1.

Life’s strange in the desert. What you need, you’ve got to make on your own.
I make it on my own just fine. That’s despite the fact I’m a wolf.
A werewolf actually. Yes, it’s just like it sounds.
My next-door neighbor, a fellow named Detroit Winifred, helps me out. We get into his gray pinto and drive out to the badlands together. From his trunk, he hands me a stack of clothes I can put in a safe space.

My name’s Larry. Larry Flying Fox. I’ve been living on Navajo land since the father’s father’s father of my father’s father’s father laid claim to it. None of them have been afflicted with a curse like this.

It all started thirty-odd years ago when I was eight and got bit by a black and white werewolf with red eyes I’ll never forget out in the desert. Those first few days were tough. Detroit’s the one who found me after the attack, out there bloodied in his vegetable patch.

He’s been caring for me ever since. Now a wily old coot of 79, I have to wonder what I’ll do when he’s gone.

The night is uneventful. My transformation’s ghastly like always. I tend to go into the shadows to do it, not that the animals will much mind seeing my chapped posterior. The desert’s not been kind to my complexion.

The thing is, when sand gets on you, it gets in you. Every crack and crevasse. Once it leeches in there, it’s not coming out for anything. I know. I’ve taken half a dozen baths since Tuesday and still can’t get the soot out from the lines in my face.

I pass the time after I turn by hunting coyotes in the night. Everything in my sightlines lights up green, and anything warm comes up red. It’s like Christmas, and makes it easy for me to track prey.

The first coyote I find, I take down without much trouble. Coyotes can be gristly, but there’s just enough meat on the bone to satisfy me. In a desert where there’s not much life, you can’t be too choosy. I’d kill for something more succulent, like a human, but if I take one of those, someone’s bound to catch on to me, and I can’t much stomach them anyway. Best to stick to coyotes and vermin for the time being.

The last thing I want is my secret getting out.

2.

You’re probably thinking being a werewolf by itself is pretty awkward. It gets worse, I’m afraid.

I’m also the town sheriff.

The town, affectionately dubbed “Satan’s Shithole” by the locals, has been a reservation for the Navajo for generations. It’s right on the border between New Mexico and proper Mexico, a border town, with the skirmishes to go with it.

In other words, it's a clapboard melting pot of Mexicans and Indians. Sorry to sound insensitive, but that’s what it is. A lot of people and things nowadays are not sure what they identify as, and I choose to have no opinion on it because there’s less hassle that way, but in Satan’s Shithole you know what you are.

Fucked.

The families here are all very poor. The homes are small, and sometimes there are families of eight, nine, ten or more packed into them. Each denomination has its own hallowed ground and traditions. We try not to step on the toes of each other.

It’s hard to keep the peace, but I enjoy it, and I’d be enjoying it a lot more if not for the curse I’ve been afflicted with. Together with my neighbor Detroit, we’ve woven a tapestry of lies that has kept me safe for years, but sometimes I’m worried the levee will break. Had that happen to our proper levee last year, and if not for some timely bodging, we’d have run out of water before summer.

My family has always been respected by both sides. They trust me. Learning about my curse would undo all of that.

That’s why I have to be careful.

3.

Another post-curse morning dawns. It’s about five or so.

I walk to the back road Detroit and I always meet at, slicked in gore like usual, and come across a strange sight. His pinto’s there, but the door’s ajar. I can see someone in the seat.

Normally he’s outside to greet me. Keeping to the bushes because I don’t want to be seen, I push my glob of hair out of my eyes, and go to investigate.

Detroit’s dead in his seat. As a sheriff, I should know better, but even still, I search his body and car for clues. His mouth’s frozen open in a ghastly o, and I can see various bullet wounds in his chest. As I’m backing away, I hear the cocking of a pistol. I turn, and see my deputy, a scrawny 21-year-old kid named Turturro Learning Staff, pointing his pistol at me.

Already I can see how this looks. I put my hands up, thinking about explaining, but I know it won’t do any good.

“Hold it right there, sheriff. Don’t move.”

I do what my deputy says. He gives me a towel to wrap around myself, which is probably for the best.

When we roll in, and they see me in the back, we’re going to cause some kind of stir.

4.

Turturro pulls the jeep into town, and my word, do people come running when they see me. A bloodied, gristly, longhaired wild man in the back seat of a beat-up jeep is bound to attract attention.

A crowd gathers from the moment we pull in. Even coated in gore, it’s easy for people to recognize me. We’re all blood in this town. We can practically identify each other by scent like an animal can. Turturro has to honk the horn to get the sea of shocked stunned onlookers to part ways.  

“They’re like buzzards all drawn to the slaughter.”

“You can’t possibly think I killed him.”

Turturro keeps his hands planted firmly on the wheel.

“Even if I believe you, the question is, will they?”

