Hank the Were Rooster 06: Were Rooster vs Omelet
When Hank was young, he loved omelets. Spinach, red peppers, pork, and plenty of cheese: there was nothing better than that. He ate that at least once a week, his mother permitting.
Then the change came over him.
He’s out of his parent’s house when he becomes a were rooster. That’s good, because he can’t imagine how to explain his behavior to his parents. It takes two days to recover from his first episode, which mostly means two days to get the taste of bugs out of his mouth. To help his taste buds recover, Hank makes his favorite omelet. It can’t quite make him forget a worm wiggling its way down his throat, but it helps. He eats lots of omelets that first month.
When the next full moon approaches, Hank thinks nothing of it. He doesn’t understand his problem yet, hasn’t realized it will occur again. That will take three more months, and another four before he links the transformation to the moon. Hank doesn’t think well when he’s disgusted and embarrassed.
A month out, he’s managed to put his experience behind him, ascribe his actions to excessive alcohol. He has a normal day, including a normal breakfast and lunch. It’s winter, so by the time he sits down to dinner, it’s dark out. Because he loves it so much, and because it’s healthy and easy to fix, he has his favorite meal.
Hank picks up his fork and stares down at the plate. Thanks to years of practice, the omelet comes out perfect, exactly the amount of brown he likes best. The peppers are big, the pieces of spinach small and plentiful. He had to mix some Parmesan with the Cheddar cheese since he ran out of the latter, but that’s fine. He’s made such substitutions before and still loved it.
So he can’t figure out why, as he now stares at his dinner, he feels ill. Maybe he’s coming down with something? When he looks away from his omelet, he feels fine, so that can’t be it. Hank prods the food around with his fork, but that doesn’t help.
As moonlight starts to sink through his window, Hank thinks about how he made the omelet. He thinks about those poor, defenseless eggs, the way he broke them against the side of the frying pan as if they didn’t matter. Those could have been chickens one day, if he hadn’t killed them.
Tears slide down his face. He rips into the omelet, eating the spinach and peppers and pork and cheese, but none of the egg. That helps. He gets half way through the meal before movement from outside his window distracts him. Once he notices the moonlight, his compulsion takes over.
When he throws up the next morning, the sight of his omelet repulses him as much as anything else. That means he can’t use his favorite food to help recover from his ordeal, which is perhaps the worst part of the whole thing.
Years later, as Hank learns to manage his condition, he learns to eat eggs again, and chicken. He can only do so during new moons. He’s pretty sure that makes his diet the strangest of anyone’s.
