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  I’m not any better than these other cast-offs, am I?

  Lost. Alone. Broken.

  But even these scraps of humanity don’t notice me.

  Even to them, I’m a freak.

  IT’S LIKE SOME kind of apocalypse out here. Streets cold and empty. Filled with smoke and devoid of movement, except for the dense charcoal cloud that seeps off of the pitch black sky. The smoke is so thick now that the streetlights stand muted and impotent, teardrops of grey in perpetual shadow.

  Goose-pimples rise on my arms.

  I shouldn’t be out here.

  I know it. I feel it. Athwart the gloom.

  Thick as that fog is, as crushing to my senses, I still imagine a faint odour of unwashed primate.

  I hunch my shoulders against the formless night and the strange quiet, and I jam my hands into my pockets, wrapping my fingers around the comfort of that hard glass bottle. I want to steel my reserve. I want to comfort myself. Delude myself. I want to swallow that bottle down right now. Part of me wants that, wants so badly to just curl up in the gutter and swallow that bottle down and feel warm and forgetful and justified.

  But the other part of me knows that’s a lie, and it keeps me moving. My feet shuffling, faster and faster, until I’m running through the darkness, rubber soles pounding against the cement, until the concrete gives way to soft earth and grass, and I collapse, heaving for breath, but warm and filled with something other than misery. I roll and spread myself out on my back in the grass and look up into the black-smoke sky. It’s moving, swirling with black shapes, turning in slow circles, coming closer and closer.

  As much as the smoke suffocates the smells, it seems to amplify the sounds of the night, or maybe it’s just that there’s nothing left alive out here. But that would be a lie too. I can hear them moving. I hear whimpers, tears. Soft and low. Begging for mercy in some ancient tongue. Then I hear the reply.

  “Fucking bitch! Hold her down!”

  “Shut her up!”

  I’m creeping through the trees, weaving through the shadows like a ghost.

  There’s three of them. Bros with flat-brimmed ball caps and belts around the middle of their asses—except one—his belt is around his knees, and he’s fighting his way between the legs of a young Asian girl. She’s thrashing away, clawing, kicking. She doesn’t want to be there. The other two Bros are holding her down. They don’t think I can see them. They think they’re all alone in the dark. They think this is a secret. Officer Friendly, so territorial when I’m sleeping peaceful under the stars, he’s nowhere to be found tonight.

  I can smell her. Lilacs and lemons. The lilacs aren’t real. Perfume, false tones of springtime, cloying and sweet. The lemon is real. It’s covering a hundred other things. Spicy, fragrant things, but the lemon cuts through it like a knife. I smell her fear. Stronger than the lemons.

  Her fear is sharp and exciting, but it’s soon over-powered by a testosterone stink, mixed with cheap body spray and stale beer.

  Then comes the blood. Not much, but I can smell it. I can taste it.

  My heart is pumping faster, my limbs are flushed and tight, muscles knotting and twisting. Some strange new energy is pulsing through me. There are drums pounding in my head, blocking out the misery and the doubt and the fear. Taking away everything that used to be me.

  My hands are curled around the tree, clawing the bark. I feel the wood snap under my fingertips.

  I’m watching them like they’re three little piglets and I’m the big bad wolf.

  Dressed of fur and fierce of tooth.

  The birds are screaming in the trees.

  “Fuck is with those birds, yo?”

  “Shut the fuck up and hold her down!”

  The one that’s trying to wedge himself inside of her—he’s first.

  I bound in from the treeline—fast—faster than I’ve ever been.

  I grab his neck and pull. Rip. Tear. I hurl him on the ground and pounce.

  I smell lemon fading with footsteps in the dark. Smart girl.

  My fists are hammers, heavy and thick, swinging from high above me, as if they were thrown down through the black clouds by Thor himself. Left and right, back and forth, one after the other, swinging wide and high and coming down with all the weight of every terrible misery that has ever darkened my mind or my heart. Nothing is wrong here. No questions, no judgments. Just blood.

