Faction: for the Omniocular's Non-Fiction Challenge
An excerpt from "Hairy Snout, Human Heart"
Epilogue
Just like the others, he wouldn't listen, and there was no-one else I knew with the talent, the resources. He laughed, and there was no point after that, I'd exhausted all my contacts. But I know - I KNOW it has to be possible, all the theories point to it. I don't have the place, I don't have the money, and I certainly don't have the talent. But I know it's possible. Maybe someone is working on it - already. Maybe in some potions lab somewhere, some skilful fanatic has found the same clues in the herbs and metals that I have. I've never found anyone that will listen, but maybe someone cares enough.
Surely someone should.
Since losing my last job, I think I went mad. I certainly can't remember much of the three weeks between the last sight of my boss, his face pale and stiff, with those hated words dripping from his lips like Chinese water torture.
"There's nothing I can do." He kept saying. "There's nothing I can do." He tried to let me think that had things been different, perhaps, that he wouldn't have "let me go." If the Ministry didn't have these rules, if the moon didn't come up month after month.
If I didn't turn into a ravening beast capable of ripping his throat out.
Rarely have I been tempted to violence, you know that, or you should, if you have actually been reading this journal, and not just skimming it through to find the times when blood lust took me and I admitted to tales of waking with flesh between my teeth and blood on my skin. How disappointed you must be.
Rarely have I even wanted to strike out at my fellow man (not that my fellow man considers me worthy of the nomenclature, as I have long realised). But that day, when he held the door out for me and kept repeating his mantra, as if that would have protected him, not if I was the kind of man he THOUGHT I was. That day I could have given in, could have leapt upon him and beaten his blank stiff face to a pulp. But what did I do? I said, "It doesn't matter, Donald. It's not your fault." Then I left.
The time after that was lost in the city; lost in a maelstrom of walking commuters and cardboard nights. Lost in emptying my pockets of the taint of Donald's pity-severance, where I swapped his guilt for vodka and drowned the memory of the avoidance of his eyes in hangovers which never went away.
When the money ran out I found myself by the river. I stank like the worst werewolf musk, my clothes were stained with things I can't imagine and I had lost most of everything I had ; shoes, keys, wallet, wand. It was the loss of my wand that drove me to the Ministry, not the looming full moon. A good little wizard doing what was right. I reported it, facing down the clerk who wrinkled his nose and made far too many notes. He told me that my case would have to be heard, and that the Wizengamot would have to make a ruling on whether I would be allowed to buy another. He passed me over to Werewolf Control, and I spent the full moon where I've spent every full moon since my infection, tearing at my flesh, and bouncing over the steel bars of my cage.
After that I went home, broke down the door and slept for a day. When I woke I sat in bed, drowned myself in black coffee and tried to think.
I could have run. I wanted to run. I know, as I write this out, being true to myself at long last, that a part of me wanted the Aurors to track me down. I would have too, but for the fear that I might hurt someone, and I couldn't do it.
So I thought what else I could do? What sort of man was I if I couldn't keep myself? How could I ever hope to keep anyone else - was there nothing, really nothing to look forward to?
If I'm not a man, am I simply a beast? If I'm not a wizard, and I'm not human, what is there? What is the point? I still haven't answered that, even after all these pages of pointless scribble. Seems I've learned nothing.
So what have you learned from reading this? Have you learned anything? Has it changed your views on werewolves? I doubt it. I don't suppose you'll let one come and work in your shop, or factory. You won't flaunt the Ministry's ruling.
You'll shake your head and say "what difference can I make, I'm only one wizard?" I doubt very much whether you'll let your daughter date one, your son marry one.
You'll give yourself good excuses too, and they'll sound plausible. "They are barren, right? Or can't conceive, don't the women abort every month if they get pregnant? Right… So you see I want grandchildren and whatever my son/daughter says, I know they say they don't care about children now, but what about ten years down the line? I just don't want my child to be unhappy. It's not about the lycanthropy, honestly."
Because you care about your son and your daughter. Of course you do.
But put yourself in MY parents' shoes.
Put yourself in my shoes.
If you can. Maybe you'll be braver than I.
I'll send my notes and ideas for the potion with this chapter.
Editorial note:
And that's all there was. "Talbot" had been sending up these diary notes about a month or so apart, sometimes written, as you've read, before the full moon, some written, those parts we will never forget, after it.
We never heard from him again. This last chapter arrived; it wasn't called Epilogue, but we took that decision when we made the decision to print.
We may never know who he is. We don't even know if he's still alive, but this book has left us with the sure feeling that he's more human than most of us who take that condition for granted. All we have been able to do is to publish his words and hope that they touch you as much as they touched us.
All proceeds of this book are going, together with his research, to the Research and Development Department of St Mungo's, where maybe one day, he might be proved right, and a cure be found.
