Wolf Land

by Jonathan Janz

  He made his way over to one of the two stalls—the one farthest from the fat fuck at the urinal—and flipped it open. The door banged loudly enough to hurt Glenn’s sensitive ears.

  “Jesus!” the oaf shouted. “Take it easy, would ya? Scared me half to death!”

  Glenn said nothing. His fever had grown downright nasty during the short trek to the restroom. He felt lousy. He knew you could get a lot of savage bugs from the hospital. Maybe he’d picked something up while he was there, it had incubated for the past couple days, and now it was really sinking its teeth into him.

  Glenn unzipped his fly, leaned forward and braced himself on the cinderblock wall.

  “I say you scared me,” the oaf repeated.

  Glenn didn’t trust himself to answer. His bladder was on fire, but the odors of the bathroom distracted him. Christ, he thought. How often was this pigsty cleaned? The concrete surrounding the toilet seemed permanently damp, not only from a hundred dudes’ errant urine streams, but also from the leaky plumbing and what he suspected were a great many loogies as well. Yes, he could smell the dried spit beneath the dampness, some of it containing the memories of masticated popcorn and candy, much of it laced with tobacco juice. God, it was horrible.

  “I’ve had kidney stones all spring,” the oaf remarked. “Some days it’s damn near impossible to push a squirt out, if you know what I mean.”

  Glenn winced, ground his teeth. His abdomen was smoldering. If he didn’t piss soon, he was afraid his penis might explode from the pressure.

  “Oooo,” the man moaned. “I can feel it burning.”

  Glenn felt the muscles of his forearms bunch and hop. He needed water. He’d lurch over to the sink now, but he was afraid if he chanced it, his bladder would finally let go, and he’d be left with a dark blue crotch and a shitload of mockery from Weezer and the girls.

  “It muggy in here to you?” the oaf asked.

  Boy, is it ever, Glenn thought. Unbidden, the image of the big man over there at the urinal filled his mind. The beige T-shirt soaked through with sweat. The too-short black shorts, which probably stank of the guy’s swampy ass. The white legs, the black socks. The guy’s shoes probably smelled so bad no amount of spray or odor-eating inserts could kill the stench. The kind of feet that clouded a room.

  “Ohhh damn,” the man said, and made a sucking, hissing sound. “Damnity-damn-damn.”

  Glenn closed his eyes, willing the oaf to finish his business and clear the hell out. The sweat was dripping off Glenn’s hair, his nose, and spattering the rim of the toilet, which was marred by fine speckles of diarrhea, several hooks of pubic hair.

  “Golly,” the oaf groaned, “what I wouldn’t give for an air conditioner in this joint.”

  And sure enough, Glenn smelled it then, the odor wafting over from the oaf at the urinal. It was even worse than he’d anticipated, the smell like bacon grease left to congeal outside some squalid kitchen door, the flies crawling over it and laying eggs in it. He heard the man shifting from foot to foot, and the stench magnified, and in Glenn’s mind he saw the ivory maggots with their black-brown faces writhing in the rancid bacon cream.

  “Awww crap,” the oaf moaned. “I told ’em there was another stone in there, and you think they believed me? Now look at that. Blood.”

  Glenn smelled it, the stench overpowering the half-dissolved pink cake in the urinal drain.

  The oaf said, “That ain’t good, man. That means more of that laser crap. I gotta go back on that gosh-darned diet. Crud, man.”

  Glenn’s whole body was rimed with sweat now. He was having trouble pissing, but that was because, he noticed with a downward glance, he was half-erect. And here was another surprise: his cock was a good two inches longer. And hairier too. Not just the area around the shaft, the part he kept neatly shaved to make himself appear longer, but the penis itself was now threaded with long black strands of hair.

  What in the holy hell?

  “Hey, buddy,” the oaf called. “You deaf or something? Wouldn’t that be just my luck? Talking to a deaf guy all this time?” A pause. “Wouldn’t it?”

  The fire was blossoming over Glenn’s shoulders, was scalding his neck like a superheated yolk. He suppressed a whimper. Yes, this was definitely the flu. Or what did they call that infection people got from hospitals?

  Staph.

