How exactly do you dress for a meeting with a werewolf? There was nothing in all the books or file folders that had taken over my apartment about it, the best I could come up with was to look as unappetizing as possible. I put on a relatively clean blue polo and a pair of dress khakis. I was going to meet a mythical creature, I wanted to look at least a little nice. I frowned at my reflection in the grimy mirror above my dresser, my pale image wasn’t familiar to me, the hair stuck out like a sore thumb.

When I first came to college three years ago, I was a little rough around the edges, my dark hair was always a little longer than it should have been, reaching to just below my ears, and my face loved to get its five o’clock shadow at around noon. My reflection now was way beyond all that, a creepy subway hobo was staring back at me. My hair was all the way past my shoulders, curling itself in a mass that made me wince to think about brushing. At some point over the course of the past three years, my stubble had snuck up on me as well, creating a thick, fuzzy beard that had taken over my chin and jawline. The only part of my face that I recognized were my grey eyes and even they were now surrounded by crow’s feet from all the late nights squinted at faded, old text.

A rapid knock at the door awoke me from my horrified fascination with my reflection and my eyes glanced to the alarm clock next to my bed, five fifty-four, the pizza was early, probably would be cold by the time Daniel showed up. Oh well, hot pizza was not specified in the deal.

“Second!” I yelled when the knock came again.

I checked myself out again in the mirror and haphazardly tried to smooth down my tangled mane of hair; it was useless and I had no idea why it should begin to matter to me now when I had looked like a caveman to everyone else for years. Begrudgingly, I went to the front door of my apartment, wishing the sun was already down and it would be dark enough in the living room to hide. A chipper young woman greeted me, her blonde hair pulled back into a cute ponytail that stuck out the back of her “Mario’s Pizza” baseball cap. She was one of those girl next door types, pretty and social, yet still attainable by even the mildly nerdy. Too bad I had sailed right past nerdy and straight to tinfoil hat land long ago.

“Mr. Blacke?” she asked, a tad less perky than her greeting. Couldn’t really blame her, if I was her, I’d have already been on the phone to the local news network telling them that ever elusive “missing link” lived in a dark little apartment in the midwest.

“Yes, how much do I owe you?” I asked as cordially as possible, giving her a smile.

The smile must have only added to the creepy factor, because her smile faltered and she handed me the receipt without saying a word. I was too depressed by her reaction to try to fix it. The total was only $15, but I handed her $25, being aware of my appearance was going to be pricey if I left myself at the bottom of the barrel. She handed me the pizza and gingerly took the money, then scurried away down the hallway without so much as another glance at me.

The beard had to come off. The hair could be dealt with later by a professional with a chainsaw, but fur that made people think I was going to eat them was unacceptable. I broke out the “grown man” beard trimmer mom had given me as a college-bound gift and spent the next fifteen minutes hacking my way through three years of indifference. The skin beneath tingled and itched, as if being covered for so long had been choking the life out of it. My reflection was already looking better, but I unburied my ill-used hairbrush from under the layer of empty candy bar wrappers and forced it through my hair. The only way to fix most of the knots seemed to be to rip them out, painful, but at least the less hair I had, the smoother it looked.

“Hey, points on having the pizza here, minus some that it’s cold. Lame timing, bro,” Daniel called from the kitchen.

I always forgot to lock my door and Daniel was never very great at manners, so I suppose it worked out well.

“Just wanted to make sure you’d have reason to stay,” I called back and pulled the now mostly behaving mass of hair back into a ponytail.

“Yeah, yeah, all I hear is that you’re trying to get into my pants. Get me double bacon next time and I might let you take me,” he jabbed, followed by the creek of the fridge door. “You’ll need to get some beer in this thing though if you want me to be the quivering, uninhibited type. You strike me as dying to be the one in charge for once.”

“Your mom’s that type,” I said with a half-smirk from the kitchen doorway.

“Ooo, nice one.” He looked me up and down. “So tell me, in to creepy werewolf sex much? You can tell me the truth, trust me, I assume much worse things about you already.”

“What?”

“The get up,” he said and motioned to me, “and it might be the first time I’ve seen you clean shaven and at least attempting some level of grooming. Apparently all it takes is a dog… werewolf thing showing up at your door, male at that. Gay werewolf sex, is that what gets you off? Might need to also add a furry suit to that extra bacon and beer.”

“That’s disgusting,” I said with a sigh. Once he got witty things into his head, he never let them go. Ever.

