This is a short story set in the world of FEVERCHAIN. It’s just like our world except there’s a town in the Pine Barrens that actually makes a significant revenue. But that’s not relevant yet. Anyway,
Photo by Darko Kriznik on Unsplash
Feel it again, my skull stretching backwards into the big sky. No sweating under the sun, no relief. Sitting on the woodchips at the corner of the playground watching, forgetting and looking for Laurie and Jess, remembering. Miss Henderson stares at me, at the clothes I wore yesterday and the day before that ‘cause I won’t let anyone touch me and I like smelling like myself.
I like not washing my hands. Smudging my worksheets with grease while I draw what I saw—Laurie crushed from the cattle stampede. Jess with her forearm missing, then when she spread out from her clothes. Bone and flesh and fur filling up the wound, healing different. A whole different thing. The thing that chased us.
What did he look like? Uncle Otis asked.
I bury my hands into the woodchips ‘til I can claw soft soil. Henderson’s coming in hot, head tilted like it’s too heavy for her knobby body. She smells like cake mix and Jack, always wet crumbs on her wrinkled lips. I finally let myself look at her. She stops. How now, brown cow? Straightens like I’ve flicked her nose. The heat cooking my eyeballs—can she feel it?
I strangle fistfuls of dirt. All this feeling like crap maybe wouldn’t be so bad if my cousins were here. If it hadn’t of come back for Jess after she flung me away with her steel sharp teeth and ripped my skin.
Maybe the thing would come back to get me, too. Maybe it wanted to be the only thing in town.
“Christina?” Miss Cake Mix stands over me, casting a shadow. “You look sick, hon.”
I don’t wanna look too eager.
The backs of her fingers stamp my forehead and she hisses. “Mom take your temperature?”
What everyone seems to forget is Mommy dropped me off at her dad’s shack two years ago in Budge, Idaho–the worst spud in all of Potatoland. Now I gotta go to Minidoka Elementary and I’m not used to school or flat land. I shouldn’t even be here. And Uncle Otis was pissed because Mom’s dad, my Pop, lives on his property and controls what goes on on his property, and he didn’t know I was getting dropped off to stay forever. And I’ve heard him call Mommy WHORE and I’ve got the sudden urge to scream it at the top of my lungs to Miss Cake Mix.
I gotta get home and get out, more than anything. Get to somewhere that isn’t flat. I’ll tell Mom what happened to my cousins and me and she’ll feel bad enough to let me ride with her again. I wanna tell her I’m dying, I think I’m dying and there’s nothing to be done about it. My eyes are welling up now so send me home, but before Cake Mix can pity me a girl shrieks and scrambles off the side of the slide, landing on all fours.
There’s a snake.
Everybody runs, including Cake Mix and she tries to herd everyone inside. Not me. She forgot all about me and probably hates me because I stink and don’t have bows to fix my hair. I mosey to the slide.
Bullsnake or a rattler? It’s a bull—only a little shorter than me. I grab its narrow head and peel its spotted body from the hot orange plastic. I bite its head off, spit it over my shoulder. Didn’t even think about it. I’m eating and it spasms, still alive, still warm from the sun. Warm raw chicken, stringy bits getting stuck ‘tween my teeth.
Cake Mix yells my name. I hurry with the wiggling snake in my mouth to the corner of the chainlink fence ‘round the playground where the honeysuckles grow thick. Cake Mix and all the knobkneed are coming for me. The snake’s still dancing crazy in my chompers. I’m not giving it up. I climb the fence and sprint, almost choking ‘cause I inhaled and jammed the snake in my gullet. I yank it out and chew, squeezing ridged scales.
Bullsnakes strangle their prey, too. But they don’t chew or choke. My neck’s stuck small—half my mind says it won’t always be.
I finish the snake and look over my shoulder. No one’s chasing.
↟↟↟
Pop finds me in the cornfield ‘cause I don’t hide. I want him to find me. To drag me to his truck. When its wheels get moving I stick my head out the window. The flatness just goes on and on and on and on and on and on. How do I get out if the river plain goes on forever? My eyes roll to the back of my head when we hit the highway. That’s the speed I need. Machine speed. I smell Otis’s homestead and sink into my seat. Pop sniffles as he pulls over and parks on the gravel.
“Pop?”
He wipes his leathery face with calloused fingers. His whole face is wet from crying but it still makes a scratchy sound. I wonder how thick his skin is, how thin. Depends on the spot. Pop smells like B.O. and Jack.
“Pop, can I have some Jack?” Helps me feel less itchy-antsy.
“Go on inside, Princess.”
The Jack isn’t in the house. I don’t smell it anywhere. Pop hid it. Took it out and hid it. “Whore!” He hid it. Why’d he hide it from me.
Pop slouches in the doorframe and the whole house slants. “Get to bed.”
There’s no bed. Not tonight. “Sun’s out.” And it’s killing me. I pull my shirt collar down as far as it’ll go. My arm is blotchy red.
He runs a hand down his jowls, pausing at the gray stubble on his throat. “School called Otis.”
“Pop,” I whine. Twist the collar tight ‘round my neck. “Why’d you hide the Jack? Huh?”
“They called and told ‘im. What you’d did.”
“Huh, Pop?” The blood in my ears tells me he’s not sayin’ what I wanna hear.
“You didn’t eat no snake now didja? Otis don’t believe you’d done it.” He picks the sweat-soaked shirt from his potbelly. “He’s gonna whoop you for skipping school.”
“I DON’T FEEL GOOD!” I hit the floor like a potato sack and claw at the boards, they come up easy at the cracks in little splintery chips. I’d told Pop what happened to my cousins and me and he didn’t believe it. No one believes me. Uncle Otis is a WHORE, and Aunt Mae’s a WHORE. Family of WHORES, and my WHORE mommy found my WHORE daddy and they wasted me. Every one of my hairs stands straight.
