Eddy Bauer sat in the driver’s seat of a semi–truck. It idled noisily as the big monster semi slid into the parking lot of the Shady Pines Truck Stop. Eddy’s hair was white and thinning. He wore a camouflage hat that said Hell Yeah. He shut off the radio, which had been blaring Willy Nelson’s on the Road Again. Eddy jumped out of the sem, i and he filled up with diesel gasoline. He walked inside the little, shack-like gas station, and he approached the cube-like checkout counter. A man with straight black hair and glasses stood behind the counter. His nametag read Hank. He wore square-looking glasses, and he was abnormally thin. “That’ll be 15.7,” Hank said stiffly.

Hank reached into his wallet and pulled out exactly fifteen dollars and three quarters. “It’s not safe for a man to be near these parts this late at night when there’s a full moon,” Hank advised his customer as he placed the money he had been given into the cash register. “Oh yeah, why’s that?” Eddy asked.

“There have been reports of a werewolf being spotted around here,” Hank said.

“That’s an awfully cute Halloween story,y but everybody knows that there’s no such thing as a werewolf.” Eddy protested.

As he started to walk away, ay Hank grabbed Eddy’s arm. “Listen, five people have been attacked and murdered near this truck stop in the last two months. This is no joke, you are in danger!” Hank’s voice was low and creepy.

Eddy freed himself from Hank’s grip, and he took a serious look at the weird guy behind the checkout counter.

Under his breath, as he was heading out the door,r Eddy muttered fucking nuts.

Eddy climbed into his tru,ck and he laughed. As he turned on the radio, some hip-hop mess popped up on the radio. ‘What the Hell’s this crap?” Eddy mumbled as he changed the station to country.

“Who’s been messing with my radio?” The annoyed trucker thought to himself as he fumbled with the radio knob. He pulled that truck out onto the main highway. Eddy soon heard rattling around in the trailer hitch he was hauling. He scratched his head. Soon, he heard scratching against the walls of the trailer he was hauling, and he became a little uneasy. He began to bite his nails. Soon, he heard growling that was beyond anything human. It was so loud and primal that Eddy shuddered.

“There’s some kind of wild animal in the trailer of my semi.” Eddy thought to himself.

At a red light,t Eddy climbed out of his truck after grabbing his magnum from the dashboard compartment. He unlatched the door to the trail, er and he saw a thirteen-foot-tall werewolf with long, shaggy, brown fur and huge claws and fangs. Drool dripped from the creature’s mouth, and its eyes were wild like a lunatic's eyes. The beast howled so loud that the windows shattered on the Nissan behind Eddy’s semi. Eddy shot the creature, but the beast remained unaffected. After all, the bullets were not even silver. The beast leapt into the Nissan through the broken window and seized the lady driver by the throat. His sharp claws penetrated thelady'ss throat as her trachea gave way and squished in the werewolf’s throat like modeling clay. The baby screamed and cried in the back seat. Frantically, Eddy grabbed the baby and his car seat and buckled him in the front seat of his semi. He sped off,f and the werewolf who now had the mother of the child decapitated was

busy disemboweling her.

He did not know how or why, but even if it cost him his life,e this baby was not going to get hurt.

It was an insane situation indeed, ed and it certainly was more film than real-life happenstance, but Eddy knew he had to survive for at least the baby’s protection.

Eddy thought of Hank’s words, and he shuddered. He thought about how stupid he had been for not believing the cashier,r but how could he have? That stuff only happened in movies, or so Eddy originally thought. Finally,y the baby had stopped crying. He looked up at Eddy and smiled. For a brief moment, not all the fear and ugliness of the werewolf attack seemed to fade away. This was why he believed in God, because in the face of such ugliness, how could something beautiful, sweet,t and innocent exist unless there was divine intervention. He heard a loud thud on the roof of the semi that caused him to jump. The roof began to sag. A furry paw shattered the driver’s side window, ow and the beast clawed at the driver’s cheek. A fresh, minor trickle of blood ran down the cheek of the terrified trucker. He swerved and jerked the wheel in an attempt to force the beast from the top of his truck, but it was far too powerful for that. The truck flipped and turned in a ravine.

The beast was crushed by the semi. The beast crawled out from under the trunk,k but its upper half had been completely torn from its body.

The beast fell dead instantly, and its cold eyes seemed very human.

So,n the beast morphed back into a human. As he held this unknown baby in his arms, Ms. Eddy sh

uddered. He saw a nude man with blonde hair and a muscular build who was torn in h,alf lying in a ravine.

He leaned in an

d whispered to the baby. “You know, kidd,o the scariest thing in life is not seeing thebeast inside , an it’s seeing the man in the beast.” Eddy bowed his head as his own words echoed inside his own skull.

Werewolf

Werewolf

Passages

werewolf