Mongrels

by Stephen Graham Jones

“No, no no no!” he screamed now, because he was like me, he could insist, he could make it true if he was loud enough, if he meant it all the way.

Every boy who never had a dad, he comes to worship his uncle.

It’s like the world wants us to be monsters. Like it won’t let us live the way normal citizens do.

“Nobody cures rabies,” the Black Wolf says. It’s the one thing he’s afraid of.

“Always feed a wolf his fill,” the old woman quotes out loud, “lest you wake with your throat in his jaws.”