Читать книгу The Werewolf Megapack - Александр Дюма - Страница 11

DUMPSTER DIVING, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Claire wished she liked puppies. When she found the little creature clawing blindly in the dumpster out back of her building, she felt sorry for it, abandoned there so young, before its eyes were even open, and without a winter coat. Its whines were so feeble she was afraid it was on the verge of freezing to death. The air was so cold it hurt Claire’s nose to breathe. Bent porchlight and moonlight caught fuzzily in the frost on the street. Claire stood with her wastebasket resting on the dumpster’s edge, wanting most of all to fling the shredded paper that had been part of her husband’s diaries into the dumpster and then to flee the freezing night for cocoa in her warm apartment.

If only it were dead. She could have given it a burial under a snow of paper, a spadeful of murdered memories, and that would be the end of it, as far as she was concerned. Tomorrow was trash pickup day.

It cried. It snuffled. It thrust its little nose up at her, making a hopeless bleating sound.

It was alive, and there was a “no pets” rule in her building.

It was alive. She had hated dogs all her life.

It was alive, alone, and helpless, about to die. She remembered that feeling.

It laid its nose down on the crumpled newspapers and sighed, just the faintest whisper of sound-colored air.

“Oh, hell,” she said, tossing her paper to the side. She reached out with mittened hands, plucked the little thing from its newspaper nest, and slipped it into her coat pocket. Maybe tomorrow she could take it somewhere—the Humane Society, or something—get rid of it.

Maybe it was crawling with parasites and they had just infested her coat. She remembered seeing a dead bird once, looking at it closely and seeing the mites crawling over its feathers. Maybe she’d have to fumigate her whole apartment if she took it up there. Whereas now, only her coat and mittens were at risk. She could toss them, puppy and all, into the dumpster and go upstairs, unpolluted.

It squirmed in her pocket, a tiny live weight against her hip.

“Oh, hell.”

She went back inside and took the elevator up to her floor.

Warm, not hot, the water she ran into the blue sink in her cluttered bathroom. She bathed the tiny thing with antibacterial soap, and realized that it wasn’t so very dirty. It smelled mostly of coffee grounds from the dumpster.

Warm, not hot, the milk she put into one of her pink rubber dishwashing gloves. The puppy suckled from a pin-pricked index finger, tugging with more strength than she had thought possible. Its tiny belly tightened and tautened like a tambourine.

She pulled the smallest drawer from her dresser and dumped her underwear in with her slacks. She lined the bottom of the drawer with torn brown towels, then snuggled the puppy in next to a hot water bottle, warm, almost hot. The puppy gave a satisfied groan and fell asleep.

In the morning, the puppy was gone. In its place lay a tiny curled human baby, its forehead and hands and knees pressed up against the now cool hot water bottle.

Staring down at it, Claire felt her throat constrict, her body freeze. What was it? Had she only dreamed the puppy? Why had her eyes seen it wrong last night? Was this some kind of psychological trick she was playing on herself? Like her mother had suggested, some unconscious longing for the children her husband wouldn’t give her? He had laughed when she talked to him about it. “Claire, you give new dimensions to the word ‘unfit,’” he had said.

Strangest of all, this baby didn’t look big enough to be born.

She knelt beside the drawer and watched it, saw its ribbed sides moving in and out. It was breathing. Breathing and naked, and, in some perverse way, beautiful, like a delicate mechanical nightingale.

It rolled itself over, as if sensing her, and opened pink mouth and milky blue eyes. “Uh, uh, uh,” it said, sounding like a grunting puppy again.

Maybe it had sounded like a puppy and been a baby all along. She had slipped it into her pocket so quickly…but during the bath she had taken a good look at it, enough to know that it was male. Which she could still tell; in fact, it made a little fountain that arched toward her and fell back to the rags.

Grimacing, she mopped off the little thing, moved it away from the wet rags it had just created, and lifted the water bottle away, too.

“Uh, uh,” the thing muttered, waving its arms and legs.

Most of all Claire wanted to wash her hands, literally and figuratively. If only she hadn’t taken the trash out after midnight, she would never have even seen the thing. It could have died unmourned and unnoticed, leaving her without any stain on her memory or conscience.

What she wanted was to be alone in her apartment, snuggled in a blanket, warming her hands around a cup of fragrant cocoa, the windows curtained against the cold, the TV tuned to American Movie Classics—something with Bette Davis or Katharine Hepburn. Her own little vision of heaven, one she had almost managed to live out. She fantasized about it, but when she was actually on the couch, cocoa and remote in hand, there was always something missing, a restlessness stirring in her gut that told her this wasn’t right, this wasn’t enough.

Now she had to worry about Pampers and formula and God knew what else. It had been a long time since she had checked Dr. Spock out of the library, reading him on the sly, wondering if there was any way to sneak a baby out of her husband without him knowing. That was before she found out what kind of operation he’d performed on her when he had told her he was taking her appendix out.

Before she started reading his medical texts, paying particular attention to toxicology.

