A Sentient, Writing Trashbag

Miles’ watched his face distort in the surface of the liquor. Not a lot of detail, but he caught the scar slashed across the bridge of his nose (Chris Walker, throwing him into a pile of broken wood; a miracle he hadn’t just been impaled) and the tight downturn of his mouth.

He shot the whiskey back so he wouldn’t have to see it anymore.

The clock ticked constantly under the TV Waylon had left on (and had he always had a clock?) and no matter how hard he tried not to the sound was all Miles noticed. He grit his teeth and stormed into the bedroom.

The room came unfocused, vision swimming and legs shuffling clumsily over to his bed. It was a comforting loss of control- a controlled loss of control- and for a little while Miles could be outside of his body, detached from the unbearable weight of his thoughts.

Or, that’s what it was supposed to do. The deafening silence rang in his ears. Miles tried to drown it out, literally, with a few more pulls of whiskey but it didn’t seem to be doing anything to quell the queasy, empty feeling in his stomach. He stared at his phone and tried to recognize the abstract letters and numerals that danced in front of him.

None of them looked like the shape that meant “Waylon”, which he thought was probably good. That meant Waylon hadn’t gotten into any trouble. Yet.

It could have also meant that Waylon was in trouble, trouble deep enough that he wouldn’t have had time to grab his phone and ask for help.

Fuck, Miles was tired. It felt deeper than the ache in his body or the gradual drag of the alcohol pulling him back into sleep. It might have been in his bones. Every time his eyes drifted shut, he thought back to Waylon and jolted into semi-alertness once again.

“Stupid prick,” he mumbled.

He left because of me, he thought. Putting words to the feeling was like pulling the shutters on a spotlight to that obvious, gaping emptiness- and the fact that it was Miles’ fault. Which didn’t come as any surprise, because misery was almost always Miles’ fault.

“Don’t come back,” Miles spat at the empty room. “Smarten up, stop fuckin’ creeping around here whimpering at me like a service dog.”

He kicked at the leg of his coffee table and sloshed more liquor into his throat. When his voice came again, it was in a shout.

“Go back to Colorado and seal yourself up in your stupid little hotel tomb until something finally kills you, just like you always wanted!”

 It felt triumphant, cathartic- and completely fucking awful as he berated the walls of his living room. Something about it was indescribably painful, but he was getting too heavy and deadened to really confront that. All that really mattered was that he was angry, really angry, and sad and damned near panicking- and he still didn’t feel the Walrider buzzing between his eyes.

 So it was still a surprise, an almost pleasant one, when something warm and wet burned down his cheeks instead.

 —

Waylon just knew that someone was staring at him from across the room. He knew it because he couldn’t really blame them, as he’d been whispering to himself on and off for the duration of his time there.

The coffee shop- the very same one he’d first met Miles in- was a warm little place, warm in almost every sense of the word. None of that warmth seemed to extend to Waylon, though. He still felt as grey, cold, and miserable as the sky outside.

He looked away from the blue gleam of his tablet and stared into the rich foam of his coffee. There was no telling what the drink was, exactly- he didn’t remember what he’d ordered. In fact, he wasn’t sure that he had ordered anything at all. The barista might have just made him something hot in the absence of any coherent answer.

He’d tipped her generously.

Waylon didn’t want to see the garble of attempted and abandoned e-mails he’d composed to his therapist. When he couldn’t justify studying his drink any longer, he was forced to look at them again and delete them one by one. He took a deep pull from the coffee cup and tried, repeatedly, to make the message come out right, but instead formless, shapeless thoughts poured onto the word processor.

You’re an awful person and everyone will eventually always want you gone. You’re poison you’re poisoning Miles you poisoned your wife you’re RUINED YOU RUINED THEM. Get out, got to go got to go home. There’s no home. Got to go somewhere else.

It had gone on, but Waylon had already deleted it. Getting the emotions out didn’t make him feel any better. He felt, more keenly than before, the blanket of guilt and sorrow draw tighter around him like a miserable cocoon.

And fear. Lord, the way the fear clawed at him. If grief was a smothering sensation, the fear was like wild animal claws scraping at his insides.

He was pinned by that fear and guilt, torn between the options he had laid out in front of him: get on the first train to Denver and forget this had ever happened, or storm back into Miles’ apartment and do what he could to make things right. There was an element of irony to the idea of someone like him trying to convince Miles that he was sick and needed help, but irony didn’t make it any less true.

