I waited with bated breath as I stepped back from the door. Why was I getting deja vu about this? Regardless, it was possible it was him, maybe I had just misheard him and somehow his voice had come out all squeaky due to his obvious intoxication.

“Johnson, you in there?” I asked.

There was a moment of anxious tension, followed by the sound of muffled sobbing, very obviously a woman sobbing. Fuck, what could I do? I wasn’t exactly strong enough to break down the door and if he was doing something to her, there wasn’t much I could probably do to overpower him, but maybe I could distract him long enough to get her to run.

“If you’re hurting her, man, I swear I’m calling the cops,” I warned, my voice shaking. Now would be a great time for Selena to show up. Unfortunately, no transformation yet.

I hoped my warning wouldn’t cause him to do something drastic. I gathered my pocket knife I often carried and my phone, just in case. I knocked again and yelled with all of my measly amount of courage, trying to level my voice, “Just open up, I don’t care what’s happening, I know what I heard.”

“Please don’t call the police,” I heard the woman shakily speak, “I’m going to open the door.”

I was prepared for anything but what I saw. The bathroom appeared to be empty, barring one person: a tiny wolfgirl, at least a half foot shorter than me, even, staring up at me as she swayed from side to side, wearing the t-shirt that Johnson had been wearing mere minutes ago. So that’s why I had deja vu.

“...It’s you, isn’t it?” I asked.

She nodded timidly, before starting to cry some more and nearly falling over as she lost her concentration on staying upright. Johnson had seemed drunk, but not nearly this bad. I did the math. If the same amount of alcohol was in her system when she was half the size, she was bound to be probably twice as drunk. Whatever issues I thought I had tonight, there was obviously a more pressing one, not that I was really worried about changing in front of her anymore anyways.

I stepped over to put my hand on her shoulder to steady her, and she winced in terror for a minute. “Hey,” I cautioned, “it’s going to be okay.” I pulled back my hoodie to demonstrate my ears, wiggling them free from the tape. She seemed to be somewhat soothed by this, even if she was still distressed.

“I’m…I’m a dog,” she spat out.

“You’re a wolf,” I corrected, “and I’m going to make sure you’re taken care of.”

She looked down and tilted her head to the side, “D..did I drink something funny?” slurring her words adorably in a way I had to restrain myself from chuckling at.

“No, this is real. Haven’t you changed before?” I inquired.

She shook her head sheepishly, falling into my arms sleepily. Okay, soon-to-be unconscious wolfgirl, who was my girlfriend’s bigoted ex-friend, bigoted against lycanthropes, against…me, also a part-time wolfgirl, and on top of it all, I was supposed to do a group project with her. And who knew when her housemate would be home. Fuck.

I didn’t know anything about Johnson’s housemate, but I wasn’t keen on finding out, especially with my current physique, my potential physique tonight, and her being in this condition. He also probably wasn’t going to be the most upstanding of guys, given what I knew about Johnson. Furthermore, I wasn’t sure just how drunk she was, or how a wolf’s body would metabolize alcohol. I needed to get water in her system to clear it out, pronto. I knew what had to be done, as much as I knew I would probably regret it.

I first made sure the shirt acted enough as a dress that she would be decent in the time it took me to carry her to the car. It was a good thing she was light and I was feeling energetic today as I hoisted her into my arms, setting her down to open the door, and then buckling her in the passenger seat.

I phoned Nora as I pulled out of the driveway. I anxiously waited for her to pick up. “What’s up, hon? You woke me up from my nap,” she finally answered, a bit of annoyance in her voice.

“There’s been a problem, I can explain later, but I need you to get some water and my bed ready. I’ve got a wolfgirl who’s passed out drunk in the car,” I panickedly replied.

She paused and then sighed. “I’m not sure how this happened over you visiting someone for a class project, but we’ll talk once you get here. See you soon.”

I sped home about as fast as I could without alerting any cops, entering the apartment with Johnson without (thankfully) encountering any neighbors in the hallway of my complex.

Nora was sitting there at the kitchen table, tapping her fingers, as I entered. She motioned for me to set the wolfgirl down on the bed, which she had propped up with pillows and blankets. As we propped her head up against the pillows, we carefully poured water down her throat a bit at a time, careful to not let her choke, emptying two cups in the process.

