1. The Perks of being a Rich, Spoiled, Brat, Chapter 3

Once again Cassandra was scribbling something in her notebook and it seemed to me that she was doing that quite often recently. I sat down at my desk, which was conveniently located next to hers in our classroom.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I am copying these textbooks by hand onto my notebooks,” she answered without looking up. She was being sarcastic again.

“That sounds like a huge waste of time,” I said after a while. She smiled, but still wasn’t looking up, very much absorbed by her work.

“You know, maybe some students will thank me when they forgot their textbooks at home,” she responded. That smile was irritating.

“I don’t understand. Are you going to make money from this?” I asked.

“No, you do indeed not understand. The point is not to make money but to help people once in a while, which is, believe it or not, actually possible,” she replied, now looking at me. I really didn’t understand anything anymore. I wanted to say something but was cut off by our teacher who somehow overheard our conversation.

“Stop copying those textbooks, Cassandra! If you keep this up, the students won’t buy textbooks anymore!” he said, visibly concerned with the issue. I was a bit surprised by his level of concern which by far exceeded mine.

“I don’t think that’s gonna happen,” Cassandra slowly answered.

“Stop destroying the economy!” the teacher then screamed. Cassandra looked at him for a while, then quickly glanced at me and finally proceeded with her writing. I thought it was as good a time as any to leave so I stood up.

“Class is starting!” I could hear a voice scream but I didn’t pay attention.

“I always do what I want,” was all I said.

Always doing what I want seemed to be the most important thing to me at the time. I didn’t know what life was all about. Where we came from or where we were going, or simply the meaning of life. I claim by no means to know the answers now but I was just more clueless back then. It was partially must have been because I always got what I wanted.

“I wanna eat ice cream!” I exclaimed, so we had to take a detour on our way back from school. It was one of those few times we actually walked home from school. Walking, as in using our feet with our own strength. No one was there to drive us, or carry us much less. It was a pretty rare experience. I think it was because I couldn’t stand to see that annoying face of the butler that day. I couldn’t stand his fake posh sounding British accent anyway. Since we walked, my feet got tired rather quickly and we had to take a break. There were only three of us, me, Cassandra and the bodyguard. So much to their discomfort, the two of them had to wait for me. The road we were walking along was right next to a park so I thought it was a safe spot, with lots of shadow and a nice view of the greenery in the park. But it was in fact quite the opposite. While there was indeed lots of green and shadow, safe it was certainly not. Because then a bloodstained, furry creature came shooting out of the park, between the bushes, presumably with the goal of attacking us. Obviously the dutiful bodyguard was protecting us, so the creature only got its claws on his throat.

“This looks very unfortunate,” I observed.

“We better run!” Cassandra then was screaming. I don’t know why she was screaming, I was standing right next to her. But I started running anyway. As we were running, she was explaining something peculiar to me.

“I saw something similar last night in my neighborhood. A heavily armed guy was fighting something that looked like a werewolf. The guy was yelling something like You can’t take away my human rights! as he kept firing at the creature. The strange thing however was that the werewolf could transform back into her human form whenever she wanted.”

“Werewolf?” I asked, gasping for air. It seemed a bit too on the nose.

“That creature we just saw was definitely a werewolf,” she continued.

“Probably the one you saw last night. I thought they only appear on full moon nights though,” I said. If it was at least night time I could somehow comprehend this, but it was in the middle of the day. It was just plain wrong. I could hear the paws touching the asphalt behind us, the wolf was clearly following us, so I just kept running as fast as I could, even though my feet started to hurt pretty bad. As I turned my head, I saw that it was my faithful bodyguard that was pursuing us and not the werewolf at all. His face however looked grotesque and bloody. His mouth was wide open with sharp teeth reflecting the sunlight. It was not a very pleasant sight. He seemed hungry to eat our flesh or drink our blood or whatever it was those creatures do. In any case, he seemed to be craving for something. If only it was ice cream.

At this point I, your truthful narrator, deem it necessary to explain the basic concept of lycanthropy to further comprehend the story. Lycanthropes, colloquially referred to as werewolves, are beings that, under normal circumstances, resemble a human being in every possible way, but once every full moon will change their appearance rather unwillingly into that of a wolf. Some of them still get to keep some of their human features even after their transformation which somehow adds a flavor of hideousness. Once they have turned, their basic instinct is to hunt. They hunt their once fellow humans and one bite will turn their prey into lycanthropes as well, with their transformation then scheduled at the next full moon respectively. That is if they are not killed in the process. How the first of those creatures came into existence however, remains unknown to this very day. Now, what our young master was experiencing that day seemed indeed a bit odd, since the creatures were appearing in broad daylight and were transforming immediately.

I shut the door tightly behind me. Leaning against it, I could hear my heart pounding. Never in my entire life was I forced to run that fast. My whole body was aching. Also I must have been in the sunlight for too long, since the skin on my forearms was turning red. Why do they have to change the school uniforms to short sleeves in summer? It was the worst idea ever. I remembered how the butler was always carrying an umbrella around for me in summer. Only now I realized the true reason for it. There was nothing I craved for more than to cool down in the pool in the lush garden behind the house. Slowly I moved away from the door and began walking through the entrance hall of our home. I didn’t have much time to rest though. Soon the werewolf-turned bodyguard came smashing through the door. Saliva and blood dripping from his deformed mouth. The door was completely broken. Unrepairable, I would have said. Then again, I was not an expert in repairing things. Perhaps a professional person could still have saved the door. But it was clearly beyond my capability. As soon as I saw the creature, I turned around and started to run again. Luckily the creature was a bit too fast and jumped over my head and landed hard on the kitchen floor, failing miserably in trying to grab me. I immediately shut the kitchen door and locked it. I could hear the roars and scratches through the door. Interestingly the werewolf didn’t break this door. At this very moment my father came down the stairs, wearing his golf outfit.

“Is there anything wrong?” he asked.

“No, nothing,” I replied, pressing my back against the kitchen door. “Why are you home so early anyway?” I then asked, trying to sound casual and in no way suspicious.

“It’s Friday. Besides, I have people who work for me, so I don’t really need to be in the office that long,” he replied.

“Shouldn’t you be telling them what to do or something?” I insisted. But he just laughed and walked away. It was something he always did it when he tried to avoid a conversation.

“What in God’s name happened to the front door?” I could hear him say but before I could reply I was already lying on the floor. The kitchen door was finally busted open and a hungry werewolf jumped out. Apparently the food supplies in the kitchen weren’t enough, because his teeth already found their way deep into my father’s throat. But this time no fangs and claws were growing on the victim’s body. The bodyguard just chewed on his throat like a dog on a toy. After a while he left. The father was dead.