T.W.: Gore/body horror(mild); toxic relationship/s.

vi. Animal instinct

*

Most wolves can shift without full moon out of necessity: it isn't instant and you can't predict what a wild animal would do, so no-one does it often or with a threat present (collapsing on the ground for an hour wouldn't help faced with a gun, anyway). But. I'm confined to full moon nights because I go through it all. Or more, at least.
It's a medical condition, but a rare one - don't know what it's called, if it's called or I'm an anomaly.

Stage one is usually soothing, the way self-cannibalism is - bite your nails religiously cause they taste like soap without the acid; those times you'd pull teeth as a kid, press, circle the wound it left - it hurt so you poked at it more. A masochistic itch to scratch, and for most that's the extent of it. It was more the aftermath: waking up with gashes in your memory and violent visions that seem like you, but you can't quite recognize yourself in it.

Then stage two, pain that pins and needles your legs, stabbing up your soles, shins, calves; up and up and up. There's a reason brains supresses bodily functions, but there's a momentary disconnect while shifting: so your guts squirm like they're trying to escape you; blood pulsating becomes the only thought. And amongst it, feel yourself slipping, less and less coherent and it's fuckin terrifying. As though dying, the panic of not waking up closing up your throat.

So -- I'm glad it's not hereditary, and everyone were surprised (to an extent, yes, even Donald); glad I'm the mystery case and Mikes doesn't go through an existential crisis each month.

It's these thoughts I mull over when Mikey says he's sick.
He's always had shit immune system as a kid, sick and sick and sick. Sometimes just sick enough to decide that the trade off's worth it; the animal left to stumble around in the weirdest confusion, cause the house was familiar when it shouldn't have been. Donna would leave, too; cause a scared wolf pup could attack her and I know my way around animals (or if I don't, how do I expect to be an Alpha without learning to? or if I don't want to, then who asked?).

"I'm fine," Mikey croaks all the way from his bed, buried in moth-eaten blankets, tassels brushing up his cheek. "Feeling like shit, sure, but fine." He doesn't look fine, between his skin pale and eyes tired, but -- Ok.

"I'm just saying, it's been two days of this and after shifting you heal faster so--" not to mention how you don't have to be present to your suffering. It's a 'skip forward' button, blur your reality.

"Yeah, it also costs too much once a month already, between the meat and the gas and shit." He says and I cringe. How he adopts my speech patterns and worries and-- fuck. No-one should hold me to such a pedestal, but especially not Mikes.

"Yeah? And it's fine, I got it." It's why I have a job at the fuckin' bookstore, shut up and be sixteen for twenty minutes. "We still have some left over in the freezer. If it's bad, then you should," I insist. Mikey tries for a sneer and ends up mid-coughing fit. I nudge a wad of tissues his way and he accepts it with a nod.

"What about mom?"

"I'll call her. Now. I'll go call her now," I repeat, close his door and head to the kitchen.

Check the freezer, just in case. A few slacks of the hanger cut I leave out to thaw. Donna would never touch it, we were roommates with a shared last name at best. Maybe not with Mikes; when it's not Donna, but Mom. I used to chuck his love up to naivetè, then the stages of grief, but now it's just a secondary, background feeling.

Me and Mikey lived like hippies, like witches with elderberry tincture lining the shelves, because the forest stretched to our stomachs. Every single full moon and every blue one encircled in our calendars; fish and meat and dairy pre-stocked on our side of the fridge.

Then there was Donna, coming back with Chinese takeout boxes and chocolate mousse (she sometimes ate in her room, but mostly in the kitchen or dining where the smell sets in the walls). She never liked existing near a kitchen, not when food could be wrapped in aluminum foil at the nearest food truck; blamed Grandma and the Great Depression, when they used margarine on thin slices of bread in place of butter and cooked with fish heads still intact, made salads of dandelions and chickweed. They were both arguing food: Elena would say 'she's far too Americanized now, buying bags of penne'. I would nod and listen; dough rolled and shaped with my fingerprints in her kitchen.

But God, is becoming Americanized so fucking easy... I haven't been in a kitchen for longer than it takes to microwave a Pop-Tart since her funeral.

