Year With the Werewolf

Cautious elation kept Toxic afloat just as much as the air current he soared on as various moments throughout the night kept replaying in his head. It was all so surreal he almost doubted it actually happened, but the warmth and roughness of Chop Hopper's hand clasped firmly to his own was undeniable, and frankly, incredibly welcome. Coupled with the way recalling the werewolf's abrupt request to hold hands and the tentative excitement written on Chop Hopper's face when he obliged, almost made his dead heart jump and wonder if it was possible for a bat to smile.

Can't believe I actually did that...

Not only had he done it, but the barrage of self-loathing and regret he expected to weather once their fingers laced together was completely absent. In its place had been that overwhelming fuzzy-blooming feeling in his chest that he'd been battling so hard since his earlier interactions with Chop Hopper, spreading from his core to the tips of his fingers and toes. As doting and affectionate as he could be with Brittany, the simple pleasure of holding Chop Hopper's hand was quite the rush that he was unsure anything else could compare to. And going by what the werewolf had nearly said to him, this might just be the beginning of similar events.

Unfortunately for him, he had a pile of anxiety-inducing chores to deal with that left a massive black smudge on his state of bliss. Between impending unemployment and the incomprehensible bombshell of Brittany's frantic messages, he was surely about to endure much more unpleasant circumstances than feeling girly for holding hands or whatever his neurotic ass could come up with.

Was that a typo, or did Brits actually call Jojo a 'she'?

Toxic wouldn't afford himself a moment of speculation. Instead, he'd cling to the memory of the werewolf's spooky brown eyes lighting up with joy and the warm feeling of his rough hands while he rigidly sailed along the breeze toward Brittany's house.

---

"Tofu," Brittany gasped into his shirt. "I'm so glad you're okay."

Toxic kept his arms wrapped around his friend, his nose tucked into her wavy blond nest of hair. "I'm so sorry I made you worry," he told her in a low rumble. "I was...havin' a really fuckin' bad time. I needed a minute."

Brittany shook her head and released him, rubbing away the lone tear that escaped her lashes. "Well, I'm happy that you're out of it now...at least, I think you are? Is there anything I can do?"

Toxic flashed her a tired smile. "Well, I'm here at least. And yeah actually, there is. I need you to tell me what had you all freaked out in code on my phone."

A faint gasp reached Toxic's ears as Brittany turned and sank down into her sofa cushions, followed by two quick pats beside her. "You might wanna sit down. Or not, I dunno, with the whole...do vampires faint!?" She reached out and grabbed his hand, then snatched it away before he could process what she'd done. "Gah, probably not. I guess you can just stand there, it's closer to the TV..."

Toxic lowered himself into the space beside her. "Brits..."

"Right, right," she actively attempted to refocus with a flap of her hands. "That...I don't even know what to talk about first! I guess, uh, the less confusing thing...I'll start with Jojo, um..."

Toxic's guts knotted up in his stomach when she turned to face him with a strained smile. "Jojo, uh...she came by a little while ago. Scared and crying and everything. She told me that, she told me that she saw you a while ago. In her house."

Somehow Toxic's corpse managed to feel even colder than normal. "She saw me? She saw me?"

"Ohhh," Brittany worried her lip under her teeth, but Toxic remained stone still and kept his impending emotional outburst locked down behind a distant, mildly curious mask. It was dawning on him that he had not misheard nor misread, and now it was up to his friend to catch him up on this revelation of Jojo's pronouns. "I know you're not supposed to like, tell people without express permission, right!? But, like, I felt really guilty and nasty if I kept talking about her like a man behind her back. And I thought, well, Tofu will understand, he had to suffer that..." Brittany's ramble slowed with the steady frown contorting her features. "...Because of her. But I felt like I had to be understanding because she felt so terrible about what she did to you, but I knew you were still angry at her. Hell, I was still angry at her, but I...I wonder if, like, if I like--"

"Slow down, Brits," Toxic told her softly. "You lookin' around like somebody about to jump you. It's okay. Well, it might not be, I don't know who Jojo wanna tell. She basically doin’ like me, ain't she?"

It felt a little foolish to spell it out any further, but Brittany's frantic, tight-lipped nodding banished any doubt he might have had about his ex-friend. He dropped his chin into his hand and let out a short laugh of disbelief, though the sound strayed far more into sighing territory than he'd intended. "Don't tell me I had somethin' to do with it," he told her, managing to sound lighthearted in spite of the small personifications of anger and a strange sense of relief duking it out in his chest.

"Probably, I think she said something about...oh, it feels bad to say behind her back!" Brittany said weakly. "But anyway, you told me you rescued Jojo from Chop Hopper, but I didn't know she recognized you or that you talked to her..."

