The Burden of a Wolf-Like Existence

The wait staff must think we are quite the pair when we come into their restaurant. Seska is resplendent as always, in a green jacket, black T-shirt, purple leggings, shades, long, unruly, dirty blonde hair, excessive jewelry, and her generally disheveled sense of fashion. And I, of course, am me. I have hair shooting out from everywhere. But since this is a special occasion, I washed, gelled and combed my hair well, and wear a blue suit with a red tie and a brown shirt.

A busty waitress eyes us carefully as we walk in, or, more precisely, eyes me, as I am more suspect, then leads us to a table.

“Dinner?”

“Yes, please,” I say, and nod as we sit. She does not say anything, but because she adorns heavy dark eyeshadow, I can see her intolerance more clearly as the skin around her eyes squints in disapproval of me like in a wooden Noh mask.

But I am used to this kind of reaction.

Once seated, Seska puts on her reading glasses and goes over the menu, tracing each item with her finger. This is an Italian fusion place.

The tablecloth is white, and it sets off my brown furred paws.

I look into the kitchen. A big guy is working the stove, and a small guy is washing dishes.

And I wonder, who chooses who we become, and who we are while we live? Is the big guy happy being a big guy working a stove, and is the small guy happy being a small guy washing dishes? They were born into this. Did they have a choice?

And me? I am a werewolf.

Yes. I am a werewolf. I was born a werewolf.

But I didn’t ask to be.

No one asks to be born.

Who would choose this chaos of overwhelming ecstasy and endless suffering if they were in their right mind? Are you serious?

We are ushered into this world in the form of a body, with a heart and a brain. And our infernal beast bodies immediately crave sustenance and liquid to survive so we go mad and build farms and aqueducts and dams so we can live. Then our hearts spring forth into desire, and we create clothing and books and theater and music so we can be happy within our bodies. Then our brains take root with curiosity, and we explore and build boats to course the planet. Then time watches over us all, marking and slowly eroding everything. These are the four horsemen of our realm: the body, the heart, the brain, and time.

They will not be denied.

Living is insane.

There are wars and verandas covered in gorgeous bougainvillea. Diseases and merry-go-rounds with colorful children riding in circles. Hunger and women’s beautiful hairdos. It goes on and on.

Last night I watched a DVD based on a true story about an aristocratic Chinese woman who during a war had to walk for months through a charred violence-scarred countryside with her disease-stricken sister to safety. And the film was in color. It was just horrible. Why did she have to go through that? What did she gain by it? Couldn’t she have been born into peaceful times instead? Why was I born a werewolf, and not Prince Siddhartha relaxing in a garden with beautiful girls plying me with wine and grapes with their bejeweled, manicured fingers all day?

I cannot get my head around it.

So I will always be a werewolf, with its beautiful implications and formidable barriers, and the waitress will always be judgmental unless she changes her mind, and Seska will always be Seska.

But Seska is Seska. And that is why I love her.

“Your hair looks very nice tonight, Roman,” Seska says.

“Thank you. I put gel in it and spent fifteen minutes combing.”

“You are very handsome in your blue suit and tie," she smiles.

I blush, but no one can tell when I am blushing because my face is covered in brown fur.

Then Seska looks at her new ring, admiring it while I look over the menu.

“What’re you having?” she says after a minute.

“The lasagna with crab. What about you?”

“The spaghetti with caviar.”

Soon our plates are delivered, and we enjoy our meal.

Seska and I met a few months earlier at a coffee shop.

I was having a cappuccino at a small, dingy cafe on a side street. I never go to big, popular cafes because we werewolves suffer from discrimination. Sometimes we are refused service. My dad once had a pot of coffee poured over his head. So usually I go to werewolf cafes, but there were none in this area. I had a job nearby, I am an air conditioner repairman, but I saw this place, and it looked OK, so I went in.

I ordered a double cappuccino. The kinda cute girl behind the counter smiled, so I smiled back, careful not to show my teeth. Then I sat at a table by a window looking out onto the theater of the city.

It was a nice cafe. Charlie Parker’s saxophone wafted through the air like blue colored crepe paper streamers. Thin women on bicycles with children in helmets floated over the sidewalk. A man stood under a green umbrella. Teen girls gazed into their phones. Two werewolf teens walked by holding hands.