“Your outfit says otherwise, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re hiding a nice bottle of wine somewhere around here. Need a condom? I’m sure you didn’t have a reason to have them around before,” he continued between mouthfuls of pizza.

“I just want to make a good impression and for your information,” I continued, ticked at his new found source of teasing, “I shaved and did my hair because I freaked out the pizza girl.” As soon as the words left my mouth I knew they were a mistake.

His eyes widened and a grin spread across his deeply Irish features. “I see, so you turned this way because human females, and possibly all females, are repulsed by you. Got it. Buddy, I won’t judge you, I understand your pain,” he tormented in the most mocking tone he could manage.

I rolled my eyes. There were times, most times, when I had trouble imagining just how I ended up with him as my only friend in the world. Looking back, I knew why, he had accepted that I was weird and obsessed and went with it. We had met in a bar, back when I still had some balance between a social life and my obsession with werewolves. Of course, the major reason my social life stopped is that I never quite learned how to shut up about it and at least pretend to know who the local sports team was.

Daniel had been drunk, drunk enough to sit down next to me, a total stranger, and ask what I was in to. I spilled my guts about my weird hobby, heavily lubricated by beer he was buying, while he sat and listened, giving a nod at appropriate times. By all normal logic, he should have laughed, called me a loser, and went off to find someone normal; granted, he did indeed do the first two, but he also asked for my cell number. He said that he, “had never seen such a depressed loser with weird habits that needed a friend,” more than me. Friendship out of pity? No I wasn’t proud enough to be against that.

“Seriously, did you leave the door open when you came up,” I asked.

“Yeah, your boyfriend should have no problem getting up the stairs, I just hope you remembered the flowers.”

Ignoring the last comment, I picked up a slice of room temperature pizza and realized how much I missed “real” food. Between going to school and spending every other waking moment researching left me no time for even a part-time job. Ramen starts to lose its charm after the fiftieth meal in a row. Laugh all you want, but those fifty meals cost me all of a couple bucks if I bought the cheap knock-off brand, which I always did. The pizza cost me at least two hundred meals worth of ramen, but it tasted like the sweetest of ambrosia. Just how long had it been since I tasted cheese? I tried not to think about it and just savor the meal, though Daniel took it as a sign that it was okay to finish up the rest of the box.

“Good job on not cheaping out on me. I eat from Mario’s at least once a day, but I never get tired of it,” he commented while licking the grease from his fingers.

I resisted the urge to strangle him and picked up the box and tossed it forlornly into the trash. Maybe in three more years I’d have a chance at eating real food again.

“Your pup’s late,” he said and shoved the piles of papers and books off my rarely utilized couch before plopping into it.

“Well he never really gave me a time, probably won’t be until dark though.”

Everything I was and had made myself to be was riding on the fact that I was indeed lucid and wasn’t just going crazy enough to make up an entire conversation between myself and a dog. An uneasy doubt passed through my mind, an all too vivid image of me half-asleep and stopping mid-pee to blabber incoherently to a passing golden retriever. In the back of my mind, I knew that was a much more likely scenario then me having talked to a werewolf, but I stubbornly clung to the assumption that a little sanity was left in me.

“I guess that would be why you don’t see them all the time, night owls or something,” he said jokingly, not that it was by any means a good joke. However, that became irrelevant with the sound of claws coming down the hallway. Daniel didn’t say anything, but he darted upright and stared at me like I was some sort of dark wizard. I only wished.

I should have taken the time to rub it in his face, tried my hand at my first victory dance, but I was too busy trying to not pee my pants out of excitement. My heart leapt to my throat when the unmistakable sound of a canine’s tail thumped against my door.

“Holy shit, you weren’t on shrooms!” he exclaimed at me, pacing back and forth. “Do you know what this means? We’re rich, we have proof of all this paranormal shit! Every talk show will eat this up, I need to go find the number for the early morning news, hold on.” He tore apart the mess on my desk looking for a phonebook, but I was too surprised at my bit of providence to tell him he was being an idiot.

The thump against the door came again and he stopped looking long enough to shove me towards the door. Sure, I had to let him… it…. in, but I found myself wishing I had cleaned up a bit first.

On the third thump I opened up the door, heart pounding with triumph and anticipation. A normal, excited golden retriever sat in my doorway, the leash around his neck wound up and clenched between his teeth. Without so much as a hint that he was anything other than a dog, he pushed past me into my living room and stared back at me from behind the couch. I wanted to use the leash to choke the laughter erupting from Daniel out of him.

