Horizons
In the final days of high school, a wolf takes his boyfriend on a road trip down to California, but their relationship meets some unexpected detours as they lose their way and end up spending time in a small-town motel.
Another of my early stories that I'm rather proud of. Like many of these beginning stories they were experiments in exploring struggling relationships while far more serious concerns are occurring behind the scenes; in this case, it's not quite yet an actual relationship until midway into the story.
Horizons
1
Alex woke up painfully to the hot morning sun stabbing its blinding rays into his light brown eyes. He had been sleeping on his right side, which was numb and ached stiffly as he trounced up and down in the passenger seat. He sneered at the bastard sun and yawned, pulling up the sunglasses from the cord that looped around his neck and drawing them over his eyes.
He glanced over his shoulder and looked at the wolf, whose eyes were rapidly shifting from the road to a large map that he held in one hand. There was a scowl on his face, and a dark half-circle of sweat stained his olive green t-shirt.
The sight of frustration and suffering on Jake's face gave the little red fox a kind of morbid joy. After all, it was Jake's idea that they go on this road trip, and it was Jake who kept pressing him to go with him. Jake, who insisted that he go to the extent of begging his boss at the bar & grill for two weeks off. Jake, who asked if they could use his Durango for the trip.
No, it's not really all his fault, Alex realized as he stretched his legs in the tightly packed space. After all, who wanted and agreed to go with him?
Eventually, Jake noticed Alex looking at him, and a pleasant if somewhat false smile came through on his grey-and-white muzzle. "Hey, you up?"
Alex yawned and stretched, careful so as not to pop the joints in his right arm. He twisted in his seat and stared more evenly at the wolf. He made a tired-sounding noise and said Yeah," as though he were agreeing to a sandwich order.
"Good," Jake said happily, "Because you're going to be driving for the next five hours. I really have no idea what I'm doing."
"What?" Alex sat up straighter. His arm reached down and pulled the lever that made his tilted seat spring back up with a soft thud. "Does that mean you don't know where we are or that you don't know where we're going?"
Jake's mouth twitched as he shrugged his broad shoulders. "I guess a little of both," he said, continuing to shift his eyes from the map to the road. Alex looked out through the bug-cemetery of a windshield and stared at the barren, sun-choked landscaped that stretched out before them.
Great. Just freaking great. God forbid I get a job that pays twelve bucks an hour when I could be doing this.
"Your mom called your cell phone the other night," Alex said. He saw Jake flinch, but he didn't care.
"Oh?" was all the wolf said. It was all he really could say; he had become too exasperated to say anything else. He was tired of Alex trying to get him to talk to his mother and father, and he was tired of Alex's vain attempts to make himself feel better by thinking he can do the impossible. He glanced sideways at the fox, feelings of resentment and frustration rising inside of him.
"Why don't you want to talk to them, Jake?"
"I...It's not that...I want to talk to them, it's just that I don't know what to say."
"That's stupid, Jake. Why don't you talk about your novel?"
"There's no use in it."
"No use? Jake, you wrote a goddamn book! Of course she'd want to--."
"I don't want to talk about it, Alex. What're you worrying about me for, anyway?"
"Because you won't!"
This was followed by silence, which Jake was only too happy to add to.
Jake kept his eyes forward, resigned to the inevitable fact that the map was a lying bastard. He continued to drive down the road, his mind feeling detached and kind of floaty. He didn't know why Alex was being the way he was, but it made him feel like one of the thousands of dusty pebbles he was driving over, being crushed further and further into the ground.
Two very long, very silent hours later, they passed a sign that said "Bickery Motel 5 miles." Alex's sigh of relief was not lost on Jake's ears, which was becoming more and more tuned to sorting out Alex's subtle noises.
They had almost passed it by the time they noticed it. It wasn't much for the eyes, but it at least afforded them some time off the road, and Jake was sure that if he and Alex had to spend a few more minutes in the car, they were going to drive each other straight up the wall. He pulled into the dirt drive, noting how wobbly the car was handling over the small rocks. They opened the doors, stepped out into the hot Oklahoma sun and looked up at the building.
Most of the wood was old and weathered, and in some spots had become a veritable termite buffet. Looking on the outside, there appeared to be five rooms on the first level and six on the second. They walked in, neither of them saying a word.
The desk clerk, a dark and wiry-haired youth who might have been an odd mix of Doberman and lion, glanced at them and asked if they wanted a room. He had a tired voice, as though he wished he were somewhere else and doing something more important. Judging by the way the place was kept, Jake sympathized.
They went through the formalities as though it were a play. Jake accepted the key to the third room on the second floor with a grumbling thanks, and proceeded to walk back outside. He saw Alex narrow his eyes when he passed him by, but Jake mumbled "I'll get the bags," as he walked out, leaving the smaller fox to walk up the dark staircase that rose up to his right. The steps were cracked and warped, and screeched when Alex stepped on them. It was a nice touch, Alex thought, for such a creepy place in the middle of nowhere.
He opened the door and stood staring like a child on Christmas day, except his face wasn't filled with joy or happiness. The wallpaper was peeling from the walls in long, vertical strips, exposing the weak and yellowed plasterwork. Grime and mold of all different colors and ethnicities formed a patchwork pattern as it slid down the walls in thin streamers, mingling freely with vines that seemed to come out of the corners of the ceiling. The window on the far wall was obscured by dust, as was most of the room, but it still allowed a wide if somewhat faint beam of yellow light to pass through. The spring-frame bed, to coin a phrase, had a little bit of everything.
