Psych 101 - Prologue
The next time her friends convince Melanie to try a new “hip” bar on the other side of town Melanie’s saying no. She doesn’t care how supposedly gentrified the neighborhood is or how supposedly trendy the bar is, nothing is worth this hassle.
She’s been walking the same block for ten minutes and still can’t find the place. According to her cell phone’s GPS and the directions Kara provided it should be right where she’s standing.
Instead she’s standing in front of closed 24-hour laundry mat, complete with gates over the door and boarded up windows. Hardly a recently opened trendy new hot spot.
Kara’s not answer her phone or replying to the numerous text messages Melanie’s sent and at this point Melanie just doesn’t care. It’s been a long week and Melanie’s got her own wine at home, along with comfortable cloths and her DVR. It’s a much more appealing plan than sitting in some overcrowded bar shouting for conversation, drinking mediocre overpriced wine.
When it starts raining Melanie takes it as fate telling her to just give up and go home.
Pulling her collar up and tucking her purse tight under her arm Melanie turns and hurries back the way she came, knowing it’s futile to hope she can make it back to her car without getting soaked through. What few people there are on the sidewalk make a run for it but Melanie keeps slipping, heels not meant to be walking on wet cobblestone. It doesn’t help when some guy bumps into her, shoulders hunched, head down, face hidden by his hoodie, shoulder barrels into her chest, shocking her breath out of her and nearly knocking her off her feet.
“Asshole.” Grumbling under her breath Melanie stumbles forward and manages to save herself from falling flat on her face.
The rain keeps falling, soaking Melanie through no matter how fast she walks; all she wants is to get back to her car, take off her ruined shoes, shimmy out of her damp, clingy nylons and go home.
She’s a block or two away from the car lot when she gets the feeling there’s someone behind her. A shiver runs down her spine and Melanie tells herself it’s because she’s cold and wet and keeps walking, ignoring the uneasy feeling that’s settled in her stomach.
Melanie gets to the end of the block and turns the corner and finds herself staring into an alley. She must have taken a wrong turn somewhere because now that she looks none of the surrounding store fronts look familiar and the car lot is nowhere in sight.
She’s at a bit of a loss, standing on a deserted street corner in the rain, trying to remember where she parked her car. Turning back to the street hoping to get directions from someone Melanie starts when she finds someone standing directly behind her, so close she brushes against him when she turns.
Startled, heart pounding Melanie jumps back, can’t stop the shriek that bubbles out of her. Forcing herself to take a deep breath Melanie looks at the person in front of her. He’s just standing there, face turned down, hidden by the hoodie he’s wearing, hands tucked in its pockets, wet and dripping. She dips her head, trying to see his face but the street light is dull and he’s hiding.
“Um…do you know where…” He sniffs loudly, sharply and Melanie knows she needs to leave. Now. “Uh, never mind. Thanks.”
She tries to step around him but he steps in front of her, refusing to let her pass. Fear starts to crawl up her spine and through her belly, goosebumps breaking out across her skin. He’s tall and big, bulky and clearly knows how to handle it.
Melanie tries again, takes another step but he just shadows her, still not letting her pass. She mentally kicks herself for leaving her key ring in her purse, pepper spray out of reach and for a moment she’s pissed. All she wants is to go home, get out of her wet clothes and maybe break out the whiskey instead of wine. For just one moment she finds herself lashing out.
“Hey!” The guy’s face jerks up and any confidence or strength or bravery she had disappears when she sees his face. He looks like nothing Melanie’s ever seen before, even in the mental wards where she did part of her residency. The person standing in front of her barely looks human, eyes yellow and animalistic, teeth large and unnaturally sharp, hands with razor sharp finger nails. He’s standing hunched, as if standing on two feet is unnatural, almost like he’d rather be on all fours like an animal.
And he’s growling.
A low animalist growl and Melanie feels run through her. She’s terrified, shaking, feels like she might piss herself, whispers a silent plea. “Oh god.”
She can’t look away, knows she needs to move, to run, to try and escape but she can’t look away from this strange unknown thing standing in front of her. He stares back at her, eyes wide and crazed.
It’s a mistake, looking him in the eye, as if she’s challenging him. He bares his teeth, growling louder, more fierce.
Melanie’s heart pounds in her chest, blood rushing through her veins, so loud she’s sure he can hear it, can smell the fear rolling off of her. Its mouth is salivating, saliva dripping from its long incisors, breath rotten. He leans in even closer; head angled towards her neck and…inhales.