Time passed by in a lovely stream. You could hear it gurgling around the stones poking their heads above the blue current.

Then someone tapped my shoulder and I turned.

A woman about my age was standing in front of me holding a to-go cup. She was tall, with dirty blonde hair and wore a lot of jewelry. The look in her eyes was an open, direct curiosity. She seemed very interested in me and didn’t divert her eyes even as she moved her shoulder bag to be more comfortable.

“Hi. May I sit down with you?” she asked, smiling. “Do you mind?”

I was caught unawares because humans rarely start conversations with us werewolves. They are generally scared of us. But this woman was not scared.

“Yes, please,” I said, after a second.

She sat down next to me.

“It’s a nice day, isn’t it,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Yes, it is a nice day,” I answered.

She was staring at me intently. So I just kept her gaze, trying to understand how she felt.

Then I turned to look back out the window, not sure how to deal with her. Something about her was different.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m looking out the window drinking a cappuccino,” I answered. I turned to look at her again, and she was still staring at me, then she started giggling. I started to think she was weird.

“Looking out the window is nice,” she said. “I like the sunshine.”

“It is very nice, true.”

She started laughing. She was attractive, but I wasn’t sure how to deal with her.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Roman. What’s yours?”

“Seska.”

“Nice to meet you, Seska.”

But she didn’t respond. About ten seconds passed in silence. So I looked out the window again. The girls with their phones had moved down the sidewalk.

The woman leaned closer to me. I turned to her. She wore this subtly coy expression on her face.

“Excuse me, I don’t want to be rude or anything, but...are you a werewolf?”

“Yes, I am.”

Her eyes grew wide, and her mouth dropped open.

“I never met a werewolf before,” she said, giggling while trying to cover her mouth.

“Well, I guess this is your lucky day.”

She stopped staring at me, then turned to look at my paw on the table.

My paw was in the bright sunlight.

She gazed at my paw with an expression of kindness and wonder. I watched her.

Then she slowly covered my paw with her hand.

Seska began stroking my paw. She seemed to really enjoy it.

I could not believe what she was doing. But I did not pull my paw away.

After a bit, she pulled her hand back, then said “nice,” with a beatific smile.

She slurped her coffee. I took it as a cue to drink my cappuccino.

“What do you do?” she asked me.

“I’m an air conditioner repairman. What do you do?”

“Seska mental clinic.”

“Oh, so you work at a mental clinic.”

“Yes, Seska mental clinic.”

That was weird. She referred to herself in the third person. Why would she do that? Was she different from herself? I straightened up and moved a little away from her. But as I watched the man with the green umbrella greet a female friend with a hug, an idea clicked in my mind like a theater prop delivered on cue. I looked at this woman's mannerisms more closely. She had an intense look in her eyes. She focused intently on something, then broke off, gazed into space, and started giggling. She reminded me of a mad scientist, yet a gentle, female one. Yet she was really nice. Then I realized a truth.

Seska did not work at the mental clinic.

Seska was a patient at the mental clinic.

I sat up straight in my chair. I was so surprised some of my werewolf fur began to stand up. But this girl wasn’t threatening, even though she was a real surprise.

We started chatting about the casual meat of life. Do you smoke? Yes, I do. No, I don’t. Do you watch TV? No, I don’t. Yes, I do. Do you like ice cream? Yes, I do. Yes, I like ice cream too.

We talked for five minutes or so. Then we quietly returned to our coffees.

You could still see time peacefully passing around the stones in the current.

Then Seska spoke up brightly.

“Seska like the park. Roman like the park? Roman go to the park with Seska?”

I didn’t know what to say for a moment, then thought about it. This girl had befriended me, a werewolf. This was exceedingly rare, to say the least. And she was a really nice girl and kind of pretty. And she, like me, was weird. We were both outsiders, albeit in different ways, but we were still outsiders. So why not hang with her?

“Sure,” I said. “I like the park, I mean ...Roman like the park. Roman go to the park with Seska.”

We left the cafe for my truck and drove to the park. I knew a beautiful place there where we could enjoy ourselves.

