Andy Deane

by The Sticks (epub)

  "Well, if I don't call or stop by for a while, don't worry. We'll get in touch after Jeff's behind bars. Again, I'm really sorry about this whole mess," I said.

  Nate nodded, and I could tell that this goodbye was hard on him as well, regardless of how upset he felt at the time. He looked me in the eye and said, "Thanks for making sure Susan got home safe, Brian. I know this isn't your fault. You guys take good care of yourselves."

  I headed out to the car with Jess at my side. We were both exhausted by everything we'd been through. We didn't say a word to one another as I drove, and when we arrived at her place, I had a strong urge to drop her off and head back to my house alone. I wanted solitude, nothing more and nothing less.

  CHAPTER 19

  I had popped open an ice cold can of depression. I had never felt so hopeless in my life, and I wanted to give up on everything. Why make new friends when just knowing them puts their lives at stake? Why love someone when being near the one you care most for rains horror into her life? I couldn't even function at work because of how little I was sleeping. I had pulled my belt in two notches since the werewolf showed up in my life, and figured I'd eventually just waste away if things didn't change in a hurry.

  And now there was the added possibility that I'd transform into a werewolf myself; maybe try to eat a few of my pals.

  That night I lay in the dark beside Jess and thought about the future. I couldn't sleep again and though I don't know it for a fact, I doubt Jess rested easy either. I thought about how bad I'd made things for everyone I had come in contact with. I wanted to believe that I wasn't at fault for the heaping load of hell that had been tossed at everyone I gave a damn about, but in my mind there was no way I wasn't the bad guy. Of course, it wasn't my fault that a werewolf came stomping from the woods, hungry for blood the morning Alicia went missing, but it was the sort of luck I was used to. Shit like that (well not exactly like that, but you get the point) followed me around like it was my shadow, and the people around me always seemed to have a little of my rotten luck rub off on them.

  I couldn't even keep things from going bad at the party Alicia took me to, and because of me she was very likely a werewolf. Hell, at best she was dead, mixed in with some of Jeff's werewolf crap somewhere off route 20. I was a party crasher. I showed up uninvited and turned people's lives upside down. Asking me over for dinner was no better than inviting a vampire into your house. I never had bad intentions, but my intentions didn't seem to matter an ounce. If I entered your life on a Monday you could count on your weekend sucking ass.

  I knew that Jess would have been better off if she'd never run into me on the road that morning. She'd be getting up for work every day without a care in the world, and dreaming good dreams at night, the kind she deserved. Nate and Natalie would have no worries, their kids sound asleep in their beds. And maybe Alicia would be okay too.

  As I lay in bed with my thoughts that night I came to a decision that nearly tore my heart out. It was time for me to remove myself from everyone's lives. Everyone I cared for was suffering because of my proximity to them, and it was high time I did something about it.

  Leaving Jess would be my first order of business, and by far the most painful. And I knew I had to make it happen immediately or I'd lose my nerve. And that would place her in harm's path. I knew Jess would hurt when she woke to find me gone, but I also believed she'd get over it and in time realize just how much better things were without me around. My living there was putting her life in danger, and I didn't want to be responsible for that anymore. Of all the people I could devour after turning into a werewolf, she's the one that would upset me the most.

  And so, sometime around five in the morning I rose from the bed and slipped on my pants and a shirt. I kissed Jess on the temple and looked at her beautiful face one last time before picking my boots up off the floor and heading for the living room. Bronson came walking out of the kitchen licking his chops after a late snack. He meowed at me and I knelt down and rubbed the top of his nose until he purred. I rose again and he watched me for a moment before heading toward the bedroom, most likely to curl up with Jess and fall asleep.

