Rational Thought

R. Boon

December 6, 2013

Rational Thought

            He loved running, hard, chest heaving, great plumes of lung-steam swirling past him like tormented fog.  Night skies, December nights, the bright moon diffused behind water-color clouds, just on the edge of storm, an icy rain, snow.  Like a scene in that Bergman film.  Seventh Seal, wasn’t it?  And he loved the bare trees, their limbs ever-finer, not skeletons, but this reaching out in subtle patterns, strategies to manipulate solar energy.  An alien intelligence almost.  The only ones smart enough to deal with climate change.

            He stopped at the creek, tapped at the damp sand, where the creek struggled to flow.  A bad summer, disguised by a little rain last month.  He leapt across, from one rock to another.  That same old song came back, stuck in his head.  I was tired of my lady, we'd been together too long, / Like a worn-out recording… He tried to growl the song out of his head.  And in the personals column, there was this letter I read / "If you like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain…if you have half-a-brain”… He picked up speed, running across the open field, trying to only hear his own hard breath.  …making love at midnight, in the dunes of the cape / I'm the love that you've…

            Surprised, he hit the ground, rolled twice before stopping on his left side.  He twisted slightly, and whimpered once at the pain.  Damn, they shot me!  He controlled his breathing, flexed his ribs.  Not broken, but a damn big slug.  Bet it’s a 30-ought-6 in there.  He snarled, and his front paw scratched at the ground.  A hard pulse of anger rose up in his gut.  He winced, and snarled again.

            Ok.  Ok.  Suppress that first urge to just go total full-berserk and rip out every throat I can find.  Remember The Incident last July at that church fireworks thing.  Don’t need ministers to start quoting Lon Chaney movies from the pulpit again.  He twisted around and licked at the wound.  Maybe these guys with the rifle are just scared.  He sniffed the breeze.  Lot of adrenaline, sweat.  Lot of cheap whiskey, too.  Four humans.  He focused on the bullet inside, felt it start to move.  Or maybe it’s that human dominance thing.  ‘See something, shoot it.’  Assholes.  Are they ever going to read Genesis the right way? Why don’t they just go blow away their boss at Taco Bell? “Fight the man, don’t shoot the wolf”—that would make a good bumper sticker.

            He squeezed his gut once more, and the bullet oozed out, fell on the bloody grass.  Yep, 30-ought-6.  Fuckers.  He staggered to his feet.  I got to eat.  That healing took a lot out of me.  He sniffed the breeze again.  Aw, yeah.  A bull, right over that ridge.  He trotted over, spotted the bull, and took it down in three seconds.  He ripped into the throat and shredded the chest open, going for the blood-hot heart.  Ok, don’t overdo it.  I need some energy, but I don’t want to be at my laptop tomorrow morning still seeing hunks of organ meat stretching my belly.  He bit into the heart.  Yeah, but remember that bull over in Calloway County a couple years ago.  Bet he weighed in a ton and a half.  Huge fucker.  Could have made five human meals just on his balls.  Ripped him open and lost it.  Blood-wild.  Tore him to shreds, rolled in that sweet blood for an hour.  He let out a satisfied growl and pulled loose a tendon in the bull’s throat.

            But what a pain, walking back to my apartment in human form, into those streetlights, just covered in blood.  How does it go in Hamlet? “Head to foot

Now is he total gules, horridly tricked

With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,

Baked and impasted with the parching streets,

That lend a tyrannous and damnèd light

To their lord’s murder. Roasted in wrath and fire,

And thus o'ersizèd with coagulate gore,

With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus

Old grandsire Priam seeks.” 

Love that shit.  He ripped the heart totally free from the bull’s carcass.  ‘Eyes like carbuncles’—can’t beat a line like that.  And there I was, blood boy, in the neighborhood, almost home.  That old guy shrieked and pissed himself.  But those two college girls—they wanted to chat me up.  Guess they could see what they wanted.  Might have gone somewhere if their damn poodle hadn’t flipped out.  What self-respecting dog wears a pink ribbon?  He rubbed his muzzle across a leaking artery, breathed the blood, felt the urge grumbling in his throat, felt a half-erection further down.  Ok, ok, don’t lose it, don’t go full out bloodlust.  Get that damn song back—getting caught in the rain…blah, blah, into health food, something… into champagne…meet you by tomorrow noon…something, hmm, hmm, bar called O'Malley's where… He lapped at the surging blood.

            Behind him, from where he had been shot, he heard human voices, and a couple dogs.  Assholes, bringing their dogs.  I like dogs, except maybe poodles.  No reason to drag them into this. He gave a low growl that raced along the ground.  He heard the dogs yelp and refuse to follow their humans.  Their stupid humans.

            He picked up the heart, ready to leave.  He heard the pop just before he felt the pellets sting into his hide.  He didn’t stagger at all this time.  Really?  A shotgun now?

            He set down the bull heart, turned and noticed as he ran the three older teens in front, the two boys, one with a rifle, just beginning to take aim, the other with the shotgun, finger on the trigger, the overripe and drunk girl with them, noticed this as he ripped through the rifle arm and then the shotgun’s chest and crushed the girl’s throat.  These three lay there, beyond any rescue, twitching, collapsing, faces and body parts open to the moon, like some panel in one of those creepy 70s horror comics.  The fourth, a younger boy, 13 or 14, held the cheap whiskey bottle, too startled, too overwhelmed to even let that drop.  The clouds opened enough that the view was clear. The boy stared into his eyes.

            This one—is he swearing to kill me when he grows up?  The life quest he’s always hungered for?  Or will he dream tonight of running beside me? You’ll see me again.

            He shifted just enough to have some human voice.  “Go.  Go home,” the guttural snarl.  The boy paused one last moment, then turned and ran, still clutching the whiskey bottle.

            The enormous wolf howled, a howl no one would challenge.


© 2013, Robert E. Boon