When the Wolf Comes Home

by Nat Cassidy

“Because everyone in the comedy scene has daddy issues. It might as well be a rule. And girls with daddy issues know how to party. But guys with daddy issues? They’re just mean.”

The truth is, nowadays, mass shootings are so common they’re more useful to bury attention than gain it. You could basically call any massacre a mass shooting, and within a day or two, most Americans will have digested it and shit it out without so much as a faint aftertaste. It’s like money laundering but for slaughter.

You donate some genetic material to make this living thing that you love, there’s no question about the love. But I mean Your body can’t carry the kid. Your body can’t feed the kid. All your body can do is stand in front of the kid when danger comes. You’re given this stupid instinct to protect. But how do you protect

Just you wait until your father gets home, she thinks. No one will be spared.

Knowledge of behavior you can’t alter is the heaviest kind of knowledge, isn’t it? Knowing you’re a shape-shifter? It gets hard to remember what shape is really you in the end. Maybe the true horror of the werewolf is that the change is never permanent. Maybe the true beauty of the butterfly is that it is.