Get Bent!

by Rick Gualtieri

  “Huh?” I looked around and, sure enough, several customers were putting money on the table and getting up to leave. “Maybe they, y’know, actually finished eating. Speaking of which, I hope they don’t take forever with our food. I kind of want to drown my sorrows in some potatoes right now.”

  She pointed toward the exit. “I’m pretty sure that couple came in after us.”

  “Okay, so they dropped by for a cup of coffee. Or they decided to hook up and are heading back to his place.”

  She glanced again and then made a face. “Eww. I hope I’m never that desperate for sex.”

  “The woman or the man?”

  “Both.”

  “Love is blind.”

  “Yeah, it definitely can be...” Riva’s voice trailed off and her eyes opened wide.

  “They bringing our food?”

  Movement registered in my periphery and I turned to find two large men approaching our table. If I had to guess, they were either truckers or farmers. They had that sort of look about them.

  They stopped in front of our table and glared down at us ... or, more specifically, at me. I’d love to say my father’s warning wasn’t blaring out in my mind, but that would be an outright lie. What the fuck was up with this day?

  “Can we help you fellows?” I asked in what I hoped sounded like an unconcerned voice. I was trying really hard to think of a reason for these guys to be here. Maybe they were lost. Maybe they were selling something. Heck, maybe they were random serial killers and it was just a coincidence they’d picked us.

  Okay, that last one didn’t really make me feel better.

  The taller of the two was easily six-three. A day’s worth of stubble sat on his broad face. He had on a red t-shirt, and was wearing a Phillies cap. His attire, however, was far less weird than the fact that he leaned over and ... started sniffing the air around me.

  The fuck?

  Suddenly, that serial killer theory didn’t sound so far-fetched.

  He stood back up, looked to his buddy, and nodded once. The friend, wearing a stained wife beater and grimy, unadorned cap, turned back toward the counter – where our waitress stood with the cook – and gave them both a nod.

  “Um, that’s Dove ladies deodorant,” I said, trying to remain calm. “Never leave home without it.”

  “Show us your real face, freak,” Phillies Cap said, his breath reeking of bacon, coffee, and gingivitis.

  “Bent?” Riva asked timidly.

  “Stay calm,” I told her, my eyes never leaving the two hicks. “I have a suspicious feeling they’re not here for you.”

  “You gonna show us or not?” Wife Beater asked. “We know you’re impersonating that Bentley girl, so there ain’t no talking your way out of this. Your kind aren’t welcome here.”

  They knew my name? Or sorta, anyway. And what was with that accusation? “You guys might want to cut back on the whiskey before ten a.m.”

  I glanced past them and saw the waitress locking the front door. That couldn’t be a good sign. As for the cook, he was now approaching us, too, meat cleaver in hand. It was definitely turning into one of those days.

  Fear began to well up inside of me, a reasonable response for any young, moderately attractive woman being accosted by two Neanderthals. That the diner staff seemed to be joining in, too, was making this feel like something out of a bad movie. It was as if Riva and I had come in for breakfast and accidentally walked in on a meeting of the Stepford Rednecks.

  I swallowed the fear back down, as much as possible anyway. It was going to take some time to get used to the fact that I could punch out a werewolf, much less the Buford brothers here.

  That thought lingered in the back of my head. What had happened to me was real, or so I’d hoped. Sadly, it wasn’t quite so easy to shake the feeling that I was about to have my ass handed to me. In the light of day, things like monsters and super strength sounded downright silly, almost unbelievable, even to someone who’d experienced them.

  “Let my friend go.” The words left my mouth before I was even sure I wanted to admit to myself that something was going to happen.

  Wife Beater looked down at Riva, as if just noticing she was there. He took a sniff, then turned to his friend and gave a single shake of his head.

  “We’ll figure out what to do with her later,” Phillies Cap replied. “For now, let’s deal with this one.”

