A Taut Drop of Skin

Ellen had worn the wolf hide for seven hours, and as it released from her own tender skin, she caught a whiff of its stink. Carrion, garbage, dirt—animal smells, strong and bad. She wanted to yank it off, to throw it away from her as quickly as possible, but it was still joined to her torso and her legs. She grabbed at the loose edges with her teeth and tugged.

The first of the change feelings, like a Band-Aid worked slowly from an under-healed wound, spread to her shoulder blades and throat. The second wave of sensation, deep, throbbing aches of bones shifting and settling into their old place, began. Her stomach ground into position with a wave of hot nausea. She aimed her head toward the toilet and puked.

Her skin burned at the touch of air, then chilled. She was shivering against the cool tile, but she didn't have strength to reach for a towel or her bathrobe. The worst was coming.

The bones in her head shifted against her eyeballs, and she screamed. She couldn't see, no color, no shape, and the bright world of smell was fading, another kind of blindness. Her eardrum crackled as it reshaped.

Panting, she lay beside the toilet, feeling her skin toughen itself again, feeling her lungs settle into their rhythmic catch-and-release, feeling her fingers and toes and eyes and brain go human again. The pain was fading. She was almost Ellen again, and she could still smell the wolf hide.

"Hon? You okay in there?" Her husband's voice, soft and anxious behind the bathroom door, sounded as if it came from miles away. Lifetimes away.

"Yes, James," she called back. "Just my stomach again."

"Can I come in?"

"Uh-" She caught sight of the hide, sticky side up on the bath mat, and she stuffed it into the hamper, under some jogging pants and an old towel. "Sure, of course."

She flushed the toilet and pressed her cheek against its cool smoothness.

"Poor baby," he murmured, stroking her hair. "Let's get you back to bed."

Ellen let him pull her into his arms and lead her back to their bedroom, his arm solid, unwavering in its encouragement. He was warm, and he smelled like laundry detergent. It was such a clean, ordinary smell. She pressed her face against him, drawing his scent into her deepest reaches. Even with dull human senses, she could smell the wonderful man smells of his skin, a contrast delicious to her own sweaty stink. She burrowed her nose into his arm and let out a hungry moan.

"You all right, Ellie?" he murmured, pulling back to look at her with concern.

The change feelings were passing. It was amazing how quickly they went. And now she really was all right. Better than all right, in fact, as if her body had been refreshed by its shift from one shape to another. She sniffed him again, and then pulled him roughly onto the bed.

"You smell so good," she murmured. "So goddamned good." The stitches on his pajama bottoms crackled as she pulled them off.

* * *

Chewing through bland bran flakes and sipping coffee, Ellen's memory was already unraveling around the edges. It had happened the last time, too, a month ago, when upon waking she had already begun to reject the sensations of the Change. There was only a faint meaty smell in the bathroom to knit the daytime Ellen to that nighttime monster. She would have to do something with the wolf-skin, or James might find it. Sometimes he did laundry.

She hurried through her morning routine and then stuffed the creepy thing into a jumbo-sized Ziploc bag. She would hide it in the potting shed on her way to the bus stop and figure out what to do with it later. Last month she had stayed home sick to bury it in the backyard. How or when she had dug it up and brought it back inside the house, she couldn't remember. She shuddered as she slipped the lock back on the potting shed door.

"Hon." James stopped her at the gate, his coffee mug still in hand, his Tasmanian Devil slippers smiling up at her. She could dress like that, too, if she worked from home. She liked to point that out whenever he complained about the balance on her Macy's card.

Ellen smoothed her skirt, uncertain why he had followed her out of the house. It wasn't like him. "Yes, dear?"

"You've been having so many stomach problems lately. Last night—and then this morning—maybe you should call your doctor?" There was kindness in his eyes, but she felt there might be an underlying uneasiness. She had to look away, down at his hands with the coffee and his paper.

Carnage in Washington Park, the headline screamed. A man in an Oregon Zoo uniform wept in the photograph. What had it said yesterday? Wave of kitten killings? She shuddered.

"Please?" James added.

She jerked her eyes away from the paper. "What? Oh. Call my doctor about my stomach. All right. Yes, that's probably a good idea." She managed a kind of smile.

He twitched his lips back at her. "Good."

They pecked cheeks, and she hurried to her bus.

* * *

All the long stuffy bus ride, she thought about the skin. That thick, luxurious pelt, gray-dappled and soft. It had been hard not to stroke it as she tucked it away in the Ziploc bag.

She already couldn't remember slipping into the skin, couldn't remember how her body had changed to fit inside its hairy, tailed and snouted shape. But she could remember running inside her changed body: that memory was distinct. A clear and beautiful sensation of wind teasing each delicate hair, stirring the nerves, informing the strange alien brain of speed and geography and dozens of details her poor human mind could not make sense of. The mind that belonged with that hairy body was much finer, stronger, streamlined. It felt good to be in that mind.