It was a veranda covered with bougainvillea in front of a lake with a view of downtown. The bougainvillea was a scarlet and fluttered in the soft, electric breeze. The polished off-brown wooden veranda was beautiful and the lake was a bright green. Ducks paddled there and families were enjoying picnics. And skyscrapers glowed in the silver distance. It was a beautiful place, like in a painting by Monet.

“It’s very beautiful here,” Seska said.

We sat down on a bench and Seska began to talk about her life.

Seska is thirty-eight. She has a mental problem called a learning disability. She lives in a residence for women with mental disabilities near the river. There are 15 girls. It is convenient, as she has her own room and a bathroom, and there are a TV and a computer, but Seska cannot watch TV or movies because she gets confused.

She once tried to walk into the screen at a movie theater. The movie was “Avatar,” and she became so convinced by the veracity of the film’s ethereal otherworldliness that she thought the screen was a portal to enter the Avatar world, so she got out of her seat and walked right into the screen. She bounced off it, was accosted by the staff, began to fight them, and got arrested. The residence staff struggled to teach her the difference between real life and movies.

She uses the computer for email but that is the extent of her computer abilities. She takes the bus, walks somewhere, sits, listens to music, usually John Legend or Mariah Carey, then gets up and repeats the process. This is all she does all day, every day.

She comes from a family of four. Her mother is cruel. She rejected her daughter early on when signs of the disability swam to the surface. The father went mum. The family was shamed because of her, so they created a distance, and Seska was sent away when she was seven. Some family members refuse to acknowledge that she is a living, sentient being, even to this day, mind you. Her mother has not communicated with her at all for over ten years, no visits, no calls, no gifts, no cards, no nothing. She hints at radiation from a nearby nuclear power plant to explain her daughter’s condition. Her dad is an amorphous, self-coagulated businessman, distant like the others, yet he at least has the decency to stay in touch with his daughter. He drops by twice a year when he comes to town on business. He stays for about twenty minutes, then excuses himself for a meeting. But he always brings a gift. Last time was a potted cactus plant.

It was a sad story because Seska was so sweet, so why did she have to suffer like that? I wanted to cry. But sadness never solved anything, whereas understanding did, I knew that for sure. And I began to understand that Seska and I were the same. We both had been treated poorly. We had both been born into an outsider existence without being asked if this was what we wanted. Our roles in life had been predicated for us, as for everyone else who is living.

Life went on and built new lives through decades and centuries of progress, yet people feared we werewolves. Somehow people got the idea that we were nasty, vicious beasts, capable of filthy, indescribable violence. The unholy ones. We were cast out of society. We weren’t allowed to join in on the fun because we were creeps. That Lon Chaney movie did not help. This is why they chase us and hit us with sticks. Once when I was a child, they attacked our house and shattered the front room window. I could see my Dad get angry but he restrained himself. I could not understand why we did not retaliate. Then they burnt down a werewolf church and four werewolf girls were incinerated to burnt crisps in gruesome, twisted, agonizing deaths. We had to negotiate with the city to open a werewolf cemetery to bury their remains.

We are the outsiders.

Sometimes I feel a terrible anger well up and I want to attack the humans. But I am always able to stop myself from doing something very bad. I know that would be wrong.

“Roman is gentle. Roman is kind. Thank you, Roman,” Seska said, as the ducks climbed out of the lake and stepped over to a family. The children fed them breadcrumbs, and it was so nice to see.

We watched them for a while, and enjoyed the sun streaming down, its liquid gold washing us.

Then Seska slowly tilted her head onto my shoulder.

It felt nice to me. I was warming up to her. I felt more relaxed with her than with other females. She was nice, she was interesting, and we were similar. I felt a lovely queasiness expanding in my chest as we sat. We were glowing together.

Time still went by in its lovely stream.

Then Seska spoke.

“Seska tired. Seska go home.”

“OK, I will drive you home.”

We walked back to my truck. Without a word, I drove her to her home, and Seska got out of the truck and entered the house without looking back to me.

So that was how I met Seska. In time, we fell in love, moved in together, and yesterday we decided to get married, so we went shopping and I bought her an engagement ring. The dinner at the Italian place last night was to celebrate. Today we are going to apply for a marriage license.

