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Synopsis

Brian, an aimless slacker, works doubles at his shift job, forgets to clean his room and lays about with his friends Nik and Darby. He's been struggling to manage his transition to adulthood almost as much as his monthly transitions to a werewolf. Really, he is not great at the whole werewolf thing, and his recent murderous slip-ups have caught the attention of Tyler, a Millennial were-mentor determined to take the mythological world by storm.

Tyler has got a plan, and weirdly his self-help punditry actually encourages Brian to shape up and to stop accidentally marking out guys who ghosted him on Grindr as potential monthly victims. But as Brian gets closer to Tyler's pack, and alienated from Nik and Darby, he realizes that Tyler's expansion plans are much more nefarious than a little lupine enlightenment...

Excerpt

ONE

The light floods into an austere studio apartment, the industrial windows magnifying the stark midday sun so that it bakes the cinderblock walls and all its contents. Like most revitalized buildings in the neighborhood, the unit is blank and impersonal like a Nordic prison cell, the kind designed for rehabilitation rather than punishment. The particle-board cabinets in the kitchenette hold a menagerie of mismatched glassware, stolen pint glasses, and Icelandic yogurt jars repurposed as whiskey tumblers, still tacky to the touch where the labels have been scratched away. Pots and pans overflow from the sink, stacked atop the steel counters amid receipts and flyers from nightclub promoters and street fundraisers. The polished concrete floor is a graveyard of unopened packing boxes, dirty thrift-store T-shirts and stacks of never-read books, through which winds a footpath towards a mattress in the center of the room. The pile under the pilled flannel duvet begins to stir with kicks and elbows, until an outstretched hand shoots from under the blanket. It fumbles across the books, laptop, phone charger, briefly holding and contemplating each until it finds a half-empty Red Bull. The hand snatches it quickly under the covers like a fresh kill. Brian heaves himself up to sitting, swigs down the flat cotton candy battery acid, crushes the can and throws it across the room. Pushing his messy hair from his eyes, he growls as last night’s drinks begin to pound in his head. He squints on either side of him; he didn’t bring anyone home with him. That’s good. He looks at his hands and pulls up the covers for his feet to peek out at the bottom. He takes a deep breath and lifts the blanket, then slowly exhales upon seeing the outline of his morning erection in his boxer briefs. He’s alive and ended the night with the same number of appendages he started out with. Maybe last night wasn’t so bad?
   For a good thirty seconds longer Brian is in a blissful state of ignorance before his memory kicks in, a streamof-consciousness slideshow of … wait … ouzo shots? And did he really commandeer the dive-bar jukebox to dance alone under the disco lights to Björk’s ‘Hyperballad’, hoping that the bulky tattooed doorman he had been directing weapons-grade flirting at all night would finally look his way?
   The pounding quickens and Brian hides under his blanket to begin his well-rehearsed morning recitation of self-loathing. Starting, of course, with the most immediate: you should have known this would happen. A couple of drinks is never just a couple of drinks with Brian. He has two speeds for alcohol, on and off. But despite this knowledge, he hasn’t been able to rein himself in. Next time will be different, he promises his pillow.
   But will it? He tells himself that next time will be different most weeks, and most weeks … it’s not. He didn’t think his self-destructive phase would last this long. It would be a blip in the grand scheme of his twenties. But it’s been nearly a year now of every night starting as okay, but just a couple. He had moved here to get on with his life, but he’s barely even unpacked. He still hasn’t bought curtains. He holds his hand over his eyes to block the sunlight. At least he got out the bar in time. He managed that much.
   He rolls out of bed onto all fours, a wounded animal in boxer briefs and a ratty T-shirt. He follows the trail of clothing leading from his bed to the door. He can smell his jeans before he sees them, the familiar scent of a hundred collective meals from last night’s shift combined with about a thousand after-hours cigarettes. He lifts them from a packing box and holds them at arm’s length, their blunt odor making his stomach lurch. He pats them down and pulls out a wad of cash and his cracked cell phone. Thirteen missed messages from his group chat with Nik and Darby. He scrolls to the top.
               Nik: WHERE DID YOU GO?!

   Yep. He made it to the park in time. He skims the rest of the exchange of text bubbles, ending with both of them confirming they are safely at home. They don’t seem unduly pissed at him – Brian’s friends know he has a penchant for the Irish goodbye. He shoots off a quick apology text, anyway.
               Brian: Sorry guys. Had one too many and had
               to leave IMMEDIATELY. See you tonight tho!

   Brian waits and watches for a response. Nik is typing. He wonders vaguely if they suspect anything.

