The Werewolves of Nyxryn

Chapter 1 - the human realm

I never thought myself capable of murder.

But tonight, I was highly rethinking it. Weighing in the pros and cons.

The clock said 2:47 a.m., and I was convinced it was lying to me at this point. There was no way time was moving this slowly. I had been here since ten, which meant I had been awake since… forever. My apron smelled like burnt espresso and something sticky I couldn’t or even dared to identify, and my hair had declared independence from my bun. Honestly, it had been a long night for everyone involved.

My brain at this point had split into two departments:

The Department of Reality: You need this job. Rent’s due. They want actual food that isn’t just bread crusts and boiled potatoes.

And

The Department of Chaos: Pour the entire pot of coffee on the floor and declare it “performance art.”

I had listened to 'the Department of Chaos' if it weren’t for the fact that my siblings really needed to eat. Otherwise, I would be halfway to reinventing myself in another town where no one ever used the word drizzle.

At 1:15, a drunk had wandered inside, ordered a black coffee, and then spent fifteen whole minutes explaining how coffee was just “bean soup.” I had smiled, nodded, pretended to take notes like he was auditioning for a podcast. Inside, I was wondering if bludgeoning someone with a bag of coffee beans counted as self-defense.

By 2:00, my body had gone on autopilot: grind, tamp, pull, pour, repeat. My hands worked. My mouth smiled. My brain, however, was elsewhere. It was busy pondering life’s greatest mysteries, like:

If I faked my own death, would anyone here even notice?

If one more person says “extra hot,” can I legally hand them lava in a cup?

How many cups could I stack before I collapse right along with them?

The gaps between annoying customers were somehow worse than the customers themselves. Silence made me notice how tired I really was. The refrigerators hummed like they were trying to sing me a lullaby written by Satan himself. My eyelids weighed roughly the same as my entire body.

At 2:53, another gremlin stumbled in. Hood pulled low, eyes half-shut.

“Uh… double caramel macchiato with whip, extra drizzle, half-caf.”

Of course.

Extra drizzle.

At three in the morning.

I smiled — the kind of smile you practiced in front of a mirror while crying — and said,

“Sure thing.” In my head: Listen, buddy, I will drizzle you straight into the afterlife.

I lined up my options while the milk steamed:

Option number one: Walk out the door, never come back, start fresh in some city where people order normal coffee like normal people.

Or, option number two: Stay here, keep grinding, pay rent, feed your siblings, rinse, repeat until I dissolve into the floor tiles.

Or, option number three: Murder the espresso machine, end civilization as this town knows it.

Option three was looking really good around 3:10.

But then I thought of them. My siblings were probably curled up in bed right now, dreaming, their bellies full for once this week. They didn’t know I had been on my feet for hours, fighting the urge to commit homicide by syrup pump. They didn’t need to know. That was the point. So I sighed, handed the customer his sugar bomb, and kept going.

By 3:20, I was leaning on the counter, chin in my palm, muttering to myself.

“Alright, Veyra. If you survive until sunrise without strangling anyone with the straw bin, you win.”

“What do I win?” I asked myself.

“Absolutely nothing. But still. A win’s a win.”

And when the next customer walked in, I pasted on my fake smile again. Because that’s what I did. I smiled, I served, I survived. And maybe that was the funniest, most morbid part of all: no matter how many times I fantasized about murder, I kept choosing to live instead.

The new customer leaned on the counter like he owned the place, which was generous — he owned nothing but a steady opinion of himself and a half-empty bottle of poor decisions. The coffee bar light halood his breath in a way that made the air smell like whiskey and regret. He smiled at me like he was made of charming intentions and stale mints. And I really started to wonder if maybe 99% of the people living in this miserable town had an alcohol problem.

“Hey there, beautiful,” he slurred with the confidence of a man who had never once been told ‘no’ in his life.

“You got a minute for an old sailor?” He winked. It was gross. I reflexively wiped down the counter as if cleanliness would disinfect his personality. Inside my head, a tiny brass band played dramatic violin: ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I bit the inside of my cheek to keep a laugh from turning into a snort. The laugh would be toxic, a little volcanic. Better to keep it contained.

“Sir,” I said instead, using the tone reserved for stray dogs and people who tried to touch other people’s faces without asking,

“I’m on the clock.”

He pursed his lips like that was a challenge.

“I’ll pay,” he promised, because apparently, cash made everything forgivable. He tapped his wallet with a greasy fingertip, as if that could buy consent, dignity, or basic human decency.

