The Wolf Gift (11 page)

He looked around. He could see all the details of the room with remarkable clarity, the old plaster crown moldings, even the fine cracks in the ceiling. He could see the grain in the wood of his dresser. He had the oddest feeling of being at home in the artificial twilight.

There were voices in the night. They sizzled just below the level of meaning. He knew he could pick out any one and amplify it, but why could he do that?

He got up and went out on the deck, and put his hands on the wooden railing. The salty wind iced him all over, quickening him and refreshing him. How invulnerable he felt to the cold, how energized by it.

There was a limitless reservoir of heat inside of him, and now it broke out on the surface of his skin as if every hair follicle on his body was expanding. He’d never felt such exquisite throbbing pleasure, such raw, divine pleasure.

“Yes!” he whispered. He understood! But what, what did he understand?
The realization escaped him suddenly, yet it didn’t matter. What mattered was the wave after wave of ecstasy passing through him.

Every particle of his body was defined in these waves, the skin covering his face, his head, his hands, the muscles of his arms and legs. With every particle of himself he was breathing, breathing as he’d never breathed in his life, his whole being expanding, hardening, growing stronger and stronger by the second.

His fingernails and toenails tingled. He felt the skin of his face, and realized that it was covered in soft silky hair, indeed soft thick hair was growing out of every pore, covering his nose, his cheeks, his upper lip! His fingers, or were they claws, touched his teeth and they were fangs! He could feel them descending, feel his mouth lengthening!

“Oh, but you knew, didn’t you? Didn’t you know this was inside of you, bursting to come out? You knew!”

His voice was guttural, roughened. He began to laugh with delight, low and confidential and utterly yielding to the laughter.

His hands were thickly covered with hair! And the claws, look at the claws.

He tore off his shirt and shorts, shredding them effortlessly and letting them drop to the boards of the deck.

The hair was pouring out of his scalp, it was rolling down to his shoulders. His chest was now completely covered and the muscles in his thighs and calves sang with ever-increasing strength.

Surely this had to peak, this orgasmic frenzy, but it didn’t peak. It went on and on. He felt his throat open with a cry, a howl, but he didn’t give in to it. Staring up at the night sky, he saw the layers and layers of white clouds beyond the mist; he saw the stars beyond the reach of human eyes, drifting into eternity.

“Oh, God, good God!” he whispered.

On all sides the buildings were alive with pulsing lights, tiny busy windows, voices throbbing inside, as the city breathed and sang around him.

You should ask, shouldn’t you, why this is happening? You should stop, shouldn’t you? You should question
. “Nooo!” he whispered. It was like reaching for Marchent in the dark; it was peeling back her soft brown wool dress and finding her naked breasts beneath him.

But what is happening to me! What is this that I am?

An imperative as strong as hunger told him he knew, he knew and he welcomed it. He’d known it was coming; he’d known it in his dreams and in his waking ruminations. This strength had to find its way out of him, or it would have torn him limb from limb.

Every muscle in his body wanted to leap, to run, to spring loose of this confining spot.

He turned around and, flexing his powerful thighs, sprang up to the ledge beneath his parents’ window, easily springing from that to the roof of the house.

He laughed it was so easy, so natural. His bare feet hugged the asphalt. And bounding across the roof he went, leaping forward as an animal might leap and then walking a few steps and leaping again.

Before he’d even meant to do it, he had cleared the entire width of the street and landed on the roof of the house opposite. There hadn’t been a chance of his falling.

He stopped thinking. He gave in to it and raced across the rooftops. Never had he known such power, such freedom.

The voices were louder now, the chorus rising and falling, and rolling as he turned around and round, and he was searching those voices for one dominant note, what was it? What did he want to hear, to know? Who was calling him?

From one house to another he sped, going lower and lower as he made his way down towards the traffic and noise of North Beach, flying so fast now that he scarce touched down on the smaller slopes, his clawed hands flying out to grasp whatever he needed to hoist his easy weight and send him flying over the next street or alleyway.