Alex managed to re-hinge his jaw long enough to utter a disbelieving noise in the back of his throat.
A few minutes later, Jake walked in carrying a pair of suitcases, both of them belonging to him. He gave the room a passing glance before dropping them in the middle of the room. He saw Alex sitting on the edge of the bed, a withered look on his russet visage. Jake shrugged and went out to get Alex's luggage.
Jake sighed as he walked down the creaky steps and past the tired-looking dog-lion. He remembered how enthusiastic they were about planning their road trip to California. They had planned it all down to the last detail, but some kind of unforeseen error must have slipped through. One or a dozen.
As Jake grabbed the three small suitcases from the back of the Durango, he remembered when he and Alex had first realized that they liked each other. They were on the basketball team together, and it was after their first game, in the locker room, that they felt some kind of attraction, some kind of magnetic force pulling them together.
Jake carried the luggage back into the room and dropped it beside his own. He saw Alex leaning against the window-sill (the part of it that wasn't as covered with grime as the rest of the wall), staring out at the nearly empty parking lot and the dusty road beyond. His arms were crossed, and the dim light that came in from the window cast an aura of golden yellow around his red fur, making him look as though he had just come out of a canvas painting. The expression on his face showed a sense of despondency, but the glint in his eyes showed a trace of noble optimism.
As Jake stared at his friend, he felt his anger and frustration disappear in a wave of compassion, contentment and, in a way, identity. Seeing Alex now, illuminated in this decrepit and dark room, confirmed his own sexuality and how close he wanted to be with the fox.
Alex saw him staring. He asked what was up, and Jake shrugged and said "Nothing."
Outside, the sun continued to sink steadily into the horizon as a black Coup De Ville roared into the parking lot beside Alex's car, and the third person in an uncontrollable wheel of destiny placed his beat up black hiking boots onto the dusty ground.
2
"Morning, Bill," said the elderly hedgehog as he waddled into the lit hallway, throwing his suitcase to the side as he pushed his massive girth through the door. Bill, who was reading the want-ads of yesterday's newspaper (it was all they had stocked on the waiting tables) jerked himself awake when he heard his boss's booming voice echo off the walls. "Morning, sir," he said, tapping his forehead as if in salute.
The hedgehog rolled himself over to the reception desk, where he threw a number of five dollar bills onto the chestnut surface. "I'll have to take a room in our own motel, son. Got some legal issues gotta' be takin' care of."
"Yes, sir."
The Doberman-lion wrote down his boss's name and went to get a key. He came back with one for the second floor. The hedgehog walked a few feet before turning around, one extraordinarily bushy eyebrow raised as he fixed the kid a stern look.
"Hey, son. I've owned this building for twelve years, but I've never had bullshit stink it up."
"What?"
"What's with giving me a key to the second floor? I saw only two cars in the lot."
"Well, one of the tenants rented out the whole lower floor. He said he's expecting some company later on. He gave me five hundred dollars for it."
As the hedgehog's eyes widened in surprise, a glimmer of elated greed shown in them and spread across his whole face, bringing out the deepening wrinkles in his grayish brown fur. His smile stretched across his face, showing the black stains of nicotine on his gums and teeth. "Holy mother of God, we're actually doing business! Oh, Beth's gonna have a fit about this."
Bill smiled, knowing the almost sitcom-like disputes between the boss and his wife.
"So what're they supposed to be? Some kind of a band, or entertainer troupe?"
"I don't know, sir. He didn't really say. He seemed kind of creepy, though."
"What do you mean, 'creepy?'"
"Well...I don't know, sir, but I just felt something weird about him. And he didn't look right at all, either."
"Oh, nonsense," said the hedgehog as he went to grab a small rucksack from beneath the counter. Eventually, he made his way around the counter to replace the old magazines and newspapers.
"What was the man's name, Billy?"
Bill looked down at the registered tenant's list. Using his index finger, he went down to number three and looked at the name. "Uh, his name is Caleb Zylka."
His boss gave a gruff sort of cough, and then had a fit trying to swallow what came up. He spun around and stepped quickly--extraordinarily quickly for a man of his size--to the counter, seized the registry and stared at it intently. His eyes, country-boy blue and very lively, rolled over the first two occupants to stare at the third name. The look in his eyes told Bill that his boss was trying desperately to not believe what he was seeing, but there was no way to unwrite the name that was set in blue ink. Caleb Zylka; the kid who was always caught doing pot in the janitor's closet, always found doing girls under the bleachers, always found wearing black and always seen where you never wanted him to be.
Suddenly he was twenty years in the past, and he had both arms looped around a flailing appendage, ducking his head as the little knife swung dangerously close to his face. He and another person (he couldn't remember the fellow's name; it might have been the gas station owner) were escorting a vicious Caleb to his cell in the police station as he screamed and kicked and thrashed madly about. They managed to wrest the knife out of the raccoon's hand, but not without receiving deep gashes on their arms thanks to Caleb's claws. They stepped back as Constable Banner locked the door. They knew they were safe from the then nineteen year-old Caleb, but they still didn't want to look back at the screaming teen, who they could hear was pacing the room like a wild-man, glaring at the backs of their heads as though he owned a mental rifle.
He remembered standing alongside the others at the side of the road as they threw him out of the truck, and threw him out of town. Then he remembered finding the bodies.
The Carrington girl...
He went straight to the phone, not bothering to look at Bill or give answer to the frightened and confused look on his face. He dialed the police office and waited.
A couple minutes later, he was on the line with Banner's answering machine. He told the constable that Caleb was back in town, that he was staying at his motel just outside of town, and that this was just a heads-up.
