by Gemma Files
Not Karl, though. He didn’t want to be placated, or reassured, or soothed. Culturally, conflict was his medium; he expected it, required it.
Hell, he reveled in it.
“’Anger management problems,’” he repeated, after I—reluctantly—let slip the reason I still saw a psychiatrist twice each week. “You.”
I felt heat boil across my face, jaw- to hairline. “Yeah, me. So?”
“Like when you get riled you go all psycho, that it?” I stayed silent, as he continued, teasingly: “C’mon, seriously—like you can’t think? And you see red? And when some guy keeps comin’ after you, you start wantin’ to rip his guts out with your bare hands?”
Teeth gritted: “Something like that, yes.”
He chuckled, deep in his throat—came in close, doing that looming thing again. But this time, my blood was up. I showed him my teeth, all white and sharp . . . and he just laughed again, even harder, at the sight of them.
“Naw, don’t think so” he said. “Little pretty kitty fag-boy you? Be serious.” Leaning closer, showing me his: Bigger, whiter, sharper. “Believe that when I—”
—see it?
(Well . . . okay.)
And then, with a growl, I was on him—had him on his back, struggling, before he even had time to count his losses. We went at it hand to hand, no holds barred. I kneed him hard in the groin; he roared but sucked it up, cracking me across the jaw so hard I bit my own lip. Finally, as I hissed blood, he got his knees between mine and spread them hard, pinning me. I raked his face, so he flipped me, bit into my nape, and gave a flesh-smothered crow of surprise and delight. Rumbling, while I thrashed beneath him—
“Ah, now—that’s better.”
I bucked up like a hard-rode horse, made it to my knees—then froze as he slipped into position, humping me higher, drawing a helpless moan. So quick, for all his bulk. And the touch of him, raising hairs where I barely knew I had them—so raw, so rank, so right. So utterly, unnaturally Goddamn . . . natural.
“This,” he told me, firmly, “this’s how it should be. Way you’re feelin’, that ain’t something you manage—that’s an ancestor-gift, Lee, pure and simple. The very best part of your heritage.”
Trying to unseat him, and failing miserably. I gave one last half-hearted flail, one last hoarse groan, then managed:
“This’s me getting pissed, that’s all. Nothing more, nothing—”
A snort. “That’s your bear, Lee, lookin’ out through those baby blues. Sayin’ ‘hi’ to mine . . . ”
( . . . the way bears do.)
All hot breath and hunger, carrion-rank, honey-sweet. Grappling and snuffling. All claws and jaws and blood in every part of me, pumping me hard enough to pop on contact. Making me feel alive in a way I’ve never felt since: Not then, not now. Not before. And sure as hell not—
(after)
“Oh, shit,” I hissed, finally. “Just . . . shut the fuck up and fuck me, you fucking freak.”
Another grin, into my spine. “Whatever you say—”
(shield-)
“—brother.”
Karl didn’t just accept my unsociably low tolerance for annoyance, he encouraged it; we’d fist-fight as foreplay, go straight from making bruises to licking them. While all the men around him had been trained to try and keep their tempers—keep them on a leash, keep them in check—if Karl felt it, you knew it. It was like breathing to him, like sex. Like prayer. For Karl, rage was a means to its own end, its own energy and its own purpose: A negative rush, infinitely destructive and potent. It was meditation, masturbation, sex and drugs and rock and roll, all rolled up into one. An in-body out-of-body experience. Losing yourself.
Or, maybe—
—finding yourself.
“These guys I run with,” he said, “they’re weekend warriors, mostly. Talk big, sure, but ain’t nothin’ under their skin worth the lettin’ out. You, though . . . ” He paused. “You could go all the way, you wanted to.”
“All the way where?”
Well . . .
. . . that’d be the question.
(Wouldn’t it?)
Wherever Karl went, I suppose, all those years ago. Wherever he left me for, after I—finally—
—left him.
