“Sorry I’m late. There was some nasty weather in Chicago today and I was stuck in O’Hare for a few—okay, I know, I’m making excuses. Let me start over.
“Uh, hi. I’m Scott, and I’m a were-weasel.”
[Group: “Hi, Scott.”]
“I hope you’ll excuse me if I seem a little nervous. I’ve never actually—I mean, I’ve been coming to Were-Creatures Anonymous for about a month now, but to work up the nerve to stand up and talk—well, it’s taken me some time to come to grips with it, and accept what I am. I mean, I’ve been aware of my wereness for a long time, but I’ve been pretty deeply in denial. I thought I could handle it myself. I was like, support groups are for total losers, you know?
“Sorry. I didn’t mean you were losers. Not all of you. Not total losers, anyway.
“Uh, it’s only been in the last few weeks that I’ve really come to realize that my—well, that my problem is out of control. It’s ruining my life. I mean, people who used to be my friends hate me now, and the people who claim they’re my new friends are like, just, damn. Who’d want them as friends?
“I suppose—well, maybe it was different for you, but I really can’t remember when I became a were-weasel. I mean, I really can’t for the life of me remember ever being bitten by any kind of weasel, much less a were one. But I know that the first time it became a problem for me was when I was in Junior High. It was in eighth grade, Mrs. Kazmarek’s American History class. We’d had a big assignment I didn’t feel like doing, to write an essay on Lincoln, and just my luck, the Kaz singles me out and tells me to come up in front of the class and read my essay. Well, this piece of paper I’m holding is blank, of course, and I’m just standing there at the front of the room, in front of everybody, all embarrassed and humiliated and everything, with my face turning bright red and the puberty hormones surging and all that, and the Kaz gives me that over-the-glasses look and says, “Well?” And then Sue Miller, in the front row—she was this pretty little blond I had the crush to end all crushes on—well Sue started giggling, and you could hear the whole class drawing their breaths, and in about a half-second they were going to totally explode in laughter—
“And just like that, it happened. I transformed, right there, in front of the whole damn class. And right off the top of my head, running on ninety-nine percent pure bullshit, I rattled off the most amazing essay you ever heard about Lincoln, with not one single word of truth in it, beyond the fact that some guy named Abraham Lincoln was once the President of the United States.
“Well, the Kaz was stunned, of course. She gave me an ‘A’ on the spot. Never even asked to see that blank sheet of paper I was holding.
“I can see some of you; you’re giving me that look. That was a problem?
“Yeah, that was a problem, but I didn’t recognize it as such at the time. And I’ll get back to it.
“But right now, I have a question: is that what it was like for you, the first time? Because to be honest, I really haven’t spent a lot of time around other were-creatures, and I honestly don’t know. I’ve been in denial, remember?
“I only know that I really got off on the raw power, and the way the Transformation, when it happened, was like—like—well, it was even better than sex with Sue Miller, a fact I later confirmed through extensive and repeated experimentation.
“But at the time, I was confused. I’d heard the stories; I knew the legends. Full moon, right? Not for me. I was really—ah, irregular. It was more related to hormones and stress than anything having to do with the Moon. When my life was going well and everything was on an even keel, it was really nice and predictable, every 28 days, like clockwork. But when I was stressed out, I could transform two or even three times in a month—or sometimes not at all. One time I went three months without transforming, and it scared the hell out of me. I thought—well, I didn’t have a clue what to think. That was right after the first time Sue and I went all the way on the couch in her parent’s basement, and I thought she’d, like, done something terrible to my body. I was scared out of my ever-lovin’ mind—until the next month, when the Transformation happened right on schedule, and I could go back to breathing again.
“While I’m asking questions: I don’t know about you, but for me, well, some months it’s really heavy, and I become like this giant rabid stoat that walks on its hind legs like a man, and other months it’s so light all I have to do is remember to shave twice daily and keep my mouth closed so the Normals don’t see my fangs.
“But as far as being a curse goes, well, it was really more of an inconvenience than a curse. And to tell the truth there were times it was damned useful. I never would have made it through law school or launched my political career if I couldn’t get in touch with my Inner Weasel on a regular basis.
“That’s when things started to fall apart. As I worked my way up the political ladder, I became totally dependent on my Weasel Sense. In time—well, eventually I wound up being the Press Secretary to somebody really important, if you can believe that to look at me now, but along the way I got so totally addicted to using my Weasel Powers that finally I just couldn’t turn them off any more. At the end, even I couldn’t tell when I was spewing bullshit. It got easier to try to figure out when I might be telling the truth, because it happened less often.
“I’m sure you’ve heard stories like mine before. In the end, I pushed it too far. I lost control. I actually transformed in the middle of a press conference, in front of the entire White House Press Corps, and not one of them noticed. I mean, maybe Maureen Dowd did; she later wrote a column in which she called me a “beady-eyed little ferret,” but at six-foot-two and two-hundred-and-ten pounds I’m by no stretch of the imagination “little,” so maybe she was just communing with her own Inner B— er, something, that day.
“But while the press didn’t notice, the people I worked for sure did, and that’s when they decided I’d become a liability. I got fired; replaced. But I still had my Were-Weasel Powers, right? So that’s when I decided I would really stick it to former employers, and show them the full fury of an enraged were-weasel! I would write a book.
“You can guess what happened after that, can’t you? Now all my former friends hate me, and all the people who claim they’re my new friends are total dirtbags who claim to love me but secretly—not that secretly, actually—despise me.
“And that’s my story. My name is Scott, and I’m a were-weasel. But with your help, my friends, I believe I can change.
“Hey! Why are you all looking at me like that?”
_________________________
In his copious spare time he runs Rampant Loon Press, just for the fun of it.
ABOUT THIS STORY: “The Were-Weasel’s Tale” was originally written for Curse of the Were-Weasel, on online multi-author multi-character multi-threaded role-playing narrative that was more conceptual art than coherent fiction. That it appears here today is because it came up in the context of a discussion with Pete Wood regarding the future development of Tales from The Brahma and The Odin Chronicles, and Pete dared Bruce to put it online to see how people reacted to it.
Tomorrow, Scott returns, in “Relapse.”
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