When the hedgehog placed the phone back in its cradle, Bill came up from behind him and made a declaratory sound in his throat, making the hedgehog jump a little. He cleared his throat and asked Bill what he wanted.
"Sir, what's going on?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing at all, Bill. Just some bully from my old school days. Nothing to worry about, really."
Then the hedgehog stepped passed Bill and over to the counter, placing things haphazardly on the polished surface. Bill reminded him of the appointment he had made earlier. His boss gave a simple "Oh," as he passed by the counter again and grabbed his bags, walking out the door and slamming it shut as a bewildered and confused Bill stared at the place where the back of his head had been.
3
Alex was the first to wake up, wrapped in the warm blanket of the sun's morning rays. As he yawned, the sun caught the white of his teeth, making them glint brilliantly in the orange light. His nose wrinkled wryly at the heavy smell of mold and other pathogen-infested fungi.
He yawned again, sighing heavily as he hung one tired arm over the edge of the bed. He tried to get back to sleep, but something began tickling the fur on his arm, keeping him just out of reach of that glorious tranquility of sleep. He raised his arm to brush away the odd strand of hair that had fallen, or the clump of dust that had been blown onto his arm. He squinted at his arm in the light, and felt cold adrenaline race throughout his body as he looked at the huge white-and-brown spider crawling stealthily up his arm. It glared at him with large, menacing black eyes before Alex let out a yelp and flung his arm to the side. He saw the spider as the force launched it from his arm, curling up its legs as it sailed through the air to hit the far wall with a dull and clearly audible thud.
Alex instinctively laid back his ears and edged himself closer to the center of the bed, but he found that he couldn't go more than a couple inches when he felt his back pressing against Jake's body. The wolf's chest was warm, and Alex, who still had doubts about their relationship--in fact, the whole trip was time enough for him to reflect on their friendship--pressed himself against the wolf's stomach.
The heat was incredible. Alex felt himself succumbing to the warmth, slowly slipping back down into the half-conscious state of slumber, sighing softly as he found Jake's chest. He closed his eyes and imagined the two of them kissing passionately in a powerful embrace. Suddenly a grey-furred arm slipped around his waist, and in his state of semi-consciousness Alex slid softly into a daydream.
"Hey, there."
Alex jerked awake when he heard Jake's voice in his ears, slowly removing his hand from the inside of his pants. "Hey," he said, half excited and half embarrassed.
The arm around his waist tightened slightly, and Alex smiled as he felt Jake nuzzle his orange cheek with a wet nose. He took the wolf's hand in his right, and he became aware of the same hot sensations traveling throughout his body when he and Jake shared their first kiss in the locker room.
"I'm sorry, Alex," Jake rumbled in his ears. "I'm sorry for getting us lost and for being such an idiot."
Alex shook his head. "It's not just your fault, Jake. I shouldn't have been such a self-righteous dick to you. It's just that...I don't like seeing people blind themselves to their own past. You have to come to terms with what they did to you."
"I know," Jake mumbled. He nuzzled Alex's cheek again, and the fox felt a small rush of cold air when the wolf breathed in the scent of his fur. "I promise, Alex. Give me some time, and I'll talk to them. I don't know if it'll do any good, but I guess I could try."
"That's all I'm askin' for," the fox said. They held each other for a little bit longer, enjoying the heat. After a little while, Jake suggested that they go into town and see what there was, to at least make the most of their (his) mistake. Alex said it was a great idea, but that he would like to stay at the motel for a little bit.
Jake got up and began stripping off his clothes. Alex watched appreciatively as the wolf stepped out of his black boxers, but he made an unidentifiable sound when the wolf stepped into a new pair. Those buns were not meant to be hidden by cheap fabric! As he continued to eye the pleasant delicacies of the male form, he felt a definite reaction in his crotch, as though to validate his decision of staying in the room.
Jake put on some ripped jeans and a green t-shirt. He adjusted the Seiko wristwatch on his left hand and started for the door. Suddenly, he stopped just short of the rusty doorknob and looked over at Alex. He felt a surge of adrenaline as the words that he had been wanting to say all month finally pushed themselves from his brain into his mouth.
"I love you, Alex."
The red fox looked at him with a surprised look resting on his muzzle. After the stunned silence had worn off, he said with some hesitancy "I love you, too."
Jake flashed him a smile, opened the door, and walked out. If he had known the circumstances under which he would be seeing Alex again, he would have said more.
4
The town, Jake soon found out, was larger than he had first thought it was. Driving down the main street that led into Bickery, he had noticed several small hamlets of two or three houses, all individual places in their own right yet still fragments of the town as a whole, the prosperous part of which was surprisingly thriving. The bank, school, hospital, church, mayor's office, supermarket, and the bar & grill were mostly all in the same five mile radius, and the people all had the same rural look he was familiar with seeing up in Minnesota.
He passed the bar & grill and drove into the parking lot of the supermarket. He checked his wallet and counted three twenties, eight tens, and a couple of fives. Not really much for a trip, but he at least had his Visa. He walked into the supermarket, stretching and yawning in the noon heat as he opened the door.
Across the street, a pair of eyes watched him enter the supermarket. The figure wore a dark grey hoodie, and after glancing back over its shoulder, began crossing the street to the supermarket, its hiking boots scuffing softly against the tar.
Alex found it difficult to get back to sleep after the first banging sounds began from the lower floor. At first, he thought some clumsy member of the cleaning staff had dropped something heavy. When the sounds began again five minutes later, though, they became louder and more rowdier, sounding like a whole percussion band only a few feet below him.