Ellen winced as the thought crossed her mind. She had not wanted to admit it. But how could she lie to herself? Since that first night, about a month ago, the night before she buried the pelt, even her dreams had been more … exciting. Vibrant. Real, in the way that nothing—not eating, not working, not the after-work prowl through the mall, not even fucking—in her entire life had been real. There was an intensity to those dreams that rivaled the nightmares she'd had as a child, the kinds of nightmares that had sent her to her parents' bed for comfort—but these dreams weren't terrifying. At least, she was never afraid. The things she chased reeked of fear.

Her stop! She hadn't been paying attention. Ellen leapt to her feet and pushed her way to the back door, jolting other riders as she went. One man went staggering into a woman's lap.

"Sorry," Ellen called over her shoulder, catching his eyes. They were very nice eyes, an unusual golden brown in a darkly attractive face. She smiled and held the gaze as she pushed open the door.

She felt a pricking of consciousness. She was married. She shouldn't be looking into anyone else's eyes, especially not smiling. Especially not thinking they were attractive. The door wheezed shut behind her, sealing off her moment's indiscretion. She set her shoulders. Work was waiting.

The firm kept offices on the sixteenth floor of a tower in the heart of downtown. The lobby was the usual: black marble desk, heavy with orchids; glass walls invalidating the recessed lighting; a bay of gold-faced elevators. The security guard called the elevator for her, his face warm and dopey behind its thick mustache. He was in love with her.

Ellen gave him a smile as she passed by the desk. A smile doesn't cost you anything, her mother always said, which showed just how little her mother really knew. She had smiled at the security guard one time, the first time he remembered her floor. Now she had to smile every morning, or else his eyes, cold with the power of elevator control, would peer down at her from behind that marble mountain while she dug in her purse for her company ID. She didn't wear revealing clothes, but men like that found a way to see what they liked, no matter the layers. She could feel his eyes stroking her ass even as she stepped inside the elevator. The door couldn't close fast enough.

She ought to gouge out those eyes, she thought, and leaned her head back against the golden wall. She was trembling. The way he looked at her, the headlines in the papers. It was getting to her.

Then the doors opened again, spreading wide to show off the firm's commanding view of Mt St Helens, all smooth white shoulder and imminent eruption. The city spread beneath her, miniature, rivers slick and ready. She felt her face relax into a smile.

* * *

The smile turned to fierce concentration as Ellen let her duties fill her mind. Mr. Morgan was not there. He liked to meet with her to go over her assignments for the day, his breath warm and minty as he turned the pages for her, sometimes brushing her hand with his manicured fingertips. But not this morning. She had email reminding her that he would be breakfasting with the other partners and then joining some prospective clients at the club. He had given her the numbers of the restaurant and the locker room, just in case.

With her boss in meetings all morning, she could focus herself completely on the project at-hand. It was her only gift, she felt. Her single-mindedness had swept her over the heads of other competitors in every field she had attempted. She was the Vice President's assistant. The other women in the office respected her.

Her body did not. Discomfort made her look up at the clock, surprised to see she had worked through her usual lunch time without moving. She tried to rub her neck without creasing the silk in her blouse. Impossible. She got up, and felt her stomach protest. She dashed to the bathroom to throw up.

Ellen knelt on the floor a long moment, face against the cool porcelain, not ready to move. Any moment, she might puke again. What was wrong with her? She wasn't … pregnant … was she?

A memory of James, this morning, still in his slippers, played across her mind's big screen. That was why he was so uncomfortable. He thought she was.

With a little gasp, she sat upright. James thought she was pregnant. Which meant he suspected—

Something. She couldn't be sure what, especially when she herself had only the faintest memories of her lapse.

Ellen pulled herself up to her feet and splashed her face, over and over. The cold water, like the cold toilet, felt good. Had it felt this good last month, splashing her face before walking down to that smoky, downtown bar, just two blocks from the office, full of knowing that her husband was twelve hundred miles away, absolutely absorbed in his work? He was at a conference for people like him, people who did who-knew-what with computers, and who probably could work from home any time they pleased. Which was often the same time that their wives were trying to feed them dinner and get them to go out. Maybe catch a movie. Maybe sing some karaoke. Anything that involved putting on real shoes, shoes with laces and not cartoon animal heads.

She dried her face.

And then remembered the man who had sat down beside her in that smoke-hazed bar. First she had noticed the neatly pressed cuffs of his dress shirt, peeking from beneath a black suit jacket. Then she caught his eyes in the mirror behind the bar. Right there, between a display of fine vodkas and top shelf tequilas, she had seen his face, dark and handsome, his golden eyes smiling back at her, wanting her.

