Liar, liar, pants on fire,
You have roused an enemy's ire;
When next you try to tell a lie,
Your pants will smoke, your ass will fry!*
An Old Wives' Tale: You can always tell when a lawyer is lying: just look to see if his lips are moving.
THE WEREWOLF'S NIGHT ON THE TOWN....
The first things that struck him were the smells – struck him in the way a flash of sustained lightning at midnight assaults the eyes and leaves a half-remembered field of ghostly afterimages. Things perhaps perceived and perhaps not. Oh, his eyesight was quite keen, too, even in the dark. But the smells!
Urine, mostly. Urine and musk – a potpourri of scents and odors and aromas as varied and distinctive as genetic codes. Every surface, every tree trunk, every bush, every signpost and, of course, every fireplug declared its own unique roll call of recent and not-so-recent visitors, each of whom had claimed dominance and ownership and warned away all others.
The lone wolf lifted his right rear leg and anointed the left front tire of a lime-green Chevy Vega. A vague synaptic impulse in his lupine brain told him this round black evil-smelling thing somehow belonged to him alone. His tongue lolled out one side of his mouth and a strand of saliva slobbered to the pavement. He performed the same ceremony on the left rear tire of the Vega and then on a nearby tree trunk redolent mostly of rottweiler and pit bull, but with a nuance of shih tzu.
The moon was two days past full; the wolf felt its influence waning, but he raised his muzzle to the sky and howled again anyway. His eyes glowed like dying embers as his voice ululated and then faded away in a long melancholy decrescendo, echoing off the empty-faced brick buildings lining the street.
“Shaddap, ya stinkin’ mutt!” A brick whizzed over the wolf’s head, bounced off the hood of the Vega and landed with a clunk in the litter-strewn street. The wolf looked up and saw the fat bald-headed figure of some two-legged creature silhouetted in the light of a window above the fire escape. “Shaddup, goddam ya,” it said. “One more squeak outta you and I start shootin’.”
The wolf, of course, had no idea what this unfriendly-sounding creature was saying, but he understood the tone and sensed the meaning. The wolf was hunting alone, and the instinct for self-preservation in this instance overshadowed the instinct to leap and attack and rip skin and tear flesh. He tucked his tail between his legs and slunk down a fetid alley between two squalid buildings, pausing now and then to sniff and squirt.
As he prowled the streets and alleys, an image filled his mind:
A herd of two-legged creatures crossing an arctic tundra, two-legged hairless creatures in all sizes, males and females and young. A pack of wolves in the distance, following, watching, watching, watching....
One of the two-leggers now falling behind, not keeping up. In some kind of distress. Stumbling. Weak? Vulnerable? A man, a human, a big one, with a shock of white hair, falling behind. Farther and farther behind. His hindquarters seem to be smoking. What could this be? The man flails at his smoking britches and dances about as if possessed by demons; his yips and yelps of pain and fear vanish unheeded into the wilderness. Now his hindquarters are in flames. The herd moves on without him.
Fearing the fire, the wolves keep their distance. They lick their chops, for food has been scarce this season, but they are cautious creatures and keep their distance. The scent of searing flesh is almost unbearable.
The wolf made a low guttural sound in his throat and saliva soaked his fangs. Sensing the approach of dawn, he found shelter and lay down hungry.
*(The author humbly thanks and acknowledges the influence of his good friend and literary heroine Phyllis Pyle, both for the actual lines of verse which appear above, and for the inspiration to chronicle some of the adventures of the legendary Clem MacDougall). (MORE TO COME)
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