Chronic Werewolf Hedonism, Unemployable

The neurologist says that it's not really a neurological condition, sends you to go see the psychologist about the chasing and the anger and the too much of it, never mind that every bone in your body stretches and twists and you can feel it in your dreams. The psychologist half-listens and scribbles notes he won't let you see and when the knots in your stomach start forming into a tapestry of panic says there's not much he can suggest, recommends you go to the dermatologist, who says growing fur is an existing condition but there's nothing to do about it but shave, and in any case maybe in your situation you should go talk to a dog trainer. The dog trainer, tired lady with lines on her face for laughing and frowning both, gives you the number of some neurologist she knows. Before you can squeeze out any semblance of thankfulness she adds, or maybe you should go talk to Liz. She's got the same thing and she's running a sort of support group about it.

Liz does not have the same thing, or rather the way she has it is all turned around, ending of a story you’d rather backtrack to its start. She fills the room - small, beige thing in the basement of what used to be a church, the sign on the door reading “book club and tabletop game nights” - not through her size but the fluid impossibility of her, her body never one still thing, her voice anything she wants. She says this is how you keep the changes going, how you take the pain of it and make it bearable. Put the sharpness in your teeth and not your joints. 

You say yes, thank you, but how do you make it stop and she says why stop? If you don’t have a start or finish nothing ends you. You say you really look like you have it figured out but I have to go to work. I have to have the sort of neck you can put a tie on.

She looks at you silent, her expression not the neurologist’s annoyance or the psychologist’s boredom or the dermatologist’s lukewarm disgust but something to the left of pity and everything in you hurts, which it has been going at for a bit but now you are too here to keep the necessary distance. Mutter a few sorrys and thank yous and make a tactical retreat. 

You last about a week. Sore evenings, fitful sleep, bones bristling with the possibility of other bones to be. In an attempt at polite smalltalk you mention some problems with your back and your coworker asks if you’ve seen a doctor about that. You laugh and laugh until your throat isn’t shaped for it. You do not come back.  

The dog          tired

her face    laughing 

gives you the best she knows

She's got the same thing and she's running.