I have just finished breakfast and am now standing in front of the house having a cigarette. I feel great and look up at the beautiful blue sky.

A woman and child walk by holding hands.

“Mummy, why does that man have hair on his face?”

“Sssh, sweetheart, that’s not a nice thing to say.”

Soon I change into my blue suit, and Seska puts on a beautiful dark red dress, high heels and copious jewelry. She wears her hair back and steps out in an aura of expensive perfume. She looks terrific. We drive downtown to City Hall to look for the Marriage License Department.

We are in a great mood. We are excited and giggling like teenagers and Seska keeps pinching me. A few people look at us oddly, but we pay them no mind because we are so happy. The magic dream has happened to us. We found each other through this rocky, jagged world. When we kiss, that outer world dissolves into a translucent veil which protects us.

We find the Marriage License Department and enter paw in hand.

A nice plump woman in a pink pantsuit and long brown hair is standing behind a counter, doing her nails. She smiles as we walk in then stops with her nails.

“Hello. How can I help you today?” she asks.

“We would like to apply for a marriage license,” I say.

“Excuse me?” she asks, her eyes widening into blinking UFO saucers.

“I said, we would like to apply for a marriage license.”

We are arm in arm and Seska giggles while covering her mouth.

The woman looks flustered, then looks around the room. But there is no one else here. She rearranges her hair.

“I’m sorry, but I cannot issue a marriage license to you.”

I freeze. Seska stops giggling and looks up. Eyes wide. She looks at me.

“Roman?”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, I cannot issue a marriage license to you.”

I look at her quietly and do not turn my glare. She holds my gaze. I am beginning to feel an anger swirling in my heart like an eddy in a stormy sea.

“But we are in love,” I say.

“Oh, that’s wonderful, I know how you feel, I am in love myself,” she says, holding up her hand to show us an engagement ring on her finger.

Seska slowly raises her hand to show her ring.

“Oh, that’s nice. But still, I can’t give you a marriage license.”

“Why not?”

“Werewolves cannot marry humans,” she says. “It’s that simple, that’s the law. Personally, I don't have any problem with it,” she continues coquettishly. “Actually, I think it’s kinda cute. I have no problem with mixed marriages. In fact, a friend of mine got married to a Chinese guy just the other day. But the law is the law. Werewolves and humans cannot get married.”

“That is discrimination,” I say.

“Well, that may be true, as you say. But the law is the law. Life’s not perfect, you know. Make sure you vote in the next election.”

I am getting angry. But I control myself, and focus on my breathing, slowly and deliberately. I cannot get angry. If I lose control the result will be disaster.

“If the law is the law, then show me the law,” I persist.

The lady opens her mouth in disbelief and steps back.

“All right, if that's what you want. Give me a second.”

She steps over to a computer terminal and uses the keyboard. Seska looks at me with worry. We are still arm in arm.

“All right, I found it. Please, come over,” the woman says.

I walk behind the counter leaving Seska in front. I am beginning to unravel.

I stand next to the woman, and she points to the computer screen.

“Right there,” she says. “Addendum 17.c.”

I lean in to read it.

I step back and feel my bonds popping.

“So, I'm sorry. Perhaps you could consider a civil union. Instead, you know.”

“A civil union? Are you serious? But I love her.”

“I’m sorry sir, but I cannot help you. Really, consider a civil union. It’s very easy, the form is simple to fill out. Let me get one for you,” she says, stepping past me to the side.

I follow her slowly. Everything slowsssss down, as it does for werewolves under stress.

“Roman,” says Seska.

The woman reaches into a drawer, shuffles some papers and pulls out a form. Then she turns to me.

“Here you are,” she says cheerfully, handing me the form.