-

It doesn't take that long for her to pick up, thankfully (or depends on how you look at it).

"Hey, mom?" Always mom when you want to appeal to her; not that it works anymore, but I want her to know I'm willing to weaponize it just as much as she is. "Mikey's sick."

"Yes, you told me yesterday. Go to a pharmacy? I'm busy, I work all day, you're a teenager."

"That's not - he's really sick, shifting sick, just thought I'll give you a heads up."

"Oh." she takes a shaky breath, "Well, what am I supposed to do? Sleep on the street? Is that what this phone call is about - 'Hey, mommy dearest, we're kicking you out of the house? ' That's the thanks I get?"

Yes. Isn't Mikey your son? And haven't you promised your friend to dog sit, anyway? Which, ironic by the way. "No, mom, I just - Dunno, thought I'll warn you, y'know? You can come back if--"

"How am I supposed to, with a wild animal in my living room? What if it bites me? Oh God, Gerard, you better keep it out of the living room, it'll ruin the couch!" There's real, tangible worry in her voice. Jesus.

"The--" fuck, I'm never ready for these conversations, "The couch is gonna be fine. So - are you not coming back?"

"Oh no, of course not! And you better see it'd be fine, and call me when it's over."

"Okay, thanks mom. Love you," she hangs up halfway through my sentence, but I still finish. Habit.

When I enter back into Mikey's room, I'm still too livid to do it quietly.
"God, I hate her. Her priorities stretch as far as her fucking dinner parties," one of these days I'll piss in her bottle of Merlot.

I remember how she used to drag me and Mikes to a church bake sale when we were kids. Donald would argue we're not Catholic, Christian even, so shouldn't be exposed to that, but couldn't even raise his voice; she'd yell back she is: wears a cross, goes to mass. And it's the 21st century, witch trials are long gone (though it always left me wondering how many wolves were gods or god-sent, how many more failed to impress, burned at a stake), so we'll be fine. In retrospect she only ever wanted to be loved (we were too close for that), and a bake sale was a way to get there. Now it's this.

Sometimes I resent Donald for leaving, not for its own sake, but because of how it reflected all criticism off her. People adore a good tragedy, it's gotten her so much love to be abandoned. And it was so much more valuable to her like that, anyway.

Try to explain to any ol' passerby how your mother's insane; if they don't find bruises on you, then you're an ungrateful brat: 'She's a single mom, cut her some slack, kiddo. It's hard to raise the two of you. In this economy? I'm sure she's just stressed.'

Mikey coughs, "So... Shifting's a no-go?" He's hesitant about it, it's been a while.

"No, uh, it's a yes-go, actually. I just hate her, as a fact."

Mikey meets my eyes with a half-smile: "Well, look at it this way, you'll be free of her in a few months, right?"

"Gee thanks, makes me feel a whole lot better to leave you here." Alone.

"No, you're Gee, I'm Mikey. God, I'm even smarter than you with my brain fuzzy!" he chuckles, drops it for a second when I don't immediately retaliate. "And I'm gonna be fi-ine, better, even, knowing you're out of here."

"Okay. Just so you know, I'm gonna be in The City, not all the way cross the country. A phone call away at most."

Mikey rolls his eyes, "Yeah, yeah - to save the day, whatever. Like I wanna live in a shoebox." He scrunches his nose and presses his fingers into his eye sockets. Copied that from me, too - the pressure helps you feel more alert when low on sleep.
Neither one of us voices the truth - that living in a shoebox is preferable to being here. Not even a New York apartment shoebox, just the actual one.

"Okay. I'm gonna get back with your tea in 5 minutes, by the way, so no shifting."

Mikey pulls a face: "Dude, I'm so sick of fuckin' tea! I'm literally shifting to avoid another piece of gunky ass grass in my teeth."

"Well yea, but fuck you cause I already set the water to boil, and sick people need a lot of liquid. Then you can shift."

"Or I could do it now and avoid it?" he blinks back at me all doe-puppy eyed, though it hasn't worked on me since I was 9.

