Tiger Tail: Shifter Romance

by Sky Winters

  Pulling out her cell phone, she called the Big Dipper club. She wanted to let them know that her vacation was going to be extended, but that she would be back. It would be crazy to stay out there in the woods for the rest of her life. She’d never been a social butterfly, but she was getting cabin fever already.

  On the fifth ring, she was watching the black bear eat some berries several feet away from the window. He seemed to be hanging close to protect her, but maybe the bear was merely close because he smelled food.

  On the seventh ring, she saw the flash of something in the bushes.

  Ursula’s eyes widened. It was the barrel of a gun.

  “Hello?” a voice said on the other end of the line. The phone was hanging by its cord where she had let it go.

  She ran out of the house. “NO!” she shouted, waving her arms. “Don’t shoot him!!”

  John the bear looked up at her and let out a growl. She was flailing around and the bear in him felt threatened, but the man in him felt concerned for her.

  Suddenly, a shot rang out in the woods. Ursula screamed.

  John fell down in a heap of black fur and berry bush branches.

  Running, tears pouring down her cheeks, she ran to him, not caring that he was a bear. Not caring that she was breaking her promise. He was hurt and he needed her now.

  “John?” she asked, taking his head and placing it on her lap, petting him. “John, can you hear me?” She felt around his fur for the wound. She found it on his shoulder. There was a lot of blood, but the bullet must have grazed him. It had to have grazed him.

  He was dazed and in pain and the woman was holding him. He let out a loud howl of both pain and anger. He did his best to stand back up on his four legs, but then fell down again a few inches away from her. The woman didn’t care. She picked up his head again and looked into his eyes.

  “Listen to me, John. It’s going to be okay.”

  He snorted and groaned, complaining. His shoulder hurt. Couldn’t she understand? Someone had shot him and she was interfering. She shouldn’t be there!

  Ursula brought her face close to his and softly rubbed the tip of her nose against his big, wet nose.

  “You’re mean to me,” she quietly sang to him, a tear slowly falling down her cheek. “Why must you be mean to me? Gee, honey, it seems to me you love to see me cryin’…”

  She looked into his soulful, chestnut eyes and she could see the recognition in them. He knew who she was now. She could see his humanity there.

  As the sun slipped away and the moon began its act, John’s black fur shed from him and the bear became her man again.

  “Ursula, it hurts,” he said, hissing from the pain.

  “Shh,” she said. “You’re safe now.”

  She did her best to help him to his feet, and dressed him back in his clothes before he caught his death from the cold. She kept his shirt unbuttoned, understanding now why he did that. If it wasn’t buttoned, he could fling it off when he started to change so it wouldn’t rip apart.

  The two of them slowly limped and waddled their way back to their cabin, arms around each other’s shoulders.

  Once inside, Ursula sat John on one of the kitchen chairs and surveyed the wound on his upper arm. It was bloody and awful, but it wasn’t as deep as she had feared. “The bullet passed you, but it wasn’t nice about it,” she said. She ran a wash cloth under some warm water. “This might sting a little.”

  He let out a howl of pain not unlike his bear form.

  “I told you not to come outside,” he said, huffing a little as she cleaned his wound.

  “I had to,” she argued. “I wasn’t just going to stay inside and watch you…” She sniffled. “I couldn’t let you die.”

  John’s expression went from annoyance to appreciativeness. His eyes were sad now. So much like the bear’s eyes. “Thank you,” he said, clearly feeling guilty about how he’d spoken to her.

  “Don’t move,” she instructed. She went into the bathroom and found a first aid kit under the sink. As gruff as he was, at least he took precautions and thought about things like first aid kits and logs for the fire. She suspected he had these things for her, not for him. Bringing out some gauze and Band-Aids, as well as the antiseptic, she stood admiring him for a moment.

  John Asher the bear man was holding the wet rag to his shoulder and grimacing like a big baby. She smiled at him. He glanced at her, then turned to face her. “What? Why are you smiling?”

