My Lucky Day, a Werewolf story by Jennifer Weigel
What’s a werewolf to do when the moon is (or isn’t) full?…
It was my Lucky Day.
It was a full moon after all, and St. Patrick’s Day to boot, and I was off work for a change of pace. Well, it was a great night anyway – working third shift security at the junkyard gets you all mixed up on when the supposed “day” is… Nonetheless, it was day to me even if it was after 10 PM, and I’ve never been one to care about the formality of the clock anyhow. I could feel it deep within my bones, it was going to be my Lucky Day, and no one was going to convince me otherwise.
I rubbed the rabbit’s foot in my pocket as I entered the gas station convenience mart. It was busy for this time of night, but no matter. It was a great night to buy a scratchers ticket. Maybe I’d get two and double my chances. Nah, why shell out more cash for an extra when the win was already a shoe in? Though they are fun to scratch off regardless. That ticket was going to be my train outta here, far away from the city to my dream-cabin in the woods surrounded by trees and rabbits and squirrels and raccoons where I could be one with nature.
I grabbed a milk chug and the last frosted sugar cookie emblazoned with the word “Lucky” scrawled upon its glazed surface waiting just for me. Cookies were always my favorite – I don’t care what kind, crunchy or chewy, they’re all good. Anyone with any sense knows not to touch the day-old donuts sitting out until they bear a stronger resemblance to crumbly dry Styrofoam circles than to food, and the brownies are always sub-par, besides which I’m not all that into chocolate and it’s bad for you anyway. But today they still had one cookie left, even now. It was a sure thing though; after all, it was my Lucky Day.
I opened the cookie and nibbled away at the velvety pastry while standing in line. It was just the right mix of crunchy and chewy with sweet buttery overtones. I savored every delectable morsel. The clerk threw some change and a pack of cigarettes across the counter to a waitress on her way home from the diner up the street still wearing her blue checkered uniform. The aroma of cheap coffee and blueberry pie wafted through the pervasive noxious cigarette-scented cloud that followed her everywhere. The clerk was too far away to tell.
There were a handful of teens just milling about the beer cooler, nondescript in their oversized denim jackets and their I’m-too-cool-to-see sunglasses at night. They smelled like a perpetual party at the keg. Wasn’t there a curfew? As a bunch of them poured together through the front door, unsurprisingly smuggling several beers out in their baggy saggy pants pockets, one of them bumped into me. I glared at the youth and growled, “Excuse me,” but he just grumbled as he wandered towards the front with his pack. Kids nowadays. Impossible.
The clerk called after them, “Hey there, hold up!”
A straggling nondescript teen standing behind me in line pulled a gun and shouted, “Don’t anybody move!”
All I could think was how dare you…? It’s my Lucky Day! Punk kids like these are always pissing on everyone else’s lawns – this is why there should be a curfew. The waitress in front of me leapt to the floor as the youth set his sights on the gas station clerk, who had reached behind the counter to extract a shotgun.
Things were about to get stupid… or crazy… or both. No matter, it wasn’t my neck on the line for a change. I was off work for the night and this wasn’t my territory anyway. I ate another bite of the cookie as I watched the development.
The teen shouted, “Get out of the way, Santa!”
How was I supposed to know he was talking to me? Yeah, I had thick white hair and was eating a cookie, but I had never been addressed as Santa before. Sure, I’d been called dawg, cur, mongrel, and I was even once mistakenly addressed as bitch, but never Santa. But then again, I’d forgotten it was a full moon, so Santa made a little more sense in that context I suppose, though Aqualung would have probably been more fitting. At any rate, I didn’t move in time.
The clerk jerked to the side and let loose with the shotgun, destroying a cardboard display and sending cheap crappy dime store candy flying everywhere like too much tire shredder shrapnel. The teen behind me fired his gun in response. I was livid. How dare they interrupt my Lucky Day?! I stroked the rabbit’s foot again before I lunged and snapped at the teen. He gasped, eyes growing wide like saucers and pointing at me with a quivering finger as he skidded backwards, turned tail, and ran.
The clerk lurched outside after him and readied his shotgun on the trash canister just beyond the front door, letting loose another couple of rounds at the fleeing kids as they sped off in a beater Cadillac. The diner waitress darted into the bathroom in the back corner of the convenience mart, slammed the door, and bolted it from inside. I stood there watching the scene unfold as I ate another bite of my cookie. There was blood on my hand. I sniffed it; it was mine.
