Of Moons and Monsters

by P. T. Phronk

  She thought about Stan, alone at home, probably miserable. Poor Stan. But she was doing this for him, wasn’t she? Dean’s eyebrows wiggled a bit as he awaited her response, those adorable creases forming at the corners of his face. She was doing this for Stan though.

  “Okay, one drink.”

  One drink turned into a few.

  Annie felt so comfortable in Ducks Bar. Her new Megadeth t-shirt fit her well; it had a badass nuke with the head of a shark on it, and wasn’t soaked with even a drop of blood. Not yet, anyway. The people in the bar weren’t overdressed like in a New York club. They wore plaid shirts and hats with funny sayings on them. One kid sitting in a cramped corner of the cramped bar had no shirt at all.

  The music was mostly classic rock, but some harder stuff snuck its way in, and she wondered if Dean was switching to the metal channel just for her. There was an old-school jukebox jammed up beside the bathroom entrance, but maybe that was just decoration, like the animal skulls nailed into the stucco walls, and the neon beer signs that bathed everything in blue, red, green, and purple.

  Dean poured another drink for a dude in a hat that said MAKIN’ BACON above an embroidered picture of two pigs fucking, then placed another bottle of Labatt Blue on the bar in front of Annie.

  “Fine, one more,” she said, holding up one finger for emphasis.

  “It’s not even ten. What have you got to rush home for?”

  Stan.

  “Nobody,” she said, looking away.

  For the first time, the easygoing smile disappeared from Dean’s face. “I heard you earlier, with those girls in Vinyl Days. You said something about your friend, Stan. It’s Stan Lightfoot, isn’t it?”

  Before she could answer, the guy in the pig-sex hat bellowed “Stan Lightfoot! Heard he was back in town!” He loudly explained that he’d always liked Linda, but knew there was something up with Stan ever since he was a kid. The guy used to own a hardware store, and Stan always asked questions about how everything worked, and who was working on what around town, and it wasn’t right to ask so many questions.

  Dean went to serve another customer while Annie listen to Pig-Fuck. “And I heard from Joe, down at the diner, that his wife used to go out with the Stan fella, but he went and cheated on her. Broke her sweet little heart.”

  Annie nearly spit out her drink. “Nuh uh, she cheated on him.”

  “Nuh uh, not what I heard,” Pig-Fuck said. “He broke her in pieces, and she made sure everyone knew it. Ran him right out of town with his head between his legs. Makes you wonder what the slippery bastard is doing back. Heard he’s gotten himself locked up already.”

  “Locked up, he says!” Another man sat on the other side of Annie; she didn’t even realize he was there. With his thick glasses reflecting the TV in the corner, she recognized him as the guy who owned the record store. “You think Sheriff Paul would lock him up? Him and Stan been friends since way back when. I heard he never made it to the county office. And we all know how he gone and escaped.”

  Annie became aware that Stan was located in the most obvious place he could possibly be. Even if Paul kept the law away, there was still a chance an angry mob would descend on his mom’s house. She chugged the last half of her Blue so she could get going, but another cold beer, glistening in the neon light, seemed to have appeared in front of her.

  As the two men talked over her, her head started feeling fuzzy. Being drunk was a calm, simple feeling, similar to when she transformed into a dog. The beer washed away all the complicated, confusing human thoughts, leaving only feelings and desires.

  Dean’s eyes were gorgeous when he rolled them at the two men.

  She picked up snippets of their conversation. Pig-Fuck said he was at the hospital for his treatment, and heard from a paramedic that Paul was being investigated by Internal Affairs. That he’s a shitty cop. That the record store guy’s wife went to night classes at the church with Paul’s wife, and even Paul’s wife didn’t like Paul. It made her fuzzy mind feel sad.

  Sounds of thunder and rain poured from the bar’s speakers. Annie swivelled around in her chair, giving the two men more room to gossip at each other while she ignored them. The jukebox near the bathroom worked; the shirtless guy in the corner had emerged, and now stood in front of it, his pale skin glowing in its yellow light.