Epilogue
Just like the others, he wouldn't listen, and there was no-one else I knew with the talent, the resources. He laughed, and there was no point after that, I'd exhausted all my contacts. But I know - I KNOW it has to be possible, all the theories point to it. I don't have the place, I don't have the money, and I certainly don't have the talent. But I know it's possible. Maybe someone is working on it - already. Maybe in some potions lab somewhere, some skilful fanatic has found the same clues in the herbs and metals that I have. I've never found anyone that will listen, but maybe someone cares enough.
Surely someone should.
Since losing my last job, I think I went mad. I certainly can't remember much of the three weeks between the last sight of my boss, his face pale and stiff, with those hated words dripping from his lips like Chinese water torture.
"There's nothing I can do." He kept saying. "There's nothing I can do." He tried to let me think that had things been different, perhaps, that he wouldn't have "let me go." If the Ministry didn't have these rules, if the moon didn't come up month after month.
If I didn't turn into a ravening beast capable of ripping his throat out.
Rarely have I been tempted to violence, you know that, or you should, if you have actually been reading this journal, and not just skimming it through to find the times when blood lust took me and I admitted to tales of waking with flesh between my teeth and blood on my skin. How disappointed you must be.
Rarely have I even wanted to strike out at my fellow man (not that my fellow man considers me worthy of the nomenclature, as I have long realised). But that day, when he held the door out for me and kept repeating his mantra, as if that would have protected him, not if I was the kind of man he THOUGHT I was. That day I could have given in, could have leapt upon him and beaten his blank stiff face to a pulp. But what did I do? I said, "It doesn't matter, Donald. It's not your fault." Then I left.
The time after that was lost in the city; lost in a maelstrom of walking commuters and cardboard nights. Lost in emptying my pockets of the taint of Donald's pity-severance, where I swapped his guilt for vodka and drowned the memory of the avoidance of his eyes in hangovers which never went away.
When the money ran out I found myself by the river. I stank like the worst werewolf musk, my clothes were stained with things I can't imagine and I had lost most of everything I had ; shoes, keys, wallet, wand. It was the loss of my wand that drove me to the Ministry, not the looming full moon. A good little wizard doing what was right. I reported it, facing down the clerk who wrinkled his nose and made far too many notes. He told me that my case would have to be heard, and that the Wizengamot would have to make a ruling on whether I would be allowed to buy another. He passed me over to Werewolf Control, and I spent the full moon where I've spent every full moon since my infection, tearing at my flesh, and bouncing over the steel bars of my cage.
After that I went home, broke down the door and slept for a day. When I woke I sat in bed, drowned myself in black coffee and tried to think.
I could have run. I wanted to run. I know, as I write this out, being true to myself at long last, that a part of me wanted the Aurors to track me down. I would have too, but for the fear that I might hurt someone, and I couldn't do it.
So I thought what else I could do? What sort of man was I if I couldn't keep myself? How could I ever hope to keep anyone else - was there nothing, really nothing to look forward to?
If I'm not a man, am I simply a beast? If I'm not a wizard, and I'm not human, what is there? What is the point? I still haven't answered that, even after all these pages of pointless scribble. Seems I've learned nothing.
So what have you learned from reading this? Have you learned anything? Has it changed your views on werewolves? I doubt it. I don't suppose you'll let one come and work in your shop, or factory. You won't flaunt the Ministry's ruling.
You'll shake your head and say "what difference can I make, I'm only one wizard?" I doubt very much whether you'll let your daughter date one, your son marry one.
You'll give yourself good excuses too, and they'll sound plausible. "They are barren, right? Or can't conceive, don't the women abort every month if they get pregnant? Right… So you see I want grandchildren and whatever my son/daughter says, I know they say they don't care about children now, but what about ten years down the line? I just don't want my child to be unhappy. It's not about the lycanthropy, honestly."
Because you care about your son and your daughter. Of course you do.
But put yourself in MY parents' shoes.
Put yourself in my shoes.
If you can. Maybe you'll be braver than I.
I'll send my notes and ideas for the potion with this chapter.
Editorial note:
And that's all there was. "Talbot" had been sending up these diary notes about a month or so apart, sometimes written, as you've read, before the full moon, some written, those parts we will never forget, after it.
We never heard from him again. This last chapter arrived; it wasn't called Epilogue, but we took that decision when we made the decision to print.
We may never know who he is. We don't even know if he's still alive, but this book has left us with the sure feeling that he's more human than most of us who take that condition for granted. All we have been able to do is to publish his words and hope that they touch you as much as they touched us.
All proceeds of this book are going, together with his research, to the Research and Development Department of St Mungo's, where maybe one day, he might be proved right, and a cure be found.