We turn into the makeshift police station. It used to be a school, but our forefathers converted it into what it is now. There was a time when Satan’s Shithole didn’t even have a police station. I’m only the third sheriff the town’s ever had.

Going in, signs of what this building used to be are evident everywhere. The gymnasium has been converted into the main precinct. There are desks tossed around here and there, and mixed-race Spanish and Native American men tapping away on their computers.

I’m taken to holding cell #3, the only cell that doesn’t have a pervading scent of urine. They want only the best for their sheriff. I’m told to dry off as best I can because someone from the state police is coming to talk to me about what happened.

So that’s what I do. I sit in the chair with the fresh towel they’ve given me to replace the dirty one and rub myself down while I wait. The surface-level coyote blood comes off easily enough. Can’t say the same for the subliminal layer of blood and grime. I’m sure, I think, they’ll recognize it’s coyote blood when they test it and not Detroit’s. Not the best start to a day I’ve had, but not the worst either, at least not yet.

That all changes when the woman walks in.

“Hello, Larry.”

She flashes a badge to let me know she’s in charge.

“I’m Lieutenant Chloe Pedroia. It’s nice to see you again.”

The woman has a pleasant flowery fragrance. She’s wearing a brownstone necklace over her nice white straitlaced blouse that goes well with her brown pantsuit.

She’s super familiar to me. It’s smacking me in the face after a bit.

“Do I know you from somewhere?”

“I’d say so. We went to school together.”

She pulls up the room’s other chair.

“You just don’t recognize me without milk squirting out my nose.”

Now, Satan’s Shithole actually has a pretty nice school. The county built it for us some years back so the at-risk youths would have somewhere to learn basic rudimentary skills and trades. I went there like most kids.

“It’s me, Chloe.”

“As in, Chloe Burning Bush?”

“It's Pedroia now.”

I get a better look at her. For the most part I was a loner growing up, but I did have one friend, a girl I went to school with named Chloe like this woman is.

“You’re right. I don’t recognize your face without milk and boogers on it.”

If she is who she says she is, she knows I had a thing for her. We were always sitting together at lunch, telling each other stupid jokes so we’d get milk to squirt out her nose like she said.

“I’m glad you remember me, at least. As I recall, you were always wanting to burn my bush.”

“I remember. Why’d you move away again?”

Burning her bush was always my code for having sex with her when we hit puberty and started dating. That’s how I know for sure it’s her.

“Two words. Satan’s Shithole.”

She touches the sticky blood I’ve left on the table.

“Let’s cut to the chase. The blood.”

“It’s not Detroit’s. It’s coyote blood.”

“Coyote?”

I have to think fast.

“Animals are sacred around here. I have to wonder what would compel you to smear coyote blood on yourself.”

“I didn’t. Damn things were killing my livestock, so I followed one of them back to their den. Took out the whole pack.”

“That doesn’t explain why you’re naked.”

She stares at my low-hanging balls. I reach down and tuck them between my legs.

“With all due respect, ma’am, what I do to protect my land is my own business.”

“Does that include killing a man?”

“I don’t remember a lot about you, Chloe, but I know you’re smarter than that.”

“Then why did the body and car have your fingerprints on them?”

“Because like anyone would, I checked around for evidence.”

“You should have just left everything alone. I don’t remember a lot about you, sheriff, but I know you’re smarter than that.”

She leaves, and comes back in. In her arms are a t-shirt and folded jeans. She stacks them on the desk.

“Get dressed. Ballistics cleared you, so you’re free to go.”

“But what about Detroit?”

The one thing that definitely hasn’t changed about Chloe is her long, lush brown hair, held in place by an ivory clip. It’s a safe bet the carpet matches the drapes.

“You don’t expect me to just leave, do you? I lived next to Detroit all my life.”

“I know. Maybe we can help each other out.”

One of the two of our stomachs audibly gurgles. She covers her belly with her hand.

“But first, is there somewhere in this burnt-out burg we can grab a bite to eat?”

5.

The station’s kind enough to let me borrow a jeep after I’ve cleaned myself up. Chloe and I take it to the best dive bar in Satan’s Shithole. It’s on the wrong side of the tracks, but if you can stomach it, and you’ve brought protection, the food’s as good as anything you’re going to get in New Mexico.

My date and I ask for a corner table. The sus Mexican waiter has a greasy bloodstained apron on and may also be the dishwasher of the joint.

I’ve done my best, but I haven’t been able to get all the blood out of my hair. I had to have been in the gymnasium’s locker room for hours trying to scrub it all off. Chloe, frustratingly, has only had to spritz on more of her flowery perfume to freshen herself up.

“This is nice. Can’t remember the last time I went out to eat with a woman.”

“Don’t get the wrong idea. They released you into my custody, so you're technically my prisoner right now.”

We order pretty high-grade beers and chug both in equal measure.

“My God…mph…do you know when the last time I had a beer was?”          