That was really held Waylon in place, that singular, most important question- was Miles better off without him?

So much of this had already been Waylon’s fault, and every move he made seemed to strangle the both of them tighter, closer, inching moment by moment to some final disaster.

Waylon was exhausted with the effort of trying to hold back his pervasive sorrow. His head, eyes, chest all ached and tears leaked out despite his best efforts to breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth. The tablecloth blurred as he scrubbed at his eyes, ashamed.

One of the baristas tapped briskly over to him and plucked the coffee cup from its tray. He felt her pause and hover there while he laced his fingers over his red-rimmed eyes.

“You okay there, darlin’?”

Her voice was sweet, cloying, and undeniably feminine. Waylon’s hands slammed to the table as the words hit him.

Darling. Darling. Darling. Bloody footprints dribbled beneath him and eyes stained red peered through the locker slats.

Waylon was out the door before it even registered that his body was moving. He barreled through occasional knots of people, gorge rising in his throat.

Darling. The word played like a skipping record in his head, feeling far away and too close as he felt, rather than heard, all the terrible tones and meanings it could take against Gluskin’s tongue.

Machinery started up somewhere, a distant mechanical whine that startled Waylon so badly that he hurtled to the sidewalk.

Pain lanced through his head, his jaw, his wrists all raw against the concrete. Hands reached out and touched him where he couldn’t see, vision swimming in a view of the ground.

Here, darling. This will help you relax.

That’s when Waylon screamed.

He crawled forward and stumbled back to his feet to shoulder, linebacker style, through the people who had drawn close to help him. Colors streaked into abstract shape as he ran aimlessly; his chest was tight and painful with his heartbeat, shaking so hard it might have been rattling his whole soul.

He certainly hadn’t intended to make it all the way to Miles’ apartment, didn’t realize he was there until his back thumped up against the door and he slid down, gasping for breath. His eyes shut against the light; when he opened them, the hallway was Mount Massive again. Water stains darkened into blood puddles, and a ceiling fan clicked faster and faster into the crackle of a fire licking at a nonexistent chapel.

This was the last place he’d wanted to be. It was the only place he knew anymore.

Dammit, darling.

The words were as real as they had been when Gluskin had said them, rasping and cruel and strangling the breath from him in panicked gasps. Waylon drew his knees to his chest and curled his forearms over his face, so he wouldn’t have to see that pulsing halo of darkness that crept into his vision. Somehow, he could feel an ache where his ankle was- where his ankle had been, he remembered.

Darling-

“Waylon?”

Hands touched him again, on his shoulders and over his own hands, trying to pry them away from his face. Waylon whimpered when he found that he didn’t have the strength the scream.

--

There was a thumping and breathing sound just outside the apartment that had really started to bother Miles. He had a headache and he was surly and sick, just enough to confront the intrusion.

Drinking didn’t usually make him sick like that, but now the liquor twisted in his gut. He had tried to just pour himself some more and drink that feeling away, but for some reason every time he brought it to his mouth he thought of Waylon, slouching out the door with that defeated look on his face, and the illness redoubled.

The sounds from the other side of the door became a strange, jittering whine, and Miles had certainly had enough of that shit.

“Listen man,” Miles drawled as he cracked the door open, “it would be great if you could go jerk off somewhere-“

The words died on his lips as soon as he recognized the shivering mass of Waylon.

“Waylon?”

He was crumpled in a heap and shaking worse than Miles had seen before. There was blood on him, on his face, the sleeves of his shirt, and drooling down his mouth. Miles was touching him before he could stop himself, trying to pivot Waylon towards him so he could try and figure out what was wrong.

Memories pulsed through reality, Waylon overlaid with more blood, in the inmate’s suit, tiny beads of blood gathering on a knife edge, all of these obscuring and merging with the current Waylon, the real Waylon, cowering in the hallway.

Miles’ fingertips buzzed. He dragged a breath in and shook his head, because it was exactly the worst time for the Walrider to be happening to him.

“Waylon!”

He tried helplessly to pull Waylon’s hands away from his eyes, to let the man see him. He only got a low, quavering moan in response.

“I can’t, I can’t do this,” Miles whispered to himself.

