The Urban Fantasy Anthology (38 page)

Actually that would have been pretty good, except Billy probably would have broken my nose for me again, or worse, if I’d tried it.

“Kelsey?” he goes, sounding mad.

I didn’t want him stomping off home in a huff. I moved up closer, and I let the bushes swish a little around my shoulders.

He goes, “Hey, Kelse, it’s late, where’ve you been?”

I listen to the words, but mostly I listen to the little thread of worry flickering in his voice, low and high, high and low, as he tried to figure out what was going on.

I let out the whisper of a growl.

He stood real still, staring at the bushes, and he goes, “That you, Kelse? Answer me.”

I was wild inside. I couldn’t wait another second. I tore through the bushes and leaped for him, flying.

He stumbled backward with a squawk—”What!”—jerking his hands up in front of his face, and he was just sucking in a big breath to yell with when I hit him like a demo-derby truck.

I jammed my nose past his feeble claws and chomped down hard on his face.

No sound came out of him except this wet, thick gurgle, which I could more taste than hear because the sound came right into my mouth with the gush of his blood and the hot mess of meat and skin that I tore away and swallowed.

He thrashed around, hitting at me, but I hardly felt anything through my fur. I mean, he wasn’t so big and strong laying there on the ground with me straddling him all lean and wiry with wolf-muscle. And plus, he was in shock. I got a strong whiff from below as he let go of everything right into his pants.

Dogs were barking, but so many people around Baker’s Park have dogs to scare away burglars, and the dogs make such a racket all the time, that nobody pays any attention. I wasn’t worried. Anyway, I was too busy to care.

I nosed in under what was left of Billy’s jaw and I bit his throat out.

Now let him go around telling lies about people.

His clothes were a lot of trouble and I really missed having hands. I managed to drag his shirt out of his belt with my teeth, though, and it was easy to tear his belly open. Pretty messy, but once I got in there, it was better than Thanksgiving dinner. Who would think that somebody as horrible as Billy Linden could taste so
good?

He was barely moving by then, and I quit thinking about him as Billy Linden any more. I quit thinking at all, I just pushed my muzzle in and pulled out delicious, steaming chunks and ate until I was picking at tidbits, and everything was getting cold.

On the way home I saw a police car cruising the neighborhood the way they do sometimes. I hid in the shadows and of course they never saw me.

There was a lot of washing up to do that night, and when Hilda saw my sheets in the morning she shook her head. She goes, “You should be more careful about keeping track of your period so as not to get caught by surprise like this.”

Everybody in school knew something had happened to Billy Linden, but it wasn’t until the day after that they got the word. Kids stood around in little huddles trading rumors about how some wild animal had chewed Billy up. I would walk up and listen in and add a really gross remark or two, part of the game of thrilling each other green and nauseous with made-up details to see who would upchuck first.

Not me, though it was a near thing. I mean, when somebody went on about how Billy’s whole head was gnawed down to the skull and they didn’t even know who he was except from the bus pass in his wallet, I got a little urpy. It’s amazing the things people will dream up.

But when I thought about what I had actually done to Billy, I had to smile. And it felt totally wonderful to walk through the halls without having anybody yelling, “Hey, Boobs!”

There are people who just plain do not deserve to live. And the same goes for Fat Joey, if he doesn’t quit crowding me in science lab, trying to get a feel.

One funny thing, though, I don’t get periods at all any more. I get a little crampy, and my breasts get sore, and I break out more than usual—and then instead of bleeding, I change.

Which is fine with me, though I take a lot more care now about how I hunt on my wolf nights. I stay away from Baker’s Park. The suburbs go on for miles and miles, and there are lots of places I can hunt and still get home by morning. A running wolf can cover a lot of ground.

And I make sure I make my kills where I can eat in private, so no cop car can catch me unawares, which could easily have happened that night when I killed Billy, I was so deep into the eating thing that first time. I look around a lot more now when I’m on a kill, I keep watch.

Good thing it’s only once a month this happens, and only a couple of nights. “The Full Moon Killer” has the whole state up in arms and terrified as it is. Eventually I guess I’ll have to go somewhere else, which I’m not looking forward to at all. If I can just last until I can have a car of my own, life will get a lot easier.