I raise my paws without thought. The woman gasps and freezes. I watch as my paws grasp her in the face, I push and my talons begin to dig into her cheeks. Seska screams. I dig my talons into the woman’s face, blood slowly trickling down over her thick foundation. Her eyes wide she screams a terrible sound, an animal sound. I push her up against a wooden file cabinet and press my body against her and dig deeper. The woman screams some more. Her screaming makes me nuts, so I tilt her head back and gnash deeply into her throat with my incisors. She stops making a sound but her body shakes furiously as my teeth dig deeper. I find her windpipe and crush it like a cardboard tube. Blood spurts up like a fountain splashing on a nearby leather chair. Her pink pantsuit is splattered with blood, then her body stops shaking; she must have gone into shock. Then I use my talons to shred her chest into spaghetti-like ribbons in an unrelenting rage. I cannot control myself. I shred and shred and shred growling in a lifetime of pent-up fury. Her pink pantsuit is shredded into ribbons mixed into her blood. You can see her white bra shredded underneath.

“Roman! Roman!” Seska screams, pounding my back with her tiny fists. I pull off and presume the woman is dead, and she falls to the floor with a dull thud. I step back and take a deep breath.

There is a mirror, I look in it and my blue coat and face are splattered with blood. I am a total mess. There is a side door and I open it, and as I suspected, it is a restroom, with a wash basin, a mirror and a toilet, so I go inside and wash my face and splash my blue suit. I hear Seska crying.

Drying my face, I look into the mirror. Then the mirror says something.

You did something bad.

I come out of the restroom. Seska looks at me in horror with her hands to her face as I see the body of the woman I have just murdered lying motionlessly on the floor. I take Seska’s hand and tell her to calm down and we walk out into the corridor. Luckily, it is empty and there seems to be no alarm, and we head out of the building.

We go out and walk down the marble footsteps of City Hall. There are a few people hanging out and walking down the sunny sidewalk. Then I hear a screech of car tires and there is a loud crash.

I hear screaming and let go of Seska’s hand. There is a commotion to the left and I walk over in a trance. There has been a car accident between a white truck and a blue sedan. People are rushing over and I do too. I look into the truck, and a groaning man is slumped over the steering wheel. Then an explosion pierces the reality around us, and I see the sedan has burst into flames. I walk over to the sedan. A woman’s voice screams from the sidewalk, hysterical.

“There’s a woman and a baby in there!”

I look into the sedan through the flames and see a woman sitting unconsciously in the driver’s seat and a baby in a baby seat next to her crying. I take off my blue jacket and wrap it around my hand. Then I step forward to open the car door. It won’t budge, so I wrap my jacket around my two hands and manage to pull the door open with a groan. I reach in, engulfed in flames, and detach the baby seat from the main seat and set the baby down on the ground. The baby is crying yet seems unharmed. The woman who was screaming picks up the baby and takes it to the sidewalk. I reach into the car to save the woman in the driver’s seat. The flames lick at my werewolf hair; I can smell the hair on my face singeing. I unlock her seat belt, lift her out of the car and carry her to the sidewalk and put her down. By this time EMTs and a police car are on the scene.

I step back with Seska. EMTs have taken the driver out of his smashed-up truck and are tending to the woman and her baby. People swarm everywhere. But no one pays attention to me; they run around me like I am not there even though I just saved two lives from fiery, awful deaths. It’s like I am invisible. Everything moves around me in slow motion like I am watching the scene from a different, yet nearby, dimension. Seska is crying as she holds my arm and brushes my face.

I get the picture. People ignore me because I am a werewolf. I am glad I saved a woman and her baby so they can live long, fulfilling lives, but the people ignore me and my good deeds because of what I am.

Seska and I step away to leave.

But something bothers me like an unwanted shadow.

I did something terribly wrong.

Seska and I go back home.

Later that evening we make dinner together as we usually do. We are in shock and speak hardly a word. After washing the dishes, I watch an old school samurai film. Seska never watches movies, so I watch it by myself.

But in bed that evening, I am troubled and cannot sleep.

I did something terrible. Really terrible.

I killed someone.

Did I need to do that? I could not control myself at that moment, but is that an excuse for what I did? What I wanted, to become Seska’s husband, was not unreasonable, so I reacted in my way when it was denied to me. But was that the only way I could have reacted? Were there other choices? Is this a part of my birth destiny, being born a werewolf, to be a monster? And that woman in the Marriage License Department, was she born into and stuck in her role also? Did she really want to be a civil clerk, enacting stupid laws?

And could she have acted differently? Could she have granted us a marriage license as no one was around and would have noticed?

I feel bad for her. What did I do?

And what about her family? How do they feel?

