Skin (23 page)
Authors: Kate Krake
Tags: #romance, #sexy, #werewolves, #gym, #body modification, #monsters, #fight club, #mma, #hybrids, #gladiators
I dropped my
head back onto the pillow and let the tears fall. Sveta stroked my
forehead.
I had gone
from Natural, to Animus and apparently Mech and now, what was I? A
shell, scared and torn and broken and useless. I cried. At least I
still had Sveta.
“
Quiello,” I said. “I took him, sold him to pay for
the—”
“
I
know,” she whispered. “Don’t worry, he’s home and safe.”
“
I’m
sorry, Sveta.”
“
I
know,” she said. She stroked her hand from my hair to chin and left
it resting on my cheek. “You’re going to be OK, Rev.”
“
Take me
home,” I said, it was a plea. I needed to get out of this hard bed
and away from these lights and noises. I needed to be home, holding
her close and burying my face into that space where her neck met
her shoulder, that place where nothing else mattered expect for the
warm softness of her skin and the way she smelled.
“
I
can’t,” she whispered. She leaned in close and kissed me, a single
soft kiss on my forehead. “Goodbye my love.”
She released
her hand from mine and turned. The door closed softly behind her. I
knew that would be the last time I saw her.
Walking to the End
I shuffle
forward in the slow moving line. The guy in front of me smells like
piss. The guy behind me smells like shit. I suppose I smelled the
same.
“
Hurry
up.” Shit smell guy shoves me in the back with his bowl, hard
enough to make me stumble, falling into the back of piss smell guy.
The small crowd erupts into a guffaw. The canvas bag containing
everything I own— a nature magazine I found in the park and a clean
pair of socks and a water bottle— slides off my shoulder and onto
the floor. It’s too heavy. They laugh at me again.
“
Watch
it, asshole,” he growls.
When he
turns, I recognise the guy they only call Max. He
’s
big, but I’ve seen bigger. Once, I could have torn him in half and
that was even before I had my dragon skin. Now, I just cower,
apologising and hope he doesn't take it the wrong way. With these
guys, living on the streets, you just never know what the wrong way
is and whether or not it changes from moment to moment.
I reach the
front of the queue, holding out my bowl for the girl to slop in the
gunk they call soup. It is thin and grey like old drain waste and
you can taste the synthetic whatever, stirred in from a packet with
too much water to make it stretch that extra bit.
“
Thanks.” I smile. No one else ever thanks the staff. She
smiles at me, through me. She doesn't see me. She just sees my
filthy clothes, the grime on my skin, the dark under my eyes. When
I turn around she will see the bald patchy hair on the back of my
head, the stretched and wrinkled scar tissue from where my dragon
skin had been removed. I am just another charity for her, not a
person, just an element of the job she is likely only doing to make
herself feel good. She looks like Victoria. If she saw what I
looked like beneath this dirty shirt, she would see me as a
monster.
I take a seat
alone at one of the long benches. The soup is hot and that alone is
comfort enough that I am still alive and might continue to be for
just another day.
It is
just on dark. The after work hustle moves through the Downtown
street outside the window. No one pays any attention to the bums in
the men
’s shelter, if they even knew what it was
behind these windows. I’d never even known it was there. Another
Guessing secret.
I had
been sitting on the kerb on the corner near what used to be my
Saturn
’s and was now Prime Fitness. Heavy bass beats
pulsed from inside, young and pretty, colourful people moved in and
out of the doors, looking like exotic birds. There was a poster in
the from window—Primal Mass, for Natural Gains. Those fucking
pills. I punched the glass, shattering my knuckles. The security
guard came outside to tell me off, rough me up. A priest came, took
me up the street into the place I now sit, slurping on soup and
trying not to piss anyone off. Trying not to be seen. Trying not to
be anything.
For the
first weeks, I could barely walk. The pain in my legs where there
used to be super strength was less now and I can walk a few blocks
without resting. And that
’s what I do. I walk. I don’t
look up to think that she might be looking back down from her
eyrie. I don’t go anywhere near Sanctuary in case I see anyone I
used to know. I saw Victoria walking with Delaney, his arm around
her waist, a fat diamond on her hand. They looked happy. Now I
don’t go near Prime Life.
I
don
’t think about everything I lost. Everyone I have
been. I was Rev. Before that someone else. I was Priest. Now I just
walk from one end of the city to the other and back again until the
end. I eat what I can from wherever I find it, trying to put my
body back together with what scraps remain. I only have my body.
That’s all anyone has.
THE END.
Author
Kate
Krake writes in different genres but has been in
love with dark urban fantasy since before the genre existed. With a
long established passion for the odd, the scary and the whimsical,
Kate created Guessing as a place where she could explore lots of
different weird avenues, strange streets and curious corners in a
variety of fiction formats.
When
she's
not wandering the streets of Guessing, Kate
lives in Brisbane, Australia with her husband, daughter, and two
beagles.
Kate blogs about
writing on
The Write Turn
.
Subscribe
to my newsletter to keep up to date with my adventures in writing
and publishing.
More from Kate
Krake on Smashwords
Welcome to
Guessing.
Population: Darkness. Strangeness.
Fear.
Walk through streets
in a city where things are sometimes not as they seem, where the
curious and the monstrous can appear on any corner, where warriors
fight, where demons lurk, where ordinary people in ordinary lives
might prefer to look the other way rather than turn to see what
might be looking back at them from the shadows.
Guessing
Tales
brings their stories together.
Guessing Tales
is a collection of short stories, serialised fiction and other
tales written by
Kate Krake
. Each story takes
place in some corner of Guessing, a sprawling metropolis that lives
and breathes as much as any of her inhabitants. Each story and
serial can be read as a standalone complete work, however some
overlap of character and incident links some stories.
Other Guessing
Tales Novels