  His face is coming apart beneath me. His eyes are lost in folds of swollen meat and awash with red. He’s shoving fingers in my face, clawing for my eyes, finding my jagged teeth. More blood, more screams. The joints pop as they separate, the sinews snapping against my tongue.

  The other bros are pulling at me, pummelling me with their fists and their feet. They are screaming, but their voices swirl and combine with the cheers of the crows in the trees. There’s a legion of them, calling to me, urging me on, daring me to make their supper an easy one.

  I hear them. I understand. I’m hungry too. So hungry.

  His swollen ear bursts in my mouth. The lights behind his eyes have gone out, candles snuffed with a hurricane. He doesn’t even twitch when it pulls free. The cartilage is chewy, rubbery, but the hot rush of fresh blood quenches me.

  I feel something cold slide into my leg, a sharp pain, then the rush of warmth and a glorious, fresh ocean of blood. It overwhelms the rest of my senses. I lift my head and breathe deep. I scream out into the night—not of pain, but of joy.

  The second one freezes when he sees my face. The knife is still in his hand, coated with red. My red. My blood. He staggers away from me, like some stupid kid in a bad slasher flick. He’s holding the knife between us, but so shaky that I could blow it away with a breath. He’s trembling, crying. I feel the heat of the stream of piss before I even smell it. His pants go two shades darker down the front. I smile and spit, launching what’s left of his pal’s ear into his screaming face. Number three is long gone. I hear his manic steps fading into the distance a block away. Number two is mine. I curl my fists in front of me, lick at the blood between the knuckles. There’s something else there, in the spaces where my own skin has faltered and split. Tufts of pink-stained hair stand out where there was none before. Fur.

  I’ve finally lost my mind. Finally.

  It fills me with a tremendous sense of well-being.

  And I smile.

  He doesn’t like that smile. A fresh stream of piss and he shudders and shits himself.

  He throws the knife at me, crawling way on all fours. The birds are all around us, black messengers from the darkness, sent down through the black cloud to announce me. The new me. The better me.

  He screams when I sink my teeth into his cheek. Thrashing away, clawing and kicking.

  He doesn’t want to be here.

  Alone. In the dark. With me.

  10

  I WAKE TO sunlight.

  My eyes open to the light and stare up into the pale blue expanse of the sky. There’s still smoke in the air, but it’s faint, a thin veneer of sepia on the few scattered clouds.

  I move to sit up, expecting the usual creaking and knotting, the initial misery of my day—sore muscles, twisted up in a lack of sleep and reminding me what abuse I have in store for it again. Pleading with me to leave them alone, to rest, to die peacefully and be left to rot.

  Not today.

  I’m on hard ground. In the middle of a broken landscape of carved-out earth. Gravel and grey dirt. I’m surrounded by lagoons of milky white water and towering piles of darker soil. Ant-hill pyramids twenty-feet high.

  I look around, clear-eyed and oddly calm.

  I’m in a construction lot—the scraped earth where nature gives way to man—there’s a tall wire fence on one side of the lot, but the rest is bordered by trees and hills of grass. I’m somewhere near the river. I can smell it, forcing its way through the concrete, metal, and glass. I’m miles away from home.

  I stand and brush the sand and dust from me, feeling taller, stronger, and calmer.

&
nbsp; I realize that the one thing I don’t smell is the monkey stench that had been following me for weeks.

  My hands are black with dirt and something sticky. Red.

  Blood dried into hard shell gloves, cracking and pebbled with grime.

  I breathe deep and long, enjoying the cool morning air free of downtown smells and the press of a thousand other people in my periphery. I kneel at one of the huge pools of rainwater, and I don’t recognize the face that stares back.

  My face is a mask of red, two day stubble turning to a spiky beard, run through with the same sticky black as my hands. There’s a stranger’s eyes staring back at me. Still emerald green, but brilliant and gleaming. Clear and confident. No longer filled with fear and doubt and misery. This face is rugged—handsome even. I splash the water onto my face and scrub, washing my hands, my face, cupping the surprisingly cool and fresh water to my lips.

  I shove my head under and come up laughing.

  I feel . . . good.