But all that was across state lines, left behind with her previous name and everything she had owned as a child. She had taken only some money and his diaries. Nobody outside the house knew the diaries even existed, so she figured no one would know they were missing.

The baby whined, reaching toward her.

“Oh, hell,” she said. She draped a dry towel over it to keep it warm, and went to heat some milk.

* * * *

At first she thought of giving it to some agency—the police, Social Services, whatever they called it. With her sleep chopped up, diapers to import and dispose of secretly, the drain on her meager secretarial income from providing for infant needs, the smell, the mess, the fact that she never really knew what it wanted but could only hope she was giving it something that satisfied, her thoughts were dark and terrible some of the time. She considered sticking pins into it, or gumming its mouth shut with duct tape so even the small whimpering sounds it made couldn’t come out, especially when she was having trouble getting to sleep.

But time passed; the little thing integrated into her schedule. She never got around to making those calls.

* * * *

She named him Rubio, “blond” in Spanish, though he had very little hair at first, and what he had was dark. He would swallow formula with ease, but he liked the baby food with meat in it most. After she got over her first hesitation, she enjoyed keeping him warm and dry and powdered, snuggled up, well fed.

Of course, there wasn’t much she could do for him while she was at work, but she did poke some holes through the top of the dresser with an ice pick so he could get light and air even when she closed the drawer he was in, which she had to; couldn’t have anybody hearing him cry, knowing she had something she shouldn’t have in the apartment. The thousand dollars she had discovered in her husband’s sock drawer and used as getaway money was all gone. She couldn’t afford to move, and the building was for singles only. Fortunately, Rubio didn’t make a lot of noise.

Now when she curled up in a blanket on the couch, he snuggled against her, at first a tiny weight with warmth and movement, gradually growing. Her stomach didn’t feel so hollow anymore.

She’d had him almost a month when he changed again.

* * * *

The sun set at 4:30, and cold air was clawing at the windows. She had rolled towels along the windowsills to catch the condensation drips before they mildewed. After peering out the windows at the frozen night, she closed all the curtains, the way she did every night as soon as the sky darkened and there was a chance someone could see in.

She changed Rubio’s diapers and set him on a towel in the middle of the living room floor, near, but not too near, the space heater. She had given him a little ball with a bell inside it, and sometimes his kicking and arm-waving moved it and it jingled. Often she just sat and watched him, and she was sure from her observations that he enjoyed the sound of the bell. She also cut out colored shapes from construction paper, pierced them with strings, and dangled them above him; his eyes tracked, and his arms reached. He made little noises.

That day she had gone to a thrift store on her way home from work and found Rubio a Fisher-Price toy, a white plastic wheel, with picture buttons that when punched made the noises of barnyard animals. She wasn’t sure if it was age appropriate, but she thought he might like noises other than the television and her radio. Besides, she enjoyed finding things to share with him. She sat down beside his towel and held the toy up where he could see and hear it. She punched one of the buttons. A dog barked three times and a thread of music played.

“Uh uh!” said Rubio, waving his arms.

Smiling, Claire tried another button, and produced a horse’s whinny.

“Uh! Uh!” He was extremely agitated. She set the toy down, frowning, and watched him.

“Uh! Arrr!” He thrashed with more vigor than she had seen him display before. He rolled back and forth. He grunted and whined; then he howled, so loudly she had to wrap him up in the towel to smother the sound. She hugged him to her, pressing his face against her shirt, listening for any clamor from the walls, floor, or ceiling. All her neighbors were very quiet, too. If any of them had heard, she couldn’t tell.

Rubio squirmed in her arms, making high-pitched squeals like the cries of monkeys in jungle films. Maybe there was really something wrong with him; maybe he’d eaten something wrong or something had struck him. Maybe she would have to spirit him to an emergency room somehow. She held him away from her and stared into his face…

…and found a dark-haired, whiskered snout poking out at her with a little wet black nose on it.

She cried aloud and dropped the bundle.

For a moment the towel-shrouded form jerked about on the floor, and then a fat-bellied, fur-covered form tumbled out and danced about, growling and nipping at her, bouncing away, swarming closer, uttering small yips, finally coming up and licking her nerveless hand.

She wanted to scream. She wanted very much to scream. But some part of her brain said that would bring people, and she couldn’t have people coming into her apartment. She just couldn’t; not after living with her husband. She had promised herself she would never let anyone into her private space again.

And here was this—this animal, inside her apartment.

“Rubio, Rubio,” she whispered, feeling a dark despair. She knew that this puppy had eaten her child, though she wasn’t sure exactly how.

“Rrrff!” yipped the dog. It scrambled against her side, straining up toward her face, its small claws digging into the meat of her thighs.

She thrust it away from her and leaped to her feet, then ran to her bedroom and slammed the door in its face. She stood by the door, hugging her elbows, her shoulders hunched. She shivered, listening to its little scraping sounds as it dug at the door, snuffled along the crack, yipped and whuffed excitedly. She could hear its panting breaths. But it couldn’t get in. It was far too small to reach the doorknob. She turned the key in the lock.

After a few minutes it began to whine.

“Shh!” she hissed.