Am I a bad werewolf?

What was your name?

I am sorry. I am so sorry, baby, whoever you are.

What can I do to make this better?

I am wracked with madness and guilt.

I look at Seska. She is sound asleep. An innocent baby lying in a wolf’s lair.

I turn into the bed next to her and fall asleep too.

The next morning, I wake up to the sound of loud knocking on the front door. I see it is a bright day through the curtains. Seska still sleeps. I put on some clothes and go to the door. I open it and see two policemen.

I freeze. I know why they are here. But they seem surprised to see me, so I keep calm, look them over, and give them a silly smile.

“Good morning,” I say.

“Hi, I’m Lieutenant Holmes and this is Detective Johnston. We’re from the police department. We would like to speak to Seska Si-mo-nia,” he says, looking at a card as he slowly pronounces Seska’s last name.

“Is she in?”

“What’s this about?” I ask.

“Does she live here?”

“Yes, she does.”

“Do you live here?”

“Yes, I do.”

“What is the nature of your relationship?”

“I am her fiancé,” I say after a pause.

I hope it has an effect. I do not like what I am hearing.

The policemen turn and share a slow glance.

“We would like to speak with her,” Lieutenant Holmes continues.

“Please, what’s this about?” I ask as my thoughts race.

“We need to speak with her. Is she in?”

I pause a beat, then answer.

“Yes, she is, but she’s sleeping. Give me a second to wake her up.”

I go to Seska and wake her up, but she doesn’t understand what’s going on. She is groggy, but she puts on a red nightgown and comes with me to the door. I put my arm around her for support.

“Are you Seska Simonia?” asks the Lieutenant, looking at Seska.

“Yes, Seska is.”

“We would like to speak with you,” says Detective Johnston. “We need you to come with us.”

Seska blinks. And blinks.

“Come where?” I ask.

“To the station. We need to ask her some questions.”

“Are they the police?” Seska turns and asks me.

“Yes, we are the police,” the Lieutenant says.

“OK, but I think we need to get dressed first,” I say, as Seska nods, now fully alert, looking at me.

“Please do,” says the Lieutenant. “We’ll wait right here.”

We retreat into the bedroom and dress.

“What do they want?” Seska asks, her brow furrowed in worry.

“I don’t know,” I say, “but I guess we need to go with them.”

“Will you come with me, Roman?”

“Sure.”

We walk to the door and the policemen balk when they see both of us dressed to go out.

“We only need to speak with Miss Simonia,” says the Lieutenant.

A churning, oily wave wells inside me.

“It would be much better if I come with her,” I say.

“Why is that?”

“Seska...my fiance...is not well. She is not normal,” I say, trying to be firm.

“What do you mean? Is she sick?”

I nudge Seska. “Tell them,” I say.

She looks at me, and I nod my head solemnly, and pat her on the back.

“Seska mental illness,” she says, nodding apologetically to the policemen.

They are surprised and look at each other. Our neighbors come out and watch us with their arms crossed.

“Seska so confused so easy.”

“Believe me, it would be better if I come along.”

“OK, that’s fine,” says Detective Johnston. “You can come. What’s your name?” he asks me.

“Roman,” I say.

“Do you have a last name?”

“No. Just Roman.”

“Alright, Roman. So you two please come to the car and we’ll go to the station. It won’t take long.”

In fifteen minutes we are sitting in a dull grey room in the police station, seated at a crummy grey desk in crummy grey chairs. Only the chair upholstery is a different color, a dark green. Fluorescent overhead tubes. Coffee in Styrofoam cups, which they offer to us. Girlie calendars.

Seska and I are sitting on one side of the desk, and the policemen are seated on the other. It’s hot and clammy, everyone is sweating.

“I want to show you something,” says Detective Johnston. He rotates a desktop that is on top of the desk so all four of us can see the screen. He clicks on the keyboard.

The screen flickers and there is a video. I gasp internally. It’s a video of the hallway in City Hall in front of the doorway to the Marriage License Department. There is no audio. After five seconds, Seska and I walk up to the door, open it and go in.

I can’t believe it. I am frozen. I am done with. It’s over.

“Let me fast forward a bit,” says Detective Johnston.