In the end, Alex decided that thirty minutes of that sound continuing meant that the whole staff had already gone deaf and wasn't about to do shit about it. So he jumped up, tossing the blankets to the far corner of the room and quick-walked to the door. Fuming, he went through the hallway and the reception room in a rage-filled daze, irritated that people couldn't respect each other's right to quiet privacy.
There was no desk clerk standing by at the counter, so Alex went into the hallway and passed the various doors, listening intently for that damn banging sound. He stopped at one, tilting his head to the side to hear better.
CRASH!!!
The sound made him recoil and hold his ear in pain. Although the door was closed, it did nothing to inhibit the jangling clattering sounds that emanated from the room.
Angered further, he bared his teeth and started rapping the weathered surface of the door with his fist, laying his ears to the sides. His tail bushed out and flashed from left to right with rapid, single-minded energy.
At first, there was no answer. Then there came another crash, this one louder and more jarring than the previous sounds. Considering this a non-verbal form of retaliation, he struck the door again, louder and more forcefully.
There was a silence, and a series of steps. Alex thought they were coming toward him. Then a voice called out from behind the door, soft, yet grating, like small rocks put into a pepper mill.
"You are disturbing my peaceful frame of mind. Go away!"
For a moment, Alex stared dumbly at the door, shocked and confused. Did he just say that? Anger welled in him again, and he smacked the door with his fist.
"The hell...You've been disturbing my frame of mind all morning! Where the hell do you get off disrupting everyone else's day by banging things around like that?"
"Excuse me?"
"All morning, the only thing I've heard was you in there, throwing things around or banging shit together or whatever the hell it is you're doing in there. You stop that shit, or I swear I'll come in there and..."
Suddenly the door swung open, and Alex took a step back as a massive, tall and grizzled-looking raccoon with matted-down grey hair stood in the doorway. His frame took up most of the doorway, and he stared at Alex with penetrating green eyes that didn't seem at all right. Alex couldn't think of it, but there was something in those eyes that was just off in an anatomical sense.
"You'd come in here and do what?"
As in every case that this has happened to him, Alex laid back his ears and tried to look as submissive as possible. He knew that trying to look as though he had never said anything was one of the most useless and ineffectual things to do, but there was nothing else he could think of doing.
"I...I just, uh..."
"You what? What, eh? I'm in the middle of something very important, and you'd be pissed off, too, if everything you'd worked on for years had up and fucking bit the dust! Years of tireless work and effort all gone...it's enough to piss anyone off! I don't need any shit from you, kid, let alone self-righteous and senseless ones like you."
Alex stared down at the floor, truly ashamed of himself now. He glanced up and looked at the raccoon, who seemed to be staring at the wall a few inches above him.
"I'm sorry, man. I wasn't really thinking..."
"Damn right," the raccoon said, his green eyes continuing to stare at the wall. Then the eyes seemed to roll down to where the fox was, and the raccoon made a clicking sound in his mouth.
"Aw, hell, kid. I've been thinking my whole life, and I've gotten chewed out anyways. One thing you've got going for you, though, is guts. Not many people I know would confront someone just to get a little peace and quiet. What's your name, kid?"
"Alex," he said, none-too-willingly.
"Name's Caleb. Never really liked the name, though, so just call me 'Z'"
The raccoon stuck out his paw, the yellowed fingernails inches from Alex's face. He took a step back and shook Caleb's paw, timidly returning the smile the raccoon gave him. Suddenly a thought came into Alex's head, and he took the opportunity to ask a question.
"Um, are you...blind, by chance?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah. Legally, at least..."
A still, awkward silence followed the raccoon's comment. Feeling that his presence had become unnecessary, Alex coughed and said "Well, I'll leave you to whatever it was that, uh..."
"Oh, nonsense! Come on in, let me show you something."
"What?"
"Come inside and see what I've been working on. It's been a while since I've had anyone capable of normal speech to talk to, and maybe you could help me with my work."
As the raccoon shuffled into his room, Alex cleared his throat and looked to the reception room. There still was no one at the counter. Why he hoped there would be he didn't know, but the feeling of naked uneasiness refused to go away.
In a moment, however, adventurer's curiosity locked away his uneasiness, and he stepped cautiously into the raccoon's room, shutting the door behind him. The halls were filled with a rusty grating sound until the door finally clicked shut, and it was quiet again.
"Your name is Jake, right?"
Jake turned around as he was grabbing for a pack of bottled water. He was shocked to see the boy who had been the desk clerk at the motel the other day. The hoodie he wore was pulled low over his face, disguising his nervous-looking eyes, and the way he shifted his weight from one foot to the other made the wolf's tail bush out and his fur stand on end.
"Yeah?"
"I'm Bill Dobson. I work at the motel you have a room registered in?"
"Yeah, I know you. But what do you wa..."
"Listen, could we talk somewhere else? It's kind of important."
"Huh? I don't know what you're ta..."
"Just trust me. Look, finish up here, and we can talk in the parking lot."
Without bothering with an explanation (Jake knew that the hybrid wouldn't have given him one even if he had made a violent show in front of people to get one), he turned on his heel and walked quickly out of the supermarket, leaving a confused Jake to return to the pack of water bottles. He grabbed it and placed it in the cart, his head feeling heavy and his mind feeling disembodied.
"So what is it that you do, Caleb?" Alex asked, forgetting what the raccoon wanted to be called.