It lapsed into silence. A little more time passed, and then she heard its toenails clicking as it ran across the hardwood floor. A grunt or two. More silence. Some small whimpers that sounded like Rubio had. Then nothing.

If it made too much noise and someone came to investigate, she realized, they would take the dog away. Yes. That was it. They would take the dog away. It would be all right.

She wrapped herself up in a quilt and spent the night going in and out of thin, terror-racked sleep.

When dawn finally stained the curtains, she sat up and dismantled three wire hangers and twisted them into a triple strand for a weapon. She knew how a single strand felt over her back and figured three would be much worse. Then she unlocked the door and peered around its edge.

Rubio lay naked, sleeping on the bunched-up towel, his cheeks salt-stained from tears, his lips cracked. He’d messed himself, and he looked thin and somehow twisted.

Claire dropped the hangers and went to him, lifted him, and took him to the changing table she’d set up in the bathroom, where she cleaned him and diapered him and powdered him. He woke as soon as she touched him, but didn’t make any sounds, except, at last, an “uh uh” of contentment when she wrapped him up in a baby blanket and held him against her breast.

She called in sick and spent most of the day sleeping with him beside her on the bed.

In the evening she sat on her couch with Rubio snuggled in her lap and looked at one of the few of her husband’s diaries she had left. She had been reading them in small doses and then tearing them to pieces.

* * * *

She is a slut and a sloven. She wasn’t so when I married her; she used to be a paragon of cleanliness and organization; but certain remarks from me and actions on my part have gradually chipped away at her belief in herself until she sinks under the weight of my regard. I shall push her further down for a little longer before I experiment on altering her behavior back toward the societal norm.

She is so precious, so perfect in her suggestibility. It was the work of but a week to train her to drop into a trance state at a word from me, and from there a short step to my systematic erosion of her personality core. I am so glad I found her when I did. Her life could have been completely wasted if I hadn’t discovered her clerking in that stupid little shop and seduced her away from it.

I wonder what I should turn her into next. It might be amusing if she was afraid of some simple everyday thing. Salt, for instance; or water—no, that would interfere too much with the housework. Perhaps later, when I have more free time.

Dogs.

Perfect.

* * * *

Rubio was whining in her lap, squirming. She set down the diary, stared toward the door without seeing it. She had hated dogs all her life.

She blinked. A thought, hovering…she held her breath, trying to coax it closer by stillness.

A small golden cocker spaniel named Bootsy.

Pressing her face into the curly fur and snuffing up a noseful of Dog. How Mother scolded when Bootsy drank from the toilet. The warm wet feel of a slobbery tongue on her cheek, her nose. Knocking her forehead against Bootsy’s domed skull; luxuriating in the softness of the fur of Bootsy’s ears; delighting in the wag of the little stump tail.

Rubio yipped and thrashed. Claire blinked back into the present and looked down just in time to see hair sprouting all over her baby, his limbs and torso shifting and his face pushing and pinching into something else. Fear shot through her, paralyzing her.

Rubio howled, then pressed his snout against her stomach, mufffling his own noise. Claire watched in surprise as her hand lifted and stroked the creature in her lap. The diaper was hanging loose on him, and a tail thrust from the left leg hole. She slid the diaper off of him; and then, suddenly, she was holding him tight, scratching behind his little lop-ears and stroking his soft smooth back, turning her face away as he licked it, his milky breath musked by his doghood, its scent taking her back in memory.

She wondered how many things she had hated all her life that she didn’t hate. This was the worst of it, not knowing who she really was and which parts of her were manufactured.

She lay back on the couch with Rubio on her chest. “Say the magic word,” she whispered.

“Rrrff!” he barked, and licked at her tears.

He was so little. She could turn him into things because he didn’t even know who he was. Whatever she did, she was turning him into something. That was what people did to each other.

She felt suddenly tired.

After a while of Iying with Rubio’s warmth perched above her heart, she sat up, catching him in her cupped hands as he slid down her.

“Paper training,” she said. She set the puppy on the floor. She tore pages from her husband’s diary. She was going to set them on the floor and let Rubio use them as puppy diapers, but before she could, he ran up and gripped the corners between his teeth. Growling, he jerked at the pages. She laughed and pulled back.

Between them they tore the pages to shreds. Not ready to visit the dumpster again, Claire collected the paper scraps in a steel bowl and set fire to them under the stove’s fan. Rubio danced around her feet and barked softly as the flames rose, fed, flickered out, leaving the pleasant scent of burnt paper, but only for a moment.

Claire sat on the kitchen floor. Rubio came and jumped into her lap, and she stared at him, hard. “Well, one thing I know. You can change yourself, and it’s not even my fault.”

His eyes were so bright, looking up at her. She gathered him to her and rocked back and forth on the cold linoleum floor, thinking of dumpster diving. That was what her husband had been doing when he found her. Look how that turned out. He had switched her around so much inside she had had to make him stop.

Maybe Rubio would feel that way about her, later, when he was bigger and stronger. Or maybe not. She rocked and hoped not.

At least he could change.