Alleyway! He stopped. He heard the sound. A woman screaming, a woman terrified, a woman who had become her scream in fear of her life.

He was down on the ground before he even willed it, landing soft and soundless on the greasy pavement, the walls rising up on either side, the light from the sidewalk showing in horrifying relief the figure of a man tearing off the woman’s clothes, his right hand clutching her by the throat, strangling her as she kicked at him helplessly.

Her eyes rolled in her head. She was dying.

A great effortless roar came out of Reuben. Growling, snarling, he bore down on the man, ripping him loose from the woman, Reuben’s
teeth sinking into the man’s throat, the hot blood spurting in Reuben’s face, as the man screeched in pain. A hideous scent rose from the man, if indeed it was a scent. It was as if the man’s intent was a scent, and it maddened Reuben. Reuben tore at the man’s flesh, growls coming out of his mouth as his teeth tore at the man’s shoulder. It felt so good to sink his teeth deep into the muscle and feel it split. That scent overpowered him, drove him on. Scent of evil.

He let the man go.

The man fell to the pavement, the arterial blood pumping out of him. Reuben chomped at his right arm, tore it almost loose from the shoulder, and then flung the helpless broken body by this arm against the far wall so that the man’s skull cracked on the bricks.

The woman stood stark still, her arms crossed over her breasts, staring at him. Feeble, choking sounds came out of her. How utterly miserable and pitiable she was. How unspeakable that anyone would do such evil to her. She was shaking so violently that she could scarce stand, one naked shoulder visible above the torn red silk of her dress.

She began to sob.

“You’re safe now,” Reuben said. Was this his voice? This low and rough and confidential voice? “The man who tried to hurt you is dead.” He reached out towards her. He saw his paw like a hand reaching for her. Tenderly he stroked her arm. What did it feel like to her?

He looked down at the dead man who lay on his side, his eyes gleaming like glass in the shadows. So incongruous, those eyes, those bits of hard-polished beauty embedded in such reeking flesh. The scent of the man and the scent of what the man was filled the space around him.

The woman backed away from Reuben. She turned and ran, her loud shrill screams filling the alleyway. She went down on one knee, rose again, and continued, running right towards the traffic of the busy street.

Reuben easily sprang up out of the alley, gripping the bricks as surely as a cat might grip the bark of a tree as he went straight up to the rooftop. In less than a second, he had left the entire block behind, bounding towards home.

There was only one thought in his mind. Survive. Get away. Get back to your room. Get away from her screams and from the dead man.

Without a conscious thought, he found his house, and came down from the roof to the open deck outside his bedroom.

He stood there in the open door staring at the little tableau of bed, television, desk, fireplace. He licked the blood on his fangs, on his lower teeth. It had a salty taste, a taste that was ugly yet tantalizing.

How quaint and small the bedroom seemed, how painfully artificial, as if it was fabricated from something as fragile as eggshells.

He moved inside, into the dense unwelcome warm air, and closed the windows behind him. It seemed absurd to slide the tiny brass lock shut; what a curious little thing it was. Why, anyone could break one of the small white framed panes in the glass door and easily open it. One could easily break all of the panes, and fling the window, frame and all, out into the darkness.

In this close place, he heard his own easy breathing.

The light from the television was flashing white and blue over the ceiling.

In the full-length mirror on the bathroom door, he saw himself, a great hairy figure with a long mane covering his shoulders.
Man wolf
.

“So this was the manner of beast that saved me in Marchent’s house, was it?” He laughed again that low, irresistible rolling laughter. Of course. “And you bit me, you devil. And I didn’t die from the bite and now it’s happened to me.” He wanted to laugh out loud. He wanted to roar with laughter.

But the dark little house was too close around him for that, too close for throwing open the doors and howling at the drifting stars, though he so wanted to do it.

He drew closer to the mirror.