He pulled his hands away to smooth back his hair and pace a tight circle in the hallway. That horrible, detached aching was tugging in his chest; he was losing himself.

It was the worst possible time, but anxiety was like a tide pulling him away from his body.

He stooped and held onto Waylon stubbornly, picking the smaller man up as best he could  and staggering through the door. His arms trembled under the uncooperative weight and he kicked the door closed behind them. Waylon had begun to thrash, weakly, but it still threatened to knock Miles off his feet.

He could make out snatches of Waylon’s panicked ramblings; he understood “Please, Eddie, no-“ at which point he tuned the rest of it out. The words had brought another wave of that dreamlike sense that Miles was disappearing from himself, and he was no good to Waylon like that.

“It’s not happening this time,” Miles grunted as Waylon’s fists and knees jammed into him. “I’m not leaving you, compadre, just- just hang tight for me, yeah?”

Waylon was deep in some memory, some old rehearsed terror. Miles was scared to even see it, scared that he might go too deep and never come back.

He fell against the arm of the couch, holding Waylon to himself tightly enough that he wouldn’t catch another stray elbow to the gut. There would definitely be bruises the next day.

“C’mon tough guy, I need you to calm down. It’s me, it’s Miles, you gotta breathe for me.” Miles voice cracked.

He couldn’t tell which one of them was making his hands shake.

Miles drew soothing circles in Waylon’s hair, down between his shoulderblades with unsteady fingers. It was too tense and Miles couldn’t think, couldn’t quite remember the places he could touch that hadn’t been used to hurt Waylon.

It was a minor miracle that Waylon hadn’t passed out with the way he wheezed and gasped. Miles leaned back against the arm of the couch, pulling Waylon against him and skimming his hands along his shoulders and arms.

The contact kept Miles anchored there, even with reality starting to melt at the edges he could just touch Waylon and remember where he was, where he should be. He hummed tunelessly and rocked the both if them in the indulgent, childlike way he remembered his mother doing for him.

“C’mon, hush Waylon. You’re gonna hurt yourself carrying on like that.”

Waylon finally opened his eyes, slowly, like he was waking up. He stared wide-eyed, movements calming to a tremble as his fists grabbed at Miles’ shirt like the garment could keep Waylon moored in real life.

He was surprised that Waylon wasn’t crying. He looked lost, haunted, and honestly a touch feral- but he wasn’t crying. For some reason that bothered Miles, but he couldn’t figure out why he should have felt better to see Waylon cry.

Waylon’s breathing came a little more measured, a little deeper, until Miles was fairly confident that he wasn’t going to black out. They stayed pressed close together while Miles stroked his head like a frightened horse.

He reached up, slowly, and dragged a shuddering palm across Miles’ cheek. It came away wet and dark, like he’d wiped off melting mascara.

“…Why are you crying, Miles?” Waylon said quietly.

Miles touched his own face. It also came away wet and dark, smudging against the similar inkstand that spread slowly up his arm.

“Oh,” Miles said, watching the liquid drip from his fingers with fascination. “I…don’t know.”

“I’m sorry.”

Waylon sat very still, staring down where Miles had fallen against him. He draped his arms loosely around Miles’ shoulders- normal Miles, familiar Miles- while a trickle of blood stained from his nose into the arm of Waylon’s shirt.

He eyed the baseball bat he’d abandoned and let out a long, deep sigh while he tried to remember his therapist’s breathing exercised. 

The idea of meditation seemed a little weak for the given situation, but Waylon would manage. As long as Miles looked like himself, he could use it to keep himself together.

Miles groaned and started to stir by the time Waylon had gotten to the part where he was supposed to imagine being a warm stone under the hot desert sun.

“Mornin,” Miles croaked. He attempted to lift himself up, then rested against Waylon once again.

Waylon’s whole body tensed up like a rubber band pulled too tight before he sucked in another breath, and let it out gently through his nostrils. The feeling of another human being held against him was, as most things were these days, too much- both an icy pang of apprehension and the warm creep of reluctant comfort.

He didn’t want to be feeling it, even if it made him feel awake again.

It had been a long, long time since anyone else had touched Waylon, outside of Gluskin and the endless parade of doctors. Even his own wife- back when he could call her his wife- had kept him at arm’s length. His whole experience had narrowed down to one word: clinical.

