Thirsty - M. T. Anderson [48]
Now I am sure. Chet is not coming. Tch’muchgar is coming. He is feeling his way into this world, preparing himself for the leap.
There is not much time left.
Darkness.
Down the street I walk. The streetlights are buzzing.
It is a hot night. People are cooped up in their houses. They are asleep, and I wonder if, even in sleep, they can tell they’re cooped up, like zoo animals roused when they roll over against the bars.
I have to talk. I have to.
Rebecca Schwartz. Three o’clock is probably too late to drop by and shoot the breeze. But it is a warm night, and the thick leaves are restive and suggest to me that all the night is alive and I should be reveling in it.
If Rebecca were a vampire, if she were damned, we could be together. This is not a serious thought, but I think it anyway, how it would be for us to be together. We live in a high dark house in the woods; our walls hung with incomprehensible pieces of modern art by the friends we have and must leave when they notice that age does not wither us. At night, we stalk the grounds and lie together by the ebony fountain clogged with amber leaves. Sometimes we cry whole ages of darkness together because of our common sin, but there is no one else to whom we can turn, and so we understand each other completely. We know each strange motion that the other makes and what it means. As the eons pass, we come to be very genteel, and I am more suited to her and not so awkward all the time, and after a few centuries my athlete’s foot clears up.
That all seems to make so much sense that I want to go speak to her now, and it takes me a moment to remember that I hardly even know her. That she would stare at me, aghast; that if she knew, she’d hate me and run inside and lock the door. That she is not my chilly queen of the night. That she wears jeans and loses her hair clips.
Tom I think about only briefly. I can’t trust him.
So I head to Jerk’s. Jerk may be Jerk, but he is the one person who is always loyal. He will always be loyal to me. I need to tell him and have him say that there’s something we can do.
After a while, I reach his house. The lights are all off. There are bleached sand toys scattered around the front lawn. There’s a wading pool with the hose dangling in it. I start to cross the lawn.
There’s a low growl.
I look around, breathing the air in deeply. I see shrubs and a tree and the aluminum siding. Jerk’s room is on the ground floor, but the window is around the back. The snarl comes again.
A dog is slinking toward me, growling like a crazy jackal.
“Bongo,” I hiss. “Bongo.”
He stops and shivers.
I look into his eyes.
I am so thirsty and so tired of all this. I’m tired of all this sneaking around and endless complaining. I want the damn dog to get out of the way.
Carefully, I step toward it with my hands stretched out.
I find it cannot move. “Bongo,” I repeat, quietly but coldly, almost like a warning. “Bongo. Bongo.”
I take another step forward.
My hand shoots out and fastens on its head.
My thumb and pinkie slip down either side of its neck. I can feel the dog’s pulse. I can feel the warmth of its blood. Its eyes are going wacko, shooting around looking for an escape. But its body can’t move. My eyes are fixed on it. I know that if, for one second, I stop staring at it, it will start barking.
My saliva is running fast and thick. I can barely keep it in my mouth. I can feel this dog like a drink. Carefully, I rotate the head up. It tries to stop me, but my strength, I find, is great. I rotate the snout up by eighty degrees, until the dog is looking almost straight up. It is gulping with fear. I can see its throat flexing. I move my other hand, almost lovingly, to the soft down below its neck.
Pushing the head up a few more degrees, I encounter the resistance of bone. The head will twist only a few more degrees before things start to pop and snap.
I lower my head, drooling.
Good-bye, Bongo, I think sardonically.
My heart beats faster.
I nuzzle the soft fur with my lips. Open my jaws.
I am ready to kill him.
But then