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Gender: Female
Status: Married
Age: 41
Sign: Sagittarius
Country: United States

Signup Date:
August 25, 2018

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09/06/2019 02:29 PM 

ALLY



SEPTEMBER 6, 2019

1:18 AM

NECROPOLIS


Mulligan’s was a dive bar on the Southside of Necropolis — a supernatural city hidden in the shadows where monsters could be monsters. Andy posted up across the street, smoking a cigarette and watching the different creatures come in and out through the bright red door. She bounced as she stood, jittery like she gulped down a pot of coffee in one go, but her anxieties were rooted to the bone and the cigarette wasn’t helping her settle the way it normally did. “What are you doing?” She whispered to herself. “What are you doing?” The guilt was taking over. This was wrong, she shouldn’t have been out. Andy should’ve been back home with her family, in bed with her wife, but she couldn’t sit still. This was wrong, but there was no way she would be anywhere else.


A man came up behind her, whistled after giving her a once over, and leered over his shoulder as he passed by and went to Mulligan’s. Andy ignored him, took another drag of her cigarette, and convinced herself that this was what she should be doing. She smoked the cigarette down to the butt and stomped it out on the ground before reaching into her jacket pocket to grab another. The pack slapped against her palm but before Andy could grab a second cigarette the person she was waiting for exited Mulligan’s.


Carrie Creed was a pretty blonde werewolf in a leather jacket with a Detroit Lions patch on the sleeve. She was one of the newest members in Claire’s growing pack — the Northern Lights — and she was already proving herself useful. She dug her hands into her jacket pockets when she stepped through Mulligan’s red door, looked around, and nodded and smiled a big toothy smile when she saw Andy across the street. The leerer whistled at her too when they passed each other and she wrinkled her nose and barked, “F*** off,” before crossing the street to meet Andy.


“Can I get one of those?” Carrie asked, eyeing Andy’s cigarettes. Andy held out the pack and Carrie took the cigarette Andy was going to take for herself. Andy chose another one and grabbed a lighter from her pocket after putting the pack away. “You called and I came running, left my f***ing smokes on the nightstand.”


“Anything?” Andy gave the lighter a flick and held the flame over the cigarette dangling out of Carrie’s mouth. The wolf cupped her hands to keep a breeze from extinguishing the flame and took a healthy drag before blowing smoke out her nostrils. 



“Not here,” Carrie said.


“But she was there?” Andy lit her cigarette and put her lighter away.


“Oh, she was there. My sniffer doesn’t lie.” Carrie tapped her nose. “Just missed her though. I asked around. Apparently the good doctor drinks there most nights.”


“But her scent ends here?” Andy asked.


Carrie pulled her smoke out of her mouth and looked around. “I mean, it doesn’t end here, the problem is there’s so much other sh*t going on around here, it’s easy for the scents to get mixed up with others. I can try to track her some more but I can’t promise we won’t get lost and spend half the night chasing after some taxi she used to get home.”


“I thought your nose doesn’t lie?”


“And neither do I, that’s why I’m being upfront with you,” Carrie said. “My nose got you this far but it can’t get you farther. Lucky for you, I have more assets than just my nose.” She shimmied her shoulders a little and her chest bounced. “The bartender there was quite talkative once you turned on the flirt. That’s how I got this.” Carrie pulled out a piece of paper from her pocket and handed it to Andy. 


“Her address?” Andy eyebrows shot up. “Why didn’t you just lead with that?”


“I was building to it.” Carrie laughed and ashed her cigarette. “Want me to stick around and come with you? I can’t imagine she’s going to be thrilled about someone showing up in the middle of the night. Can’t hurt to have some backup.”


“No, I’ll be fine.” Andy dug into her back pocket and pulled out a crumpled up fifty. Carrie shook her head when it was offered though. “C’mon, it’s what I promised you.”


“Forget it,” Carrie said. “Consider it a favor. You’re the Alpha’s wife. I’m happy to do it.”


“Take it.” Andy forced the bill into Carrie’s hand and closed her fingers around it. “Head back in there or go to a bar you actually like and buy yourself a round on me. If it makes you feel better you can give me back the change.”


Carrie laughed and tucked the money away, either happy to take it or unwilling to keep up the fight. The two finished the remainder of their cigarettes together and stood around in silence for a bit before Carrie asked, “So what’s so important about this lady that you need to track her down in the middle of the night like this?”


“It’s not about the importance of this lady,” Andy said. “It’s about the importance of my lady.”


***


After parting ways with Carrie, it took Andy twenty minutes to take Necropolis’ El-Train to get to the other side of town. The Jawbone neighborhood was a little more put together than the Southside, and it was flatter two. Andy got off the train and walked a couple of blocks west past a series of flat, one story houses with wide wrap-around porches. Some of the homes were boarded up but others looked like they weren’t a terrible place to live. The street lights actually worked, there didn’t seem to be a ton of pot holes in the street. It was one of the few places in Necropolis where Andy actually felt safe. 


