Monsters

by Rob Knight editor

  "Daniel..."

  "Your teeth had changed. They were so long. So big." And he laughs. "What big teeth you have," he says and Ian supplies the next line.

  "All the better to eat you with, my dear."

  Daniel looks away, then back at him. "What are you?" "You have an idea, don't you?"

  He shakes his head. "But it can't be." "Eliminate all the other logical answers and what's left?" "There's no such thing," Daniel says. He's had this conversation with himself, always coming to the same conclusion: he can't absorb it, can't believe it.

  "There is," Ian tells him. "And I am." He offers a weak smile. "One of the things that go bump in the night."

  "Don't!" Daniel demands. "Don't fucking joke about this!" Even though he joked about it before. "I saw you kill a man."

  "I wish you hadn't."

  Daniel covers his eyes. "I'm not. At least now I know why you wanted to end it between us. Because of your..." He searches helplessly for the right word. "I don't even know what to call it."

  "It is what I am."

  "Which is what?"

  Ian sits in an armchair, well away from Daniel. His skin glows in the dying light. "I don't know when I was born. What year. We lived in the forests. My family." He pauses. "My pack."

  "Pack?"

  Ian touches his own face as if to be certain of the visage he wears despite his words. "We were wolves," he says. "We are wolves."

  "You're a man," Daniel insists.

  But Ian shakes his head. "I guess the truth is that we're neither anymore." He stands and walks towards the last of the afternoon sun, his features obscured by the light pouring into the window.

  "Where were you born?"

  They speak in hushed voices as if the truth can only be whispered.

  "Ireland. So long ago." Looking weary, Ian returns to his chair and sits. "I can't begin to tell you how long it's been. How long I've been alive."

  "How did this happen?" "A wizard, the gods, aliens, I don't know," Ian laughs, the sound edged with hysteria. "All I know is that one day we were wolves and the next we were men. With a man's faculties, but a wolf's cunning, a wolf's senses, abilities. Desires. Hungers." Ian lowers his eyes. "We learned to live like men, learned the language, learned how to live among humans without arousing suspicion, and for centuries we've endured."

  "How many others are there?"

  "I don't know anymore. My parents are dead, so are my brothers. We were never very many and now there are so few that we roam the world without ever meeting."

  "Why did you kill that man?"

  Eyes shiny, Ian tries to explain. "Sometimes a madness comes upon us, a hunger so great that it consumes us. Most of the time we can control it. But sometimes, sometimes we surrender to the hunger." "And you kill." "Yes."

  "Always?"

  Ian hesitates.

  "Tell me the truth."

  "Sometimes a bite isn't fatal." "What happens to the person?"

  Ian's lip trembles. "They become... werewolves." Hence the legend, hence the stories, and the films, and the Halloween costumes, and the fear.

  Suddenly Daniel's eyes widen and he moves without thought. "You almost bit me."

  "Daniel-"

  "And you knew." He backs away from Ian, afraid.

  "I love you. I would never-" "You're a monster!"

  A tear drops from Ian's jaw.

  "And you were right: we should stay away from each other."

  *** Ian shakes as the door slams close. He walks to the mirror that hangs next to his desk and stares at himself in the glass. Monster. His face changes, jaw lengthens, elongates, fills with long, sharp teeth. Monster. His fingers shorten, become paws tipped with claws that rend and tear. Monster. He slashes the mirror, claws cutting through glass as if it were butter. Shards of glass fall to the floor at his feet.

  *** Countless decades behind him and the years stretch ahead of him like an endless highway. It is a journey he no longer wishes to take. He is tired and wants to rest. Forever. There's no point in returning. The world will always be the same. He will be always be the same. An animal. No matter the mask, nothing can disguise the beast within.

  He showed his true face to Daniel and Daniel fled in fear and loathing. His mate rejected him.

  The pain makes him gasp and he bends over with his arms around his middle and rides it out. And remembers.

  Daniel shyly showing him his portfolio of sketches, including a portrait of Ian.

  He and Daniel making love on the floor as the sun rose, bathing them in light. Daniel calling him a monster.

  He sobs and lengthens his claws.

  Brushing Daniel's hair back from his forehead as he slept.

  Running through the rain into a restaurant and then kissing in the restroom, wet clothes and hair forgotten.