  A bass guitar played over the sound of the storm. The guy by the jukebox nodded his head along with it. He was probably just over twenty years old, with shaggy hair that bounced to the beat. A tinkling keyboard joined the bass.

  The men on either side of Annie mentioned something about a man coming into town on a motorcycle.

  Riders on the storm, Jim Morrison sang over the speakers. The kid gyrated to the music, his eyes closed, his bruised skin stretching over the jutting ridges of his ribs like water flowing over rocks.

  “Wasn’t that guy on the motorcycle asking about Stan Lightfoot too?” the record store guy asked, gesturing to Annie, but she was looking the other way.

  There’s a killer on the road, Jim Morrison continued.

  “Fuck, was askin’ about something, but it’s all foggy, can’t remember. Must’ve been drunk. What did the fella even look like?”

  Girl you gotta love your man, the song went on. Annie registered what the men were saying, part of her worried about Stan, but she was transfixed on the shirtless kid as he danced. He brought his hands in front of him, wrists bent in a praying mantis pose. Then he gingerly tapped his feet to the rhythm on the grimy bar floor, like he was trotting in place. He raised his head to the ceiling and exhaled, his lips vibrating, a mist of spit illuminated by a red beer sign.

  “Dean, you remember that guy?” the shop owner asked.

  The shirtless kid trotted across the bare patch between the bar and the bathroom that he’d turned into a dance floor, his shaggy hair catching green light, then blue, then the purple of a UV light. He let his lips flap again, pawing at the air with his praying-mantis hands.

  “Remember he tipped well,” Dean said. His voice was smooth, cutting over and blending with the electric piano in Riders On the Storm. Staring at the dancing guy, she wanted to grab Dean and join in. She wanted to be taken away by the music; it was the same feeling she’d had when she wanted to run away with that friendly moose she met in the woods.

  Like a dog without a bone, Morrison sang, and she wanted to grab Dean, pull him close, and gyrate with him the way that kid was gyrating with himself.

  She snapped out of her drunken haze and swivelled around. Dean wiped the bar in front of her, the tendons on his forearm bulging. “Getting acquainted with Horse Boy?”

  She touched his arm. “Have a smoke with me.”

  They headed outside, Dean placing a hand on her back to help guide her through the maze of chairs.

  She let him light a cigarette for her. “When did that man come into town? The one on the motorcycle?”

  “Fuck, when was it?” Dean said. “Last week? Earlier?”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He was … just a guy, I suppose.” He’d put his sunglasses on to go outside, even though it was dark out. The eyebrow above the red lens twitched. “I actually don’t remember what he looks like. Why don’t I remember his face? I think he was … lumpy?”

  “Lumpy? What the fuck does that mean?”

  “That’s the word that came to me,” he said, his face tight with the effort of remembering. “Just … lumpy.” He touched his neck as he said it.

  Annie’s heart jumped like a frog. “A scar. His neck was scarred.” Saliva filled her mouth as she remembered ripping Wilcox’s throat out with her canine teeth. She inhaled a deep lungful of cigarette smoke.

  Dean shrugged. “Maybe that was it.”

  “You don’t know anything else about him?”

  The eyebrow above the black lens of his glasses twitched. “Nope.”

  Suddenly, the shadows all around them seemed deeper. The foggy darkness beyond the street lights seemed to watch them. Wa
s that blurred light down the road the headlight of an approaching motorcycle? She shivered.

  “You’re terrified,” Dean said. He reached out to caress her shaking jawline. “I wish I could ask you what this is about, Miss Annie.”

  She nuzzled her face against his hand. It made her miss being petted.

  Dean let his hand continue past her face, then behind her, pulling her closer. She could smell sandalwood and leather in the heat that radiated from his chest. When she tilted her head up just slightly, his lips were right there, an inch from hers.

  She shoved him away.

  His delicate lips arched into a frown. “Sorry,” he said.

  “No!” she said. It came out like a bark. “I mean, I’m sorry. You’re such a nice man. You’re nice and I like you. But there’s a not-nice man out there and my friend could be in trouble, so I need to focus on that right now.”