“Should I ask Mr. Pedroia?”

She wipes the foam off her top lip. It has a few wiry brown hairs on it. I’m sure she shaves regularly and it’s odd that she’d overlook something like that.

“When was the wedding?”

“Six years ago.”

She shows me pictures of her and her husband on her phone. He’s a mighty nice-looking fellow. If I try real hard, I can almost transpose my head onto his.

“How about you? You must have a big family by now.”

“Nope. Never even been married.”

“Why not?”

“Miss Right left town a long time ago. She’s the only girl I ever loved.”

“I hope that wasn’t a jab at me.”

“I said Miss Right, not Mrs. Pedroia.”

I ask the dishwasher-turned-waiter for a cold glass of water to wash the beer down. Chloe seems to like that idea, and orders a water of her own after he’s brought me mine.

“This is actually my last week working for the state. I just took a job as the new police commissioner of El Paso.”

“Texas? Sounds big.”

“It is. Normally Satan’s Shithole is under Border Patrol’s jurisdiction, but when I’d heard they’d arrested their own sheriff, and that he was naked and covered in blood, I couldn’t resist pulling some strings for one last stroll down memory lane. I just didn’t figure on him being you.”

“Shoot, if I’d known you’d stayed so close to home all this time…”

“Don’t remind me.”

She drops her fork on the floor by accident.

“I try not to think about this place.”

Chloe leans over to get it. Her butt’s in my face, and I can’t help but ogle the bright pink panties sticking out of the hem of her pants. They’re thin for ladies underwear and may be a thong, which only gets me hotter. In the right situations, the animal side of me comes out whether I’m furred and fanged or not.

Midway through our enchiladas, her phone rings. She answers it, and chats on it noisily. I know women get mad if you refer to them as hens, but it doesn’t take away from the fact she is one at the moment, clucking away to whomever she’s talking to. I tune out a lot of what she says.

I should respect women more than I do, but I don’t. Lots of people around here bitch about having their fathers walk out on them, but for me, my mom was the bitch. She had a complete mental breakdown and walked out on my dad and I on Mother’s Day when I was ten years old, and then my dad got killed in a shootout at a gas station when I was fifteen, forcing me to drop out of school and care for my land on my own. Without Detroit, I’d have been a goner.

“…hey, Larry Flying Fuck, you listening?”

I snap out of it. In school the other kids used to call me that to tease me. She obviously remembers that.

“I was saying we caught a break in the case. There’s these geologists out in the valley, see. Yesterday they planted secret cameras around the desert to study the erosion of the land.”

“Cameras?”

I’m chewing on a piece of enchilada. When she says cameras, I nearly choke on it.

I cough raggedly, and just barely swallow, pounding my chest. She looks on at me with concern.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

I wave her concern away.

“Sorry. Wrong pipe.”

“Yes, well, they say they know who shot your neighbor. I’ve set up a meeting with them after lunch.”

No one told me about any cameras being set up. It’s frustrating that I’m the sheriff, and they never tell me anything.

“That’s…great.”

If there were cameras out there they may have caught the shooter. But that raises another possibility too.

Someone could know I’m a werewolf.

6.

The whole ride to the camp, I’m thinking to myself, if I show up on any of those tapes, I’m screwed. I can just picture myself tearing into a coyote carcass with my fangs in full view of a secret lens.

At the camp, we’re greeted by a pair of bubbly college girls that look like they’re about to bust out of their skimpy little tank tops. When you’re a monster like me, some of your senses are heightened. I can practically taste the sweat and endorphins coming off them.

They’d make a good snack for a wolf.

The ladies take us to their tent, where there are beakers, terrariums, and lab equipment all strewn about on tables. A computer with a curved monitor is set up in the corner.

“So yeah, like we told you on the phone, we found something pretty interesting.”

“The shooter, right?”

I put my hands in my pockets. I have nothing to be scared of, right?

“Yeah. Mind you, it’s not as crazy as the werewolf.”

Wrong. Chloe does a double-take.

“The what?”

The computer screen cuts to a night-vision view of the badlands, where a man that looks all too much like me stumbles along naked. As he’s going, he’s transforming, becoming taller, starker, skinnier, yet somehow more muscular. His shoulders divide into perfect knots juxtaposed around his bony chest, which quickly grows wiry black fur. The man turned werewolf drops to his knees, before taking off on all fours. The camera has hi-def fidelity and even the most backwoods hillbilly can tell it’s me. You don’t need to be a genius to see what’s right in front of your face.

The girl manning the computer figures that out pretty quick. She gasps.

“Hey…wait a second…that’s you in that video.”

The video ends, and Chloe and the two women turn to me. I twiddle my thumbs.

“Nice effects. You should be in film school.”

Chloe’s sweating pretty good. She pushes her bangs off her brow.

