“God!” I stumble back, falling right smack onto my tailbone. A gray face, mouth agape, stares back at me from the car. I sit on hot asphalt staring back at this stranger until the silence is comparable to what it must sound like on the moon. I realize the engine of the car isn’t running. The driver is slumped back in the seat like a sixteen-year-old who just got his license. I look away, his gnarled features haunting my brain, and twenty yards in front of us is a small two-seater airplane with a blue stripe down the middle, impacted into the concrete. No smoke rises from the engine. The windshield is cracked and coated a reddish-brown. The tail jack-knifed into the air, the plane all bent out of shape at rest in an L position. The door to the cockpit hangs loose on its hinges, drifting in the wind. Two deer cross the road here—as if this scene couldn’t get any more apocalyptic—casually approaching the fallen aircraft, grazing the weeds poking up from cracks in concrete.
Beyond the plane, cars are parked on the sidewalks, with one decidedly resting inside the barbershop where Mr. Dickens used to cut my hair as a child. The glass decorating the ground beneath the vehicle shines like diamonds in the sunlight.
I look back to the ghoulish figure in the car. It’s as though everyone in this town but me remembered to drop dead at two a.m. last night. I’m momentarily pissed at the prospect of having been left out of such an endeavor. Why no one included me, I cannot say.
Two miles from my destination, I’m forced to another stop.
Wayward and nonchalant, three pachyderms are crossing Market Street, and I sit here watching like this is the most casual happening in the history of the world. Just another Wednesday afternoon in small town America.
Hang on, Valerie. I’ll be right there. But the elephants have the right of way.
Valerie’s car is in the driveway. I park out front, in the street, and leave the car running. A quick getaway. I plan to be no victim of the Zombie Apocalypse.
I skip the front door and try the side garage door. Valerie’s mother, Ms. Anderson, Vivian—Viv—keeps a key inside a stupid, plastic turtle next to the door. I’m no thief, but Christ, if I was, the first thing I would look for is a stupid, plastic turtle next to the side garage door.
It’s dark and damp and cluttered. I wouldn’t call Viv a pack rat, but one could say a garage sale or a fire is well overdue. Most of the crap in here belongs to her husband. Ex-husband. I’m not entirely certain if they actually divorced when he left.
For a thousand extra moments I simply listen—for what, I do not know—wasting time, letting my eyes adjust to the dark so I can make my way around Viv’s car. I don’t know how many of you have ever been involved in a situation as unique as mine, but I can’t quite shake the feeling of being watched, followed, and stalked, even as I grow more confident fewer and fewer people are alive. I kick an uncapped metal trashcan full of golf clubs, baseball bats, Frisbees, and footballs. Valerie’s younger brother, Victor, is quite the athlete. Valerie and I spent countless hours in gymnasiums and grandstands surrounded by cheering fans while we felt each other up, slipping in hand jobs and blowjobs. I linger here on these memories. I find the cold grip of a wooden Louisville slugger in my even colder hands. I sling the bat over my shoulder like I’m next up to the plate, and open the door that leads into the kitchen.
I should have rehearsed something to say. “Hi. Hello? It’s me. The man you despise, yet left a mysterious message for last night. I’m just following up by sneaking in through the backdoor with an erection and a baseball bat.”
The lights in the kitchen are off, but the sun seems a few inches closer today than normal. I’m able to see perfectly well while I wait to disintegrate along with the rest of this town.
“Hello?” I whisper, carefully choosing the tiles I’ll step on. I’ve snuck out of this house enough times at 3 a.m. to know the sour spots on the floor. You don’t stand a chance in hell on making it through here undetected with a pair of shoes strapped to your feet.
From the kitchen I find myself in a living room entirely unlived in. This room was solely dedicated to the prospect of having company over, and it was Valerie’s favorite place to fool around. She would kiss me here with a passion undetected in any other location. Something about how forbidden this place was—the fact that Viv had every speck of dust, every fiber in the carpets accounted for—made Valerie want to tear the place apart with our desire for each other.
I leave the un-living room, a room I never felt so alive in, and check the bathrooms, the office, the back porch. Everything is immaculate, set strategically for show. It was never a wonder to me why Valerie left the day she turned eighteen, so imagine my surprise when Ma told me she’d moved back. This house was so full of rules and regulations that there was never any place for the children.
