by David McDaniel

A strange eerie night indeed, and I come awake in the wee morning hours, suddenly claustrophobic in my sleeping bag. The tent is breathing with the wind, swaying, sucking in and ballooning out like some kind of gigantic jellyfish. These new nylon dome jobs are built to be portable and lightweight, and that is exactly what they are in a good stiff breeze. I can hear the dog and he is restless -- pawing around, snuffling and snorting and making other kinds of weird racket, and then it dawns on me, through the slowly ebbing sleep funk, that I don't have a dog. Great, beautiful...and the obvious question arises: If I don't have a dog, just what the hell is out there banging around in my camp? The brains zips into high gear and the ears kick into hyper-sensitive mode: auditory data, sensory processing, recall of past experience and the careful application of logic; the perfect union of intense listening and deep thought, a sane and pragmatic process to discern the exact nature of my nocturnal visitor...ah, yes, the verdict (the envelope, please) and it seems that I have definitely decided (and the winner is) that I have a werewolf on my hands. Holy fucking shit, what to do now, and I am instantly deeply sorry for my swaggering arrogant daylight agnosticism, oh sweet Jesus. Think, man, think! I'm fresh out of silver bullets and, then again, I don't even own a gun. In fact, the only silver for miles that I know of is the two delicate loops in my left ear, and, although I am in pretty good shape, I just do not feel entirely capable of ambushing a werewolf and successfully stabbing the sonofabitch to death with a goddamn earring. Maybe a hastily crafted blowgun or an accurately hurled fork, end over end, embedding itself in the eyes...yeah, right. Rambo could probably deal with this nasty turn of events, but I am a mere mortal and as an ungodly stench fills my nostrils, I wonder lamely if it is me or the beast, or both of us.

The survival panic is upon me and I slip, inch by agonizing inch, into my jeans and creep, inch by agonizing inch, through the tent flap and, inch by agonizing inch, out into the inky darkness. Not that I have any addled plans to do battle with a full-grown werewolf, or even a young one for that matter, but there is the overwhelming urge to be on my feet and mobile and clad from the waist-down. I'm scared shitless to be out in the open, but the alternative of being mauled by a werewolf while laying on my back in my underwear inside a tent is sheer fucking terror, and I hate to digress, but I must, if only to prop this thing up.

Everyone, or at least everyone I know, has a weird tale about being in a life-threatening situation and, for no apparent reason at all, a strange casual offbeat notion will just pop up out of the blue and occupy the attention, and it's like, why the fuck am I thinking about this when I'm about to die...maybe heavy jolts of fear short-circuit a few integral axons or maybe the brain tries to divert itself in the face of certain death or maybe it is an ancient stalling technique to somehow occupy the modernized version of noggin while the repressed animal in us awakens and tries to figure a way out of this scrape. I don't know, but here's an example (I'm assuming you haven't followed). I'm twenty and I total my van -- a screaming slam-and-roll job, and I'm flinging around like a rag doll in a tornado and I'm worried about the state of my socks. You see, it's a foregone conclusion that I'm going to the emergency room, and Mom has always berated me about the importance of matching socke (clean underwear) and how embarassed she'll be if she ever shows up at a hospital one of these days and finds her son laying on a stretcher in mis-matched socks (dirty underwear). And I'm pretty sure my socks don't match, the underwear is being soiled at this very moment, the van disintegrates around me and you get the picture.

So anyway I'm outside the tent on my feet clad from the waist-down in the dark being stalked by a homocidal werewolf, and my thought turn to urine; because I know that as soon as the beast grabs me I'm gonna piss hard right down the leg of my jeans, and it's gonna be a big press scene and the local yokel deputy is gonna immortalize me as a middle-aged white male who died of unknown violent trauma in a huge puddle of his own piss. ("Never seen anything like it, must have been at least five or six quarts...")

Meanwhile the monster is snuffling, snorting, getting a good ripe snoutful of my scent, my spoor, and probably forming some tentative plans for the attack; licking his chops, sizing up the prey, gauging the possibilities of fight, struggle, resistance. (Well guess what you hairy motherfucker -- first you're gonna be blinded by a powerful blast of piss to the eyes, then you'll lose your footing in a slick patch of piss-mud, and finally you'll find yourself gurgling and strangling on a steamy amber ammonia froth, a virtual delige of piss.) Woah! Yikez! Egad!...and I'm back...I have established a touch-and-go control over the bladder and I realize I cannot stand this suspense any longer. Something must be done, even if it involves a sudden involuntary voiding. Waiting patiently in the dark to be ripped up by a hideous werewolf has become unbearably difficult for some reason. Action and damn the consequences and here we go: a super-human adrenaline rush lunge for the drop lamp, fumblefumbleclick and let there be light oh my God Mother Mary brace for the inevitable demonic body slame...and a squinty-eyed armadillo looks up in confusion at a quivering idiot with a wet spot on his jeans. And it's gonna be a big press scene and the local yokel deputy is gonna immortalize me as a middle-aged white male who died of a heart attack and somehow managed to drown an innocent armadillo in a huge puddle of his own piss. ("Never seen anything like it, must have been at least five or six quarts...that poor little critter.") Bullshit, that was a big evil armadillo.