  “Listen, fellas,” I said, making one last desperate plea. “I don’t know who you are but...”

  Sadly for us, he didn’t need words to answer me.

  He simply smiled, revealing teeth that were far too long and sharp to be human.

  CHAPTER 12

  Rough hands reached out to grab hold of me, changing into ragged claws in the time it took Phillies Cap to close the distance between us.

  For a moment, I was too stunned to react, but then he blinked and the dull brown of his eyes was replaced with bloodshot yellow – the same eyes I’d seen staring back at me from multiple hairy heads the night before.

  No flipping way!

  How? The full moon was last night. It was over, it wouldn’t happen again for...

  The questions would have to wait. Whether or not I believed what I was seeing, my reality was about to become seriously hairy.

  The man’s ... err, wolf’s claws tore painfully through my shirt and started to drag me from my seat. I instinctively grabbed hold of the table to stop myself from being pulled out and felt its moorings groan in protest.

  That gave me an idea.

  “Lean back,” I said to Riva.

  There wasn’t time to say more. I just had to hope she trusted me. I gave a yank, adding my own strength to my attacker’s, and the table tore free from the wall. I flipped it up and slammed it into the waiting faces of both our would-be assailants, sending them staggering back.

  Impossible as it had seemed only moments ago, apparently whatever I had in me functioned just fine in the light of day, too – a handy thing to know.

  Pity that the same could also be said about our gracious hosts.

  I turned to find the waitress and cook both changing. And I don’t mean their clothes.

  Both of them were growing taller, more muscular, and a lot furrier.

  “I told you we should have gone to Gib’s!” Riva screeched, huddled in her seat.

  “Fair enough. Next time, you can choose where we eat. Stay behind me!”

  Both Phillies Cap and Wife Beater recovered quickly and likewise continued to change. Hands became claws, ears became longer and pointier, and clothes ripped to shreds, affording me a far better view of them than I really wanted.

  While I’d seen my fair share of horror movies, I didn’t really consider myself a connoisseur. Still, one of the more obvious mistakes in them is that people always stand around gaping when they should be moving. It’s like that old Michael Jackson video Thriller. The girl stands there for like five minutes as he turns into a monster, when she could have been halfway to the next county.

  It was a lesson I took to heart.

  The two truck stop werewolves were still busy snarling, snapping, and growing extra hair when I charged. I plowed into Phillies Cap, the larger of the two, shoulder-first. I half expected to rebound off the much bigger man – my mind still insisting we were playing by the normal rules. Instead, I took him off his feet, carried him across the room, and plowed into the mirrored wall of the diner hard enough to make the building shudder.

  Glass shattered all around us and he let out a great big belch of air. Not satisfied that he was properly dissuaded, I drove a fist into his gut, the oddly undulating flesh giving way as I pushed the contents of his stomach up against his spine.

  I backed up a step and he fell to his knees retching, just in time for me to sense movement from behind.

  Wife Beater had double-timed his change, seeing that I wasn’t going to stand there and scream like a good victim. Eww, a werewolf with a beer belly – not a good look.

  He raced fo
rward and I half turned so that my profile was facing him. At the last moment, I bent low, letting his momentum carry him into me.

  Oof! Damn, these things were strong.

  I lifted him up in a fireman’s carry, meaning to dump his ass on the floor and put him in the danger position. But I underestimated my own strength and sent him flying instead. Oops.

  “Um, I meant to do that.” Oh yeah, some practice was definitely in my future ... if I lived through this.

  Fortunately, if there was only one upside to fighting monsters, as opposed to wrestling, there was no such thing as being called for an illegal move. So I, in a rare display of unsportsmanlike conduct, hurried across the room before Wife Beater could get up and planted my foot into his face with a satisfying crunch.

  Two down – for now anyway. That left two more asses to kick.

  “Bent! Look out!”

  Or not.

