Lunatic Fringe

by Allison Moon

“I hurt you.” Archer’s forehead creased with regret.

  Lexie sniffed in her tears and wiped away Archer’s. “No, you didn’t. That was . . .” Unable to find the right word, she pressed her mouth to Archer’s, the kiss hot and salty with both their tears.

  Archer carried Lexie back to the fleece that was becoming their sensation of home. They lay down together, alert but needing a respite. Lexie fought against her hunger, the dull reminder of yet another primal need. She wondered why their bodies signaled mortality in all the dullest of ways, these ineffable rolling discomforts, rather than prickly fierce pains that one might assume would signal the actual urgency of hunger, thirst, or lack of rest. She was uncomfortable admitting her increased attraction to ideas of meat and smoke, salt and fire. She focused on the warmth of Archer’s body at her back, redirecting her hunger for food into a hunger for answers.

  “What was that, last night?” Lexie asked.

  “Which part?” Archer replied with a gentle chuckle.

  Lexie couldn’t help but smile in return, the mixture of anguish and ecstasy still roiling in her veins.

  “Who were you before?”

  “This,” replied Archer, stroking Lexie’s cheek with the backs of her fingers. “I’ve always been this way.”

  “So, we’re different.”

  Archer nodded.

  Lexie’s eyes focused on the horizon, the sunlight filtering through the leaves. Her mind struggling to right itself as it tumbled over every fleeting question. She struggled to form at least one into coherence.

  “Archer?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m starving.”

  Chapter 15

  The rat was freaking the hell out. Its terrified squeals shattered Lexie’s eardrums as she struggled to get the needle of anesthetic into its haunch so it would stop squirming and fall asleep. Her lab partner, Kal, a skinny, feral-looking raw vegan, refused to play a part in any of this first vivisection of biology lab. Instead, he expounded his food philosophies to Lexie as she sucked the blood out of the scrape wounds inflicted by the rat’s tiny claws.

  “Veganism is food activism,” he explained, “not just a dietary choice. Not like vegetarianism.”

  “I tried to be a vegetarian in high school,” Lexie chuckled. “I almost lasted a whole week before my dad made bacon for breakfast and I threw in the towel for good.”

  Kal grimaced. “Pigs are smarter than Labradors, you know.”

  Tastier too, Lexie thought.

  Renee strode between the stations in her crisp lab coat. Next year, she would graduate with honors and go straight into a biomedical PhD program. Lexie and half the boys in the class, including Duane, who hovered over his rat with empathetic authority, agreed that Renee could rock that lab coat like no other. Minutes earlier, Renee had demonstrated the proper technique in picking up the rat and injecting the anesthetic, causing Kal to growl under his breath. Renee didn’t pay him any mind as her unnamed demo rat drifted into a deep sleep, the needle buried in its haunch.

  Lexie, though, couldn’t focus on the task before her. Renee’s hands distracted her, as she recalled them balled into fists, striking the jaw of the bound man. Lexie bit her lip, struggling to maintain her composure while flanked by an alarmist activist and a woman she had been attracted to and now legitimately feared. At least she had been sleeping well at night.

  “Our origin myth is fuzzy, as most origin myths are. Our kind was a species unto itself. For ages, we lived in the forests and plains, looking to all the world much like wolves, but stronger, larger, faster, and with some physical curiosities, most notably our articulated paws and substantial size. For generations we lived alongside our cousins, the humans, in what harmony could be expected from two advanced and territorial species. Though neither werewolves nor humans believed it was possible to own the earth, this did not stop either of us from taking umbrage against those who would trespass into a tribe or pack’s sphere. Territory was sacred to both of us, and we defended it fiercely. Our fallen were evidenced in the Lupine hides that the humans used to clothe their bodies, theirs in the human meat that we used to feed our young. Yet there was respect between the races.

  Some of our human relations even deified the werewolves, treating us as forest elders from which all life came, due to our ability shift corporeal forms from wolf into any other creature in the forest. We werewolves understood otherwise, that there was a far greater force of the forest, and that we were no more gods than the humans were. It’s so silly now that anyone would mistake us for gods; why should shapeshifting be any more incredible than the other gifts of nature, those of flight, the breathing of water, of eyeless navigation, or the human’s ability to manipulate nature to meet its own needs?

