Even a man who's pure at heart and says his prayers by night, they say. And you aren't a man. And you were raised an atheist. And you've never been pure of heart. Your heart is a dark, hateful engine. It fuels your four padded feet as they tear down the sidewalk after the screaming woman. Tiffany. Sandy hair, fashionably layered. Suit jacket. Gold jewelry. It's not yet 6 p.m., but you can see the moon in the daylight sky. Passersby gawk at you and scramble for cover and hold up their phones to take videos, but no one tries to help Tiffany.
Her ankles wobble. It must be hard to run in those heels. You tense your hindquarters and spring as she tumbles to the concrete floor of the world. You can smell her fear, cold and sour, spiced by a faint, piquant note of subconscious arousal.
You've never felt so much like yourself.
* * *
When you were a baby, you never stopped crying. You couldn't sleep. You were born with a canine tooth already grown in and a head already thatched with black hair. As you grew, you remained a fretful insomniac. Your other teeth came in early and they came in sharp. Your father, who was a dentist, was proud. Your mother, who was not a dentist, was worried. She gave you a baby doll to play with, an expensive one the size of a real baby, with soft skin and a pursed mouth with a hole that you were supposed to pour water into. The doll even had a diaper to change.
“I always wanted something like this when I was a little girl,” your mother said, smiling at you expectantly. You held the doll by one leg, making her open-and-shut eyelids flutter. She had a pleasant texture, squishy yet firm. Your mouth itched as you smiled back, but you knew enough to wait for your mother to leave to bite down on the doll's leg. Chewing her to a pulp was heaven. You worked your way slowly up her body for two weeks, then shoved her spit-soaked remains in a box under your bed. You told your mother she was lost. Your mother seemed to buy it, but she never gave you a doll again.
A little later, when you were not quite five, you had an accident. At a neighborhood barbecue, you tried to play with a stranger's nervous husky. You growled at him, grabbed his ears ungently. That was the kind of goblin child you were.
You don't remember the moment he attacked, but you remember the shock of blood, the smell of spit and animal fear up close, your breath and the dog's breath entwined as though you had always been connected by teeth and pain and terror, and always would be. You remember a wet, loud sensation that filled you up and drowned all your usual thoughts and feelings. You couldn't tell if you were screaming or not, but you must have been, because you heard running feet and adult voices and then you heard thuds and scared yelps and the dog wasn't on you anymore. You felt the absence of his weight as almost a loss, and your vision was a haze of red.
Then you were in the hospital, and your head felt huge and numb, and you couldn't see out of your right eye. Your mother was holding your hand. She wouldn't look at you, but she gripped your fingers so hard they started to go as numb as your face.
Miraculously, there was very little permanent scarring. You were under the impression for many years that the dog had eaten your eye, but you found out as a teenager it had to be surgically removed when you were in the hospital. Punctured and lacerated, infected, rotting inside your head. You have no memory of this. A mental image that has persisted in your daydreams and nightmares for twenty years is of dog teeth fitting themselves around the jelly of your eyeball. You imagine the dog's furred throat moving as it swallows your sight, taking your perspective into itself.
You never hated dogs. You understood the husky. An eyeball would be more satisfying to bite than any doll's plastic flesh.
It was difficult adjusting to the loss of your stereoscopic vision, but by midway through elementary school you couldn't remember what it was like to have it. You didn't mind your glass eye. You minded the way other kids gawked at you and teased you and ostracized you. Maybe that wasn't really because of the eye. Maybe the eye was just a convenient excuse.
Maybe it was because they sensed something wicked growing inside you. You sensed it, too. It lay in the cage of your ribs like a bristling animal. It sent thick black filaments running through your muscles, making them twitch. You felt the filaments brushing against the back of your skin at night and you knew that one day soon they'd erupt into fur. You dreamed of fangs and claws and the cold wash of moonlight. You woke up sweating and itching between your legs, your lengthening limbs askew. You thought you should feel horror and revulsion. Instead, you couldn't wait for the wickedness to reveal itself.
It didn't.
