The Personal Choice

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

It had been one full week since her ‘exciting’ encounter with Damien and his crazy pack.

Damien had said that she needed to learn control but Ali didn’t see what he was talking about. Sure, she’d noticed changes; she could hear the slightest things, see things from far away, smell odors from a mile away and she was strong – no pickle jar was a match for her. But it wasn’t like she was out howling at the moon and killing deer or anything like that.

She scoffed, “Some ‘change’ that was supposed to be,” she muttered to herself as she got ready for work that Monday morning.

Ali had asked for the rest of the week off after the incident so that she could make sure she was okay for society. It was her first day back.

Sure, she didn’t really leave the house, afraid she was going to go ape shit – or is it wolf shit – on some unsuspecting person, but Ali felt like she had the whole situation under control.

“I’ve been by myself for almost a decade now, I think I can handle myself,” she continued to mutter as she walked down the stairs out of her apartment and hopped in her small car.

The smells from the small town hit her, they were pretty intense, so much so that she got a slight headache; and the sun was super bright but Ali managed.

She pulled on her shades and rolled up the windows to her car. The smell of the A/C wasn’t much better but it was an improvement from outside.

She turned her car on and the loud music blasted her sensitive eardrums. She screamed in pain and quickly turned down the music to where it was nothing but a whisper, but Ali could still hear every word of the song.

She sighed, “Guess that means no more concerts for me,” she said to herself. But she wasn’t sad about that, she never was one to go out and party anyway.

She drove her small car the few blocks to the town library where she opened it up and turned on all the lights. The smell of old, musty books welcomed her and she smiled; nothing like a quiet library to help soothe a new werewolf’s senses.

She went over to the drive-through window and picked up the books that were dropped off during the week she wasn’t there. Although everything was electronic these days, some of the older residents still preferred the books and Ali ended up having a few dozen books in the drop-slot.

She sighed, that’s what happened when you’re the only librarian in the only library in town, you miss a week and there’s a whole hell of a lot of work waiting for you.

Ali worked in silence, checking the books in, issuing late fees, then piling them on the cart to shelf them.

Ali also discovered, during her week off, that she was really fast too. If she wanted, she could shelf these books in a minute flat, but Ali decided against it.

She preferred the monotony of the work so she could let her mind wonder. Plus, if anyone walked in and saw her zipping around it would be one heck of an explanation.

So instead of shelving the books away in a matter minutes, Ali took several hours. In fact, it was about four in the afternoon before Ali sat down. Not only did she shelf the books, she also reorganized some sections, ordered some new books to be shipped to the library and scheduled a few story time dates for the kindergarteners.

It was then that they came in.

Not only could she hear them, she could smell them as well. She liked to call them the ‘Goth group’. It was a bunch of wannabe punk rockers that smoked weed, cursed way too much and were very loud – even in a library.