  “Yet, that shared reverence maintained the peace between two such disparate communities for generations, until new humans descended on our territory, colonizing and murdering the native inhabitants of both human and werewolf kind.

  “These pale intruders burned swathes of forest to make way for buildings, they tore through the soil for minerals, and they slaughtered anything that frightened them. And everything frightened them. The fur trade was vigorous and brought my kind to near extinction. They would even clothe their horses in our hides. It was wanton waste, a show of bravado to demonstrate their sovereignty over the Earth.

  “The werewolves saw their arrogance as the petulance of adolescence, a childish need to be stronger than the natural world that gave them life. But it was also frightening, as the Mother was not fighting back, choosing instead, in her most feminine way, to attack by surrender.”

  Armed with a needle, a rat, and a number of crude surgical instruments, each pair of students set to work on the day’s task of outfitting their specimen with an electrode buried in its brain’s pleasure center, to be stimulated as needed to teach basic learning behaviors.

  Kal cooed at the rat, which he insisted on naming Falafel against Lexie’s requests to leave the poor thing with its dignity before drilling a hole in its skull. He whispered to it, gripping it tightly against his chest as it squirmed and squealed away from Lexie’s touch.

  She pinched a piece of its skin over its haunch in yet another attempt to drive in the needle. The rat scratched at Kal’s arm, squirming out of his grasp and attempting to escape through the gap between his arm and torso.

  “Ouch! Lexie, you’re hurting him!” Kal shouted.

  “It. I’m hurting it. I have a huge needle I’m preparing to drive into its muscle. No shit, I’m hurting it. Comes with the territory.”

  “Christ, why do you have to be so inhumane? This is a dignified creature, not some pincushion.”

  “It’s a rat, Kal, but thanks for the life lesson. Can you please hold that thing still?”

  Kal gripped the rat around its shoulders. By this point, all the other groups had a fully anesthetized rat and were working on phase two of the experiment.

  As Lexie touched the needle to the rat’s skin, preparing again the plunge, its hind legs twisted wildly, kicking the needle out of her hands to the floor. “Kal, hold that fucking thing still!”

  “It’s not a thing, Lexie. It’s an animal, and it deserves as much freedom as any other creature, but instead we keep it in a shit-filled cage all its life so we can learn, what? That pleasure will make an animal do something? Well, no shit!” Kal dropped the rat back into the open top of its cage where it fled to the corner and burrowed into the wood chips at the bottom. “Fuck animal testing, fuck you, and fuck this class!”

  Lexie’s face burned with rage. “They test everything on animals, Kal. Everything! Soap, pills, everything! If you’re so goddamned indignant about injustice to animals, never take any medicine, never mop the floor, and go become a Comp Lit major, alright?”

  She picked up the fallen syringe and tossed it on the table. By the time Renee arrived to break up the scene, Kal was already on his way out the door and Lexie was beyond pacification.

  The rest of the class, limp rats and h
and drills forgotten, watched the drama unfurl. Lexie stood alone at her station, holding her head in shame.

  “Lexie, you were doing a fine job.” Renee approached like an apparition, placing the flat of her palm on the small of Lexie’s back. “Try again. Be assertive. Pinch the skin really hard, and ease in the needle. He’s going to squeal, but he’ll fall asleep quickly.”

  Lexie’s hands trembled as she picked up the needle. She could feel each of Renee’s breaths across the back of her neck as though she were searching for something in her scent. She struggled to grab Falafel in a secure hold. His heartbeat battered the soft flesh of her hand. She exhaled and sank the needle home. The rat’s flesh gave only a small tack of resistance before Lexie depressed the plunger and Falafel released a tiny, sighing squeak and his hot skin turned cool.

  “Good,” Renee said. “Now give his tail a good pinch to make sure he’s under, then secure him to the table.”