He presses the keyboard and the video fast forwards, then he lets go and the video is normal speed again.

The video shows Seska and I leaving the room.

Detective Johnston reaches over and clicks the video off.

“Seska, what happened there?”

Seska does not say anything. I turn to look at her, then turn back to look at the Detective and the Lieutenant.

“Seska? Seska, what happened in there?”

“Seska does not know. Seska confused.”

“Is that you in the video?” asks the Lieutenant.

“Yes, Seska sees Seska. Seska sees Seska and Roman.”

“What happened in there?”

“There was no one in there, Detective Johnston,” I say.

“Excuse me?”

“I said there was no one in there. When we went in.”

They pause and look at me closely. I hold their gaze with my werewolf eyes.

“So what did you do when you saw no one in there?”

“I said ‘hello’ a few times in a loud voice, rapped my knuckles on the counter, and no one responded, so we left.”

“Did you see a woman in there?”

“We saw no one in there.”

“There was a woman in there.”

“Not when we were in there.”

“That woman was killed.”

“WHAT?” Seska shouts.

“Yes. She is dead.”

“Hot in here, isn’t it?” says Lieutenant Holmes.

He undoes his tie and unbuttons his shirt.

I see his neck is a soft, white flesh, unlike his tanned brown face. His white neck is bathed in beads of sweat.

Seska gapes with big eyes, staring at the officers, holding herself.

The Detective bangs his fist on the desk and Seska jumps.

“Detective, I think...” I say, as I am starting to get angry, then he interrupts me.

“Seska, do you believe in invisible men?”

“INVISIBLE MEN?” she shouts, wiping tears from her cheeks.

“Yes. Invisible men. Men that you cannot see. Maybe they did it.”

“Did what? Seska does not know invisible men,” she pushes out. “How can Seska see invisible men if invisible men are invisible men?”

“Seska has a learning disability,” I say, raising my voice. “She can’t watch movies or videos because she gets confused about what ‘reality’ is and what ‘isn’t’,” I say. “Don’t talk to her about invisible men!”

“Calm down, Roman.”

“Is that true, Seska?”

“Seska mental clinic,” she leaks out quietly, leaning back in her chair sniffling.

“Seska is a mental. She is confused. I don’t think any more questions are going to help. Let us go home, please,” I say. “There was no one in that room.”

The Lieutenant and the Detective look at each other, then back at us.

“Excuse us a moment,” the Detective says, and the two of them leave.

I turn to look at Seska. She is holding herself with her arms in a protective gesture, her face stolid. I don’t know what to say to her, so I put my hand on hers and squeeze it. She keeps looking forward.

The two return.

“All right, you can go. But we need Seska’s fingerprints. And I want to look at your paws,” says Detective Johnston.

I breathe a deep sigh of relief that I make sure no one can see. We seem to have escaped this disaster that I have created. I thank God for this break that we have been given. I could accept that I would be punished, but I could never accept that Seska would be.

And will I ever be able to accept what I did?

My mind is swirling and I think I might black out.

We are ushered into an adjacent room where they take Seska’s fingerprints. It is common knowledge in forensics that werewolves do not have prints, and that werewolf DNA has not been sequenced. But they look at my paws closely.

“What are these marks on your paws?”

“I rescued two people from a burning car.”

Then they inform us that we can leave.

The next day I go to work. Seska stays home, puttering and gardening as usual. But I am in a bad mood.

It is a very slow week.

On Wednesday I come home early and find Seska sitting quietly at the kitchen table.

“Her name was Karen Lane,” she says.

“Who?”

Seska slides a newspaper on the table over to me. I look at the paper. There is a stark headline.

Clerk Murdered at City Hall

“I see,” I say. I read a bit of the article. Her name was Karen Lane. She was single.

“Seska feels terrible,” Seska says.

I get up to get some water.

“Seska doesn't have to feel terrible,” I say. “Seska didn’t do anything. Roman did.”

“Roman did something?”

I ignore her. This is how she is. Sometimes. Most of the times.

I don’t feel well, so I go to our bed to rest. Seska crawls in next to me.

I lie on my back looking up at the ceiling, and Seska puts her arms around me.

I did something bad.

I took a life.