  I WALK UNTIL I recognize my surroundings, feeling new strength and surety in my legs. Every muscle in my body feels new and strong. People stare as I pass, ragged and terrible with my shirt and my pants filthy with old blood. It’s not my blood. I checked. Whatever happened to me in the night, it left its mark. Just not enough for me to remember, or care. I scratch at the scrub on my neck and feel the urge to run swell up in my new legs.

  It starts as a jog across the beltline into Seventeenth Avenue, bouncing across in front of traffic, pouncing through cars locked in stasis, humming at stoplights, rumbling at the curbs. I bound into the crowd and break free, legs pumping harder, body moving quicker. My lungs are open, every part of me working as if I was made to run. The faster I run, the less I notice the world around me. The smells merge and disappear, the voices fade, the faces melt into a blur, and I’m sensing my way forward, dodging bodies and cars and turning corners by feel until I come roaring across First Avenue and that smell hits me like a wailing siren. The hot monkey stink. I trip once coming to the curb and barrel—shoulder first—into the endless brick tower of my own building, crumpling against the wall and slumping to my ass on the sidewalk.

  It’s filling my nose now, so close. Closer than it’s ever been. I turn a wide nostril toward the alley, following it, seeking it out.

  And there he is, down the alley, staring right at me. The monkey man. An unwashed animal wrapped up in dirty jeans and a leather vest. He’s smiling.

  “Are you ok? That was a pretty hard landing. I think you’re bleeding.”

  Another smell I knew all too well. I turn my head to stare up into her curious eyes. The redhead from the thirtieth floor. I flick my eyes back down the alley too late, and my stalker is gone.

  “Hey. Are you ok?”

  She’s wearing a purple sundress, and she has an armful of books and a leather purse clutched to her chest. Those long legs are bare to the thigh.

  The scent of her blood is faint, stemmed with cotton, her time almost passed, but it still overpowers everything else around me. My eyes roll back as I breathe it in. Taste it. The taste of it is in my mouth, but stronger than before. There are terrible things flashing through my mind. Screaming and fear, and geysers of blood. The taste of flesh on my tongue. My stomach cramps at the thought of it. Hunger. Deep and terrible hunger.

  She backs away as I get up from the ground, creeping forward, matching every step she takes.

  The fear comes into her pretty blue eyes. Wide and pleading. She’s backing out into the sidewalk, people are passing us by, turning to look, but no one stops, no one utters a word. They all start backing away. I’m clearing a path between us. The blood is feeding me, drifting through my lungs, into my heart, pushing it harder, faster, the power of it pounding in my ears, rushing through my bones like lightning.

  She turns to run. I can see it now, like a red trail behind her, flowing out like a line on a map.

  She breaks for the intersection, ten steps ahead of me. She’s in the street, screaming now, the red is flowing like a river, forging a path between us. My eyes are locked on her legs. Those legs I want to tear apart, swallow whole, juicy and firm and full of life. I see it in my mind, gnawing on the bones beneath, feeling the soft sponge of the marrow in my teeth.

  I pounce, launched like a rocket by new legs, through the air and flying. Powerful. Free.

  Yellow fills my eyes. There is the sound of thunder. The force of the entire world screeching to a stop. A thousand screams. I am swatted into darkness. Her smell and her screams are fading. There is blood. New blood. My blood. I recognize that smell, but it’s fading too. Everything is fading. Everything is black.

  11

  “COME ON, FINN. Run with me.”

  The echoes. The white walls that move. Her voice. Young and high and calling me.

  “Finn. Come on, Finn.”

  The room is shifting, the echoes longer, farther away. I’m losing her to the darkness, the white walls shifting quickly to shadow. My mother’s voice gone. Little Emma calling me.

  “Run, Finn.”

  I’m staring down at my own hands, bloody and torn. Something sticky there. Something mixed with the blood.

  Cloth?

  Hair.

  I scratch at my own hands with long nails—not nails—claws. Pulling at bits of stuff. Stuffing. Fluff. I’m bursting at the seams like Dr. Rhodes’ fucking chair. I claw deeper, skin splitting and tearing away like paper. There is no more blood. No blood, just thick white hair.