"Ah, I'm a bit of a wanderer. Just an American gypsy without a guitar, really. I used to think that in my past life I was an organ grinder entertaining the streets of some small Rumanian village, but I suppose in this economy that's not really much of a past to live up to, is it?"
Alex stepped gingerly around the metal trinkets and mechanical doodads that littered every square inch of the floor. Jars filled with tiny bits of steel, copper wire, and numerous other metal trinkets lined shelves that hung slightly askew on the walls. He peered into one of them, arching an eyebrow when he saw an assortment of mangled pieces of discolored metal. The window was blocked by small boxes, piled almost as high as the ceiling. The scent of strawberries and rotten eggs slid stealthily into Alex's nostrils, making his head woozy and his stomach cramp.
"No, I suppose it isn't."
Caleb crouched down at the foot of the bed, bracing one hand on the mattress while his other searched and scrambled for something underneath. Alex, feeling his stomach slowly start to rise up into his throat, held a hand over his nose and mouth as he tried to look over the raccoon's shoulders at whatever it was he was looking for. As he looked, he noticed that the coat the raccoon wore took up most of the bulk he observed earlier, and that the raccoon was much thinner and leaner than he first had thought.
Suddenly Caleb gave a tremendous "Aha!" sort of sound, as though this whole thing was some sort of act and he had just delivered the coup de theatre.
"There you are," Caleb muttered, dragging a heavy box out from beneath the bed. This, Alex thought, was probably what had been making that banging sound earlier. It was only the raccoon dragging the metal box around on the floor. Alex felt somewhat more ashamed as he looked over the raccoon's shoulder, perking his ears up as he heard the creaky hinges on the box's lid screech as Caleb opened it.
"What're you talking about?"
"I'm just saying that the person who took the room under yours is...might, be a dangerous person."
"What?"
Bill made fanning motions with his hands in an effort to get Jake to calm down. There wasn't a soul in the part of the parking lot they were in, save for a few crows that were pecking idly at a discarded box of french fries.
"Look, I'm only paraphrasing what I heard my boss say the other night."
Shit, Jake thought angrily, a chill running ghoulishly up his spine. He ran his fingers through his hair, his mind filled with hazy thoughts. What did he mean by dangerous? Was the guy a murderer? Were they okay if they stayed there, just for little bit longer? Was--
Was Alex alright?
Shit, Jake thought again. The magnanimity of the situation suddenly weighed down on him, and his knees wobbled slightly as he realized who it was that had planned this whole excursion. Who it was that had gotten them off the interstate and into a place they knew nothing of.
"Listen," Bill said, sounding just as calm as you please, "My parents are visiting my aunt for the week. You and your friend can stay there while the sheriff gets things sorted out."
Jake shook his head, still trying to think properly. He could have insisted on having Alex come with him to the store. He could have forced him, but that would have made him seem like an asshole, the one thing he desperately wanted to not be to Alex. But how could he have known? He couldn't see into the future. He wasn't Madam fucking Blavatsky.
But it would be a good idea to stay somewhere else, and wait for whatever the hell that was happening to cool over.
"Thanks," he told Bill, who said that it wouldn't be any trouble, as long as they didn't do anything spectacularly crazy while they were there. Jake said that he wouldn't have to worry about anything like that. They shook hands and smiled. Bill turned and started for the crosswalk, the hem of his coat billowing softly in the afternoon wind. Jake watched him go, his head filling with disturbing thoughts that he failed to push away. After a short time of obscure thinking, he stepped into the car, turned the key, and drove off to the motel. He had already forgotten about the groceries he had bought and put away in the back seat.
Before Alex even knew it was happening, the fur on his body was standing on end and a thin sliver of blood slid down his nostrils. His head hurt with a dull throbbing pain that matched his racing heartbeat as the walls around him slowly contracted inward and then pushed outward. Tears slipped out from beneath his eyes as he tried to speak, but no sound came out. The muscles in his neck bulged, veins becoming visible through the fiery orange fur.
He tried to scream, but all that came out of his open mouth was saliva that left a long, sloppy ribbon as it traveled down his chin to the floor.
He heard Caleb's voice in his head, somewhat lyrical and soothing yet altogether taking on a terribly oscillatory voice that wavered in his head, like speaking into the whirring blades of a fan.
"One hell of a rush, isn't it? What some of my friends down south would call a 'shot of the old holy.' Knocked me on my ass the first time it happened, but after I gave up that marijuana shit I knew that there was nothing else better than Phaerossis. Am I right, Alex?"
Alex could feel all the muscles in his body clench and soften and turn to jelly inside of him. In a final effort to keep his balance, he threw out a hand to the edge of the dresser, which seemed to jump back and recede miles into the distance, becoming a black spot in a quickly growing darkness.
In his last moments before he lost consciousness, Alex heard a low, discordant sound. It was an auditory dreamscape that could have been a hum, a rumble, and a muffled scream all at once. After that, all his senses were enveloped by the darkness, and the darkness welcomed him.
5
Constable Banner was angry. He had woken up with a whiskey headache, a sore throat, and a cold. He had hiccoughed as he sneezed on the way to the police station, and it felt like his throat was filled with hundreds of pissed off wasps. He was in a bad mood, and when his secretary told him of the call the motel owner made last night, he felt like strangling someone with a pair of shoelaces. He tried to call Sam, but all he got was the dry hum of the motel phone.
Now, Constable Banner looked out through the windshield of the dusty police cruiser at the grimy wall of the motel. Unwanted memories echoed in his ears. Memories of finding corpses, some big enough to fit in one of those new hybrid cars, like the one his wife had gotten on their anniversary.
