“Is everything ok, Icarus?” asked the hostess. Pushing the door open, she stepped back so that we could pass.
“Bloody nose,” Icarus explained, fishing in his pocket for our ticket. “Rush it,” he told the valet, pushing a twenty into his hand along with the small blue stub.
“Is there anything I can do?” the hostess pressed, overly polite.
Icarus mumbled something under his breath and turned with a feigned smile. “We forgot her coat at the table. Do you mind getting it while we’re waiting for the car?”
“Oh, sure!” she beamed, relieved to help in some way.
I started to drop the napkin to survey the damage, but Icarus pressed it back to my face. “Not yet,” he said, nodding his head in the direction of the restaurant. Inside, the onlookers with window seats were still watching the drama with rapt attention. I didn’t want to see anyhow.
“Don’t fight this,” Icarus cautioned. “The more you fight the change, the harder it’ll be. I know you’re afraid, but this is all natural. Do you understand me?”
“I’m not dense, fuckhead,” I hissed, though the lager part of my attention was focused on my fingers, which folded involuntarily beneath my palm. They began to meld together, forming a paw-like set of smaller digits. The pain was unfathomable. My thumb snapped and shrank, all but the distal phalange vanishing beneath my flesh. Hard ridges developed along my knuckles and split the skin at the tips of my proximal joints. Claws burst forth with brutal agony.
My panicked cry disclosed my inattention to Icarus’s demands. He grasped my shoulders, shaking me firmly to gather my attention. “Please, Thale, by fighting me, you’re only hurting yourself. I need you to obey me. Without submitting, I’ll have no power to help you.”
Coming to, I glared. “I’ll suffer before submitting to you!”
The Porsche pulled up, jerking to a stop. Icarus yanked the door open and helped me in, slamming the door closed once I was seated. He was around the driver’s side before the valet had a chance to fix the seat. When he slid behind the wheel, his knees were bumping the steering column. Cursing under his breath, he adjusted his seat and sped from the parking lot, leaving a cloud of burnt rubber billowing to the sky, and a bunch of stunned onlookers gaping.
“Stubborn!” he growled. “Refusing what’s for your own damn good!”
He slammed into second and third in quick succession. I heard the engine of the Porsche rocket. We surged forward, my back flattening to the seat. Fourth, fifth, was there a sixth gear? I’d lost count. My stomach was left behind in the valet’s tent in the parking lot of the Inn.
Another cry escaped me as my feet began their transformation. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced foot pain before, but I can promise you death is more preferable. You’d never realize the vast number of nerve endings your feet contain. The pain is immobilizing.
Now, men have this code of silence that—even when in unbearable pain—must never be broken. I know this from living with my dad and my brother Bennie. And from watching movies like ‘The Dirty Dozen,’ ‘The Great Escape,’ and ‘The Guns of Navarone.’ When men get shot, they grit their teeth and bear it while someone excavates some small slug of lead from their flesh with nothing but a pocketknife and a flask of whiskey. If they scream during the course, their masculinity will have been tainted forever, branded cowards and yellowbellies.
Women have no such code. ‘Scream,’ they tell us when we’re in labor. ‘There’s no shame in crying,’ ‘Go ahead. Let it out.’ Women are a completely different species. I claim no falsities. We can’t handle pain any better than a man. Pain is pain. It’s all how your parents raised you to handle it. Naturally, being female, I screamed. A lot. No exaggeration.
My legs contracted, tapering and shortening into the slender legs of a canine. I felt like a tube of toothpaste in its final days. Everything felt like it was being squeezed upward into my torso, including my bones.
From witnessing Marcus’s transformation, I was fully aware it was going to be all kinds of awful. Nevertheless, nothing could’ve prepared me for the degree of pain I experienced. The human body wasn’t made to deconstruct and reconstruct like a set of k’nex. We weren’t toys.
My pigheadedness didn’t help either. I ignored Icarus’s alpha voice as he shouted at me until blue in the face. Because of alpha female status, he had little to no effect. And boy, let me tell you, did it piss him off. (Good for me, because I was angry too.) My anger for him was the only thing holding me together. I used it as my focus against the pain. It kept me lucid, sane.