I blink right back "Or, you drink your tea and don't suddenly jolt awake in a dog kennel?"

"You fuckin wish, but you're not cruel, all your threats are baseless."

"I'm Donna's son," I say.

Mikey chuckles, high. "...okay, fine, bring in your tea. Not cause that sentence was horrifying or anything, I just changed my mind very quickly for a completely different reason."

"Sure," smile at him, close the door on my way out and head back to the kitchen, check the kettle - we got it upon Elena's insistence, she never liked microwaves, something radiation, something tradition. It took forever to boil, and was too heavy to handle after full moons, but I liked how it brought me back to her kitchen. It was so warm there, something always on the stovetop, in the oven. I liked her kitchen better, we should've sold this house, instead.

Had I any say in shit like that we'd live in Elena's home, or separate, an apartment closer to the center, always found those little apartments above shops charming. I'd get custody of Mikes cause it's some bullshit how everything's Donna's responsibility except if a wolf kills a man. She was always a mother only when it suited her and it rarely did. Does.

-

Mikey says he'll be fine in the spare room - it locks, and I shouldn't herd the animal through the house. I lay a blanket the furthest from the door so the wolf wouldn't feel as cornered, clear off the trinkets I can see.
He sits on the ground huddled in a blanket like a still from an art house horror, half of his back drenched in shadow, the light angling the rest. I've always felt we were ripped from one of those movies during full moons; maybe just me, he'd always wait to shift after.

He scratches the back of the neck with his thumb and the skin there cracks under like an eggshell. Scratches like the itching is burning in his bone marrow (it is). Scratches till it stings, but when it's this bad you'd rather peel off your skin then let it itch. It looks raw under the fingertips - agony both in the salt on his skin and the exposed flesh contact with the air. Still itches. Back cracks, each vertebrae popping from him like premature birth, white and ghastly, he wobbles to stand, legs bending; then falls limp onto the carpet and I barely hold him up, lay him down, shift to the blanket. His skin breaks slowly, like amateur stitching under pressure; sinew stretched to the thinness of a yarn string, then a thread, a hair.

God, I can't fucking be here - the air is too metal and my jaw locks on instinct. Like I can feel it. My throat swells and I blindly reach back for the door handle. I'm not - not abandoning him, I'll just get him a bowl of water, the meat, a blanket after. Another, another blanket. A breath, open a window. It's still in my throat, but less. Brush my teeth. Times like these I could go against the grain and be vegetarian, vegan, at least in my waking moments; but it dissipates quicker when I look at how Frank has to fight it each time ("Not even the taste of it, it always smells better. Just this wiring we have, to crave it").

The wolf is still half-formed, I pour the leftover water from the kettle to a sauce pan while I wait, peel an orange and throw in a cinnamon stick, a clove, back on a low fire. Elena once said it helps with bad odors, but I don't think she ever meant it quite like this - usually something we'd burn to charcoal - cause now it just smells like iron with a hint of orange and cinnamon. Somehow in my memory it was never as bad, never took as long. Maybe cause Donna used to be such a constant her absence outweighed any drawbacks. She's barely here these days.

It'll take a while, the transformation. Would watch horror movies and it'd be what, 10 minutes to shift? 15 maybe. Got jealous of how fast it was, how the uncanny bipedal creature would retain enough humanity within itself to attack the protagonists. In murderous rage maybe, but it was relentless - more human than anything we've had as animals. My first full moons I used to think I'd go on a rampage as seen on TV (like you couldn't kick me off?): there'd be a police car by our house or a new missing poster plastered all over Jersey when I come to, there'd be blood on my hands from someone who didn't have two-to-five stomachs to digest grass.

It never happened, but still, I'd mirror other's expectations of me.

Used to have zero to none self-preservation instincts as a kid; fall to the ground right where I stood without hands outstretched - and skin my chin and my knees, parts of my forehead and the bridge of my nose; walked around with everlasting scabs like a wild child, so people thought I was rowdy, loud. They'd get so surprised when I turned out to be mild; always got praised for being mild.
Never felt mild - I'd stare myself bend over the sink, pry my eyes open to get it out of me, the softness.