His hand rested on the butt of the .45 resting in his hip holster. He knew that if he did what he wanted to do, he'd be put in the very jail he was meant to maintain, and as much as he wanted to enact some good old fashioned police justice, he didn't want to become a felon.
After a little while, Banner coughed painfully into his fist and stepped out into the heat.
From the moment he opened the door and walked into the reception area, he was alert. He wasn't sure if it was the natural silence of the building or his own thoughts voicing themselves at the most inopportune time, but whatever the hell it was, it was damn creepy. He stepped over to the reception desk, peered over the counter...and saw the tenants list. It was upside down, but he spun it around and scanned it for a second, quickly locating the raccoon below the first two.
He's really here, Banner thought. It was seeing the name on the list that delivered the final blow to whatever skepticism he had.
He walked into the hallway, passing the paint-peeling walls of the reception area. His blue eyes glanced for areas that could be detrimental or helpful to him if an actual confrontation ensued. He remembered how strong the raccoon was before, but that was twenty years ago. The bastard would obviously have gained some muscle as the years went by, assuming of course that he had grown off weed and hadn't moved on to stronger stuff.
Finding Caleb's door, Banner struck his fist on the wood surface, feeling the same chill Alex had felt earlier in his gut. He stepped back and waited, listening intently to the shuffling sounds inside.
He waited for another minute before rapping again with a clenched fist. The shuffling sounds inside stopped, silence again taking its hold in the shabby building.
The door opened a fraction, stopped by the length of chain fastened to the wall. Constable Banner could smell the bitter fumes of something burning, making his nose hairs tingle unpleasantly.
"What?" barked a bad-tempered voice that Banner remembered hearing not too long ago. It was lower and deeper, but still had that irritated, whiny voice of someone who always got what he wanted.
"G' morning, Mr. Zylka. I'm Constable Banner."
"...Is that so?"
"Yes, it is. I received a call this past night that you're in town. I wanted to see if it was true."
An eye peeked out from the slit of the doorway, dark and glaring. Banner could see the calfskin vest and pants that the raccoon was wearing, and as a hand curled around the thickness of the doorway, his own fingers started tapping against the butt of his pistol.
"Well, it's true, ain't it? There, you saw me, now go away."
He was about to shut the door, but Banner halted it mid-way with one large hand.
"You don't remember me, do you, son?"
The raccoon grinned as he stared at the sheperd's curious face. "I remember a low-rate, booze-and-cooze kind of officer who had dreams of becoming a sheriff. How'd that fill out for you, constable? You wouldn't dare touch me without the proper legalities with you. You wouldn't want to tarnish whatever image you've got with the rest of the law enforcement community. Now get your ass out of here, before somebody calls the real authorities."
He was about to shut the door again, but Banner stopped it, pushing on it so that the chain strained against its fastening.
"You've got a lot to answer for, Caleb."
"I'm sure I do, but all you people're gonna have a lot more to answer for when this day is done. You stay out of my way, and I'll put a good word in when the big guy gets here."
Banner let the door slam shut in his livid face. He clenched his fists, the sound of his cracking knuckles echoing throughout the hallway.
The next few moments passed like a dream for Constable Banner, who stepped back, took out his gun from its holster, and took a deep breath. In the split second before he kicked the door open, his brain gave off a single thought, spurned by unreasonable and illogical stimuli he couldn't place. He thought "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, baby," and smashed his foot against the door.
The force of the door striking his back threw Caleb down to the floor by the far wall. Banner trained the barrel of his gun on the raccoon's back, ready to accomplish what he had set out to do, what he had promised to do ever since he and the other angry men and women threw the young raccoon out on his tail all those long years ago.
Then he saw the half-naked body of a young fox lying on the bed, convulsing silently as his mouth hung open, saliva pooling in sloppy wet patches around his head. Blood fell in torrents down his nose.
Banner's shock launched him from his previous vigilante hardwiring back to his Serpico-bred law enforcer mindset. The grip he had on his pistol loosened just a little bit, still trained on the raccoon's back. He became more alert, and more receptive to external provocation, and the one thing that filled his brain was the second half of the fabled commandment his position was supposed to fulfill: to protect.
Banner edged toward the bed, shouting at Caleb to stay on the ground and to put his hands on his head. He had just enough time to edge toward the bed when Caleb roared and spun around on the floor, his fingers clenching firmly around the Uzi as bullets began shredding into the doorframe beside Banner.
Banner jumped back and made it into the hallway. He pressed his back into the wall beside the door. He checked to make sure his gun was loaded. He didn't particularly enjoy the idea of getting killed, especially by his own carelessness.
6
Jake was in the parking lot when he heard the gunshots. A lump of ice formed in his chest as his legs nearly gave way. Please don't let that be Alex, his mind thought numbly as he went into the motel.
He headed toward the staircase, but stopped in surprise when he saw constable Banner holding his pistol, leaning his back against the wall. Banner saw him, and shouted in a gruff and pestered voice, "Get out of here, kid!"
The wall opposite Banner burst into bits of shredded fiberglass and wood splinters from a spray of bullets of the raccoon's Uzi. "I'll go when I'm goddamn ready!" Caleb shouted, thinking it was him Banner was shouting to.
As another series of whip-crack shots rang out from the room, Jake ran up the stairs to find Alex. After finding the room to be horribly empty, he ran back down the stairs, feeling as though his whole body were a tin of jelly resting on the edge of a shaking table.
