The Werewolf on Christmas:
A Very Hairy YA Christmas Story
By Rusty Fischer, author of My Big, Fat, Hairy Werewolf Intervention
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The Werewolf on Christmas
Rusty Fischer
Copyright 2013 by Rusty Fischer
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This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Cover credit: © hypnocreative – Fotolia.com
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The Werewolf on Christmas:
A Very Hairy YA Christmas Story
My stepmom comes in first. Of course. She looks hesitant, but hopeful, in a soft red sweater over a stiff white blouse, with a little evergreen pin just so on her collar. Her raven hair is shorter than it was at Thanksgiving, brushing her shoulders as she steps on tippy-toes to look past the guards at me.
Her lush, Latin skin is pale, too. I wonder if she’s just nervous, or sad, or depressed. For now, though, she sees me and lights up, and my heart melts a little for her. And for me. And for us all.
“Jace!” she cries, but the security guards on either side of the door impose, quieting her, blocking her. They’re afraid any “seasonal stimulation” might upset me. I roll my eyes and she apologizes from across the room.
“Merry Christmas, honey!” she cries even as they pat her down, her straight black hair cut bobbing around as they slide big hands over her arms and down her legs.
“Oh, surely not my Christmas tree pin?” she argues as Reggie, the beefier of the two guards, slides it from her collar and into the plastic bucket the other guard, Claudell, holds out to him.
“Ma’am, you have no idea what a monster like him could do with this.”
Reggie casts me a glance that says, “Don’t even try, punk.” Instinctively, despite my best attempts at fronting like I’m some wild beast, I flinch.
I roll my eyes at Carmen, my stepmother, and she rolls them back. “How are you, Jace?” she asks when she finally slides into the chair next to me, breathless and flustered from the frisking. Her accent is always a little thicker when she’s nervous, but she’s keeping it fairly under control for the moment, considering where we are. That being a gaily decorated conference room at Project Paranormal, a government rehab facility for werewolves, lycans and shifters.
I’m considered a “low priority” because I’m old school. You know, bitten by a werewolf, only morphs during a full moon, can’t shift at will, that whole 50s black and white movie mythology everybody seems to forget still exists.
I only have security guards around today because this Christmas Eve happens to come with a full moon attached, so in a few hours I’ll be naked, locked in my cage down in Holding, three floors below ground.
Merry Christmas!
But for now, I’m allowed to have visitors. And punch and cake and presents and cheesy Christmas carols oozing from a cheap, tinny CD player across the room. So as long as I keep one hand chained to the arm of the chair I’m sitting in and don’t make any sudden moves, I can visit with my family.
Or, what’s left of them.
Dad comes in next, sheepish as always, twenty-plus years older than Carmen and two or three shades paler. He looks rough, hard, barely holding it together. His only nod toward the holiday is a cheap, shiny tie Carmen probably made him stop and buy at a gas station on the way down.
“Hey Bud,” he says, voice gravelly. I can smell the nicotine on him from a mile away as Reggie and Claudell frisk him heartily at the door. He grunts each time they get close to his armpits, butt or crotch. However many times he comes to visit, I don’t think he’ll ever get used to being frisked at the door.
“Hi Dad,” I say, going to wave and forgetting my right hand is chained to the chair. The metal cuff rasps against the metal chair arm and he frowns.
“Does it have to be like this?” Dad grouses to Reggie, looking up at him as the massive guard pats down Dad’s bulging belly. “It’s been six months since his last incident.”
“Unless you want your family to be slaughtered for the holidays, sir, yes it is.” Reggie’s voice is stern, like his fists. And his feet.
Dad shakes his head and walks over, sits on the other side of me with a heavy grunt. He grabs my free hand, tightly, in a way he never used to do before I came here. “Merry Christmas, pal.”
“Hi Dad.” He tugs me in for an awkward hug, one I can only half-return with one hand chained to the chair, but at least it’s something.
Then we sit, waiting awkwardly for a few more seconds, until I see Tracy teeter in on heels too tall for her, wearing a snug red sweater only buttoned at the top, over an even tighter green blouse barely buttoned at all.
“Come on you guys,” I grumble, noting the length of my sister’s short-short red and green gingham skirt and the lime green stockings stretched to breaking up her endless little legs. “Are you even trying since I’ve been gone?”
“You know what she’s like,” sighs Carmen, eyes settling on the thick black heels at the end of Tracy’s coltish legs.
“Uncontrollable,” grumbles Dad, looking away. “Forget winter break, pal. She’s been on suspension for the last two months.”
“Now Phil,” cautions my stepmother, taking his hand and squeezing it tightly before letting it go. “You know how hard it’s been since what happened to… her mother.”
Her mother. My mother. The mother who put me here. Who put us all here, really.
Tracy flirts with the guards as they frisk her, twirling some kind of nuclear colored pink gum around on the tip of one finger as they aggressively rub down her legs and arms in ways that go far beyond rent-a-cop protocol.
“Careful,” says Claudell, the shorter, beefier, uglier guard, winking to his taller partner and guffawing. “This one looks like she’s packing.”
“Packing something,” agrees Rex with a lurid wink. Right there. In front of me. In front of Carmen. In front of Dad.
“Hey!” Dad barks, getting up out of his chair, fists clenched and hammy at his side.
“Relax,” Reggie and Tracy say at the same time.
Claudell reaches for the night stick-slash-cattle prod hanging from his creaky leather belt. “Sit back down, sir.” His voice is casually threatening, but threatening just the same.
I grab for Dad’s belt and haul him back down. He looks at me, huffy, like it’s my fault my sister turned into a tramp.
“She’s fine,” Reggie adds, not even turning to address Dad.
Tracy shoots me a look. “I’m. Fine.” Then she winks, like she’s starring in some sexy perfume commercial and I’m the director.
Tracy is fourteen.
She slinks over, wavy auburn hair tucked half under a shiny Santa cap that looks more like a disco ball. I see a little of Mom in her, but it’s so buried under thick mascara and torn stockings I can’t look too long or I’ll get even sadder, which at this point is really saying something.
She slides a chair away from the wall and pulls it up in front of mine and then slinks down into it up to her shoulders, like she’s thinking of taking a nap. “Merry Christmas, brother.”
“You too, Tracy.”
“We bought presents,” she says, jerking a thumb at the doorway where Reggie and Claudell are inspecting them for contraband. “But Thing 1 and Thing 2 over there confiscated them on our way in.”
“I got you some stuff, too,” I say.
“How?” asks Carmen. “I thought they revoked your off campus privileges after your last… incident.”
“They did,”
I say. “But I’ve been doing extra chores for commissary credits and bartered them with a few of the guards.”
“So… what?” asks Tracy, mouth full of gum and voice full of disdain. “You had guards do your Christmas shopping for you?”
I nod toward the corner closest to the buffet table. “Sort of.” Three heads turn to find three nightstick sized cattle prods leaning in the corner, each with a bright red bow stuck on top.
“Merry Christmas,” I say, ironically, to the sound of imaginary crickets chirping as they stare at their “presents.”
“Uh, thanks son,” Dad says, arching one eyebrow in Carmen’s direction.
“Yeah, awesome,” says Tracy. “Just what every teenager needs. Their own 200-watt vibrator!”
“Tracy!” we all yell at once. From either side of the door, leaning against the wall at their backs, beefy arms crossed over their steroid chests, the two guards snicker, nodding their approval.
“What?” she asks, adjusting her Santa hat as she crosses her legs underneath her, sitting-around-the-campfire style. I don’t want to notice, I really, really don’t, but it’s hard to ignore the candy cane