Bonus Short Story: Not My Problem

"You have a duty--” “A duty I never asked for! A duty I never wanted. I want a normal fucking life, I want to be on stage with fans screaming my name."

Glenn was in his room, sitting on his bed with his bass in his hands, just to have something to do besides stare and feel miserable. Jane was flying out to San Francisco today, to start school at the San Francisco Art Institute. She had just sent him a text:

On the plane, gonna turn my phone off in a sec. I’ll text you when we touch down. Wish me luck! And a winking kiss emoji.

Glenn sent her back a four-leaf clover emoji and hoped they could eventually break the habit of texting like they were still dating. Well, part of that was his fault, he supposed. He broke it off with her last month, but they still couldn’t resist using up every moment they had left together. Maybe they should have weaned themselves off, and maybe he should have waited to break it off, but he didn’t want to send her off to school crying and a month would at least give Jane time to get used to the idea. Instead it had been like peeling off a band-aid super slowly. 

They tried to just be friends about it at first, but they were like iron filings and a magnet, and it felt more like when they first started dating: flirting, little touches, blushing and looking away when they realized how much they revealed. All this with the added desperation of knowing they were supposed to be pulling apart. So they said fuck it and kept it up until the last moment.

There was a knock at his door. “It’s open,” Glenn called, and strummed the strings, pretending that’s what he’d been doing all along. His father poked his head in.

“How’re you doing?” John asked his son. Glenn shrugged. “Jane left for school today, huh?” He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him, even though they were the only ones in the house. “I’m kind of surprised you didn’t ride with Tom to see her off,” he said with a smile.

“Kind of a long drive to Bangor. Besides, we said our goodbyes last night,” Glenn said, plucking a string and reaching up to the neck to adjust the tuning a little.

John smirked knowingly. “I heard.” 

“Sorry,” Glenn muttered. He thought they’d been quieter than that. Tom had them over to have a kind of going-away party for Jane. Some time during the evening, as the dads watched TV (with the volume cranked), Glenn and Jane had snuck up to her room to make love one last time. It had been intense, physically and emotionally, and Jane had wept afterward. There was no pleading or bargaining, though. He was grateful to her for that. He might have given in.

John laughed. “I know what you two have been up to. Do you think it’s the Condom Fairy who refills your bedside drawer?”

“Jesus, Dad!” Glenn frowned.

“Don’t turn red over it. Believe it or not, I was young once too. Hey, don’t worry about Tom either. I mean, we both kind of got a kick out of our kids getting together. We used to joke about it when you were little, especially when you’d play house.”

“Yeah, well, don’t count your grandkids yet: we broke up.”

John’s face fell. “Oh no!” He sat down on Glenn’s desk chair. “She wanted to check out those Cali surfer boys, huh?”

“No, I was the one who called it off.”

“Ah. Did she go all ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’ on you?” John asked. Glenn’s face was blank. “Meatloaf?” He sung the chorus in a falsetto. Glenn clamped his hands over his ears. “No? C’mon, he was in The Rocky Horror Picture Show?” John gave him an exasperated look. “You’re killing me here, Glenn. He was Bob in Fight Club, if that helps.”

“Oh yeah, that guy.”

“I have a few of his albums if you’re interested.”

Glenn quirked an eyebrow. “Um, no thanks.” He went back to plucking at his bass. “But no, I just figured she’s going to school across the country, we’re trying to get Black Blood Moon off the ground, and long-distance relationships suck, so--”

John gave him a knowing look. “Ah, band floozies.”

“What?”

“Every band has floozies, son. Women can’t resist musicians. Even the ugliest guy on stage has someone out there wanting to get in his leather pants because he’s playing a guitar. Or a bass.” He winked. “And you are far from the ugliest guy on stage. I’m honestly surprised you never noticed. Then again, you only had eyes for Jane up until now.”

“Nestor takes care of the, uh, ‘floozies’ for the most part,” Glenn said.

“Nestor’s a walking cautionary tale,” John said wryly. “I’m glad you’re not a girl, honestly, or I would be counting my grandkids already. Plus I’d have to try and explain tampons and all that stuff secondhand.” He grew thoughtful. “There’s enough I had to explain secondhand to begin with.”

Glenn’s mother hadn’t told Glenn anything about their supernatural heritage before she died, though she’d told him the story about the brother wolves a billion times during his childhood, as well as stories about Grandmother Woodchuck, Uncle Rabbit, and all the other figures of Penobscot legend. He had no idea  that his mother was a werewolf, or that she had passed it on to him. Like everyone else, she thought she would have plenty of time. 

It was the second worst day of Glenn’s life when he woke up in the backyard, lying in a puddle of bloody, puke-covered chunks of fur and gristle, blood and bile stinging the back of his throat and the smell of dirt, grass, and offal filling his sinuses. He was fifteen, the same age that his mother’s powers manifested, as his father told him later. Only she knew it was coming and had her father to guide her, to teach her, to hunt with her. Glenn was like Carrie in the Stephen King novel, ignorant and terrified.

He remembered staggering into the house, skidding to a stop in the kitchen when he saw his reflection in the china hutch by the faint light of dawn. Gore clung to his chin and the t-shirt he’d worn to bed was stuck to his chest with blood. Half running, half creeping up the stairs, he’d locked himself into the bathroom, cranked the shower as hot as he could stand it, and got in to scrub himself pink. 

The night before, he’d had what he thought was just a weird dream of running through the woods, the glow of the full moon lighting the ground like a muted spotlight. He remembered chasing something, a rabbit, a flash of white fur, a trail of fear-scent. He remembered the snap of bone between his powerful jaws. Nausea rose again at the thought. If it hadn’t been a dream, what had really happened?

He brushed his teeth twice and examined them in the mirror. His canines didn’t look any bigger or pointier. Nothing about his face looked different: same longish black hair (he was growing it out ever since he and the guys started their metal band; a headbanger needed long hair to shake), same boyish face starting to lose its softness, same brown eyes.

“What the hell is that?” he had heard his dad say, downstairs. Glenn pulled on some clean clothes, shoving his bloody ones to the bottom of the hamper, and padded down. He found his father on the lawn in his bathrobe and slippers, coffee in one hand, prodding a bloody mass of fur and flesh and vomit with the shovel he used to dispose of dead birds and mouse carcasses the neighbor’s cat sometimes left on the back porch. 

John had looked back at Glenn, and his face fell. It was like he knew. He knew. “Oh kiddo,” he said sadly. Glenn had crumpled, wracking sobs erupting from him no matter how he tried to hold them back. John embraced him and rocked side to side like he had when Glenn was little and upset over something.

John had kept Glenn out of school that day, calling him in sick, made him some toast and tea as if he actually was sick, and told him everything. How Glenn’s mother had really died, what she had been doing and why. How the power had awakened in him last night, with the first full moon after his fifteenth birthday, just as it had with her. And what his new responsibilities were.

Those responsibilities had hung around his neck like a choke collar ever since.