Toxic's eyes snapped wide open as his scattered priorities suddenly lined up in his mind and started slapping sense into his prefrontal cortex. "Fuck," he hissed, making his friend flinch from the intensity that he was now staring at her with. "She really told you I talked to her!? What did you say? Does she know that I've been here with you? Or that I'm a--"

"No!" Brittany cut him off sharply. "I didnt expose you. I didn't really...get to say anything, actually. I didn't know what I could say either, and she was panicking, so I panicked too. Told her she was talking crazy and that she had to leave." With that, her stern expression softened just a little, but Toxic could tell she was still cross. "I wish you hadn't kept me in the dark about that, TJ. I can't cover for you if I never know what version of events is taking place!"

Her use of his real name in such a condescending and scolding manner made his already fraught nerves sizzle. "I ain't anticipate Jojo runnin' back to tell you what had happened, especially since we wasn't on speaking terms with her last time I knew," he bit out. "But I know I shoulda told you anyway. A lot had happened that day, and I was kinda ready to forget about it."

Brittany's raised shoulders deflated at the latter half of his statement, and she blew a steady breath out of her lips. "Argh, it's fine. I have to tell you about the other thing...have you seen the fucking news lately!?"

Toxic recalled his several-day wall staring marathon and shook his head, feeling secretly abashed.

A flurry of blond hair and scurrying pale hands made Toxic leap back onto the arm of the sofa. He watched as she unearthed a remote from the cushions and tapped hard at the power button in such quick succession that he wondered if she might accidentally start turning it on and off before the picture even got to appear. Unfortunately for him, it eventually did, and his jaw dropped open at what he was met with.

"That's him, isn't it!?" came Brittany's hoarse whisper. "Except it can't be. You would have known if he was...?"

"He ain't," Toxic said a little too quickly. "So who the fuck is this...?"

"I'm Chop Hopper, and I'm a vampire."

Flashing lights detonated in rapid blinding white circles, nearly overexposing the unmistakable visage of a pale man with a wide scar across his nose and multiple scars around his face. But even beneath the heavy black shadows of his protective umbrella and the white flashes in front of him, he was just visible enough to show that something about him was off. Not just to Toxic and Brittany, but to the camera crew and interviewers as well.

"You claim to be a vampire, and yet our headquarters are saying they can see you perfectly on camera!"

"Haven't vampires always been invisible in photography and video?"

The false Chop Hopper smiled and waved them off with the heavy, metallic clatter of his restraints. "Whatever information you've gotten out of your previous captives will hopefully be the last of it. I do not intend to share the extent of my abilities."

Then, of course, questions that actually mattered.

"Were you responsible for all the murders taking place here!?"

"Are you the very same Chop Hopper that was reported massacring from town to town years ago?"

"How many more of you are around here?"

"Why have you agreed to be taken in if you won't explain anything to us?" Finally shouted a frustrated reporter.

Toxic's eyes practically bore holes into the screen, daring it to stop lying to him with the image of a werewolf he knew was likely kicking around a mud puddle somewhere. But alas, the golden-eyed Chop Hopper kept that cold, distant smile on his face as the guards roughly guided him past the thrusting microphones and cameras in the direction of what looked like a military-grade vehicle parked on a very familiar road. The garish local news logo splashed across the screen and ended that segment's recording.

"How did I miss all this shit...?" Toxic muttered.

"Good question!" Brittany cried beside him. "But seriously, that wasn't him, right!? So who knows what Chop Hopper looks like and is trying to pretend to be him!?"

"I...I don't know," Toxic looked away from the looping news story to gaze up at his friend, her face as full of questions as his head. "He told me he got a sister out there somewhere, but never mentioned a twin or nothin'. Let alone a fuckin' vampire that look like him."

"In stories, aren't vampires like...shapeshifters?" Brittany offered uncertainly.

Toxic stood upright and turned his back on the TV, eyes downcast and serious. "I wouldn't know. I ain't ever met none knowingly, and other than a bat, I can't change into nobody."

Regardless of his own abilities, Toxic knew the golden eyes and fangs of a vampire even if he'd never seen his own. A shadow of grief tugged at his heart when he remembered the way his auntie described his features to him the night he returned to her apartment--the one he occupied now--after an unknown assailant attacked and turned him from man to monster. So, there was no doubt what he saw on screen was a vampire, but the question was which one and why?

Maybe I ain't the only vampire he crossed.

An uncomfortable sensation settled in his stomach at the thought. Could it be that Chop Hopper had actually pulled the mess he was pulling elsewhere, but was chased off by the other one who was now seeking some kind of...defamation-oriented revenge? But why even do that when Chop Hopper was, for all his morally dubious meal choices and monster curse, just some guy to an outsider? There was no way of knowing without asking, and he didn't dare ruminate on the thought. Aside form that, the idea of being jealous of a vampire he made up in his mind almost made him want to cry laughing.