“Well, I guess that would explain finding you naked and covered in coyote blood in the badlands, but that can’t be real…”

I shrug my shoulders.

“Tapes are like Shakira’s hips. They don’t lie.”

One of the young geologists pulls out her bedazzled pink phone, shooting video of me.

“This is amazing. He’s some kind of werewolf.”

I can see my secret’s out. No point in hiding it, and in my current state, I’m in no shape to do anything about it. If I were transformed, tearing their throats out to keep my secret safe would be easy.

As it is, I have to come clean.

“Yes and no. In our culture, we call them skinwalkers.”

The young woman doesn’t stop filming me. It’s getting on my nerves.

“I got bit by one years ago when I was eight, and I’ve been one ever since.”

“We should call someone.”

“Like who, National Enquirer? Fox News?”

“Nah, Fox News is all fake. This is the real deal.”

“While you were busy filming me, did you happen to get a look at whoever shot Detroit? The man in the car.”

“See for yourself.”

The young woman at the computer switches to another video. It shows three armed soldiers shooting Detroit to death in his beat-up Pinto.

“Looks like the cartel. Maybe he was a drug dealer.”

Chloe takes a closer look at the monitor.

“That doesn’t make any sense. What would a drug dealer be doing all the way out there…?”

“He was waiting for me.”

“You?”

I may only have a 8th-grade education, but I’m smart enough to see there’s no way out of this. I slump, and sigh.

“Yes. He’s been helping me out with the curse since I first got it.”

One of the two college girls makes fluttering motions with her hands.

“Wait till this footage hits the internet. We’re going to be rich.”

The other girl quickly taps on her phone.

“Just gonna upload this to social media first…”

“Actually, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Chloe removes her glasses. Honestly she’s still so pretty after all these years that it’s been slipping my mind she’s even wearing them.

“In fact, I’d hand that over to me right now. We’re with the police, after all…”

“Like hell I will. He’s a fucking werewolf.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

She sets her glasses on the table. Then, like my wildest fantasy come to life, she starts to undress, beginning with her shirt and pants, then transitioning to her shoes and socks. The second-to-last thing to go is her bra, and then finally her underwear, which sure is a thong. It has a leopard-print crotch too. Once I catch sight of it, I doubt I’ll forget it. The two girls ogle her naked body, blushing.

Chloe's eyes turn bright red. She hands her pile of clothes off to me, and transforms into a werewolf seamlessly with nary a hint of screaming. Her mouth extends into a snubbed snout, and she sprouts dark brown fur all over herself. It’s bushiest in her naughty places, naturally.

My old friend, now a werewolf, lays waste to the two hapless college kids. Their blood sprays off their snapping, jerking bodies. I’m a safe enough distance away that it doesn’t reach me though.

In no time at all, the girls are mushy piles of entrails, and Chloe stands in the center of it all, licking her chops.

“I don’t believe it. You have the curse too.”

Chloe shifts to me. There’s blood all over her furry body, from her toes to her nose to the tip of her big bushy tail.

“Did you think you were the only one? I thought moving away from here would help me deal with it, but…”

Her eyes glow a deep red again.

“There are some things you can’t escape from. Speaking of which, take off your clothes.”

“Huh?”

That’s when the change takes hold and I can see fur growing on my arms. Frantically, I take off my shirt and trousers, and am just able to get my boots off right as I shift into my werewolf form as seamlessly as she did. No full moon or screaming or snapping is even required. I still have my senses too, which is even more amazing.

Weirdly, my long hair always carries over into the werewolf transformation, becoming a mane of long brown fur. This doesn’t happen with her, and in fact, the hair clip she’d been wearing is on the ground in the sea of blood surrounding the dismembered bodies of the two college students.

“How…I…I mean...?”

“I don’t just let it run my life like you. I’ve learned to control it over the years.”

“And that’s how you can transform during the day.”

She twiddles her pointy thumb claws.

“I just did that to show off. The problem is, when I transform like that or make someone else do it, I have to stay like this for the next 24 hours. So do you now.”

“I reckon you should have told me that before you made me change.”

She picks at the copious gristle on her jowls.

“Is there some place we can lay low for a bit? You deserve to know why I really came home.”

I think on it.

“My place should be safe, but it’s so far away.”

“Mm. And if we try and drive there like this, someone's bound to spot us.”

She asks to have her clothes back. I didn’t even realize I was still holding them.

“You’d better ditch the jeep.”

“Ditch it?”

“Yeah.”

She rolls her shoulders, probably to loosen up her muscles.

“After that, grab your clothes. We’re going to take a little walk.”

7.

It’s all dark when we get back to my place in the middle of the night. I grab my key from under my mat and lead Chloe into my clapboard shanty.

“Yuck. This place hasn’t changed at all.”

She lopes over to the sofa and plops onto it. Dust rises up off the tattered fabric.

“I’m famished after all that walking. I could go for a nice, juicy goat.”

