sort of tingle when my fangs extend, though. It must be weird when every single bone in your body grows at once.
FRIDAY 23RD DECEMBER
My family invited me to play charades with them this evening, but I soon bailed out because they insisted on choosing books that were popular ages before I was born. Every time they mimed a book, I knew it would be something I’d never heard of. They groaned at me for failing to guess The Castle of Otrantro, The History of Caliph Vathek and The Mysteries of Udolpho, yet when my sister mimed High School Musical and I got it right, they said it didn’t count because it was too obscure!
I told them I was happy to play board games with printed instructions that we could agree on before playing, but I would no longer join in any game in which they could change the rules to suit themselves.
SATURDAY 24TH DECEMBER
4PM
We were invited to a Christmas party by our neighbours, the Pattersons, this afternoon. I presumed Mum would get us out of it, but I was forgetting her silly obsession with us being a normal family, so we all had to go and stand in the corner of their living room. I know I complain about my parents occasionally, but I’m glad I don’t have to live with any of those humans. They just stood around sipping eggnog and talking about house prices. I felt like attacking one of them just to liven things up.
Although Mrs Patterson was able to accept that none of us wanted a drink, she wouldn’t let us get away without trying the mince pies. We all had to take one and pretend to eat it while really stuffing it down the radiator. Eventually, pie filling began to leak out of the bottom and Mr Patterson called out a plumber. We decided to leave before he turned up and revealed that ungrateful guests rather than faulty valves were the problem.
As we left, Grandpa slipped some type A- into the punch from his hip flask. I expect all those humans would have been grossed out if they knew they were drinking blood, but I don’t particularly care. They tried to force those disgusting mince pies on us, so it’s only fair.
10PM
My sister is looking out of the window for Santa’s sledge tonight. I can’t believe she still thinks all that nonsense is real. I’ve tried to explain to her that it’s just a story, but she’s still convinced that there really is someone up there delivering wooden toys to children who didn’t vandalize any bus stops this year.
Mind you, I didn’t believe werewolves were real until a couple of months ago. For all I know, Santa could be real too. If he is, I’d advise him to stay away from our chimney. We’re all getting really sick of frozen blood and some fresh stuff from a plump old man and some red-nosed reindeers would go down a treat right now.
SUNDAY 25TH DECEMBER
Merry Christmas, I don’t think.
I can’t understand why humans spend so much of their year looking forward to this day. It doesn’t seem very exciting to me.
Mum and Dad are getting into the festive spirit, though. It’s only three in the afternoon and they’re already on their third flask of type AB+. Mum will be dancing on the table by five and tearfully reminiscing about the Victorian era by seven, I guarantee. Happens every year.
I think I’ll go downstairs and warn Dad against drinking so much blood that he gets hungover and can’t travel to Scotland tomorrow. I don’t care if they miss their stupid holiday, but I don’t have a back-up plan for Chloe’s transformation. We could try the Travel Inn near the retail park, I suppose. But we’d be sure to get kicked out if she shredded the room on the first night.
MONDAY 26TH DECEMBER
5PM
Thankfully, Dad heeded my warning about overdoing it on the blood, and they all piled into the Volvo early this morning for the drive up to Edinburgh. It’s quite a distance, and Dad will have to drive very carefully if he doesn’t want a policeman to stop him for a breath test. You only need a tiny drop of alcohol in the blood you’ve been drinking to fail one of those things these days.
I’m so glad I got out of their little excursion. The last time I had to sit next to my sister on a long journey she kicked me so hard I fell out of the door and on to the fast lane and I nearly got run over by a coach. If I’d been squashed, it would have taken ages for my body to heal itself.
It’s so lovely and quiet without those idiots around. I think I might move into a flat of my own soon. As soon as I get over my guilt about attacking humans, I’ll be totally self-sufficient. I’ll probably have to move to somewhere like Tokyo or LA to find friends who are cool enough for me, though.
In the meantime, I’m off to prepare the basement for Chloe tonight. This should be interesting.
4AM
Well, that was all rather harrowing, but I’m pleased to say that my werewolf containment system was a success. It’s all over for the night, and Chloe is asleep on the armchair opposite as I write.
She came round at seven this evening, with a change of clothes in an overnight bag. I asked her how you know you’re about to transform, and she said you get a painful itching all over, then it feels like your body is being stretched in every direction at once, and then you black out.