I hadn’t realized the gun the teen had fired had clipped my side. Good thing he wasn’t using silver bullets. The wound was mending quickly as usual, with a fine coating of fur forming over the knitting flesh before smoothing to human skin by the light of the full moon. But the shirt was ruined. Crap. I’d have to borrow another one next month. I left a wad of cash on the counter to pay for my treats. I’ve never been all that good at math but it was more than enough I’m sure.
As I wandered out the door and down the street towards the junkyard, I finished off the cookie and guzzled the milk chug in one gulp. I stroked the rabbit’s foot again and then fingered the leather collar around my neck. Burned into the leather was my name, Lucky. It was still my Lucky Day, no matter what those punk teens and the gas station clerk did. Next full moon I’d have to return and get those scratchers tickets, and another cookie if they’ve got one. Until then, it’s back to the junkyard to howl at the moon.
And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
Today on Nightmarish Nature we’re gonna revisit The Blob and jiggle our way to terror. Why? ‘Cause we’re just jellies – looking at those gelatinous denizens of the deep, as well as some snot-like land-bound monstrosities, and wishing we could ooze on down for some snoozy booze schmoozing action. Or something.
Honestly, I don’t know what exactly it is that jellyfish and slime molds do but whatever it is they do it well, which is why they’re still around despite being among the more ancient organism templates still in common use.
Jellyfish are on the rise.
Yeah, yeah, some species like moon jellies will hang out in huge blooms near the surface feeding, but that’s not what I meant. Jellyfish populations are up. They’re honing in on the open over-fished ocean and making themselves at home. Again.
And, although this makes the sea turtles happy since jellies are a favorite food staple of theirs, not much else is excited about the development. Except for those fish that like to hide out inside of their bells, assuming they don’t accidentally get eaten hanging out in there. But that’s a risk you gotta take when you’re trying to escape predation by surrounding yourself in a bubble of danger that itself wants to eat you. Be eaten or be eaten. Oh, wait…
So what makes jellies so scary?
Jellyfish pack some mighty venom. Despite obvious differences in mobility, they are related to anemones and corals. But not the Man o’ War which looks similar but is actually a community of microorganisms that function together as a whole, not one creature. Not that it matters when you’re on the wrong end of a nematocyst, really. Because regardless what it’s attached to, that stings.
Box jellies are among the most venomous creatures in the world and can move of their own accord rather than just drifting about like many smaller jellyfish do. And even if they aren’t deadly, the venom from many jellyfish species will cause blisters and lesions that can take a long time to heal. So even if they do resemble free-floating plastic grocery bags, you’d do best to steer clear. Because those are some dangerous curves.
But what does this have to do with slime molds?
Absolutely nothing. I honestly don’t know enough about jellyfish or slime molds to devote the whole of a Nightmarish Nature segment to either, so they had to share. Essentially, this bit is what happened when I decided to toast a bagel before coming up with something to write about and spent a tad too much time in contemplation of my breakfast. I guess we’re lucky I didn’t have any cream cheese or clotted cream…
Oh, and also thinking about gelatinous cubes and oozes in the role-playing game sense – because those sort of seem like a weird hybrid between jellies and slime molds, as does The Blob. Any of those amoeba influenced creatures are horrific by their very nature – they don’t even need to be souped up, just ask anyone who’s had dysentery.
And one of the most interesting thing about slime molds is that they can take the shortest path to food even when confronted with very complex barriers. They are maze masterminds and would give the Minotaur more than a run for his money, especially if he had or was food. They have even proven capable of determining the most efficient paths for water lines or railways in metropolitan regions, which is kind of crazy when you really think about it. Check it out in Scientific American here. So, if we assume that this is essentially the model upon which The Blob was built, then it’s kind of a miracle anything got away. And slime molds are coming under closer scrutiny and study as alternative means of creating computer components are being explored.
Jellies are the Wave of the Future.
We are learning that there may be a myriad of uses for jellyfish from foodstuffs to cosmetic products as we rethink how we interact with them. They are even proving useful in cleaning up plastic pollution. I don’t know how I feel about the foodstuff angle for all that they’ve been a part of various recipes for a long time. From what I’ve seen of the jellyfish cookbook recipes, they just don’t look that appealing. But then again I hate boba with a passion, so I’m probably not the best candidate to consider the possibility.
So it seems that jellies are kind of the wave of the future as we find that they can help solve our problems. That’s pretty impressive for some brainless millions of years old critter condiments. Past – present – perpetuity! Who knows what else we’d have found if evolution hadn’t cleaned out the fridge every so often?
