by Mac Flynn
Chapter 4
I don't know what was in Garrison's Surprise Juice, but whatever it was gave me some strange dreams. I dreamed I stood in the middle of an open field full of thick, tall grass, and all around the meadow were pine trees. Somehow I knew I was in a deep forest, and high overhead sat the bright full moon. I couldn't take my eyes off that beautiful glowing orb in the sky, and the longer I stared at it the hotter I felt. My hands reached up and tugged at my clothes, gently at first but it quickly became a furious, desperate tearing.
I fell to my knees when the change started. My fingers lengthened and sharpened to dangerous points, and my muscles tightened. My breasts swelled and pushed through the tattered remains of my shirt, baring themselves to the dark world. I groaned as my pants tore open at the seams and my shoes split in half to reveal clawed feet. Soft fur sprouted from my body, but by then I couldn't feel anything but the heat welling up inside of me. It was unbearable and so full of lust it nearly drove me mad. I fell back on the thick grass and squirmed on the ground, pleading and moaning for something to come and fulfill my need.
As I lay there helpless and hot, a shadow fell over me. I looked up and saw a figure silhouetted against the night sky with their back to the moon. They were tall and muscular, and a pair of red eyes stared back at me with as much lust as I felt for them. It was the person from the basement, but now I knew it wasn't a person. This was a feral animal, and I was what it sought to satiate its own desires. It swooped down atop me and I screamed.
I jolted up in bed and looked wildly about my room. Everything down to the troll doll on the dresser was as it should have been, but I was covered in sweat. I brushed my hand through my soaked hair and gasped for breath. That dream had felt so real I swore someone had been in my room. That's when I felt a soft, cool breeze sweep over my wet body, and I glanced over to the window. It was open. I never left it open. Too great a chance somebody would sneak in and steal my troll doll.
I swung my legs out of bed and shakily made my way over to the window. It wasn't open very far, and I leaned out to see if I could find a reason for it being open. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a shadow flit around the side of the building, and for a brief moment I thought maybe the Bandanna Gang had come for me. Then I remembered that if they had come for me I wouldn't be talking to myself right then, or anyone else later, for that matter. They would have killed me deader than a squirrel on a freeway.
I shut and locked my window, and glanced at the time. Half past god-awful early, but I knew I wasn't going to get any more sleep that night so I dressed and fed myself. The confines of my apartment felt stuffy and dark, so I crept out into the hall and-
"You're up early." I jumped so high my hair brushed the eight-foot ceiling. When I touched back down I whirled around to find Garrison standing there with a smirk on his face.
"Don't do that!" I scolded him in a hushed whisper.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."
I sighed, and closed and locked my door behind me. "You apologize a lot, you know that?"
"I'm-"
"-sorry. I know." I rubbed my eyeballs and he stepped up beside me with a worried expression.
"Is everything all right?" he asked me.
I shook my head, paused, then shrugged. "I don't know. Just bad dreams and my window disobeying me by not staying shut."
"Did you want me to take a look?" Garrison suggested.
"Sure, why not?" I unlocked the door and let him in.
"Which window is it?" he wondered.
I nodded at the bedroom. "The one in there with the great view of the alley." Garrison went into the bedroom and I followed. Thankfully I was a clean person and left no lingerie-preference hints lying around. Garrison checked the window and knocked on the lock with his fist. "Is it terminal, doc?" I asked him.
He smirked. "I can save it, but this has been a lingering illness for a while, even before you moved in. It's going to take a lot of elbow grease and luck for the lock to pull through."
"Do whatever you can, but spare the expenses. I don't get paid until next week," I replied.
"It's on the house. That is, included in your rent," he reminded me.
"Oh, right."
"Anything else you want help with?"
"Know any good bodyguards who'll work for donuts?"
"If they work for donuts I wouldn't hire them, but isn't it a little early to be worried about the Bandanna Bandits?" he joked.
I shrugged. "I feel kind of uneasy right now, like I'm all tight and tense inside."
"Have you tried exercises?"
"It's not my guts hurting me, it's my head."
"Lobotomy?"
"Too old-fashioned. Besides, it's more like something's not quite right with everything around me rather than me. You know, like it's stuffy in the rooms and I just want a breath of fresh air."
Garrison rubbed his chin in one hand and glanced up at the ceiling. "I think I might have a remedy for that."