With that done, Nora cleared her breath and stared at me, motioning for me to sit down in the chairs she had gotten from the kitchen. I complied.

“So,” she started, “what happened?”

“You wouldn’t believe the half of it,” I replied. Seeing as this made her raise an eyebrow, I decided to elaborate. “I was assigned to work with Johnson for my philosophy project.”

Her eyes flared with rage. “That bastard, I should’ve reported him, I should’ve..”

“Wait.” I replied, “it isn’t what you think, really.”

She skeptically motioned for me to continue, as I explained the rest of the story, concluding with, “..and that’s why I brought her here.”

Her expression was a mixture between laughter, deep sadness, and utter perplexity. To be honest, I’m sure mine wasn’t much different. The situation brought on a tumultuous mess of emotions. I looked over at the sleeping girl. It was hard to believe that just a few hours ago, I had been scared of her finding out about me. And now, well, that wasn’t much of an issue, at least for now.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

Nora thought for a minute and shook her head. “I think we’ve done all we can do about her immediate problems, but she’s obviously going to have some issues to work through. Who knows if she’ll even remember any of this happened beyond the initial change, and whether she’ll think even that was just a hallucination from bad booze if she wakes up again as her old self tomorrow.”

“But that means she’ll probably change tomorrow again, probably earlier in the day,” I pointed out.

Nora nodded somberly. “As much as I’d like to help out, you understand how that’s going to be hard to do given that she knows who I am and that we’ve told her in no uncertain terms to never approach us again.”

“You mean you and Selena,” I corrected, “she’s obviously fine with just me.”

Nora seemed to raise her eyebrow, but her expression changed to pause to consider something. She pondered something in silence for a few seconds and then spoke up. “Okay, this is going to be a weird plan, but it might work.”

“Go on,” I prodded.

“If you transform tonight, we can just say that human you knew of friends who would be willing and able to help a wolfgirl in need, and pretend we don’t know who she is in this form,” she continued, “We’ll figure out when her housemate is coming back and sneak her back into the house, with her consent, during the night or early morning, that way she doesn’t raise any suspicions.”

“One question: why would she go along with going back into the house?” I spoke up.

“Because if she’s at all thinking straight, she won’t want us to know who she is. We’ll offer to take her back home under the cover of darkness.”

“And what if I don’t transform?” I asked.

“Then we’ll say that you, wolf-you, had to be somewhere tonight but send your best wishes, and we’ll have human-you “show up” a bit later in the evening, simple as that,” she replied.

I nodded. This was pretty foolproof. However, this did certainly complicate things. If she remembered what happened at all, she might be wary of me even in my human form, wolf ears and all, especially me being friends with her ex-friend. Furthermore, me changing at all tonight would mean I would have to deal with at least some more permanent changes. I couldn’t exactly kick her out of my room to just hole myself up there, and that would probably mean I’d transform for longer this month once Selena was let out. How funny that things just happened to be taken out of my control like that again. As much as I was still unsure of whether I wanted that, I didn’t see any other options if Johnson was going to be safe.

“Alright,” I replied, “it’ll have to do for now. Good thinking.”

As we sat there, I had just one more question: if this really was her first time transforming, why did it happen so soon, even before me? Must be the weirdness of the moon this month. I shook the pensiveness off and went to the kitchen to get some pork chop to cook. I normally didn’t really care enough to cook something as work-intensive as meat, but recently I’d been craving it somewhat on the regular and Nora had convinced me that eating it raw would, in fact, give me food poisoning.

It had been a long day, and I could only hope it wouldn’t get longer by being induced into yet another transformation. Eventually, the pork was finished cooking and I slapped it on the plate with some salad, another thing that Nora had convinced me to start taking the time to prepare. If it continued at this rate, she might coerce me out of all my maladaptive habits. Curses.

As I chewed mindlessly on the food, I noticed the beginnings of the moon creeping over the horizon from the large window. It looked supremely massive, from my perspective, and oddly soothing. As I gazed into its light, I wondered if things might just turn out alright in this situation, and maybe I wouldn’t even have to worry about participating in tonight’s activities as Selena. On cue, my neck tickled. Shit, well, here we went again.

Leviathan86

If I could be as creative with my titles as I was with my plots, maybe this story would have better metrics. Lmao.