Puberty dusted you with new hair, true, but mostly it just betrayed you. You grew tall, but not tall enough. You stayed thin, but not thin enough: your breasts and hips grew until you were shaped like a violin. You hated the way they swayed as you moved. You hated the way they made people look at you, the things they made people say. Someone was always calling you a beautiful young woman .
You let your leg, armpit, and pubic hair grow out. You cut the hair on your head short and spiky. It didn't stop the comments. You wanted to die.
Every month, blood spilled from your body. You liked to sniff it furtively in a bathroom stall between classes. Sometimes you wet a finger in the blood. Put the finger in your mouth. The thin bright red tasted different than the clotted dark.
In middle and high school you were still ostracized by your female classmates, but boys started asking you out. You found them boring and unattractive. They were only interested in your body, and in such a timid, tepid way you couldn't even get decent sex out of them. Your first kiss was in seventh grade. Jason F. ran away after you bit his lip hard. You lost your virginity in tenth grade. Steve K. flipped out when he realized you were on your period. You removed your glass eye and threw it at him, and that was the end of that. Psycho bitch. I'm telling everyone what a psycho bitch you are.
When you were seventeen, you started going to bars with a fake ID. The ID wasn't that convincing, but you looked a lot older than you were. You drank the bitterest drinks you could find. You made bartenders prepare obscure cocktails you found online, showing them the recipes on your phone. You danced sometimes, when the alcohol was fizzing through you in a numbing joyful wave of forgetfulness.
One night, a man found you dancing. He was the most handsome man you'd ever seen. Gold stud in one ear. Beard nearly blue. Big eyes, big ears, big teeth. His body wasn't bigger than yours, but it felt bigger. Because he was handsome, and smiling at you, and because you were drunk, you ground against him for half an hour and then let him take you home. He said his name was John when he first introduced himself. He said it was Frank when you were leaving the bar. You let it slide; God, he made you wet.
JohnFrank fucked you hard and everywhere but his bed. He ran a kitchen knife against the inside of your thigh. He tied you at the wrists and ankles with extension cords. He gripped you tight around the throat and squeezed until you saw flowers bloom in your good eye, then disintegrate into burnt-edged holes. He said he was going to kill you, and you could tell from his voice and the shine of his eyes and teeth in the dark that he meant it. You grinned and laughed soundlessly.
His grip relaxed a little.
“God,” you croaked. “Don't stop. What are you waiting for?”
His hands left your neck. “What's wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” you breathed. “This is the most incredible thing that's ever happened to me. I really want you to do it.” Your voice was so scratchy you barely sounded human.
JohnFrank flipped you over and began to untie you. “Well, that takes the fun out of things,” he said petulantly.
“Chicken,” you said, but the word got lost in a cough.
You looked and waited, in excitement and dread, but you never saw him again.
You left your parents' place at twenty. With your dad's money, you secured a small apartment. You stayed in the city where you'd grown up; it didn't seem worthwhile to move. Everywhere a person like you could go was more or less the same, anyway. You worked retail, then graduated to low-level office jobs. You kept to yourself during the day. At night, you kept going to the bars. Not every night. Maybe three or four times a month. You'd leave around midnight with the best-looking man, or the most violent-looking man, who'd have you. You'd try and convince him to knock you around a little. Some of them kicked you out, or got an Uber home in a hurry. Some of them responded with enthusiasm— beat you, raped you, robbed you.
It wasn't enough. It didn't satisfy. But it was something. You lived for those sparkling, drunken nights of danger. The wickedness inside you stayed trapped, pacing its cage of bone, howling at the moon behind your false eye and your true one. During the day, it slept. And the days were gray and flat and endlessly, frictionlessly boring.
Until you met Tiffany.
She'd been the receptionist at your office for a while. Weeks, maybe months. You didn't notice her until she got into the elevator with you one evening. Instead of ignoring you and avoiding eye contact, she smiled. Asked if you had weekend plans.
“Not really,” you said. “Why?”
You didn't bother to keep the hostility out of your voice. Tiffany was your age, about your height and build, but she might as well have belonged to a different species. Her makeup was like something you'd see on a magazine cover; you could barely tell she was wearing it at all. She looked perfect. She wore a slightly old-fashioned skirt suit and matching shoes. There were gold stars in her ears and around her throat. You could smell her laundry detergent, or maybe her perfume, or her soap. Lavender and mint.