Meantime, some wolf nights I don’t even feel like hunting. Mostly I’m not as hungry as I was those first times. I think I must have been storing up my appetite for a long time. Sometimes now I just prowl around, and I run, boy do I run. If I am hungry, sometimes I eat garbage instead of killing somebody. It’s no fun, but you do get a taste for it. I don’t mind garbage as long as once in a while I can have the real thing fresh-killed, nice and wet. People can be awfully nasty, but they sure taste sweet.

I do pick and choose, though. I look for people sneaking around in the middle of the night, like Billy waiting in the park that time. I figure they’ve got to be out looking for trouble at that hour, so whose fault is it if they find it? I have done a lot more for the burglary problem around Baker’s Park than a hundred dumb “watchdogs,” believe me.

Gerry-Anne is not only talking to me again, she has invited me to go on a double-date with her. Some guy she met at a party invited her, and he has a friend. They’re both from Fawcett Junior High across town, which will be a nice change. I was nervous, but finally I said yes. We’re going to the movies next weekend. My first real date! I am still pretty nervous, to tell the truth.

For New Year’s, I have made two solemn vows.

One is that on this date I will not worry about my chest, I will not be self-conscious, even if the guy stares.

The other is, I’ll never eat another dog.

Farewell, My Zombie

Francesca Lia Block

They call a male P.I. a private Dick. So what would they call me? Not a C word or a V word, that would be much too offensive. There are plenty of Dicks but no Vaginas walking around. That just wouldn’t be right, now would it? Maybe my title would be Jane. Private Jane. Dick and Jane. Makes you wonder why Jane hasn’t been used as a nickname for female genitalia before. Better than a lot of them. Men have a nicer selection.

It was one of those warm L.A. autumn days when you felt guilty if you were at the beach while other people were working or freezing their asses off somewhere, and even more guilty if you were sitting in an office letting your life slip away. That’s what I was doing. Sitting in my office with my black-booted feet up on the table (even though it was too hot for boots), staring at the window, wondering why I wasn’t at the beach. But I knew why. The beach made me think of Max. I tried to distract myself by poking around some paranormal activity websites on the Mac. There was an extended family in the Midwest who ghost hunted together. They had a disclaimer on their site that they could turn down any job that felt too dangerous. The woman kept spelling the word “were” like “where” and “You’re” like “your.” That happened so much online I wondered if someone had officially changed it and not told me.

That was when I got the call.

“Merritt,” I said.

“Jane Merritt?” the caller asked.

“Speaking.”

“Sorry, I…I need some help.”

“That’s what we’re here for. You’ll just need to come in and fill out some forms.”

There was a silence on the line and for a second I thought the call had dropped.

“Hello?”

“Uh, yeah. Thanks. Sorry.”

“So when would you like to come in? Everything perfectly confidential, of course.”

“Thanks. Sorry. It’s about my father.”

“I see. Yes.”

“He’s a monster.”

I waited for the giggling on the other end. She was obviously very young. I got calls like this all the time. Curious teens with too much time on their hands.

No giggling.

“I mean really,” she said. “A real monster.”

Then she hung up.

No one else called that day. Business had been slow. I left the office early and stopped at the West L.A. Trader Joe’s for a few groceries. Bagels, cream cheese, apples, celery, the cheapest Pinot Noir I could find and a tub of cat cookies, plus a can of food for David. I wanted to buy myself flowers because that’s what all the women’s magazines tell you to do when you haven’t been fucked in too long, but I decided not to waste the money. There was a big bouquet of fourteen white roses with a pink cast. They looked pretty good but I knew they’d blow up in a few days in this weather, petals loosening from their cluster and drifting to the floor. Besides, roses were another thing that reminded me of Max.

I went home and watched CNN while David and I ate dinner. Bad news as usual. The economy, disasters, war. Not to mention global warming and assorted acts of violence. It was like a horror movie, really. I drank the whole bottle of wine. Then I took a bath and went to bed. I had really weird dreams about letting Max go by himself on a train at night and then realizing what I had done and not being able to get anyone to understand why I was so upset when he didn’t come home. Dreams are cruel; they won’t let you forget.