  Was that it? Was focus why she felt so guilty for letting her lips get so close to Dean’s?

  “Can I help?” Dean asked.

  Annie didn’t know what to say, and she was suddenly feeling very scared for Stan, so she dropped her cigarette, turned her back, and ran until she got to Stan’s mom’s house and saw something horrible.

  9. A Pig Is A Boy Is A Dog

  SHE TOLD HIM HE DESERVED all this, and he started to believe her.

  It started with insurance policies. Bree showed up at his door and told him that he’d be paying for the damage to her husband’s storefront. She insisted that it would probably be covered by Stan’s insurance, but actually his job freelancing as a finder of lost things didn’t come with benefits, and he’d figured trying to get car insurance on a vehicle stolen from the vampire he killed would be more trouble than it was worth.

  “You still don’t have a job?” she asked after he explained all this, leaving out the part about the vampire.

  “I told you, I help people with missing persons and lost pets. It’s better than my old job,” Stan said.

  She waved her hand as if she were shooing him away. “Yes, yes, I heard about your paparazzi bullshit. And now you’ve sunken even further.”

  They argued. Her attacks got more vicious, and it reminded him of the worst parts of dating her, especially near the end. But those bad times contrasted with the good times, especially at the beginning, when Bree’s strength and defiance were channeled toward keeping them together rather than driving them apart.

  “…legal consequences,” she continued. “You think a new window costs a lot? Try hiring a lawyer around here. You think you’re at a low point now? This could ruin you, Stanley.”

  He sipped warm beer and started to believe her.

  “And do you know who my husband is? When Joey gets back and finds you, he—”

  “My mom is missing. Maybe dead,” Stan blurted out.

  Her eyes transformed from accusing slits into worried windows. “Linda? How?”

  “Don’t really know. Doesn’t really matter.”

  “Oh, Stanley. I’m sorry.” Her voice changed. It regressed to the early times: the soft, kind tones that so soothed Stan when he talked to her on the phone for hours at a time, constantly hoping he had a few more minutes before his mom needed to make a call and take over the line. “Is it related? To the other old folks who disappeared? The latest ones, I mean. Paul probably told you.”

  “Yeah. Paul and I aren’t really together anymore though.”

  Her rosy, round cheeks twitched upward. “Sorry, I don’t mean to laugh. You just made it sound like you broke up with Paul.”

  Stan nearly spit up some of his beer. “It felt that way too!”

  The tension eased and they talked about old times. Stan, Bree, Paul, Joey, Linda—dinners together at the same table just a few feet away from the couch they sat on. They talked about all the things in town that had changed. Like Bree getting married to Joey, who had become quite handsome and powerful, and travelled all the time so they could afford their pretty house. It seemed like a good idea at the time, she insisted. They talked about all the things that stayed the same too. They talked and then they kissed, and there seemed to be no transition between the two. They kissed, and to Stan, here in this town, in this house, it felt like the most natural thing he could possibly be doing.

  Both of them pulled back, as if suddenly waking up from a dream. Bree’s sad blue eyes hadn’t changed in all these years. Her words were always fierce, but her eyes gave away her vulnerability. Stan had loved her human side. Others took advantage of it.

  “He can’t find out about this. My husband, I mean.”

  Stan nodded. “The way things have been going, it’s not like anyone would believe me anyway, but don’t worry, I wouldn’t tell anyone. You know I wouldn’t.”

  He brushed his hair into place, then started to stand, but Bree put a hand on his chest. She undid the top button of his shirt, which started a chain reaction of clothing removal, catalyzed by hurried kisses.

  A half-remembered nightmare about moons and gravity jumped through Stan’s mind.

  Her hair had an expensive shine that was new, but it was still its natural blonde, with that slight waviness that made it bounce as she took off her bra and let it swish across her breasts.

  For a moment, Stan didn’t worry about Annie; he didn’t flash back to Dalla; he didn’t even think about his mom. There was only Bree’s soft skin against his, just like old times. He sunk deep into the couch—its springs were long worn out—as she writhed against him.