  Shit, he hoped it wasn’t a staph infection. That was some serious stuff. People lost limbs from that, even died because of it. If he got a freaking staph infection from his stay at Lakeview Memorial—

  The stall door rattled. Glenn gasped, whirled.

  “You alive in there, buddy?” the oaf called.

  Glenn stared at the sliver of beige shirt in the slender gap between the door and the frame. Glancing higher, Glenn spotted an eye.

  The man watching him through the gap.

  “You don’t look so good, buddy,” the man said.

  Glenn turned back toward the toilet. The thighs of his jeans were restrictive, the shirt a couple sizes too small.

  “You want me to call the manager, have them fetch a doctor?”

  Glenn opened his lips to tell the guy to mind his own fucking business, but his mouth was suddenly full of teeth. Hot drool glopped over his bottom lip, his chin. The heat in his body was unbearable, like he would at any moment ignite and melt the blue plastic stall around him.

  “Suit yourself,” the oaf said. “I need to take something for this pain. You ever had kidney stones?”

  Glenn looked down at his hands. Oh Jesus.

  The oaf said, “Believe me, pal. You never want to know. Worst stuff in the world.”

  A spasm racked Glenn’s body, doubled him up. And like the oaf’s words had somehow infected him, he now felt a molten pain spread through his urethra. But it didn’t stop there. It burned through his loins, sizzled down his quadriceps. Urine squirted everywhere. There was an immense cracking sound in the middle of his back, and Glenn let out a coughing groan. He felt a burst of wet heat in the seat of his jeans and realized he’d shat himself. He figured the oaf would comment on that, but the guy was washing his hands now, the dull roar of the faucet masking Glenn’s bodily functions.

  “You’re not getting off, are ya?” the man called.

  Oh my God, Glenn thought. Get out now.

  The oaf chuckling. “Sounds like you’re doing the hokey-pokey in there, pal.” The man began to sing, his voice jolly and high. “You do the hokey-pokey and you take yourself a dump—that’s what it’s all a-bout!”

  Glenn’s arms were juddering, twitching, the liquid fire spreading through his joints, even his fingernails.

  “I oughta call the manager,” the oaf said, and from the sound, he was facing the stall again. “Come on out of there, pal. I got kids here tonight. I need to make sure you’re not some weirdo, perpetrating some kind of weirdo stuff in there.”

  Glenn’s body was a jitterbugging blur. He bent backward, his face upturned to the cobwebbed ceiling, the ceiling somehow too close, like he was on stilts. The pain swam over him, the heat a metronomic blast on his throat, his shoulders, his—

  “That’s it, buddy. No fooling. I’m going for the manager.”

  Glenn whirled and backhanded the door. It flew open and crashed against the wall, the hard plastic splitting, the cinderblock shrapnel spraying the area between them. As the dust settled, he saw that the oaf was indeed staring at him, the man’s face going slack with shock. And over the oaf’s shoulder, Glenn beheld his own reflection and understood why.

  But before Glenn had time to register the shock of what he saw in the mirror, he scented something that made his muscles seize. The dribble of blood soaking the man’s underwear. The greater, pulsing network of arteries and veins under the man’s pale, blubbery flesh. The oaf backed up and sat on the sink, his ample buttocks actually drooping into the basin.

  Glenn
realized his vision was clearer, more crystalline than any high-definition footage he’d ever seen. But this was a mere afterthought, his other shrieking senses obscuring what he saw. He scented every fold and crevice in the man’s body, the stink between his toes, the gathered filth in his navel. He heard the beat of the man’s heart, the guy’s malfunctioning plumbing, the backed-up urinary system, the gurgle of his bloated belly. But most maddeningly of all, he could feel the rough chafe of his own stretched clothing, could taste the taint of the alcohol he’d drunk earlier, so impure compared to the flesh that quailed before him.

  The oaf’s hands were out, the man’s face a pathetic, quivering mask. Drool spilled over the sluglike lower lip, the man’s sobs inciting something deep within Glenn, some dark crimson urge.

  Glenn took a step in the man’s direction, ready to rend him to pieces, but as he moved he caught his own reflection again, saw the metamorphosed face, the hairy, satanic mask and the yellow wolf’s eyes.