  Before I went outside I wrote a note for Jess explaining that things between us were over. It went something like this;

  Jess, I've gone home to sort things out in my head. You'll be safer without me around. I left the gun here on purpose, just in case. I left Bronson with you, because I don't think it'd be fair to take him away. ~Brian

  As I reread what I'd written, I wanted the note to be longer, to explain things better. My words sounded corny and childish to me, but I couldn't find the right things to say. I couldn't bring myself to tell her what getting scratched by the werewolf could mean. I sat the paper on the couch and made my way slowly for the door, stopping before walking out to take a last look around.

  When I reached the Mustang I turned around and considered going back. I could rip the note into a hundred pieces, undress and lay down beside Jess. She'd never know I was gone. Losing her was like cutting off my own arm, but I felt I didn't have a choice in the matter. I was doing what seemed right at the time. I started the car and pressed on.

  By the time I got home I noticed that the needle on the gas gauge was resting firmly on the bright orange "E." I didn't even have enough fuel to reach the nearest gas station in town. That's what I really needed, more good luck.

  I went inside the house and everything was quiet. No uninvited guests had paid me a visit this time, and my mess was just the way I had left it. I walked over to the couch where I stretched out and fell asleep within a few minutes.

  I was woken up around eleven to the sound of my phone ringing. I figured it was probably Jess, pissed off and depressed, so I didn't answer it and forced myself to fall back asleep after it stopped ringing.

  CHAPTER 20

  I was standing in the field where Jeff had held Susan hostage, and it was dark save a few beams of moonlight cutting through tall trees. I could make out several sets of bright yellow eyes moving about in the forest around me, but couldn't see what was there. I was stiff with terror until I heard something crashing through the forest, getting closer to me with each passing second. I turned to run, but my legs wouldn't cooperate and I ended up falling time after time, and couldn't seem to get my speed up no matter how hard I pushed.

  After falling a fourth time the woods went silent around me and the menacing eyes were nowhere to be seen. I stood and started walking, hoping that it wouldn't take long to find my way out of the forest. Suddenly, I was in an unfamiliar cemetery. It appeared to have been forgotten by time, and the cracked gravestones were covered in thick cobwebs and weeds. The words on the stones had been worn too far by the weather to be read, leaving the decaying bodies that rested below anonymous.

  Footsteps caught my attention. I squinted into the darkness to see who was there. I called out and received no response, but a moment later I could make out Jess from her silhouette. I asked her what she was doing in the cemetery, and she answered with a chilling moan. She emerged from the shadows and the moonlight caught her face. This wasn't the beautiful girl that I loved, but a version of her that appeared to have died and crawled back from the soil to walk again. Her face sagged with decay and most of her pale skin was peeled back and flaking. Her stomach was swollen and covered in claw marks seeping blood. Her eyes were milky white and seemed to see nothing. A worm hung from her nostril and danced on her lips which were covered with scabs.

  I wanted to run, but I couldn't move. And then more of the walking dead emerged from the shadows, shuffling their stiff legs toward me. Among them I recognized Nate, Natalie and Sergeant Matheson. Behind them, in the shadows, Alicia's corpse stood smiling at me. Worst of all were the undead children. Susan and James came forward and stared at me with hunger in their glazed, dead eyes. James opened his mouth and hissed, and Susan spoke three words in a voice of gravel and dust. "You killed us."

  CHAPTER 21

  I woke up to find I had my pillow
in a vice-like grip against my chest. Sweat covered my body and my heart was beating like I'd just won a close race. I lay there for another thirty minutes, trying not to fall asleep again, but exhaustion won out and I was soon sleeping a mercifully dreamless sleep.

  I got out of bed around noon and checked my phone to see if Jess had called. She had, but only once, and she hadn't left a message. Somehow, I'd expected her to go out of her way to track me down as soon as she read the letter I left, but I was dead wrong. Jess was stronger than any girl I'd ever dated, and the fact that she wasn't begging me to come back hurt a bit.

  Once in the bathroom, I brushed my teeth then took off the T-shirt I'd slept in to see how my wound was doing. This was the first time in my life I'd wanted an injury to look bad, because if it was already healed I knew I'd be taking a trip to Werewolfville in the near future. Luckily, the long cut was still red and swollen at the edges, the way any laceration should look the day after it happens. The cut was sore and itched some. The itching made me nervous, because I'd heard it was a sign that a wound is getting better.