Arriving at Valerie’s bedroom door, I find it closed and almost knock to be polite, but polite is probably the first thing to go during the end of the world. I turn the knob, pushing the door open with the tip of the bat. I stand at the threshold until the door is fully open—until I can see every corner of her room.
Valerie is in bed, covers off. She’s wearing only her underwear, with a t-shirt I’m relatively certain belonged to me in high school. I look away—my gut reaction—as though I’ve just walked in on her changing. Her closet is open, clothes spilling out as if she’d stuffed everything she owned inside, and then later, opened it like she’d forgotten where she put it all. I let the grip on the bat slip through my fingers until the head touches the floor. I use it to hold myself steady. I take a few steps into her room. I am underwater and sinking fast, a ship forever lost to the sea. There’s no hope for me now.
My lips dry, cracking. I run my tongue along them, tasting blood.
Valerie looks at peace. Hopefully whatever happened to her happened naturally and without pain. Overwhelmed with an onslaught of grief and fatigue, I crouch at the foot of the bed, tucking the bat beneath my chin, a slight sway in my stoop.
Noticing the phone gripped in Valerie’s hand, I stand, approaching her for the first time in what could be hours since I’ve entered this room. I’ve lost all sense of time the way you often do in dreams. I do not touch for I do not wish to disturb. I’m almost fearful that if I did touch her, she would snap back to life, startling me so, and I might just die next.
On the opposite side of the bed: a discarded photograph. Leaning over this body once so full of life, this body I’ve been inside of, I snatch it up. Photographic evidence of the life Valerie once shared with me. She’s glaring in my direction, one eyebrow cocked, and my fingers are pistols, locked and loaded. The look on my face clearly says I swear to God I’d shoot her if I only had a gun.
And Valerie, she’s saying something like, “Go ahead. Make my day.”
I grip the bat, return the photo. I stand. I swing. The lamp on the nightstand explodes. The alarm clock is next to go. It lets out a shrill cry for help before I pulverize the thing into a million little pieces. I take out the bedposts, then go swinging for the mirror above the dresser, daring the Universe to grant me seven years of bad luck. A crack and explosion of what could be a hundred shattering light bulbs comes raining down around us. I swipe at every trinket, every piece of memorabilia, every framed photograph along every surface, sending them all into oblivion. When there’s nothing left to attack, I go for the walls until plaster splatters my face and swirls in the air around us, until I’m breathing in dust and paint and can’t feel my arms; until I can’t see through the tears and the spit. I drop the bat. I don’t even pause to catch my breath. I don’t even bother to say goodbye.
I find the same, sad story in Viv’s room, and in Victor’s. I leave them undisturbed, the need for going ballistic having subsided.
I try the phones. All the landlines in the house: dead.
I trudge back down the stairs and prepare for the arduous journey of returning home.
But home to what?
I skip the garage, open the front door, and there, a wolf on the porch, lips curled. All three hundred razor sharp teeth appearing to be accounted for, but I’m in no mood to be eviscerated this afternoon.
“Is there nothing else in this town to eat today?” There’s a smorgasbord of gazelles and birds around here this afternoon, but somehow I am the easiest target? I’m talking to her like I’m hoping she’s learned the art of negotiation since we’ve last met. My hand is still on the knob, and I am still inside the house. All I have to do is shut the door and this whole debacle will be over with. The house has yet to become fetid from its dead occupants. I am sure there’s plenty of food to eat. I can outlast this son-of-a—
The wolf makes her move. I’m not fast enough. This directly affects my ability to close the door hard enough to cut the bitch in half, but it certainly slows her down. She lets out a whimper and a sneeze so human I almost say, “God Bless You.”
The stairs are directly behind the front door, so I go scrambling up them instead of running into the kitchen where all the knives are. The beast is on top of me before I make it three feet, her teeth slipping into my shoulder. I scream, I cry, and instinctively roll over, slamming the overgrown mutt into the wall. Twenty teeth slipping through my flesh with the ease and precision of surgical scalpels. I flip back onto my butt. I kick and I thrash and my boot lands right on her snout, but she’s too quick, taking a mouthful of my pant leg. I shake and twist, making my way backwards like a crab, but her jaw is a goddamn bear trap. I will not win this unfortunate game of Tug of War.