"Where? In the ceiling?"
"Come with me." He gently grabbed my hand and led me out of my apartment. We traveled to the top floor and down the hall to the far end of the apartment building. In the ceiling was a trap door with a short string attached to a ring. It was a good eight feet up there, and I didn't see a ladder.
"Need to use me as a stepping stool?" I suggested. He jumped up and easily grasped the tiny bit of string, which he then dragged down with him along with a flight of narrow wooden stairs. "I stand corrected, and flabbergasted. How'd you learn to jump so high?"
"I eat my Wheaties every morning."
"With jumping beans?"
"Beans and I have an agreement to disagree with each other, so we're not on speaking terms." He led the way up the creaky old stairs, and I paused when I peeked my head over the floor. We were under the peaked roof of the building, and judging by the thick layer of strata over the shroud-covered furniture and boxes a scientist could carbon-date the building to the age of Really-old. The only sign of life was a path leading from the staircase to a door in the middle of the single long room. Garrison stood beside the door. "You've gone too far down the rabbit hole to turn back now," he teased.
"Maybe this bunny wants to keep all its feet," I quipped, but I went over to him.
Garrison grasped the knob, but gave me a stern look. "You can come up here as often as you like, but don't tell anyone else you're up here."
I jerked my thumb over to the ladder. "Then you might want to close that thing, because I don't know how."
His serious face was transformed by a sheepish grin. "Oh, right." He scurried over, closed the ladder, then scurried back and slipped on his serious expression. "As I was saying, this is a secret that needs to be kept between us, otherwise I might lose my job."
I crossed my hand over my heart. "Till death do us part."
"I think you're mixing up your promises."
"Pinky swear?"
"Pinky swear." We performed the age-old ritual of the pinky swear, and he turned back to the door. "I have to keep this locked from the inside in case somebody good at jumping roofs does get up here." He unlocked and opened the door.
The exit led to a flat patio that faced east and ran along the entire length of the building. It was five feet wide, and there wasn't any railing at the ends so any slip so there was a sudden drop with a quick stop at the bottom. I had a healthy respect for heights, so I kept two feet away from the edge, but Garrison stepped right up to the edge as confident as a man with a death wish.
He held out his hand to me. "There's nothing to fear but fear itself, and the view is wonderful from here," he encouraged me.
"Fear doesn't have to worry about falling over the side of a five-story building," I countered.
"I'll catch you if you fall," he promised. I looked him up and down, and decided his scrawny frame couldn't catch a cold much less my-ahem, shall we say ample weight.
"I'm quite h
appy hugging myself to the wall in the hopes of not falling to my doom," I assured him.
He sighed and shrugged, but there was a grin on his face. "All right, have it your way, but what do you think of the view?" I opened my mouth, but he held up his hand. "Other than the drop," he added.
My mouth snapped shut and I glanced around for a serious appraisal of this hair-raising high-rise. There was tar paper beneath my feet, the crumbling slant of the roof at my back, and in front of me rose the sun over the city in a scene that took my breath away. The glistening lights reflected off the metal roofs and shining windows, and created a forest of brilliance that nearly blinded me. "I think I need sunglasses," I quipped as I lay my arm over my face.
He laughed. "It is pretty bright, but I've been on a lot of rooftops in my day and this view can't be beaten."
I raised an eyebrow. "What were you doing on rooftops?"
Garrison sheepishly grinned. "Would you believe inspecting the architecture?"
"No."
"Former chimney-sweep?"
"Nope."
"What would you believe?"
"Pervert."
Garrison snorted and shrugged. "Very well, a long time ago I was a pervert."
"A long time ago?"
"We won't get anywhere in this relationship if there isn't any trust."
"Because there isn't. You're keeping secrets, I'm keeping, well, keeping to myself." My life wasn't exciting enough to have lies, much less secrets.
"Well, if we can't have trust we can at least have this place." He held up his arms to the patio. "Come here anytime you like, and if you can't find me I'm usually up here getting a breath of fresh air." A garbage truck passed down below us. "Or at least what constitutes fresh air for a city."
"That's nice of you, but I don't think I can reach the string," I reminded him.
A strange smile slipped onto Garrison's face, like he knew a joke I didn't. It was probably a fat joke. "I'm sure with practice you'll reach it, but let's go down to my apartment and I'll see what I can make for you."
or visit Mac Flynn's website.
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