It all seemed like someone else’s mess, their outline of a slow descent into madness. I knew it was all mine, every meticulously studied and highlighted book and well-used printouts belonged to me. Standing there in the middle of it all, I felt overwhelmed and sick. One or two books every week doesn’t seem like much, but over the course of years it adds up to terrifying numbers and I didn’t want to imagine the possible amounts of sheets of paper I had acquired. When in the thick of it, when the clock seemed to speed through the day and I had nothing else to look forward to, it hadn’t seemed too bad. I knew it was messy, but I wouldn’t have even begun to assume that it was beginning to be a true hoard. Yet, here I was.

I wanted it to all disappear, it all was in vain and its presence was mocking me. With the guise of the reality of werewolves slipping away from me, I could finally see what the world around me had truly looked like. Instead of a well-cultivated research library, it was haphazard and potentially all useless. I was in no shape to begin the process of purging it, all I wanted was sleep and hope that I’d wake up to find the past years of my life were only a terrible nightmare.

Stumbling to my bedroom and stepping over ridiculous piles of paper and books, I tossed the magic pages onto the bed and sought refuge in the bathroom. It was the only room I hadn’t shoved research in and having the door closed to all the chaos made me feel a little better. I ran a bath and stripped down, it was a strain to remember the last time I had bathed and I vowed to myself to be better about it from then on. I climbed in the tub and put a warm, wet rag over my face. I probably should have attempted to scrub the layer of filth from me, but any and all effort out of me felt too impossible.

My mind ran over the past, and more intensely, what had just happened. I understood that Alan turning out not to be a werewolf didn’t mean that they didn’t exist, it was just hard to feel so close, then have it turn out to be a fake. I should have expected it, the ratio of serious accounts to hoaxes is hilariously small, but I allowed myself to get carried away. Of course, there was also the question of whether it was worth worrying about since I had the instructions to magic laying on my bed, even if it was just as likely to end up a hoax as well.

I drifted off, my thoughts twisting into dreams, the most terrifying of which involved being mauled to death by a werewolf that looked suspiciously like a golden retriever. I woke up with a gasp, my mouth tasting like salty garbage and my bath water ice cold. I was relieved to be awake, but not exactly rested.

My thoughts snapped back to its own set of nightmares, like what to do with my life. The obsession with werewolves was waning thanks to the disappointment and the fact that the sightings I had tracked down were Bubbles and were most likely the most accurate I had ever found. If even the most realistic and possible of the sightings were a hoax, then I could no longer feel much confidence in the field of werewolf tracking at all. I decided, still sitting in the icy water that I was going to have to get rid of my research and maybe live like someone half way normal for a while. I knew that Alan was counting on me to switch gears and obsess over magic instead, but he underestimated how big of a blow this all was for me.

Shivering, I pulled myself out of the water and slipped on my terrycloth bathrobe. I frowned at my image in the medicine cabinet’s mirror and decided the hair had to go. I was tired of looking and feeling like a creepy cave dweller. I pulled a dusty, ancient pair of hair clippers out of the cabinet and whirled them to life. Without ceremony I buzzed my hair down to a more respectably buzz cut. Not particularly my style, but staring back at me in the mirror now was someone much less likely to have people run from in horror.

I dragged my stiff body into the bedroom and started piling up all the old books, papers, and essays I could manage to carry and stacked them by the front door. I was unsure if I should toss them or keep them, but either way they weren’t staying to mock me. It took hours to get things into a humongous, but relatively manageable mass.

I took a step back and shook my head, the final pile stood just over my head and extended five feet from the door. I was forced to move around my living room furniture in order to accommodate it all. “Pitiful” was the only word I could think of to describe it. Thousands upon thousands of wasted pages, enough to make an environmentalist break down into wails and sobs. I was ashamed of how out of hand I had let it get and that seeing it all ready to go still made me feel panicked. The mess of it represented so much time and effort, I felt at least a little accomplished in all that I had studied and wrote about, and getting rid of it all seemed like too much of a waste. The chances of any of it ever becoming relevant to me again were slim, but at least for the time being I couldn’t let the dump be their final resting place. That didn’t mean they could stay though.

My eyes flickered over to the phone. I needed a truck and some help, unfortunately both of those needs could be met by Daniel. He would be thrilled to find out that I was getting rid of my stuff, thrilled and annoyingly arrogant. Assuming he wasn’t still convinced he was dead, he was apt to come running down to my apartment to do a victory dance. I didn’t have much choice otherwise, it would have taken days to carry all of it by hand on my own. I sighed and picked up the phone to dial his number.

“Hello?” he answered on the third ring.

“Hey, what are you up to?” I asked.

“Sitting naked with my blinds wide open. Scared the hell out of the lady next door.”

“Daniel, you’re not really dead, people can see you.”

“I know, figured that out when the same old lady freaked out at me laying there and called 911. The paramedic chick was hot though, she didn’t buy that I fell on my face and got knocked out because my dick is too big.”

“I need help and your truck,” I sighed, ignoring any more references to his dick.

“You’re actually moving around and wanting to do something other than fap while reading?” he asked skeptically.

“Look, can you promise not to rub anything in my face?”

“Not even my ass?”

“I’m being serious.”

“I think if you really need my help it doesn’t matter to you what I do,” he said.

“Can’t give me a break even once?” I grumbled. “Alright, fine, I’m moving my books and stuff out of my apartment and to a storage space.”

The line went silent, then clicked off. I hoped it had gone dead before I explained and when he didn’t show up five minutes later, I was fairly certain he hadn’t hung up to rush over for his victory dance. I didn’t want to call him back either, so I went to work in my now cleared bedroom cleaning up my laptop of any evidence of my obsession. Without any of my files, there wasn’t much left other than the factory installed programs, it was like a brand new computer with no traces of having been used. I shut it down and closed it to avoid the temptation of visiting the old forums, I could feel my brain itching to read the latest sighting.