It’s enough to break Melanie out of her paralysis, spins on her heel and runs. Her purse slips off her shoulder, her shoes aren’t made to run but Melanie doesn’t care. She runs. As fast as she can.
Straight into an alley.
It follows her, Melanie can hear it growling, can hear it’s footsteps hitting the wet ground coming fast on her heels.
Melanie keeps running, straight into the back wall, desperate for some kind of escape. She hits the back wall hard, as if she could somehow barrel her way through. The brick is rough against her palms, her shoulder hurts from the impact and her head pounds from the whiplash.
There’s nowhere to go, brick walls enclose her on three sides and behind her is some kind of crazed man.
She wants to scream. Have someone, anyone come to her rescue. But fear clogs her throat and only a whine comes out.
Behind her the man growls.
“Oh God.” Melanie turns, slowly, terrified at what she knows she’ll find. The man is there, all claws and teeth and crazed eyes waiting, growling.
“Please. Oh God please.” Her legs give out and Melanie slides down the wall, clothes snagging, brick stuttering her descent till she’s curled in tight, trying to hide.
She’s going to die in this alley, alone; terrified and defenseless, crying and curled up like a coward.
She can feel the man standing over her, still growling and sniffing at her, ready to rip her to shreds.
It’s agonizing waiting for the attack, waiting for death.
And then it lunges, jerking forward.
But instead of coming at her and finishing her off it spins around, growling furiously, lashing out with his claws. There’s a loud pop, followed by another and Melanie watches in shock as the man staggers, falling to the ground.
Melanie watches in fascinated horror as its face morphs back into one that looks completely human, teeth withdrawing, eyes wide and round. Its claws retract back to hands. He lays there, convulsing, blood seeping from its chest, letting out one last pathetic whimper before he dies.
She can’t stop staring at the dead man lying on the ground. This man who moments before was wild and crazed and not human, ready to rip out her heart now lays there, vacant and broken and so very human.
Among the terror and confusion and tears Melanie almost feels bad for him.
And then something is grabbing her, pulling at her and this time Melanie lashes out, fists pounding, nails clawing, feet kicking. She’s shrieking and fighting and still it won’t let go.
“Stop. Damn it lady stop it!” It’s a man’s voice. Melanie knows it’s a man’s voice but she doesn’t stop, keeps flailing and screeching and fighting.
“Shit. Stop it. Fuck lady…” She crashes back to the ground, her head hitting the brick wall, hard and jarring, enough to make her stop fighting, enough to clear her head.
There’s a man crouched in front of her, face grizzled and bearded, eyes narrowed. There’s a gun holstered at his waist and a knife strapped to his combat boots, his clothes are disheveled and dirty. His voice when he speaks is rough. “You alright Lady?”
“I’m…not sure. I think so. I…” Melanie forces herself to stand, leaning on the wall as she pushes herself up. She doesn’t really know how she feels but she’s definitely not okay.
“He bite you?” The man reaches out towards her, stopping when she shrinks back.
“Bite me?” She has to stop and think for a minute because despite everything, the question doesn’t really make sense. “No. No he didn’t bite me.”
Her eyes drop back to the dead man lying on the ground. “What’s wrong with him?”
The man doesn’t even glance at the body cooling on the ground behind him, eyes still sweeping over Melanie. Seemingly satisfied by what he sees he looks Melanie straight in the eye and says “It’s nothing. You’re safe now. Best to just forget about it.”
And then he turns and walks away.
“No wait!” Melanie starts after him because she knows, she knows that wasn’t nothing and it’s something she’s never going to forget. “That wasn’t nothing! I saw it change. That’s not nothing!”
He keeps walking, ignoring her. Melanie has to jog to catch up with him, hobbling on a broken heel and a tweaked ankle. Reaching out Melanie grabs at him, fingers just catching his flannel shirt. “Please…”
He turns quick, face pissed, hand on his gun, already pulling it out of his holster. Melanie lets go and steps back, hands raised in front of her. There’s blood on her hand and when she looks at his arm she can see a dark patch.
Melanie knows he’s not willing to talk to her, wants her to just shut up and go away but she has to know what happened to her tonight, what that man was and why he attacked her. So she tries another approach.
“Please, you’re hurt. I’d be happy to take you to the hospital. It’s the least I can do. My car’s around here…somewhere.” Melanie glances around. She still has no real idea where her car is.
“Just go home lady.” He’s already halfway across the street by the time Melanie stops looking around. She watches as he walks into the 24 hour diner, its gaudy neon lights the only bright spot along the street.
