The Werelupe in Room 453

     I guess I’m getting ahead of myself, though, since you don’t know who Gregor is, yet. Let me start at the beginning.

     My owner dropped me off at the Cockroach Towers for a twenty-eight day stay when she found out she’d won a free trip to Faerieland. She’s been stressed lately, so I understood, and wished her a great trip. Unfortunately for me, my first week at the NeoLodge wasn’t all that great, and I even got a bit lonely. On my seventh night there, though, things began to look up.

     At about 8 pm, an exhausted-looking Techo appeared at my door and uttered the fortuitous words: “My apologies, Allen, but there seems to be a slorg infestation on this floor. There are no remaining units of this type available, so we’ll have to move you to a luxury suite.”

     He apologetically informed me that my new rooms (which were free of charge!) were to be shared with a Halloween Lupe from the Haunted Woods named Gregor. His current room was adjacent to mine in the Cockroach Towers, so he was also getting bumped into a nicer suite.

     I didn’t mind -- I was actually looking forward to having a roommate!

     I met Gregor a day later with my suitcase in tow. I walked into my new suite and he was sprawled across the couch reading a book. He greeted me with a noncommittal grunt and resumed pawing through the thick tome in front of him. I figured that might be a normal greeting for Neopets from the Haunted Woods, so I greeted him the way Red Acaras (like myself) from Neopian Central do: by saying hello.

     He completely ignored me.

     That interaction set the tone for the week. Gregor ignored me, and I did my best to stay out of his way.

     I did begin to notice...well, some interesting things about him. I should let you know that I don’t know much about the Haunted Woods. I’ve heard there’s a pretty spooky carnival there, which is neat, but most of what I’ve heard about it is that the Neopets who live there are...different.

     The weirdness with Gregor started a few days into our shared living arrangement. As far as I could tell, Gregor almost never left our suite. He spent most of the day reading through dusty old books covered in cobwebs or eating absolutely ridiculous amounts of food.

     He also largely avoided speaking to me. But a few days in, Gregor gave me one of his characteristic grunts of acknowledgement after I walked into the common area, then shocked me by actually saying something.

     “There’s a full moon tonight,” he said.

     “Wow! Cool!” I replied. (I think I would have exclaimed those exact words had Gregor said anything at all, including “Have you seen my shoes?”, because to be honest, I was just delighted he was speaking to me.)

     Gregor grinned, his wide mouth curling into an almost grotesque smile as he flashed long teeth at me.

     I nearly fell over.

     “I’ll be heading out tonight,” he said. “But I’ll be back in the morning, so don’t touch my stuff.”

     I nodded, gulping audibly.

     Gregot left that night, and returned early the next morning. I tried asking where he’d been, but he’d returned to communicating exclusively in grunts, so that was a no-go.

     Later that day, I opened my suitcase to grab a new pair of socks, and noticed something.

     A few months ago my owner had stopped by the Toy Store and picked me up a Werelupe Plushie. She’d told me a bit about them, about how they were Lupes who morphed into Werelupes under the light of the full moon. I sort of ignored the plushie (I had cooler toys), but my owner had packed it for me when she left.

     The plushie was sitting there, right next to my socks. I grabbed both of them, struck by a sudden revelation.

     Gregor was a Werelupe! The evidence was all there.

     He was way bigger than most Lupes I’d met. He was from the Haunted Woods, and he was, quite frankly, absolutely terrifying. He’d left the suite only during a full moon, and one of the only other times he’d spoken to me was to read me some of his (terrible) poetry about how beautiful the Haunted Woods were in the moonlight.

     I mulled the matter over for a few days, trying to decide my course of action. The plushie sat on my bed, reminding me of what I’d discovered.

     That leads me to this moment, right here, two weeks into my stay at the NeoLodge, and ready to confront Gregor.

     I grabbed the plushie off my bed, straightened my spine, and marched into the shared room.

     Gregor was at the kitchen counter, devouring a plate of mashed potatoes.

     I slammed the plushie down in front of him.

     “Gregor. We need to talk.”

     The forkful of mashed potatoes that Gregor had been in the process of raising to his mouth clattered noisily onto his plate. I was worried he might not say anything, but his eyes caught on the plushie, and then he turned to me, eyes narrowed.

     "What?" he demanded, slamming a paw on the kitchen counter. Hairline cracks immediately appeared across its marble surface.

     My jaw dropped.

     Gregor, having noticed my expression and apparently deduced that it was not, in fact, a normal occurrence for a giant slab of marble to crack under the weight of a Lupe’s paw, hastily slid his plate over the ruined section of the counter.

     "Well?" he prompted, crossing his arms and leaning forward, his irritation at being interrupted unabated. "What did you want to talk about?"

     My tongue felt like lead in my mouth. I'd intended to catch him off guard, hence the slamming of plushie onto the kitchen counter. But Gregor’s response -- to literally break the kitchen counter -- had not happened in any of the versions of this conversation that I'd rehearsed.

     I gulped noisily, then gestured wordlessly at the plate and the massive quantity of food on it, the counter, the plushie, at him. He followed my wild pointing, his grizzled brows drawn together.

     My heart thundered in my chest. I wondered if Gregor, being a maybe-Werelupe, could somehow sense my innate terror using his extrasensory abilities.

     "Wow," Gregor said at last, drawing back, his eyes widening. The irritation was gone from his voice, and he looked a little concerned. "Allen, are you alright? You seem...scared."

     I knew it! I wanted to scream. You're a Were-

     "You're shaking," he observed. He leaned forward and settled a paw on my shoulder with exaggerated gentleness, perhaps trying to avoid another cracked-counter scenario.

     "Gregor," I blurted, finally managing to get a word out.

     "He speaks!"

     "Gregor," I continued, ignoring his interruption, and shrugging his paw off my shoulder. "I think we might, uh, need to talk about...you know. I mean, there's no good way to say this, but I think we need to talk about..."

     Gregor, it appeared, had decided to confront my bizarre behaviour with a surprising sense of good humour. He looked at me expectantly, almost encouragingly, through massive green eyes, and took a huge bite of mashed potatoes.

     I took a deep breath and dove in headfirst. "Do you know what this plushie is, Gregor?”

     Gregor swallowed. "Maybe," he said finally.

     I blinked.

     He sighed. "It’s a Werelupe.”

     “And...are Werelupes of any particular significance to you?” I asked.

     Gregor shrugged. His gaze focused on the plate of mashed potatoes. “What do you know about Werelupes?” he asked.

     I frowned. “Well...that they’re normal pets most of the time, even though they’re always stronger than Acaras like me. But under the light of the full moon, they can turn...dangerous.”

     Gregor looked down at his mashed potatoes, his shoulders drooped. "I know that," he said. “But say there was a Werelupe who didn’t want to be dangerous. All he wanted to do was read books and eat lots of mashed potatoes. Would you have a problem with that?”

     Gregor was still speaking to the plate of mashed potatoes, unable to meet my eyes.

     This was the longest conversation I’d had with Gregor all week. I felt a smile stretch across my face.

     “I wouldn’t have a problem with that at all, Gregor,” I said. “In fact, if I knew a Werelupe that liked to read and eat delicious food all the time, I think we’d actually get along really well. We might even become good friends.”

     Gregor looked up, his eyes wide.

     “Friends?” he said.

     “Yeah. Even after we leave the NeoLodge. We’ll be friends,” I assured him, acknowledging openly that this conversation wasn’t about some hypothetical Werelupe -- it was about Gregor.

     Gregor grinned in return. This time, it wasn’t scary.

     He extended a massive paw. I reached out and shook it.

     “Friends,” he agreed.

     The End.