#werebatchronicles

A strong puff of warm air hit his ear as if to answer him. Turning, he saw brown fuzz, then a plastic sheen, then…it was an ostrich, ducking in through the passenger window, a dissatisfied look on its face. He slapped his left side against the door but it didn’t respond; it stayed, staring with dissatisfaction as he popped open the car door, bent out, and slid sideways into tall weeds and squishy persimmons.

As he scanned the overgrown yard between him and a two-story adobe building painted black and gray, he and the ostrich seemed alone. A soft curve of bent overgrowth trailed from the side of the building to his car. If he didn’t feel his keys in his pockets, he could imagine parking near the building first, falling asleep, then rolling forward until stopped by the wall. Unless he climbed the wall, he’d have to follow the trail to leave this place. He wished he’d crashed through it completely into some alleyway or field through which he could escape now so he wouldn’t need to worry about who was in or around the building and whether or not he could pass undisturbed. Driving out would be noisy even if he didn’t have to contend with an ostrich now snapping at his stirring wheel. If that woman with her fantasies waited in the building, she’d have time to respond.

That woman...

He thought he remembered the entire encounter but he’d been so sleepy: meeting her on the sidewalk them both of them on his patio without walking out onto it; him asking her repeatedly to leave; her almost kissing him; her saying he was a bat; her shouting; him feeling she wouldn’t leave unless he agreed to drive her wherever she wanted to go. Was she dangerous, though? His judgment had been impaired. What could he do if she were dangerous? Throw fruit at her while calling 911? Hit her with his car and drive away and tell the police that he’d hit her because...he hadn’t been kidnapped but still felt kind of forced to leave his apartment against his will?

One plan: he could request a driver through Uber or Lyft or a similar driving service app then and there, climb over the wall, find the driver, and ride off. On the ride, he’d plan his return for his car, maybe ask a friend or the police - if he could determine a legitimate reason to bother them for assistance - to join him. Maybe his driver would look tough enough to help him fight off any danger. They’d walk to his car, the driver would help fight of any danger, he’d give them a ride back to their car, and then they’d negotiate payment for their time. Even if they didn’t seem tough enough, maybe they’d be carrying a gun and/or a taser and/or pepper spray with them.

He could climb onto the hood of his car and try to grab the edge of the wall and pull himself up, but he didn’t know how the ostrich would react as he bounced the car; he didn’t have much faith in his ability to pull himself up the wall either. Scanning the yard again, he noticed thick branches of a tree rested on top of the wall. He could climb over those. Between the trees and the building, he noticed a bell-shaped stone fireplace blending in with the color of the wall. He could easily climb over that. Abandoning his car in this place for any amount of time bothered him. He was neither rich, nor well-insured. He needed his car, needed it fully operational. If the woman was dangerous and saw him escaping, so much could be done to his car in retaliation—it would be as easy to cut the tires as it would be to set it on fire. He squished over persimmons to the shade of the tree. He’d stare at his phone there and further plan.

As he neared, he noticed that a patch of red behind a thick branch he’d assumed was also butterflies was actually a fringed macramé hammock. The afternoon light turned it the bright, corn syrup red of blood in old horror movies. A curved stick poked up from the hammock and a passing butterfly landed on it. Then a thin, brown-and-white headed animal with the face of an electrocuted squirrel popped its head over the branch, snapped at the butterfly, then ducked down out of view.

Zé hollered.

Below the branch, a mass turned within the hammock until two delicate eyes blinked and stared at him through the webbed fibers.

“Hiya,” a cheerful male voice said above Zé. He glanced up to see a thin man in over-sized clothes squatting on top of the branch, adjusting a riding helmet. “You slept all day,” he said, smiling with rows of tiny, bright white teeth and a pair of jaundiced eyes. Or were his eyes as orange as the persimmons all around?

The hammock swung below the man and he glanced down without moving his head. “She’s grabbing snacks. Butterflies aren’t for her."

“What’s going on?” Zé asked. His faced flushed. “Where am I?”

The man reached out to Zé with a finger that seemed three times as long as his other fingers; its cool nail tapped Zé on the nose. “Aye Aye,” he said. “I don’t know about bat things.” Zé opened his mouth to ask another question but the man shouted, “Ollie! Leave the car alone,” and was on the ground jogging toward the ostrich, which now pecked at the driver’s side mirror.

“Don’t know what you eat,” an unexcited female voice said beside him. “But this is what I snack on.”

He turned to find a tall woman extending a slender tray toward him. She wasn’t the woman from his apartment but she had the same eyes that had fluttered from within the hammock. Now they looked at him within a band of skin much lighter in pigment than the rest of her face and the tip of her nose. He stared at her face and blushed at his staring. She said, “Berries, dates, mealworms, cashews, apple slices, and vitiligo, the same thing that Michael Jackson had. Google will answer any questions you have about vitiligo. I’ll answer some of your most important questions about us.” She shoved the tray at him. “Like the question: where am I? You’re still in Dallas, near home, and you slept all day in our backyard.”

“But why am I here?” Zé asked.

She grabbed a date and stuff a mealworm into it. “Because you drove here.”

“Thanks, but why was a certain woman eager for me to drive her here.”

“Because you don’t seem to know what you are. And she’s not someone who thinks you should discover that alone.”

“A bat, you mean?”

