Best New Werewolf Tales (Vol. 1) (29 page)

I strut into the kitchen with a towel around my waist. I smelt eggs cooking on the stove. Norita leaned over the skillet in full concentration, a queen doing a peasant’s duty. I tip toed behind her. With a quick pinch on her butt, I sent the spatula flying from her hand and the red rushed to her cheeks.

“You watch you hands, Mister,” she said through a half smile. “My word Bill, have you been working out without telling me?”

“Honey, you know I retired ‘cause of my bad back.” I reminded her while sitting down at the table.

“Well, I don’t know, but you’re looking awfully healthy this morning.” She turned back to her eggs and beneath the cracking of the shells and the sizzling of the yolk she asked, “How is your arm today, dear?”

“My arm?” I forgot, and for good reason. What was once a row of deep gashes was now small specks of scar tissue. “I guess it wasn’t as bad as I thought.”

“Well, you always do over react.” She smiled and slid some eggs onto my plate and then her own. Staring into the dry yellow clumps, my stomach rumbled disapproval. Without a word, without asking, I stood up, tossed the eggs into the garbage and searched the freezer for steak. “I worked all morning to make you those eggs.” Norita stood to confront me, crossing her arms over her chest. “I know you’re looking for steak, but you won’t find any in there. All you will find is sandwich meat in the refrigerator.”

“Fine, I’ll eat the lunch meat then.” I growled and Norita took a step back. Gathering myself, I cleared my throat, grabbed the bag of sliced turkey breast from the fridge and walked to the living room. Grabbing the remote and joyfully running my fingers through my hair, I dropped into my favorite chair and exhaled slowly.

“Well, okay then, Shiny. You enjoy your day off, but I’m going to do some more laundry.” I winced and grumbled at each slipper slap I heard while she headed down into the basement.

My thumb pressed the remote while my other hand crammed slices of meat into my mouth. “No hockey, no football, no cops. What the hell am I supposed to watch?” My thumb beat upon the remote like a woodpecker on a tree. Then, I stopped and found myself in a trance, stuck on the Discovery Channel watching “Predators of the Wild.” On the TV, a lioness was chasing a zebra, full pursuit with the cameraman on her tail. I leaned forward in excitement and, like watching a running back break free and head for a touchdown; I began to cheer on the lioness. “Go. Go!” And with a final pounce, the zebra was dragged to the ground and its throat torn open.

The turkey didn’t satisfy my hunger. The lioness chewed into the zebra’s belly, tearing through the skin like knives through cloth. Her face covered in red, she licked her lips eagerly and I did the same.

Suddenly, the air was thick like I felt that morning. I felt my ear angle backwards and, immediately after, a scream erupted from the basement like a breeze escaping a cave. The smell was familiar. I knew the taste. It was fear. I crawled to the basement; hand over hand with knees following.

“Bill! Spider!” I normally ran to her assistance during spider attacks, but I found myself taking my time, savoring the scent like a glutton of her fear. “Bill, hurry!”

I reached the steps and, still on all fours, proceeded down. My hands began to lengthen. My jaw was uncomfortable, sore like chewing gum for too long and I opened and closed my mouth trying to stretch the muscles. I put my chin to my chest and saw my torso elongate and my ribs cracked and repositioned themselves. I howled in agony while my skeleton broke apart and reformed. My fingernails scraped the concrete floor and I licked my lips. I could hear the neighborhood dogs barking in the distance. I could hear their encouragement. I heard their envy in each outburst. They could smell it too. The taste of her fear and sweat made me drool. Thick strands of saliva dripped to the floor.

“William…” I glared at her from behind a nose that shone black and moist like an olive. Her body tensed. I could see her muscles tighten beneath her skin. My mind was possessed with a single thought. There was no remorse, no doubt, no sympathy as to what I was going to do. With one last look into the queen’s eyes, I leapt onto her and began to tear, claw, and bite. My appetite was immense, and the steak was delicious.

