The Lycan of Lucan in Lockdown
With a glass of wine in his injured hand and his laptop in the other, Lucas settled down on his favourite sofa chair for the monthly group chat with his friends. Under normal circumstances he would be out in a pub with them, but because of a godforsaken human-borne virus, he had no choice but to use video conferencing instead.
‘Hello, hello, hello’ Ol’s bright, fuzzy face popped up on screen.
‘Hi, there’ Lucas smiled, accidentally waving the wrong hand.
‘Oof,’ Ol said. ‘What happened there?’
‘It’s...,’ Lucas said, clutching his bandaged palm. ‘It’s nothing. I just... was playing basketball in my backyard and the ball rebounded off the wall and hit my hand. It’s just taking a bit time to more time to heal because... you know, I’m low on energy.’
Ol sighed in sympathy.
Before he could say anything else, everyone else joined in. And soon, they were discussing how tough they were finding everything: Wilma had to move her faux silver jewellery business online, Róisín had to eat a few of her own sheep for the thrill of it, and Hari had to go back to living with his parents after being fired from his job.
‘I don’t know why we have to be in lockdown, too,’ he was saying now. ‘It’s not like it’ll affect us.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ Wilma asked. Ol nodded his head in agreement.
‘I don’t mind risking it,’ Róisín opined. ‘I think I’ll go mad if I stay inside any longer.’
‘Don’t you live on a farm?’ Hari sniggered.
She scowled at him, baring her incisors. ‘I’m on your side, fool,’ she added, before turning to Lucas, ‘And you, what does the great Lycan of Lucan feel about this?’
(Ever since one night twenty years ago, when a human mark, incidentally named Mark, had chosen Lucas over her, she had developed a great disliking for him. Later, having recovered from his transformation, Mark had been forced to leave Ireland to avoid being bullied by Róisín.)
‘I can understand both points of views,’ Lucas finally said, taking a sip of his wine. Róisín made a face. ‘Your answer is just as boring as you.’
He gave her a feeble smile. He couldn’t really tell her, or any of them, how, in an act of moon-madness, he had run around a nearby park at midnight and how, on the way back, he had slipped on his neighbour’s boundary wall, rebounded off the ground like a basketball and landed right next to their German Shepherd, who had promptly bit his right paw.
And he could most definitely not tell them how he had howled in pain after that, how he had cowered under his blanket for days, in shame and embarrassment.
‘But yes,’ he added now, feeling his cheeks go warm at the memory, ‘I’ll admit I’ve been feeling quite anxious, like a caged animal who must be set free.’
Srijani Ganguly is a former journalist, with a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Limerick. Her short stories have been published in The Honest Ulsterman, Silver Apples Magazine, Fairlight Books, and other magazines. She is a Contributing Editor at Vestal Review, a Features Editor at Talking Writing, and a reader for the Scottish publishing house Sandstone Press. She currently resides in Dublin. Her twitter handle is @gigiganguly.
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