The Big Book of the Dead by Marion Winik

Author:Marion Winik
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781640092549
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2019-07-04T16:00:00+00:00

The Werewolf

DIED 2013

AT PARTIES BY THE turquoise pool, eating pescado Veracruz and drinking Mexican beer, her friends have no idea. He’s a little quiet for this boho crowd, but so is she. She is watching him tip a bottle to his lips, and she is afraid.

If you have never seen one, you may not believe in werewolves. You don’t know what can happen to a honey-haired boy from Chicago after the third glass of whiskey and the seventh beer. Even after you see it once, how the cold gleam comes into his eye, how his voice becomes a howl, how his hands curve into fists, even after you wake up sickened, covered with bites and bruises, you still tell yourself there’s no such thing as werewolves. Or, my husband is not a werewolf.

The first strange thing she noticed was how much he hated stoplights, how he struggled with a little yellow box trying to tell him what to do. Then it began in earnest, and continued in secrecy. Even though she had seen the old clumps of fur around the house when they visited his parents, she still imagined he would change.

One morning she woke with another kind of nausea, the kind that means birth control has let you down. Having a baby with a werewolf is quite a risk, but she gave him this last chance. Briefly, he was wide-eyed and sheepish with tenderness. Then came the night when he was not. Her friends arrived and loaded her and her daughter into their pickup, and that was the end of it.

The next woman was smarter. When he bought a gun, when he violated his restraining order, she called the police. After that, the werewolf was locked up for a while. When he got out, it wasn’t long before he fell down drunk and hit his head. Went to bed with a headache and never woke up. There’s a honey-haired boy from Chicago who might have agreed: it was a blessing.

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