She paces a slow half circle around the flayed man. Her milky eyes lock not on my face but on my throat. “Please, Mom. You know me. You remember me.”
The flayed man paws the dirt. His skinned feet are split in the center, more hoof than human and crowned by the wreckage of shattered ankle joints. “And you? What will you choose?”
The abyss of his mouth ripples. The snarl that emerges burrows into me like cactus spines, and I hear the command in it:Attack.
But he’s frozen my curse. I can’t lose control. Not because I’m stronger, but because he won’t let me. I don’t understand, and then a body hits me and I’m down, razor teeth snapping the shadows at the back of my neck, and I do.
The command wasn’t for me.
“Mom!” I get my legs under me just in time to dodge her flashing teeth, coming for my neck again. She lunges and I rear back, arms up to protect my face, and I’m on my back, claws slicing through layers of muscle and tendon where I try to push her away.
“It’s me.” I’m trapped between two forms, only half metamorphosed, but she’s all animal. “Please—”
Her snout twists and my forearm goes white-hot. Blood froths over her teeth. I wrench my arm free and kick myself upright, praying she missed the artery. When we face off again, my mom crouches low on her haunches, a predator’s growl leaking between her teeth.
She’s not in there anymore. She’s going to kill me.
I think of the knife in my bag and Uncle Bill’s conviction and all the reasons I swore I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, it wasn’t time yet. And when she leaps for me again, I know I have to.
I sidestep and launch myself at her. She skids on the hard-packed ground, writhing under my weight. Her heart pulses frantically, dirt-spattered and exposed. My teeth are long and sharp enough, even half-transformed like this.
My snout is poised at the cavity of her rib cage when she whines. Tragic, desperate. I look into her face and see those eyes, her eyes, gray, unfocused, weeping. Is this how I show her I love her?
I turn my face away from hers, back to the heart I’m meant to skewer. The flayed man took my compassion and made it cruel. Made it some vengeful game.
I can’t do it. Not even if it kills me.
The flayed man growls. “Pathetic.”
Then he’s knocking me out of the way, aiming for her heart, and I realize what he’s doing a split second before he does it and I won’t let him. She’s my family and he’s nothing, and he won’t take this away from me. I coil all my strength into my legs and barrel into him. The flayed man rolls free of my mom, and before I can think what it will do to me, I wrench my fist through the wreckage of her rib cage and impale all four red-purple ventricles with my claws.
I pull free and sink into the dirt. My face is wet. Someone is screaming. I only realize it’s me when my throat gives out.
I brace for the burn of the flayed man’s fangs. But he doesn’t attack. He sniffs my mom’s corpse, dives his snout into the reliquary of her chest. I squeeze my eyes shut.
Footfalls, and his scent draws closer. When I open my eyes, his circular void of a mouth is level with them. Fresh hot blood coats his jagged teeth.
Her heart is in his mouth.
He grins wide and snaps his jaws shut. My mom’s blood spatters my face, warm and wet. The flayed man’s esophagus bulges as he swallows.
“You’re pitiful.” A vast, impersonalyouthat means all of us, anyone like me. He pronounces it like it’s the worst thing he can imagine. “Self-absorbed, petty. Fearful. Killing’s supposed to be fun, isn’t it?”
I won’t answer. I can’t answer. My throat is slick with tears.
“Isn’t it?” he snarls. His mouth flares, and endless rows of blackened teeth rise to meet me, writhing with fat worms and remnants of my mother’s heart.
Something’s rising in me too. Something primal. Something angry.
Petty, boring, pathetic, selfish. I’ve heard all that before, and no cruel words or rotted worms can scar me or scare me more than my mom can. And she’s gone now. He took her from me and chewed her heart up like it was nothing. I want to rip him apart, piece by piece. I want to show him what it’s like to be eaten alive by guilt and shame. I want failure to kiss him on the mouth and make him bleed.
“I can see the future,” he hisses. “I’m going to eat your heart, and then I’m going to eat your friend too.”
For a second, I’m derailed, but then I realize it’s all a con, a threat, a maneuver. These are the kinds of games humans play. Name-calling, negging, lies. Here is a creature who thrives on the hunt, on the slip of heart muscle through his teeth, here is a legend passed on through generations, who can stalk into my mind, who can conjure corrosion before my eyes, and he’s playing games. My anger soars higher and higher, searing white-hot with injustice. But like a fire, there’s only so much for it to eat, and when it falters, fear rushes in. Would it be so bad to die? the fear whispers. If I just close my eyes, soon none of this will be real.
If only I wasn’t so alone.
And then a howl.