Coco Hart came to see me about a week later. She was a beautiful girl in a private school uniform skirt and blouse and a ratty sweatshirt that was too hot for the weather. Her long hair up in a ponytail and makeup so lightly and carefully applied that only the most discerning eyes would notice it there. She looked perfectly well-adjusted but her fingernails were bitten down so far that it hurt to look at them.

“I called you,” she said after she’d introduced herself. Her eyes darted around the room trying to find clues. I don’t have any in this tiny, dingy office. Not even a photo of Max. I had to hide it in a drawer.

“About your father?”

She nodded.

“Is he hurting you?”

“No,” she said. “Sorry. It’s not that.”

“You can tell me. I’m here to help.”

“Thank you. You were the only woman I could find. Well except that one who tries to entrap the guys by wearing wigs in their favorite color.”

People always mention her when they come to see me. I’m nothing like that Amazon. Just cause we are both Janes.

“So why not her?”

“I heard that interview with you.”

There’s only been one. It was in conjunction with the new
X-Files
movie. The local news compared me to Fox Mulder because of my interest in the paranormal. I expected business to boom after that but it didn’t. In L.A. you have to look like a movie star with big tits or be a guy to make it big in this business. I’m neither.

In the interview I talked a little about some weird, dark stuff, the kind of thing teenagers and
X-Files
fans eat up. But most teens aren’t going around hiring a P.I. and the
X-Files
fans would rather watch David Duchovny reruns. Like the famous female P.I. who wears the wigs, he has a lot more sex appeal than I do.

Coco put her hand to her mouth as if she were about to chew on what was left of her nails, then thought better of it and folded her hands tightly in her plaid-skirted lap. She looked out at the sunny fall day. The leaves on the tree outside my window looked like they were on fire. I didn’t know what kind of tree it was. I wondered why Coco was here and not at some mall with her friends or something.

She took some crumpled bills out of her sweatshirt pocket and put them on the table.

“That’s all I have,” she said. “But I’ll get more.”

“And you want me to do what exactly?”

“Oh. Uh. Sorry.” She hesitated. “Do you believe in zombies?” she said, finally.

Fuck.

Sorry, but I am not going to pretend to you that I am normal. I am not normal in any way. Yes I shop at Trader Joe’s and watch CNN, get my hair cut on a regular basis, shower and use deodorant. I wear my dark hair scraped back in a tight bun like I did on the force, and dress in flat-front black trousers and white stretch button-down shirts from the Limited and black heels or flats or boots from Macy’s.

When I got out of the hospital they let me live in the trailer in the backyard of what used to be my home. I can see my old house through the trailer window. It is a long, low structure painted avocado green. My ex and I were always planning on repainting it but we never got around to that. Then Kimmy came and picked the green. It looks nasty, even monstrous in certain lights. I planted the roses in the garden but I’ve stopped trying to take care of them. Once Kimmy came out while I was watering and weeding. I said, “Sorry,” and scuttled back into my trailer. The roses remind me.

At night I stay up watching the windows of my old bedroom until the lights go out.

I went into this work because I didn’t know what else to do. I thought it would help me forget to get up every day and go to my little office on Washington. It helps me forget that I was ever Max’s mom but it makes me remember the hospital and the doctor’s face, as I sit here waiting for someone who really needs me to come in.

I mostly just follow cheating husbands and wives. Once I followed a woman who was engaged to two men at the same time. The guy that hired me was so upset he started crying in my office. Then he wanted me to dress up like her and fuck him. That was the most eventful case I’d handled so far. But the thing that happened with Max made me open to the possibility of stuff that wasn’t so easy to understand.

Coco told me that her father had been behaving very strangely. She’d seen him eating flesh in big, gross, salivating bites and it didn’t look like cow, pig, goat, lamb, chicken or turkey. Let’s just say that. And he never spoke anymore. After his stroke he shambled around the house with these heavy steps just staring at the floor. He grumbled and grimaced and that was all. His skin was a weird shade of greenish white and once when he was asleep she’d felt for a pulse and there wasn’t one there. He smelled bad, too.