"YOU ARE A WEREWOLF" are the words that reshaped Vincent's existence. These are the words his Great Teacher used, and these are the words Vincent swore to prove wrong because he could not understand why they are correct. He is no supernatural being--yet their truth remains stark. Vincent did not choose to be dropped through covert, social, and occult means into a monstrous skin, yet there he resides all the same.
LET IT BE KNOWN: This novel is a work of transgressive anti-fantasy. An expose of what grows in places hidden from light, unchecked and unbalanced with unlimited input.
You may, or may not, be like the characters in this book, but I can assure you this simple truth: you've met people who are. Remember that--within singular mental locations, laced with absurdity and worthy of ridicule, resides someone's truth--and that truth can be a legitimate danger to you.
"YOU ARE A WEREWOLF" are the words that reshaped Vincent's existence. These are the words his Great Teacher used, and these are the words Vincent swore to prove wrong because he could not understand why they are correct. He is no supernatural being--yet their truth remains stark. Vincent did not choose to be dropped through covert, social, and occult means into a monstrous skin, yet there he resides all the same.
LET IT BE KNOWN: This novel is a work of transgressive anti-fantasy. An expose of what grows in places hidden from light, unchecked and unbalanced with unlimited input.
You may, or may not, be like the characters in this book, but I can assure you this simple truth: you've met people who are. Remember that--within singular mental locations, laced with absurdity and worthy of ridicule, resides someone's truth--and that truth can be a legitimate danger to you.
[A clock ticks.]
DOCTOR: We really aren’t making a terribly huge amount of progress here, are we?
PATIENT: But we are. I’ve told you over and over—the world is right again.
My world, that is. You know what I mean when I say reconstruction. Neither of us needs to be here any longer.
DOCTOR: It’s our world.
PATIENT: It’s not.
DOCTOR: It is.
PATIENT: Please, doctor, we spent the last three sessions on this already […]
DOCTOR: The last four.
PATIENT: Because you’re obtuse. This is what I’m talking about.
DOCTOR: Then you’ve failed to explain yourself adequately. You say it is all true—that you are a werewolf—
PATIENT: Not anymore!
DOCTOR: It doesn’t matter. It’s delusion. Under this assumption I’m to believe things utterly fantastic. Things that cannot be. To accept with perfect credulity that you have healed yourself of—
PATIENT: I have!
DOCTOR: And that though much of this happened internally, and without a shred of evidence, I’m to think this internal healing can affect external—
PATIENT: The reconstruction, doctor. It’s healed me. I have every hope that it will last.
DOCTOR: Hope is not enough.
PATIENT: But I’m well now. Please, how can I show it to you?
DOCTOR: Even back then, you thought you were well when we both know you were far from it. You don’t dispute that, correct? Therefore, you cannot provide an accurate account of your current mental wellness.
PATIENT: But I’m actually well now. The situation is different. I was told I was a Werewolf and—
DOCTOR: The situation most assuredly is not different.
PATIENT: What do you need from me? I want to move on with my life! For once, it’s all ahead of me, and I want to be part of it. For once. Please. Let me have it. Let me be free. Sign the papers!
DOCTOR: Explain yourself to me.
PATIENT: I’ve fucking tried!
DOCTOR: Calm down.
PATIENT: Fuck off. Tell me what you want, or just sign the goddamned papers.
DOCTOR: Explain again how you came to be here. What happened to you last year? Who was he to you, really? You said you once called him the “Great Teacher.”
[A sigh.]
PATIENT: It’s so complicated […]
DOCTOR: Perhaps you would rather tell me more about StarSpawn.
PATIENT: No.
DOCTOR: Then which of this hazy gallery of characters should we talk about? You blame them for this bizarre werewolf belief.
PATIENT: I’ve tried, but it gets muddled… You don’t let me go on…
DOCTOR: I’ve asked you to try writing it out for me. Take your time and explain it adequately. Why can’t you do that? I know you have the time. All I’m asking you is to have a conversation with yourself from a year ago and see if you can come up with possible answers to my questions.
