The Last Werewolf (Vidar #1) | ONC2021 Grand Winner

Can I offer you a slice?

His conversation with Mo lasted a whole ten seconds. "Swing by the office as fast as you can. The body dumped at the Great Market Square—looks like a case, Wolfie," he said.

So a minute after six-thirty in the evening, Vidar put the shutters down and locked the door. He crossed the street as two skaters soared through the sky, high above the half-pipe, twisting and turning before landing and making another sharp turn.

"There are twenty people on the live stream," shouted a lanky boy with spiky hair. The rest of the group sitting by the bench glanced up from their phones, but not for long. "It's going up quickly—twenty-three, wham, straight to twenty-six."

 The girl with the blue hair wasn't with them. Hopefully, she would be back tomorrow.

Vidar strolled towards the Velo station where two rows of red-and-white bikes were waiting for him. Of thirty-five, only a handful remained. The Velo Project was the mayor's pride, announced as an initiative to ban motorised vehicles out of the city, but mostly used by those who already didn't own a car.

Still, everyone considered the project a success. The bikes were everywhere. Even for the technically challenged, like him, they were easy to rent. No human interaction required.

Vidar fished his Velo card out of his wallet, peered at the code written in thick blue marker while simultaneously entering the numbers in the console, then pushed the buttons 1-2-3-4, his pin code. Seconds later, he took bike 3254 out of its dock and rode off.

Sunna's bright rays crawled from behind a cloud, soothing the nagging ache in his muscles. Life was good. 

High-pitched shrieking and laughter erupted from the playground where children slid down the long tube slide and climbed the racks, only to jump down as they reached the top.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a little girl with black curly hair crossed the path. He hit the coaster brake, the wheel slipping on the gravel as he squeezed the front brake too. 

The child ran on. A woman with the same curly hair stood up from the foldable lounge chairs by the shallow pond, a cocktail glass still in her hand. "Miri, watch where you're going! That man could have run you over!"

"It's alright." Vidar signalled.

The woman gave the girl a scolding, anyway.

Vidar cycled on, passing a group of students sitting in the grass, raising cans of cheap beer. In the middle lay a large cone of fries, topped with a light orange sauce, a hint of spice not far away. His stomach rumbled.

After exiting the park, he turned towards the Lange Dijk-street, where every other house was wrapped in scaffolding. At least, the owners here had the money for the long-overdue renovations, and the buildings would be restored to their original late-nineteenth-century glory. Half a block further, the rich-man townhouses of the past had been reduced to crash pads for those existing outside the law. The pompous gentlemen of yore would turn in their graves if they knew.

Time had the least mercy of them all.

The trees of Saint John's Square were in bloom, the white flowers subtle yet present. Vidar took a moment to appreciate their beauty before continuing towards Rotterdam Street, where he zigzagged around the potholes that had formed weeks after men in orange overalls had fixed the tarmac.

On the bike, he was still faster than those in their fat, blinking cars shuffling towards the traffic light.

At Central Station, he had the opportunity to park the bike and take bus 17 to the University Hospital. But, unlike Mo, Vidar wasn't in a rush. When the office you had to go to was a morgue, the work remained just as dead, even if you were late. Mo wanted action and quick resolutions, and patience was not in his dictionary.