Somewhere beneath layers of panic, paranoia, and mistrust, Waylon felt something hard to name spiderweb inside him like, like a cracking windshield.

He hugged Miles closer; it felt safe, and comforting, and if the gesture wasn’t exactly welcome well…he was sure Miles would forgive him for the indiscretion. There was no telling the next time he’d experience safe human contact and in that moment, he wanted to remember what it felt like. To be alive. To be apart of someone else’s life, even briefly.

Blood trickled down Miles’ face as he looked up at Waylon, which called Waylon’s brief sense of safety back into question.

“I think it’s actually past noon,” Waylon said.

He scrubbed the heel of his palm against the blood tracked down Miles’ nose and chin with a wan smile. It did wonders to take the sickly edge from the man’s face.

Miles’ arms shook as he leveraged himself up and swung into an upright sitting position. Waylon ignored the pang of disappointment as he followed suit, one hand against Miles’ arm, just in case he swooned again.

“Sorry,” Miles said.

“It’s fine.”

“That’s not exactly true, is it? Thanks anyway.”

“How do you feel?”

Miles eyes were heavily lidded. “Not great.”

Waylon punched the TV remote on to fill the silence; some quiet program about art and museums droning in the background. Miles winced as sunlight dappled across the living room in an arc, which prompted Waylon to jump up and yank the blinds closed.

“Thanks.”

“You need something?” Waylon ventured.

“Nah. M’fine.”

Waylon worried his lip between his teeth and went to the kitchen. He returned with a glass of water that he held out to Miles like a peace offering.

Miles took it from him with a squint. “Kinda thought you’d start screaming again.”

“Think I got it all out of my system for now.”

“I’m not-“ Miles started, staring at the glass guiltily, “I don’t mean to sound like you don’t have a good reason to be-“

“It’s okay, Miles. Really.”

“Is it? Can’t believe you’re not having any second thoughts about sitting here right next to the big-bad-boogeyman Walrider.”

Waylon picked at his fingernails. “You’re not the Walrider.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Does it hurt?”

The question rushed out of Waylon as if he’d been holding it in for a while.

Miles jerked to attention. “What?”

“Changing like that, I mean.”

“Not…no? Not really.”

“‘Cause it looks like it hurts.”

“It doesn’t. Not at first, anyway,” Miles said, and pressed his thumb to his temple as if to demonstrate where it hurt.

“M’sorry.”

Miles grinned. “Now that’s more like it.”

Waylon smiled despite himself and pushed at Miles’ arm chidingly.

The smile fell from Miles’ face. “It’s like…an instinct, you know?”

“Huh?”

“Changing…it’s like an instinct.” Miles spread his hands out and inspected them as if he were afraid they’d start changing again without warning. He probably just wanted something to look at other than Waylon.

"You just…fade out. You’re still there, but something is else is piloting you. Watching from behind your own eyes.”

Waylon shuddered at the familiarity of the description. He reached out and placed his hand on Miles’ shoulder after a great deal of internal effort.

Miles exhaled and leaned against him.

“Well, I haven’t done anything too awful, at least. I think.”

Waylon’s eyes flicked away. “I really don’t want to be contradicting you right now, and you might not even remember but…you did almost tear a man in half. Just like, yesterday.”

“Oh. Yeah. You know, I had forgotten about that for a sec there.”

“So…why didn’t you?”

“What, tear the guy in half?”

“Yeah.”

“You were screaming,” Miles said simply.

“So? Why should that stop you?”

Miles’ mouth worked silently for a moment. “So, I- I dunno man! None of this makes any goddamn sense! Everything stopped making sense the moment I got shot by a firing squad and didn’t die.”

“Well, what do you remember?”

Miles grimaced. “A knife, blood, the sound of screaming and then…not much else.”

Waylon blanched. “Christ. Was it me? Was that my fault?”

“No- I mean, maybe? It’s not anyone’s fault! I just- fuck it,” Miles groaned. “I’m not doing this right now! This does not have to be unpacked.”

He stood suddenly, swaying on his feet. Waylon jumped up and reached out to steady him and tugged him back onto the couch.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to-“

Miles dropped his head into his hands. “I just want some whiskey.”

