More often than not, where you are is where you’re at, and wishing otherwise doesn’t change anything, a lesson Josh had learned many moons ago.
Back then, of course, he’d had Barbra, without whom he never would have survived long enough to continue without her.
She’d been in hysterics that night when he regained consciousness, and she continued to shriek and scream at Josh as he tried to orient himself.
His whole body throbbed, and when he raised his hands to massage his temples, he saw they were covered with blood.
“You killed him! You…. You…. You monster!” Barbra ran from the kitchen.
Groaning, Josh pushed himself to a sitting position. Why was he on the floor? Why was the floor stained with blood that sparkled in the overhead lights? Why wasn’t Scamp–
The name caused a series of sensory images to flash through his mind. Scamp howling. Scamp bleeding. Scamp tasting–
Josh shook his head.
He’d never passed out before. Never had a seizure. He didn’t do drugs or drink to excess. So what happened?
All this blood. Was he dreaming?
Josh gingerly checked himself for wounds. When he didn’t find any, he told himself he’d had a bloody nose.
Never had one of those before either.
But then there was a first time for everything, right?
Seizures. Bloody noses. Muscle aches he hadn’t known the likes of since his last growth spurt.
The stains on the floor were streaked as though claws had been dragged through them. And why did he use the word “claws”? Did he know something, subconsciously?
Scamp’s nails were kept trimmed short. The marks hadn’t been made by Scamp trying to drag himself away.
Josh couldn’t make sense of what had happened here. Or maybe he could, and that was even worse.
But even if the worst thing he could imagine had happened, what did that mean had happened exactly?
If he had hurt Scamp, why had he done so?
Why did that possibility seem more like a dream than something that actually occurred?
He’d come to lying here. Covered in blood. Accused by Barbra of committing a horrible act.
Why would she lie?
Josh called out to her then, his voice little more than a croak.
Too drained to climb to his feet, he cleared his throat.
Called to her again.
And again.
Barbra finally rejoined him in the kitchen, standing at the other side of the room, arms folded against her chest. Her face was flushed, and tears had left their mark.
“What do you want?”
“I want to understand.”
“So do I.” Barbra exhaled. “I don’t understand what you’ve become. I don’t–” She raised a hand to cover her mouth.
“Barbra. What happened to Scamp?”
She straightened until she held herself rigid. “What happened to Scamp? I think you know very well what happened to Scamp. What I want to know is, what happened to you?”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea. And I don’t know what happened to Scamp, not really.”
“Then how do you explain that you’re lying naked in his blood?”
John closed his eyes. “I can’t.”
When he finally opened his eyes again, he saw that Barbra was gone.
Barbara was gone. Scamp was gone. He was gone.
She was back. Barbra paced as she spat out the words. “Do you really not know what happened?”
Josh shook his head. “I need your help.”
She took a deep breath. “After you fell asleep, I came down here to make a little snack. Cheese and crackers. You know how Scamp likes his cheese.” Barbra stopped with a wince.
“Go on.”
“You joined us. Then … then you convulsed. You dropped to the floor shaking and screaming. And then … and then … fur … fur started sprouting all over your body, growing from your stomach and arching towards your back. Your hands and your fingers … you had these long claws.” Barbra covered her face and sobbed.
Josh fought his growing nausea. “How did Scamp react?”
Barbra took a moment to compose herself before she continued. “He stayed by your side. He … he wanted to back off, and sometimes he barked at you, but then he moved closer and he stayed by your side. And then you ever so slowly reached out and wrapped your claw around Scamp, you pulled him close, and then you … you–” Again, Barbra ran from the kitchen.
Josh rolled onto his back and stared out the window at the full moon. As crazy as Barbra’s story sounded, it fit the facts as he knew them. Besides, she didn’t take drugs or drink to excess either, and why would she make up such a tale?
Okay, then. What now?
Accept her story as a working premise. Where did he go from there?
Where he went was to the bathroom where he threw up for twenty minutes before staggering back to bed, still covered in blood.
The next morning, he showered extra long before burying Scamp and scrubbing away all traces of what happened last night. Meanwhile, Barbra remained curled up on the couch, turned away.
She emerged from her cocoon later in the day. Barbra and Josh sat across from each other saying nothing. They couldn’t find the words to say what needed to be said, and were terrified that someday they would.
For the next month, they existed inside a fragile globe filled with shards of glass instead of plastic snow, praying that nothing would happen to shake them up. They walked carefully, moved slowly, spoke as little as possible.
The spent more time looking over each other’s shoulders than they did looking into each other’s eyes. They slept at the edges of their bed, the bedding of which Josh had burned in the back yard. They quietly threw out dog toys whenever they ran across them.
Maybe, with time, if neither talked about the incident, they could stop thinking about it. They could come to believe it never happened, and maybe — only then — it didn’t.
And then that month ended.
Josh came to during daylight hours. Covered in blood. Barbra sitting in a chair. Shrunken, pale.
The burning pain of his body kept Josh from asking questions he didn’t want to voice, from hearing answers he feared he already knew.
Next to him on the floor, a furry body, the fur matted and torn.