It kept me from surrendering to him.
Perhaps I had learned something from all those old war flicks after all.
Downshifting, Icarus cursed, swerving. The wheels squealed. We fishtailed for a split second before he gained control again. Behind us, horns blared. Someone shouted a profanity.
“Sonuvabitch!”
Icarus barked a laugh to himself. “I suppose I am.”
“How cliché,” I grumbled through my teeth. What was left of them. My pearly whites were now in a cluster on the floor between my transmogrifying feet. Both hands, now deficient of opposable thumbs were incapable of holding a napkin. My new—much pointier—teeth began to puncture their way through my gums, free of the encumbering, omnivore variations.
“Isn’t it?” Icarus agreed. “You’d think they could be more creative.”
“I meant…you,” I panted. I was beginning to see a pattern in my torture. It came in waves. Pain. Rest. Pain. Rest. It was like mother nature was forcing me to appreciate every stage of my transformation; she was reveling in my suffering. I always picture her sewing seeds and nurturing the change of seasons in some magical gossamer dress. But now, I could see she was a vindictive bitch who was punishing me for the freak of nature I had become. I was an abomination. I had a strong suspicion that she was hinting around that my immortality wasn’t welcome here in this earthy realm, and this was her way of telling me to fuck off.
“Bad dog puns…They’ve all been…done beforrrrreeeeeeee AaahhhHHHhhhhhh!” I trailed off as my torso began to mutate, the furthest extremities having completed their alteration.
The air rushed from my lungs, leaving me gasping like a fish out of water. My ribs compressed, my chest jutting out in a grotesque steeple of flesh and bones.
Beneath me, my tailbone extended, following the curve of the bucket seat. Now I know where my femur and tibia went. Nothing went to waste. It went to use elsewhere. Efficient, I know. Right? Go green! Don’t get too excited. It hurt. A whole fucking hell of a lot.
In my own opinion, my nervous system should’ve obliged me by shutting down. Every single nerve ending in my body was firing at rapid pulse sequence. It was highly unnecessary.
I had my eyes closed at this point, bracing myself against the pain, but I knew we had reached the house because the Porsche slowed minutely. We hit the lip of the driveway with a force that should’ve shattered the motor mounts and deflated the tires. Icarus skidded to a stop, throwing the door open without shutting the engine down. And he was gone.
Yes, gone. He abandoned me while I suffered my last lucid moments as a human. I shouldn’t have been surprised. His abandoning me was the reason I was here in the first place.
Alone, I sat in the car with only the purr of the engine to console me.
With my torso in its radically defined shape, my arms rolled downward. Comparatively, they now protruded where my breasts once were. Where my breasts went was a mystery to me.
I dared not wonder.
“Thale!”
I opened my eyes enough to see Bacchus bounding out the back door. Icarus was close behind, fighting with Caius, Max and Lucius who were restraining him. At one point, all four limbs had left the ground, his eyes rolling wildly as he fought with all his might to break free.
“Me, Thale,” Bacchus ordered. “Look at me.”
Stalled in a state of rest, I was powerless to take my eyes off Icarus. I couldn’t rationalize
the tortured look in his eyes. Had I made him lose control over my refusal to submit? Was he such a control-freak that my obstinacy sent him over the edge? What a total freakin’ spaz.
Looking on, his transformation took less than a minute. In his struggle to break free of his cousins, he let out a frustrated snarl, realizing his escape was in vain. A tremor racked his body from head to toe. His muscles seized and quivered beneath his cousin’s hands. His shoulder blades thrust back into two sharp points jutting from his back. His chest rippled and compressed, his head dropping down as his face contorted. His legs contracted. His tail extended. Black fur elongated ubiquitously over his body as he resumed his fight.
Caius clutched him in a chokehold, pinning him to the ground and sliding his knee up over his ribs to immobilize him. Still, Icarus fought, growling furiously, his legs and feet shredding his clothes and kicking dust into the air from the gravel driveway beneath him.
