Garlic For Vampires, Silver For Werewolves

Rory cut the moist, thick chocolate cake with his white plastic fork and took a bite. He always ate desserts with a fork. The thought of eating it with a spoon, well… he'd rather go without than use a damn spoon.

"Want a slice? I had chocolate left over so I made a cake."

"Full as a tick." Muttered Thomas.

"It wasn't a werewolf." Rory argued through a mouth full of chocolate.

"You still on about that there dog-boy?"

"Dog-man." Rory corrected.

Thomas leaned back in his seat and took another sip of his beer. "What the hell's the difference between a dog-boy and a werewolf?"

"Dog-man." Rory pushed his glasses further up on the bridge of his nose. "A werewolf is someone who turns inta a wolf, or wolfish monster. Dog-men are bipedal canines that never change."

"It's all bullshit anyway." Thomas muttered, peering out into the dark from his familiar spot on the back porch. The humid night air was an orchestra of singing crickets and clicking, swooping invisible bats.

"I'd rather it was a werewolf." Rory hastily shoveled another fork-load of cake into his mouth, accidentally smearing a bit of chocolate in his orange mustache.

Thomas sighed and tapped the bottom of his box of cigarettes. He knocked one loose from the pack, and immediately grabbed it with his mouth.

He slid the box of cigarettes into his inner coat pocket and lit the one he intended to smoke with his brown lighter.

He only bought brown lighters. Brown lighters were the unwanted. They never seemed to find themselves in a pocket they didn't belong in. Even after it had been passed around a campfire circle, it's pocket of origin long forgotten, the memory lost in a collective haze brought on by too many cases of cheap beer, there was never any dispute when claim was laid upon a brown lighter.

Thomas mustered his patience along with the first drag of the cigarette. "Why's that? Why would you rather have a dog-boy than a werewolf?"

"Werewolf is a cursed person. There's a person still in there. Dog-men were born dog-men. Dog-men die dog-men. They ain't got no humanity. Egyptians used to send em bundles of weapons and meat, cus they was so scared of em. Said there weren't a more vicious fighter in existence."

Thomas hitched an eyebrow in response. "Where do you get all this? Those weird podcasts?"

"I read it too." Rory muttered, before bouncing the conversation back to his preferred track. "Plus, everyone knows how to kill a werewolf, silver. How the hell do ya kill a dog-man?"

"It's aaaalllllll bullllllsssshhhhiiiitttt anyway ya look at it." Thomas reiterated as he turned his worn ball cap backwards. A curly auburn lock poked through the adjustable closure.

"It's not! I've seen it with my own eyes, plus my trail cam caught it!" Squeaked Rory. His voice tended to rise a few octaves whenever he grew too excited.

Thomas only made a skeptical expulsion of air.

"Then what'd I see if it wasn't no dog-man?" Rory demanded, sure that he'd backed Thomas into a corner.

"A black bear."

"And the trail cam?"

Thomas was prepared to sling a response he'd had holstered nearly all night. "Some kids in a werewolf costume prankin ya. They know ya got trail cams set up, hell after you had to be on that damn show, 'I was touched by a dog-boy' everyone in Dachasoocha County knows about your.... odd interests and proclivities."

Rory sunk back in his chair, feeling a bit defeated. "The show was called 'Finding The Dachasoocha Dog Man'."

"You know what I mean." Thomas muttered, as he cracked another beer. A fleck of foam flew up, lodging itself on the man's cheek, among the scruffy stubble.

"I know what a bear looks like too." Rory added.

Thomas's patience for Rory's shenanigans had dried up some months ago, and the night's conversation had been a slow boil, and he was at the point of rolling and spilling over onto the stove.

The beer had only served to loosen his tongue and reassure him of the validity of his stance. "Look," He began, "I'm sayin this because you're my cousin, and we're friends. But you gotta stop this shit. No woman wants a man who's always going on about dog-men and... what was that thing you kept saying you saw by the creek last summer… a captain?"

"Kappa." Rory said in absolute deadpan. "Claws, duck-bill, turtle shell, bald head, likes to crush skulls."

Thomas leaned forward. The movement was more of a spasmic jerk than something deliberate. "My point exactly. Remember Bailey? What was her last name...?"

"Grace." Rory muttered with a sigh as he slumped further in his chair.

"She always liked you. But, you never gave her any time because you had to spend every Friday night hunting dog-boys. I'm just sayin, you should look her up. Spend a few nights a month doing something outside your box. Maybe don't talk about dog-boys when you're with her."

Rory elected not to respond, and instead went inside the house, emerging a few minutes later with another piece of chocolate cake.

"How's your doctor's visits goin?" Thomas asked, fearing the silence was evidence that he'd overstepped himself.

"Fine." A fly landed on the top of his cake. Rory flicked it, launching it and a gob of chocolate off into the dark yard.

"Ya have to switch meds again, or are these ones working?"

Rory considered his next answer for a few minutes before saying anything. In the end he chose the most direct route. "I quit taking those meds, and I quit goin to that doctor."

A gulp of icy, carbonated beer went down the wrong tube and Thomas choked on his own response. "Damnit... why?!"