There was a long, comprehensive, and extremely entertaining mental catalogue that opened in me at that moment. It was elaborate and occasionally operatic. It included:

— A whole Broadway production in which this man was swallowed by a stage curtain, after delivering his last terrible joke.

— A tax audit so thorough it ruined his ability to buy cheap cologne ever again.

— A rain of pigeons that landed exclusively on his shoulders and would not be shaken off until they had all pooped.

I called this catalogue 'my coping mechanism'. It was non-weaponized, delightfully passive, and legally sound. It did not require me to leave the premises. It did not involve sticky evidence. It kept me sane inside this hellhole I called my home.

No.

Not home.

Just a… place I lived in.

The drunk leaned in, the smell of him a bold combination of aftershave and bad decisions.

“So what’s your name, sweetheart?” he asked, like I was supposed to respond with a sonnet and a schedule for our imaginary wedding. I considered telling him my name was ‘Very Busy’ and to please make an appointment. Instead, I handed him a napkin and said,

“It’s on the nametag.”

He laughed. Clearly too drunk to be able to read, instead, he just kept staring at my breasts.

great.

Just…great.

“Cute.” He reached for my hand with the confidence of a man who thought consent was a suggestion. I pulled my hand back like it had been dipped in something mildly radioactive. My smile was the one that said I was civilized and also potentially armed with a fork resting behind the register, just in case. And a baseball bat in the back.

“Sir,” I said,

“I am legally contracted to serve coffee and look slightly apologetic about it. I am not contracted to be flirted with.”

He frowned, misinterpreting my bluntness for coyness, and tried again. Somewhere behind my ribs, the ‘Department of Chaos’ took a bow and tossed me another idea. This one was weirdly specific: I picture this asshole glued to his seat, forever leaning forward with the fork sticking in the back of his head, eternally friends with the edge of the counter. It was ridiculous. It was a cartoon. It was safe. It was perfect.

“Trust me, sweetheart,” he said, voice getting louder,

“I know how to treat a lady.”

My internal narrator provided a helpful subtitle: Clearly, He does not.

I could have humiliated him with kindness so surgical it would have felt like some form of revenge. I could have sketched his life in bullet points and handed him the bill for emotional labor. But instead…I did none of those things because the only thing with real power here was my restraint. Because restraint, in my world, was practical. Restraint kept bread on the table. Restraint kept the lights on in my house. Restraint was what made it possible for the two small humans who thought I was made of unbreakable things to sleep in peace at this very moment. Because of the sacrifices I was making for my family.

So instead of killing him. I smiled — the practiced, professional smile that had lost none of its edge — and I made his drink while I fantasized about all the ways I could kill him instead. I put the cup down with nothing but the faintest of civility. He tipped a coin onto the counter like it was a prize. It clinked like a sad bell.

“Goodnight, miss,” he slurred, wobbling away with the fragile dignity of a soap bubble. I watched him go with the same attention I gave to bad weather: note it, adapt, continue. My head filled with small, non-actionable fantasies — a confetti storm of his misdemeanors, a stage exit that collapsed into applause — and I tucked them away like postcards I would never send out.

For a little while after he had gone, I stood there and let the banal roar of espresso machines and refrigerators fill the silence. My hands were steady. My thoughts were ridiculous and safe. The murderous part of my imagination, such as it was, preferred metaphors and theater. It liked to stage the impossible in ways that never required cleanup or police statements. It was very lazy that way.

I finished my shift, stacked the cups, and handed the till off to the register. The town was completely asleep, and I was not. I could feel the weight of the coming day press against my temples — rent, groceries, shoes that needed mending — but underneath it all, there was a small, stubborn warmth. It was not bravery. It was not heroism. It was the dull, steady ache of responsibility that said: you work, so they can sleep.

Thinking about thirty ways to kill someone was, it turned out, more of a pastime for me than a plan. It kept my hands busy while my feet carried me where they had to go. It was a terrible, comic little ritual that never crossed the line into action. Because when the fantasies stopped being jokes and started being possible, I breathed in the cost: jail, empty plates, small people who would be put into foster care.

That was how I kept my fingers clean.

That was how I kept them alive.

That was how I kept myself alive.

So yeah… just thinking about thirty ways to kill those assholes was all I had. Because if the day came that I would actually do it, I wouldn’t just throw my own life away, but also that of my siblings. And I just couldn't put them through more hell than they had already witnessed in their short, little lives.