I dozed off, still exhausted from my fitful night in the tub and all the physical activity. I didn’t wake up when Daniel finally did arrive and he took no measures to fix that. Stumbling out of bed a couple hours later, I was shocked to see it was nearing sunset through my blinds, I had lasted my first continuous twenty-four hours without picking up so much as a book to study. It felt like I was making some sort of good progress with my life.

“I was right!” Daniel yelled triumphantly and leapt through my bedroom door.

I jumped and cracked my knee on my bedpost, which he found hilarious.

“Oh man, you should have seen your face just then,” he laughed, wiping tears from his eyes. “Here I thought that this day could not possibly get any better. Woo… wait, did you pee your pants?”

I hadn’t and he definitely didn’t need to know how close I had come to it.

“Damn, that would have topped it off. Oh well, next time,” he said through deep breaths to calm his guffaws. “But come see the surprise I have for you. I would have been here sooner with it, but customized stuff takes longer.”

My living room, including the monstrous book pile, was decorated with life-sized cutout pictures of Daniel and banners proclaiming “I was right.” I sighed and raised an eyebrow at him, but he was never the type to let a party pooper get him down and he broke into his version of a victory dance, including ample amounts of pelvic thrusting.

“I’m riiiight, right, right… RIGHT!” he sang, emphasizing every “right” with a violent thrust of his hips.

“You spent a couple hours and probably a couple hundred bucks on this?” I asked.

“Well no,” he said with a final thrust, “there’s also a cake.”

He skipping into the kitchen and pointed to a pink sheet cake featuring a sparkly, white unicorn and the words “Dude, I was so right!” in elegant script.

I made sure to get you the cake that fit you the most. The chick behind the counter said she had no idea how to make it any more precious though and the rainbow would have ruined the lettering. I gave her the best description of you I could, an eight-year-old girl,” he sighed. “Sorry dude, I hope you still understand that I fully understand and support who you truly are on the inside.”

“The cake’s edible right, it’s not Styrofoam or anything?” I asked, not putting it past him.

“Are you kidding? I’m having a slice of fabulous unicorn,” he said, getting out a knife and neatly slicing through the neck of the beast.

“At least you brought me actual cake.”

“This is a time to celebrate,” he said through a mouthful of frosting. “If we get you cleaned up and a fraction normal, we might be able to find you a nice partner. That is unless you aren’t already doing the weird creeper guy from yesterday. For all I know you guys had mad, passionate sex all night after you left me.”

“I don’t want to think about yesterday,” I grumbled with a shake of my head.

“Sad panda?” he asked and forced a plate of cake into my hands.

“Sort of, I guess.”

“Don’t go emo on me. I can fix nerdy, creepy, and weird, but there’s no fix for emo other than multiple kicks to the face and usually that just makes them cry more.”

“Just a lot to process. The last few years were stupid on my part,” I sighed.

He shrugged and violently sliced off another part of the unicorn.

“So? At least the next few years won’t be. Everyone spends a few years stupid. Can you believe that in the fourth grade I didn’t know how to fap? Wow, those were stupid, wasted years,” he said dramatically with a shake of his head.

I couldn’t help but laugh, thinking about Daniel not sex-oriented in some way was actually a pretty funny idea.

“Laugh, but it’s true. Poor Slugger was so neglected and lonely.”

“Wait, you named your penis ‘Slugger’?”

“Yeah, it hits like a train and keeps on going,” he boasted.

“Doubt it.”

“Hey, hey… ask most any girl on campus. Go ahead, any of them. I’m not saying I’ve slept with all of the, I’m just sort of a legend.”

I nearly choked on my cake while laughing. Despite the pain caused by cake lodging itself in my windpipe, laughing felt pretty good.

“Why don’t we go out to a bar? Sure it’s a Tuesday, but its summer and we won’t end up pressed between too many sweaty, desperate drunk guys,” he suggested. “I don’t think you’ve been out in at least a year. I’m sure you have enough extra cash laying around for at least a couple of beers.”

A year? More like two, but it was too long either way. I used to drink my fair share and drink some under the table, one beer was likely to get me buzzed being so out of practice.

“Okay, but not a sports bar, I hate those, never have anything to talk about.”

“I guess, baby steps, but to be a real man eventually you’re going to have to get used to squeezing between two sweaty drunk men and scream at a muted television. Hey, I bet the first part of that sounds pretty damn good to you, huh?” he said with a grin.

“I question why you already enjoy it,” I countered.

He grinned back and tossed his plate in the sink.

“Always hoping I’m gay, poor thing, but I’m afraid that Slugger only let’s chicks up to the bat.”

“Yeah, yeah, let’s go get this over with, but tomorrow you honestly help me get all the books moved,” I said.

“Deal, though we might be too hung over to care.”

“Regardless, I can’t live with the crap around anymore,” I eyed the mountain in the living room. “Plus with all of it gone I have a better chance of not going back to it.”

“What about the whole magic thing?” he asked. “The guy seemed to convince you to try it.”

“Don’t know if I will, probably not soon at least. Just seems even more stupid than believing in werewolves,” I said with small laugh. “It’s the kind of thing you believe in as a little kid after watching one of those magicians specials on TV, but eventually you realize it was all just wires and sleight of hand.”

“That stuff is the shit when you’re six,” he admitted, “I remember watching one of those things and thinking, ‘he plays with lions and hot chicks in bikinis? I want to do that when I grow up!’ but then the starter kit came in the mail and I couldn’t even get the first card trick right. Crushed dreams man… crushed dreams… I need that beer, let’s go.”