By Frampton Jones

It is my sorry duty to announce that Nick Rossert has departed this life, and his other life, having failed to get out of the way of a slow moving piece of machinery.

We’ve grown used to werewolves in recent years. We’ve all learned not to go out at full moons – not that many of us go out in the dark anyway. We learned to cope with the more threatening eyebrows, the weird food cravings, the occasional psychotic rampage. Despite that, none of us ever really came to terms with what Nick did in his other skin.

Many of us have known for some time now that Nick transforms. It’s not at the full moon, always. It’s hard to predict. But transform he did, into something slower, hairier and less able to flee from peril. In his were-form, Nick often retreated to the trees and it wasn’t unusual to find him hanging upside down from a branch, waiting for the effects to wear off.

No one seems to know what manner of creature he became, or why he felt so moved to eat leaves when in this state. Why not blood, like the rest of our uncanny citizens? Why shift into the skin of something so slow, so unable to defend itself?

No one knows.

Witnesses at the scene described to me the experience of watching the old, wheeled device crawl slowly towards Nick, while Nick in his transformed state began to lift one limb, clearly unable to make a getaway. The witnesses, who wish to remain anonymous, say that they would have helped him if it hadn’t been so funny, and that by the time they stopped laughing it was too late. They tell me they feel bad about that – and so they should.

One three toed paw remained intact after the machine passed over him. It has been laid to rest. No one will ever know the truth about him now, and we are the poorer for that.

On an entirely unrelated note… Nick runs Sloth Comics, which publishes Hopeless Maine.  http://www.slothcomics.co.uk/