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It wasn’t rare that Walter woke up with a throbbing headache. They had been getting worse in the past few days, worryingly, at the same time that the moon was slowly swelling into a full. It wasn’t there yet, though. He was never sure if the whole wolf thing was connected to the moon or not. It often lined up, but sometimes it didn’t. It was probably a lot more complicated than a simple trigger like that. He should be safe, he thought, until he looked in the mirror and saw two round, fluffy ears poking up from beneath his hair. Panic rose in his chest.
He touched his head, and felt blood where the ears had broken through the skin. It was beginning, and he didn’t have the time to deal with it properly. He had a meeting with Freddie later that day, fortunately for that, at least. Both his partners were out. No one to notice before he did, though Florence would be back any minute now. That was ok. She was always understanding, even when he still didn’t feel comfortable talking to her about things like this.
He didn’t really know why. It was automatic at this point. His life was lived on eggshells. He didn’t know it any other way. His feet had been permanently stretched to accommodate his eternal tip-toes. He felt the soft, velvety fur now sprouting from his head. It hurt, but he had always wondered if, in another life, he would have enjoyed it. Made the most of it. Maybe if he let himself explore it, look his reflection in the eyes, he could find a way to calm the explosions without the pain. Without fighting his nature.
He knew that that would not be this lifetime. Maybe another time around, if there was one. Deep down, though, he felt like probably he would just end up doing everything the same again. He went through his list of different hat options to hide the ears. They were quite big by now. Everything would be very uncomfortable.
He heard the creak of the door opening. It wasn’t normally this loud. He turned around to see a very surprised Florence, staring at his ears.
“Walter… what is on your head?”
The sound of her voice hurt. It didn’t normally do that, but now it was emanating from her mouth with red daggers of sound, tearing through him with a sharp pain that abstracted everything around him. He felt dizzy. She saw him start to curl up in pain.he should be used to it by now. This had happened so many times, and it was worse with every one. Why couldn’t he just get over this? He sat down on the end of the bed. “Can you talk quieter? Sorry”
She nodded, her voice dropping to a whisper as she sat down with him and asked if there was anything he needed.
He looked at himself in the mirror one more time. “I am sorry, you weren’t meant to see this. I was doing so good at keeping this a secret, but now you’ve seen it and-”
She hovered her hand over his arm while looking at him questioningly, and he nodded. She held his arm, lightly, the touch grounding him in an ever spinning world. “You need to tell me these things, Walter. I won’t be mad at you, I won’t judge you. But it’s important to me that you don’t suffer in silence, and it’s important that we communicate when we have problems.”
“It’s so hard,” he said. “I freeze up when I have to talk about certain things. I don’t want you to have to deal with everything. I want the world to be easy for you.”
She smiled “It’s nice that you care about me like that. But I want the world to be easy for you, too. If you go too far and tell me something I am not ready to deal with, I will tell you. We didn’t get to this point because I dislike listening to you talk to me. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but it could help. Even if it’s just that I can know how to help you manage this when it happens again.”
He told her everything, about the wolf, about the attack and the dreams and the murder and the explosions behind locked doors, tearing claw marks in walls and the pain from trying to suppress it all. He felt the ears slowly shrinking.
He explained the feeling of being hunted, of the dream wolf’s teeth over his face, its eyes, its saliva dripping down his neck. The festering gash on his leg.
He explained the heaviness of that once full human body, as he pulled it into the woods, as he covered it in cold dirt. How he could sense it’s still form resting under his feet and the sky grew large around him. His promise to never let it happen again.
The wolf calmed. As he told her how he was sensitive to things. He always had been. Noise and scent and light. But it got worse when the wolf started to come out. How he heard everything louder, how normal volumes felt soul-destroying for him. How the world became a web of scent, how he could navigate without his eyes, his feet and nose knowing the geography of the universe naturally.
The ears had stopped hurting. He looked in the mirror. They were gone. Florence hugged him.
“That must be hard to deal with. Did talking about it help? I always worry about you, you know. I don’t want you to think that you have to hide things to protect me.”
“Yeah. it helped,” he said. “But also I feel worse now. Anxious. I don’t like talking about things like this.” And, he thought, I still haven’t told you most of what is going on with me. I am still scared of how you will handle it. I feel like I am not allowed to talk about these things. He didn’t say any of that.
“That makes sense,” she said. “This was a big thing. It’s scary to talk about it even when you know you can trust someone.” she paused for a moment. “Are you ok with me telling Freddie, or are you not ready for that?”
“No," he said. “I don’t think I am, sorry.”
“That’s ok. Do you want to do something fun together, to distract you?”
“Yeah. that might be nice.”