She almost threw up again. She had just seen those eyes on this morning's bus.

* * *

There was only one thing to do, Ellen thought, slipping off her pumps as she closed the front door. She would go back to the bar and confront him. If he was who she thought he was, he would be there. And if he was—well, she would need the skin.

The door to James's office was shut. She didn't need to tiptoe around the house, then. But she did anyway.

She changed into simple, sturdy clothing and looked at herself in the mirror. She could not help looking pretty; it was something she had learned to accept, much like hay fever in summer and a black thumb. But in the loose black sweater and jeans, at least she looked like she didn't care that she was. That felt like an advantage. Ellen pulled on some running shoes and a back pack. She was ready.

But as she was undoing the lock on the potting shed, she heard the sound she had hoped to avoid:

"Ellen!"

She turned to look at James. At least he was dressed. The plugs of his i-pod were still crammed in his ears, and she felt a sudden wave of fury. He really wanted to talk to her, didn't he?

"What?" she snarled.

His face twisted, the freckles she had once found so endearing standing out across his sun-starved cheekbones. Then he drew himself up. "I know where you're going. This is about your boss, isn't it? Don't pretend it's not. I watch how you dress to go to work. And I saw him at the Christmas party. His eyes were all over you." James's voice trembled with anger.

"You think I’m having an affair with Mr. Morgan? You think that's what this is about?"

"Yes! It’s morning sickness, isn’t it? Your stomach pains? I got that vasectomy for you, Ellen! You begged me so you could get off the pill and lose all that weight!"

"You're the one who didn't want any children! First it was 'let's wait until we're ready,' and then it was 'they'll just interfere with our lifestyle'! What lifestyle? All you do is play with your goddamn computers!" Ellen's voice climbed in pitch.

"That doesn't justify fucking your boss!"

"Fuck you!" she yelled back. And she slammed the shed door shut. She stomped to the front gate and kicked it open.

"Damn it, Ellen, don't go! Come on, come back—there are animals out there! It was in the papers!" His voice was desperate behind her.

She kept walking, too angry to even slow down. In her fist, the pelt seemed to almost wriggle.

* * *

Ellen got off the bus one stop before her usual. She shifted the Ziploc bag under one arm, feeling the heat of anger like heartburn in her chest. It made her want to strike out—at James, for attacking her, and ignoring her, and wearing those damned slippers all the time while all the time she had to go to the office and let assholes like that security guard try to look down her shirt. Mr. Morgan, too, because James was right. And of course this asshole. This goddamned fuck who'd gotten her to ruin her marriage and given her this … thing. This hairy, snarling gift. Ellen squeezed the pelt and took a look at the sky. It was nearly dark. The stars were small sparks in the faded denim sky, brighter than the pale moon beginning to show itself at the edge of the mountains. It would be hugely shining after the sky had gone dark. It spurred her to action.

Up ahead, the bar in its old brick cube hulked, waiting for her. It was one of the oldest bars in town, and Ellen remembered that this bar was soaked in history. Men had died here; city forefathers had taken bribes here; women had been bought and sold like livestock. That was probably why he had picked it.

She pushed the door open.

The bartender looked up at her, but he didn't. He sat at the end of the long swathe of mahogany, as finely dressed at the first time she had seen him. He was drinking something colorless in a martini glass, and the twist of lemon at the bottom of his glass was the brightest point in all the room.

She slid onto the seat beside him.

"Buy you a drink?"

Once again their eyes met in the mirror behind the bar, this time between the Mardi Gras beads and the whiskeys. She shook her head. She placed the Ziploc bag on the counter.

His eyes flicked to it and then back to hers beside the Wild Turkey. "Let's go someplace else."

"Yes," she growled.

He grinned. He took her elbow as they walked away, and while his hand was very warm through her sleeve, it was neither hard nor cruel.

They walked for a while, silent as two old friends, until they reached a stretch of park near the art museum, and they settled on a bench. It was getting dark, and they were alone. The moon was already much brighter.

"What do you want?" he asked, and his voice was warm and kind, like his hand.

Ellen eyebrows contracted. "What do I want? What do I want?" Her voice was a touch shrill. "I want to know why I turn into a goddamn werewolf!"

He patted her hand. "Just a few days a month."

"A few days a month?" She smacked at his hand. "And what have I been doing at night? Why do I get so bloody? And why can't I remember?"

He nodded. "It's all right. You'll get better at remembering. It's new. It's hard for your human mind. And the blood …" he shrugged. "Wolves are predators."

"Did you do this to me?" she whispered.

He shrugged and almost managed to hide his smile. "Look, I'm sorry…"

"Ellen," she said.

"Ellen. I'm Gene, by the way. Nice to meet you."