She should probably follow his advice and go home, get drunk and forget what happen tonight. She’s probably better off never knowing. But she can’t let it go. He’s got answers to her questions if she can just get him to talk to her and Melanie’s an expert at getting people to open up, tell her their deepest darkest secrets.
The diner’s nearly empty, just a few tired looking customers staring down at their food, ignoring everyone else in exchange for being ignored themselves.
Which is good because Melanie can’t imagine what she would look like to other people; soaked through, her clothes hanging limply off her, a broken shoe and torn nylons, scraps and cuts on her legs and hands, her dark hair falling out of the bun she twisted in this morning.
She finds the man sitting in a booth in an empty back corner. He’s already got a plate in front of him, eating steak and mashed potatoes while he ignores her standing there. Not waiting for an invitation that will never come Melanie slips into the bench across from him, back to the door.
The guy continues to ignore her - though it’s obvious he knows she’s there - and Melanie doesn’t say anything, just takes the time to calm down, take in the man in front of her.
He’s older than she expected, face grizzled and worn, salt and pepper beard a bit mangy, deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. His hair is shaved close to his head and Melanie can see the receded hairline easily from this angle. His hands are dirty but his nails are clipped neat, there’s a few specks of blood on his hand hastily wiped away. His clothes are worn though not as dirty as she thought back in the alley, red and black checkered flannel over a plain grey t-shirt. He’s wearing a hunting jacket now, covering the blood Melanie knows is there.
A waitress arrives at their table, interrupting the strained silence.
“You alright sweetie?” The waitress looks her up and down, noticing Melanie’s bloody palms and broken shoes, her ripped nylons and scratched up legs. Melanie can just imagine what the woman is thinking.
“I’m fine, thank you.” Melanie forces a smile onto her face. “I was running, trying to get out of the rain and I trip.” She shrugs, trying to act blasé about the whole thing.
The waitresses face clears immediately and she smiles knowing sympathy, nodding her head. “Do you want a towel for your hair?”
Melanie reaches up and starts retwisting her hair, trying to force it back into some semblance of order. “No thanks. It’s practically dry now anyway.”
“Well…can I get you anything?” The woman’s nametag reads Terry and now that she thinks Melanie’s okay she’s back to business, tipping the coffee pot she’s hold towards Melanie and eyeing the menu sitting on the table.
“Some tea. Please. Earl greys fine.” The waitress smiles before turning to the man sitting across from Melanie, eyes still on his plate, eating his dinner.
“What about you, Sir? Can I get you anything else or you still working on that plate?” The man looks up and offers Terry a small smile.
“Just more coffee ma’am.”
Terry fills the man cup before leaving to get Melanie’s tea. Once she’s gone the man finally looks at Melanie, meeting her gaze straight on. He looks annoyed, pissed that she didn’t follow his advice and go home, has followed him to demand answers.
Still, he doesn’t say anything, just stares at Melanie. Daring her to ask.
Finally Melanie can’t take the silence anymore. “Are you sure you don’t want a doctor to look at your arm?
It’s clearly not what he was expecting, eyes startling at her question. His eyes don’t leave hers when he answers. “It’s fine. I’ll stitch it up later.”
“Oh.” Somehow, Melanie’s not surprised.
They lapse into silence again, a staring contest that ends when the waitress comes back with Melanie’s tea.
The warm cup feels good cradled in Melanie’s hands. She sits and watches as the tea seeps into the water, a deep earthy scent rising with the steam. It reminds her of winter afternoons in her grandmother’s kitchen, comforting.
It helps her settle, stops the jittery pulsing rush of her blood; her heart finally beating at its normal pace. Lets her finally start pushing for answers again.
“What was happened to that man?”
“Look lady, I told you…” He pushes his plate away, tossing his fork on top if it with a clank. He sounds pissed, like she’s finally exhausted his patients.
“It wasn’t nothing. I know what I saw.”
He smirks at he and Melanie knows he’s going to tell her just to spite her.
“Fine. You wanna know so bad.” Melanie nods. “He was a werewolf.”
Melanie can’t stop the burst of laughter that bubbles out of her. It’s so absurd it’s funny. She wants to tell him to be serious, to tell her the truth except…he’s still looking at her, watching her, eyes never wavering and Melanie knows he’s not lying.
“A werewolf?” He just nods. “Are there…um, I mean, I’m sorry it’s just…a werewolf.” She’s not sure how exactly to wrap her head around that.
“A werewolf.”
“What did it want with me?”
“To rip out your heart out of your chest and eat it.” He says it like it’s nothing. Like it’s perfectly normal and he deals with this sort of thing all the time.