I try not to think much about that last night we spent together, if I can help it. That time we went up alone, just the two of us, with no disciples invited—when we built a fire so big it felt like we were cooking in our own sweat and fucked in every splintery corner of the house Karl’s Grampaw built, ‘till we were both so hot and tender we could barely move. And then, when everything was at its peak . . . when Karl, who never drank, had already downed what seemed like a potentially fatal load of fermented honey-mead he’d bought from some fellow Viking-obsessed freak in the Society for Creative Anachronisms, and made me match him slug for slug from a couple of dirty steins . . .
. . . then, if I force myself, I can just about barely remember what it felt like to find him pulling me outside by my hair, holding me upright against the wind and pointing me towards the trees. Crooning so low I could hear it move through his chest and into mine, like some subsonic earthquake-warning; pressing a knife—a Goddamn *knife*, serrated blade long as my femur—into my limp right hand, and telling me:
C’mon, Lee—tonight’s the night. Can’t you feel it comin’? My—
(our)
—bear.
Naked, sweating, barely upright. His fist on my hip, over that left-side swastika—fingers spanning my thigh, nudging my half-hard cock. Steering me by it, practically, like it was a magic wand that’d make me do whatever he wanted me to . . .
( . . . whatever . . . I wanted to.)
Because here’s the truth, all right? It was never what Karl wanted that scared me. It was the part of me that desperately wanted to be what he wanted—to do whatever it took to keep him with me, on me, in me. The insatiable part. The angry part. The—
(bear part)
That voice, murmuring—was it even coming from him, anymore? Or from somewhere deep inside me?
So c’mon, baby: Into the woods, knife out. And I’ll get mine, and you’ll get yours, and we’ll be together, always—
Hunt together. Kill together. Eat . . . together—
(—forever.)
And at the last second, the very last second possible . . . I turned, and I dropped the knife, and I punched him in the face, so hard I broke a knuckle. And then I took off, running. And I have never looked back, never. Not ever.
* * *
. . . ’till now.
* * *
Say it with me, once again: Right now. Which is when I find myself turning sharp off this last, gravel-paved trace of road—eyes burning, neck stiff, limbs fatigue-cramped, with memory still lodged bone-deep and burning sharp in every part of me, like too much lactic acid after a long, hard race. When I pull over into the trees at the bottom of Karl’s hill, turning the engine off, getting out, kicking my joints awake again . . .
Then look up, squinting into the sun. And easily spot, even through seven years’ worth of encroaching overgrowth, the door of what that blond kid says Karl’s will says is (from this moment on) “my” cabin.
The key still works, albeit with a rusty click. Inside I find a homespun panorama of decay—wood-rot and silence, dust rising like ghosts, screen-doors black with caterpillar corpses, cobwebs laden deep with mummified flies. That oil-lamp we used to see by, its wick only half-burnt, waiting for a match’s kiss; that unvarnished pine table-and-chairs set Karl once bent me across, splintery as ever. That same fireplace, full of cold ashes.
And everything I touch, everything I don’t—just, plain, everything—still smells . . . exactly . . .
. . . like Karl.
Musty, musky. Earthy as a cave. Like somewhere you can sleep all winter, hibernate ’till
spring—live off your own fat and dream, willing yourself into another shape by the time you finally wake.
(And how the fuck can that be, anyway? After seven years?)
I feel a shiver go up my spine at the very thought of trying to answer that particular question, quick and cold as the phantom lick of a long, grooved tongue.
Because: It’s been quite the ride for me, one way or another. And now that it’s finally over, I find I have almost no idea—
(good or bad)
—why I ever actually bothered to come back up here again, in the first damn place.
Dust on the floor, dirt smeared black on the dimming windows. That earthy scent. Berkana in earth, third reading of four: Unsafe footing, shifting ground.
The rune-books’ advice? Hold back a little. Take stock. Try “not to be so pushy,” because—
(things)
—could rebound on you.
Jump-cut, moment to moment; lost time, skittering sidelong between action and re-. And suddenly, it’s later—maybe very late—with the oil-lamp’s shine joining a shifty play of firelight across the dusty floor . . . a huge, blood-warm, spark-leaking blaze I must have worked at least a whole half-hour to build, being the woodcraft-unfriendly little city mouse that I am.
