Читать книгу Invisible Men - Eric Freeze - Страница 7

It is inconvenient being a wolf. Imagine this: spring, sitting in a desk when the stamens and petals of daffodils or day lilies or lilacs bloom, and the heady scent of pollen comes to you so strongly that your nose is full of it. You feel like you’ve shoved spray foam up your nostrils and your head is expanding like a pollen balloon. You can smell the pistils and the thin stalks of grasses and the small clovers like they were part of a spring cornucopia lining your desk. It’s stronger than you know how to say, because all the comparisons are human, and yet your wolf olfactory senses haven’t gone, nor have the field lice or the burrs that ended up in your hair. And, there’s this: you’re hungry.

“You haven’t answered me, Jason.”

You lift your head and drool connects you to your desk in thin strands like milk whites from a cracked egg, and Beth Geary and Gina Mars both say “ew” with their syrupy whines so loudly that Mr. Midge shushes them and you’re forced to respond.

“I wasn’t really listening.”

Mr. Midge sighs and he looks for a second like he’s going to cry. I don’t know why I intuit this because I am a wolf and human beings should be afraid, very afraid, but maybe it is my empathetic pack sense, my ability to know what others are thinking or feeling before they even know it themselves. And so it’s no surprise when he does cry, right then, and you can hear the students’ clothes rustling as they squirm and try to avoid eye contact. He sits down behind his desk and the ergonomic chair makes a shushing sound when it accommodates his weight. “Pointless,” we can hear him saying, and then he is logging onto his computer and sniffling. Nobody in class knows what to do. They are titmouse-silent, probably thinking what is wrong? But not me; I’m awake and hungry. This beast is alive.

Outside, I want meat. Any meat. Something to stop the throbbing in my temples, to soak up my saliva. I think: venison, rabbit, squirrel, possum. Then the domestics: cat, dog, ferret, guinea pig, rat. Each has its own distinct flavor but I am not picky and the flesh of my schoolmates starts to look more and more appetizing. A friendship-braceleted arm of a first grader, smooth calves dangling from monkey bars like slabs of meat in a slaughterhouse. Once I look, I can’t stop. It’s Cardigan Whitmore I finally settle on: a ginger-haired gymnast who can put her feet behind her head. She is on the grass, bending her arms backward to touch her feet and she exposes her belly. For a moment, my wolf senses sharpen and filter out the pollen and fetid spring swamp smell and I zero in on little Cardigan—dumpy name for one so fit—and my body uncoils with panther-like agility toward my prey. My mouth is open, wet, and with a frenzied chomp, I attack her side and she falls to the ground screaming.

“Get off of me you creep!” She is yelling—prey often resists—and I bury my face deeper into her and shake my jaws from side to side. Soon the flesh will rip and she will bleed. If she takes flight, she will be slower, more apt to stumble, and I will be upon her again. She knows this. She knows that if she lets me in for one more moment, her life will end and this induces an adrenaline panic. She needs out now