“Is this normal for you? Hunting werewolves?”
“Look lady…”
“My name’s Melanie.”
He rolls his eyes at her interruption. “Look Melanie; there are things in this world, monsters and demons and all kinds of nightmares that need killin and if we don’t do it no one else will.”
His eyes are fierce, certain, the look of someone who believes to the depths of their soul.
“What kinds of monsters?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Melanie shivers at the chill that runs down her spine, her imagination getting the better of her. After what happened tonight it’s terrifying to think of what else might be out there. What other horrible, nightmarish creatures are real, hiding in the shadows, just out of sight.
She’s finds herself both terrified and perversely interested, excited. There are so many questions she wants to ask, so many things she wants to know but the one that pops out is “How did you get involved with…this?”
She waves her hands, trying to encompass everything he seems to do. “It doesn’t seem like something one chooses to do.”
His eyes are cold, furious and Melanie knows she’s treading on dangerous ground.
“You’re right. It’s not a choice. No one chooses this life. No one chooses to discover the truth. No one chooses to have their family murdered by some piece of shit monster.”
Terry interrupts with an offer of more coffee and hot water and breaks some of the tension that was radiating from the table. Melanie’s tea has gone lukewarm but there’s still water in the mini-carafe and Terry leaves after topping off the man’s coffee.
The few minutes Terry is at their table give him a chance to regroup and Melanie watches him deflate, anger burned out and sorrow settling on his shoulders, heavy and familiar.
It’s distressing in a way, to see the man who took on a werewolf and saved her life become so fragile, so human. But it’s also comforting in a way because sorrow, misery and guilt…Melanie’s an expert at dealing with.
“How did it happen?” She keeps her voice low, even and non-judgmental; inviting.
He sighs deeply, his head bowing and Melanie knows he doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t want to remember. She sits, gives him the time he needs till finally he starts talking, staring into his coffee cup, voice rough and low.
“Not much to say. I came home from work to find my kids murdered and my wife being gutted by a shapeshifter wearing my face. He ran and my wife died in my arms, staring into the face of the man who killed her.”
He sounds so matter of fact, like he’s reading an instruction manual. There’s no emotion, no inflection, nothing that reflects the bone deep pain he’s feeling.
“You know you didn’t kill them right? It may have looked like you but it wasn’t. It wasn’t you. You know that right?”
“I know. But sometimes…sometimes I forget.”
There are so many things Melanie can say, so many directions she can take this, so many issues to deal with, far too many for one night. Instead she gives him the one thing he probably needs the most. “It wasn’t your fault.”
His entire body jolts as if he’s been shocked, as if hearing someone tell him it’s not his fault his entire family was murdered by a monster is a physical blow. Melanie watches as he pulls himself back together; watches as his mask slips back over his face, shielding his pain and vulnerability, his humanity; turning him back into the man for earlier, a man who hunts and kills monsters like the one that killed his family and Melanie knows he’s done talking.
Terry comes back with the check which Melanie happily pays; leaving a generous tip to make up for the house they sat talking. Then she gathers her purse and follows the guy out of the diner.
Being outside is a shock. The rain’s slowed to a fine mist and the night seems clean, the air lighter than earlier this evening when she was trying to find that stupid bar.
Earlier. Before she got attacked and had her entire world turned upside down.
They walk for a bit, neither talking, just wandering and Melanie’s surprised when they stop in front of her car. She has no idea how he found it, if he always knew where it was but there it is. Waiting for her.
She’s pulling out her keys when she realizes, “You never told me your name.”
He looks surprised for a moment before he tells her. “Wayne.”
It’s hardly a surprise he won’t give her a last name.
“Thank you Wayne. Thank you for saving my life.” He seems confused for a moment, surprised, before his lips quirk, just a hint of a smile, pride. It’s as if no one has every thanked him before and it saddens Melanie to think that maybe no one ever has.
“If you ever need to talk, about anything, call me. Anytime. Or if you’re ever back in the area…” She hands him her card, name clear and bold: Melanie Sharma, PH.D and under that: Licensed Clinical Psychologist. Her phone number and the address of her office down in the right hand corner.
Wayne glances at the card and there’s a moment when Melanie’s sure he’s not going to take it but he just tucks it into the pocket of his flannel. He gives her one last look before turning and walking away.
Melanie watches him till he disappears around a corner. Once he’s gone Melanie turns back to her car, glancing at the sky. The night’s nearly over, it’ll be dawn soon but the moon is still out, full and bright against the black sky. It sends a shiver down Melanie’s spine before she slips into her car and drives home.
Chapter 1