(Late.)
The fire, the lamp. And me, looking down at something laid out across my lap, all big and stiff and . . . furry.
Something with a hood-like, floppy, shaggy head.
Something that smells, worse than the cabin around it. Worse even than my own stink of cold-sweat incredulity.
Something with empty eyes, and sleeves—their seams sutured fast with dried gut—that end in claws.
Something I know—must be—
(Oh, go on ahead and say it, Lee, baby. You know you want to.)
The bear-shirt, itself.
(Karl’s . . . bear)
—or what little’s left of it, at least. After he finally got through with it.
(Ah, shit.)
I feel my eyes sting, my head buzz; feel my inner arm hum with sympathetic pain, my Berkana tattoo puff rug-burn raw, just like it did the day Karl let them draw it on me. Make it to my feet, swaying slightly, and watch this terrible artifact I hold unfurl to brush the floor beneath me; Jesus Christ Almighty, but the fucking thing’s fucking huge. Big enough—
(—for two.)
Questions reeling through my head, answered practically in their moment of asking: So where’d I find this particular haphazard masterpiece of outsider art, anyway? Must’ve been in that closet gaping open by the bed—the one that looks so very familiar, ‘specially when I squint. And why am I having so much trouble forming these questions, in the first place? Well, the empty bottle by my boot might hold a key, rolling to clack against a few of its similarly empty buddies as I stagger back towards said closet, trailing Karl’s precious shirt in the dust—but barely make it to the bed before this subtle numbness in my face and hands spreads southward, felling me onto its rumpled sheets.
And yes, that is me crying openly now, all salt and snot. Me knotting tight into a wet-faced human ball, kicking off my offending Docs, shucking the rest of my trendy clothes to crawl inside this dead animal husk; me, slicking this unsanitary parody of a fur coat over my own naked skin and hugging it to me, sobbing.
I think about Karl, and wonder: Was it just too much for him, in the end? My desertion? This latest—last—failure? Or a self-image-destroying combination of the two, that awful morning after . . . cold light of day, the hard death of a lifetime’s dreaming, cut with blood-stink and mead-hangover?
Bear-grease on my cheeks, mixing with my tears. Bear-head pulled down over my nose like a mask, toothy jaw flapping to knock against my chin. And Karl’s spoor shedding everywhere it touches, marking me with his scent—its sheer bulk so like his, warm and heavy on all my most intimate parts. As I think, hysterically:
Got me under your skin, Karl, baby—down deep in the heart of you. So deep, I’m really . . .
. . . a part of you.
Just like you always said I was.
I still don’t know where he went, and maybe I never will. But—wherever he is, this isn’t with him. Which means it sure as hell can’t be where—
(or what)
—he wanted so desperately to be.
And the sad fact is, I think I know Karl well enough to know that if he couldn’t be what he wanted, then—in the end—he’d probably rather be . . .
. . . nothing at all.
* * *
So I cry myself to sleep, and dream my own dead dream—face-down, tapped out, crushed flat under ten years’ worth of retroactive anger and bitter regret. I dream of one more reading, the final one available: Berkana in fire, hot and close as this cabin, sliding swift towards incineration like one of those volcanic islands off Iceland’s coast, the kind that rise and fall in a flood of lava and a matter of days. Danger, Will Robinson; you don’t know as much as you think you do, not by fuckin’ half. So pay attention to detail, or pay—
—the price.
Rune-knowledge, hard-learned, flickering in and out like light through the Yggdrasil’s narrow leaves. But paying attention’s not exactly top of my list, right at this very moment. Instead, I find myself slipping down fast into a morass of memory crossed with fantasy—”feel” the bear-shirt part beneath Karl’s phantom hands as his stubbly profile glides quick across the sweaty small of my back, leaving a trail like the scratch of an open matchbook-cover all the way up my spine. Submerged, swamped, moaning and drooling in my drunken daze, I “hear” him snort and snuffle between my shoulder blades as he pulls me up by the tail, rooting and spreading and puppeting me around in that way he’s always liked best. “Feel” my mouth come open as he thrusts inside, coring me, and think:
Oh Christ, Karl, CHRIST . . .