He was close to the bottom when he realized just how silent the building had become. Gripping the dirty banister with sweating palms, he walked quietly, turning his head around the corner. He saw the sheriff, bloodstained and crouched against the bullet-strewn wall. Jake ran over to him, clearly seeing the blood that gushed through the sheriffs fingers as he gripped his throat. The shepherd gurgled and looked up at Jake with watery eyes, opening and closing his mouth like a hooked fish dangling on a line.
In the span of perhaps a moment, Jake felt his stomach rise up and threaten to spill out onto the dirty floor to mingle with the cop's blood.
The constable grabbed the wolf's pant leg with his free hand, leaving a long crimson stain on the fabric. He tried to say something, and as Jake bent down to hear what he was attempting to say, the canine lurched and coughed a mass of his lifeblood onto Jake's startled face. The wolf leaped back against the other side of the hall and cried out in surprise. He stared at the cop, who gave one last wheezing hiccough before his head lolled onto his shoulder, and became still.
Jake couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't hold it in any longer. With a painful heave, the wolf doubled over and vomited a colorless mess onto the floor. After a minute or two, he did it again. He continued to dry heave until his stomach felt as though he had swallowed battery acid. Sometime later, he managed to get up off the floor and wipe his mouth of the sick that hung from his lips. Everything just seemed to be spiraling down into a black pit, and he wouldn't have been surprised if the walls around him were torn apart and the floor opened up beneath him. Now, more than ever before, he wanted Alex beside him.
He stepped into the room, wondering if he was on the set of some horror movie; blood was splashed on the walls, solidifying on the glistening steel trinkets that littered the floor. It trailed in a long red stream from the body of a ragged looking raccoon, lying in the corner of the room face down (the only way Jake could tell it was a raccoon was by the scruffy banded tail that snaked out from beneath the scruffy old coat). Then his eyes rolled over to the bed, and a numb, senseless feeling crept into his brain as he saw Alex sprawled out on his back, wearing nothing more than a pair of black boxer-shorts. His fiery orange brush lay still and lifeless, draped over the side of the bed between his legs.
No...
There wasn't any more matter in his stomach to throw up, and he felt too weak to dry heave. Jake stumbled forward, lurching in a somnambulistic way to the prostrate fox. He looked at Alex's face, seeing the blood and saliva mingle on a large wet patch beneath the fox's mouth. He breathed harder, and his vision grew fuzzy for one split second.
This can't be happening. It isn't real, it's just...
Somehow, his mind couldn't think of just what to call what he was seeing, what he was smelling, what he was feeling. There wasn't a name for the maelstrom of emotions that assailed him from all angles. It was simply pure--.
Devastation.
The word rang in his ears like the throbbing hum that echoed off the walls of the destroyed little room. Jake's breathing became harder and faster, yet he could feel the air leaving his body faster than it was coming in. He swayed on his mistrusting feet as he clutched vainly at his chest, ripping and tearing at his shirt.
His eyes caught the yellow flash of light that came from under the bed, and with that alien sound thrumming in his head he fell into a limitless black void.
7
Jake was nowhere. It was the only thing he could think of to call the place where he was, wherever the hell he was. Everything was black, though he could feel grass brushing up against his legs, and a wind that ruffled the fur on his face and made him grimace. He didn't know why he did it, but the wind felt like the breath of some evil monster from a fairy tale.
He cautiously stepped forward, feeling the grass rubbing against him like hairy spider legs. He moved faster, working into a slow jog, then into a quick sprint to find some kind of a light. There were no stars in the sky, just more darkness.
The wolf turned around and ran in the opposite direction. After discovering nothing, he changed direction to his right and ran that way. It wasn't long before his breath ran out and a sharp pain lanced into his sides. He caught his breath after a while, and he began to run some more, this time to his left.
It didn't matter. More darkness, more grass, no light.
Finally, the wolf stood still, tears of exhaustion and anxiety streaming through the grey fur on his cheeks. He nervously ran his fingers through his hair as the pain in his muscles slipped into a dull ache. There was no way out of the nowhere; it was just a huge expanse of black grass and dark, foul wind. He ran a bit more, clutching his sides as if to hold his insides together. He wheezed and coughed, happily accepting the cool odorous wind as it fell against him. He had to stop and breathe, so he kneeled in the sea of dark grass and tried to calm himself down.
The wind blew with a monstrous pulse, and Jake held his head in his hands and cried. He felt like Alice in wonderland when the Red Queen told her to run as fast as she could just to stay where she was. That's what happened when you were nowhere. You could run away as fast as you can, but if you didn't know what you were running from you never got anywhere.
He remembered Alex's face. The soft, gentle brown eyes, the nervously happy smile, the bold black markings just behind his nose, curving like tattoos amongst a dashing orange and white canvas. Black-tipped ears that rose up out of a tangled mess of black hair. A lithe and lean body, with strong muscle hidden in his arms and legs. A gorgeous tail, draped seductively over a firm butt. Jake remembered all of it, and the craving for seeing Alex again fell far short of just how lost he felt. Lost and alone, in a world of dark grass and black wind.
Jake raised his head from the cradle of his arms and began drying his eyes. After a moment, he became aware of a soft, yellowish glow coming from behind his back, illuminating the field of grass. It was a surreal sight, seeing an endless plane of yellow grass set against the black sky. He had never had a dream as ethereal or as abnormal as this, but he knew it wasn't a dream because you can't feel things in dreams. You don't fall into one without finding a big glowing exit sign at the end of the tunnel. Jake stood up and turned to face the glowing, knowing that what he was seeing was no exit sign.