  Fur.

  Dressed of fur and fierce of tooth.

  The scream comes from deep inside my throat and bursts from my nose, my mouth, my eyes.

  My hands are in front of my face, out toward the distance. I’m staring down the long hallway, between the white fur of my hands, ribbons and scraps of paper-skin left dangling like streamers from my clenched fists.

  The screaming. The blood. They begin like another echo, down that long hallway.

  I blink, and my eyes open wide in new light. I’m under the bed now, watching, as they change.

  Two people. Naked. A man and a woman. She is beautiful. Like the little girl, dark hair and olive eyes. He is tall and thick with muscle, covered with thick hair.

  She claws at his face as he grips her arms, both drawing crimson trails beneath their fingertips. Their faces are twisting, breaking, falling apart in front of me, faces falling away to reveal gnashing fangs beneath. Nothing but teeth. So many teeth.

  I hear screaming. Loud and piercing. Like a thousand crows calling in unison, screeching with all their might. It’s coming from inside me. I feel a touch against my hand. I don’t recoil. I don’t start. It’s warm, comforting. Tiny fingers wrapping around mine. She is beside me. I turn and look into those olive eyes, so deep and calm. There are vast forests inside the green of those eyes.

  “Run, Finn,” she says. “Run away home.”

  I WAKE TO white hot fluorescent light.

  My eyes open and stare at the water-stained, pockmarked tile ceiling of a room that scares me. Deep in my bones, I feel that this place is wrong. Dangerous. False.

  Machines clicking. Beeping. A cavalcade of noise beyond the walls. Crying. Pleading. Groaning. Shouting voices.

  And the smells. So many smells. Cleaners. Harsh and poisonous. Shit and piss. Vomit and blood. I’m in a hospital. Whether it’s a hospital, or a hospital, remains to be seen. Whichever kind of place this is, there is death here, I can smell it.

  I can smell him. The ape-man. The unwashed man, sweaty and dirty, no chemicals and perfumes on this one.

  I try to move, twisting at my wrists, heaving against thick leather straps at my wrists, ankles, thighs, and chest. My head is free, with enough give in the straps to strain a few inches to turn and look at the man standing against the wall, his stink sheathed in light blue hospital scrubs. His face is tan and leathery, his cheeks and neck textured with a scrub of thick stubble. His long dark hair is tangled behind him with some sort of leather strap. Not the sort of man who w
orks in a hospital, or wears light blue.

  “Where the fuck am I?” I croak, in someone else’s broken voice, “Tied down.”

  “Yes, mate,” the man warbles back. Kiwi? Aussie? “The doctors think you might pose a spot of trouble, I reckon.”

  “Please?” I groan, tugging weakly at the straps.

  “Oh I couldn’t do that, Jim. Not yet.” He grins a mouth of yellow teeth, blank spaces here and there, like a broken fence. He’s flipping through pages on a clipboard. “Says here you puked up some bloody fingers, mate! Fingers! That must have been a bitch to bring up.”

  “I didn’t . . . what am I?”

  “What are you in for?” The man chuckles, “All I know, son, is that they’ve been out there in the hall talking about your Doctor Rhodes. Something about second time this week, and mandatory psych evaluation. Whatever it is you did, they think you’re bonkers!” He sits down next to me on the bed, reaches out, and playfully pats my head. When he raises his arm, the smell of him punches me right in the face. I try to twist away from it, feeling a mad terror spread through my body like wildfire, welling up in my chest and bleeding out into my limbs, twitching at each spot that was locked down against me.

  “Now!” this fake orderly continues, “I have been tasked with making sure that your paperwork is correct, Jimmy-boy!”

  Australian. Definitely Australian, and badly in need of a bath, or a firehose.

  I know his smell. The smell that has followed me for weeks. Who the fuck is this guy? Where the hell am I?

  “Finn Bar MacTyre, aged thirty-five . . .” he grins again, showing me all the spaces in his face, “Now ain’t that a bloody handle?”