“I’m fresh out of goat, but I’ll see what I’ve got.”

Chloe follows me to the kitchen, checking out all the rooms. She stops at the only room that has a bed in it.

“What’s through there?”

“My bedroom. Not really important, unless you’re ready to let me burn your bush if you know what I mean.”

“You’re joking, right?“

She whaps me on the shoulder. With her clawed hand, it kind of hurts.

“I’m a lot of things, but I’m not easy, although…”

She cocks her head, and taps her chin with one of her index fingers.

“I’ve never done it with someone in this form before. Might be kind of exciting.”

“I don’t think Mr. Pedroia would like that.”

“Since you were kind enough to come clean with me, I guess I’ll come clean with you.”

She grabs a carton of milk out of my fridge, and chugs it. I think it’s expired, but that doesn’t matter much to a monster.

“There is no Mr. Pedroia, at least not anymore. We separated just before the pandemic hit.”

“How’s come?”

“He kept wanting me to settle down and quit my job so we could start a family. It’s like, I’m not going to quit doing what I love so I can take care of the three boys you’re wanting by myself while you just sit on the couch chugging a beer.”

“Speaking of which, do you want a beer, or are you content with your milk?”

She glugs her milk and sneers at me with a white milk mustache above her fangs in response.

“Obviously, the other problem was that the more we saw of each other, the more likely it’d be he’d catch on to the fact I was cursed.”

“How’d you even get it?”

“I won’t have it for much longer. According to my research, the original werewolf lives in this valley.”

I grab a beer, and pound it down through my fangs. It washes down my gullet, making my furred Adam’s apple bob along the way.

“That’s why I’ve come home, Larry. I’m going to kill him.”

8.

The hours pass by slowly in the night. Mostly we just sit on the couch in our wolf forms, streaming random shit on my nice TV. It’s something I paid good money for that may or may not have come off the black market and also may or may not have illegal streaming and cable hookups. All the guy told me is that I should wait and see if my contact information appears on the dark web, whatever that is. I keep propositioning Chloe for sex, and every time, she shoots me down. I suppose it’s good I have the image of the pink leopard-print thong she had on all day to fuel my lonely nights with my limp noodle going forward in the likely event I can’t make this thing happen before she gets what she’s come for and leaves Satan’s Shithole for good.

It was never that easy with her. I tried the same thing the day she moved away when we were both sixteen. Just asking Chloe wasn’t enough. With her it had to feel right, and it never did, not even that day when she was hours from leaving with her family for Albuquerque to go live with one of her mom’s many sisters.

I’ve always thought it was fortunate I was an only child. It wasn’t a choice. After having me, mom went barren, another thing that contributed to her growing mental instability. The real kicker was when she called me out of the blue two years ago from a mental hospital in Phoenix right before the end to tell me she was on her last legs.

My voice was the last voice she heard. I have to hope that gave her closure.

After raiding my fridge again, Chloe and I decide to kill time by pulling out old topography charts of the valley from my back room and seeing if we can’t figure out where the original werewolf she keeps talking about might live. It all sounds like a Netflix show gone horribly awry, not that anyone would know, since most Netflix shows are canceled a season in before they can get good.

This is getting good though. With half a Hot Pocket sticking out of her mouth, Chloe gleans the charts with her sharp eyes, seeing them in grids I’m sure, the same way I do when I transform. She says she’s been trying to figure out who this werewolf is and where he’s been living around here for years. I want to help her, but I’ve never been good with topography, so I just leave her to it and let her do her own thing for the rest of the night.

Hours later, I’m conked out in a ball like a furry little lapdog in the doorway leading to the kitchen, snoozing peacefully, when she jostles me awake.

“Wake up, sleepyhead. I think I’ve finally figured it out.”

I untuck my knees from my stomach, yawning. I’ve always been a real light sleeper, ever since I was young. Curses made you adjust your whole schedule to fit around them, even if it wasn’t ideal for you.

“So after looking at it all night, I think I’ve narrowed it down to this one cave way out in the badlands. If we’re going to go there, though, we should go now while we’re still like this.”

“Why the rush?”

She finishes off the pepperoni and cheese Hot Pocket hanging precariously from her mouth in a single swallow.

“Let’s say we find him, or her. You really think we can take him on as humans?”

“Or her.”

“Right.”

Somebody has brazenly shat all over the hardwood floor. I know it wasn’t me, so by process of elimination, that just leaves her.

“You know, we may be werewolves, but we can still use toilets.”

“Getting to the toilet would have meant moving you from your resting place. You looked so peaceful that I didn’t want to wake you.”

We sit together on the couch, and she twiddles her thumbs.

“I’m sorry. I just had to go so bad, and those college girls weren’t sitting well with me.”

“You didn’t have to eat them.”

“I did you a favor. The last thing the world needs is to know werewolves really exist.”