Waylon hated how defeated Miles looked in that moment, shrunken inside himself. He hated how defeated he felt even more, even as he crept off to the kitchen to pour a glass of whiskey.

He stared at the liquid for a long time, watching it refract the dingy kitchen through the glass while he silently hated himself for doing it. Hated Miles for asking him to do it. It felt like guilt was coating his skin like grease, or dirt, sinking into his skin where he could never wash it off.

He wondered how many different times he could show up and ruin Miles Upshur’s life. He wanted to hurl the entire bottle against the wall. Instead, he handed it to Miles without looking at him.

Miles took the glass, watching Waylon curiously as he drank deep and slammed the glass onto the coffee table hard enough for whiskey to slosh out. His voice, when it came, was sharp.

“What?”

Waylon took a step back and stared at the floor. “You…you shouldn’t drink this much.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Well,” Miles said flatly, “I’m very fucking sorry for wounding your delicate sensibilities. If you want, I will go and do this somewhere you won’t have to see.”

Waylon’s eyes stung faster than he could process the feeling of rejection. He swallowed the feeling down and balled his hands into fists; he was tired of crying every time Miles got to him, and tired of making it everyone else’s problem.

He wanted to scream, but instead his voice came out small and unfamiliar.

"Do whatever you want.”

Miles drained the glass in one impressive swig and slammed it onto the table, empty. “I intend to.”

“Fine, then. I’m going out. I’ll be back.”

“You’re going outside? Alone?”

If Waylon hadn’t know any better, he would have thought Miles looked a little guilty. Then again, Waylon’s worst quality might have been his penchant for wishful thinking.

“Is that okay?” Waylon said sharply.

Miles expression closed off and he stared into his empty glass. “Whatever. Just don’t like…fuckin’ die out there.”

The tension between the two of them at the mere mention of Death was palpable. For a second Waylon would have sworn they’d had simultaneous visions of that man in the alley, the knife in his fist.

The desire to stay, to avoid the entire looming world outside Miles’ apartment welled up in him like nausea.

Until he watched Miles get up, unsteady and tilting on weak legs, to grab the whole bottle of whiskey and bring it to his lips. Waylon grabbed the door handle before he could lose his nerve a second time.

Miles waved a hand without even looking up.

The wolf’s head pummeled between Joseph’s shoulders, shoving him face-first to the ground. He could feel his body buckle under the huge, clawed hand it pressed to him and he thrashed frantically to roll onto his back. Claws scraped him as he did, the vice grip threatening to crack his ribs like breadsticks.

“Fuck,” Joseph mumbled, trying in vain to wrap his arms more tightly around Sebastian’s bulk as he seemed to catch on a crooked panel of wood. He deposited Sebastian onto his bed in an unceremonious heap, watching with mild amazement as he breathed peacefully, still asleep. Joseph pulled the covers up and over him.

He patted Sebastian’s stubbled cheek affectionately, smiling stupidly at the way the man’s tongue poked out comically as he drooled onto the sheet. His smile faded as the calm that Sebastian’s sleepy weight seemed to magically transfer to Joseph began to ebb away, like a physical loss. Something cold and heavy was already lapping at Joseph’s insides again.

How could he have fucked up this badly? Sebastian wasn’t even any old donor- he was super-human- and Joseph had still managed to drink the man into a dull stupor. It was the worst combination of poor self control and selfishness he could imagine; he felt like he could crawl out of his miserable skin, the memory of Sebastian shoving Joseph’s awkward hands off of him replaying until he could almost feel it, the ghost of a sensation again and again.

It was the only thing Joseph could think to repay him. Wasn’t it what he wanted?

He’d probably just been too out of it, Joseph figured. Why shouldn’t he have gone for, after all? He had yet to show any developing disgust of Joseph, and he’d taken some pretty egregious liberties with Sebastian’s body, after all. He’d come to his senses, collect on the offer soon enough.

The thought had come calm and cool, but as soon as it registered Joseph could feel that panic creeping higher, from his stomach to his throat.

It had just been…he glanced to his bandaged arm, where the stinging pain had subsided. He hadn’t needed to prove Sebastian’s theory there; he had known well enough that it would work. It had just been so hard to restrain himself through that haze of pain, and the way it made his whole body throb with hunger.

