When I finally tell my twin brother, Matty, that I’m a werewolf, I sit amongst the carnage in a barn, stranded, almost sixty miles from home. Seems I raged farther than usual. There’s silence on the phone. “Hello?” I say, dragging the remains of a cow behind a hay bale, in case whoever farm this is comes wandering in.

I hear typing. Matty says, “I’m checking the side effects of Xanax.”

“I need a ride, Matty,” I whisper. Behind the hay bale, I discover the remains of my shirt and jacket, which I’ve been looking for for an hour, the shreds of my clothing that made it this far. As best I can manage, I pull what’s left back on. I’ve found it’s best to stay clothed, or even duct tape my phone and wallet to myself when I know the frenzy’s coming.

“What about Xanax?” I say.

“My psychiatrist prescribed it. It doesn’t say anything about lycanthropy. What medications are you on?” he says.

I push open the barn door and see nothing but empty field. “My dude, it doesn’t work that way. My doctor says you have to be cursed.”

More typing on his end. “Do they know if it’s hereditary?”

I crouch and slink through the grass toward the tree line. “Even if it is, don’t freak out.” But, he will. We’ve been through this before. Once, when we were college freshmen, I had a freak seizure, a one time thing. I wasn’t sleeping well, drinking too much; I figure, like, open and shut case. But, ever since, he’s been convinced he’s going to have his own.

When I broke my leg in kindergarten, falling off my bike, Matty demanded our folks get him a cast. Everyone thought for attention. He told me his shin should have time to mend.

When we go into one of these spirals, I remind him I was born with a cleft lip and he wasn’t.

I try not to worry about the little things. He frequents WebMD.

Somewhere nearby—I hope—is a stream, creek, or pond, because my hair is matted with blood and my arms stained red to the elbows. According to Google Maps, I’m now about fifteen miles from the highway. For obvious reasons, I can’t call an Uber, so I’m going to have to hoof it to the nearest exit sign and wait for my brother to come pick me up, which I haven’t asked yet.

He’s going to be a weiner.

“Wait—who cursed you?” he says.

“Amber, probably,” I say. Amber is my recent ex. Deep into the occult, that Amber.

“That tracks,” he says. “She sucks.” (Amber predicted, via tarot reading, that Matty would lose his job. He hasn’t yet.)

“I’m at 187 East,” I say, “Come pick me up.”

“I’m at work,” he says. “It’s my office hours.”

“Dude—” I’m trying not to get mad “—I’m covered in blood.”

“Call an Uber.”

I plop down behind a big rock and try to think of someone else to call. Everyone on my contact list is either a work friend, a weed dealer, an ex, a college friend who lives in another state, or otherwise unsuitable. This in itself is depressing, something to work on. “You know I’d come get you,” I say. I’m going to throw in his face how I came to his acoustic set at an open mic last month—or, one time last fall—but he’s hung up.

Matty and I argue about many things, and one of them is empathy. Both of us accuse the other of having none.