She grabbed another date and stuffed a cashew into it. A tall shadow rose across her face and something nudged his waist. He brushed against retreating feathers as he turned. The man with the long finger said, “I’ll be back. It was time anyway.” He leaned onto a saddle perched on top of the ostrich. He opened his mouth and snapped at a flying date. “LAH-vvvv ya,” he said with a mouthful as he turned his bird. He waved his long finger.

“Guess I’ll Google that finger, too,” Zé said.

“A-y-e a-y-e. And he has two,” the woman said.

He introduced himself. She replied, “Yep.” He asked her what her name was, the name of the man, the name of the woman who’d shown up at his apartment and directed him her. She said, “When I get to know you better.” He asked, “Are you also a bat?” She nodded. He asked, “Will you prove it?”

She laughed. “You were already shown proof,” she said. “I could stand her for the rest of the night, wings out, fangs and talons curved at you, and you believe or you don’t the same amount. Your body will prove it to you better than we will.”   A phone rang in the building. “Enjoy the food,” she said, then she climbed the tree, leapt from a branch, landed on the chimney of the stove, flipped up into a leap, and landed on a wide balcony of the building.

I’ll escape just like that, he thought, snorting. But as he reached into his pocket, he didn’t feel his keys anymore. That nudge he’d felt must’ve been the ostrich or the man stealing his key. In which direction had the man and ostrich left?

He looked across at the house and sighed. He didn’t want to walk near the building; however, he worried for his car’s well-being even more without his keys. Maybe he’d find the man just around the building. They’d laugh about his pick-pocketing ostrich, the man would give him back his keys, then share directions to the nearest highway.

Imagine it into being, Zé thought. Imagine it in being.

He wandered toward the building.

**

Jayden hadn’t seen the woman who’d spoken to him. Someone with a soapy scent had picked him up and carried him, bent over their shoulder, his body crackling into a space that darkened as they went. A curtain had dragged across his hair and swept away the last of the light. A few moments after, he was laid face first onto a cool cushion. Then the person tugged at the Mylar somewhere around his legs. The material crackled and he heard another sound of scissors cutting. Soon, the someone yanked away the Mylar from his knees down. Then he felt a tugging above one arm. He’d felt the pop of the scissors through the fabric and the fabric lift from his muggy skin until his full arm was exposed up to his shoulder. The person pushed down on his back afterward. Jayden heard their footsteps trail away. Then a fluorescent light buzzed on and flickered before fully illuminating the space.

Jayden slid one bent leg onto the floor and lifted his upper body with the freed arm. His clammy palm and cheek peeled from a leather couch cushion. He blinked. He wasn’t sure if he was still wearing shorts or even underwear but at his arm, he saw the skin of his shirtless torso. He’d been placed on a bulky leather couch in the corner of a small kitchen, the kind typical of office buildings with cabinets and appliances all pushed to one side. On a dining room table near him, steam plumed from a French press near a bowlful of grapes and a visibly steaming breakfast burrito on a napkin.

The same female voice called his name from a walkie talkie next to the breakfast.

“Jayden. Jayden, you’re here because we think you should have some things explained to you before you go back home. Eat your breakfast. Please don’t leave this room.”

On the far end of the same wall the couch was against, he saw a closed black curtain hanging a few inches above the ground. It seemed to be the only exit. If he walked up to the curtain, his feet would be easily seen from the other side through the gap. He didn’t see a light switch but of course they’d see if he turned off the light.

So Freak Show Guy has friends who kidnap his dates when they see him being freaky?

Should he eat the food? Should he free his other arm and try to escape? He could do both. He was hungry. He walked to the refrigerator. The cool fog felt uncomfortable when it met the sweat across his body. On the top shelf, a carton of half-and-half was surrounded by clear bags of blood.

Great. Vampires.

The freezer was filled with individually packaged burritos.

Some vampire frat. All they need is beer and it’s a party.

He grabbed two more burritos. If they were going to suck his blood and/or kill him - because, what else did weird kidnappers who wrapped you in the strongest fucking aluminum foil you’d ever encountered and also stored blood in their office fridges do but suck your blood and kill you? - he’d get more breakfast than they’d served him.

As he turned toward the microwave, someone all in black stepped back through the curtain into the darkness. He threw both burritos at the curtain. Both hit with a thud, then fell.

“Jayden,” the woman said from the walkie talkie. “Just eat.”

He grabbed three burritos from the freezer, slammed the freezer door, opened the microwave, slammed it shut, opened it again to actually put the burritos in, slammed it shut,…

Was he in that apartment, again? He didn’t remember a room or space like this in the guy’s small, one-bedroom home. He’d been abducted and taken somewhere else. Would it matter if he screamed? In movies and TV shows, when the kidnapped screamed, only the captors heard.

He tried swinging his right hip and shoulder up, the Mylar sounding like a long shhhh as he lurched twice before the front of his body flopped into the bean bag. Then he swung his left hip and shoulder, hoping to roll over, but he seemed to only sink the right side of his body deeper, and shove his nose into an uncomfortable angle. So he breathed deeply and tried swinging himself the opposite way, and he was successful, rolling downhill until he slammed onto his back onto a concrete floor. The wind wasn’t knocked out of him but the slam still hurt.

He looked up into the mirror. The shiny mummy and the blob.