  The hustler's eyes as he realized he was going to die. He goes into the bathroom and enters the shower. Better to do it here and spare the rest of the apartment. He holds out his arm and places a claw in the hollow of his elbow right over the vein. Up and down, not across. That's the mistake most suicides make. They go across instead of up and down.

  He closes his eyes. Goodbye, my love. Presses down. Blood wells up from the spot. He swallows. All he has to do is cut right down his arm.

  He hears a noise. Banging. Thinks, at first, that it's just his heart beating, but then he realizes that it's the door. Too late. Too late.

  The banging intensifies and he starts to close the shower door.

  "Ian! Ian, open up! Ian, it's me! It's Daniel! Open up!" "No," he whispers. It's too late.

  "Ian! Ian, for God's sake, let me in! Ian!" And the desperation in Daniel's voice reaches him and stays his hand. He steps out of the shower and walks a somnambulist's path to the door. Opens it. Daniel rushes into his arms, heedless of the line of blood that mars Ian's skin.

  "I'm sorry," Daniel says, holding him tight. "I'm sorry. I didn't know. I didn't know."

  Ian eases him away. "Wolves mate for life, don't they?" Daniel looks at the blood on Ian's forearm.

  "I'm a monster. I deserve to die." "You're not a monster." Daniel kisses his fingers. "Not a monster. I'm sorry. I love you. I love you, don't leave me. Don't leave me here all alone." Daniel presses to Ian's chest again. "I want you to do it. I want you to bite me."

  "You don't know what you're asking." "We're mates." "You'll have to give up everything you've ever known. Your family, your friends, even your name. Everything, stripped from you. And then there's the madness, the change... you don't know what it'll do to you. I've seen it. I've seen it drive men insane."

  "If it does, then you'll help me." They both know what he means: Ian will kill Daniel. "But at least I would have had you for a while. At least I could stay with you and you wouldn't have to..." Daniel sobs and rubs his face against Ian's hand.

  Ian cups his cheek; it is streaked with his blood. "I promise," he says. "I'll never leave you."

  "Then you'll do it?"

  Silently, Ian nods and kisses Daniel sweetly upon the lips.

  "Will I grow older?" Daniel asks as they undress. "No," Ian answers. "It's why we keep moving, keep changing identities. So that no one suspects us."

  "Then I'll always be..."

  "A twink," Ian says with a twist of his lips.

  Daniel drops off his trousers and briefs and Ian can't help himself, he reaches for Daniel, palms his creamy flank.

  "Will it hurt?"

  "There is no change without pain." A mantra he chants to himself when he would give into the madness, to the hunger.

  "You mean, even afterwards... When you do it, does it hurt then?"

  A silvery tear appears and falls. "Always." He wipes it away. "It's part of our curse. The pain, the madness, the hunger... the loneliness."

  "Not alone. Not anymore." When they are nude, Daniel stays Ian with his hand. "Show me. Show me all of it. What you really are."

  Taking shallow breaths, Ian prepares himself for the change. For the pain, not only the physical
ache, but the pain of remembering what he once was. How at peace they had been. All gone now.

  *** Daniel is transfixed by the spectacle that unfolds before him. He watches Ian's features shift like oil upon water. Pain racks Ian's body as it unhinges and remakes its frame, its form. Instead of one smooth transition, Ian goes through more than one transformation. One reminds Daniel of the creature he saw in the warehouse, more man than wolf but with a wolf's teeth and claws. Another with a wolf's snout, but with skin still smooth. The third reminds him of the werewolf from the movies, hairy and hunched over, powerful muscles, saliva dripping from between sharp fangs. And then the werewolf seems to split open and in its place stands a wolf. Grey pelt with a tan undercoat; great, hazel eyes. It comes to him and sits at his feet.

  Daniel drops to his knees and risks a touch. Not knowing if he's committing a grave error, he scratches the wolf's ears. It goes down upon all four legs and lays its huge head in his lap. "Ian," he whispers and leans over its body, running his hands through its fur. It feels so good against his bare skin. Then he gasps. Feels the wolf's tongue lapping at his cock. He sits, legs spread open, head thrown back, as his lover licks him to stiffness. Ian releases his dick and straddles him, lies down upon him. Daniel wraps his legs about the wolf's body, luxuriating in the feel of the thick fur, as Ian begins licking his face, his great, red tongue washing over his cheeks, his neck.

