Mistress of the Werewolf

For months, caught up in glorious, unreasoning madness, he had tried to seduce her, to corrupt her if he could. All to no avail. He resented his own defeat as much as he grudgingly admired her ongoing purity. He envied purity; he despised purity, he didn’t even know why. Maybe because it was all a hoax. But perhaps she really was good, after all. He even wanted to believe it.

Angela had escaped the werewolf’s seductive attentions in the end, up to the very last evening before she moved away. He almost respected her for that, for he knew himself better than anyone else did and knew what he would have done to her if he had gotten the chance. At the same time, he couldn’t help but take her rejection of him as an insult. Because in general he believed he was of that family of Casanova that made for the world’s best lovers. He had only a silly, not serious notion that he may really be a werewolf and incompatible with Angela.

Well, Angela had moved away and out of his clutches, but the specter of her had remained over the house where she had lived when her replacement arrived, a thoroughly undesirable, selfish, and priggish girl named Aimee. One could not help but make comparisons between Angela and Amiee. But in time, Aimee had moved away also, and these days the werewolf thought of neither woman very often, until he saw lovely Angela now, across the street.

Little did Angela know how surely she had put herself in harm’s way by crossing his path again.

Even now, after all of this time, her goodness still revolted, fascinated, and bewitched him.

Even now it vexed him that he had once let her escape.

* * * * *

The werewolf sat seemingly docile at his computer in the office on the sixth floor of a high rise. He spent most of the day on the phone or in meetings or traveling from one office to another. Didn’t everyone?

Ah, but keeping his own freedom and independence mattered more than anything in all the world to this werewolf. He should have been abroad or lounging by day to rest his copious stores of strength for his macabre forays on that night of the month when the moon is at its fullest. Instead, he was holed up in an office every day, without even enough time to take a walk when he got home at night. He felt his rear end getting softer, and the ache in his shoulder was getting worse daily; he resented having to spend most of his day sitting.

"Need my copy of the files before the next convention?" one of his co-workers, John Dough, abruptly called through the door.

John Dough, an energetic optimist, looked at the werewolf and saw a bright, brilliant co-worker, a highly intelligent, highly efficient, quiet but at times amiable and pleasant man who, though not always on time, was always productive. John Dough had no inkling that his co-worker was a werewolf. The werewolf, meanwhile, made his usual mental comparison between John Dough and himself. The werewolf sized up everyone he met as a potential enemy out of necessity, involuntarily. Why? Because he did not want to be caught off guard if and when John Dough ever dared to cross him. For the most part, though, the werewolf was satisfied that John Dough would never pose a real threat. How could a mere John Dough compare to him, after all?

"Sure," the werewolf said agreeably, with a showing of his teeth that people called a smile. The werewolf was always honest, in all that he was willing to say. Honest but secretive. He never said much. "Anyway, I’m almost done with this document. I’ll send it over when it’s finished." The werewolf added.

And in general, if the werewolf was never threatened, it could be said that he was amiable on the surface. Everyone seemed to think he was a nice guy, even if he could be critical and argumentative-opinionated, at times. If he wasn’t threatened, the werewolf even experienced a state of near-comfort and pleasant, productive, numbness so long as he was working on something constructive and interesting. It killed the time.