His body pointed toward a wall behind his head completely covered by a black curtain, the only wall without a hot pink rod attached to it. The entrance to the room must be there. He bent his crossed legs and torso up as much as they’d bend, probably only an inch, then he scooted himself in line toward the curtain.

The shiny mummy turns into a caterpillar, and escapes!

Since he could only bend a small amount, he wasn’t certain how he was going to bend up enough to open a door or window if there was a door or window behind the curtain. Each time he scooted, he unsuccessfully tried ripping his arms and legs from being crossed. He was glad the floor wasn’t carpeted because he wasn’t sure if the static created from Mylar rubbing across carpeting could start a fire and he didn’t need one more dilemma. Maybe he should’ve tried to stand while still on top of or beside the fancy bean bag. That would’ve been practical. It’s okay to not do everything efficiently the first time you’re kidnapped, he thought. He was already more than halfway to the curtain.

The shiny caterpillar will explore, AND THEN return to his bean bag to stand.  

A draft from under the curtain cooled his hair and cheeks and across wet lines that angled from the corners of his eyes down passed his throbbing ear lobes and jaw until they ended at either side of his neck. He realized then he’d been crying or was crying. He paused at this realization and suddenly the Mylar seemed suffocating. As much as he moved, he still seemed bound as tight as he was when he first woke. His phone probably wasn’t on his person; in fact, since he hadn’t felt the shorts and tank he’d been wearing shift and scrunch at all since he’d moved, he assumed he was naked beneath, except for whatever was used to tie back his arms and bind his legs and ankles. Naked, phoneless, bound, and still uncertain what to expect beyond the curtain (did a draft indicate a door or an air vent or something else?), he wasn’t sure if he could escape wherever he was.

In movies and TV shows, captors punished those they’d kidnapped for attempting to escape—even if there never was a possibility of escape in the first place. He thought of Freak Show Guy on the ceiling, contorted like some kind of demon or beast.

What kind of punishment could THAT kind of thing inflict?

He assumed he’d been kidnapped because he’d seen the guy for what he was—whatever that might be. Since he wasn’t dead, though, either the guy hoped to persuade him not to tell, then would free him OR…

…he needs me for food!

At this, he rolled his eyes and snorted a laugh. None of this is believable but I guess if my worst case scenario is that I’m going to be eaten by someone I hooked up with, he thought, he’ll eat me whether I try to escape or not. He imagined that his last few moments alive before being eaten would either be…

…scooting through the building he was in until Freak Show Guy found him, then bent down to bite him or break his neck or something violent OR …

…scooting in a circle around the fancy bean bag, imagining nu-disco playing, the neon lights blinking softly because…

…both scenarios seemed like ridiculous, drug-fueled fantasies from a horror movie. And, he was in a horror movie, wasn’t he?

He imagined nu-disco playing anyway as he angled up and scooted, angled up and scooted to the beat towards the draft.

Soon, his head nudged the curtain. He angled and scooted again. The curtain skirted down his forehead and came to a rest across his nose. The top half of his head stuck out into another space. He couldn’t see a ceiling, only walls that tapered into darkness. He couldn’t see much to his right or left, but when he bent his neck up to see over and behind his head, he saw a strip of light, so he flopped his body sideways toward the curtain to angle himself for better view. Across a long empty space, one fluorescent rod hung above a table. Two people stood on the other side of the table. He only saw them in silhouette, though, one with long, straight hair (though it could’ve been a head-covering) and the other wearing a wide-brimmed hat. The one with the hat turned, perhaps to look his way. He tried to be still, but a crackling sound grew louder and louder. Looking down his face, he realized his body lifted the curtain up and that the Mylar reflected the pink light across his body. When he glanced again at the table, the silhouettes weren’t there. The crackling-more like a tapping sound as it closed in-intensified and the pink light flickered on long, jutting things above his head. Was this Freak Show Guy scuttling down toward him?

“Dinner time?” he asked, with a laugh, his eyes tearing, his torso shivering and crackling.

“Oh, no,” said a soothing female voice above him. Drinking straw-like objects moved slowly far above him, catching the pink light. “Breakfast time.”

**

Adalynn entered the lecture hall for her favorite entomology class…disappointed. She hadn’t caught Jayden on his “walk of shame” (or, rather, his “bike of shame” or…“route of shame?”). She also hadn’t decided what to yell at him from her car window to embarrass him as they crossed paths, but she’d wanted the opportunity. She still wanted it, even as she sat down and unpacked her tablet.

But, no, she actually didn’t want to tease or embarrass him; she wanted to slap a hot pink sticky note on the fridge like him that said she’d be gone for the whole night and most of the next morning, no return time designated or expected—time off from everything without the need to inform half a dozen people like her brother or their parents or a babysitter or anyone. And, when she returned, everything at home (Hawthorn, dinner, laundry, etc.) would be handled. Ideally, she wouldn’t consider it “escaping.” Jayden didn’t call it “escaping”; he called it “fun.”

Someone smelling of coffee and cedar rocked her seat while sliding in beside her. They said, “I’m nervous about tonight.”

She turned to him, Osvaldo, her best friend in the class, and lied, “Jayden’s just as nervous.”

“What does your brother like to do besides bike, again? You haven’t told me much about him.”

No, I haven’t told you much about him. I have told you much about anything that concerns my personal life, have I? she thought. They’d been friends for a semester and a half. A semester and a half! She’d taken a break from college and in her first college class post-break (another entomology class, in fact), the professor had assigned them an icebreaker: what’s your favorite type of bug and why do you like it? One-by-one, each student was required to introduce themselves and answer.