  “Oh, nothing,” she said. “You’re just cuter than you realize. But this won’t be cute.” She put some antiseptic on his arm and watched as he threw his head back and yelled.

  She wrapped the wound in the gauze and added some Band-Aids to the minor scratches he’d received from the berry bush.

  John was gone again the following morning, as Ursula now expected. But thankfully, he was back in the afternoon when her water broke.

  “Ahhh, John, help me!!” she greeted him when he came back into the cabin. Thankfully, he had the key with him now.

  Quickly, he brought her down off the couch and onto the fuzzy rug by the fireplace. She had lit a fire. That was good thinking. He pulled off his coat and brought her legs up so they were bent, her feet flat on the rug.

  He knelt between her legs. “This is going to be okay, darling,” he told her. “You are strong and confident…”

  “I can do this,” she said, breathing slowly through her lips.

  He coached her and she pushed. Then they rested. He mopped her brow with a wash cloth, smirking a little. “It’s my turn to take care of you,” he said.

  She pushed some more, screaming and hollering bloody murder. Before long, there was a little baby in John’s arms and Ursula was crying tears of joy that she didn’t know she would feel about this. They had a baby. They’d created a life together, somehow. It was strange and it was certainly not one they’d be able to explain to many people, but it was their life.

  “It’s a girl,” John said, crying a little himself as he held their new little person.

  Ursula carefully took her into her arms. “Matilda,” she said. “Matilda Joan. Joan for her daddy, and Matilda just because it feels right.”

  John smiled and kissed Ursula deeply. “I love you,” he said. Then he gingerly touched the small brown head of their daughter. “I love you.”

  For several months, Ursula Blake sang songs in the cabin for a very limited audience of two. When Matilda was old enough to be able to laugh at her mom’s over-the-top performances, Ursula took her around town in a sling across her chest, sticking and stapling flyers to anything that could hold a flyer.

  “Live at the Black Bear Inn: Ursula Blake-Asher! Jazz and Soul Songs to Cozy Up To!”

  No matter what, even with his fairly rigid schedule, John never missed a performance. He sat in the front row with Matilda and the two of them would smile up at Ursula every night after dusk, when the black bear and his cub had shifted back into the man and his daughter.

  THE END.

  BEAR POCALYPSE

  “We saw you in here,” The voice was cold and mocking. It matched the evil laughter in the man’s eyes. I had run back into the building as soon as I saw the looters prowling the streets. There was no telling how many had followed him into the hospital. Although, I guess it doesn’t matter what you call any of these buildings now.

  It was quick, I will say that for the virus. A super virus, bred in hospitals for years. Immune to antivirals, inoculations, and other medications. It killed billions of people for sure, but the worst thing that it did was remove our humanity.

  “Come on out,” I curled my knees in tighter as he beckoned to me. I was hiding in the large compartment of a janitor’s cart. I was not about to move for anything. Although, I was sure that I was shaking. This man had nothing to fear, he knew his days were numbered, so what did my days matter to him? “I can smell you.”

  It was an odd realisation, and not likely his intention, but the looter reminded me of how long I had gon
e without a shower. The water had stopped flowing weeks ago. There was no one to monitor any of the public works. Electricity worked on and off in some areas. Water was done altogether. The sewers were a whole other problem.

  Everyone was too busy living for today to do basic things like jobs or work. Billions had lost their lives to the virus, but many had been killed by gangs like the charming gentlemen who were hunting me at the moment.

  For the first few weeks I had been a member of a community. The nurses of A2. That was our ward. We had all brought our families to live in the hospital. We were taking care of each other. We had food, medicine, and beds. A few left when the rolling brown outs started. The rest left when the water stopped flowing. The backed up sewers drove most people out of their homes. It was rare to see people moving through the streets.