“I was just wondering if you wanted to come out with me and the rest of the girls on Saturday night.” Her voice was like her scent. Soft, soothing. “You always keep to yourself. I thought you must be lonely.”
The rest of the girls. Never in a million years. “I don't think I'm up for a crowd.”
“Oh.” Small ditch dug between her impeccably groomed eyebrows. “Well, would you like to meet up for a drink tonight, then? Just us? I'm not busy.” She seemed so sincere.
You were going to say no. What could someone like Tiffany want with someone like you? The elevator chimed and the door swooshed open. Her smile was lovely.
“Sure,” you told Tiffany's pseudo-silk back. “Just tell me where.”
You'd been to the Barcade before, but for Tiffany, you pretended you hadn't. The gimmick was all in the name: a bar and a nostalgic arcade, like the kind people ten or twenty years older than you might have haunted as adolescents. There were game machines. Neon lights and tinny, electronic blip-bloops. An incongruous soundtrack of modern pop hits. Carpet like the upholstery covering bus seats. Even a singing animatronic cat lady with big, furry breasts in a black crop top with the Barcade's logo on the front. Tiffany grimaced at her as you walked past on your way to a booth.
“That thing is so gross,” she said. “Only part of this place I don't like. I wish they'd get rid of it; not all their customers are college boys.”
“I don't mind,” you reassured her. “This is all really neat— thanks for showing it to me. What're the best cocktails here?” You slid into red pleather benches, facing each other.
“They do pretty good G and Ts. Usually I just have a couple beers.”
You don't like beer, so you ordered a gin and tonic. You ordered four more gin and tonics as you sat and talked and watched the neon rainbows dance across Tiffany's face. Her skin was so smooth. You wanted to touch it. If you were a man, you'd touch it, you thought. If you were a man, you would bring Tiffany home with you and ask her what she wanted you to do and do it all until she was satisfied, until she couldn't stand it anymore, until she came again and again into your mouth and your hands.
The conversation started awkward and slow, but as you both got tipsy it became fluid, funny. Devoid of much meaningful content. You joked about work, let Tiffany share all her office gossip. But you'd have talked about dryer lint to watch Tiffany's mouth move under those shifting lights. She would have made dryer lint seem interesting. Words swam up from her throat like shining bubbles. You laughed, and she looked startled.
“I'm serious, though. Joel from accounting, he's totally bald. I mean, totally . No eyebrows, no eyelashes, no anything. It's some kind of disease. He has a really good wig and, like, these fake eyebrows and eyelashes and sideburns he glues on every day. Sheila swears up and down it's true. She even showed me a picture of him where one of the eyebrows was slipping off.” She grinned. “It was sort of diving towards his ear, like a little worm.”
You laughed again. “That's nothing,” you said. You tapped your glass eye. “I'm a cyclops.” And you told the whole story of the husky, the accident, the operation you don't remember. With gin fuzzing up your brain, you couldn't tell how Tiffany was taking it. Her face rippled before you. Slick pink lips, eyes the color of a swimming pool. No, a spring leaf. No. Something else.
Suddenly her hand slid over yours. Just for a moment, but it felt like it had burned you, like the imprint of her palm would be branded on your knuckles forever. “I'm so sorry that happened to you,” she said. “No wonder you're, well, the way you are. But really, you shouldn't feel insecure about it. Nobody can tell! You look normal. You look pretty.”
Your heart swelled; your heart fell. Tiffany didn't understand. But she was trying. She wanted to. You pinched the back of your hand where she'd touched it. Did you want another drink? You couldn't decide.
“It's not about how I look. It's about who I am. It's about what's under my skin.”
Tiffany frowned and asked what you meant. She called over a man wearing a tight Barcade t-shirt and ordered another Corona Light. You ordered a Blue Hawaii to mix things up a little. Before it even arrived, you were spilling words across the table. You told her about the man who first choked you, how he was going to kill you.