The handsome man she’d sat next to, introduced himself as Osvaldo and said, “The praying mantis because their posture and eyes make them the most sentient or human-looking bugs.”

“Ugh,” she’d thought, “their eyes look like they’re following you at all times from all angles.” But she hadn’t only thought it; she said it aloud to the class.

“They are looking at you at all times,” Osvaldo had said. “But just at YOU!” And then he’d bent his forearms up to his chest, his wrists limp to resemble a praying mantis, and then he’d leaned toward her with wide eyes, moving his head side to side while locking his stare on her until they’d both blushed and started laughing. He’d invited her to coffee after class. She’d considered it a first date until he’d mentioned he was gay. 

The two of them hung out at least five days a week in classes, lectures, labs, study groups, coffee shops, school activities, and for little field trips (all with fellow classmates), and when they weren’t nerding out on their mutual passion for insects, they were losing track of time in conversations about films, art, articles, food, music, and almost anything else, except for anything about Hawthorn or Jayden.

Why was her personal life always absent from their conversations? Maybe after a few years absence from college, she wanted to ensure her success in college and network and she didn’t want to alienate her younger classmates with talk of single mother things and baby things—and maybe she was distancing herself from those things, too, whenever she stepped onto campus. Or maybe she wasn’t sure how to invite any man she found attractive into her personal life, again. But she wanted to, and she wanted it to be Osvaldo; but instead of bringing Hawthorne along when they hung out or inviting him over to her apartment, she’d eagerly set him up on a blind date with Jayden. The moment she suggested it, she was confused and regretful.

He asked, “Do you think he’d want to look at monarchs? At sunset? They’re still all over that lake we walked around. Is he spontaneous? Can we just grab our coffees to-go and maybe something for dinner and bike over there?” She imagined slapping a hot pink sticky note on the fridge that said:

Man of My Dreams / Lakeside

She said, “Sounds fun.”

He said, “If he doesn’t want to, expect a text that says, I ditched your brother. Wanna see butterflies?”

“As your friend, I’d like that. As his sister—”

“You’d understand?” he asked, smirking.

Did she actually want Jayden to date him? Her expectation: more time with Osvaldo. The possible reality: Jayden would mess things up so badly-tonight or in the near future-that the man of her dreams would distance himself from her in one way or another. Maybe she’d lie, tell both her man and her brother that the other had cancelled, and then she’d ask her man if he was still interested in her joining him lakeside.

He said, “I’m excited, too. I’m looking for a good man.”

She thought, “Oh, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu—!”

JUMP TO PART 4

Zé examined her for a few moments, hoping to recognize her. She seemed friendly with smiling eyes and a delicate, plump face, and her natural, nearly-shaved hair, twinkling with mist, suited her head. Depending on the neighborhood, he’d seen dozens of cute young women like her-several even worked in his office-which didn’t help him remember who she was. If they did work together, he hoped she wasn’t offended or, if she was offended, hoped she wasn’t the type to seek revenge somehow in the workplace.

“Work?” he asked. “We work toge—?”

She shook her head. “We’re very much like each other.” Looking at her, he couldn’t think of what she meant besides “short” and, maybe, “gay.” Perhaps not 100% gay because he thought she was looking at his crotch. He stepped backward, one step closer to his building, one step further from whatever was going on with her.

“I’m sorry. It’s late. Do you mind just telling me, please?”

“Not here,” she said, looking above them.

“But—”

Something enshrouded him. It felt like a leathery blanket. Two bony arms hooked under his armpits and yanked him upward. As his feet dangled, he stared up into the woman’s grin and grinning eyes.

Am I being mugged? Kidnapped? Whatever was happening, he didn’t like and would stop it. He formed a fist.

When he punched at her, she twirled him away. Feeling his feet had returned to the ground, he ran...into a wall or maybe the truck again. Rubbing his head, he looked up and discovered he faced glass and in it he saw his reflection and hers and that of the full moon over their shoulders, the amber street lights, and the lights from the intersection, the crosswalk blinking white and the stoplight holding yellow before they simultaneously beamed red. Through the glass, he also noticed a night-light shaped like the letter “Z.” His night light! They were standing before his sliding glass door. On his patio. Four stories up from where they’d just been standing.

**

Before he stopped, Jayden had peddled nearly five miles further from the street he was supposed to turn on if he’d wanted to be home by now. He’d seen that guy-or whatever he was-run into that parked moving van.

But had that slowed him? Could he still be following me?

He realized there was an easy way for that guy to track him no matter how many miles he sped away. So he coasted into the shadows of a side street, stood, his bicycle slanted between his legs, and he retrieved his phone. His battery was low. He might not even be able to do what he wanted to do but he’d try before starting for home again. He unlocked his phone’s screen, swiped through his apps until he found the one social app through which he’d met the guy he’d just run from, one of dozens of apps specifically for men who were interested in meeting other men—mostly for sex and/or dating. Its gold screen brightened his face and he clasped his phone to his chest, waiting for it to change from a bright, full screen of gold with just the app’s logo on it to a darker color palette with a grid of men’s profile photos. Each profile indicated how many feet away other users were in relation to him.