It took another half block of walking before Andy arrived at the address Carrie procured for her. She stopped across the street and sighed, staring on before moving in. The porch light was on and an older woman in her late sixties sat on a rocking chair smoking a joint and staring back at her. Her hair was nice, her eyebrows looked amazing, and the woman wore dark lipstick that curled around the joint she brought to her lips. Andy crossed the street and stood at the end of the path that connected the sidewalk to the porch and the woman smiled at her.



“It’s a little late for pop ins,” the woman said. She nodded to a shotgun leaning up against her front door. “You see that? I’m faster than I look so if you’re here for trouble you best try one of the other houses.”


“I’m not here to stir the pot,” Andy said. She held her hands up to show she wasn’t armed to trying to cause trouble. “My name’s Andy Stoddard-Barclay, I—”


“Stoddard-Barclay?” The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You called my office earlier today. I believe I have a house call with you tomorrow, do I not?”


“With my wife,” Andy said. “Claire. And me too, I’ll be there, I mean, but it’s for Claire. I’m really sorry to bother you, Dr. Lucas, I know I shouldn’t be here but I feel like I need to be here.”


Dr. Lucas stared Andy down for a good long while like she was reading the lines on her face or seeing something in her blue eyes that wasn’t otherwise apparent. Almost a minute passed before Dr. Lucas reached out to offer a toke from her joint. 


“If I come up there are you going to shoot me?” Andy snickered.


“No promises.”


A smile was shared between the two of them and Andy cautiously ventured down the path, climbed the stairs to the porch, and took the joint from the psychologist she ambushed in the middle of the night and inhaled the smoke deep into her lungs. Dr. Lucas nodded to an open seat beside her when she took her joint back and Andy took it.


“I only glanced at the file we started before I left the office tonight,” Dr. Lucas said. “In the overview you provided my secretary you listed depression as the issue at hand with your wife Claire? Crying outbursts, manic swings associated with your children not needing her as much and her pack needing her more? Am I remembering this right?”


Andy nodded. “She’s been hiding it from me. Or maybe I just wasn’t paying close enough attention. My daughter had to be the one to make me wise to it, my daughter. Claire has nightmares, she wakes up in the middle of the night and goes off into a corner to cry… it’s worse than I even know, I’m sure.”


“I see.” Dr. Lucas rocked back and forth in her chair and stared off at one of the streetlights beyond her porch. She rocked two or three times before continuing. “I see that there’s a problem but what I don’t see is why you came all the way to Necropolis in the middle of the night to track me down when I’m coming to your house tomorrow afternoon to deal with this very thing.” Dr. Lucas reached over to pass back the joint.


“Tomorrow is about helping Claire,” Andy said, bringing the joint to her lips but stopping before she got there, getting distracted by the thoughts spilling out of her. “I’m there for moral support but tomorrow I want your full attention on Claire and how you can help her manage what she’s going through. I don’t need any of the attention tomorrow, but… but that doesn't mean I don’t need attention.” She paused to take a hit. “I came to you tonight because I need to know what I can do to play my part. I know there’s more I can do, I know there’s some way I can help Claire, but I’m lost. I feel useless, and I’m terrified of her slipping away into this mental hole she’s digging and getting lost there.”


Dr. Lucas reached for her joint back. Andy obliged.


“There’s no good answer here,” Dr. Lucas said after a long pause for smoking. “I’ll know better after I sit with Claire, after I get a feeling for what she’s going through, but there isn’t an easy fix. Partners of those struggling with some sort of mental setback don’t have it easy. It’s a different sort of struggle than the kind your wife is dealing with, but it’s still a struggle. I don’t ignore that. But here’s the thing; the secret to being a good ally.” She coughed and covered her mouth with her free hand. “It’s already something you got going on.”


“I don’t understand.”


“Sure you do,” Dr. Lucas said. “It’s why you’re here. No matter the details or the struggles that come, an ally only needs one thing to get them and their partner through the dark sh*t: love. If you have love it means everything you do will be done with love, which means it’ll be done purely, it’ll be done right. Now, I don’t know you, Mrs. Stoddard-Barclay, you’re just a stranger who showed up on my doorstep in the middle of the night like a f***ing crazy person, but I know you love your wife. Only love can make you this crazy.”


“So that’s it?” Andy asked. “Love. That’s the best you got?”


“Until tomorrow? Yeah, it’s the best I got. Love is all you need. Now, I’m tired and I got an early day tomorrow. Please leave.”


Andy sighed but smiled. She stood up and said, “Sorry, again,” before stepping down the porch steps while Dr. Lucas went to her door.


“Andy,” Dr. Lucas said. Andy turned back. “I’ll see you and your wife tomorrow. Try to get some sleep in the meantime.”


“Yeah,” Andy said. “Yeah. See you tomorrow.” 


Dr. Lucas disappeared into her house and the porch lights went out. Andy dug her hands into her pockets and started back down the street to head home. She needed to get some sleep. She needed a lot of sleep.


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