Only now I like to think myself so vicious I come across as benign.

-

All throughout the night I wake up like I'm stuttering out of anesthesia – roll off the living room couch with a Melatonin aftertaste and creep towards the door, only to see if it's--he's still there; like he'll evaporate otherwise. Slink back to the couch and dumb myself down with informecials set on 'mute'. Back to sleep, and cycle.

I'm not abandoning him, he has food and water; he's my baby brother and I love him. But seeing him in pain is -- it's a lump in my throat that eventually takes hold of my entire body. I can't be there for him.
But I know a person who might — we trade in favors.

-

The next morning I make tea and wait for my voice to go back to normal, practice softness. Fluid, round movements; without corners, without edges, which, my body does me no favours there. Last I was 14 and my voice hadn't dropped and-- it's-- fine. Fine. The animal knows me, by smell and-- it's fine.

And okay, he's not eaten the meat either, dragged it out of the bowl and it pools and trickles to the rug, watery and soppy, cream edges turning rust.
Carefully step around it and near it-him; the animal. It's Mikey still, in the smallest ways, distilled to his animal instinct.

"He-ey, buddy..?" its' coat matted and I take care to comb it out with my fingers, crouch down, wait. 5 minutes; nothing. And I have to go to school, but I can't fuckin-- Can I really leave him here; if it's this bad?

I leave the room and take the meat, the bowl with me. When I come back to dump a wad of paper towels the wolf's still sleeping. Fuck. Okay.

Not entirely comfortable missing a day again. Some classes are fine, not others. Like Physics, I don't know anyone there well enough to borrow notes and we're probably doing revisions today and fuck--- am I gonna fail the exam? Do art schools look at physics? What if I slip in a little post-it with my application that says, 'Not becoming a sculptor; it's not gonna topple over like a spinning top and kill a man'?

_

When Bert shows up he's strangely alien to himself - hair wispy clean and tied together, a hoodie with strings pulled out of it. His clothes scentless and everything about him. That's good, at least he knows (but no, of course he does). Cause wolves are timid and reactive

"Hello, you ordered a saviour messiah to your rescue?" he swoops his backpack from one shoulder onto the next.

"Yeah, I'll owe you one," I say (even if he's mostly absent), and now that it's spoken it's true, cause Bert McCracken operates by fae rules, unlike normal people. I can only hope it's not something too difficult to handle.

"Don't worry bout it, just curious as to why."

"Oh, uh, you know-- School. And well, thought maybe he'll be more comfortable with someone who can become an animal so..." I trail off, not sure if Bert got that, not sure if I want him to. He blinks.

"And you what, can't? C'mon, Ger, I already agreed to-"

"Yeah, can't." Cut him off. It feels oddly self-conscious coming from a guy who's spend most of his life not being one, but here I am anyway.

"Oh," as he unties his shoelaces, "Like, at all?"

"Well, I could, technically, probably. But yeah, my muscles lock and only full moon can force it. Something high pain tolerance, so I don't faint quick enough."

Fuck, man, that sucks," Bert huffs, cause there's nothing else to say; silence is louder anyways.

"No, really?" I don't want to linger here and I don't want your pity or sympathy-- return the favor like I did at the bleachers; or something.

Bert clears his throat, "Where's Mikey? Or, y'know, wolf Mikey. The wolf?"

The wolf, yeah," at least it's easier for me. "He's in the spare room over there..? The only one that locks and-- wait, FUCK."

Bert stops like a gazelle mid-traffic.
"What, the lock's rusty or something?" 
Somehow he looks just as relaxed as he does tense.

"No, it's-- no, I just was so preoccupied with getting you here that I forgot  you're staying, y'know? I'm a terrible host, fuck you gonna do all day?"

"Pfft, what would you have, fucking hauled the TV into the same room? I'll be fine," he taps his backpack, "I have weed so as long as your pantry's decent; I brought a book, too."

"Yeah, no, help yourself. And you can have my Gameboy?"

Bert chuckles, "I can have your Gameboy."

*

A.N.
This chapter is more G-centered, next one's more Gerbert, promise 🙃
~3k