PATIENT: It’s hard to think about… I’m very embarrassed about that time in my life… I don’t want to think about it.
DOCTOR: Coward!
PATIENT: That’s not fucking fair!
DOCTOR: If you are not a coward, I must assume you are trying to conceal things from me.
PATIENT: Doctor… Wait.
[Something scrapes along the floor. A leather seat squeaks, and a suitcase latch pops.]
DOCTOR: I’ve been wondering why you lugged that thing in here.
[Papers crinkle. Silence looms for minutes on end.]
PATIENT: Take it—read it. I wrote this a year ago at someone else’s request.
DOCTOR: For him?
PATIENT: No.
[A long pause.]
PATIENT: Well, they didn’t ask directly. But I thought they were asking. You’ll get it if you read.
DOCTOR: There are hundreds of pages here.
PATIENT: It’s what you’ve asked of me. Better than that because I didn’t write it for you.
DOCTOR: What has that got to do with anything?
PATIENT: Honesty, doctor. Honesty. Please just read it.
DOCTOR: Very well…
[Papers crinkle again as an unbearable silence burns the room. Breathing slips in and out. The clock ticks on.]
Chapter 1
I
A werewolf lurked outside of my window again. I’m not supposed to let my gaze linger, but I saw it down among the trees that line the snowy path from College Boulevard, sniffing and pacing through the piled ice.
I did the right thing—I looked away. But then a trio of young men with reddened, numb fingers hooked into grocery bags passed right by it—it followed them—but they never saw what trailed behind. Right up to the end of the path, they were stalked until one discarded a cigarette’s glowing stump into the shadows near it—this exploded when it hit bark, and in the flash of red-orange ash, eyes loomed at me.
Hands shaking, I dropped the blinds and immediately sought means to distract myself because the longer I think of it, the longer it has to find me. I did so by watching videos. But even that wasn’t fast enough. Something marched down the hallway even as I cranked the volume. The grainy figures on my laptop screen seemed to become tenser, awaiting the interruption that never came. The feet marched on and vanished.
I don’t know how many times that has happened now—I try not to keep count—it will find me if I pay that much attention. That is why it is inconceivable that my Great Teacher could level such an accusation at me. Heartless even. But it’s so easy for him in his Palace, standing so tall above all others upon his ramparts, winding the world before him in the fog above steel water where nothing escapes his sight. He weighs all—sees all—when his verdict is delivered, it cuts in its correctness. But I fear him too—fear his eyes, fear his brain, for is he not cruel? Did he not call me to him after so many days of learning and extraordinary, elucidating talk, only to say that after everything I've told him, he believes me, with every fiber of his being, to be a werewolf?
It cannot be true. The werewolf is out there. I must prove him wrong. I will prove him wrong. Because he cannot possibly be right. I told him so then too—the moment he accused me. He derided this haste—told me in that forceful, dominating, unintentionally cruel manner that he'd anticipated not only my exact response down to the very syllables I used, but my actual emotions too. As though an emotional response was incorrect and foolish, as it must have seemed to him. I hardened myself, expecting more scorn, before his wonderfully visionary nature took hold. Once again, he was the Great Teacher—not the Great Tyrant some accuse him of being—gazing over the ramparts and seeing the whole of creation and its import swirling in the mists at the foot of his palace. He just wants me to see it like he does—so I can forgive his occasional impatience.
Sensing this, he had placed a heavy arm around my shoulders, and his topaz ring glimmered like the distant haze beyond the ramparts. Told me that I should meditate on his words. Said that if I did, I should surely see their correctness—he assured me of that. But also, that if I could prove him wrong, he would listen with patience. Perhaps even delight.
Though I thrilled at the thought of such a success, he also said that I shall not yet be able to see either the true bite that laid the werewolf's curse upon me, nor have I experienced the transformation. Thus, I would always be wrong—I simply lacked the facts. I denied this naturally, for is it not a fact that werewolves do not exist?