  They would move through the streets scavenging from time to time, but for the most part everyone stayed away, because of the scent. I had stayed because of my father. He was too weak to move. When he finally passed on yesterday I decided it was time to move on. I have been trying to do it ever since.

  My first trip outside of the building I ran into a bear. The woods must be getting too crowded now that they are filled with people. He didn’t seem to pay me any mind. He must be used to humans by now. I on the other hand ran like the wind. As soon as I saw him I froze. He looked me up and down and then turned his head. I took off like a shot. It took me ten hours to work up the courage to step outside again. That’s when I saw these guys.

  “Knock, knock,” The man was only a few feet away from me. He was knocking on the door to the janitor’s closet. “Let me come in,” he said mockingly. I was mad as he said those words. I didn’t know why I hadn’t gotten behind that heavy steel door. There was even a lock. There was a weird muffled banging that seemed to be shaking the cart.

  “What are you doing?” It was a deeper voice than the first.

  “I am getting ready.” The first man said. He was shaking the cart. I tried to hold myself still as he violently shook the cart.

  “By humping a cart?” The deeper voice sounded a bit confused. I tried to hold it together, but a cry of fear escaped.

  The hand flew in through the door before I could react. “Ahh!” I yelled as I felt the cold floor tile hit hard against my cheek. The laughing eyes were going all over my body as he licked his lips. Just the look in his eyes was enough to make me feel sick to my stomach.

  The slight bit of solace that I had in this moment was that the virus had likely rendered me sterile. There was no way that I would ever have to have this man’s baby. I edged myself backwards along the floor. I held my foot back ready to kick him. There were four men moving toward me. I knew that I couldn’t take all of them, but I was going to kick him in the balls so hard. That was my goal in that moment. I didn’t think about anything else, I just wanted to hurt him.

  “Don’t worry,” the man’s smile made my skin crawl. He leaned forward to grab my legs. “My eye!” He yelled as my 3 inch heel went into his eye. They were the only shoes I had left. I had had to leave the hospital from time to time to get food and I had managed to destroy every pair of shoes that I had owned. The heels were my last clean pair. They had blood on them now. “You bitch!”

  “What did you expect?” The deeper voice was coming from a fat young man in a black t-shirt that was two sizes too small. He was almost doubled over with laughter as he watched the man who now had only one laughing eye. They were travelling together, but they didn’t care about each other at all. It was sad to see how much he enjoyed his companion’s pain. The others were still moving towards me.

  I was trying to back away further, but I had backed myself into a corner quite literally. I had deterred the first contestant, but I knew that this wasn’t over. A skinny redheaded man wearing a fedora and a Hawaiian shirt was already undoing his pants and he was still fifteen feet away from me. My world was going dark. It was like the stress of the situation was taking away my senses. I had a ringing in my ears.

  It was only the fear in the fedora wearer’s eyes that alerted me to a change in the situation. His eyes went wide and then a brown furry paw swiped across his face. Blood spurted on to the floor by my feet as the man dropped lifelessly to the ground. The others started to run. It was only the man with the injured eye that stayed to deal with the bear. He had taken a knife out of his coat pocket, and he was walking slowly toward the great beast.

  I took advantage of the situation and crawled along the floor. I knew I could get to the stairwell if I could only stand up, but I could not get my legs to work. I kept looking backwards to make sure that nothing was following me. The looter made up for his size and strength disadvantages with a healthy dose of lunacy. He was swinging the knife wildly.

  The bear was up on his back legs and hanging back from the blade. I was almost to the stairwell when a missed swing of the knife took the man by surprise and he went down to the ground hard. He spun onto his back as the bear dropped down on top of him and sunk his teeth into his throat.

  “Grrrrrrowwww!” The great bear moaned. I watched as the fur began to recede. The bear itself was shrinking too. It was hard to tell what was going on. I got back to my feet and started running over to the spot where the combatants lay. The laughing man was missing his windpipe. It looked as though he was trying to say something to me, but all that was coming out was a bunch of gurgles and blood bubbles. I was barely paying attention to him as the crazed laughter drained out of his eyes.