Something tickled his ear gauges. He rubbed one ear lobe and stuck his finger through each 5/8th inch tunnel as he glanced at the quiet intersections to his right and left and at the shadowed building across from him. The building had a mural that was predominantly a pair of cupping hands stretching toward him.

That shape reminded him of the guy. Were they wings? Or just shadows of his bent arms and legs?

He looked at the sky, full of light pollution from the city and the bright moon, searching for any winged thing. Then he angled his phone so he could see the grid. Its light, half as bright as the gold screen, hopefully wouldn’t make him quite so easy to spot in the shadows if that guy happened to pass by. He tapped on the message icon. At the top of his messages, that guy smiled like a cherub from his profile photo. Even with the smile in front of him, another image of Cherub Guy proved stronger: up on the ceiling, front torso facing down, arms and legs bent back, palms and foot soles firmly planted on the ceiling as he scuttled forward from one end of the room to right above Jayden, eyes wide, mouth agape. He’d scuttled backwards and forwards until Jayden had finally vocalized a shout, then he’d fallen to the floor.

What a freak show. BLOCK

Now Cherub/Freak Show Guy didn’t appear on Jayden’s grid, and Jayden wouldn’t appear on Cherub/Freak Show Guy’s grid. Whether pursued or not, he’d just eliminated one easy way to be tracked. He’d deleted the others apps like that one earlier that night because none of them attracted what he wanted to attract into his life. Or his sister, with whom he lived, deleted them before she walked off to see why his nephew was crying in the other room because she also thought none of the apps attracted what he wanted to attract into his life. Then, as he was about to delete this last one in her absence, his phone had buzzed, alerting him in one line at the top of his screen that he had a new message from the guy he’d hooked up with the week before.

Cherub/Freak Show Guy: Want to come over?

If he’d know he’d just been invited to a horror movie, he wouldn’t have answered—even if the guy was cute and the sex had been great the week before. Depending on the neighborhood, you could find dozens of cute guys who looked just like him. No apps needed. Another reason they deleted those apps: his sister had found the “perfect guy” for him, someone she’d met in one of her college classes. He wouldn’t know anything about the classmate-not even what he looked like!-until their blind date tomorrow/later tonight. It wouldn’t matter if the classmate was attractive or not, or if they had enough in common to sustain a conversation—his sister wanted him to change his habits and mature if he sincerely wanted to meet a “worthy boyfriend.”

She’d said, “Maybe there are worthy guys on these apps but you’re either not messaging them or you are but in a way that makes you seem unworthy. Let’s break that pattern.”

The conversation seemed loving and condescending at once. And he thought he agreed. He also decided having a satisfying hook-up that night would make him less horny in the days and nights to follow and, so, less likely to redownload these apps soon.

Back on the grid of men, he noticed one handsome guy who he’d flirted off-and-on with all week was closest to him on the grid. Perhaps he lived nearby or was driving by. In his profile photo, the guy stood on a dark street and held a large rooster in his arms. His face beamed as if he knew he’d found the perfect setup for a funny profile. The first line of his profile read: “I know I have a big cock. Let’s move on.” Rooster Guy had wanted to meet for coffee a few times that week but he texted creepy jokes and responded angrily when he wasn’t instantly responded to. Jayden appreciated patient, calmer guys who didn’t give off a creepy vibe. But what did he know? One “calmer guy who didn’t give off a creepy vibe” had just proved to be very creepy across a ceiling.

What if I hadn’t woken up?

His phone buzzed. At the top of the screen, an alert appeared: a new message from Rooster Guy that said, “What’s up?” As he opened the app again to respond, something stiff poked through each of his gauges and under each of his armpits. He and his bicycle were yanked upward from the ground.

His phone bounced off the pavement, splashing gold light.

**

Zé didn’t want an explanation for how they were on his patio. He wanted to go to sleep. On either side of his patio, there wasn’t a set of stairs against the building or gutters or scaffolding-anything that she could’ve climbed up while carrying him-so he rationalized that she had used something like Batman’s batclaw, a grapple gun that shot out a claw-shaped projectile connected to a retractable high-tensile cord. The claw had penetrated a wall on his building, the cord had retracted, and they’d glided up onto his patio. A simple, reasonable enough explanation that was definitely not simple, reasonable, or true, but it distracted him for now.

“Will we stand here all night?” she said.

He turned and asked, “How about I give you my number and we can text tomorrow?” and as he turned and spoke, he felt her arm slide across his back as she slid open his door.

“You didn’t lock up,” she said. “Tsk tsk tsk.”

He turned to see his night light blink as she passed it. He clanged the door shut, and the lock satisfyingly thudded with a weighty turn. The blinds swept lines of amber light across his living room as he stumbled down the hall. A small portion of him cared that a stranger was in his apartment but he needed sleep so much and wanted so badly to fall into a coma before the shrill started again. He found her standing beside his bed looking around.

“Can you leave?” he muttered. “I’ve had a long night.”

“I see.” She pointed up at the ceiling with one hand and held a flat piece of drywall that had fallen from the ceiling. “These ceilings weren’t made for werebats.”

“Bats? Where?”

“You! You know, like werewolves. Werebats.”

“Whatbats? Can you leave?”

“I know what you are,” she said, frustration in her voice. “You can stop your game.”

