Anxiety was gripping me as much as the freezing air around me should have been. I felt cold, but not excruciatingly so, as the feral energy that was inhabiting my body kept me warm enough not to shiver.
I was waiting for my best friend, unsure what steps to take when she would arrive. We had decided to be honest, but the question was how honest I should be. Telling her about vampires, magic, and past half-souls transformed in wolf pelts seemed…unwise considering the line of work Marie was working in. Not telling her anything was out of the question though. She seemed truly terrified since my abduction, and more emotive, as the scene with her now ex-one-night stand had shown me. She was not an advocate of violence or aggressiveness, and pretty much the opposite of insensitive. Still, her reaction to her ex had been all of the above.
Few people passed next to the bench I was on, none saw me. I blended with the shadows as naturally as I breathed. Only the stars and the half-moon lighted the park, even though lampposts were plenty. The bulbs had been stolen repeatedly by the diverse sororities on campus, with such regularity that the university had just stopped replacing them.
I smelled Marie before I heard her, and even then she was still too far away to see.
That was freaky.
She came to our meeting point and saw me almost immediately under the darkness of the unlit lamppost.
“If you were trying to scare me right now, I will kill you.” She said.
“It was not my intention.” I answered ceremoniously, coming closer.
She visibly relaxed at my unnatural response.
“Dumbass. Here, no underwear though, I did not want to shuffle through that drawer.”
She was giving me privacy by looking away, I took the clothes she was handing me.
She had mixed a sweater that was not mine in the mix. Seemed like a pink unicorn themed one.
“Erm, what’s that?”
“My revenge.”
“Is it yours?” It smelled like her.
“Of course not.” Was the most obvious lie I ever heard her say.
I laughed loudly.
“Shut up, it’s my pajama, It’s way too big for me. And you’ll have to face the stares of everyone on the way home. You have no right to turn it around to bully me.”
“There are people in furry costumes on this campus, may I remind you. I do not think anyone is even going to stare at me.”
She grimaced.
“Come on, let’s head back home, you’ve got some explaining to do.”
I nodded, anxiety gripping my core once again.
She worries too much, she likes us.
Would you shut up, she’s a le…she’s into girls. I translated for myself.
Why did they not burn her then?
What? What do you mean by…
Before I could finish my mental sentence, and before I even began following Marie that was going back to our flat, a memory surfaced from my insides. One of the uncountable ones that I saw but could not register.
Igris now Gray was screaming in front of a large fire. Many men and women in ritual clothes were shouting and singing songs in a language that I did not know but could nonetheless comprehend. She was being held in place by a large man of dark-colored skin, father, and my sisters were watching me, some crying in silence.
I was breaking from the inside, as I saw a silhouette on top of the sea of flames slowly falling apart, ashes mixing with the melted gold and copper bracelet I had given her.
I breathed again; my eyes were focused on something in front of me… snow. I was crouched on the ground.
“…Ray? RAY.” Marie was shouting at me. Only a few seconds had passed, as long as the memory took to resurface. I tried to talk but felt sick.
I am sorry we had to see that again. It has been a long time, but it is still not…pleasant.
Why?
It is a sin.
Much had to be said about that statement, but I had someone else to worry about, Marie was dialing 911.
“Wait…” I managed to say out loud “Don’t…I’m…” I couldn’t finish my sentence. Fine was not the truth.
Marie crouched on my level and forced her eyes into mine, hand on my chin.
“What is your brother’s name?” She asked.
“Francis…” I answered, clenching my teeth.
“How many fingers?” She continued, showing me the middle one.
“Well five on my chin, and one quite rude just in front of my nose.”
I stood up effortlessly.
“Wow! You just passed out, be cool!”
“I’m fine, I just had a flash-back.”
My best friend gave me a strange look. “Of you naked outside the woods? Of course, that’ll happen! What were you thinking!”
I squirmed. “Not really about that, even though it would make a lot of sense.”
She waited, expectantly.
I sighed before continuing. “I can’t explain without sounding crazy.”
She gave me another look, much more understandable.
“Well, without sounding craziER.” I corrected.
“I work with crazy, even though I don’t believe this word actually means anything, it’s one way of describing my future job.”
I gave her a half-smile.
“I’ll try to explain, I promise. But right now, I just want a hot chocolate.”
“I’ll even make it for you, but please, don’t disappear anymore, or pass out, please?”