  She guided him inside of her, wasting no time. And that’s when the illusion broke; when he flashed back to driving an old wooden stake through Dalla’s heart. There was so much blood.

  Bree moaned. “I’m so wet,” she whispered.

  Stan held her closer and drove deeper, concentrating on her smell, her taste, filling his mind with her. The past kept rushing in to compete. It had been a long time since he’d been with a woman, and he was already close to coming, but he was interrupted by a pang of guilt. A pang with a name: Annie.

  Why would he think of her at a time like this?

  “What’s wrong?” Bree asked, leaning back.

  Before Stan could answer, a crash from the doorway made them both jump. He scrambled to his feet and grabbed a throw pillow.

  Annie stood behind the front door, which had toppled into the house and slammed onto the floor.

  “I … I tried knocking,” she muttered.

  Stan kept his crotch covered up with the pillow, even though he’d changed in front of his dog countless times. His face prickled with beads of sweat. When he opened his mouth to say something, nothing came out.

  “Hey, you’re the new girl. From the diner, with the burgers,” Bree said, gesturing at Annie in a way that made her bare breasts bounce.

  Annie’s face flashed recognition as she stared at Bree. Her cheeks began to quiver as she looked from Bree, to Stan, then back to Bree.

  “Annie …” Stan muttered.

  “Nope!” Annie shouted. “Nope! Nope! Nope!” Her voice cracked as she stomped into the house and grabbed her small bag of stuff. Stan reached for her with the hand that wasn’t clamping the pillow to his crotch, but she slapped him away.

  “You have no reason to be upset,” Stan blurted. Apparently it was the wrong thing to say. She looked at him with an expression he’d only ever seen when she was about to attack another dog, then, seemingly with great effort, forced herself to turn and stomp away with her shoulders hunched.

  He almost followed her out into the night, but he was naked, and there was no point in talking with her when she was angry like that—though he couldn’t completely understand why she’d react that way.

  Bree had most of her clothes back on.

  “Um, do you want a … drink, or something?” he asked.

  Her eyes had regained their businesslike hardness. “You know what? I’m going to leave too.”

  For the next week, Stan was completely alone.

  10. One Week Later

 
THE SMELL MADE ANNIE WANT to barf, but she couldn’t say that to Paul. He had a big smile on his face when he brought the pile of bacon and onions to the kitchen table. His wife, Florence, was a thin woman with thin lips that seemed frozen in a line, and triangular cheekbones beneath a frizz of red-and-gray hair. Florence looked older than Paul, who looked older than Stan, even though they must have all been around the same age. She stood by the doorway, sipping coffee but making no move to join Annie.

  “Heeere’s bacon!” Paul said.

  Annie tried to smile, but she could feel her face scrunch with disgust.

  “You don’t like bacon?” Paul asked.

  “I … I like bacon. I’ve met some very kind pigs, but they’re just so delicious. I see you’ve cooked them in the same pan as onions.”

  Paul’s smile faltered. “I can make you something else.”

  “No no!” Annie said. She picked up a wad of greasy bacon and folded it into her mouth. “Mmm! Oniony bacon!”

  Florence took a loud sip from her coffee.

  “It’s just that, um.” Annie forced a mouthful of bacon down. “I haven’t had onions in a while. I used to have a dietary restriction.”

  Onions were poisonous to dogs. Stan knew that and never fed them to her, and now just the smell of them made her sick.

  Florence didn’t know Annie’s little canine secret. Annie tried to keep herself from saying anything weird—anything that a full-time human wouldn’t say—but it was hard. So Florence often looked at Annie with a weird confusion that made her feel very unwelcome despite Paul’s excessive hospitality. He’d let her stay at his house after hearing she couldn’t stay with Stan anymore, even though he barely knew her better than Florence did.

  “Okay, no more onions,” Paul said, trying to stand in front of the large bag of them he’d just bought, and the extra bacon still soaking in onion juice. The sadness in his eyes broke her heart even more than usual.

  “You having any, Florence?” Annie asked.