Mongrels

by Stephen Graham Jones

“Right around sixteen, your teeth get too sharp for the teat, little man. Simple as that.”

This is the way werewolf stories go. Never any proof. Just a story that keeps changing, like it’s twisting back on itself, biting its own stomach to chew the poison out.

“He’s not a bad wolf either,” he went on, shaking his head side to side. “That’s the thing. But a good wolf isn’t always a good man. Remember that.”

And none of Grandpa’s stories were ever lies. I know that now. They were just true in a different way.

It was the werewolf version of The Talk. Just, with more dead bodies.

if there are any real answers about werewolves, then it’s a picture of them right there doing that, a picture of them right there trying to find each other.

I’ve never seen one, but these man-wolves, these moondogs, they’re what the movies are based on. They can’t go the full distance, can’t transform like you can if you were born into it, but they can get half the way there, anyway. The claws, too much hair, the ears and the snout. The teeth. Their body, it’s trying to fight the blood, to keep it down. But the moon, it sings that blood up to the surface like a tide.

So then they try to chew the world up, the same way a dog with rabies bites just because it feels good, because the world is pain. Might as well spread it around.

He’s the one who finally figured out the real way to recognize a werewolf. They’re the ones who never grow up.

and the mechanic closes his eyes, knows that the people still don’t want werewolves coming to dinner. But they are anyway, he says to himself, to help his uncle. And they’re hungrier than ever.

Werewolves aren’t proud. If we were, we’d have died out centuries ago.

Everything’s a trade-off when you’re a werewolf. It’s like the world wants us to be monsters. Like it won’t let us live the way normal citizens do.

“Being a werewolf isn’t just teeth and claws,” she said, her lips brushing my ear she was so close, so quiet, “it’s inside. It’s how you look at the world. It’s how the world looks back at you.”

People say werewolves are animals, but they’re wrong. We’re so much worse. We’re people, but with claws, with teeth, with lungs that can go for two days, legs that can eat up counties.

This is how it is with werewolves. Even when they lie, it’s the truth.