Page 7

Dern

Many years ago on Pharenos

“The good news is it’s not cancer,”

the doctor announced as me and my parents sat squished in his little office. The whole place smelled like beans as if he scarfed them down in between all his patients. It wasn’t an appetizing smell but one that made me wonder if he had some secret obsession. I knew whatever was wrong with me wasn’t cancer. I saw far enough ahead into the future to know all the scans and tests were more for the sake of my parents. I was twenty-five now, but it wasn’t cancer. I’d have seen that coming a mile away. I also knew enough not to open my mouth and blab that information to my parents or my doctor. I had enough problems without ending up in some asylum for the insane. I wasn’t crazy. I just saw the future and apparently, I was built a bit differently too. Built differently enough that it caused everyone around me problems.

“Because they can’t sniff their own butts leave ours alone,”

my wolf chimed off in my thoughts.

The fits that led my parents to begging me to see this specialist, Doctor Jenkins, started about five years ago. They started with one big fit that left me defenseless, sniveling, and burning up with a fever that reached over 110 F. It was as if all my atoms were on fire and longing for someone or something that I couldn’t name. My flesh craved touch and my tail stayed swung low and to one side. I trembled whenever my parents had over any unmarried male company. It was as if I was coming apart at the seams and only found short reprieves in the iciest of showers. The doctors couldn’t find any cause for my fever but issued two courses of their bacteria killers anyway. You know, just to be on the safe side.

Now every three to six months I sweated like I was going to bleed out through my pores, my appetite waned to nothingness, and all I wanted to do was howl and cry because there was a fire inside me that nothing quenched. Not even the long line of one nightstand that I tried to put out the fire with. The more of them I had, the more of them I craved. It was as if my wolf turned into an insatiable sex-demanding deity and no one lived up to his expectations.

My pack was worried about me. Our leader even compared the ‘fits’ to how the females in our pack acted whenever it was mating season.

Heat.

Heat was the word they used for the gals whenever they hit their bellies, whining with their tails up.

Heat.

Heat was the word that set off my dear ol’ dad.

My father nearly knocked the leader’s head off his too big shoulders and almost lost his life for it. That’s when I finally agreed to see Doctor Jenkins. I didn’t think heat was all that much of an insult. There was nothing embarrassing about being a woman. I wasn’t a woman but likening my symptoms to theirs seemed like a fair comparison to me. I was pretty damn sure that despite the condoms I used to practice safe sex, if I could be pregnant, I’d have been full bellied by now. Only my parents didn’t know what I got up to in my free time.

“What is it then?”

my father asked, his voice controlled but his annoyance with how the doctor beat around the bush clear in his scent. He pushed his glasses up high on his nose and frowned at the doctor. The old bastard of a wolf looked so passive but at his sides his fingers clenched into tight fists like he might punch the doctor next.

“I think I need to speak with Dern alone. He’s all grown up now. That’s the most important thing to remember,”

Doctor Jenkins said.

“Is it a sex thing?”

my mother whispered. “Did he pick up a sex thing?”

“The boy would have to talk to a girl for that to happen, you dumb---”

Dad started.

“No need for that,”

the doctor cut him off. “I really must insist that you both wait in the hallway. It’ll be up to Dern to share his diagnosis or not.”

Only the doctor was a liar. He had no intentions of letting me tell anyone anything. He expected me to go along with his games, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I always got ahead of myself when I tried to explain these times.

“What’s wrong with me, doc?”

I asked, knowing it as nothing. Whatever he thought it, he was wrong. I’d already seen myself as an old man living on my own and handing out apples to younger wolves. Apples that I’d enchant first, of course.

“Dern, you have to understand, we’ve never seen anything like this and it’s something that requires treatment straight away. We’ll go ahead and get you to sign these papers while we talk,”

Doctor Jenkins said and pushed a stack of papers over in my direction.

“UH… Not to be too forward, but I’m not signing anything until you tell me what you think is going on,”

I said and pushed the papers back to him.

“Sign the papers, Dern. I’ve already discussed this with Elke, and he agrees with me. This is the only way forward. We can’t let any of the other packs find out that you are a freak of nature. You would embarrass every last one of us. We’d never be able to arrange another cross-pack mating. The survival of our pack depends on this.”

Elke was our pack leader and thought he owned everyone’s balls. Maybe he did because most of the wolves in our pack listened to him. Most of the mated pairs were of his making. I never thought Elke was all that impressive. For all his bulk, it looked like one good spell cast at the correct time might knock him to another world.

“What the hell are you talking about? Why don’t you slow down and tell me what’s up, doc? I’m not here to ruin anyone’s life. I just want to know what’s wrong with me and what the hell you’re trying to get me to consent to,”

I said, doing my best to keep my wolf’s growl out of my words.

“We don’t need your consent, Dern. It’s just a formality. It’s just our way of giving you a chance to fix what you’ve broken. Elke’s word is pack law.”

“Broken? What the fuck do you think I’ve broken?”

I stood up, knocking the chair back in the process.

“We should’ve told Dad to knock his lights out,”

my wolf chimed up in my thoughts as his claws forced their ways out of my fingernails. I held one clawed hand in front of me as I reached for the doorknob.

“Look at this scan,”

Doctor Jenkins growled, his eyes shifting to that of his wolf’s as he wrenched open the topmost drawer of his desk. He jerked out a scan and slapped it onto the table like he was playing hot hands instead of showing me sensitive medical information.

I almost didn’t look down. Keeping my eyes on him was more important than seeing whatever was on the scan. He smelled erratic like the wolves at the parties where drugs floated around that made you see and hear things. I took two big steps backward toward the door before glancing down. There it was in black and white. I didn’t need him to point out what shouldn’t have been there. The whole scan looked like something someone might’ve drawn up for a comic book. There was something on my scan that shouldn’t have been there, but the doctor was right. It wasn’t cancer. It was extra reproductive organs. The type of organs generally found in women with some extra things added in. Things I didn’t understand yet and wouldn’t really wrap my head around for years to come.

“Dad!”

I shouted as Doctor Jenkins lunged across the table.

I should’ve never have let him bully my parents out of the room. A thud sounded in the hallway too and my mother’s shriek for help was the last thing I heard before the world faded to black at the jab of on little needle that doctor had hidden deep within his pocket. I’d never see my parents again. Only later would I discover they’d been executed for being so brazen as to bring an abomination like me into the world.