“I will try my best.” I promised.
Our talk had to wait, as Stan was waiting for us, with a hot chocolate already prepared for me.
“You’re the sweetest.” I said with the most ostentatious flirty voice.
He laughed, at my sentence or at my sweater, I do not know, but probably a bit of both.
“Ha! GAAAAAYYY.” He shouted while getting dressed in his polar jacket.
I sat down at the table, and Marie did the same.
She had a scary expression as she spoke to me, silence had accompanied our walk back, it seemed not welcome inside.
“He has a date.” She explained to me.
“I had guessed as much.”
Stan, on the verge of leaving, finally realized the mood was weird.
“Everything alright guys?”
“I hope that soon, it will be.” Marie answered.
I looked at my masculine flatmate with teary eyes.
“Could you tell my best friend that I love her, after I have been assassinated?”
Stan smirked. “Even though the murderer is the best friend?”
“Yes.”
“Sure, have a deadly evening, I’ve got a fun one!”
And he left me with the angry pack of wolves personified.
“Don’t think your golden tongue is going to work with me. ‘Love’, ‘Best’, you are trying to smoothen the road for what’s coming next, and I won’t be smoothened.”
I couldn’t help myself: “You’d make a delicious smoothie.”
She stared at me. Her right eyebrow was twitching.
“Out with it. Now.”
I gulped.
“Erm… well…”
Do we need to intervene?
Wait uh…
I immediately stopped slouching; I didn’t even realize I had been doing so. One instant I was Gray, 22-year-old timid boy, the next I was Gray, the woman 10 years older, and much more mature to the horrors of the world.
“We…I do not want to tell you everything, not because I don’t trust you, but because it is difficult for me, and I am not ready to talk about it.”
Marie’s eyes widened, and she visibly recoiled, but only acquiesced.
“The person who kidnapped me was not a person. It had the appearance of one, but the insides of something decrepit and vicious. What I did to survive that night…those days… it changed me. This change brought today, and it’ll bring lots of tomorrows, certainly as strange. I will tell you more as time passes, that we promise.”
And then I slouched back again.
The sensation had been…normal. I should’ve been furious, having lost control over myself like that, but it wasn’t anything like that at all. She had been in control of nothing more than I had been. Every word I could have stopped, every gesture I could have modified.
We had just decided to prioritize one method over another.
What’s happening to me?
We are…merging, as we are one, soon, we will not be able to differentiate between ourselves. We shall just be one Gray, with the memories of two lives.
That was unsettling, to say the least.
Marie had stayed silent the whole time of my soliloquy and my mental conversation.
She was still not saying anything.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Marie?” I asked, worried.
“Multiple personality disorder?” She finally said.
That, I was not expecting. I froze.
“I’m not an idiot Ray…or Gray? That makes more sense. In such a traumatic event, having to break part of yourself and change it to survive is possible, I believe. I have not studied that pathology though, it’s extremely rare, only ever happens in books or movies. People think it’s the same as a schizophrenia, which it is not at all. You’re not hallucinating though? Hearing voices? Believing you’re a god or something. You said not a person. What then?”
She was looking at me… weird. I did not like it.
This was how she looked at her patients. I could only guess that was the case, as I had never seen her in that context, but that’s how it felt.
“Gray.” She said calmly.
She was not calm, I could smell the anxiety, the sadness.
She is a seer, our words were a mistake. She sees the truth behind us, understands it more than she should. We said too much already.
“I…” I tried.
“Gray… could you come with me to…”
I could not let her finish her sentence, I felt it would ruin part of our friendship.
“I cannot tell you. But I can show you. Now.” I got up and wearing the same pink sweater, I left the flat.
She quickly followed me, shouting “Wait, I’m sorry.” She truly was.
I took the stairs downstairs, the elevator only worked half of the time anyway, and the enclosed space seemed unbearable now.
“Would..you…wait!” I heard behind me.
I didn’t.
She finally caught up to me five minutes later, out of breath.
“Weren’t you running all day? How are not tired?”
I was not even sweating, I walked slowly, so she could follow. I did not want to answer, so I did not.
“Fine.” She said angrily. “Where are we going?”
“Forest next to the park.”
“Really? Again? We were there half an hour ago? Couldn’t you have shown me inside?”
“Not enough room. And I don’t want witnesses.”