“Oh man… oh man… David, this is too good. Tell the truth, you set this all up in an elaborate attempt to laugh me to death,” he wheezed, collapsing onto the couch and holding his sides. Tears squeezed their way down his cheeks as he struggled to breathe between laughing fits. Had he actually stopped breathing, I would have left him.

The dog opened his mouth and dropped the end of the leash followed by a loud burp. Daniel writhed on the couch, struggling for breath. I, however, saw hope in this.

“You going to lead me, boy?” I asked the dog. I’m not sure what I expected, if I really dared to hope the animal would speak, but I at least expected something more than the blank stare I got.

“Oh yes, we’re walking this dog,” Daniel gasped, getting to his feet. “I want to see the look on your face as he leads you to every tree in this city he wants to pee on. But please, have mercy, I need a drink first and to pee, I really don’t want to pee myself laughing at you.”

For some reason I waited for him, I guess my desperation for socialization was worse than I wanted to admit. It did give me time to get acquainted with the dog. I patted his head and he let out a loud fart. At least he was consistent.

“Okay, get his leash and let’s do this,” Daniel said with a giggle, back from the bathroom.

I tentatively picked up the end of the leash, the dog wagged his tail and bolted for the trash can, nudging at the empty pizza box and looking at me pitifully. Ignoring the chorus of snorting giggles behind me, I opened the box and gave him access to the little oil slick of cheese still stuck to the cardboard. While he thankfully licked the box clean, including a good bit of the top layer of cardboard, I noticed a small slip of paper in the back of his collar. It read: “Hi, my name is Bubbles, take my leash and let me lead you. If I’m a bad dog say, “No cookie.” I read this aloud much to the delight of Daniel.

“Bubbles?” he guffawed, “who names a male dog that? A gay man, that’s who. It’s all so clear to me now, you’re going to be lead into some secretive, speedo wearing, bear of a man’s lair for a night of unbridled passion. It’s your lucky day, my man.” He clapped me on the back and slipped a condom into my hand. What he said and did right then didn’t matter to me, what did matter was what I had just read.

“I’m so stupid,” I laughed aloud.

“You didn’t know this before?”

“It’s not a full moon tonight, not even close. He couldn’t have come here in form and probably didn’t want his normal identity given away, hence the messenger dog,” I explained, tossing the condom back to him. “Come on, I think this is still it, this dog will lead us to the werewolf.”

Daniel stared at me, saying nothing for a few moments before shaking his head at me. “In all seriousness, this is all crazy. I can only joke so much before I just feel too sorry for you. Even if I wanted to believe that line of thinking, it wasn’t a full moon when you supposedly met him, either.”

“I promise, if this all turns out to be wrong, take me to a mental institution. If I am making this all up I need the help, but for tonight, we go, okay?” I compromised and conveniently ignored the fact that he was right about the lack of a full moon. Maybe everyone was wrong about werewolves, maybe it only had to be kind of close to a full moon for it to work. I was willing to grasp at any straw that made the scenario even slightly more plausible.

He shrugged, but motioned to the dog and the door. It was a bit worrying to me that he was feeling too sorry for me to feel right about teasing, that level of pity doesn’t come out of nowhere. That wasn’t going to stop me from pursuing what was in front of me though. I was too close to finding out if I had been wasting my life or if I was about to open a door to a whole new set of rules for reality. I tugged on the leash, but Bubbles was still trying to eat the greasy cardboard and refused to budge.

“No cookie,” I said sternly and tugged on his leash.

I had never before seen such pitiful eyes on an animal. The dog’s eyes turned to me, wide and glistening. I know that dogs aren’t supposed to be able to cry, but I swear on all my subscriptions to paranormal forums, that he had tears in his eyes. Bubbles led me to the door, though slowly, paws heavy, as if weighed down. Great, I wanted to get moving, not depress him, it was nice to see my social skills were still intact. It takes a special sort of talent to be able to make a dog’s day worse.

“Always the charmer,” Daniel remarked and opened the door.

We shuffled into the small hallway and I locked up while they waited on me. I rarely felt like I had anything worth stealing, but I was a little paranoid now that my research could be worth more than I could imagine. Fumbling with the keys, I got everything secure and let Bubbles lead me to the elevator. I was more of a stairs kind of guy, but the dog sat in front of the closed doors, presumably waiting for one of us to push the button. Bubbles wagged his tail and farted as the elevator whirled into action in response to my push. I was beginning to understand where his name came from.