  I leaned close to the mirror, stared into familiar blue eyes and studied my face, searching for any indication that I'd changed in the night. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, so I opened my mouth to see if I'd sprouted fangs overnight. I don't normally spend too much time looking at my teeth, so I couldn't decide whether my incisors had grown or not. I ran a finger across the tip of one tooth. It did seem kind of sharp, but was it sharper than the day before? I couldn't be sure.

  Next I tucked my hair behind my ears. Both ears were nice and rounded. I was no closer to looking like Spock than I'd ever been.

  My paranoia was well earned, nothing to be ashamed of. I figured the manliest of men wouldn't have handled this nightmare any better than I did.

  I backed away from the mirror and made a snarling monster face at my reflection, my hands curled into mock claws at the side of my head. I laughed out loud then sat on the toilet and cried until my tear ducts ran dry. It took me some time to compose myself, and when I finally stood up my ass hurt.

  I spent another twenty minutes inspecting myself as I finished undressing. I stepped into the shower, did a quick check to make sure I hadn't grown the beginning of a tail then tried to relax under the hot water.

  I was already missing Jess, and my guts ached some as I thought about her. But I felt like I had done the right thing. Until I knew for sure that I wasn't going from human to lycanthrope I was going to stay well clear of her. And even if I was sure I was okay, I'd feel a shit-ton better about seeing her knowing Jeff was dead or behind bars.

  It's a hell of a thing wondering if you're a werewolf or not. I questioned my own sanity several hundred times over the course of the day. It was a lot simpler to convince myself I was alright with Jess around to verify that all the crazy things I'd seen were real. Now it was just me. By myself at home. Checking my body over every half an hour to make sure I wasn't shape-shifting into a monster.

  I kept the TV on to drown out my thoughts, but it only went a small way toward helping.

  I started feeling hungry, and decided I'd like a steak. That's when my brain decided it wanted to have a chat with me.

  Why a steak, Brian? Meat. That's why. Typical meal for a werewolf in training. Nothing out of the ordinary. Red meat. Mmmmmm.

  "Shut up!" I told myself.

  Fits of anger. Yep. That's a red flag. You should really think about changing your name to Rover. Or how about Spike? Spike's pretty good, don't you think?

  "Jesus! Shut the hell up!"

  What's wrong? Your hearing getting too sensitive? Is that it, wolf-boy? Come on, stop worrying and get to cooking that steak. Better yet, eat it raw. Might as well get used to that taste now. After you're done we should go howl at the moon for a while. Don't be too sad about all this, because think, soon you'll be able to lick your own balls!

  The fact that I was arguing with myself was disconcerting. I was driving myself mad trying to figure out if I was a werewolf. Every film I'd ever seen made it clear that getting scratched by a werewolf turned you into one. But then again, the werewolf I'd been dealing with didn't seem to follow the Hollywood rules.

  For one, Jeff certainly didn't require a full moon to change. Also, he'd told me that he'd shot and killed the beast that had infected him, and chances are he hadn't loaded his hunting rifle with silver bullets. Maybe it took more than a scratch to catch werewolfism in the real world. I hoped to hell so. I knew I hadn't been bitten, and that meant that I might not end up wanting to bite people.

  After digging around in the fridge I realized that steak wasn't one of my dinner options. I ended up microwaving a couple of hot dogs and using folded bread for a bun since it was the closest thing I had in the house.

  I watched an episode of Cops as I ate. I wasn't in much of a mood for television, but the moving images and sound were helping me fend off a little of my sadness.

  I was scared, and I was missing Jess terribly. I felt like a reheated shit sandwich for ditching her the way I had, but I couldn't bear to tell her the truth. It was too painful. It was also somewhat embarrassing. Having your entire body contort and change into a hairy monster is way worse that a giant forehead zit or even a meteor-sized cold sore.