I thought it might be polite to wait for this itching to start, but I was worried the change would be too sudden for me to cope with so I fixed her to the pipes in the basement at 11pm.
Shortly after midnight, Chloe tearfully begged me to remove the locks. Dad’s werewolf book had warned about these kinds of pleas, so I ignored them. And then it happened. Her bones twisted beneath her skin, her nose extended into a snout and thick brown hairs pushed through the pores of her face.* Then her head lurched down and her cries turned into howls. I looked into her eyes for signs of recognition, but there was nothing. If she hadn’t been fastened to the pipes, she would have torn me apart mercilessly. That time I lent her my felt tips would have counted for nothing.
There was no point trying to speak to wolf Chloe, so I chalked the lock combinations on the floor and came
back upstairs. Her pining and howling was very loud, so I blasted a compilation of party hits from the stereo to mask the ungodly noise.
At one point Chloe strained against her chains so violently that the whole house shook, and one of Mum’s antique vases fell off the mantelpiece and smashed on the floor. I went up to the attic to find another one. She’ll never notice.
After a couple of hours, the howling stopped. Chloe came upstairs with her new clothes on and fell asleep on the chair, where she remains now. Her wrists and ankles look very sore, but other than that she’s unscathed. I’ve just noticed that her arms and legs are twitching. I wonder if she’s dreaming about running.
* According to Dad’s book, the colour of a human’s hair will always be the colour of their pelt when they turn into a werewolf. It claims the dark-haired ones are the most dangerous, as the ginger ones are easy to spot from a distance and the blonde ones are easily confused and spend most of the time chasing their own tails and getting their heads stuck in paper bags.
TUESDAY 27TH DECEMBER
Chloe slept through the morning, so I mopped up the slobber in the basement and went out to the supermarket to buy some meat.
I figured that Chloe wouldn’t strain against her chains so much if she had some raw meat to keep her occupied. Luckily, the supermarket hadn’t sold all their Christmas turkeys and they were reduced to £1.99 each. I bought five, which I thought would be enough to keep the wolf from the door, if you’ll pardon the expression.
Chloe was awake by the time I got back, and she said the meat looked nasty as I was chopping it up and flinging it into a bucket. I said she wouldn’t think that when she was in Fido form, but I couldn’t disagree with her. I don’t know how humans can get on their high horses about us drinking blood and then casually chew on animal corpses.
We had a fun afternoon playing SingStar on the PlayStation. Chloe selected ‘Love Song for a Vampire’, so to get my own back I chose ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’.
Soon the moon rose and it was time to prepare for the next transformation. Chloe said she didn’t want to ruin another perfectly good set of clothes, so I fetched one of Mum’s huge ball gowns, which I reckoned was loose enough to cope with the transformation.
As I was fixing her locks, I asked Chloe what she’d done about clothes after her transformations last month. She admitted that she’d had to steal a yellow Pringle jumper and a pair of grey Farah slacks from a washing line one night. Luckily, her parents were still asleep when she got in, so she didn’t have to pretend she’d been at an all-night rave for golfers.
I suppose I must have looked very strange chaining a teenage girl in an oversized ball gown to the pipes in my basement, but it’s amazing how quickly you get used to stuff like that. Take it from someone who drinks human blood in school toilet cubicles at lunchtimes.
I watched her disturbing transformation again, wrote the lock combinations on the floor and shoved the bucket of raw meat in front of her. She immediately shoved her muzzle right in and began to gnaw on it, so I left her to it. It seems to have done the trick, as she’s howling much less tonight. I’ve still whacked up the stereo to be on the safe side, though.
WEDNESDAY 28TH DECEMBER
Chloe turned back into a human and came upstairs early this morning. Once again, she slept through most of the day, we spent the evening on the PlayStation, she changed into her gown, I chained her up, she howled in terror and I stuck the party hits on the stereo.
I have to admit I’m very pleased with my system for controlling werewolves. Perhaps one day my pioneering work will be acknowledged and I’ll---
THURSDAY 29TH DECEMBER
7AM
It turns out that my system was much less foolproof than I’d thought. Just as I was writing the above words, Dad’s car pulled into the driveway. I wasn’t expecting my family to return so early, but they’re about as good at organization as sunbathing, so I should have known better.