The thing looked like several enormous worms drifting in the sky, covered in long, flowing hairs. The creature was completely iridescent, pulsing with that ghostly golden glow and making a peculiar humming sound. The wolf could hear a mixture of screaming, humming, and rumbling through the air, weaving its way through the grass. The sky seemed to ripple and writhe with that amalgamated noise, making Jake's ears tingle unpleasantly and his fur stand on end.
There is no time here. We have all the time in the world.
Jake heard the words clearly in his ears, more clearly, in fact, than he could hear the rustling of the grass swirling around him. He coughed and cleared his throat, unsure of what to do, of what to say. Eventually, he straightened out his mind long enough to utter the words "What are you?"
But Jake knew what it was before the monstrous thing answered him. It was a dream, but it was real, and what it left behind was a poison. What he was looking at was the face of an underlying reality--or maybe an overlaying nightmare--that had as much precedence over the real world as he did over an anthill. Whatever this thing was, it had been watching him, seeing what he was doing, and it was enjoying what it saw.
Of course it was, because Jake could hear it laughing.
The worms, if that was what they were (and Jake knew they were not) twisted around one another, their bioluminescent hairs wrapping fluidly to form bridges for the thick semi-material bodies. The glow brightened in the sky into something resembling the sun, and Jake had to cover his eyes from the light. Hidden in the dark of his elbows, he wondered how any of this was possible. In the end, however, he realized that it didn't really matter if it was or not, because it was happening right now.
When he looked up, he saw the face of his mother, large and terrifying magnified in the sky. Suddenly he was nine years old again, and he was back in their tin-roof four-room house in the Minnesota backwoods. The grass became dusty and dirty shag carpeting, left over from the days when his mother had a husband who loved her and a steady paying job with decent hours before she lost her husband to a Los Angeles hooker and lost her job to a Parisian slut who probably got the job doing what any hooker would do.
The sky became the dirty, cracked surface of the ceiling, and he was naked. He felt wet, and warm, terribly warm. The water in the bathtub was scalding hot, and his mother attacked his bare chest with a sponge as though he were some hideous layer of filth. Steam filled the dilapidated little room like summer fog, making everything appear ghostly and unreal. Then he was going down, pushed backward by massive hands that painfully gripped his shoulders. The water distorted his vision, his mother's lupine features becoming a faint series of ripples receding miles into the distance.
He tried to get up, but the hands on his shoulders were tight and cruel. He pushed against the bottom of the bathtub as claustrophobia set in. He held in his breath for as long as his nine year-old lungs could permit, but the primordial desire for air forced him to open his mouth and swallow the hot water that surrounded him.
It was a transparent prison, and the closest thing that he could see with any amount of clarity was his mother, and she was smiling.
He screamed, but only bubbles came out. He pushed up as hard as he could, his weak muscles straining, but his mother was stronger. She held him down, practically pushing him down against the porcelain surface. He swallowed more water, breathed it in, until a quiet dark began slipping around the edges of his sight.
Something happened then that pushed the darkness away. Jake could fee both the younger and the older parts of him, the parts that were separate and united at the same time, and something else. It was something that welled up inside him, that had been waiting for years, centuries, to come out, and all it needed was a little spark to ignite and break out. The spark arose, and from it came a strength Jake had only ever known in dreams.
_ STOP!!!_
Surrounded in an ethereal blue light, he pushed himself off the bottom of the tub, broke through the surface of the water, and threw himself upon his mother, who shrieked with a banshee-like cry. In the half-moment before he struck her, he saw that her eyes shone with a malign yellow light.
_ STOP STOP DAMN YOU STOP!!!_
"No."
_ STOP OR I'LL KILL YOU STOP_
"No!"
He smashed his fist into the face of the thing that looked like his mother, and as it gave another otherworldly scream of terror, the room was filled with a white light that blanketed everything and enveloped the senses, from sight to touch. Jake was filled with a hellish, burning sensation that racked his body and made him twist in the white abyss.
8
The sparrows and whippoorwills were quiet in the dim light of the quarter moon. Stars, bright and twinkling like sequin decoration on a midnight evening dress, stretched out in a vast congregation throughout the sky. A cool, soothing breeze swept in from the east, bringing with it short memories of summers long past.
The motel was silent. It was as though it were expecting something to happen, having been a spectator and host of the day's events. It was holding in its breath, waiting for a conclusion. The night didn't know from right or wrong, and whatever happened...it happened. Silver light seeped in through the windows and penetrated the shadow-filled rooms, occupants in a hushed world.
Jake felt a soft breeze ruffle his fur, and he opened his eyes. It was dark. It was quiet at first, but as he started to listen to the sounds of night birds flowed into his ears. He tried to raise his head, but the muscles in his neck throbbed painfully. His back also hurt when he tried to get up off of...whatever he was laying on.
The wolf settled down, trying to relax and ignore the burning twinges in his body when he realized that what he was laying on was slowly rising, and falling. With some panging discomfort in his lower back and shoulders, he managed to hoist himself up. When he looked down, he could barely see Alex's white-furred chest rising and falling.
Relief.
Relief and love.
Jake knew where he was now. This was real, and whether what had happened was a dream or not didn't matter, because he was with Alex again. He knew what room he was in, and he knew what had happened in this room (and the things that remained in the room), but somehow he forced it all out of his mind and rested his head against the fox's chest. He could hear the steady throbbing beat of Alex's heart, and as a tear slid gently out of Jake's eye to settle in Alex's fur, the wolf let out a long sigh before ultimately drifting off to sleep.
Beneath the bed, dying smoke drifted out of a heavy metal box that gaped open, the last remnants of the occupant's final death after a long, long existence.