And that's how Clarence became a terrorist (Part 1)

Clarence Bryd, werewolf, is a character I will eventually write about if I ever finish my first two novel ideas and get to a third. Without revealing too much, he eventually becomes part of a terrorist organization. It all started with a visit to one of his buddies from Vietnam. I began to write out this scenario for a post at the RPG "Tower," but obviously it being Tower, it deviated from the actual outcome. So here is Part 1 of 2 - Clarence arriving at his buddy's apartment. Part 2 is fourthcoming as soon as I have a moment to write.

Clarence turned the wipers off and killed the ignition. The raindrops slapped gently against the windshield, congealing, distorting the world outside until the sparse trees, the ramshackle apartments, the cracked concrete looked as though they were fashioned of melting wax. A stray cat, rail-thin, despairing, and ragged like the people here lapped water from a puddle, its surface iridescent with motor oil. A woman who was just a child herself pushed a weathered baby carriage, wheels spattered the mud and grime, over sidewalks addled with deep fissures. Her eyes were hard, joyless.

It caused Clarence a strange discomfort in the pit of his stomach, thinking of Robert living in a place like this. He remembered his smiling, clean-shaved face, eyes transfixed on the shimmering Pacific ocean far below their plane. Over the roar of the engine and snoring of their fellow marines, the other man had told him that his service would give him the money he needed to study biology in Europe, where therians were treated like humans. He wanted to travel the world filming endangered species, or something like that.

Decency was an endangered species in this town. He could smell through the car’s vent the scents of humanity’s decay: the vinegar reek of old heroin syringes; the alcohol stink of discarded whiskey bottles in paper bags; the musk of used condoms from cheap alleyway dalliances; the stinging wan of gunpowder and with it, old blood. He sighed, his hand resting on the door’s handle, not sure he really wanted to venture up the rusted fire escape, a five story ascent, to visit some ghost that barely resembled the man he’d known in Vietnam.