“Weren’t you saying something about a cave?”

She points to the chart.

“Like I said, if I’m right, the werewolf I’ve been looking for lives there. We kill him, or her, and it’s hasta la vista curse.”

“What if it isn’t?”

“If it's the original werewolf, it will be. That’s how it works in the movies.”

She holds out a hand.

“So what do you say? Are you in, or out?”

There’s lots of things I can say. Hell no, probably, would be a good answer, or perhaps fuck that, let’s just have sex. The problem is, when I transform, my sex drive goes haywire, and right now it’s taking everything I have not to give in to my baser instincts. If she’s like me, she must be feeling the same way.

“I don’t know…”

“C’mon. Don’t you want to be rid of all this.”

She bares her teeth and points at them. My, the naïve storybook grandmother in me thinks, what big teeth you have.

“You could finally live a normal life for once.”

“There’s nothing normal about Satan’s Shithole.”

“Well, I didn’t come out here to just sit and sulk. I’m going, whether you’re coming with me or not.”

And that’s that, at least in her mind. She gets up, without even so much as thanking me for the food and hospitality, and leaves out the back door. I just sit there for a minute, before coming to my senses.

There’s no such thing as a normal life in Satan’s Shithole. But being rid of the curse would bring me closer to it than most.

“Hey, wait up. I’m coming too…”

9.

The entrance to the cave where the supposed original werewolf that gave us the curse lurks is dark and foreboding. It’s cut into the red rock like the old homes of the natives back in the day. On the way in, we can see cave paintings.

The cavern’s not only dark and scary. It’s tilting right to left, though that’s mostly our doing.

Before we set off, we raided Detroit’s house. It turns out he was a drug dealer after all, and there were hundreds of pounds of cocaine in a secret storeroom in his basement. Chloe suggested we snort a little bit of it to make the journey out here on foot less of a drag.

It certainly did that, among other things.

The downside is, it’s made us more crazed than we were before. We tracked and killed a hapless family of jackrabbits for sport a little bit ago, and their blood is still fresh on our jowls. Our eyes are wide and bloodshot. Chloe’s peed on herself at some point. Her bushy pubic fur’s slicked in urine.

Thankfully the contact high’s wearing off when we get to the cave. We’re more in control of ourselves by then, but not enough to keep the cavern from spinning under our feet.

Dappled sunlight comes in through cracks in the ceiling. Once in a while, our heads will pass through them, and we’ll catch a glimpse of each other’s ghastly heads, eyes, teeth, fur, etc.

“Hey, check these out.”

Chloe directs me over to a cave painting that takes up all of one side of the square-shaped cavern. It’s drawn in distinctive red, black and yellow ink. She touches it.

“This isn’t that old. It looks almost brand new, in fact.”

The scene depicts warriors with lined, corded bodies and singular eyes in the middle of their heads facing off against a much larger creature twice their size. The creature has two noticeable pointy ears on its head, and a snout. His mouth is open, and someone has drawn a wriggly, triangular tongue between his jaws.

“A werewolf. It’s a werewolf they’re fighting.”

Her stomach gurgles.

“I have to drop a deuce. Don’t leave without me, yeah?”

She doesn’t wait for a response from me, and goes off to do her business. I just stand there, looking at the painting on the wall. Through my grided, bicolor eyes, it looks like a Christmas display.

I’m so caught up in it that I don’t even notice he’s there. With my sharp eyes, nose and ears, that’s embarrassing.

“Nice, don’t you think? I drew it myself.”

I whip around, bearing my teeth. There is a short, gaunt elderly man standing in a shaft of sunlight. He’s dressed in a three-piece suit with a matching petticoat that looks like it’s a century old at least.

“You…drew it.”

The man speaks in a British accent.

“That werewolf’s me. I’m close to death, so I’d say I’m entitled to my own legend.”

He has slicked-back gray hair going down his head. His thin lips are taught across his teeth.

“You’re a werewolf too. Obviously a very powerful one, if you have the ability to transform in broad daylight.”

Chloe comes back to this scene, wiping her hands off on her furry thighs. She stops in her tracks at first sight of him.

“Who’re you?”

“My name’s Carothers.”

His eyes glow red. Chloe bears her teeth.

“You’re a werewolf.”

“And you’re here to kill me.”

He begins to undress. I don’t think I’m liking where this is going.

“How did you know that?”

“I’m inextricably linked to everyone I bite. They can’t do or say or think anything without me knowing about it.”

When his clothes are all off, he shifts seamlessly into a strapping black and white mottled wolf with dark red eyes. His fur’s the exact color of smog, and he seems to emit a kind of haze to boot. My eyes have trouble locking on to him. With all that being said, I instantly recognize him as the werewolf that bit me when I was eight. The original werewolf himself.

What an honor.

“And here I thought I was the only one who could transform during the day. Too bad you’ll be nothing but another chapter to my legend in a minute.”