Tiffany's eyes glistened. She shook her head. Her hand hovered over yours, but did not touch it. “I'm sorry,” she said again. “Oh my god, that's incredibly fucked up. I'm so sorry. Listen, there are hotlines you can call if you need to talk to someone about—”
“You still don't understand!” Your interruption was louder than you meant it to be, and you were standing, bristling. You could feel the fur scratching below the surface of your back, trying to break through. People at other tables stared, startled. The waiter arrived with your drinks and you sat back down quickly.
“You don't understand,” you said again. “I wanted it. I needed it.” You sipped your Blue Hawaii through its long plastic straw, and the night broke apart.
You were laughing and Tiffany was crying. You hugged her and she swayed into you. You were both apologizing for something.
Now you were playing a Beetlejuice-themed pinball game. Losing. The lights and bells shrieked until you couldn't think.
Tiffany stood guard outside the bathroom as you retched into the toilet again and again. There was blood in what came up.
In the parking lot waiting for a ride. Asphalt under you, white-gold stars up above, a grinning moon. You lifted your skirt and pushed aside your underwear and pissed on the ground. The smell was acrid and comforting in its familiarity. Tiffany was making a face at you. Tiffany kept looking at you and then looking at her phone. You kept looking at her and then looking at the moon.
You had your head on her shoulder in the car. A woman was singing about loneliness over a spacy electronic soundscape.
You were at home in your bed and Tiffany wasn't beside you. Good . You wanted to have something more special with her. You wanted to be sober the first time. You wanted some sort of tenderness.
* * *
For the first time you could remember, you spent the rest of the weekend alone in your apartment and happy.
You had forgotten to exchange numbers with Tiffany, so you couldn't text her, but you found her Instagram. You spent hours scrolling through the photos in a shaft of sun. Tiffany with a puppy, with a gaggle of friends, with her mother and grandmother, in a canoe on a lake. Always laughing, starry, summer-eyed.
You didn't have an Instagram account. You thought about making one, just to message her. You kept chickening out, unfolding from your lazy circle on the armchair, pacing the dusty floor, coming back to your phone. There would be time. You'd see her at work soon enough.
When you dreamed, you dreamed she was with you. You gently bit the silky, peach-fuzzed skin around her navel until it mottled and bruised. She flipped you on your back and straddled your chest, her fair hair and pointy, pink-tipped breasts swaying above you. Her hands found your throat and squeezed, and squeezed, until you felt something start to rise. It was coming through your nostrils, your ears, your eye sockets. It was fur, smoke, a sound like the wind at night. You oozed out of your body in the shape of a great black dog, and you took her between your teeth.
In your sleep, your mouth twitched itself into something like a smile.
On Monday, the other receptionist sat behind Tiffany's desk. Lacey or Lindsay or Lily, her name was. She was bucktoothed and dour, with long fake fingernail claws you half-envied.
“Out sick,” Lacey-Lindsay-Lily told you, when you asked. Hungover , you surmised she meant. You hoped Tiffany would be all right tomorrow. On your lunch break, you bought three blood-red roses in a glass jar.
“Can you make sure Tiffany gets these?” you asked Lacey-Lindsay-Lily.
“Sure.” She tapped her claws on the desk. “You wanna leave your name? A card or something?”
You nodded. Asked to borrow some printer paper, scribbled a quick note on it. Had a great time on Friday! I've never met anyone like you before. Can't wait to see you and talk again! Hope you're feeling better. xoxo
This morning, Tiffany was back at her usual place. Finally. You'd started to get really worried. Maybe she was sick after all.
When you walked into the office, she beckoned you over. You practically ran.
“I can't accept these.” Her voice trembled as she shoved the jar of roses at you. They were wilted. It had been a couple days.
“Why not? It was nothing, I promise. I wanted to give you something.”
“I just can't. I'm sorry, it's too weird.”
“Do you want to grab lunch together? I've missed you.”
“I can't today.”
You leaned towards her. She looked pale and tired. “After work, then. Please? We don't have to actually go anywhere. We can just sit on that bench outside the library and catch up for a couple minutes.”
She sighed. “Yeah. Okay. Fine.” Her voice was stronger now. “That's all right.”