She looked at me, eyebrow raised. “Really? You want to murder me in a bush for being nosy now?”
I smiled at her. “Nah, but I’m reconsidering my security detail. You’re the one who’s going to summon Satan on my ass sooner or later.”
Is she? Wait no, that’s sarcasm.
She laughed, then immediately after sighed.
“Better be worth it. I still believe I was right with my multiple personality disorder. Your reaction was evident. But I’m not your psychologist, I’m your friend, I went too far. I’m sorry for that.”
“No worries. And you are right, in a way. You’ll make a great therapist later. You’re too far from the truth though. I do not want to lie to you.”
“How can I be right, and still far away from the truth?”
“You’ll see.”
We soon arrived in the woods, in a clearing not far from the main road. There was a thicket between the two, and mixed with the snow covering the vegetation, it was impossible to see or pass through it. I knew a way traced by the wildlife that linked both.
I finally looked at my best friend, shivering and trying to warm her hands with her breath.
“Your eyes… if I didn’t know you so well, I would be really scared right now.”
“What do you see?”
She seemed hesitant. “I don’t know, you look so… wild? You’re supposed to be the indoors type, but you seem so, at ease here. You don’t even look cold.”
She is a seer.
She’s just sharp.
That is what we call a seer.
I didn’t want to make my trembling friend wait for another of my mental conversations to finish, so I refocused on what was surrounding me.
“Do you remember the pelt?” I asked.
“The one you stole? You lost it in the woods but it’s how you survived right?”
“Yes. But I didn’t lose it, I thought I did, but it seems it was more than just a pelt. It was something old, something that belonged to me.”
She looked confused for an instant but immediately hid her reaction. She was trying her best to analyze my sentence with emotional distance. What it could truly mean.
“It fused with me.” I couldn’t stand her looking at me like that. So…cold.
She couldn’t hide anything that time.
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“That thing that kidnapped me, it was a vampire, and not the twilight style one, the soulless undead kind who lives only for blood.” I didn’t know that for sure, maybe some of them were vegetarian and nice, but it was better to simplify right now.
She looked pained. “R…Gray you know it’s not the truth. Did she try to cut you? Is that why?”
I stepped closer to her; anger was fueling my steps.
“We will never lie to you, not even when lying to ourselves. It has been promised so.”
She looked spooked by my sudden closeness, by my tone of voice that gained imperium, but she stood her ground.
“Who am I speaking to now?” She countered.
I smirked.
“Gray.” I stepped back, undressing.
My best friend still did not move, nor did she avert her gaze, fixed on me.
“Do you think you’re a vampire too now? You got bitten and now you’re a monster. There is no sparkling sun you know, no magic.”
I continued to remove my clothes.
Her semblance of confidence finally faltered slightly.
“For fuck’s sake, I don’t want to see your ju…”
I pictured my wolf self.
I could not stop shouting in pain that time.
“Gray?” She immediately responded, panicked. She moved closer.
“Right there is GOOD” I warned her to stay away.
She did not listen to me, only to the sight in front of her.
“What the…”
Time seemed to stop.
Pain subsided, flesh reworked itself, muscles ripped then renewed themselves, just differently.
I howled at the half-moon, beseeching it to show me its full glory. She did not listen to me.
I looked at the terrified human on the ground, she smelled delicious, but I was not hungry.
“Friend” We reminded ourselves. That was weird. In this form, something else was inhabiting Gray.
Dark.
Introspection had to wait.
I circled around the speechless Marie, who was looking at me with a mixture of terror and awe, as if she knew her death had come, but it was too beautiful to run away from. She was on her knees, hands behind her back on the ground, holding her straight.
She turned with me, staring into my eyes, refusing to let them go.
That was annoying.
In one step, the distance between me and her became nothing.
Still, she looked me in the eyes.
“IMPUDENT HUMAN.”
She was our friend though, maybe the only one we ever showed our heart to. So she had the right to be.
I pictured Ray again.
The pain was terrible, but I managed not to make a sound. It seemed one way was worse than the other.
Before saying anything to my dumbfounded friend, I picked up my clothes and put them back on.
Halfway through, I heard her speaking, her voice broken by shock.
“That’s…No way…” Her hands were becoming blue, and to be able to spot that, even in darkness, meant that she had to be truly frozen. She was not wearing her usual white and black skull gloves.