But I saved the lives of a mother and child.

When I was young and jobless, I volunteered to be a school crossing guard at a werewolf private school. Everyone liked me and it was fun. Then the school became a mixed human-werewolf school, and I was asked to stay on, and everyone still liked me, including the human parents, so the problem cannot be that I am a werewolf.

No.

I made a mistake. A terrible mistake. And that’s just it.

But I can do something about this.

I hate it when people commit some horrific crime or transgression then say, “Forgive me,” as if that will solve anything. That is cheap.

So I do not want to be forgiven.

I look over. Seska is sound asleep. Her breath curls into the air like puffs of mist. I put my arms around her.

I will not let any harm come to you. I will protect you, whatever I have to do.

Then I have an idea. I look to the kitchen then get up.

I look at the newspaper article and read the whole thing. And I find what I’m looking for. That’s it.

The next morning, I tell Seska that we are going to the cemetery, so we need to dress up.

“The cemetery?”

“Yes, the cemetery. For Karen Lane’s funeral. Her funeral is today at the cemetery.”

“Roman and Seska go to the cemetery for Karen Lane’s funeral?”

“Yes. So get dressed up. Wear something black.”

“Yes, of course, Seska wear something black.”

When we are ready, I wear a black suit and Seska is dressed all in black too. We walk to a nearby florist shop and buy a dozen lilies, then we drive to the cemetery in my truck.

We get out of the truck and look around. The cemetery is big but not huge, and in the distance we can see a group of people. I figure that must be Karen Lane's burial, so we head in that direction.

It’s hot and I sweat profusely, but I do not take off my jacket. The cemetery is a human cemetery, and there are so many gravestones there. Some of them are children, I notice. Then I think of the werewolf cemetery across town, which is so small.

Soon we come close to the group, and slow down, walking carefully. Then my werewolf awareness kicks in.

We would not be welcome. Or, rather, I.

“Seska, let’s go over there,” I say.

We walk to some benches and sit down. Somewhat hidden, no one will notice us sitting here. It’s nice to get off my feet, and it is so hot.

After some time, the crowd at Karen Lane’s burial finishes and disperses back to their cars.

The cemetery is empty except for Seska and me. We get up and walk to what I think is Karen Lane’s grave.

The weather has changed surprisingly in just a few minutes and is now overcast, and it looks like rain.

Seska and I walk up to the grave, and the marble tombstone does say Karen Lane indeed. The newly turned brown earth has a truthful fragrance, and there are bouquets of flowers already poised on the brown earth, roses, carnations, and chrysanthemums. They are bright in the grey day and make me think of the life that has disappeared, in its brightness, full of laughter, kindness, and joy.

I look down at the grave, then fall to my knees.

“Seska, please come down here with me,” I say, and Seska drops to her knees too.

I close my eyes and pray.

Karen Lane, I am so sorry.

I am so, so very sorry that I took your life. I know it was a terrible, terrible thing to do. I do not want you to forgive me, because I am not cheap. But believe me when I say it was a mistake. I am so sorry to your family. I apologize to them too. Do not allow them to forgive me.

I celebrate that you had a good life, and that you enjoyed being alive, and that you knew you were loved.

I cannot reverse the effects of time or change what I did, this terrible tragedy. But please believe that I am a good werewolf, not a bad one, I just made a grave mistake.

If you cannot accept that, I will certainly understand. 

I will strive to be a good, compassionate werewolf for the remainder of my days.

Please accept this gift of flowers, and I will pray for your good fortune in your next life.

I place the bouquet of flowers on the grave near the other flowers. I look at Seska. I can see the tears in my eyes reflected in the tears in her eyes. Then Seska and I stand.

It has started to rain, a warm rain. I can feel it on my scalp, moistening my fur.

The rain on my head reminds me that I am a part of something larger than myself.

I am grateful to it; I am eternally thankful that I am a part of this thing called life, and that I am conscious of it.

I look up to the sky.

Seska draws a scarf tightly over her head.

Seska and I walk back to my truck, then we drive home.

That night I lie in bed, unable to sleep. I look over at Seska, she is snoring away. God bless her.

And as I look up at the ceiling, I ask myself something.

So, what will I do now?