Boom
Coffee done, Billy and Kate took a short walk around the neighbourhood.
"Oh lord!" Kate exclaimed.
In front of them, a shop's front window was completely smashed in. Mannequins lay haphazardly among the glass, a slumber party in a minefield. Most of them still sported the lingerie they had been designed to display. Billy turned away to hide his blush but glanced back quickly to confirm his lupine form's taste; he liked the underwear hidden in his hotel room more than any of the pieces scattered in the shop now. Garish and bright, he assumed his wolf form would have felt like they were gilding the lily. “Should we phone the police?”
“I’m sure the shopkeeper’s already done it.”
“Then where are they?”
“I don’t know. Let’s just move on.”
"What is this city coming to?" Kate asked, looping her arm through Billy's and continuing their stroll. "Why would someone even do that?"
"Panty emergency," Billy suggested.
Kate giggled. "Maybe a date needed to be spiced up. Are you into that?"
Billy pulled up short. "What?"
"Women wearing that stuff."
"Oh, sure."
She wrinkled her nose. "I think it's a bit try-hard." They started walking again. "Which of those did you like?"
"They didn't have anything I liked."
At the tube station, Kate invited Billy to come back to her flat. “Just for coffee.”
“We just had a coffee.”
“So?”
“I have work.”
"You're still doing that?"
"Yep."
"You live at the Four Seasons, Billy, you don't need to slum it at some gym in Hackney."
"I enjoy it." He flexed his arms, letting his biceps bulge, "And people enjoy me."
"You have to let people enjoy you, sweetie. Are you sure you won't join me?"
"I told you: I have to work."
"And I told you that you don’t have to. But I'm not a beggar; be boring, it's no skin off my nose." She kissed him on the cheek, "until next time."
He stood waving at her until the escalator took her out of sight then turned around to take the bus to the gym.
Cool against Billy's forehead, the bus window also allowed to consider his own face as he brooded. He gazed through his face to the grey London skyline and hoped that, despite five years of evidence to the contrary, an answer to his monthly problem would present itself out of thin air. He had never disclosed the gynecological aspect of his transformation to anyone; he supposed that there might be werewolf elders in the UK who would be able to immediately diagnose what was wrong. Perhaps he was just one potion or ritual away from claiming his birthright with a full cock swinging between his legs.
But what if he was unique? What if it had never happened before in history? Certainly no one spoke about it. His father, garrulous lupine raconteur, keeper of werewolf lore, indefatigable source of everything relating to the pack, had never mentioned a cis-male wolf with a vagina. (Of course, he didn’t know if his father knew the prefix ‘cis-’.) Not a mention of such a creature or condition had ever been relayed to him. He was alone in the world.
And even if he weren’t unique, if it were just something that people know of but refused to mention, what if it inherently marked him out as lesser? Billy was meant to be an alpha, he was born into the world of werewolves; he was unbroken, a fortified castle unconquered, no teeth had broached his neck, no one had overpowered him. He was meant to choose a mate, bite her and then sire the next heir. How could he do that without the most important piece of equipment?
A poisonous cloud of rumours swirled around him, deleterious but impossible to grab a hold of, growing in intensity every day that he did not step out into the world, did not chase women, did not carouse with the other werewolves or take charge in any way of the realm that had been gifted to him.
He had tried googling ‘alpha werewolf with a vagina’ once, just in case an enterprising member of his kind had put useful information on the internet, with the knowledge that humans would just believe it to be superstition, but all he got was BTS fanfiction. He sometimes went to magic shops in the city only to be met with crystals and overpriced amulets.
Time was against him but he could see no way out of his predicament and so, the way he did whenever he considered the impossibility of his situation, he closed his eyes and wished for a miracle.
Holden's Gym, for men only, was in a building that had once been the kind of tower block that put the brutal in brutalist, so grey it seemed to leech the colour from the sky and the earth around it, so even the plants that managed to shrug their way through the cracks in the concrete turned ashen in its presence. A stolid building that was seeing an unexpected renaissance, an ugly duckling rendered in cement, the gym was a testament to the idea that eventually, anything could become desirable.
David at the front desk had wonderfully thick arms. Every day, Billy felt envy spike within him when he saw David’s physique; he was a much broader man than Billy, and as such could really make an impression, stake his claim within a room. His jawline, too, lent an air of legitimacy to anything he said. People took David seriously because of his looks; Billy admired that about him, and he would pore over David’s appearance, sometimes summon the image of the man before he slept at night, in case he could replicate it, trying to achieve what had been gifted to him naturally. They nodded but didn’t speak to one another; there was no need for small talk.
A few other men in the changing room also had figures to make Billy jealous. He stole glances at them, in their briefs, some glistening with sweat from a workout just finished and some just about to start, the sleekness of their muscles, the way their legs and arms cut shapes in the air, catching the eye and drawing him in with envy. He examined their bodies for the seconds he knew he could look without seeming strange, trying to commit to memory the glide of their physiques so as to motivate himself in the future.
Once he was changed, he walked into the exercise room, where Nate, his supervisor, the spitting image of his father who just so happened to own the gym, waved him over, “you’ve got a new client.”
“But I’m meant to train Charles today.”
“I moved Charles over to Eli; this new guy specifically asked for an American.”
“Why?”
“Ask him yourself.” Nate raised his arm and shouted to someone across the room, “Teddy!”
Billy turned and met eyes with Teddy.
When he was little, Billy’s parents had taken him to Central Park to watch a fireworks show. His father had bought him a helium balloon as a gift and tied it to his wrist. As the show began and the sky turned kaleidoscopic, colours blurring and rearranging, paint being thrown against the ceiling of the world as tsunamis of sound and heat crashed down on the welcoming audience, the balloon slipped from Billy’s wrist and sailed skywards, travelling up and up, drawn to be among the power and the blaze and the light and the noise. Billy watched it, the silvery silhouette, a fragile, nebbish object with crinkled edges that folded in on themselves, daring to be in the volcanic sky, a jellyfish in a firestorm, near the apex, surrounded by the cacophony and splendour, when a rocket hit square into it and the balloon was instantly subsumed by fire.
That was Billy felt in the moment.
“Excuse me…” He managed to croak the words out before he scrambled away from the spot which Teddy, like a tank, was fast approaching. Billy slammed into the doors but kept pushing and then stumbled into the toilets, emphatically locking the door behind him before he’d even managed to turn on the light.
He scrambled to the find the chord for the light, his fingers frantically grasping at the string for several seconds before he managed to pull it taut enough for the bulb to spring on. In the mirror, Billy was red in the face and beads of sweat were covering his forehead. His chest shook as he breathed. His fingers kept flexing and unflexing. None of these things were what concerned him.
Shivering, Billy reached down, grabbed the waistbands of his sweatpants and his briefs and pulled them down. He gulped at what he saw.
In the middle of the day his penis was gone and, with no fur, muzzle or tail to accomplish it, his vagina was back.