Joseph could feel himself racing back towards panic again, the same panic that had driven him like a blind animal and seared his arm. Now, cool night air drafted through the window, and the opportunity was there again.

Get out. Joseph placed his hands against the cool glass, testing it. Get out if his life before you fuck it up any worse. Before you kill him. Before he kills you.

Joseph hurried into his jacket and boots, pulling the hood over his head. He pulled the window up incrementally, trying to keep the noise as low as possible.

You don’t have to be happy, Joseph thought bitterly, but you can still be free.

Then why, he asked himself as he stared sullenly at Sebastian, did he feel so goddamn guilty? So much more guilty, in fact, than he had before? It was a half-second that made him question if he was really escaping some kind of cage at all.

“The best kind of captive animal,” Joseph whispered through gritted teeth as he threw the window fully open, “is one that puts itself back in its own cage.” He thought he remembered his aunt saying something like that, about horses, or dogs, or something, and it seemed fitting.

Sebastian struggled awake and blinked at Joseph, whose leg was poised to spring out the window.

“Sorry,” Joseph whispered.

Sebastian frowned, cocked his head to the side and flopped onto his back. “Careful out there,” he said, “Sunrise’ll be at 6AM, give or take.”

Joseph worked his mouth silently, trying to think of anything to say to that. Instead, he dropped down from the windowsill, and took off into the night.

-

Autumn wind stung at Joseph’s exposed skin, almost comforting in its familiar chill. He thought he might have preferred the warmth  of Sebastian’s apartment (and the warmth of Sebastian, for that matter), but he pulled his jacket tighter. This, he knew exactly how to deal with.

It was the cold comfort, literally, of freedom.

Joseph made his way downtown, back to where he’d run into Sebastian for the first time. He blended in and out of the crowds that drifted from bars to parties and back again, watched as they broke into smaller huddles of people and found new ones in a shifting constellation of social intricacy. 

He caught himself balling his fists in his pockets, grit tin his teeth whenever those blazingly warm bodies bumped against him. Still, it was easier to be around them now than any time he could remember. He watched them, almost enraptured by how easy it was to study their faces without the pulse to hurt them, to kill them. A girl clapped him on the shoulder, peering under his hood with amused curiosity- Joseph stumbled backward away from her, drawing his shoulders up against himself as if he could make himself into a shield.

He must have been quite the sight, standing on the sidewalk gaping at people. Joseph stole a glance backwards where the girl was still watching him slink away, her hand frozen in midair.

The sight of it pierced through him with a pang of sadness. It used to be like this, he thought, and he tried to recall when it was true; when he’d been just another mundane person in that crowd. The memories were like a flickering movie reel he could barely remember; sunlit, washed out and dreamlike. Given a few more decades, he wondered if there’d be anything of them left.

Those sullen thoughts dragged him through the metal gates of the city’s large main park, casting prison-bar shadows across him by the glaring orange spill of streetlight. He’d spent most of his nights hunkered down here in some stream-bridge culvert or the other, running from curious drifters and singeing himself when he lost track of the daylight.

By the time he’d sorted through the meager remains of his memories, Joseph found himself facing that same bridge, and threw himself onto a park bench to stare up at the pinpoints of light in the cold, velvet-black sky.

He folded his arms behind his head and sighed.

You could just stay here ’til morning, a voice in the back of his head crooned to him.

Joseph had talked to himself a lot. He talked himself through the interminable loneliness of his existence, talked himself in and out of suicide in frustrated loops. No matter how bitter it got, it had always made him feel a little better to hear that voice, to know he was still in control of himself, no matter how tenuously.

Well…it used to make him feel better. It occurred to Joseph that he hadn’t conducted that little ritual in the last few days, and in retrospect the absence was glaring. Now, his own voice felt like an unpleasant itch in his mind; a needling reminder that he had, however briefly, found someone else to talk to. Someone he’d liked to talk to. Someone he couldn’t imagine telling him to let himself burn to ash in the middle of this shitty park.

“This is stupid,” Joseph whispered aloud, sitting up and drawing his knees to his chest. The suggestion had started to chime in circles around him: stay ’til morning. Solve this problem, once and for all.

The need to escape had been bone deep and overwhelming, but now that he was out again, really on his own, Joseph could only ruminate on that warm little apartment, the muscular bulk of Sebastian splayed out against him under layers of blankets, and the pleasant heat of Sebastian’s hands in his wet hair; the steaming box of the shower stall.