He pulled me a little closer to him, nodded his great head—he again anticipated this. Said what afflicts me is a true curse because I cannot see it before the dread moment becomes manifest. That only when the full moon rose—indeed he promised that dreaded full moon would rise in the morning and not the night—I would see the truth in his words. I had no answer to this because I had seen the moon he meant, which isn't the real moon. I knew that it already lingered in the third quarter. That it had been as such for months, and cycles don’t wait for you to be ready.
"The time is set then," he murmured. "It will not be hastened or slowed."
A few moments of silence passed before he renewed his request that I meditate on his words. A creeping melancholy entered his voice—he told me that I should not see him again until meditation cleared away the bushes blocking my path inwards. Until I had an answer, he would not see me. The Great Teacher is cruel.
He is also always entreating me to return to simplicity—to smash the concrete that encases my thoughts. To reflect on my past; not as narrative assuming point A leads to B (or B was A all along!) but simply as an image. To consider every symbol of that image—aspect by aspect—until I begin to see things I couldn't acknowledge before because my narrative had no room for it. So often he's told me that this method of meditation is what set him on the path to find me and, before that, to bloom into the one and only teacher worth listening to.
II
I’ve been sitting in the dark terrified of my window—even though by now it would only reveal icy stillness and distant prairie. Wracking my mind on how to present an argument—but I can’t even begin to see the beginning of one. And I know why; my Great Teacher was right when he told me I lacked the facts. I need to follow his teachings and begin re-examining my path to him. Why did things unfold as they did? Why did I end up in his palace as his disciple? What could've struck him in such a way as to call me werewolf?
If you're a reader like me who enjoys supernatural novels, you're probably expecting a shifter story here. There is, indeed, a werewolf of sorts in this intriguing tale, however the creature is but a small part of a much larger picture.
And when you said your name was Vinnie, they imagined you to be a Vinnie through and through--that is someone likely to be somewhat rash and decisive. A high-strung gambler... But you truly are Vincent, thoughtful and imaginative. Intelligent and inclined to romanticism, but also placid and indecisive.
The main character, Vincent, is someone who may be easy to associate with: he's unpopular, socially awkward, prefers video games to people, and he's severely out of shape. You may know someone very much like him.
The Werewolf Spring takes place during Vincent's first year at college. He's finally out from under his mother's care and plans to reinvent himself. His dorm room has 3 additional residents with vastly different personalities. None of them want to add him to their friend list. Vincent definitely isn't in Kansas anymore, and it's frankly painful if you find yourself sympathetic to him.
It doesn't take long for our anti-hero to realize that one of his roommates is more peculiar than the rest. Disturbingly so. Something just isn't right with Chester, and he's suddenly set his eyes on Vincent.
Those who enjoy psychology could have a field day diagnosing the characters here. Those who love philosophical discussions will enjoy the dialogue. Those who are into horror will get their itch scratched as well. As for suspense... this story is dripping with it. The plot takes on a fantastic new dimension as Chester plays his terrible game, and lives begin to suffer.
There's something else this novel possesses that I haven't touched on yet: humor. As Vincent teeters toward a psychotic break, he begins to write about THE VICTIM.
It's laughably terrible, full of nonsense, guts and gore, and a crazy hero as well.
This novel is so unique it nearly denies classification. This is not a standard mystery, thriller, or suspense read. It definitely has fantasy/paranormal elements, but it also doesn't read like an average fantasy. In fact, I don't feel like "average" can be used to describe this piece at all. It is dark, brutal, savage, intelligent, and deep. It features sinister and bleak adult themes. Much of the dialogue centers around the philosophical and the psychological--both of which play an intricate part in the story. If you're wanting pure action and a classic shifter story, this is not your read. However, if you're looking for a deeper, intelligent story full of symbolism and thought-provoking events, pick this one up.