“I assume ground floor?” I asked the retriever. He looked at me blankly, but excitedly shoved himself through the doors as soon as they opened. I kind of wished he had the ability to speak, just to make things a little easier. It was probably all the better that he couldn’t, I was fairly certain all he would say would be, “Elevator! Elevator! Elevator! Ride! Ride! Want Ride!”

I hit the ground floor button and we were nearly knocked over as soon as the car began to drop. Bubbles exploded into excited prancing and panting, his eyes rolling around in his head as he tried to look everywhere at once. The dog might have been the key to my unfathomable future and wealth, but he had more than one screw loose.

He stopped his frantic movements when the doors opened at the bottom floor and he calmly led me down the hall to the outside doors as if nothing had happened. The doors were still propped open by the rock Daniel had used, I kicked it out of the way and let the door slam shut behind us.

“All right, now time to watch him pee on every tree and bush in the city. Exactly how I like to spend my Monday nights,” he said sarcastically, “I suppose this is the most excitement you’ve had in a long time, should probably shut up and let you enjoy it.

I let him think whatever he wanted, if it made him quiet for the rest of it, wherever this night was going. Too bad I knew it just wasn’t how he operated.

“But what fun would that be for me? None, and if I’m not having fun then I’ll just be grumpy and life’s too short for me to waste like that. Cold beer in one hand, slice of pizza in the other, and a smart ass comment ready to be unleashed, that’s the very basic way everyone should live. No one would be all depressed or wanting to kill each other with a nice buzz and a stomach full of pepperoni,” he said in his own brand of wisdom.

It’s not that I didn’t understand that his lifestyle and personality made him happy, I was more annoyed that he couldn’t quite understand that not everyone got quite the amount of pleasure out of his jokes as he did. One day he’d crack one about someone who didn’t find the humor in it, then maybe he’d learn. Somehow, I really doubted it, it was much more likely that my werewolf was going to meet us at his door with tea and crumpets.

“You know I speak only truth,” he continued on as Bubbles led us toward the edge of town.

The dog was definitely meandering in a direction, never straying too far one way or another, but that didn’t stop him from trying to sniff every rock, tree, blade of grass, and crack in the sidewalk along the way.

“I’d be willing to bet if you’d just let me make all the decision in your life for you, for just a week, you’d totally change. You’d forget all about this bump-in-the-night crap and beg me to teach you more about how to live like me. I mean, look at me, I ooze the good times.”

“You also ooze shit,” I countered.

“Maybe, but other people still eat it up. How many friends do you have other than me? If you can name anyone else I’ll eat the next thing that comes out of that dog’s ass.”

As much as I wanted to see that, I couldn’t come up with anyone. Unsurprisingly, even creepy internet weirdos who frequent online paranormal forums don’t go out of their way to make friends with each other. Everyone tends to understand just a bit too well the depth of creepy tendencies that other people can have after more than just casual time spent on the types of forums I frequented, it was way safer to stop it at only knowing someone by their username.

“Exactly, as harsh and rough around the edges as I am, people still want to hang with me, my way can’t be all wrong,” he said.

“It just wouldn’t feel right to me,” I explained, having to stop for Bubbles to mark yet another tree.

“And this life you have now does?” he asked with a raise of his eyebrows, “Dude, as nerdy and set in your ways as you seem, you obviously aren’t happy. I’m an optimistic enough person to think that whatever is ‘you’ doesn’t involve you being a miserable sad sack for the best years of your life. You’re twenty-two and in college, you should be living it up, going to bars, eating way too much cholesterol, having a few flings, and promising yourself to repent for it all later.”

“I’m productive, all this work has been important to me. I like learning about it and I just can’t seem to get enough, I want to solve it. I want to be able to say, ‘I know the answers here, let me explain it all’,” I pressed.

Daniel let out a long sigh and shook his head, but said nothing. He walked beside me, watching the dog before us. I got the feeling that this had turned into my intervention.

“Is that more important to you than living?” he asked suddenly.

“I don’t think it’ll kill me.”

“Not what I mean and I think you know that,” he said and shook his head. “One day you’re going to have it dawn on you that for years of your college life instead of drinking, pigging out, girls, and all around enjoying life, you chose to sit in your own filth and wasted your time following around some kid in a Halloween costume.”