A daylight scene on the television screen laid bare every detail. His eyes were the same, large and deeply blue, but his eyes. He could see himself in them, yet all the rest of his face was thick with dark brown hair, revealing a small black-tipped nose that only faintly resembled that of a wolf, and a long lipless mouth with glaring white teeth and fangs.
The better to eat you with, my dear
.

His frame was bigger, taller, taller by perhaps four inches than it had been, and his hands or paws were enormous, sprouting thin deadly white claws. His feet were huge as well, and his calves and thighs so powerfully muscled, he could see this beneath the hair. He touched his private parts, then drew back from the slight hardness he discovered there.

But it was hidden, all that, by a soft underfur, as well as the coarser hair that covered most of his body. Indeed this soft underfur was everywhere,
he realized. It was just thicker in some places than others—around his private parts, and on his inner thighs, and on his lower belly. If he parted the fur, or the coarser outer hair, gently with his claw, he felt a rippling, dazzling sensation.

It made him want to go out again, to travel over the rooftops, to seek out the voices of those in need. He was salivating.

“And you are thinking, feeling, watching this,” he said. Once again, the low timbre of his voice startled him. “Stop it!”

He looked at his palms, which had thickened into hairless pads for the paws his hands had become. There was a thin webbing between what had been his fingers. But he had thumbs, still, did he not?

Slowly, he made his way to the bedside table. The room felt much too warm. He was thirsty. He picked up the small iPhone, and it was difficult to grasp it with these huge paws, but he managed.

He went into the bathroom, turned on the full electric light, and stared at himself in the mirrored wall opposite the shower.

Now, in this intense illumination, the shock was almost too much for him. He wanted to turn, cower, shut off the light. But he forced himself to study the image in the mirror.

Yes, a black-tipped nose, and a nose that could smell a multitude of things such as an animal could smell, and powerful jaws, though they did not protrude, and such fangs, ah!

He wanted to cover his face with his hands. But he didn’t have hands. Instead, he held up the iPhone and clicked a picture of himself. And again and again.

He rested back against the marble tile beside the shower.

He pushed his tongue through his fangs. He tasted the dead man’s blood again.

The desire rose in him again. There were more like the reeking rapist, and the sobbing woman. The voices were still all around him. If he wanted, he could reach into that slow rolling ocean of sound and hook another voice, and bring himself to it.

But he didn’t. He was paralyzed, finished.

The impulse to cry came to him, but there was no real physical pressure to it. It was just an idea: cry, pray to God, beg to understand; confess your fear.

No. He had no intention of doing it.

He turned on the tap and let the basin fill with water. Then he drank it in fierce laps until he was satisfied. It seemed he’d never tasted water before, never known how purely delicious it was, how sweet and cleansing it was, how invigorating.

He was struggling to hold a glass and fill it with water when the change began.

He felt it as he had the first time, in the millions of hair follicles covering his body. And there was a sharp contraction in his stomach, not painful, just a spasm that was almost pleasure.

He made himself look up. And he made himself remain standing, though it became harder and harder to do so. The hair was retracting, disappearing, though some of it fell to the tile floor. The black tip of his nose was paling, dissolving. His nose was shrinking, becoming shorter. The fangs were shrinking. His mouth tingled. His hands and feet tingled. Every part of him was electrified with sensation.

Finally, the acute physical pleasure overwhelmed him. He couldn’t watch, couldn’t be attentive. He was near to fainting.

He staggered into the bedroom and fell across the bed. Deep orgasmic spasms ran through the muscles of his thighs and calves, through his back, his arms. The bed felt wondrously soft, and the voices outside had become a low vibrant hum.

The darkness came, as it had during those despairing moments in Marchent’s house, when he’d thought he was dying. But he didn’t fight it now as he had then.

He was asleep before the transformation was finished.

It was broad daylight when the ringing of his phone awakened him. Where was it coming from?

It stopped.

He turned and got up. He was cold and naked, and the raw light of the overcast sky hurt his eyes. A sharp pain in his head scared him, but then it left as suddenly as it had come.

He looked around for the iPhone. He found it on the bathroom floor and at once clicked back to the pictures.