“Let’s go back, you’re not looking okay.” I began.
“Okay?!” She shouted. I never saw her so emotional, so not in control.
And then she was calm again.
She got back up on her feet, stomped towards me, and pointing an accusatory finger at my chest said: “You being a werewolf does not give you the right to show me your genitals.”
And she left, forcing me to be the one following her this time.
“Wait what? That’s not what I was trying to do…”
Welp. She got over it fast.
She could not outwalk me long, but I did not know if she wanted me near her, so I stayed a safe distance away.
She noticed it immediately: “C’me here.”
I arrived next to her, and with no warning, put her frozen fingers inside my clothes.
I yelped.
“What the!”
“Your fault they’re falling off and you’re warm. You traumatized me for life, you’ll let me do anything I want to you for the next decade and I guess we’ll be even.”
We had never been close physically before, and I did not like this new turn of events.
That is a lie.
Shut up.
“I did not sign up such a contract. I just showed you the truth.”
“That I cannot begin to comprehend. Too bad friendships don’t work with contracts though. It's the only way you would have been popular.”
I could not see her face, as she was too close, and her dark hair was blocking my view. It was usually red or blue, but she had decided to wait for her natural color to come back completely to try a new color. She still smelled delicious. It made us remember the prior events, and the strange new influence we had experienced as Wolf Gray.
What was that?What was that?
We did not know. That could be problematic.
Marie’s finger pinching my belly cut off my thoughts.
“Would you please stop?”
She began giggling like a lunatic.
“Marie? Have you lost it?”
“Definitely. Tell me everything Gray.” She looked up; her eyes prevented me from any form of refusal.
“I will, I promise. But I’m also very much in the dark, and I just want to make sure you’re okay before continuing.”
“I’m not okay but that doesn’t matter. I was sure I was going to die. But I’ll wait to be back inside before asking. I understand why you had to show, but it doesn’t really help.”
I nodded, sensing she was talking to calm her nerves.
“You know what’s truly weird?”
“I think pretty much everything was.”
“Nah, I mean, I was scared, I knew I was going to die. But the thing…giant wolf…or you, I don’t know… it was so magnificent.”
“…Thanks.”
“Shut up. I mean, it was, like that drawing of yours I love so much, but alive and moving.”
I tried to change the subject, maybe wolf talk wasn’t the right moment now.
“You never told me about that drawing?” She complimented my work often, but never more than that. She had told me that she knew too little about art to say anything else.
“It’s the one you threw away.”
Oh.
I trashed ongoing projects often, but a finished one? That had only happened once.
What is she talk…
I felt the memory come back, as it had for Igris now Gray, it happened again for Ray now Gray.
It was raining outside. Soft music in the room of my old flat. An old one, with too many people. It’s where I had met Marie for the first time. I had been terrified that day. I had almost forgotten my brother’s anniversary. I had taken a blank sheet of paper and decided to draw something I could give to him. Even though he would never be able to receive it.
I don’t know what brought the feeling, but I felt just like the day he… died.
I did not stop. Not even to drink.
Now that I saw the memory again, I realized that Marie had entered my room that day, unsure at my unresponsiveness, not knowing me as much as today, and worried for me, as always. I did not register her presence. She was watching me draw in silence.
She left shortly after, depositing a glass of water next to me before finally closing my door.
I drank it without even looking.
At first, I was happy with what I had done.
It felt true.
Too real.
“Gray! Snap out of it, I really don’t need this right now.” Marie was holding me in her arms, clearly pissed off.
“Sorry, sorry, another flashback.” I apologized honestly.
That was…
Sorry, we really are similar, even in our traumas.
We are one.
“Those flashbacks have to stop. You’re killing me.” Answered Marie, unaware of what was happening in my head… “Do they have something to do with your new alter ego?” … or maybe very aware, hard to say.
“It’s… complicated. Let’s go back. I’m not fine, you’re not, I want to eat something.”
“Like a big steak with lots of piercings?”
“Very funny. I’d eat you, but not like that.” That last sentence slipped.
Hey!
It’s the truth.
“Welp, you can’t, not interested!” Marie was not bothered by my bad jokes as much as I was.
I could see our apartment building now.
“Finally!” Said Marie. “Let me go get my silver bullets before dinner though, just to be safe.”
It poses no threat to us, but is she going to…
Sarcasm.
Oh. Yes.