  Yeah, that’s what I’d been afraid of. Seeing that I was no pushover, it was only a matter of time before the other side threw the Marquess of Queensberry Rules out the window and rushed me all at once.

  The others weren’t stupid either, not like their hick cousins. There was no grandstanding, no attempt to intimidate me. They simply slammed into me as I turned their way, one high and one low.

  It was like being hit by a fur-covered truck.

  The wind was driven out of my lungs and I landed atop of the one I’d just given the boot to, the meat in a werewolf sandwich. I didn’t consider myself a prude, but this was one kink I really didn’t see myself getting into. A little hair on a man’s chest was one thing, but even I had my limits.

  Mind you, that was the least of my problems right then.

  Fire raced up my leg as one of the wolves, the waitress I think, bit into my thigh, her teeth shredding my jeans and probably not doing wonders to the flesh beneath.

  Before I could cry out, the one atop me – the cook most likely – slashed my face. There came a spray of blood, almost certainly my own, and my cheek instantly felt like it was on fire.

  See if I leave you assholes a tip now.

  I had no way of knowing how bad the damage was. For all I knew, half my face could have been gone. Unfortunately, stopping to check would only result in them taking the rest of it off. Vanity be damned. As much as I didn’t fancy looking like I’d French-kissed a weed whacker, I much preferred staying alive.

  Angry as I’d been this morning, I liked my life and wasn’t quite ready to give up on it yet.

  The wolf atop me reared back as the other continued to savage my legs. I tried to push myself up using what leverage I could, so as to dislodge him and...

  Fuck!

  Muscular arms encircled me from below. Wife Beater wasn’t quite as out of the fight as I’d hoped.

  This was bad. I was outnumbered and pinned, with little room to maneuver. Wrestling had taught me a lot, but not how to win a three-on-one handicap match. That shit was only for the pay-per-view events. Far as I could tell, my odds were getting worse by the moment, especially grappled as I was.

  From somewhere outside my line of sight – which currently consisted of angry werewolves and the ceiling – Riva screamed my name. Unfortunately, unless she was secretly the queen of the harpies, there was little she could do to help.

  Problem was, I had no way of knowing what these bastards would do to her once they’d finished me off.

  “Run!” I shouted, hoping that this time she heeded my warning.

  Above me, the cook-wolf snarled and raised both its fists into the air, no doubt preparing to ruin my day once and for all.

  I braced for it as well as I could.

  Bright light filled the room just as the beast’s arms began to descend – a strange flash of multihued luminescence that left spots before my eyes.

  I apparently wasn’t the only one caught by surprise, as the wolf’s attention turned toward the other end of the room. It let out a confused chuff that was almost doglike in its uncertainty.

  And then it was silenced as something bright red lanced through its midsection, punching a fist-sized hole through its chest.

  What the hell?!

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The wolf at my legs looked up in surprise and its face shrunk in on itself – its muzzle retracting until it was at some halfway point between werewolf and human. “You’re not welcome here.”

  At my current angle, I couldn’t see who or what she was speaking to, but I really didn’t care. Shifting her position freed my good leg enough for me to bring a knee up into her face, sending her tumbling away.

  That left Wife Beater, who was busy trying to scramble his way out from beneath me. I gave him an elbow to the throat for his trouble, then rolled off and prepared to engage the nearest...

  “Mrs. Bentley?”

  I looked up at the sound of Riva’s voice and froze. “Mom?!”

  At least I thought it was her. The face was the same, but the rest...

  Her hair fluttered as if there was a heavy breeze – despite us being indoors – her normal auburn color looking like it was sheened in bronze. As for the rest, it looked like she was wearing a dress made of pure flame.

  It was a good look for her – scary as fuck, but highly effective.

  As I stood there gaping, the first wolf, Phillies Cap, recovered and charged my mother from the side ... or at least it tried to.

  She lifted her hand and the next thing I knew, its head and half its chest were gone, a red-hot mess of cauterized flesh from its midsection up the only indication of what had happened.