  He can feel the wolf's cock, hard in its sheath. As he touches it, Ian begins to transform. He takes on his human form, a man's penis between Daniel's thighs, which he uses to thrust against Daniel's cock. "Take me," Daniel begs. Ian raises up and looks Daniel in the eye. Daniel nods and Ian enters him, pushing past the tight ring of muscle. "Yes!" Daniel cries and he moans as Ian's cock slides in and out of him. With Daniel writhing beneath him, Ian opens his mouth, teeth lengthening, and latches onto Daniel's neck. He breaks the skin and blood floods Ian's mouth. Daniel screams, the pain so intense the room darkens and he can't see for a moment. He struggles against Ian, fighting him, and then the pain lessens and his body is wracked by pleasure, from Ian's dick pistoning inside him to the man's tongue lapping at the wound he has created.

  He gives a cry of complaint as Ian pulls out, but it's only to turn him over, to mount him from behind. They kneel on their hands and knees and work against one another, Ian's mouth on his neck, kissing him, licking his blood-stained skin. Already the wound is closing. He feels Ian's cock harden impossibly. Ian growls and jabs him, stabbing him over and over as he erupts. Through his blood and Ian's come, they form an unbreakable bond.

  Daniel raises his head and howls as he climaxes, claws digging in the hardwood floor.

  ***

  They run through the woods, two wolves, one grey, the other golden-haired. Playing tag like pups, gently nipping at tails. Coming together, they mock-fight, catching one another by the ruff and tugging.

  The rain begins. A drizzle at first which becomes a steady shower. They stand still and the water washes away their fur, washes away their teeth, their claws, until they stand naked in the woods, two men, two lovers. Two mates.

  In Place of Mourning

  by M. Jones. There was no harm in the day's light, or the shadows that played over the car as we drove down the highway, the stretch of the sky golden amongst equally tainted leaves. These little splatters of trees fell as we sped past, their spent red, brown and golden hues littering our path. Beauty, but wrapped in the decay of late summer, an encroaching promise of death.

  I hadn't wanted to come here. My Aunt's death had brought many in my family sadness, though in my case it had been a quiet relief. You'd be wrong to think I'd held any animosity toward her, however, since she had been a generous enough person to take care of me when my parents were too ill equipped to do so themselves. My mother had long since vanished from everyone's life like a whisper one never speaks of, and my father...Rumor has it that he now drives a cab somewhere in the belly of New York. He drinks with his buddies every single night to forget about Mother, my Aunt, and no doubt myself.

  It hadn't been easy for my Aunt to care for a boy of about ten with a feral attitude and a chip on his shoulder large enough to make a house out of. She did her best, even if I hated her for it sometimes. She had her rules and her care, and my relief at her passing was unfair to her memory -- maybe even a little heartless. She raised me with a stoic firmness that would never bend in any direction, regardless of how much she maybe should have on occasion. But still, I had been a child of difficult circumstances and, without that firm resolution of hers, I probably would have been as much of a piece of human driftwood as my mother and father were.

  Thinking about the past brings me abruptly into the present, with the sound of my companion's snores enveloping the car. His head slops lazily from side to side, his mouth drooling and mumbling in his uncomfortable sleep. I have this urge to nudge him awake, to let him enjoy the picturesque countryside along with me, to see the way the leaves dance and sway and fall against each other in their last fatal collapse to earth. He has a day and half's beard on him and I stroke my own chin, feeling only the thin down that suggests I should have brought a portable shaver. Still, in the current setting we are in I supposed we could stand to look a little rustic.

  The road leading into my Aunt's cottage is a hollowed out space nearly completely overgrown with trees. It is hard to navigate through, though the car itself seems to know where it’s going. Long, clawing branches scrape the sides of the car and suddenly I'm happy that Tom is still sleeping, since it prevents a fit on his part over the paint job the new car was going to need. The trees eventually thin out to become more of a clearing and then I see it, nestled like some little, warm fairy tale house in the middle of a forest, its roof badly patched, the nearby barn fallen into further disrepair than how I last remember it. A large duck walks lazily past the front of the car as I drive closer to the porch, a waddling girlfriend tagging along behind him. I get out of the car and stare at the house, at its small hinged door, too narrow for my Aunt's wide girth, at the two cracked steps leading up to its entrance. The windows are still intact, however, a good sign, and regardless of the sheer isolation of the place, there are phone lines, and a grey disk on the roof declaring my aunt had purchased a satellite TV. This was what she did in her later years, when her eyes were too poor for sewing. She sat on her wide couch with the multi-colored quilt and watched TV shows, talk shows mostly, and every now and then the latest movie, which she always found fault with. She had favorites of her TV pop psychologists and would write to me about their exploits at length, and how she could teach them a thing or two about how to get some common sense. I believed her when she'd said she could do it. My Aunt had that habit of forcing people to listen.