“I don’t—”

The shrill began again. He convulsed and blinked and relaxed into other bodily reactions until he saw her mouth agape, until he distinguished his pulse from the additional thudding of her pulse, until he distinguished the distance at which her pulse thudded from him and then realized, as he stumbled closer to her, that the shrill came from her direction, until he realized she was the source of the shrill. He swatted at her. The shrill stopped and he fell backwards onto his bed.

“Do you really not know?” she asked.  

“Please stop. Don’t come any closer.”

“You are a werebat, a shape-shifter, a human-bat hybrid.”

He rolled onto his chest. “I’m a sleep deprived person having delusions.”

“How do you not know what you are? Are you just now shifting? Flying around uncontrollably? Is that why you’re ceiling is clawed and people are running away from you?”

She tugged at him. He thought, speak to her. Whether this is a dream or reality, she won’t leave you alone when you turn away and ask her to go away. Maybe she will go away if you face her and speak to her.

He said, “I haven’t been getting enough sleep because of that sound that you make. It keeps me up at night.”

“Then why didn’t you come out and find me? When a woman calls for you—”

“Is that what you meant? I thought you meant you were calling my name.”

“I don’t know your name. I know your scent. You're a werebat, you’re male, and you're sexually—”

She’s insane. She’s a horny insane woman smelling me out. Play along while you find your phone, then call 911.

He asked, “What do you mean? Like I turn into bat during the full moon” and he pointed out the window at the moon. As she turned to look out of the window, he searched in the sheets for his phone.

“You can fully transition into a bat, but no shrinking into a little bat. No ripped clothing if you know what to wear. Just parts of you change. At first, it’ll happen and you won’t be in control.” She pointed at the ceiling again. “It’ll stop and you won’t be in control. But the moon has nothing to do with it. You do. Your reactions do. I will teach you and we will practice. Then transition will be as simple as raising your arms--”

As her voice tapered off, she lifted her arms up gracefully, and either her dress had much more fabric to it than he knew or she had wings that seemed to stretch longer than his bed from one wall to the other as high as the ceiling. They blocked out all light from the window. Their pulses both seemed to bounce from her as she neared. The fabric or wings closed in like a canopy over him until something like a finger rested against each of his ears. She smelled like over-ripened fruit.

“We can transition fully, though, if you want. You’ll look the color of your skin, be the same height and width but with wings! Your bones and muscles will shift and stretch into the shape.” The finger-like structures at his ears began to trail down his neck. “But try not to in public. It’s too strange for most people and they react with attack--though you’d be a handsome light brown bat, as you are a handsome light brown man. Very handsome. Maybe they wouldn’t attack you.” The fingers slid down his chest. “I’ve been wanting to meet you for a month, been wanting to see the handsome bat you are.” She leaned in, the whites of her eyes the only light, and he felt her lips press into his.

“Oh, I’m gay,” he spoke onto her lips. Her head drifted away. Suddenly all the light came back into the room and she was a human silhouette against the window.

“Of course you are. I knew you were gay before I knew you were bat.”

As she wandered toward his window, he said, “I’m sorry. You seem—”

She held a finger to her mouth and shushed him. Her eyes widened and she leaned into the window, smiling. Then she laughed to herself. He laughed with her.

“This is insane,” he said.

“It’s not safe for you here.”

“What?” he asked.

“You’re destroying your home, silly.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re also not safe because someone else knows about you.”

“Oh, that guy?”

“No. He isn’t sure what he saw. No, someone else. Someone who isn’t running away. They’re hiding only because I’m here.”

“Are you lying to me? Because all of this seems like a lie.”

“I’m saying just enough so that you know you should take me home.”

“Can I nap first?”

“Now!” she screamed with a hint of shrill.

Would he have dialed 911 if his phone hadn’t been dead? Would he have packed a bag if his phone had been fully charged? He wondered this as they walked to his car in the soft light of dawn. Thankfully, he wasn’t scheduled to work today.

**

Adalynn started to call for her brother again as she entered the kitchen but stopped when she saw the hot pink sticky note bright against their black fridge. Hot pink meant: a guy.

Hot pink meant: a coffee date, a dinner date, and/or a hook-up + this is where I am if you need to locate me.

Hot pink on the fridge at 6AM meant: I stayed the night and haven’t gotten home in time to remove this note before you see it and learn that I left in the middle of the night to hook up.

She rolled her eyes. She considered texting her classmate then and cancelling the blind date she’d set up on behalf of Jayden but hot pink didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t interested in a blind date. Hot pink did mean she didn’t have an extra pair of arms and hands this morning to help with Hawthorne and so she had no time to waste if she wanted to get to the Hawthorne’s babysitter and to work on time.

“Cherub Guy,” she scoffed as she pulled the note off. She saw the address written below the nickname Jayden had given the guy, and realized she’d pass it on her way to the babysitter. As she started coffee, she smirked. I’d love to catch him on his way home, roll down the window, and yell something just to embarrass him.