  It took one more step then fell to the ground, so dead that they’d probably have to bury it twice.

  Daaamn!

  A small voice in my head reminded me this was the same woman I’d flipped off and hung up on just minutes earlier. If this was indeed my mother, then I really had to make it a point to not do that again.

  “Both of you, come here now,” Mom ordered, sounding like she was both near and far. There was an odd chiming echo to her voice, as if someone was breaking glass in the distance. Either way, color me pretty darned impressed.

  While I limped over, she continued to hand out brutal judgment. I glanced back just in time to see her utterly vaporize Wife Beater, leaving nothing but a faint outline of ashes where he’d been.

  That left only the waitress. She held up her hands and backed away – fully resuming her human guise – until she was huddled against the far wall, naked and obviously terrified. “Please. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “I know you won’t,” Mom replied, pointing a hand toward her, palm out. She closed it into a fist while muttering, “A 'briseadh làmhan.”

  The result was swift and so extraordinarily brutal even I wanted to look away. It was as if someone had stuffed the waitress into a transparent car crusher, or maybe a black hole. She had time for one whimper and then her body folded in on itself – a cacophony of breaking bones and ruptured organs, until there was nothing left except a quivering pile of bloody meat on the floor.

  Holy fuck!

  All the while, Riva and I stood there watching as my mother committed what could only be called wholesale slaughter.

  At last, when it was over and silence again reigned in the small diner, Mom blinked several times, staggered, and had to grab a nearby booth to keep from falling over. She began to cough as if catching her breath, and the glow around her faded away to nothing. Her hair dropped limp and the gown of flames snuffed out, revealing a simple summer dress.

  Within seconds, she was just my mother again.

  I exchanged a wide-eyed glance with Riva. The whole thing had been beyond surreal, and this coming from someone who’d spent the last few minutes trading punches with monsters. So I could only imagine how strange it was to my friend.

  After a few minutes, Mom caught her breath. She stood up, straightened her dress, and said, “Let’s go, both of you. There’s no time to dawdle.”

  All thoughts of arguing instantly fled my mind at the sight of w
hat she’d just done. Yeah, throwing shade at a one-woman wrecking crew did not sound smart. It made me wonder how I, at three years old, could have even remotely threatened, much less hurt, someone like her. Hell, forget being a toddler, it seemed impossible for me even as an adult.

  So, for one of the few times in my adult life, I zipped it and stepped in line like a good little girl. Riva, too.

  “Both of you, put one hand each on my shoulder. Don’t let go.”

  We did as told without protest.

  Mom lowered her head and let out a long breath, far longer than her lung capacity should have allowed. Her body began to glow again in an odd shimmering fairy light, for lack of a better phrase. Before my very eyes she began to fade, becoming translucent. I still felt her shoulder beneath my hand, though. Weird, but obviously part of the magic.

  I looked over and Riva, too, had taken on that same ethereal quality. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen or where we were going to end up, but I had a feeling it was going to be interesting at the very least.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Or utterly anticlimactic.

  The glow faded from Mom as she and Riva simultaneously solidified. However, nothing had changed. We were still standing in a diner surrounded by a bunch of massacred werewolves.

  “Um, so are we invisible or something?”

  Mom glanced at me and narrowed her eyes.

  “The astral plane?” I offered.

  She turned to Riva. “Is your car outside?”

  “Y-yes, Mrs. Bentley,” my friend replied as if this were the Army and a general had just told her to drop and give him twenty.

  “Good. Hand me the keys. I’m driving.”

  CHAPTER 13

  I made to hop in the shotgun seat, but then remembered Riva wasn’t driving.

  Also, the glare Mom gave me kinda hinted that I might be more comfortable riding in the back.

  “I should have known that would happen.” She put the car in drive and peeled out onto the road, not bothering to stop and check to see if we were about to be creamed by any passing eighteen-wheelers.