He opens his fanged mouth. Saliva drips off his sharp teeth.

“But first…”

After that he’s just behind Chloe. No idea how he got there so fast without us seeing. In a flash, he rips the baggy she’s been holding out of her hand.

“This white powder…and that beguiling aroma…is this cocaine you’ve brought?”

Chloe looks sheepish.

“Who wants to know?”

“I haven’t had that stuff in years. I could do for a hit before our big climactic clash.”

He grins.

“What do you say?”

10.

We came all the way out here to kill a werewolf. Never in a million years did I think I’d be snorting coke with him instead.

For the next half hour, we pass the bag around, taking hits off it with our noses. There’s white powder streaks under our nostrils.

“But like I was saying, they should fire everyone at CNN and ABC and Fox News and all those places, hire werewolves and have it all be called Werewolf Worldwide. Just hours and hours of werewolves talking about shit that’s anything but political.”

The Englishman nods his head in agreement to each one of Chloe’s suggestions.

“Agreed. It’s like, why’s everything got to be so political all the time. If people were more inclined to solve their problems with teeth instead of elections, the world would be so much simpler.”

Carothers laughs.

“Man, this is some good shit. Reminds me of when I was bumming around Amsterdam in the fifties, before I decided to settle down in this valley thirty-odd years ago.”

The whole time they’re over there trying to solve the world’s problems, I’m hanging back in a cocaine-fueled haze, just trying not to piss myself. Cocaine’s something Satan’s Shithole has plenty of. The drug problems in our town are out of control, and it’s all too easy to get your fix, even at the police station. I know for a fact a few of my cops are dirty, but there’s nothing I can do about it. It comes with the territory of working in a place full of gangbangers, rapists and honest folks from distant lands just trying to make a better life for their kids.

The border crossing from Mexico to New Mexico isn’t far from Satan’s Shithole. Contraband’s being smuggled in all the time. Too much of it winds up in towns like mine, just a peaceful little reservation haphazardly caught up in a border war it wants no part of.

Doesn’t help we’ve apparently had an ancient cocaine-loving British werewolf living next to us all this time. Chloe’s taken quite a shine to him. Not gonna lie, it’s making me jealous.

“How old are you, anyway?”

They sit next to each other with their legs drawn up. It annoys me how much they’re hitting it off.

“160, give or take. I was born in 19th-century London.”

“And you say you’ve never been married.”

“How can I be married when I’m like this, although I’d marry you in a heartbeat…”

Something’s off about this. It’s been off from the start. I watch him lean in close to her and put his jaws on her ear.

“But that’s enough of that. Time to add to my legend.”

In a single stroke, he rips off her ear. She shrieks, and falls to the ground. Blood’s dripping from the orifice where her ear had been.

I grit my teeth. Doing cocaine’s all well and good, but this is more my style.

“Get ready to be immortalized on my wall.”

“The only thing I’m going to immortalize on your wall is your guts.”

We lunge at each other and collide in a rage-induced, coke-fueled frenzy.

11.

Carothers may be old, but he’s a damn good fighter. He’s easily doubled in size after his transformation, and yet, he’s able to block and parry my attacks like he’s half the size he is.

Somehow I find an opening and tackle him from behind. I clamp my jaws onto the place where his spine meets the base of his skull, hoping to have severed something. No such luck. He flails and does everything he can to throw me off him. Blood’s dripping down my forehead into my eyes, obscuring my vision. I’d be in real trouble if I couldn’t smell him.

I’m just barely hanging on, when he flips around, and kicks me off him with both feet. I go flying and hit the wall with the mural on it. Something cracks in my back, and I drop to the ground in a heap. There’s no feeling in my legs.

Carothers gets to all fours and grins, right as a furry shape tackles him from the side. I can see it’s Chloe in the light, and they converge in the center of the room, sending sand everywhere.

Chloe, too, isn’t strong enough to take him on by herself. After some back and forth, he bites down on her neck and ragdolls her to the ground, then picks her up by the throat with one hand, holding her aloft.

There’s got to be something I can do. but what? In one move, he’s incapacitated me. I’m in no shape to help her or stop him from devouring her.

It’s just like it was the day she moved away when I unsuccessfully tried to have sex with her. I couldn’t do enough to make the moment right, and she had to move away, and forget about me, or so I thought.

Now she’s going to die. I’ve failed her again and this time I have to watch her get torn apart for my failure.

Carothers leans in close to her. He squeezes her windpipe until there’s a crunch, making her yelp in pain.

“Sad someone as pretty as you has to die, but oh well. Adios.”

The tension in the air is thick. The gunshot, when I hear it, is so loud in the quiet, tense cave that it could pass for a firework. Something rips into Carothers’s left shoulder.

He roars and staggers back. Turturro, my trusty deputy, is standing in the entrance to the cave. All three of us are still werewolves, but he’s not even scared.

