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THESE DAMNED FUR BAGS won’t stop yapping!
“I don’t know why they’re behaving so poorly,” Yanka states as she snips at another lock of my hair. “They usually settle down by now after they’ve met someone new.”
She walks away, leaving me in the bathroom to quiet her pets, but they yap louder with more anger like they are trying to warn her about the unnatural creature she invited in to share their space. I’m getting tired of all this noise. It hurts my ears and I’m not used it. I’m used to the voices of whales as they sing their love songs to their lifelong mates.
The lights flicker as a flash of bright light pierces through the windows, which is followed by a boom that vibrates heavily through the skeleton of Yanka’s wooden house.
“Oh no!” cries Yanka. “I hope it doesn’t rain,” she says and pauses to study her fur bags. The animals are quiet. “Well, that shut you all up, didn’t it?”
I hear a few more whines from two of the four dogs and thunder cracks through the sky once more. The sound is so close it almost sounds as though it's ripping from one end of the ceiling to the other across Yanka’s pink and white house. Its enough to keep her nasty critters from making any another peep.
Yanka continues to cut my hair, pulling out a fat wand of some type that makes a lot of noise and I push her hand away. “I’m not going to hurt you with it,” she insists. “I’m just going to use the clippers to trim the sides.”
Taking a big breath, I watch her in the mirror. She puts the clippers to my head and, surprisingly, it feels good, but I’m not so sure about the loss of hair. I’ve never had hair this short, not even when we had an infestation of head lice aboard the Annabelle, my most favorite and last ship I sailed on. I wouldn’t let the portly captain allow the butcher to cut my hair. I took a lashing for it, but the good captain grew fond of me after that—I stood my ground. Of course, we are brothers now and I’ve grown fond of him, too, but I’m glad I haven’t seen him in a decade. I certainly don’t want him to know I have legs just yet—he’d be jealous.
When Yanka appears to be finished, she looks in the mirror and drops the clippers. “Heaven help me,” she says, grabbing her chest. “I cannot wait to take you to the festival tonight. I have never seen anyone as handsome as the likes of you.”
My face flushes with embarrassment and I look at myself. Truthfully, I think I look like an officer of our Majesty’s Royal Navy, like my brother, the Captain. His uniform always looked freshly pressed and his wig perfectly curled with fresh white powder, which made his gray eyes sparkle like diamonds. Spoiled rich brats in command are the only ones who could afford to look so...clean. That’s how I look—clean.
I wish I could say the same for Yanka’s home. It’s ironic she works in the hospital where she was so sterile about everything—always washing her hands, sometimes wearing a mask, and folding tape and sheet corners so they were at perfect sharp angles.
But her home? There are way too many frilly things hanging from every corner of the house—on the doors, on the handles, over the magic box that provides entertainment. Humans seem to like their magic boxes, but it’s hard to watch when Yanka’s large kettledrum holders are blocking the view as she stands between me and the mirror finishing my cut. Plus, there are mountains of makeup spilled and sprawled over every countertop from the bathroom to her bedroom and I wonder if I should mention my suspicion of rouge as making women go mad from back in my day when I was a sailor.
I also can’t get over the hair. There’s hair everywhere—dog hair, cat hair, Yanka’s hair.
Yanka rubs her hands through my new, shorter mane and her fingers feel good on my scalp, making my eyes close. As I feel the heat of her breath close to my face, I open my eyes and she tries to kiss me, but I put my head down to look at my legs, a reminder of why I’m here, so her lips smack against my forehead. I can tell Yanka is disappointed as she lets out a small, impassioned huff that warms my face.
“You have someone, don’t you?” she asks.
I close my eyes. I don’t want to say anything and I’m glad I can’t.
“That’s okay,” she says coming behind me as she brushes the cut hair off my bare shoulders; although it’s not the hands of the girl I came for, I enjoy Yanka’s touch. She hugs me from behind and speaks in my ear. “I’m going to be so good to you,” Yanka says, “that I’m going to make you forget all about where you came from and whoever it is that seems to have forgotten all about you.” Yanka bends down to nibble on my ear, sending a blissful tingle through my chest, hips, and down to my legs until I am covered in goosebumps.
I’ve missed this—being with humans and being human. More than anything, I’ve missed the touch of a woman, especially from a sexy, beautiful woman, which Yanka is surely. And there is a small piece of me that wishes she could, indeed, make me forget the last nearly three hundred years.