                Nik: Just let us know next time! I was worried. BTW
                you left your bike at the bar. But in the state you were
                in, it’s probably for the best.
                Darby: And bitch, you better hydrate. I can’t pick up
                your slack tonight. Have to put on my own face mask
                before assisting others.

    Brian rolls his eyes at Darby and clicks his phone into the charging cable on the floor. One would think with five years of experience and the cyclical nature of the moon, the twenty-five-year-old werewolf wouldn’t be caught off guard each month. But plans rarely work out for Brian and take more energy than they’re worth. He thinks of his transitions in the same way he does his piles of laundry on the floor – he has never separated lights and colors and, so far, nothing that bad has happened. Okay, sure, there was that one person in the park last month. But, if you average that with all the nights he hasn’t killed someone, he definitely has a passing grade.
   As penance for his bad decision-making, Brian begins to organize the chaos of his apartment. Starting from the front door, a trash bag in one hand, he works outwards, widening the footpath carved through the detritus that links the bed, bathroom and kitchen. He picks up takeout flyers, balled-up tissues and empty packs of cigarettes He tosses away a pile of unopened mail (everything is online anyways) and uncovers a long-forgotten plate and fork with the remnants of some hardened spaghetti and marinara sauce. Holding it in one hand, he slowly turns it upside down, but the fork is fused to the plate. He shrugs and throws them both away. He picks up a greasy pizza box and is delighted to hear the rattle of leftovers. He gnaws at a four-day-old pepperoni slice for breakfast while absentmindedly kicking sweaters, socks, T-shirts and jeans across the floor into their respective piles, triaging them from dirty to less dirty. He clears off the steel countertop, surgically unfurling a couple of rolledup bills that he found next to the microwave. He squints to see if any flecks of coke have dusted the countertop. It’s not much, but he dips his index finger in what’s left and rubs his gums anyways.
   With some space now freed up in the room, he resolves to tackle the packing boxes. He has been avoiding them for months. When he moved in, he only unpacked the essentials – laptop, kitchenware, clothes and lube, unsure if his stint in the city would take. He’s spent the last twelve months sliding, stacking and unstacking the neat cardboard boxes into a range of Tetris formations. They’ve been dinner tables, nightstands and chairs; and during one mushroom-induced trip they were both the walls and the distinguished guests of a tea party in his blanket fort. Their alternate uses protect him from both their contents and the arduous task of having to pack things up quickly if he’s ever found out. But he can’t live among boxes forever. Brian takes a deep breath and puts himself to work.
   Kneeling before the box labeled ‘School’, he removes the unused textbooks and stacks them against the wall with the others. The hardcover copies of Moral Philosophy, Historical Sociology, Cultural Anthropology, serve as a strong foundation. He stacks the paperbacks on top, each a variation on the same theme but with the word ‘Perspectives’ clunkily added to the title. All of which were tools to prepare him for a career in … being hard to talk to. He was two years into his degree when he was turned. It’s hard for him to remember the version of himself that got him into university in the first place. The years of studying, volunteer work and struggling to pull his weight on the Mathletics team were all done in the service of a future that now seemed entirely out of reach. He had tried in the beginning to keep going, keep up his studies, to not let his condition hold him back, but he had struggled too much with the hypocrisy of preparing himself for a vocation that would put some good in the world with the murderous tendencies of being something that goes bump in the night. He had left school about a week after he’d eaten the campus cat and hadn’t looked at his textbooks since. He thinks to himself that if they’re out in the open at least, he may one day have the inclination to pick them back up and jumpstart his motivation to finish his degree. And if that doesn’t happen? Well, if he’s ever short on cash, they’re a sort of millennial nest egg. Textbooks can be sold for a fortune on Amazon.
   Once he’s emptied out all the books, he crawls over to another box, pausing at the flap, where his mother has written in marker pen ‘beach towels and rugs’. Brian runs a finger over his mother’s familiar cursive, a flourishing penmanship beaten into her through years of Catholic school. He didn’t even know he owned any rugs. He remembers the day his parents picked him up from college. He was scant on details, only telling them that he was done. The paperwork was submitted, he was leaving. They had never really had a particularly effusive relationship. When they pulled up to meet him outside the student housing, they must have been thinking the worst. Their young, whip-smart son who had quietly exceeded their expectations was a stark contrast to the sallow-cheeked twenty-something stood before them. They must have thought it was drugs. That their gay son was out gaying it up at the first chance he got to get out of the suburbs. That or crushing amphetamines to keep up with the breakneck academic pace he had set for himself.