SILVER ANNIVERSARY

STEPHEN M. WILSON

GOD with honor hang your head,

Groom, and grace you, bride, your bed

With lissome scions, sweet scions,

Out of hallowed bodies bred.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, “At the Wedding March”

She gave him rich dainties

Whenever he fed,

And erected this monument

When he was dead.

“The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard and Her Dog”

“‘Beer before wine’ or ‘wine before beer’?” she mumbled to herself as she grabbed the gallon jug of port from a cupboard that, minus the bottle, was now bare, “fuck, I don’t remember. Maybe it’s ‘drink before smoke’ or ‘smoke before drink’?”

She smirked.

“Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.”

She giggled.

Who said that… Dorothy Parker… Mae West?
She searched her memory,
Liquor quicker? Lick her—

“Lick her quicker!” she said aloud.

She screamed.

In a daze, she set the bottle on the table and then, sidestepping the mess on the floor as if she did not see it, retrieved a twelve-pack from the otherwise bare refrigerator and set the beer next to the wine.

“Well it doesn’t much matter, I guess,” she answered her own questions.

Bare, bloodied, and bewildered, she dropped into the one chair that accompanied the table and began to drink.

Everyone leaves
, she thought,
everyone abandons.
Husbands, children…

Nearly six years had past since her own whelps had turned eighteen and left her, the only contact, a postcard Rom had sent her two years ago from Argentina. Just four short sentences:

Dear Mom,

I have joined Greenpeace. Remie is in Budapest collecting Hungarian folklore. We love you.

She often wondered if they too had taken unsuspecting brides.

Don’t focus on such things
, she thought as she rolled a joint,
sometimes they return.
She had learned that lesson all too well this evening.

She inhaled deeply on the stick, embracing the thick cloud of momentary forgetfulness that filled her.

An hour later, mercifully stoned, she dragged an old trunk from beneath her bed.

She rummaged through a past embodied by aged photographs and ancient love letters, before finding what she was looking for.

The smell of mothballs, dust, and memories permeated the ivory-colored linen of the wedding dress as she removed it from the trunk. She spread the gown over the frayed bedspread then returned to the trunk. After a few more moments of sifting through nostalgia, she found a pair of silk hose that had been out-of-date since the invention of nylon and two age-stiffened red lace garters. She placed these remnants of her prior bloom, alongside the bridal vestige on the bed and then stared at the ensemble for a long time before returning to slide the trunk back beneath it.

As she was closing the lid, something caught her eye. She pushed the various relics of her youth to one side, revealing a black wig that had a little hat attached to it with bobby-pins. It seemed a lifetime since she had been an airline stewardess.

At the sight of the black hair, something ugly scratched at the surface of her mind then flitted away before it could be realized.

She retrieved the wig and returned to the bed, leaving the trunk in the middle of the floor.

She ignored the blood that was drying on her hands and forearms as she slowly, ceremoniously donned the treasures from her past, Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus” trilling through her addled brain. Afterwards, she took a small mirror from atop the chest-of-drawers and glided into the living room.

She placed the mirror on an end table otherwise occupied by an antique brass lamp. This she turned off. She floated across the matted green shag wall-to-wall and raised the tattered shade on the one small window in the apartment. The light of the full Autumn moon shone bright as it streamed through the dingy lace curtains giving the tiny room an ethereal glow.

A tear coursed through her blood-caked cheek. She put a heavily scratched vintage vinyl on the turntable and began to dance around the small apartment.

“Lavender blue, dilly, dilly…” she joined Burl Ives in a surreal duet.

She occasionally paused to take a swig or a toke, or to light a cigarette, but would quickly resume her reverie. At one point she tried to stand on her head, but she crashed to the floor laughing. After a while, the matter within her skull was spinning.

She plopped down onto a threadbare orange velour sofa and lifted the mirror to stare at her reflection. Through the haze of alcohol and pot, she saw herself as she must have looked to him on that night twenty-five years earlier.

“Hi there, purtty,” she said to the mirror, “yera hot little number.”

Her blood-smeared doppelganger cackled.

She gasped.

She threw the mirror across the room, where it hit the record. The amplified blare of needle scratching across vinyl momentarily replaced the music.