  “One morning, my mother, who was the Alpha of our pack, was tending to my brother and me while the rest of our pack, including my father, was out hunting. It turns out they were being hunted as well. Many of our pack were shot down. Those that weren’t, fled. Only my father returned for us.

  “My parents ran, carrying us in their mouths. It’s my earliest memory: my paws dangling as I swayed from my mother’s mouth, the skin on my neck pulled so taut, holding me tight, protecting me. We finally arrived at a lair so deep in the northern woods, no trappers or hunters would dare venture there.

  “For a time, we were safe. My brother and I grew together, under the watch of our parents, a meager pack hoping to reclaim our numbers and our future somehow. We lived quietly and simply, hunting small game and refusing to communicate with howls, even at our happiest or most desperate. But the humans continued to expand their territory, and my parents realized that they would never stop pushing us farther and farther away. My parents had denied my brother and me our birthrights out of fear--to howl, to hunt great game, to raise our own packs without fear of lead or traps.”

  Two hours later, each of Lexie’s classmates had a perky, wakeful rat, outfitted with a cap of adhesive out of which stuck an electrode linked to a lever. They looked like tiny space men, their crude helmets transmitting signals to the mothership. Renee made the rounds, a harsh critic of the students’ surgical technique. Lexie was still scattered, far behind the rest of her class. Unlike Falafel’s, her own heartbeat hadn’t yet steadied.

  Duane had finished early and walked over to keep her company, perching on the lab desk as Lexie wired up her rat to the device. Renee moved between the two.

  “Lexie,” she said over her shoulder. “You’re going to have to stay after.”

  “It’s cool, Renee. I can help her out,” Duane offered.

  Renee scanned him and moved on to the next station.

  “One blustery evening when I was still a pup and my parents were out hunting, I wandered out of the cave and fell into an abandoned badger den. When they discovered I was missing, they panicked, chattering and barking, searching everywhere for me. Finally, deep into the night, my father found me, no more than twenty yards from our camp. I had sat silently for hours waiting for them to find me. I didn’t howl or make any noise. I was terrified, absolutely terrified, but I refused to howl; we’d been admonished for making noise our whole lives.

  “That I never learned to howl, even to protect myself, crushed my parents with guilt; they were raising their pups as mutes to keep us safe, yet in doing so denied us one of our greatest gifts: our song, the identity of our species.

  “Our parents stayed up all night and through the morning, speaking to each other in hushed tones as my brother Sage and I pretended to sleep. I knew they were debating something fierce, as they kept losing track of their voices and would sometimes nearly shout before hushing the conversation back to whispers.

  “The next night they lead us to a human encampment. We crept to the edge of the woods and I saw my first campfire. Around it were men and women, banging drums, dancing wildly, smoking long, carved pipes and eating fire-roasted game. I watched my mother’s heart break as she recalled the joy of her own pack. It was clear how she longed for that feeling again. Men sat on a log beside one another, buck-skin drums of different sizes in their hands or wedged between their knees. The rhythm shook me, wild and intense. Each strike of their mallets and fingers was like a blow to my chest. Beyond them, a woman danced in the orange firelight. She had long mahogany hair and her lean body was covered by a scant suede dress. She looked like one of the kinds of humans I had known around the time of my birth, but there was something different about her. Her eyes were bright blue and her skin was fairer than the people of my homeland. She was a m√© tis woman, not uncommon in that time and area, the product of a love between one of our indigenous folk and a pale immigrant. She was exquisite, smiling and spinning, whipping her hair about her like the tail of a horse. She gave herself over to the rhythm of the drums. Her dress strained and twisted on her strong earthy body as she spun. She threw her arms towards the stars, her bare feet kicking up dust, the audience’s faces glowing in the sienna clouds as they swirled about.

  “She enraptured the crowd with her dance. The drummers played as hard as they could to please her, to keep her moving, to keep her praising their skill, spirit, and vitality. The other tribespeople passed the pipe among themselves, never removing their eyes from this passionate vision of beauty and vibrance.

