Episode 63: Alter-Ego
Written By Karl White
For almost 800 years, Sem vanished from the historical record. Darkness hollowed him out as he drifted without purpose, undone by the ruin the curse had carved into his life. One part of his vengeance had felt righteous. The other made the first feel corrupt and misplaced. He carried an enemy inside his own mind, one that never rested.
He roamed Canada and the Americas, lost because he had nowhere to go, no home, or people to return to. Disgraced by his actions, he’d killed the last link to his family, while learning the terrible things his father did...and the discovery of an extended family who witnessed him slaughter their provider. Whatever humanity Sem once possessed was fractured beyond repair.
He tried countless times to end his own life, but the curse denied him even that mercy. Whatever wound he would inflict, would heal quickly. He attempted to suppress the affliction through will alone, but the hunger followed him into daylight, and the change came regardless of his resistance.
Desperate, Sem sought out shamans, healers, medicine men and women, anyone who claimed knowledge of curses or the know-how to heal the hex he carried in his blood. Each attempt ended the same way. There was no cure. It was hopeless...and so was he.
Sem self-medicating - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
So Sem self-medicated, willfully sedating himself. He dulled his mind with peyote, mushrooms, and other psychoactive roots, chasing oblivion where peace could not be found. But the drugs fractured him further, breeding paranoia in the man and savagery in the beast. Whatever balance remained eroded.
As European settlers spread across the land, alcohol became his refuge. It softened memory just enough to survive the night. But tolerance grew, and so did his need. Sem drank in quantities that would kill any mortal body, yet even excess could not grant him release. Instead, it pulled him deeper into despair, hardening him against himself and the world alike.
By the 1700s, America swelled with newcomers, and for the first time Sem understood there were places still farther away. He believed distance might help dull his pain. So he boarded a ship bound for England, leaving behind a land that no longer held meaning for him.
In Great Britain, he was forced to adopt a proper name. “Sem” had never meant anything. It was only a sound given to him at birth, a marker used when needed. One night in a pub, when asked his name, he spoke it aloud, someone misheard it as “Sam”. The Christian name Samuel clung to him after that. The surname came later, taken from a prostitute he frequented, Margaret Mundey. He had an affinity for her as she was kind to a man, long severed from his former life...And so Sem shed his past, reborn as Samuel Mundey.
Becoming Samuel Mundey - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
But memories were still a specter stalking close behind...and the distance did nothing for his spirits. In crowded cities, surrounded by people, his werewolf transformations became more dangerous, harder to conceal, and far deadlier in consequence. During extended benders, he would black out entirely, stalking and killing through alleyways and forgotten edges of the city. In those lost hours, others were marked. His curse passed unknowingly, condemning new lives to face the affliction alone. Margaret Mundey was among them, infected during one of their transactional, intimate encounters. Unaware of what she carried or how she’d received it. She fled to France, continuing her life as a courtesan, transmitting the curse further still. And so the blood of the werewolf spread outward, unchecked, branching like wildfire across Europe and beyond, fueling the lore of wolf-men and women.
In 1787, in a drunken stupor, Samuel, in his werewolf form, slaughtered a stagecoach driver and his horses. When authorities arrived, the still drunk, but very human Samuel, lay naked, covered in the blood of his victims.
Arrested and hauled to jail, the overcrowded prison system would see the violent Samuel sentenced to hard labor at the newly established Australian prison colony. Though he’d instead beg for death, the magistrate refused.
And somewhere during the long and arduous voyage to the Southern Hemisphere, the boat rocking back and forth, the strong smell of salt in the air...Mundey, suffering from withdraws from centuries of heavy drug and alcohol use, was struggling to suppress his curse.
Trouble on the high seas - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
One night, he could hold it back no longer, uncontrollably shifting. The vicious beast killed all of the other prisoners in the hold, nearly one-hundred in all.
Being the sole survivor, there was no question as to who the perpetrator was. Marched before the captain, Sam again pleaded for death.
SAM: Hiding inside me is a vicious monster. I never meant for it to come out. But I can only control it for so long.
CAPTAIN: Are you mad? Is that it? Mister Mundey, you can’t expect me to believe such ravings.
SAM: Show me mercy. Kill me now...but you must burn my body after.
CAPTAIN: I know I shouldn’t ask, but why is that?
SAM: The curse I carry won’t let me die. And I have a connection with water, it’d be too dangerous to throw me overboard.
CAPTAIN: Hmmm, yes. As much as I’d like to accommodate your request, fire aboard a ship is not an option. Upon arriving to New South Wales, you’ll be hanged until dead. Immediately following I will personally see to it your corpse is burned until ash...Our expected arrival is in two months.
SAM: I can’t hold it back that long. The blood will be on your hands.
CAPTAIN: And what is it you suggest?
SAM: Alcohol. Lots of it.
Though rations were tightly controlled, and highly coveted by sailors, a vote among them. And since they were the one’s who had to clean up the carnage left by Sam after his transformation...it was unanimously decided to keep him drunk for the rest of the voyage. Sam was locked in the ship’s hull, alone and brought daily rations of rum and laudanum to keep his mind dull.
The rest of the trip was plagued with rough seas, caused by Sam’s unstable moods and memories. His command over the element of water stirring the choppy ocean and bringing about storms. When the battered ship finally made it to land, Sam was the only prisoner to be delivered to the colony expecting a boatload.
Marched to the gallows - © 2026 Headless Horseman Productions, LLC
When the ship made it’s dusk-landing at New South Wales, Sam, drunk on the last bit of high proof Navy Rum, was immediately marched to the gallows by an entire entourage of Marines. As the slipknot was placed around his neck, the captain addressed the crowd.
CAPTAIN: I sentence thee, Samuel Mundey, for the murder of...all the prisoners aboard during our travels. Have you any last words?
SAM: Remember our agreement, fire till ash.
CAPTAIN: Ready...
The signal was given, and the executioner pulled the lever....But as Sam thrashed at the end of the rope, his curse took over and he turned into a werewolf. Ripping from shackles, tearing from his noose, the beast would shred his way through the frightened crowd. Sam vanished into the night, no one believing what they had witnessed.
Authorities declared Samuel Mundy or whatever he was, a threat to all life. A bounty was posted with a single instruction: Kill on Sight. A monster was on the loose, and no one would feel safe until he was found.
TO BE CONTINUED…