   He stood outside the dormitory as the grey sky misted over, flaring the lights from inside the academic buildings. His mother by his side, with his father diligently packing his things in the hatchback, the other students flowing between classes, giving the family a wide berth.
   ‘Maybe you’ll feel ready to go back next term?’ his mother said, trying to sound optimistic.
   ‘Uh-huh,’ he said from his 10,000-yard stare.
   ‘You know, I never told you this, but your old man was no stranger to parties in my college days. I’m sure if you just buckle down …’
    ‘It’s not that.’ His dad closed the hatchback with a thud. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
   ‘No. No thank you.’ The two of them both seemed relieved at that.
   They all piled into the car and wordlessly began the two-hour drive back home. Brian slept most of the way. On the occasion he was awoken by passing traffic, he would catch concerned looks from his mother’s eyes in the rear-view mirror.
   His parents let him sleep for days. They washed his clothes. Left him plates of food and folded laundry at the door of his childhood bedroom. After a week, he worked up the courage to join his mother in the living room during the day. He would lie down on the loveseat, his feet now hanging off the arm-rest, and watch daytime talk shows and soap operas. She would sit in the armchair beside him, vibrating with unspent energy, using the commercial breaks to take care of housework and bring him apple slices and fruit snacks. It was a second adolescence as he fell into the rhythm of a string of yet-to-be-determined number of sick days home from school. Whenever his mother ran errands, he’d stay home, lest they run into any of his friends from school and alert the cabal of judgmental overachievers. But he did reach out to his old weed dealer, who now managed the liquor store at the end of their street. When he became attuned to the cadence of his mother’s errands, he would fire off a quick text and slide his sneakers half on, shuffling up the street on the mashed-up heels of his shoes to the loading area in the back. After a clandestine handoff, he’d hurry back to get high in the garage and tiptoe back to his bedroom to play Super Nintendo till the early morning. Brian gradually felt more like himself and would get more and more courageous with his solo excursions. After a month he had re-downloaded Grindr to peruse the faceless torso pics. When everyone was asleep, he would tiptoe out the door and jump into an idling car a couple houses down for late-night rendezvous with discreet married men within a 5-mile radius. Two steps forward, three steps back.
   Brian was used to keeping secrets from his family, forged in the fires of suburban politeness and being in the closet all those years, so being a werewolf fit neatly in the cavity in his mind where things were kept that could never be spoken. They hadn’t noticed his latenight hook-ups, so he didn’t think much about sneaking out each month for the full moon. He had perfected the craft from meeting his out-of-town boyfriends in high school for romantic midnight drives followed by awkward, passenger-seat hand stuff. This would just be a trial period to get his proverbial shit together before getting back on with his life – he imagined that, when he’d figured out how to have a handle on the whole mythicalbeast condition, he’d re-enroll at college, reframe it as a gap year, and continue on the path set before him. And, in truth, the suburbs were a perfect place for Brian to learn to manage his transitions without causing too much collateral damage. He’d go into the huge, sprawling forest, strip down and leave his clothes next to an old beech tree, then spend his night terrorizing the local fauna. But he hadn’t accounted for the increased attention paid by middle-class suburbanites to the comings and goings of their only child after suffering an ambiguous breakdown.
   Walking back in from the forest one dawn, he had felt particularly relaxed, knowing he was at the furthest point from the next full moon. The soles of his feet had been wet with dew, the sun cresting over the pine trees. For the first time he had thought that perhaps things were going to be all right. With his shoes in his hands, he tiptoed through the kitchen back towards his room. Then the lights turned on behind him in the living room. It was his mother, her robe pulled tightly around her, her hand shaking as she took a drag of her cigarette.
   ‘Where have you been?’
   ‘I was just taking a walk through the woods.’ Brian congratulated himself for saying something that was true. She always knew when he was lying.
   ‘I heard you leave around midnight. What were you doing?’ Her voice shook. ‘Just tell me. Is it drugs? Is that what this is? I know what it smells like, you know. Your poor father thought a skunk was trapped in the garage.’
   ‘No, it’s not. It’s not that.’
   ‘Then what is it? Something’s up. You’ve been sneaking out at night doing God knows what. You drop out of college without so much as a word. Do you know how much that cost us to send you to school? No, you don’t. You just do whatever you want. I just can’t believe—’
   ‘Mom! It’s fine. I swear!’
   ‘No, it’s not fine. You’re in our house and you live by our rules. We’re trying, Brian, but you’re not. You need to straighten up and apply yourself. I just—’
   ‘I’m a werewolf, okay!’ Brian yelled, before hushing his voice. ‘So now you know.’ His mother laughed but stopped when she saw her son’s face and knew he wasn’t lying.

Copyright © 2024 by Tony Santorella

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