Feel free to check out more Nightmarish Nature here.
Continuing our junkyard dawg werewolf story from the previous St. Patrick’s Days… though technically he’s more of a wolfwere but wolfwhatever. Anyway, here are Part 1 from 2022, Part 2 from 2023 and Part 3 from 2024 if you want to catch up.
Yeah I don’t know how you managed to find me after all this time. We haven’t been the easiest to track down, Monty and I, and we like it that way. Though actually, you’ve managed to find me every St. Patrick’s Day since 2022 despite me being someplace else every single time. It’s a little disconcerting, like I’m starting to wonder if I was microchipped way back in the day in 2021 when I was out lollygagging around and blacked out behind that taco hut…
Anyway as I’d mentioned before, that Scratchers was a winner. And I’d already moved in with Monty come last St. Patrick’s Day. Hell, he’d already begun the process of cashing in the Scratchers, and what a process that was. It made my head spin, like too many squirrels chirping at you from three different trees at once. We did get the money eventually though.
Since I saw you last, we were kicked out of Monty’s crap apartment and had gone to live with his parents while we sorted things out. Thank goodness that was short-lived; his mother is a nosy one for sure, and Monty didn’t want to let on he was sitting on a gold mine as he knew they’d want a cut even though they had it made already. She did make a mean brisket though, and it sure beat living with Sal. Just sayin.
Anyway, we finally got a better beater car and headed west. I was livin’ the dream. We were seeing the country, driving out along old Route 66, for the most part. At least until our car broke down just outside of Roswell near the mountains and we decided to just shack it up there. (Boy, Monty sure can pick ‘em. It’s like he has radar for bad cars. Calling them lemons would be generous. At least it’s not high maintenance women who won’t toss you table scraps or let you up on the sofa.)
We found ourselves the perfect little cabin in the woods. And it turns out we were in the heart of Bigfoot Country, depending on who you ask. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never seen one. But it seems that Monty was all into all of those supernatural things: aliens, Bigfoot, even werewolves. And finding out his instincts on me were legit only added fuel to that fire. So now he sees himself as some sort of paranormal investigator.
Whatever. I keep telling him this werewolf gig isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, and it doesn’t work like in the movies. I wasn’t bitten, and I generally don’t bite unless provoked. He says technically I’m a wolfwere, to which I just reply “Where?” and smile. Whatever. It’s the little things I guess. I just wish everything didn’t come out as a bark most of the time, though Monty’s gotten pretty good at interpreting… As long as he doesn’t get the government involved, and considering his take on the government himself that would seem to be a long stretch. We both prefer the down low.
So here we are, still livin’ the dream. There aren’t all that many rabbits out here but it’s quiet and the locals don’t seem to notice me all that much. And Monty can run around and make like he’s gonna have some kind of sighting of Bigfoot or aliens or the like. As long as the pantry’s stocked it’s no hair off my back. Sure, there are scads of tourists, but they can be fun to mess around with, especially at that time of the month if I happen to catch them out and about.
Speaking of tourists, I even ran into that misspent youth from way back in 2021 at the convenience store; I spotted him at the Quickie Mart along the highway here. I guess he and his girlfriend were apparently on walkabout (or car-about) perhaps making their way to California or something. He even bought me another cookie. Small world. But we all knew that already…
If you enjoyed this werewolf wolfwere wolfwhatever saga, feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
You’ve seen me as Theda Bara, a Witch, and a Necromancer already (as well as Cleopatra, Elvis, and Andy Warhol) but here are some more fun costumes I’ve worn while figure modeling for the Friday morning art group at Hutchinson Art Center. The group is switching to Saturdays but hopefully I’ll still be able to make it in from time to time… Life’s a circus, or maybe a magic act in a shamanic ritual with Holly Hobbie… At any rate – beam me up Scotty, I have your missing spaceship part…
Yeah yeah, so none of that was really all that terrifying. Just another time warp in all honesty. At least there’s still some residual Rocky Horror vibes to be found, but then again, there usually are with me when I get into the identity based costumes.
But in follow up and in the spirit of so much of my other randomness, here’s a music video for Everything Changes by Eytan and The Embassy. Check it out if you want to see some more fun costumes in an immersive homage montage experience unlike any other. (If the video doesn’t load, just follow the link here.) See how many artists you can recognize in this quick change setup. Ready… Set… Go!