Then there was silence.

She screamed.

She vacated the sofa and flowed into the kitchen.

She approached the heap that lay in the middle of the floor.

She dropped to one knee, almost slipping in the tacky blood.

When she pulled the large silver crucifix from the corpse, it exited quicker than she expected and she fell on her ass.

She quickly righted herself then watched in morbid fascination as viscera spilled to tile before the black hair slowly closed around the wound.

She drifted on the sea of blackening blood, the cross gripped tightly in both hands like an oar. As she stared at the pelage, a quarter of a century of both indignation and desolation passed in seconds.

She kicked the carcass once. Then, wedging her feet against it and leaning back on her hands for leverage, she pushed.

It took some effort but eventually she was able to roll the beast over onto its back. One of her shoes was pulled from her foot by the motion, its sharp heel now buried in the creature’s pelt.

“Ain’t that somethin’.” She dragged her stocking-clad foot through the tacky pool surrounding the mongrel.

She released her grip on the makeshift weapon and, after it clattered to the tile, studied intently the blood that also coated the feet of the figure of Christ that adorned it.

Even in her inebriated condition, the irony of the crucifix did not escape her.

Twenty-five years ago, after consummating their marriage, her groom had stepped out for a smoke and disappeared.

The next morning, on the pillow that should have been cradling his dark curls, she had instead found an unmarked package wrapped in plain brown butcher paper and tied with twine.

She postponed opening it, afraid of the truth that it might contain.

After the first month, spent searching for her husband, she realized that, like Larry, her monthly curse had also disappeared.

Tears sluiced the gore from her face as she leaned forward and started to stroke the black bristly pelt.

“You bastard. You goddamned fucking bastard.”

Larry had made no bones about his staunch atheism, so when she had lifted the crucifix from the cradle of layered tissue paper in which it was nestled, she had stared at it in confused fascination. She spent months trying to decipher its meaning, as well as the cryptic note that accompanied it, scrawled in his own hand.

That was until the twins had reached puberty.

The hair.

The blood.

The stigmata.

With her sons, the mystery had eventually revealed itself to her.

For twenty-five years she had anticipated this night with both longing and dread.

She reached into her bodice to retrieve the note, stiff and yellowed with age. Her eyes drifted one last time over the faded script:

My Dearest Jenny,

I cannot explain, nor can I tell you how sorry that I am to leave you this way. Always keep Christ close. Someday, you will know when, my gift will be your salvation…

She had read it so many times that the words were scored on her heart. She crumpled the note and then threw it at the corpse, the remaining words echoing in her mind:

…for even the man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the Autumn moon shines bright.”

Your loving husband,

Lawrence Talbot

BUY A GOAT FOR CHRISTMAS

ANNA TABORSKA

The moment Pierre saw the tank he fell madly in love with it. It was large and chunky, its rotting green paint barely covering the blood-colored flecks of rust beneath. Pierre ran his hand over the gun barrel, wincing as he caught his finger on a sliver of flaking paint. He sucked his bleeding finger and ran his other hand over the side of the tank, his eyes glowing like those of a schoolboy who’s just realized that toads pop when you blow them up with a straw.

Not many people remembered the time before the war, but Pierre did. He remembered when a traveling cinema had come to the nearest town. He’d borrowed a donkey from one of his neighbors and ridden to the cinema. The film showing was ‘The Exorcist’. Some of the other locals had walked out in protest, a few women had fainted, and a little boy got possessed and had to be taken to the local priest after the screening. Pierre was in seventh heaven: thrilled, terrified, moved—one emotion after another and all at once. Pierre rode out to town every day, for the three days before the cinema was closed down and the projectionist thrown out of town for blasphemy and perverting the God-fearing locals. It was during the third and final screening that Pierre realised his life’s ambition: to be able to say, “your mother sucks cocks in hell” in every language on earth. From that day on, until war broke out, Pierre worked towards fulfilling his ambition and tried out the language skills he was acquiring on any tourist who passed through this godforsaken part of the world. Pierre often sported a black eye.