I hated when he started to make some sort of sense, people as immature and alcohol-soaked as him should have only enough brain cells to feel a hangover, not lay out the inadequacies of my life.

“Not that wallowing in your own filth is such a terrible thing,” he added after a moment, “I do enjoy a good, long wallow every now and then, but after a while you just have to roll off the beanbag, brush off the cheesy puff crumbs, and put some pants on.”

I grunted in response, but didn’t look at him. Sure, I understood that my life wasn’t for everyone, probably no one but me, but he couldn’t quite understand that. He liked things like beer and girls, but he wasn’t infatuated with them. Despite what he would probably claim, I was sure that he could think of more than just those things. That’s the part he would never be able to get, I found it almost impossible to think about or focus on anything else. I could go to classes, take the appropriate notes and act like the good student, but my grades would always end up horrible because it’s all just motions, my mind was too busy trying to think of where I should try next for information or who to talk to about their sighting. It was an addiction almost to the point of feeling like a disability.

I had sometimes wondered, late at night when it sunk in that I had never bothered to eat or drink anything that day and hours of research had felt to pass in minutes, if I needed some kind of professional help. I had considered finding someone to talk to once or twice, but there was always something that stopped me, some idea that I was truly on to a new sighting and would soon be able to prove my time spent wasn’t a waste or the perceived shame I would feel from being told that I really did have a mental illness. I knew, logically, that if I did, then there should be no shame in getting help and getting back to whatever it meant to have a “normal” life, but it still felt like a hot coal in the pit of my stomach when I thought about it too much.

“If I could, don’t you think I would have already?” I asked, wanting him to form some spark of understanding and drop it. “It should be some sort of indication to you that I had no idea that I looked like a hobo, that I hadn’t eaten anything but ramen for who knows how long, and that I haven’t done anything else. Just drop it, I’m a hopeless case.”

We walked in silence though he did shake his head at me again. I appreciated his intentions, they were noble, but he had two huge roadblocks that aren’t easily torn down: my stubbornness and the addiction in my brain had to werewolves and the paranormal world.

Bubbles seemed unaware of any argument, he was more than ecstatic to keep on his distracted, meandering path. Every couple of blocks he would raise his head and sniff the air intently, as if trying to pick up the scent of our destination. It made sense, I didn’t expect this dog to have much reserved intelligence for things like paths, I was mildly surprised he could recognize his own name.

We were led past neighborhoods I wasn’t even sure I recognized or remembered existing and I had lived in the area since moving to college, wherever this guy lived, he liked it nice and obscure. The dog stopped again, just outside a little cluster of houses that I assumed signaled the edge of a suburb. He sniffed the air deeper here and began to drool before pulling me down the quaint little street that led into the neighborhood.

“If you won’t listen to my tried and tested beer and pizza lifestyle, then at least tell me how this all started,” Daniel said, sounding a little defeated.

It never crossed my mind that maybe he actually did like me as a friend and had just been hoping for a buddy relationship.

“Well, you know I’m majoring in history, but some of the classes are just exercises in masochism,” I began, “So it was my Sophomore year and I really needed a break and History 310, History of Myths and Legends, sounded like it might be actually fun.” I looked over at him to see if he was actually paying attention, amazingly he was. “The class wasn’t really easy at all and some of it was pretty boring, but our final assignment was to research a myth and track its growth and development throughout history. I randomly got assigned werewolves and well, it was all downhill from there, I guess.”

“Should sue that professor, any court in this country would convict him,” he said.

I laughed and shook my head. “He only planted the seed, I’m the one who watered it and gave it more attention than any hobby need.”

“See, that’s how I know you’re actually crazy. You have a chance at free money and you justify it as being your fault.” He slugged me in the arm just enough to hurt a little and wrinkled his nose. “You smell that? Smells like sugar cookies?”

I sniffed the air and indeed, it was the unmistakable scent of sugar, flour, and butter browning in an oven. “It’s a pretty cute neighborhood,” I said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a little old lady wearing a flowery apron and followed by thirty cats came out to great us with a plate of them.”

“Uh, what about a weird guy in an apron?”

“What?”

He pointed ahead of us where Bubbles was now struggling against his leash to get to. A man with long blonde hair and a scraggly beard had a plate of fresh cookies in one hand and was frantically waving at us with the other.