It was a cage, something protested. It was a nice cage, though, Joseph thought.

Nausea stung at his gut and he rubbed his face tiredly. Maybe it was just the physical warmth that he was missing; the cold settled in bitterly, making him feel damp and achy. He stood up, rubbing his hands together as if he still had a heart to pump the blood through and froze at the glint of something- something shining red and gold from the black treeline that bordered the park’s forested center.

He squinted, making out the shape that moved behind those flashing eyes. The shape shuddered under his stare and shrieked a long, garbled howling sound, a sound like a dying hound dog that made Joseph shrink away instinctively as if he were some kind of prey animal. Was that a wolf?

Sebastian?

The creature turned to him as if it could hear him thinking, slinking forward on unnaturally sloping limbs.

A surge of righteous anger overrode Joseph’s fear and he pitched forward, stomping with grim determination towards the creature’s shambling bulk across the expanse of grass.

“I knew you were full of shit, Sebastian, you weren’t going to let me leave-“

The words died in Joseph’s throat as the thing crept into the lurid yellow light of a streetlamp. It was a werewolf- probably, anyway, granted Joseph had only ever seen one- and it definitely was not Sebastian. This wolf-man, still almost a flat shadow with its’ thick, matted black fur, was only recognizable as something other than a wolf by the twisted, blunt facial features and the intelligence that glittered coldly behind its orange eyes. Well, that and the size- Joseph had never seen any real wolves before, but something told him they didn’t get that big.

He watched with a detached sort of concern as it revealed its teeth in a dripping snarl. It was the sound that propelled Joseph backward, a gravelly, sharp growl that rose to drown out the ambient night sounds. A sweep of cold air was the only thing that told him that the creature had lunged as he turned away and ran.

He didn’t bother looking back, and he didn’t have to- in the space of blinking, the thing was in front of him again, claws spraying loam as it skidded and threw its monstrous body at Joseph again. He tried to sprint forward and threw himself into a clumsy roll. He felt teeth pop the fabric of his jacket sleeve open and score the skin, the jaws making a horrid snapping sound as he rolled out of biting range.

The wolf’s head pummeled between Joseph’s shoulders, shoving him face-first to the ground. He could feel his body buckle under the huge, clawed hand it pressed to him and he thrashed frantically to roll onto his back. Claws scraped him as he did, the vice grip threatening to crack his ribs like breadsticks.

Okay, he thought, kicking desperately to try and gain himself any space, I guess this is how I die? It’s not what I would have picked.

He felt his boot connect with the werewolf’s soft belly and kicked it with whatever energy he could muster up in an adrenaline-fueled gamble. He could feel something give, sickeningly, and with a grating scream the werewolf reeled back and unpinned Joseph. He scrabbled up, gasping at the jolts of pain that lanced through him as he got his legs under him and sprinted off.

Now he did look back to see the drooling werewolf gnash its teeth in his direction. He could only describe the sound it made as a roar, which was more of a warning than he needed. He kept moving, pressing himself to go a little faster, for a little farther, whipping up whorls of trash and dried leaves in his wake.

He couldn’t stop and worry about whether or not he was making a scene; attracting attention. He didn’t stop running until he was halfway up the rocking fire escape of a familiar apartment building, flat against the grated ground underneath the staircase.

It was a while before he was satisfied that no enormous black wolves had followed him. Joseph crept quietly up the rattling fire escape until he was looking into the window of Sebastian’s bedroom, glancing between it and the empty street. With a huff, he dropped to sit with his legs dangling off the escape and fished a cigarette and lighter- both pilfered from Sebastian- out of his pocket.

Joseph breathed the acrid smoke in gratefully. The nicotine wouldn’t have much of an effect of his halted lungs, but the gesture was both familiar to him and comforting. He focused on the warm smell of the smoke and the cigarette against his lips, tried to quiet down the way his mind seemed to spin in confusion.

Confusion about whether or not he was going to go back into that apartment like a homesick dog, about that other, feral werewolf out there with a mouthful of his jacket and what it meant, about what it meant about him and his own pathetic situation that right then, he wanted nothing more badly than to go back into that apartment.

Pitiful. Joseph flicked the cigarette stub away and crawled through the open window.