  I park the car and take the key out of the ignition, sitting quietly while the engine dies. I undo my seatbelt and open the car door, Tom still sleeping inside. I take a long, deep breath of the air around me, at its fresh, clean scent that is a shock to my lungs. My body wants to surge towards it in memory, but I hold my emotions back.

  There is a stirring within the car, a series of half hearted grunts and mumbles that signify that Tom is awake. I keep my distance from him now, as my mind is so overwhelmed with memories. I stare at the entrance of the house, half expecting my Aunt to come waddling out of the torn screen door, her flowered dress hanging loosely around her knees, her grey eyes small and piercing with disapproval at my very presence. What would she think, I wondered, of my bringing Tom here? Tom, who is now getting out of the car, rubbing sleep from his eyes with the heels of his hands and running them over his face and his black stubble. His startling blue eyes finally register that somehow we'd left the highway to arrive at a beaten down cottage in the middle of nowhere. Tom, with his black hair that has that messy look only a very expensive hairdresser can properly create.

  Tom, my lover. "Pretty convenient," Tom observes, kicking at the tires of the car and then looking at the nearby porch. "Door to door service." He lo
oks up at the trees, at their thick, golden canopy that was darkening into crimson as every minute passed. The sun was setting and even now the mosquitoes were in full force. "Isn't there a garage?"

  I laugh. "Of course not." Tom is unimpressed. "I hope it doesn't get covered in birdcrap." He nods at the house. "Jeez, Mickey, you grew up like a hermit." He swats at the air, disturbing a pile of bloodthirsty insects that are hovering like a halo above his head. "You actually grew up in this shack?"

  "Spent nearly ten years here," I admit. Tom's downcast look is almost endearing, his pity wrongly placed. "I was a happy kid here, for the most part. There wasn't much by way of video games, but then again, there was fishing and hiking and all that other sport. And I wasn't that isolated." I point towards the back of the house, bidding him to follow me as we take a small path. "Across the lake there was another family and they had lots of kids. The Bishops. And beside them there was the Townsends and they had a boy my age." I put my hands in my dress trousers as we make our way to the dock behind the house, a tiny, grey leaky boat swaying in the water and hitting the side posts gently. "His name was Gerald. His parents weren't from here, they were city folk looking for a new start. His dad had a breakdown before they moved here and I guess the hope was that he'd be cured by the slower pace of country life. It didn't work, of course, he went bonkers again just before I left for college."

  Tom slaps his arm. He slides his leather jacket back on in a vain attempt to quell the mosquitoes' ardor, but they merely pool their resources onto his knuckles and on his neck. He slaps that, too. "Damn! I think I know why he lost it."

  I'm not hurt by Tom's lack of enthusiasm since, in truth, I suspected this is how it was going to be. Tom is a true city dweller, a man who thrives on highways and crowded streets, who doesn't feel at home unless the buzz of life is right there at his ear while he sleeps. The silence will be hard for him to bear, I think. He slaps the back of his hand and I smile and turn away, knowing that if I let my gaze linger any longer I'll be leaning against him and stealing a kiss from eager lips. This in turn would lead to his steering me back towards the house, to its small confines and its neat arrangements, my aunt's stuffy remainders lying in the form of a multicolored quilt on the couch, hiding the holes. I haven't stepped in yet, but I can already envision her side table with her TV Guides and reading glasses, a bottle of scotch in the rollover cabinet attached to the couch. I know how it will be for me inside. I will stumble over furniture and knock down small artifacts of my youth as Tom pushes me further inside, to the outline of the door that used to be my bedroom, to the thin, narrow twin bed that would barely accommodate one full grown man, let alone two.