  On the end of his knife was no longer a bear. It was a naked man. He was alive, but not for long. I looked around. I was still in a hospital. There had to be something that I could do. I ran through the lobby and into the emergency department. I found a gurney and wheeled it out to him. I couldn’t roll it when it was down and I couldn’t raise it by myself. Truth be told, I have never liked working with gurneys, it’s a paramedics job as far as I am concerned. It was one of the main reasons that I had never worked in the emergency room.

  I had spent my entire nursing career working on a post-surgical floor. I knew how to heal and treat wounds. I just had to get this guy to stand up. It was going to be tough. The naked man was not responding at all to my voice. I shook him and that seemed to get his attention. His eyes went wide and he grabbed for the knife.

  “Gahhhhhh!” He shouted as he stood up and ripped the knife out of his abdomen. He was big, even when not a bear. About 6’5” and at least 250 lbs of solid muscle. I guided him onto the stretcher. As soon as the rush of energy had passed he just kind of followed where my hands were taking him. He laid back on the stretcher and I wheeled him into the emergency room.

  The cupboards had been raided for drugs and supplies. They had taken almost everything. I got a lot of gauze and started to pack the wound. I knew that he was going to need stitches so I started looking for a kit to help me get the wound closed off. It was frustrating to open so many doors and see the same empty shelves staring back at me.

  In the end I had to use steri-strips to close the wound. I had found a supply closet with saline in it. I already knew that there were really no options for blood or plasma. I had gotten to him fast enough that I was hoping he wouldn’t need anything like that. The rolling black outs had been a killer for medical supplies in this hospital. Anything that needed to be kept at a constant temperature was useless by now.

  I knew that I was going to need more than just a couple fancy bandages to get this wound to heal properly. I waited until he seemed stable enough and I moved up a floor and started poking through the drawers, carts, and supply closets. The hardest floor was the second. My father’s corpse was still rotting in bed 2034-A. I could smell him as I walked out of the stairwell. I checked the floor for a suture kit, but I already knew that there was nothing. I had helped the people who were trying to leave pick the floor clean.

  I had originally told my father and myself that I was just going to leave with the group. I was going to head out and leave him to die on his own.
I thought that I could do it, but it is just not who I am. It was the seventh floor that finally yielded some results. I had some morphine, saline and a suture kit. I was pretty good at sewing and I had always believed that I could do surgery. I had seen so many of them done on TV and in person, I was actually excited to get the opportunity.

  I was getting more and more worried as I got closer to the emergency room. What if this man had already turned back into a bear and he was gone? What if he was just waiting downstairs to eat me? I left the stairwell cautiously. It had been a nerve wracking day. I didn’t hear anything except for the thrashing of the patient. He had been having small fits whenever he came to. He was in an incredible amount of pain. I put the morphine in through his saline and waited for the thrashing to stop altogether for an extended period of time. I wanted my first surgery to be a success.

  I found a nice quiet place to wash my hands. I was only going to seal off a wound. It really seemed as though the organs and intestines had all been missed by the blade. It was only the skin that had been broken. There had been a very significant loss of blood, but other than that the young man stood a really good chance of making it through.

  I could feel the needle shaking as I got closer to the cut. I still had the steri-strips in place to hold the wound, which liked to move in place. I was going to take them off one by one as I moved down the gash. His stomach was hard with muscles, but the skin still moved very freely back and forth. I was trying to keep everything under control, but I could not get my hand to settle down.

  It wasn’t until I passed the needle through the skin and pulled the thread through for the first time that my nerves started to settle. With each passing stitch my confidence grew. By the end I was sad to be finished with the sewing. I was starting to really get the hang of it and I knew that it might be my last opportunity to stitch somebody up. I had found another kit as well. It was secretly hoping that I would have to go in and try to find a bleeder or something.