by Sky Winters
John’s smile ran away from his face. “Oh…” He sat on the bed and brought his hand to her belly as well. “Yeah, this was a possibility. Are you on the pill?”
She nodded, feeling tears fill her eyes.
“That won’t help when you mate with me,” he said by way of explanation. “The seed is strong. I should have told you that before, but then you wouldn’t have…”
“Oh, you think?!” Ursula started to cry. “I didn’t want any of this! What made you think that I would want any of this? I didn’t want to have a baby!”
John looked like he wanted to correct her and tell her it was technically a cub, but she glared at him, so he didn’t actually say anything.
Instead, he hugged her in his arms and petted her hair. “It’s going to be okay,” he told her. “I should have told you, but I was afraid that you would run away from me like all of the other women in my life. When I saw you at the club that night, I thought you would be different. I knew you were special.”
She wiped at the tears on her face, even though they were still falling. “Because I’m fat?” she asked. Something about the way she said it made John aware that this was something she had more or less felt her entire life, at least ever since she was old enough to feel as though ‘fat’ was a reason to not be loved by people…
“No, darling,” he said, rocking her a little in his arms. “Not because you’re fat. Because you are strong and confident. You are beautiful in all of the ways that matter, and you don’t see it. You are perfect, to me. I know this sounds sappy, especially after what you have witnessed and what you must be feeling right now. But it is the truth. I love you, Ursula Blake.”
How could she believe this man? Was he even a man? She didn’t know what he was, but she was drawn to him inexplicably and unavoidably. She didn’t know if he had some kind of black bear magic voodoo over her or what, but she was not running from him. In fact, when she saw the black bear coming towards her, the first person she thought of trying to run and find was him.
But the bear was him.
“Are you yourself, when you…?” She looked into his eyes. They were so calm and gentle looking. Had the bear had those same eyes, or had that been some trick of the early morning light?
John shook his head, then nodded slightly. “I am and I’m not,” he said. “It is best to not be around me when I’ve shifted. I can get very dangerous very fast. But I am myself in here.” He pointed at his head. “It’s just mixed up with all of these instincts and confusions.”
Ursula began to feel sorry for him and he sensed it.
“Please don’t pity me,” he said. “I am what I am.”
She brought her hand up and caressed his scruffy cheek. “You are,” she said. She brought her face close to his and kissed him softly on the lips. “I think I love you, too,” she whispered. “But I am also so frightened.”
He smiled his smirky sort of smile and rubbed his nose against hers. “You’re human; I wouldn’t expect you to not be frightened. But I promise it will be okay. I will keep you safe, just please heed my warning and stay indoors at dawn and dusk.”
Ursula nodded. Then the realization struck her again. “I’m going to have your baby…”
“Yes,” John said, stroking her belly with his fingertips and looking deeply into her eyes. “And that is another reason why it is so important for you to stay indoors.”
Boy, was she going to have a lot of explaining to do when she went back to The Big Dipper club… “What am I going to tell my boss?” she wondered aloud. “How am I ever going to explain this?”
John rose from the bed. “It’s simple,” he said. “Don’t go back. Stay here with me. You can sing in the inn’s lounge. People will love it.”
Ursula laughed. “Sing to who? The staff? I have hardly ever seen anyone else in that place.”
He shrugged. “So advertise. You’re good at that.” He smirked at her again and padded out to the kitchen. “Do you want anything?”
She carefully got out of the bed and followed him. She wasn’t going to be bound to her bed. “I feel like I could eat an entire restaurant right now, but I shouldn’t. I’ve already become a walrus. Look at me.”
“You are a mama bear,” he replied matter-of-factly. “But you will lose the excess weight once the baby is born. Which will be very soon. Do not fret about that.”
He chopped up a banana, an apple and an orange and put them into a blender along with some ice and a little bit of milk. She covered her ears while it worked to chop up the fruits even more and turn them into a smoothie.
After pouring half the blender’s contents into a glass, he passed it over to her. “Drink this. It will give you lots of vitamins and energy.”
Ursula drank it. It tasted delicious, but she shivered because it was cold and it wasn’t exactly warm inside their cabin. John noticed and went to the fireplace, quickly igniting the logs. He made a disapproving face and went into the bedroom, coming back out a few moments later in his dark jeans and a navy blue button up shirt that he neglected to button.
He went outside, to the side of the cabin where he’d left a pile of tree branches and stumps. She watched through the window while he chopped up some of the branches. His muscles rippled as he swung the axe. She admired his fluid movement and how easy he made the action appear, even though she knew that chopping wood was no simple task.
As soon as he was done, he carried in a pile of wood for the fire and set it on the hearth. “This is for the next round of fire,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his arm.
They cuddled up together on the couch, alternating between kissing and talking. Every time their baby moved inside of her, she brought his hand and held it where he could feel it. “Is it going to be like you?” she asked softly, in case the unborn child could hear them discussing its possible abnormalities and would take offense.
John nodded. “Yes. It’s genetic. And the ownership of the inn is also genetic. It will be passed on to him or her when I am gone.”