"What do we do?" Brittany murmured. "Do we even...do anything!? This is so bizzare."

Toxic stared blankly ahead, overwhelmed into a contemplative silence. She was right, what was to be done about this clone Chop Hopper, if anything? Unlike the actual werewolf, this stranger had yet to pose any threat to Toxic's feeding schedule and was already being carried away in chains by guards wearing the painfully familiar rancid, deadly white cloves of garlic. "I'll jus' ask Chops about it next time I see him," Toxic told her, pinching the bridge of his nose. "If it's somethin' that's gonna affect him or me, he might say what it is."

"You think he will? That's a good sign," Brittany responded in a suspiciously neutral tone. Toxic took one look at the glimmer in her eye and immediately noticed his slip of Chop Hopper's new nickname, which she undoubtedly noticed. Before he could start blustering and backpedaling his choice of titles, Brittany changed the subject back to something a little more grounded, albeit even more stressful.

"Jojo asked me if I'd seen you, too," Brittany sighed, slumping into her sofa cushions. "That's why I had told her she was talking crazy! I didn't know how to answer, and I'm kind of pissed about that. What am I supposed to do about her seeing you when I didn't think you would even let that happen!?"

"I don't know," he answered sharply. "What is there even to do? She's supposed to think I'm dead. Everyone's supposed to think I'm dead!"

"Jeez," Brittany muttered. "Well, I know I did."

"That's not--" Toxic hissed. "I'm not sayin' anythin' about you, I just...it's scary as fuck, Brits. Say you tell Jojo she really did see me and I tell her I wasn't just murdered, I was also turned into a vampire...what then? How can I know she won't tell nobody else? What will happen to me when the wrong people find out that I'm a vampire!?" His unrestrained voice raised during his rant as his frustration and confusion boiled over, sharpening his eyes and tongue until he could nearly slice her to ribbons just by looking at her. "We just watched some guy get carried away with chains and garlic this week. And I'd risk that for what? Jojo!? Don't forget this the same chick who treated me like shit alongside my mama just 'cos I didn't wanna live a lie anymore! At this point you can tell her to fuck herself, and I don't wanna hear another goddamned thing about Jojo again!"

"But she..." Brittany said meekly. "She told me she was sorry about how she treated you...I really think it might be worth trying to, um..."

 Toxic angrily shrugged off her hand before she finished laying it on his shoulder, stunned silent with utter disbelief of what he was hearing. In a swift motion, he snatched his hat off the sofa and stood up to leave. It’s like she ain’t heard shit I just said!

"Tofu, wait," Brittany called to him. "I...I can tell I messed up, I'm sorr--"

"I don't wanna hear it," Toxic seethed. "I'm sorry I barged in here in the middle of the night. You ain't gotta worry about that anymore, trust."

Not even Toxic knew if he could follow through with what he'd just implied since he couldn't trust the words coming out of his mouth right now. His thoughts and nerves were reduced to shrapnel in the tornado whirling around in his skull, and the end result was sloppy, half-formed ideas and feelings gushing around his stress-scorched cranium.

It's just one thing after another!

As he fluttered into the night sky, the overwhelming majority of him felt genuinely fearful of how quickly his visit with Brittany had turned sour when he'd gone there with the intention to make amends for his wall of silence. Why can't shit get back decent and just...stay that way? Toxic thought, worry practically dripping out of his furry black ears. I wonder if it'll ever stop bein' like this. Is it really not possible for me to be friends with Brittany again because of all this shit?

The shit he was referring to, as difficult as he found it to name these numerous concerns, was how every problem he encountered with Brittany seemed to tie back into her humanity and his vampire curse. His need to drink blood, to hide the fact that he was turned from man to monster long before he'd been reported dead, and the way he seemed to cause unending turbulence in his friend's life by merely existing in her awareness again was all because of what he was. A seed of guilt formed in the pit of his stomach when he admitted to himself that it was all becoming too much for him to bear, considering he pinned himself as the cause of all the upheaval. So, what was there to do?

Go home, Toxic thought shakily to himself. Go home. There ain't nothin' you can say right to Brits right now...especially now that she probably think you hate her. 

…Do I?

He didn’t have to spend any time on the question.

No…but I’m pissed at her. She probably do think I hate her anyway…nice fuckin' going, as usual.

The starry night sky disappeared behind a blanket of pitch black as Toxic closed his eyes and coasted along the breeze, stretching out his little bat wings and feeling the wind tug at his short fur. As he actively tried to clear his mind, its wild churning slowly ceased and the writhing tendrils of anxiety calmed into less frantic tangles of passing thought until, eventually, his consciousness wandered back into the hovel under a tree. Eyes still shut and wings beating intermittently, the tension gradually ebbed off of him and into the air as he thought about nothing but Chop Hopper's spooky eyes and the feeling of holding his hand.

He sighed.