“Turturro?”

He removes the glasses he’s wearing. For astigmatism, if I remember right.

“That’s twice in one week you’ve found me out here. It’s like you have a sixth sense.”

“It’s more than that, sheriff.”

He takes off his clothes. The next thing I know, he’s a big gray wolf, still with his deputy’s hat fitted between his ears. He raises his gun again.

“I don’t think a gun will stop that thing.”

He grins.

“Did I mention it’s loaded with silver bullets?”

Carothers interrupts with another roar. Foam is flying from his mouth.

Turturro fires another bullet. This one pierces his forehead, and makes a spidery firecrack run through it. His body turns black and hazy, into a shell of itself almost, and explodes into ashes.

The effect on us is instantaneous. My legs have feeling again, and as I crawl over to Chloe to check on her, I change out of my wolf form for good. It all evaporates off me in a fine black mist. In no time, I’m the scuffed, scarred man I’ve come to know myself as, worn down by the lines the land has left upon my face.

Still, it’s better than being a wolf. I’ll try not to be so down on myself the next time I look in a mirror.

Chloe’s herself again by the time I get to her. Breaking the curse has healed her wounds like it did with mine. I lift her up into my arms, and she pushes her matted, thatched hair out of her eyes.

“You okay, Chloe? Say something.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah.”

“No. Okay.”

“Okay what?”

She pokes her tongue in her cheek.

“You can burn my bush now.”

I turn bright red. Turturro, who’s no longer a wolf, gets dressed and comes to check on us.

“So does everyone in town have the curse, or…?”

“He’s bitten a lot of people, I’m sure, and in turn, think of how many people they’ve bitten. Not everyone sticks to animals like you.”

Together, the three of us leave the cave, heading for a waiting jeep.

“Hopefully, killing him’s cured everyone.”

Chloe can walk under her own power. Neither of us have to carry her, not that she’d let us.

“I can’t believe we found the original werewolf.”

“He may not have been, miss. He’s just the one who cursed us, but someone had to curse him, know what I mean?”

I elect to sit in the back with Chloe. While we’re settling in, she grabs my hand, and won’t let it go for anything.

“Usually it doesn’t work like that. I guess that’s the difference between fantasy and reality.”

Turturro hasn’t brought us any changes of clothes, but he did bring a big Navajo blanket for us to wrap ourselves in. I’m too hot in it though, and let it fall off my shoulders, exposing my bare chest and potbelly. Some would also call it a dad bod. The ironclad grip Chloe’s had on my hand since we got in the car makes me think it may be a dad bod soon enough, but then again, we’re in no shape to be raising teenagers at 60.

With young couples there’s all this pressure to be parents. I feel like at our age all we want to do is be.

“Speaking of which, I cleaned up that little mess you left of those two college students at the campsite. All of us kind of have a mind meld going if you’re skilled enough to tap into it, so we all know what’s going on with each other’s lives. It’s how I knew you were out here.”

“But if other folks have the curse, why is it I’ve never seen another werewolf around here except for Carothers and me?”

“Maybe we’re just better at hiding it than you. You were always the slow kid in class.”

I slug Chloe in the arm with my free hand. She just grins.

“You say that like everyone had the curse.”

“What makes you so sure they didn’t?”

“Detroit didn’t.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Maybe he was the only one.”

I have to laugh at that. That’d be Satan’s Shithole in a nutshell if potentially the only person in town who wasn’t a werewolf was a notorious drug dealer instead.

“One thing’s for sure. I can’t wait to get to El Paso.”

Chloe shifts on the rough cloth seat, trying to get comfortable. The whole time we’re sitting there, she just keeps squeezing my hand. It’s like we’re kids again, and she’s done something silly and put glue on her palm as a prank so the next time we hold hands, they’ll be stuck together.

“So I guess you’ll be leaving now.”

“I don’t have to leave alone. Know what I mean?”

Even I’m not dim enough to miss that hint bomb. She gives my hand another squeeze.

“You’re talking about me going to El Paso with you?”

“Why not?”

“I can’t just leave. I’m the sheriff here.”

“I’m sure we’ll be just fine without you, sheriff.”

My deputy gives me a nod of approval.

“The way I see it, if an old flame rolls into town, and she offers you a free chance to leave Satan’s Shithole, you'd better take it.”

My long hair’s slicked in grime. When I get back, I’m fixing to get a haircut, and also apparently do some packing.

We put the jeep in gear and head for home. Chloe and I conk out on each other’s shoulders.

“Did you mean what you said, about letting me burn your bush?”

Chloe rests the side of her head against my chest.

“Provided you let me live my own life. Can you promise that?”

“I think so.”

There’s always been something there. I rest my case. Maybe in El Paso it’ll all feel right.

“I’m a lot of things, but I’m not picky.”