Ursula raised her eyebrows at him. She didn’t want to think about her big, strong John being gone! “But that won’t be for many, many years,” she said.
He chuckled a little, softly touching her cheek with his fingertips. “Let’s hope not. Hunting is no longer legal around here, ever since…”
“Ever since your father died?” she asked, slowly putting two and two together. “He was killed by a hunter, wasn’t he? Oh, John, I’m so sorry. That’s awful.”
John closed his eyes. She could tell that thinking about it brought him a lot of pain.
“But you don’t have to stay here, John. We could leave this place.”
“Where would we go?” he asked her, opening his eyes and looking deeply into her blue ones. “There is nowhere that is safe for me but here. Here, I have people who know about me. There are people here who do their best to keep me protected. Heaven knows why, but they do. They care about me. They cared about my father, too. I trust them.”
Ursula looked down. She wanted to help him, but she did not know how. He seemed to already have the help he needed, but she wasn’t convinced that he was happy. “You went to Silver Lake,” she said.
He played with her hair. “I went there to find you. No other reason. And now that I have you, I need not go anywhere else again. This is our home.”
The trouble was that she was starting to miss the spotlight and the Big Dipper club. As much as Ursula loved and cared about John, she was not convinced that this place could be her home.
When afternoon started to threaten the arrival of evening, John took his leave. He gave Ursula a kiss and promised that he would be back around eight. “Please wait for me,” he said. “And please stay indoors.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said with a smirk. “I promise.” She took the key to the cabin out of her purse and put it in the breast pocket of his coat, giving his chest a gentle pat.
It was painful to watch him leave again, knowing what he was go
ing to become and what might happen to him. Besides hunters, there were likely other bears out there along with wolves and whatever else inhabited the hills and mountains of the Sierra Nevada.
She stood watch by the large window that overlooked the lake. John had gone off in that direction and she wanted to keep an eye on him from her shelter, if she could. Baby Bear was restless inside her tummy, as if he or she knew that Papa Bear had gone away. She chuckled under her breath. “I can’t believe I’m thinking like this.”
Pulling out her cell phone, she called the Big Dipper club. She wanted to let them know that her vacation was going to be extended, but that she would be back. It would be crazy to stay out there in the woods for the rest of her life. She’d never been a social butterfly, but she was getting cabin fever already.
On the fifth ring, she was watching the black bear eat some berries several feet away from the window. He seemed to be hanging close to protect her, but maybe the bear was merely close because he smelled food.
On the seventh ring, she saw the flash of something in the bushes.
Ursula’s eyes widened. It was the barrel of a gun.
“Hello?” a voice said on the other end of the line. The phone was hanging by its cord where she had let it go.
She ran out of the house. “NO!” she shouted, waving her arms. “Don’t shoot him!!”
John the bear looked up at her and let out a growl. She was flailing around and the bear in him felt threatened, but the man in him felt concerned for her.
Suddenly, a shot rang out in the woods. Ursula screamed.
John fell down in a heap of black fur and berry bush branches.
Running, tears pouring down her cheeks, she ran to him, not caring that he was a bear. Not caring that she was breaking her promise. He was hurt and he needed her now.
“John?” she asked, taking his head and placing it on her lap, petting him. “John, can you hear me?” She felt around his fur for the wound. She found it on his shoulder. There was a lot of blood, but the bullet must have grazed him. It had to have grazed him.
He was dazed and in pain and the woman was holding him. He let out a loud howl of both pain and anger. He did his best to stand back up on his four legs, but then fell down again a few inches away from her. The woman didn’t care. She picked up his head again and looked into his eyes.
“Listen to me, John. It’s going to be okay.”
He snorted and groaned, complaining. His shoulder hurt. Couldn’t she understand? Someone had shot him and she was interfering. She shouldn’t be there!
Ursula brought her face close to his and softly rubbed the tip of her nose against his big, wet nose.
“You’re mean to me,” she quietly sang to him, a tear slowly falling down her cheek. “Why must you be mean to me? Gee, honey, it seems to me you love to see me cryin’…”
She looked into his soulful, chestnut eyes and she could see the recognition in them. He knew who she was now. She could see his humanity there.
As the sun slipped away and the moon began its act, John’s black fur shed from him and the bear became her man again.
“Ursula, it hurts,” he said, hissing from the pain.
“Shh,” she said. “You’re safe now.”
She did her best to help him to his feet, and dressed him back in his clothes before he caught his death from the cold. She kept his shirt unbuttoned, understanding now why he did that. If it wasn’t buttoned, he could fling it off when he started to change so it wouldn’t rip apart.
The two of them slowly limped and waddled their way back to their cabin, arms around each other’s shoulders.
Once inside, Ursula sat John on one of the kitchen chairs and surveyed the wound on his upper arm. It was bloody and awful, but it wasn’t as deep as she had feared. “The bullet passed you, but it wasn’t nice about it,” she said. She ran a wash cloth under some warm water. “This might sting a little.”
He let out a howl of pain not unlike his bear form.