Rory pressed his lips together until they were a white line under his mustache. "Because nothins wrong with me. They can't prove any of it exists. They just note symptoms. Did anyone ever think maybe just the symptoms are real, and the disease is made up?"

"You were doing so good..." Thomas muttered with a pained tone.

"Still am. Cus nothins wrong with me." He retorted, shifting his eyes down onto the porch floor, suddenly interested in the cracks between the wooden planks.

"It's all made up huh?" Thomas asked, flicking the butt of his cigarette out into the grass. What about the time I talked to you on the phone for 4 hours because you kept seein and hearin people in the shadows?"

"Maybe there was people in the shadows." Rory began picking at his fingernails. It was suddenly impertinent that he possessed immaculate finger nails.

Thomas tossed another fastball. "What about when you showed up in the E.R. because you were convinced that big vein in your eyeball was a worm that was eating your brain?"

"That anxiety was being projected in my head so I wouldn't notice what they were really up to." Rory said quickly.

"So you wouldn't notice what who was really up to?"

Rory shook his head, raising a hand to partially cover his mouth.

Unwilling to relent, Thomas tossed another. "What about when you were a kid? You were so sure that you were being abducted at night that your mom put a camera in your room to watch you sleep. We proved to you that you weren't getting abducted."

Rory shook his head as he visibly clenched the inside of his cheeks. "I never said it was a physical abduction. They could have just been intersecting the signal of my consciousness when I hit REM sleep so they could temporarily redirect it into a clone body."

Thomas was left flabbergasted, but he eventually landed on a simple thought that felt incontestably true. "You'd be so much better off if you'd never discovered the internet." He muttered.

"You know what's worse than dog-men?" Rory asked as he finished the last bite of his cake. Having felt like he'd come out on top during the testy moments of their conversation had caused most of his anxiety to abate.

"This conversation." Thomas slurred out of equal parts intoxication and exhaustion.

"Goat-men."

"You mean the little dancin, randy fellas with the flutes?"

"You wish." Rory's demeanor and cadence adopted a darker, more serious tone. "Goat-men, you only know em by their rancid smell and their sound. Once you hear their bleating though, you're dead."

"Then how the hell does anyone know about goat-men if they kill everyone who's ever heard em?"

Rory pulled his cell phone from his pocket and scrolled for a moment before he stood, donning his jacket with haste. "Trail cam caught something interesting." He said excitedly, pushing his glasses back in place.

"Prolly a pig, or a coyote at best." Thomas murmured.

Rory began walking to his beat up single cab, "You comin?" He hollered back at Thomas who was still sprawled in the porch chair.

"Actually" He said only after a moment's consideration. "Yea. I am. I am." He stood with a bit of a sway. "So when you get back you can't try to say you saw a dog-boy dancin with the Llama-gal."

*******

After a silent fifteen minute ride down the twists and turns of several unlit, backwoods dirt-roads, Rory pulled off to the side and tossed Thomas a flashlight from his center console before getting out.

Without a word, Rory retrieved a twelve-gauge from a case in the bed of his truck and strode confidently into the pitch black woods.

Thomas followed.

Rory never used his flashlight. It was a path he had taken many times before, one he could walk blindfolded.

Thomas kept his light trained intently upon the ground but still managed to trip three times.

It wasn't long before Rory had located the first trail cam, and was popping the memory card in his phone.

The screen illuminated his face as an overly excited smile stretched and contorted his features.

Rory pocketed the phone and turned on his flashlight, sweeping the ground around them.

"Be careful." He warned Thomas as he took off again.

"Of what?" His cousin asked as he followed closely behind.

Rory stopped suddenly, honing the light on a single spot between two trees. "My bear traps." He said calmly as he strode forward, leaves crunching underfoot as he squatted next to the cruel, fanged, spring-loaded trap.

Thomas knelt next to Rory, the sounds of the forest and even the sensations of his own body fell silent before his own rapture.

Caught in the trap was an arm covered in coarse brown fur. The forearm was nearly double the length of a persons. The hand, not counting its long curved black claws, was also larger than a persons could ever be.

"Chewed off its own arm." Rory whispered excitedly.

"What was the bait?" Thomas whispered.

Rory reached to the ground, grabbing something which he shoved into Thomas's hand with a wet plop.

Rory was up again, moving through the trees. Thomas wasn't willing to be left alone, so he made sure to keep up, carrying the 'bait' in his right hand.

They followed the trail of blood through the lightless wood for a few dozen yards before Rory put a hand to Thomas' chest, signaling him to stop.

Rory shone his light on the leaf littered forest floor, illuminating a ghastly canine head. Its foaming mouth brimmed with jagged fangs. Its eyes were rolled back in its head as if it had died seizing. He swept the light down the skinny, hairy body. One arm had been chewed off at the elbow.

"Garlic for vampires." Rory began. "Silver for werewolves, but what kills a dog man?"

He brought the flashlight down to Thomas's hand which was still clutching the 'bait'.

It was ground meat, mixed with...

"Chocolate." Thomas muttered.

Some bushes a few yards away from the pair rustled. A rancid and terrible scent wafted through the forest, accompanied by the bleating of a goat.