  “The rhythm in her hips ensnared me as well, as did the smile on her face as the drumbeats moved her soul. Her eyes would close as she spun, but her smile never faded. I could have watched her all night, and she looked as though she could have danced as long; her feet never stumbled, her shoulders never slumped. She was pure energy made of that music, of community, of movement. I had never known that kind of freedom. It was . . . a revelation”

  “I can’t believe I let you convince me to take this class,” Lexie said, glaring at Duane as he rocked a lab stool with his feet.

  “Oh please. You were always good at biology. This is really interesting stuff.”

  “Yeah, I love getting lambasted by self-righteous vegans.”

  “Don’t blame me for that protein-deficient crazy man. I just thought you’d get a kick out of the anatomy stuff,” Duane said. “Anyway, I wanted to apologize for the other day. Brian’s a cool guy, but kind of an ass when he’s drunk.” He pulled a bright green apple out of his bag, rubbed it on his sleeve and took a bite.

  The crack of his teeth breaking the chartreuse skin rattled Lexie’s eardrums like an ax through a tree. From across the room, Renee said, “Duane! Put that away. You’re in a lab, not a cafeteria.” Duane rolled his eyes and tossed the apple into the trashcan near the door with a perfect swish.

  Lexie squeezed a line of glue around the braided wire sticking out of Falafel’s head, making it easy to avoid eye contact with Duane. “It’s not your fault your friend is a dick.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want people to see me as a guy who hangs out with dicks,” he said.

  “You’re pledging a frat, Duane,” Lexie said, letting that fact speak for itself. She tested the glue to make sure it was dry, then began piling on layers of adhesive to create the little helmet that all the other rats sported.

  Duane snorted in agreement. “Fair enough, but I’m no longer a pledge. I’m in.” He waited for congratulations. Lexie managed a weak smile.

  “Brian is taking some of the new guys camping this weekend as a celebration,” he continued. Lexie blanched, her mind immediately jumping back to the night on the mountainside, the terror of the attack still fresh in her mind.

  “Duane, are you sure that’s smart? The wolf attacks have increased.”

  “Lexie!” Renee barked from across the room. “Everyone else is done. You’ve got five minutes left. Step it up!” Lexie flinched.

  Duane scooted off the desk and spoke quieter so as not to invoke more of Renee’s ire. “Nah. All the attacks have been on lone lu
mberjacks or hunters. There will be at least four of us, making a shit-ton of noise and acting like crazy people. No wild animal will come within a hundred miles of us. Besides, we’re heading south, east of town, back towards the Creek. There’s never been an attack there. It’s probably out of their territory.”

  “I don’t think they have a territory, Duane.”

  Duane groaned. “You’re worse than my mom. We’ll be fine.”

  With that, Renee stormed towards them both, a royal rage bursting red beneath her skin.

  “Christ,” Duane said. “What’s up with her?”

  “Duane. Outside,” Renee scolded. “Lexie, finish up. I’m waiting on you.”

  “Renee, chill. I’m just keeping her company,” Duane insisted.

  “You’re keeping her distracted.”

  “Lexie’s taking care of her business, why do you have to get up in mine?”

  “Duane, stop sassing me and get out,” Renee said, pointing to the door.

  “Renee, seriously--”

  But he couldn’t finish. Renee wrapped her reedy fingers around his bicep and jerked him towards the door. He let out an incredulous laugh as she forced him into the hall. The steel door fell closed with a clang behind them.

  Lexie burst into a flurry of activity, smoothing out the adhesive attaching the metal bits to the skull of her sleeping rodent, and placing him in the cage, a furry ball of drugged, space-rat slumber. Next class her technical prowess would be tested when she would wire up Falafel in an attempt to give him a tiny, electrical rat-gasm.

  If Lexie could wire the kinds of things Archer made her feel, she might be inclined to go under the knife herself, she thought as she packed up her things. Just as she finished washing her hands, Duane slipped back into the room, his face ashen and eyes downcast.

  “Hey,” Lexie said. He ignored her as the alkaline scent of his anxiety filled her nose.

  Renee followed him in, removing her lab coat and hanging it in the office. She jangled her keys as Duane packed his bag and rushed out of the room.