  Sleep came to me shortly after watching two cops arresting a sixty-year-old cross-dressing bum for exposing himself to a busload of Catholic kids.

  CHAPTER 22

  I woke up the next morning to find my front door filled with one hundred and ten pounds of furious female. Before I could even shake the sleep out of my head a ball of paper hit me in the face and the shouting began.

  "Nice try, asshole! What in the hell were you thinking? You made one hell of a giant mistake leaving that gun with me when you left, because I'm feeling a good deal like blowing your nuts into the next life!" Southern girls don't usually say things they don't mean, and that didn't bode well for me. Or my nuts. I had to think fast.

  "What's wrong?" I asked. The second those words left my lips I wanted to reach out and catch them so I could shove them back down my throat before they reached her and she shot me.

  "Are you kidding?" she asked with a look on her face that was suspended somewhere between bewildered and disgusted.

  I rubbed my face and stretched to buy myself a few seconds to gather my thoughts. I needed to prepare a defense if I was going to survive the coming assault. Jess was already turning a shade of red usually reserved for little wagons and '57 Chevys, and I thought I heard her teeth grinding from across the room.

  "Jess, I'm sorry. I just don't think it's safe to have me around right now. If I'm with you I'm just going to keep dragging trouble into your life, and I don't want to do that to you. I don't want to be your downfall."

  I watched her closely, especially the hand that held the gun, to see if I'd said the right thing or the wrong thing. And something good happened. Her skin went from red to pink, and her expression softened a little. I'd struck gold for my nuts!

  "Well damn it, Brian, if you felt like that you should've been a man about it and just talked to me. You don't just run off in the middle of the night leaving some lame note behind in your place. It was fucking selfish and pathetic," said Jess, a bit of anger bubbling to the surface.

  "I didn't think you'd understand, and I didn't want to argue about my decision. Plus, I was a little nervous that you'd get all crazy and threaten to shoot me in the balls."

  That one did it. My defense was complete. If there's one thing that always worked on Jess it was my sense of humor, and it had come through for me this time in a big way. Jess threw a smile at me and walked across the room, putting the gun down on the coffee table as she sat down beside me.

  "You're lucky you're so damned funny, cowboy," said Jess.

  "I know, trust me."

  "Look, if you want to get away from me that's just fine, but I think it's a waste of something really good and that you'll regret it down the road. Plus, I think you owe me a little better th
an walking out while I'm asleep. I've been through a lot with you. For you. You feel the need to leave, tell me to my face."

  "Jess, what I'm worried about most is whether there will even be a down the road for you if I stick around. I think you've been around me long enough to see what I bring to the table. I don't want to be responsible for something bad happening to you. I mean, Jess, not to be overly dramatic here, but when you're with me you get attacked by werewolves, and nothing sucks worse than that. God damned werewolves."

  "For all you know that thing would have attacked the car that night with or without you around. And if you hadn't been there, I'd either be dead or scratching my hairy ass against a tree somewhere in the woods right now. So don't go blaming yourself for all of this. I certainly don't." A tear escaped Jess's left eye and she rapidly wiped it away with her sleeve.

  I didn't know what to say next, but Jess had eased my mind a bit. I decided to keep quiet, because the conversation had gone well and I didn't want to drop a bomb on it by saying something stupid. But I had to tell her about my getting scratched.

  "You want to come back over to my place and make some lunch with me?" Jess asked, another tear tracing her cheek and wiped away.

  I thought for a second before deciding I'd go, knowing that this was my last chance to separate myself from Jess. I had an image in my head of lying in bed with her that night mentally kicking the shit out of myself for not standing firm with my decision to leave. But in the end, her good looks and southern charm won me over. I nodded a yes at her and took her hand in mine.

  I almost didn't tell her my secret. I came close to letting it slide and hoping for the best. But looking into Jess's eyes, I found myself feeling like hell for even considering lying to her.