“Thale!” Bacchus shouted, demanding my attention. My eyes met his, a gurgle escaping my throat. The cycle of rest had passed. Pain was again beginning to take hold. “We don’t have much time, so listen to me. LISTEN TO ME!” He shouted, knowing he was losing my attention. “You’re focusing on the transformation, the pain that you’re feeling. In doing that, you’re slowing your progress, and prolonging your suffering. I need you to focus on the end goal, embrace the outcome. It’ll be much easier on you.”
Embrace the outcome. How the hell was I supposed to do that? I wasn’t the Yin, Yang or Zen kind of girl. I never understood any of that breathing yoga, pilates crap. I laughed at believers of meditation and hypnotism. They were for eccentrics and the weak minded.
I was neither of those.
Pain wrung my organs like a damp cloth, renewing Icarus’s fight. Helpless, Bacchus retreated a few steps, tormented by the sounds of my distress. I tried to bite it back, to keep from crying out, but it was wasted. The only relief was when my face and neck began to transmogrify, it muffled my screams until they faded into a faint gurgle. I didn’t fool anyone. I could see by their faces, they were aware of my suffering. They knew what I was enduring. I hated myself for being a girl just then, for not having the strength to remain silent.
“Let him go,” Bacchus told Caius.
“You sure?” Caius asked. He looked at his brother, Icarus and then me with uncertainty.
“Yes.”
“No!” Crispin shouted, coming through the back door. Lucius grabbed him, holding him from behind. “He’s gonna hurt her!”
“She’s suffering!” Bacchus shouted. “Let him go!”
Yes, I agreed. I couldn’t take the pain anymore, or the pity of their anguished stares. I wanted it over. Icarus should’ve done this long ago. Yes, let him go.
Caius lifted his knee first, restraining Icarus by the scruff of his neck.
“No!” Crispin cried, his legs kicking out. Lucius lifted him off the ground.
Hailey stepped out the door, her face smug. She would enjoy this.
Freaking imp.
Releasing Icarus, Caius stood, making the sign of the cross. Funny that that small gesture I had once dismissed as frivolous could give comfort to me now, when I knew the end was near.
As Icarus’s teeth met my throat, I didn’t fight him. I closed my eyes and waited for the end. I felt at peace, free of pain. I embraced the dusk of life, welcomed death with open arms, released from the curse I had become.
Chapter 14
Hmm. Phones in heaven. I imagined JC would’ve gone with thought transference for means of communication, but maybe he chose to stick with the familiar. It would certainly be a comfort to the recently deceased, attached as we are to our technology. How considerate.
He even got Bennie’s ringtone right, an infinite loop of ‘In One Ear and Right Out the Other.’ Bennie’s personal joke. He set it himself a few weeks ago.
Gosh, I was going to miss Bennie. I wonder if we were allowed visitations. I could go back and haunt him until he painted evocative portraits of me that would make him a renowned artist. He could immortalize me on canvas, trapped timelessly in oils and pastels.
“Answeeerrrrrr ttthhhhhheeee ppphhhhooonnnneeee!” droned Crispin’s voice.
“But she’s still zonked out. B-B-B-Benny and the jets.” Caius.
“Oh but she’s feared when ireful.” Max.
“Oh, Bennie she can really scream.” Bacchus.
“She put on her dog hair suit, and chewed up my shoe.” Caius.
“Let me tell ya she can get really meeeaaannnn-een-een-een!” Lucius.
“BENNIE! BENNIE!” Caius.
“B-B-B-Bennie and the jets.” Bacchus.
“Idiots.” Hailey.
I knew it was too good to be true. Groaning over my current life status—which unfortunately was living—I fished my phone from under my pillow. “It’s too early for facetime, Benny,” I grumbled, pushing the nest of hair from my face.
“It’s twelve, Thale.”
“It was a long night.”
“Tell me about it. Peyton stopped by last night.”
“Peyton?” I blurted, lifting the phone to see Bennie’s face. He now had my full attention. Or at least the attention of my dilating right eye. “What did she say? Where’s she been?”
“Well that’s the thing,” Bennie said unsurely. “She was all Salem’s Lot like—scratching at my window in the middle of the night.” He coughed, garbling his last word.
“Wait a minute—did you say naked?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you do?”