She pushed away the hand he extended. "Why?" she asked.

"I was lonely." He shrugged again. "I'm the last of my pack. And I was saving the skin for someone special. It was my mother's," he added.

"You didn't even know me. You didn't even ask."

"Would you have believed me? Anyway, the way you were in bed, I thought you'd like it. You're wild. You're a sexy, sexy beast." He leaned toward her, his eyes bright.

Ellen closed her eyes, sickened by the thought. She really had gone to bed with him. She hadn't been sure, but now she could remember. The wonderfully smooth sheets, smelling of lavender. The fireplace in the bedroom. His insignificant prick and frenzied thrusting. She hadn't been wild, she'd been desperate, desperate to get some kind of pleasure out of the experience.

And afterward, he had wanted to cuddle in front of the fire, and she'd been chilly and frustrated and ready to go home, but then he spread the beautiful fur wrap over shoulders, and the world burst into pain.

She opened her eyes. She felt so cheated by the memory that she could only stare at him.

"We'll start a new pack," Gene murmured, taking her hand in hers. "I'm sure you'll have strong, healthy pups. We'll take this town for our own."

Ellen pulled her hand away and stood up. Her mind was made. Gene looked up at her, head cocked and confused. He was still handsome, but she could see now that he was developing a slight double chin. And she could see his nose hair, ready to be trimmed. She kicked off her sneakers.

"Did you want to change? I have my hide in my messenger bag." He grinned.

She moved quickly, and before he had his cuffs undone or his belt loosened, she stood naked beside the bench. She pulled the pelt from its bag and wrapping.

"I will have strong, healthy pups. But not with you." And she pulled the wolf skin over her.

She was not afraid, even as the pain of Change swept over her. She was not afraid, even when she dropped to four paws and had to look up at him. But he was frozen. A million years of human instinct made him tremble as she bared her teeth and snarled.

It would have been more enjoyable if he had run, but she was fast and her teeth closed through his windpipe before he had a chance to even squeak. She felt the warm splatter of his blood on her muzzle, and she realized she was hungry. She clawed through the thin cotton of his shirt, ready to feast.

And then spasms in her abdomen seized her. They were so fierce, so painful, that she cried out with pain, a long howl of agony. Another wave of cramps came over her, and she whimpered. Even her wolf mind knew it was the puppies, dying inside her, rejected like their father. The hidden human part of her cried for them, innocent little things. The wolf just howled as cramp after cramp squeezed her womb empty.

* * *

Hungry and aching, the great gray wolf bit into the messenger bag on the park bench and began trotting home. It was dry and heavy in her jaws. She kept to the shadows, and she rested often, often enough that the sun was already threatening when she finally made it across town. She slipped under the laurel bushes and into her own backyard.

"Ellen? Is that you?"

She knew the voice. She froze beside the bushes, not sure what to do.

James emerged from the front of the house, a snub-nosed pistol clutched in his fist. He stopped when he saw the wolf, the bag hanging by a strap from the creature's blood muzzle.

"Jesus!" he gasped.

She felt herself growl.

"Oh my god!" He raised the gun; there was a horrible explosion, and then a fierce burning in her shoulder. She leapt from her back legs. Not thinking, just knowing pain, fear, rage.

Her teeth ground on something bone and there were sounds: grinding, screaming, silence.

This time there were no cramps to keep her from eating her fill.

* * *

Ellen sat at her desk, a soft cashmere cardigan thrown over her shoulders and sling. She wished the sling had come in white, instead of the awkward navy. She preferred warm colors, pinks and soft peaches, to cool blues.

"Ellen!" Mr. Morgan stopped beside her desk. He leaned toward her, his blue eyes written with concern. "I heard about your husband. I am so sorry."

She nodded. It was easier not to talk.

"Did they find him yet?"

She shook her head. "But I have a restraining order, so if he does come back, I'm protected."

"Hmmn. Bring it by some time. I'll look it over. Some of those restraining orders aren't worth the paper they're written on." He brushed a finger across the navy fabric of the sling, and under the after-coffee peppermint, she smelled the strong, man-full scent of him.

His mouth twisted. "That bastard shot you, Ellen. Don't think I'll let him get away with it. You're my right-hand woman."

"Left-hand, for now!" she laughed. And she smiled back at him the way she had never let herself smile at him before. He held her gaze a second, his pupils wide and eager, before he went back toward his office.

Watching him walk away, she noticed the toned muscles in his ass, his long legs. No wonder James had been worried. Her boss was a good-looking man.

Ellen smiled for just herself. She stretched her legs and felt the toe of her Coach boot brush a messenger bag under her desk. The smile widened. He might be the right kind of man to help her start her pack.

And if not? She'd find some way to have a good time.

Back to: Vol 2, Issue 3