“I told you not to come outside,” he said, huffing a little as she cleaned his wound.
“I had to,” she argued. “I wasn’t just going to stay inside and watch you…” She sniffled. “I couldn’t let you die.”
John’s expression went from annoyance to appreciativeness. His eyes were sad now. So much like the bear’s eyes. “Thank you,” he said, clearly feeling guilty about how he’d spoken to her.
“Don’t move,” she instructed. She went into the bathroom and found a first aid kit under the sink. As gruff as he was, at least he took precautions and thought about things like first aid kits and logs for the fire. She suspected he had these things for her, not for him. Bringing out some gauze and Band-Aids, as well as the antiseptic, she stood admiring him for a moment.
John Asher the bear man was holding the wet rag to his shoulder and grimacing like a big baby. She smiled at him. He glanced at her, then turned to face her. “What? Why are you smiling?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said. “You’re just cuter than you realize. But this won’t be cute.” She put some antiseptic on his arm and watched as he threw his head back and yelled.
She wrapped the wound in the gauze and added some Band-Aids to the minor scratches he’d received from the berry bush.
John was gone again the following morning, as Ursula now expected. But thankfully, he was back in the afternoon when her water broke.
“Ahhh, John, help me!!” she greeted him when he came back into the cabin. Thankfully, he had the key with him now.
Quickly, he brought her down off the couch and onto the fuzzy rug by the fireplace. She had lit a fire. That was good thinking. He pulled off his coat and brought her legs up so they were bent, her feet flat on the rug.
He knelt between her legs. “This is going to be okay, darling,” he told her. “You are strong and confident…”
“I can do this,” she said, breathing slowly through her lips.
He coached her and she pushed. Then they rested. He mopped her brow with a wash cloth, smirking a little. “It’s my turn to take care of you,” he said.
She pushed some more, screaming and hollering bloody murder. Before long, there was a little baby in John’s arms and Ursula was crying tears of joy that she didn’t know she would feel about this. They had a baby. They’d created a life together, somehow. It was strange and it was certainly not one they’d be able to explain to many people, but it was their life.
“It’s a girl,” John said, crying a little himself as he held their new little person.
Ursula carefully took her into her arms. “Matilda,” she said. “Matilda Joan. Joan for her daddy, and Matilda just because it feels right.”
John smiled and kissed Ursula deeply. “I love you,” he said. Then he gingerly touched the small brown head of their daughter. “I love you.”
For several months, Ursula Blake sang songs in the cabin for a very limited audience of two. When Matilda was old enough to be able to laugh at her mom’s over-the-top performances, Ursula took her around town in a sling across her chest, sticking and stapling flyers to anything that could hold a flyer.
“Live at the Black Bear Inn: Ursula Blake-Asher! Jazz and Soul Songs to Cozy Up To!”
No matter what, even with his fairly rigid schedule, John never missed a performance. He sat in the front row with Matilda and the two of them would smile up at Ursula every night after dusk, when the black bear and his cub had shifted back into the man and his daughter.
THE END.
BEAR POCALYPSE
“We saw you in here,” The voice was cold and mocking. It matched the evil laughter in the man’s eyes. I had run back into the building as soon as I saw the looters prowling the streets. There was no telling how many had followed him into the hospital. Although, I guess it doesn’t matter what you call any of these buildings now.
It was quick, I will say that for the virus. A super virus, bred in hospitals for years. Immune to antivirals, inoculations, and other medications. It killed billions
of people for sure, but the worst thing that it did was remove our humanity.
“Come on out,” I curled my knees in tighter as he beckoned to me. I was hiding in the large compartment of a janitor’s cart. I was not about to move for anything. Although, I was sure that I was shaking. This man had nothing to fear, he knew his days were numbered, so what did my days matter to him? “I can smell you.”
It was an odd realisation, and not likely his intention, but the looter reminded me of how long I had gone without a shower. The water had stopped flowing weeks ago. There was no one to monitor any of the public works. Electricity worked on and off in some areas. Water was done altogether. The sewers were a whole other problem.
Everyone was too busy living for today to do basic things like jobs or work. Billions had lost their lives to the virus, but many had been killed by gangs like the charming gentlemen who were hunting me at the moment.
For the first few weeks I had been a member of a community. The nurses of A2. That was our ward. We had all brought our families to live in the hospital. We were taking care of each other. We had food, medicine, and beds. A few left when the rolling brown outs started. The rest left when the water stopped flowing. The backed up sewers drove most people out of their homes. It was rare to see people moving through the streets.
They would move through the streets scavenging from time to time, but for the most part everyone stayed away, because of the scent. I had stayed because of my father. He was too weak to move. When he finally passed on yesterday I decided it was time to move on. I have been trying to do it ever since.
My first trip outside of the building I ran into a bear. The woods must be getting too crowded now that they are filled with people. He didn’t seem to pay me any mind. He must be used to humans by now. I on the other hand ran like the wind. As soon as I saw him I froze. He looked me up and down and then turned his head. I took off like a shot. It took me ten hours to work up the courage to step outside again. That’s when I saw these guys.