Christ but I’ve missed this, you could-be-dead-for-all-I-know Nazi nutbar of mine—missed doing this, with you—
But: It’s not true, and I know it, even as the charge begins to build. It’s just my fume-filled mind tricking me, my body looping back into those painfully pleasurable patterns of hurt and hunger it knows so well. And the idea that I could be such easy prey, even for my long-lost lover’s ghost . . . the mere idea of me overtaken by dumb ecstasy, rucking the sheets and howling, then sagging forward like I’ve just been disemboweled: A corpse myself, skinned and gutted and left to soften like the splayed remains of some—
(bear’s)
—last meal—
Jesus, it all just makes me so damn . . . mad.
And I come awake, mid-spurt, amid smoke and mess and oh fuck, are those flames? Fucking cabin’s on fucking fire, how the fuck did that happen—like I kicked the oil-lamp over in my sleep and it hit the rug, spread and sparked across those bare pine boards where my boots fell and shit, can’t believe I’m gonna have to run barefoot through this crap—slamming hard into the wall where I think the door should be and bouncing, spinning into that filthy screen, my Berkana-arm punching through in a spray of wounds, broken metal threads already hot enough to cauterize on contact—
Stumbling out into the cold night air, with pine-needles stabbing the soles of my feet; turning back, squinting and gasping, to see the whole damn thing engulfed beyond saving. Shivering in the bear-shirt, clutching myself. Thinking—
Hey, look, boys ‘n’ girls . . . a real live Viking funeral, just like on TV. Everything Karl ever had, gone up in flames—
—all except me.
More questions, though, as the ash flutters upwards: Where’re my glasses? Inside, of course—unsalvageable by now, mere melted slag. But . . .
. . . I can still see.
And that smell, mounting, that back-of-the-throat strong stink—that must be me too, right? Burnt hair, burnt flesh, burnt bear-hide. Looking down to confirm it and seeing the charred palms of my hands
poking from the bear-shirt’s paws, my shins already swollen with water-blisters . . . but why can’t I feel it? And—what—is that—
(other)
—smell?
At which point I turn again, further, towards the first shadowy rim of trees, and see the bear come out of the woods.
Five feet at the shoulder. Twelve standing up, clawed hands tentatively drooping inward, childish as a Tyrannosaur’s vestigial clutch. Its fur is sandy, touched with dull hints of gold; its muzzle matted with blood and honey, underbelly-fur shaggy with burrs. I can smell its breath from here, even over myself, over the fire: Old bees, fresh carrion. Honey-sweet blood-reek.
The bear is huge. The bear seems hungry. And its tiny eyes, so dull and atavistic, which widen almost beyond the limits of their narrow orbits as they turn my way—as it catches my (familiar?) scent, and moans with goony ursine lust—
—are blue.
(Karl.)
Karl, in his shirt, in “his” bear. In his natural animal form.
(That bastard.)
Because if this is Karl’s shirt I’m wearing . . . and that’s Karl, then . . .
. . . I have been seriously screwed.
Find your bear, kill it. Wear its skin—
Yeah, okay, got it. But once you put it on, once you change—
(as is becoming more than obvious)
—you can’t ever take it off again.
Which makes this not Karl’s shirt, then, at all. Made by Karl, for certain-sure, back when he still had hands—imprinted with his musk, his enticing flavor, before he traded his tender human skin for the far less permeable coat he now wears. But not on his own behalf. No.
Because just like he said that night I ran away and left him—holding his knife, alone in the darkness—this bear whose hide I wear now, this bear was meant—
(—for me.)
The final puzzle-piece, gut-feeling intuition made explicit. Bears are predators, omnivores, opportunists, pure and simple; they don’t tend to think strategically, if they think at all. And in the wild, just like everywhere else, the only animals who lay traps for other animals . . . are humans.
