PDF

Bestiary


by Jake Barnes


A woman posted a story on Fictionaut about discovering that her husband was a werewolf. I had recently discovered that my wife was a unicorn, so I sent the writer a note offering my condolences. I said I could sympathize with her situation, because, of course, both werewolves and unicorns are mythical beasts. We are lucky, I said, because if our spouses were real animals, that would be awful.

 

Then it occurred to me that maybe we should start a recovery group for people like my friend, the writer, and me. We could call it Mythical Beasts Anonymous.

 

So that's what we did, and our new group is a big success. Members of the group include women married to an ogre, the Cyclops, and a dragon. One of the men is married to a mermaid, the lucky bastard. There are tragedies in the making, too, such as the Scottish woman who is in love with the Loch Ness monster. It's hard, she says, because she does not know how to swim. A woman who was engaged to marry a satyr says she broke off the engagement because she discovered that at heart he was just a horse's ass.

Endcap