This morning I woke up to a glorious, lazy Saturday morning after a very busy week, opened my eyes, and stretched. Bad decision. I was visited by the mother of all leg cramps, an apocalyptic mega-cramp, a Sharktopus of cramps. If Cthulhu had risen from the bloody ruin of my calf muscles, it could hardly have hurt more.
You think I exaggerate? Well, perhaps about the Cthulhu thing, but otherwise it’s pretty spot-on. At one point I could literally feel my leg rising from the bed as my calf muscles knotted and strained underneath it. Horrible. I have no idea how long this lasted, perhaps five minutes. At one point it faded and I held my breath in fear that it would come back. Carefully I reached down and gently started to feel my leg…and it returned in force.
I remember moaning (probably only in my head) “oh no, please no, no more, no, no...” Bargaining. Me, a lifelong agnostic/atheist, bargaining with an uncaring fate to Just. Make. It. Stop.
Eventually it went away and I am now limping on a leg that feels as though I tore or badly strained muscles in my calf. Weird ass shit, I tell you. And I remember Phil asking me at one point “Is it a blood clot? Do you need to go to the hospital?” I couldn’t answer, but inside I was like “How the hell would I know how that felt? Do I feel like I’m dying? Possibly!”
It all makes me think about werewolf movies. The transformation always looked so damned painful, bones breaking and reforming, tendons snapping and reattaching in new configurations. Forget the silly Twilight weres who transform mid-leap from boy to wolf without even a whimper. You just know that it wouldn’t be like that, it would be hell. It truly would be a curse.
So if I ever write a werewolf novel, I’m going to be able to write the hell out of transformation scenes, because I’ve been there, man. I’ve seen shit you wouldn’t believe. I had LEG CRAMP.