Even with the return of the roses, you felt light and full of optimism. You barely ate, barely paid attention to your work, barely noticed the way your co-workers kept giving you sidelong glances and whispering behind their hands. Your blank, bare cube made the roses seem cheerful although their heads had started to crust and curl at the edges. They still smelled alive.
You hummed to yourself as you typed. You were still humming when you left the building. Crossed the road. Walked a block down to the public library where, as promised, Tiffany was waiting on the broad metal bench, picking at its peeling paint. She started, wild-eyed, when you sat down beside her.
“Shit! I didn't see you come up.”
“Sorry,” you said. “How're you doing? How's your dog? I saw on Instagram he was having tummy problems.”
She moved away from you, down the bench. “Don't look at my fucking Instagram!” she snapped. Then, before you had time to react to that unexpected outburst, in a calmer voice: “Listen, don't take this the wrong way, but I don't want to see you again outside of work. I don't think we should be friends. And I'm straight. I don't want to get flowers from other women.”
“But I—” Your head whirled. This wasn't anything you'd been expecting. Your feelings tumbled and clashed. It was difficult to form words. “You're the one who asked me to go out with you. You're the one who asked in the first place. I thought we had fun.” You sounded so plaintive; you hated that.
“I felt sorry for you,” said Tiffany. Still calm, condescending, even. “I really did. I was trying to be nice. I thought you were just shy, see, even though everyone else thinks you're weird and stuck up and aloof. Figured I might bring you out of your shell a little.”
“And it worked! Look, I swear I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable by coming on to you. We can just be friends. I'm not even really a lesbian, honest. I'll never buy you roses again.” You might as well have been on your hands and knees, prostrate.
“That's not the point!” Tiffany snapped again. She must have hated your whining and begging as much as you did. “It worked, but you know— some people ought to stay inside their shells! I can't handle being friends with you!”
“What do you mean? Tell me what you mean!” You moved towards her on the bench, pushing her back until she was cornered against one of its curlicue armrests. You could smell her toothpaste. You could see a glimmer of fear in her face, and you liked it.
She shoved you aside and sprang to her feet. Her hands were fists, her cheeks flushed. “I mean that you're a freak. You're a fucking nutcase! You need professional help! You're a drunk and you're sexually confused and you have these absolutely demented fantasies and you don't know how to tell when you're making other people feel scared and uncomfortable! Or maybe you just don't care !”
It certainly wasn't the first time you'd heard any of this. For some reason, though, it all felt new. Each truth was a glass knife plunged between your ribs and pulled downward, razing your heart and your breath and your very bones. You were coming apart. You were dying. You wanted to be dead. You wanted to have never existed at all. The thing that hid inside you uncoiled itself. It pressed hard against the back of your skin— more knives, or pins and needles, each one forcing itself through a pore.
You fell forward onto the sidewalk, scraping your palms. There was a pressure building in your skull. Blood began to drip slowly from your nose and mouth. It seemed too bright.
Tiffany was saying your name. She sounded concerned. It might have been enough, but she was still backing away, moving farther from you, her hands hovering in front of her chest. A defensive posture, protecting her vital organs.
You erupted from your old body, skin and clothes shredding across new muscle and wet pelt. Your glass eye popped from your face like a cork from a bottle, and you realized you could see depth again. Two eyes, new eyes. Only, the colors were different.
You stood on all fours, your tail alert, your ears full of sounds and your snout full of scent. Hunger prodded you to give chase as Tiffany screamed and began to run, heels clacking, hair flying. It was easier to get the hang of your new shape than you would have thought, but you were not thinking now. You are not thinking . Only moving in pursuit, moving on instinct, finally unfettered.
* * *
You bite Tiffany's neck. You hold her down with your massive paws while you bite out her right eye and swallow it like a piece of candy. There are gunshots. Some commotion. It doesn't matter. Still alive, Tiffany sobs underneath you. She's trying to say something with her smeared red mouth. That doesn't matter, either.
Behind you, beside the shabby library bench, the remains of what you were ripple in the breeze like ribbons in a little girl's hair.