I tried to mask Chloe’s howling by selecting ‘Who Let the Dogs Out?’ on SingStar, but it didn’t fool them. As soon as they got in, Mum and Dad followed the noise down to the basement. I went after them to explain that the wolf was Chloe, but this didn’t stop them from hissing and bearing their fangs at her, which was hardly polite. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them so angry before. Not even that time I changed the ‘E’ to a ‘B’ on my school report.
Soon, Grandpa and my sister were down in the basement, and it looked as though no amount of pleading on my part could avert a violent supernatural showdown. Why do they always have to be so melodramatic?
I knew it was time for deeds and not words, so I grabbed the washing line and tied it around Chloe’s neck to create a lead. I then undid her locks and gripped the washing line as the terrified Chloe wolf darted out of the basement, across the living room and straight through the front window. A shard of glass broke off in my thigh as I was dragged along, and I had to pick it out so my skin didn’t heal over it.
I’d like to think that if any insomniacs spotted us, they’d have seen nothing more unusual than a teenage boy taking his dog for a walk. They might have wondered why the walk was taking place at 2am and why the dog was eight feet long and wearing a ball gown, but most humans are so drunk at this time of year they probably wouldn’t have noticed.
I’d hoped to keep up with Chloe and explain things when she turned human again, but the washing line slipped out of my grasp just as we were approaching Stockfield Moor, so I let her go.
When I got home, my family refused to speak to me. I think it’s fairly safe to say that I’m grounded.
12PM
Got a text from Chloe this morning:
Just woke up wearing a ball gown with a washing line tied round my neck and half a sheep hanging from my mouth. What happened?
I replied:
Yeah, messy night ;) My parents know about you now, so don’t come round. Don’t worry, though. I’ll sort everything and call you,
Nige
V^^^^V
FRIDAY 30TH DECEMBER
Mum and Dad still aren’t talking to me. I saw Dad cleaning some antique pistols in the kitchen this morning and I have a horrible feeling he’s about to buy some silver bullets and restart the vampire-werewolf war. Maybe I should sneak out of town before it starts. I know it’s all sort of my fault, but I really don’t want to fight in a war. I bet I could write some good war poetry, though.
SATURDAY 31ST DECEMBER
My parents are speaking to me again now, but they’re still really angry. I was summoned into the study early this morning, to find Mum, Dad and Grandpa scowling at me. I said I was sorry, but they clearly intended to make it as painful as possible.
Dad asked if I had any idea how serious what I’d done was, and I pretended I didn’t. He said that vampires and werewolves had been enemies for centuries, and if they ever meet, instinct should force them to fight to the death.
I told them about Jason and his family, about how Chloe had been accidentally transformed and how I’d invented a good system for restraining wolfpeople. I went on to say that while I’d felt resentful and competitive towards Jason, I’d never felt any urge to kill him. I suggested that if the rest of vampirekind were as understanding as me, all supernatural beings could live together in harmony and the world would be a better place.
Dad didn’t sympathize with my progressive views. Instead, he flew off the handle, ranting about how werewolves were untrustworthy and would think nothing of ripping a vampire’s head off their shoulders. I was going to point out that we’re not exactly without blame, but I thought it was best to keep quiet.
Then Mum burst into tears and asked if next time I felt like aiding a sworn enemy of our kind, could I at least refrain from ruining one of her best dresses in the process? Apparently the ball gown was a present from some old archduke or other. I suggested that she might wear one of her million other dresses next time she attends a ball, which she never does anyway.
I was then sent out of the room
so they could consider what to do next. Perhaps they’ll kick me out of the coven, perhaps they’ll confiscate my PlayStation. Either way I don’t think I’m going to have a very good start to the new year.
11:59PM
5… 4… 3… 2… 1…
Unhappy New Year! No sounds of cheering and merriment coming from downstairs, and still no word on what my punishment will be.
This is looking serious.
SUNDAY 1ST JANUARY
8AM
My new year’s resolutions are to tidy my room more often, play less computer games and stop making enemies with supernatural beings. I was going to include learning Spanish, but I’ve had that one on my list for five years and I haven’t done it yet, so I think I’ll finally strike it off.
3PM
I was called back into the study early this morning so Mum, Dad and Grandpa could let me know my fate.
They said that we were in an unacceptable situation, with a pack of werewolves and a coven of vampires both living in the same small town. I thought Dad was about to declare war formally, but instead he said we were all moving to Scotland!