I bang the edge of my free foot against the stairs until my boot falls off and goes tumbling down. I’m hoping this werewolf will go tumbling after in a game of fetch, but her yellow eyes haven’t yet left mine. The undomesticated hound just tugs and tugs, harder and harder, my jeans ripping, her snarling growing louder. I can feel drool on the skin of my ankle, and for some reason I am most disgusted by this. I am about to have a heart attack. I can’t make it up the stairs. She’s too strong.
I unbuckle my belt, undo my pants. I slip the belt from its loops, and down my pants go, to my ankles and beyond. The wolf stumbles back, mid-tug. I scramble up, my socks making the climb increasingly difficult. I watch as the wolf tears my jeans to shreds in a matter of seconds before she realizes I’m no longer in them.
By the time I get to the top of the stairs, I can already hear this relentless machine slinking up behind me. I take two seconds too long assessing my next move, knowing there is no way out of the house or back to the first floor from here. There are no balconies or roofs outside these windows. I look back just in time to see my new friend arrive, all wild-eyed and smiling. The belt still in my hands, I use it like a whip, screaming like an Indian running into battle, the buckle smacking her right across the eye. She snarls and snaps and bites, jaws closing around the leather before I can retract it. I let go and return to Valerie’s room because it’s closest. The bat is right where I left it. I drop to retrieve it, and kick the door shut. For the second time today, a wolf hurls its body into a door I happen to be on the more fortunate side of. The brass knob rattles, her claws scraping wood. A snout appears at the bottom of the door, but the opening is barely big enough for a beetle to crawl through. I stand with the bat in hand and swing like I’m hitting grounders. The wolf whimpers off like a good dog should, and the silence I have grown so accustomed to returns.
I stand staring at the door for God knows how long. Ten minutes? Ten hours? Who can tell the difference anymore? The moment my heart crashes and the adrenaline leaves my bloodstream, I drop the bat, crumbling into a useless, bloodied mess. For whatever reason, I’m convinced I’m in twice as much pain, and this situation is ten times as bad as it could be now that I am sans-pants. I can’t help but feel I won’t have full control of this situation until my penis has been safely returned to another pair of jeans.
There is a mirror on the back of Valerie’s door. My reflection is a pathetic excuse for a human being. There’s more blood than I have ever seen in my life. I can’t tell if it’s fear or the critical loss of red stuff making my face go white.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Stand up. Find something to cover the wound, apply pressure.
Without turning around and having to see Valerie lying there, I maneuver myself over to her closet, picking up the first shirt I see. I press it to my right shoulder, biting my tongue until it bleeds—as if I need one more part of my body to be spewing out this precious commodity—to keep myself from screaming.
Do wolves mark their territory? If they’ve wounded their prey, will they do whatever it takes to bring it down? I try to recall any books I’ve read or movies I’ve seen about wolves. All I can think about is Jurassic Park. I’ve never regretted this badly missing a movie starring Liam Neeson. I don’t doubt wolves smell blood. Which means if I don’t come up with a plan soon, I’ll have more than one of these bastards to deal with. I consider waiting them out, but I’ll surely bleed to death. My shoulder throbs and pulsates with the force of a migraine headache during a hurricane.
I remove Valerie’s now blood-soaked shirt from my back, and grab a sundress from the floor. I wind it as tight as possible over my shoulder and under my armpit again and again before tying it off. I retrieve the bat from the floor, and take one last look in the mirror. This is not how I want to remember myself. I’d almost feel proud, heroic even, if only I were wearing pants and not semi-drunk.
I can’t help but see Valerie behind me, already escaped from this dilemma. What would she do in this situation? Her stare was enough to stop the hearts of most men. I’m sure it would’ve worked on wolves too. In another life we could have got this right.
I think of the condom sitting in my medicine cabinet.
“I’m sorry, Valerie.”
I take a few deep breaths and crack open the door, bracing myself against it in case the Wolfman has been patiently waiting for this moment. When no furry menace tries to squeeze its way in, I open the door a bit more. Valerie’s door doesn’t make a sound. I step back, push the door open, the bat raised and ready to swing.