Green - a werewolf story

26. Monsters

Vanessa considered the document in front of her. She was supposed to be writing an upbeat text on chainsaws that a woodworking company had hired her to do, but found herself distracted by the sight of Green striding back and forth outside the window as he talked into his phone and the wind pulled at his hair and clothes.

After breakfast they'd headed to a café out by the waterfront and she'd spent the morning working while Green had walked off far enough that she couldn't overhear the conversations he had on his phone, but not far enough that he couldn't still keep an eye on her .

It irked her that he felt the need to constantly have her in view, but when she'd told him that he'd pointed out that she'd been poisoned a little over a day ago and that someone should look after her. Vanessa didn't need looking after, but she knew telling him that would be pointless so unless she felt like sneaking off and spending the rest of the day staying downwind she was stuck with him.

Being stuck with him wasn't all bad, though, she thought as he walked back and forth outside the café. He improved the view tremendously.

With a last glance at him, she turned back to the document. Chainsaws. Right. The text should have words like "cutting" and "revving" and those words went together with stuff like "edge" and "engine". She checked the product information to find out exactly what edge and engine and wrote all of that down.

She read through the rest of the information. Time for some fuel and fumes. Vanessa tried to picture herself out in the woods, cutting down trees. It took quite a bit of imagination since she liked trees and would prefer that they were left standing. People on the other hand... What if she was writing this for the crazy guy in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? She let herself fall into the rabbit hole of the horror movies and in two minutes she had a rather gruesome text which involved not one word of trees and logs and rather a lot of blood and entrails.

"They want to put that in an advertisement?"

Vanessa jumped. She'd been so lost in her world of intestines and splatter that she hadn't noticed that Green had finished his call and returned to the café. He was leaning in, reading over her shoulder.

"Probably not," Vanessa admitted.

"I didn't know you liked horror movies," Green said, pulling out a chair to sit next to her.

"I'm a werewolf. I practically live in a horror movie. It's nice to watch horror movies happen to other people sometimes."

Green rolled his eyes. "You're not living in a horror movie."

"I am being stalked by a dude who turns into a bloodthirsty monster and yesterday I was poisoned by a giant, shapeshifting snake."

"I don't turn into a bloodthirsty monster!"

"Debatable," Vanessa muttered as she saved a version of the chainsaw advertisement in the file where she kept her fictive short stories and quickly exchanged all the words alluding to humans in the text to wood. It wasn't the best piece of writing she'd ever done, but it was good enough to go in an internet ad.

"I know exactly what I'm doing when I'm in... my other form."

"Sure you do."

She quickly copied her text and started making alterations to fit the different makes and models of saws. With a change of adjective there and a shift of the order of words there she soon had ten short texts that seemed original. Honestly, how original could they expect her to be when writing about chainsaws?

"I've never done anything during a full moon I wouldn't have done otherwise."

Vanessa attached the word document with the text to an email and sent it to the firm while congratulating herself on making an easy ten bucks. Hopefully, they'd like it enough to let her write more.