Josh couldn’t even tell what it had been.
Barbra stirred. “You dragged yourself across the floor as though your blood was molasses. You made these … sounds.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Three days. Three days I watched you inching your way across the room, and then I went to the pet store.”
They both refrained from looking at the bundle of fur.
“I don’t know why this is happening.”
Barbra nodded. “It doesn’t matter, Josh. I can’t go through this again.”
“I understand.” Josh sighed. “I don’t know if I can either.”
As soon as Barbra moved out, Josh prepared for the eventuality that this curse or whatever might return. He removed the kitchen table and replaced it with a large dog crate. He placed boards across the top of the crate and ate his meals there, the better to pretend that nothing had changed.
And, except for Barbra leaving, and Scamp no longer treading on his heels, nothing had changed. Josh went to work and took in nutrition and voided waste, same as he always had.
But his kept his eye on the calendar. He noted the date of the next full moon, and kept a running total of how many days remained.
Josh wasn’t certain that the full moon caused the transformation, but both previous transformations had occurred on a full moon, and so he worked with what he had.
The day of the next full moon, he visited the pet shop. He placed the creature in the crate with food, water, and shredded paper. That evening, he entered the crate and patted the creature until the full moon rose.
Again it was still night when he regained consciousness, the same as the first incident. Last time, he had gone without a kill for three days, and so for three days he had remained a monster, not that he blamed Barbra for taking so long to rationalize what she eventually did.
It was easier for him. Josh never saw what he became. He never saw what he did after the transformation. He never saw himself as the beast that killed and fed.
The months went by.
Josh spread his purchases across pet stores and shelters before deciding to trap wild animals and feral cats. He buried the bodies in the back yard until he could no longer stand to see the mounds. He then switched to digging graves in the woods.
A day or two after each full moon, Barbra called. She always asked how he was doing. Whether it was still happening.
Josh didn’t understand why the transformation continued to happen, but then he never figured out why it began.
He’d never been affected by the full moon before. He hadn’t been bitten by a wild animal or changed his diet or angered some old woman with a shaky finger and a wart on her nose.
For a while, mid-lunar cycle, Josh considered the idea of setting up a video recorder. He broached the subject to Barbra the next time they spoke, and she begged him to reconsider.
“Right now, it’s not real to you. I’ve seen what happens. You don’t want to do that. However you’ve kept yourself together this long, I’m afraid that watching your transformation would drive you over the edge.”
“So I just go on like this. That’s what you suggest. Not really knowing what happens. Not understanding why it happens. You want me to just soldier through as if nothing is happening at all.”
“Honestly, Josh, I don’t think you could handle the truth.”
Josh put the video recorder on the back burner.
Which wasn’t the same as pretending that the full moon came and went without incident.
He examined the claw marks. He gathered the hairs. He analyzed the few impressions he’d collected from Barbra.
A sloth. When the full moon rose, Josh became a sloth, and remained one until he fed.
He laughed his throat raw.
Transforming into a wolf, at least, had some history. Wolves were once worshiped. They were part of the American id.
A sloth?
He’d been smart to buy the large crate. How else could he ever manage to chase down his prey, unless he fed on two-legged turtles and snails?
Josh rubbed his face as if he could be cleansed.
While he might have been nipped by a dog that was one-sixteenth wolf when he was a child, Josh had certainly never been bitten by a sloth.
Sloth. Sounded like the name of a frozen drink.
“I’ll take a strawberry sloth. Better yet, just give me a tumbler of straight alcohol.”
As time went on, the chores become more difficult.
Burying the bodies.
Cleaning the crate.
Reassuring Barbra that everything was fine.
The only good that came out of this whole thing was the monthly telephone conversations with Barbra. And if this whole thing had never happened, he could have talked with her every single day.
Josh found himself fighting depression. His boss, disturbed by Josh’s lack of motivation, let him go.
He sat at what served as his kitchen table and watched the days tick by.
As the next full moon approached, Josh decided he was done. He didn’t pay a visit to a pet shop or shelter. He didn’t check the humane traps he’d scattered throughout the woods. The day of the full moon, he simply climbed into his crate, and tied the door shut with a shoelace.
When he awoke, it was light. According to Barbra’s watch, seven days had gone by since he climbed in here. She must have called and called and called. And then she came over.
Josh climbed past her body and pushed the door open.
There was a note on the counter, which he couldn’t bear to read.
Instead, he gave himself up to what he’d become, and left everything else behind. After burying the remains of Barbra, he disappeared into the dark woods.
***
Bio: Stephen D. Rogers is the author of SHOT TO DEATH (Mainly Murder Press) and more than 600 shorter pieces. His website includes a list of new and upcoming titles as well as other timely information.
Kinda dark. Not quite sure if the slothfulness provides enough humor for me to lighten it up.
But yanno. I like’m light and funny. :>)
I have always had some intuition that a sloth lives inside me.
Funny? The site is called Spinetingler and it did.
Always great reading Stephen’s work.
Patti, no argument and I knew it would be dark before I started. That doesn’t always stop me.
I don’t have an intuition about a sloth, I AM a sloth.