JUMP TO PART 3

The first night, when he sprang up in bed, a ringing in his ears, he thought his phone had signaled it needed charging or a smoke alarm had signaled it needed a new battery. But the sound didn’t repeat itself that night, so he drifted off to sleep, unconcerned. The next night, it woke him twice. It could still be something like an electronic signaling but it didn’t follow the usual pattern of a quick succession of chirps, then silence, then repeat. The shrill came in a sustained, insistent crescendo. It didn’t trail off as if passing, just stopped and left a ringing in his ears. By the middle of the third night, he’d stuck his ear to every appliance and electronic and window and wall in his apartment, eyes closed, hunting for the source. He unplugged, opened, closed, muffled. The shrill didn’t seem to start softer or louder from any direction. He stared out of his front door at the peopleless hall and stairs and out his windows and sliding glass door at the peopleless parking lots below and sleeping buildings across and the still sky above. Maybe a motorcycle raced or a drone circled or firecrackers launched behind the buildings or down the street? Though it continued, he couldn’t match the sound to a sight. He wanted to mimic it–or just scream as ferociously as possible to exorcise his frustration–hoping that it would hear him and stop.

Neither melatonin nor sleeping pills kept the shrill from waking him. Earplugs didn’t either. After a week of the recurrent late night noise disturbing his sleep, he’d wake in the morning in different rooms not remembering getting out of bed, and once he woke on the roof of his building--always a ringing in his ears. He’d sleepwalked as a child until his family doctor had added another prescription drug to his daily routine in the days when many parents and doctors thought pill-popping solved every behavior they didn’t like. Over the next week, he dreamed he’d levitated and soared through his apartment until he’d crash into a wall and fall back. He woke with bruises. One night, he dreamed he heard a scuttling outside his front door and that he’d scratched at it. The next morning, he had paint under his fingernails, and there were scratch marks all over his door but also around every window, even high above the blinds. He would’ve needed to stand on a chair to reach above the blinds.

He wasn’t bothered that he was falling asleep at his call center job. Monotonous mal-employment excited no college grad. But his boss demanded Zé use the sick days he never took off. (”You look like a zombie.”) He hadn’t sought a solution until then.

Since he couldn’t find the source of the sound and he hadn’t seen his neighbors responding as if they heard it, too, he assumed he was just “hearing something” and perhaps becoming more sensitive to sound after working long shifts wearing a headset through which frustrated customers screamed at him. To him, sensitivity seemed like the “best case scenario.” His first plan of attack was try combining the three things that usually guaranteed he wouldn’t wake up for a while: sex (he was usually looking for love before sex but love wasn’t the priority this week and thankfully there were many guys on dating apps living near him who were ready to host “fun”); a run; and wine. He drifted to sleep especially exhausted that night, but woke to a sound as if someone blew a whistle in his face. He flicked the earplugs away as he stomped around, hoping there was someone in his apartment he could beat. Silence. He leaned against the blinds of the sliding glass door in his living room, a ringing in his ear and tears in his eyes.

A different sound emerged: pounding. It started in the hall, muffled, then louder until it hit his front door. He wiped his eyes with his palms and wondered if he’d just heard things or if he should answer the door.

Outside, a woman yelled, “Hey, Sir. Hey, Sir.”

When he opened the door, he looked up into the scrunched face of woman twice his height in a sparkly jumpsuit.

“Sir, I live above you. You bang around all night long and now you’re screaming. Don’t care what’s going on. Don’t care. You need to shut up. Okay? Leave the ceiling alone. Before I get so sleep-deprived and frustrated that I do something you won’t like–like call the police. Do I need to do that?”

Zé shook his head adamantly. As she thundered away, he leaned into the hall and asked her, “But have you heard that whistling sound?”

She turned. “What, Sir?”

“Like a shrill. Like a smoke alarm going off for half a minute. I’ve been moving furniture trying to find whatever it is. That’s what you’ve heard. And tonight, I screamed in frustration.”

He hoped she’d sympathize, maybe even apologize. She said, “call maintenance and hope they find it before you keep me up another night” and she chuckled as she walked toward the stairs. He watched her tattooed legs ascend.

Wait, he thought. The ceiling? Leave the ceiling alone?

***

His apartment community sent two maintenance men, both his age, to check the voltage of each electrical outlet in his apartment and just generally listen around. As they checked, they joked with each other and pinched each other, and Zé thought they looked cute together. Pretending that a gay couple worked where he lived comforted him. Then one said to him, “you’re just getting old and need to get your hearing checked.” They could break up now. “It could be a bird’s nest,” said the other, pinching the first guy. “You know those birds who start shouting in the middle of the night?” Zé wanted to say, I like your boyfriend better. They didn’t find any bird’s nest on his patio or on the patios of any of his neighbors or on the rooftop. Zé wanted to say, Never mind, I don’t like your boyfriend but he also wanted to pinch and joke with someone, too. Sex before love hadn’t been so bad the other night. If he wasn’t so tired.

He was obligated to have dinner one night with his mother (his only family), and she yelled at him for looking so pale and tired and for not telling her about his problem sooner.

“Spend the night,” she insisted. “I’ll call Dr. Wisp and get you an appointment first thing so you don’t miss work.”