“I took a picture, Thale! What the hell do you think I did? I screamed like a girl! She scared the shit out of me!” Bennie’s face dropped from view, but I could hear a muffled choke. When he lifted his head again, he had tears in his eyes.
“Bennie!” I hissed. “This isn’t funny!”
“Oh my God, you should’ve been there. It was great. When I screamed, she jumped like ten feet in the air, and then slipped and rolled off the roof. It was straight outta Loony Toons, I tell ya. The only thing missing was the crate of T.N.T to break her fall.”
“BENNIE!”
“What? Geez! I didn’t get to talk to her. Mom and Dad heard me scream and they pushed the panic button, and set off the alarm. She took off through the Anderson’s yard.”
“Naked?” Caius inquired from his bedroom on the floor below.
I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling. “If you like little boys, she might appeal to you,” I said in response to Caius’s question. “Besides, if you care for the health of your pecker, you’ll stay away from her.”
Bennie’s face grew distorted as he put the phone to his face as if he could peek around the corner of his screen and see into my room. “Who are you talking to?”
“Everyone. There’s no such thing as privacy here. With our heightened senses we could hear Jiminy Cricket fart.”
“I didn’t really scream like a girl. I screamed, but it was more like ‘Ahhhh,’” Bennie demonstrated in his deepest tone, realizing he was on speaker. “It was a very masculine scream. Deep. Baritone. Oh, hey Icarus! How’s it going man?”
Icarus? Glancing over my shoulder, indeed, it was Icarus. In my bed.
“You’re sure she was bare?” he inquired to Bennie. Tugging at the blankets, he loosely covered himself, obscuring only the darkest patch of hair below his waist. I did likewise. As Icarus had mentioned before, clothes didn’t come with us when we transformed.
“No doubt about it. Not that I was looking. Thale’s right. She’s built like a boy. Fried eggs, ya know? Not much to look at. Besides, she’s like the skanky sister I never had.”
I barely registered Bennie’s prattling. My mind was busy gaping at the nude alpha in my bed. He was all lean muscle and smooth olive skin with a light dusting of dark hair. He was the Barberini Faun in the flesh. Lounging on his back. The picture of leisure. Admittedly, it took several moments before I found my tongue, inebriated as I was with his very presence.
“W
hat are you doing in here?”
“Just leaving,” Icarus said, brooking no argument. Rising from the bed, he dropped the covers, revealing all his masculine splendor. Glorious he was, rigid at this fine hour of morning.
“Thale,” said Bennie, gathering my attention. Icarus turned and smirked, catching me gaping at him, slack-jawed.
“When you’re finished here, get dressed and come down. We need to talk.” Borrowing my bath towel from the floor, he folded it around his waist. I turned my head, ignoring the tent pitched below his hips. No matter. The image was burned permanently into memory.
Flipping from facetime to phone call, I pressed the phone to my ear. “Bennie, I gotta go.” I ran for the bathroom, escaping my rampant desires. A cold shower would do me good.
“I knew it!” Bennie hissed. “I knew you liked him!”
“Shut up Bennie.”
“You can’t deny it. You just did the deed with him. You’re both neked.”
“I did not.” Sliding from the bed, I stepped into the bathroom and flicked the light on. I gave my eyes a second to adjust before I looked in the mirror, examining my teeth. They had returned to normal, better than normal. And I’d worn braces when I was younger. The slightly sharper cuspids glistened like lethal weapons. “I changed last night. Like into a wolf.”
“Holy shit! You did? What was it like?”
“Horrible.” I started up the shower. “It was excruciating. I don’t remember anything after that. I blacked out.”
“See—you did sleep with him! You just don’t remember. You had mad animal sex—didn’t you?”
“I didn’t sleep with him!” I snapped. “This isn’t fun and games, Bennie! I’m not here playing tiddly winks with my boyfriend! I have much bigger things on my mind!”
“Geez, Thale, no need to get snippy.”
He was right. I felt bad. We’d barely talked the few days I’d been home. Between my infirmity and my short temper, he’d kept his distance. Before I knew it, I was moving out. I missed him more than chocolate. I was loath to spend our time on the phone arguing.
Feral Page 21
