Roxy
The bus lurched back into motion, careening down the street.
I was always glad for motion.
Three women at the front of the bus were doing their morning ritual: calling into a local radio station to vote for their favorite song up for that day’s Song Wars. They always voted, every day, and were known as The Ladies on the Bus to the station’s DJs. They also always rode the Thirty-three bus on the Trenton Avenue line: same time every day.
Just like me.
I guess I'm a creature of habit.
Twenty-one-year-old werepuma nursing school student/waitress.
Yeah, I have issues… but who doesn’t?
This morning the Ladies voted for Pat Benatar's Love is a Battlefield. It was challenging the incumbent Star Boy by The Weeknd.
As usual, the three women—all nurses at South West Memorial Hospital, got off at the stop at Trenton and Euclid Place.
What wasn't usual was the man that got on the bus.
The winter wind blowing in through the open folding door at the front of the bus brought his sent to me the instant he stepped foot on the bus.
Werewolf.
Fear spiked through me immediately, uncontrollably.
Every muscle in my body tightened, ready to run. I was about to start hyperventilating.
No.
I closed my eyes for a moment and stamped down on those thoughts, those base gut reactions.
A year ago I wouldn’t have batted an eye if a werewolf had popped up… but then again, what happened a year ago might make Laura Croft and Buffy Summers a little edgy.
The skinwalker flashed through my head.
My fear spiked into terror.
Nonononono!
Just stop.
I forced my muscles to relax. I forced my breathing to remain normal.
And then I forced my eyes open.
I flicked a glance to the front of the bus, at the man who had just gotten on.
He was young, dressed like a street tough with ripped blue jeans and a leather jacket.
His eyes were burning blue: his wolf out for all to see.
The other passengers on the bus were looking away, trying not to make eye contact. Instinctively they knew something bad had just gotten on with them.
I kept my eyes set on my hands, where they held onto my book bag.
I had three more blocks until the next stop. Getting off then meant an extra quarter mile of a walk, but it would be worth it to get away from the werewolf.
The intersection of Hamilton Avenue flew by.
The intersection of Jennings Boulevard went by too.
As the bus slowed for the next stop, and my body coiled with anxiety—the drowning need to get away, to get anywhere but where I was—that’s when the werewolf scented the air loud enough I heard it. And then he turned to look straight at me.
I was up and out of my seat in a flash, probably a little too fast—especially around humans, but the need to run was overwhelming.
I was shaking as I waited for the back door of the bus to open.
But it did, finally, and I moved down the steps trying not to attract any more attention.
The cold air felt so good. I filled my lungs with it. It wasn’t as fresh and clean as home, but it lacked the now bad memories home did.
That’s why I’d moved here, three hours from home: to get away from those memories.
I’d ran.
I looked back to the bus and saw the werewolf sauntering unhurriedly off the bus. When our eyes met he smiled.
I faced forward and walked faster. I needed to get to class, creepy werewolf stalker or no.
I slid through the pedestrian traffic, not taking any of the shortcuts I’d learned of in the last few months traversing the area. I needed to keep to public ways, to crowds.
I didn’t look back once the entire time I walked the seemingly endless sidewalks and cross ways that led to my school.
Part of me felt a great rush of relief when I saw the first signs of the nursing program building, just the top fifth floor visible over the shorter buildings that line the other side of Gershon Ave. But if anything I started walking even faster.
Just before I got to the front door to the nursing building I looked back behind me.
Plenty of people, but no werewolf.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t there, waiting.
Hopefully, he had better things to do than to wait for me.