A night away from the shrill–he was convinced it was a real sound and not a personal hearing issue–was what he needed, but he disliked their family doctor, who he’d nicknamed “Dr. Wisp.” She always drew blood, prescribed new pills (for ADHD, OCD, depression, carpal tunnel syndrome, and other things he didn’t think he actually had), and always ignored his questions and answers. For most of his life, he’d accepted this because the assortment of pills didn’t seem to negatively affect him and because he was on his mother’s insurance plan, and she and the doctor had arranged some sort of payment plan that involved his mother never paying. He didn’t have that kind of insurance. A couple of months before this dinner, when he’d slept over one night at his mother’s and finally confessed that he’d quit taking all of his prescriptions cold-turkey, he woke on the living room couch that made into a bed to find the doctor sitting above him on top of his mother’s elliptical machine. Her steely gaze brightened as her bony fingers drummed a syringe. He’d long-forgotten her name but called her Dr. Wisp because of her waify frame and her thin, waist-length silver hair that tickled his face even when she was a few feet away. At that time, she’d coolly urged him to let her draw blood for testing to make certain he wasn’t making “a selfish decision” concerning his health. She urged while he wrapped a sheet around himself, grabbed his clothes, dressed in the bathroom, and folded the mattress back into the couch before leaving. As he’d unlocked his car, he’d received a text from her that read:

Come to my office any day. Soon. No appointment needed.

He declined his mother’s offer to spend the night. She slapped the table and, in a pained voice, said, “But I love you.”

He considered slapping the table, too, and saying, “But I don’t like her.” Instead, he stood, hugged her, tossed cash on the table, and left.

***

He made an appointment for a hearing examine at the beginning of the third week of the shrilling. The receptionist insisted that he needed to be referred by his doctor first but his insistence that he didn’t need to be referred won out. He drove in silence. The radio had begun to give him headaches, even at a low volume. In the waiting room of the ear, nose and throat specialist, sharp shrieks persistently distracted him. Minutes later, he recognized those shrieks as the same sounds used as part of the hearing test. The ENT told him:

“You shouldn’t be able to hear that outside unless you have the ears of a bat.”

The tests concluded that there was nothing physically abnormal with his hearing: no obstructions or inflammation--“And,” the ENT concluded, “no bat anatomy.”

Then he made an appointment with a headache clinic near his office. They weren’t insistent. When he described the sound and his story up until then, the doctor shrugged and scheduled an MRI. “But I don’t think you need it,” the headache doctor said. The scan had been the worst hour of Zé’s month. Before he’d emerged from his car, he thought he could hear the pulse and clang of machinery bouncing around the parking lot. The sounds intensified as he neared the office. His eyes watered. While inside the MRI itself, he was assaulted by a continuous sound of a million billiard balls cracking against one another. The technician assured him that his experience was normal.

The headache doctor had been on site to assure him the MRI scan ruled out any medical conditions that could be the cause and that “once you find the source of this sound, you’ll sleep like nothing had ever happened.”

Sitting in his car, Zé vibrated. As he glanced from mirror to mirror, saw the gray half moons beneath his eyes, the dehydrated shape of his face, his worried eyes, he feared that he would never find the source. Maybe he should stay with his mother, meet with Dr. Wisp, leave with a handful of multicolored pills. His phone vibrated with a text from Dr. Wisp that urged:

Come to my office any day. Soon. No appointment needed.

She’d sent the same text every day since he’d told his mother about the shrill.

Maybe she would have cure. But maybe his mother and the doctor had conspired. Maybe they somehow produced the shrill in order to convince him to return to the pills. His mother had a spare key to his place after all. She or they could’ve entered his place and hidden some device while he was at work.

He laughed at this, bent down, set his eyelids and forehead against his palms, and shook his head. I just need more sleep.

He considered booking a hotel room, though he didn’t have the money for that. He wished he could sleep over at a friend’s place but they’d all moved out of state since graduation, leaving him with only his mother, work, and insanity. Better yet, he wanted someone to stay at his place and be a witness. If they heard the sound, he wasn’t “hearing things” and their fresh ears might be able to locate the source. He was desperate to “sleep like nothing had ever happened.”

He texted the guy he’d hooked up with the week before.

***

In Zé’s shower, the guy he’d hooked up with the week before said, “You have such a bony back. Your shoulder blades are huge. Are everybody’s shoulder blades that big? I want to push them down. I don’t think they’re supposed to be like that” and he playfully pushed down until Zé turned and pulled the guy’s hands somewhere else.

Hours later, while spooning, their breathing and heartbeats becoming one calmed Zé. He dreamed of admiring his sleeping companion from all angles, could feel himself smiling. He felt relaxed until he awoke with the sensation that he was falling. The guy shouted, “Not cool, freak. I’m out.”

Still-groggy, Zé followed him down the hallway, apologizing without knowing what to apologize for.

The guy said, “Your magic trick might impress other guys but when I wake up and see a dude crawling on the ceiling but facing me, fuck that.” The guy had already dressed and lifted his bicycle up between them. When he opened the door, Zé realized that he was naked and ran back to his room for a tank and shorts.

“Wait,” he yelled, chasing the guy. Had he even closed the door behind him? He thought he could still hear the guy’s heartbeat, knew which direction it bounced from even as it sounded fainter each second. On the sidewalk, Zé halted within an inch of slamming into a moving truck parked at the curb, and he spotted the guy waiting at a crosswalk, lifting a leg over his bicycle seat. When he began to jog toward him, the shrill began louder than ever. The wind swatted from behind, shoving him head first into the truck.

As he leaned up from the ground, the shrill ceased. It ceased! For a moment, he was thrilled. Pounding his face and temples might’ve cured him or destroyed his hearing or killed him. Who cared as long as it stopped that sound. When he looked up, a youthful woman as short as himself but fitter stood beside him, smiling. Her skin seemed to absorb every shadow around her while her tangerine dress reflected every light.

She said, “Found you.”  

“Found me?” Zé asked.

She leaned in. “You haven’t heard me calling?”