Pop rushes inside hollering “Didya eat venom, girl?” He cups each shoulder, gasps at the touch of my flesh. Drops me and I hit my friggin’ funny bones.
He’s a worthless whore. He never stopped Otis from hitting me or Laurie or Jess and he hasn’t stopped the heat or the hate. He’s just old jerky, but he knows where the Jack is. I snivel and reach to take his hand. Tendons snap under my thumb. Pop yells like he’s been shot – “Christ—ieeeena!” – tries to pull away but can’t.
I suck through my teeth, cool air stings my gums. “Help me.”
I hear the screen door slam from the house up on the hill. I squeeze his hand and it pops. “Help me find the Jack, whore.” Whore’s more a sound than anything, more a feeling. It’s how Otis says it. Just how he says it, like he’s spitting on a bug. And now he’s coming, the Uncle himself. Fling Pop’s mangled hand away and him with it, get up, grab his car keys off the floor, and bolt.
I’m young for driving, young for drinking and cow tipping and lots of other things too but so what. I could be in high school if they’d let me. I could live on my own–maybe now I really could. I get in the truck–ignore their hollers and threats. Turn the key and slam the pedal. Bald tires screech when I pull off gravel and onto the black tar road. I drive ‘til the sky catches fire. I burn, rip off the steering wheel at twilight. Hit the brakes and the highway rolls to a stop under the blue-white moon. I stretch, punch through the windshield. Cool in its glass rain and scrabble onto the truck’s hood in a bloody tangle, happy to kill or die ‘cause that’s what it’s all about now, waiting for the next sundown showdown. Fangs crowding my steaming gums, I smother my howl and listen.
↟↟↟
It’s gonna get me, it’s gonna kill me, it’s gonna…
Wake up naked, covered in dew, and rub my crusty eyes. Guess I am like Jess was, like I thought. I’m the thing that chased the cattle and came back for Jess when she was half mad dog I’m me I’m Jess I’m it.
I’m in a different cornfield. “Fuckin’ whore.” Tongue sticky in my dry mouth, roll over and glance behind, see the part in the stalks from when I was taller. The sun bakes my scalp and I retrace my steps to a dog’s hind leg. It’s got white, familiar fur, still smelling of Otis’s house, Otis’s palm, Otis’s stress. None of ‘em ate dinner last night.
Cry ‘til I laugh and finish every bit of meat, swallow toes without chewing, stop when my canines scrape bone, and see Pop’s staring at me from the hill’s shallow slope, Jack Daniels in hand.
↟↟↟
Pop I was right about what I told you about the thing that chased the cows, then us, then Jess. I was telling the truth and yes, I’m owed an apology and that bottle of Jack. Otis better not come and try to interrupt.
Slumped at the stained wood table with the wobbly leg, the bottle is hot between my thighs, its juice scalding my throat. The afternoon air shimmers around my arms and hands. I take another swig and feel it trickle down deep. Settling nowhere, dripping. To some cavern, some ravine unseen with a lava creek where everything goes to disappear. I drink more than ever.
Pop sags across from me watching with dull spoon eyes. He nods once.
“Psssooo you believe me or what?”
He nods again, points at me with the thumb from his good hand and pushes up out his seat. “You go on’n finish that.”
I sigh so deep the hair on the back of Pop’s neck splays. He opens the screen door and shuffles outside, dragging gravel with his boots. Told him sorry about his truck but he didn’t seem too upset.
And Otis hasn’t come yet. Don’t know why. But I’m real glad about it. I sigh again and sheeny black claws pierce through my fingertips to scratch the bottle. What if I tore up Otis’s house. Smashed his windows and furniture. Rip his and Aunt Mae’s scalps off, like I saw in the history book. I finish the Jack and gnaw my inner lip. The ugly old chair creaks under me.
Something slides from the shack’s wall facing the backyard. A rake, maybe. I hear Pop come around to the front door, each step. He enters the house stiff, one hand behind his back, the other bound and limp at his side. I catch a whiff of damp steel and hardwood. I’m melted to the chair, arms on the table. If I so much as flinch, my stitches will come undone. I’m hot, sleepy, bursting at the seams. A pillowcase of boiling blood. Pop comes to me, his bandaged palm cups my cheek. I start a smile but my jaw falls open like I’m stupid. His blunt fingers twitch around it. Spit trails down his wrist. My limbs slacken and something near my heart untangles, thrusts against my chest. Pop tightens up face all twisted and trembling. The axe head peeks from his hinged hip.
“Look at the f-floor, P-princess.”
I don’t. Metal flashes, I explode.
🪓
Thanks to Emil Ottoman who came at this piece with a hatchet. He was both hilarious and incredibly helpful. And to Dan Scamell, RM Greta, and Emma Golding—thank you!
Thank you to Emily S Hurricane for reading LIVE.
A special thanks to the one and only Dylan Bosworth, who was able to accomplish everything I wanted and more on an extremely expedited timeline. What we did never could’ve happened without us already trusting each other. I never had any doubts.
AND HEY THANKS EVERYONE who has ordered FEVERCHAIN, a book about lesbian werewolves, etc. Writing this little short story really brought me back to the good ole days of when I was in the thick of it, feverishly writing a chapter each week for my serial. I can’t believe the day has come where all those words have been compiled onto something PHYSICAL. Talk about shapeshifting…
By the way, couldja tell who this story was about? Of course she’s changed her name like forty times before she meets Gwen and Bianca.
Smell ya later, packmates… <3
gotdamnnit i fucking love the snake head off this!! you done it again, you s.o.b. why am i feeling so sad for this poor neglected wolf baby's end?