  Choking down a growl, Glenn said, “Go now,” but the man, the stupid fucking slack-faced man, he didn’t move at all, if anything showing even greater horror at the rumble of Glenn’s voice.

  And then Glenn was hurtling forward, his blackened nails sinking into the flesh of the man’s torso and shredding down and inward, the deep furrows that bloomed reminding Glenn of gills, ragged, bloody fish gills, and the blood splashed over the basin in brilliant torrents, the man vomiting and gibbering and keening and begging, and maybe this was what flipped another switch in Glenn, the goddamned begging. He punctured the man’s womanish breasts, closed and opened his fingers as though kneading dough, only the blood and the tissue and the thrashing removed the thought of bread straightaway and replaced it with the floor of a slaughterhouse, the purple offal and the dripping cutting boards and the heat and the man was wailing for mercy and Glenn needed to cut off that wail, but before he buried his muzzle in the distended puff of throat, he reached down, unzipped the man’s fish-white belly with a single swipe. But that was worse because now the shriek rose higher, so loud it chipped away at Glenn’s overtaxed eardrums, which would surely burst and spew blood and pus over his shoulders, so he thrust his thumbnails between the man’s locked-open lips, punctured the pink roof of the mouth, the blood and saliva swirling over his knuckles, transforming the wail into a machine-gun gargle, and when the spray of bloody spit misted over his face, he could restrain himself no longer. Glenn’s jaws unhinged and he buried his tearing, grinding teeth in the fleshy wad of the man’s throat, and beneath the blast of scarlet that splattered his face Glenn felt the man’s convulsive denial, the twitching of his big head helping Glenn’s teeth razor through the fat and sinew. Glenn gulped the spurting blood, his tongue flicking, his teeth shaving off sheets of membranous flesh, the fat melting in the oven of his maw, coating his tongue, the glorious lifeblood spurting—

  The outside door opened.

  Glenn stopped in midchew and stared in astonishment at the man who entered.

  The funny thing about it was the way the guy, a white-haired man in black leather who looked like a hardcore motorcyclist, moved into the room about eight paces before he even looked up at Glenn and his victim. The guy was gripping a cigarette between thumb and middle finger, the narrow spiral of smoke rising lazily up his arm. For an endless moment, the ribbon of smoke was the only thing that moved in the bathroom. The man’s squinting, hard-lived eyes betrayed almost no emotion, but Glenn thought he discerned a species of sardonic disbelief in the man’s gaze. Like the guy figured he was being put on, a hidden camera situated in the room capturing his reaction to the gruesome tableau at the sink. Glenn was still nestled between the oaf’s splayed legs, gripping the big guy like a giant sex doll.

  Then the biker frowned. He was listening, Glenn realized, to the rapid drip-drip-drip that pattered onto the floor beneath the basin. The man’s eyes traced the downward trajectory of the blood, took in the spreading lake beneath the sink, then slowly crawled back up to behold Glenn’s face anew.

  The man’s squinting, nicotine-ravaged expression didn’t change.

  The man turned and strode toward the door.

  Glenn was on him with a bound, the biker’s head cracking the bottom of the door, throwing the whole thing open, both their bodies skidding into the half-enclosed entryway and revealing to them the ghostly spill of images on the screen, the faces of the characters too white, moonlike, the echoes of four hundred car stereos drilling into Glenn’s ears. The man’s attempts at escape were silent but determined, the biker like a powerful old turtle crawling toward the row of rear bumpers. Glenn knew there would be more men coming any moment now. This was the only restroom. He couldn’t devour this biker, couldn’t revel in the font of lifeblood as it drenched his lips. He couldn’t remain here an instant longer. To do so was suicide. And dammit, Glenn wanted to live. He mashed the biker’s face into the scabrous concrete, twisting it back and forth like a stubborn cigarette butt, and the man’s skin rashed off like a molting snake, a circle of bloody peels removing the biker’s squint, removing the biker’s face, and Glenn forced his thrumming muscles down on the head until the skull cracked, split, the exhilarating odor of exposed brain boring into Glenn’s nostrils.

