SHARK-WERE

SHARK-WERE

“Rusk noticed a new recruit, close-wrapped in layers of rags, whose looks disturbed him on some level far beyond mere instinct: squat but hunched, his eight grey-skinned fingers webbed and nailless, pallid skin visibly touched with chill. He did his work clumsily, forever turning a too-thick neck to train first one wide-spaced, lidless-seeming flat black eye on the task to hand, then the other; even what little the currently sinking sun was left appeared to pain him, making him bare a double-jarful of serrated teeth in a an aggressive sort of wince, as though he wanted to take a bite out of it and bring on a far more comfortable flood of dark.”

“The man barely seemed aware he was being spoke to, prompting Rusk to peer closer, checking whether his ears were over-muffled, slit — or even there, to begin with.”

Gemma Files, Two Captains

This week will be a random assortment of monsters from various, more contemporary authors I love. Starting off is this shark-were that appears in a few of Gemma Files' stories in the collection Drawn Up From Deep Places.

I've loved Gemma's work for years and she's actually written an avatar of Nyarlathotep for me. And I've previously cited her story The Narrow World for my Humbaba drawing.

I love the idea of an inverse were-creature. Not a man that turns into a shark but a shark that was turned into a man; still with that mostly gnarled fish intelligence, brutal impulses and resentment at being forced to walk on two legs.

While Shark-weres are a Files' invention, weresharks aren't completely unheard of in popular culture. In 1976 the A&E (Alarums and Excursions).

#13 zine article J. Eric & Chris Holmes laid down the premise and description for the wereshark that would reappear in various Dungeons and Dragons monster manuals. It appeared in an official capacity in Monster Manual II in 1983 with an illustration by Jim Holloway.