  But he saw the moonlike faces on the screen, knew similar faces would appear at any moment. Some ancient race memory revealed to him a circle of faces, a killing mob, and when his energy was spent they would converge and immolate, and he would die in a howling blaze, the raging villagers bellowing in triumph, and he would not permit that, he must go, so with a black-nailed flick he opened the biker’s jugular, stumbled to his feet and lurched into the darkness. He knew well enough where the Corvette was parked, but he didn’t know how he’d drive it, not with the toenails and the barbed heels, and what would the girls think, whatever their names were? He heard voices nearby, laughter. A question or two. A figure approached, a man with his arms out, as though he were a preacher and Glenn a lost soul. The hands twitched, beckoning him closer.

  Weezer.

  Glenn opened his mouth to tell his friend it wouldn’t work, there was something wrong, when a chunk of meat the size of a sugar cube slipped off one of his daggerlike canines. Glenn moved to cover his face, but Weezer didn’t act abashed at all, only ushered him forward. Weezer slipped an arm around Glenn’s enlarged shoulders and shepherded him toward the pickup truck.

  Weezer said, “I know you’re worried about the ’Vette, but I told Rebecca she could drive it. She’s smart and won’t hurt your baby, so you don’t need to worry.”

  Glenn shot a look at his car and noticed Rebecca wasn’t even looking at him, was fiddling with the stereo. Behind Rebecca was the Ford Focus the girls had arrived in, and though Mya appeared to be watching him from the driver’s side window, it was so gloomy back here it didn’t matter.

  “Just lie down,” Weezer said, helping Glenn into the Ranger, “and no one will see you.”

  Glenn climbed in behind the driver’s seat and slumped onto his side. He tried to ignore the squishy sound of his sodden clothes on the cracked vinyl seat, but it still made him shiver uncontrollably, the guilt so heavy he would surely suffocate beneath it.

  Weezer got in, slammed the pickup door and started the engine, which stuttered like a diseased heartbeat. Glenn was shaking so hard he thought his ribs would splinter.

  Weezer’s voice was silky smooth. “Don’t worry, friend. We’ll get you out of here. There’s no commotion yet. By the time they find out what you did, we’ll be well on our way to your house.”

  Glenn’s voice was an agony of gravel and broken glass. “Kill me,” he whimpered. “Please kill me.”

  “Here we go,” Weezer said, the pickup looping toward the drive-in exit.

  Glenn’s scrotum tightened as the shouts erupted from the area of the restroom. Beneath the muffled score of the horror flick there were hysterical voices, demands that somebody call somebody.

 
“As long as the girls follow us,” Weezer said, “we’ll be just fine.”

  From the quality of Weezer’s voice, Glenn knew he was watching the other two cars in the overhead mirror. Glenn supposed he could turn around and watch too, but he was too distraught to do that.

  The streetlights outside the drive-in spilled over the pickup. Glenn shut his eyes. They stopped, waiting for the girls to catch up.

  “There’s Rebecca,” Weezer said.

  An endless pause. Glenn held his breath, mumbled disjointed prayers to no one in particular. Just let him get through this. Just let him stay undiscovered. He hadn’t meant to do any of it.

  He realized he was weeping.

  “Shhh,” Weezer soothed. “Shhhh.”

  Glenn shivered with revulsion at the blood sliming his chin.

  “And here comes Mya,” Weezer said. “Good. We’ll make for Rangeline Road. It’s not as direct as I’d like, but it gets us out of town faster.”

  Glenn nodded, unable to process anything. The shouts, which had swollen like a polluted cloud from the other side of the drive-in’s tall concrete façade, were now diminishing, the voices no longer so accusatory, no longer so reminiscent of torches and burning hair, of writhing death and judgment.

  Glenn knew the town well enough to know when they halted at the red blinking light and when they were headed toward Rangeline Road, the pickup gaining speed fast. He could hear the sweet purr of the ’Vette behind them and the graceless chuff of the Ford Focus behind the ’Vette. When they turned onto Rangeline Road, which would take them closer to Glenn’s house in the country, Glenn began to think about Weezer, about the way his friend had known how to handle the situation, and though Glenn knew he was stupid for missing all of it before, he now wondered with a sharp stab of fear how Weezer had known what Glenn had done.

  Had Weezer been watching?

  Of course not, he realized. Weezer had been with the girls, prepping them for their escape.