Running with the Pack

TAKE BACK THE NIGHT LAWRENCE SCHIMEL

Some have said I’m crazy. Well, lots have said that about me, actually.

I run an all-night bookstore. An all-night feminist bookstore.

Take back the night, we’d demanded in all those demonstrations and marches. This is my way of doing just that, claiming the night as my own. I’m making a safe place for women to go to at night, a reason besides the bars for going out—and someplace to stop on the way home from them.

Not that I don’t allow men in the store. Their money’s just as good as anyone else’s, so long as they’re respectful, and I certainly need that money to stay open.

And, sure, I get a lot of riffraff coming through, but I’m not the kind of woman to let that stop me. And anyway, the cops know to keep an eye on the place. The new guy especially, Albert, likes to come in every now and then, and I let him take a used mystery novel for free. His taste is for police procedurals, and I never can figure out, if he’s dealing with the stuff all day long, why he wants to read about it on his time off, but maybe he’s looking for tips and pointers. I just hope he realizes reading is no excuse for experience, especially in his line of work.

One night in mid-summer it was hot as hell and I had the doors open. Around 2:30 am—late at night or early in the morning depending on your perspective. I was standing on the porch having a cigarette, since I don’t allow smoking inside the store. Too much of a fire hazard, what with all those old dry books.

The moon was full and fat and sort of orange as it perched above the sports bar across the street, looking as if it were a basketball teetering on the rim of the hoop. I felt a powerful urge within me to jump up and slam dunk the moon right over into tomorrow, and right as I’m thinking about that metaphor a large dog climbed up the steps and walked into the store, just as casual as can be.

I looked around the street for the owner, but no one was in sight. I stubbed out my cig, and followed the dog inside. She was sitting in front of the cash register, as if waiting for me. I walked around the counter, wondering what to do. Call the cops? Or was it the fire department who handles pets, or only the ones stuck in trees and stuff?

The pooch turned to face me, just siting there, waiting. She wanted something from me, I was certain, but I had no idea what. A doggie treat? She seemed to expect me to recognize her.

I didn’t know whose dog she was, and had never seen her around town. She wasn’t wearing a collar. But something made me trust the beast.

“Come here, girl,” I said, bending down. She eagerly came towards me, and licked my face and sniffed my crotch as I ruffled the scruff of her neck and stroked her back. “Didn’t you read the sign on the door? No Dogs Allowed.”

I didn’t really mind. I like dogs, a lot in fact. I just don’t want them in my store. I was losing some customers by not allowing dogs—people out walking their dogs used to stop in and browse when I welcomed pets. But one night a man came in with a doberman and the damned creature lifted his leg on two shelves full of hardcovers. Couple hundred dollars worth of damage, and I didn’t even find out until after they’d left the store. Not even an apology. After that, the sign went up on the door. I figure I’m saving money in the long run, and who knows, maybe before I was losing customers who were afraid of dogs, who now felt welcome.

She barked twice, as if to get my attention, and then began to howl. I clapped my hands over my ears and stood up.

“Quiet there, you’ll wake the dead with that racket!” I stared down at the beast. “I should change the sign to read: No Dogs Aloud, but you couldn’t read it anyway.”

She shook her head, as if to disagree.

“If you could read it, then why’d you come in?”

She disappeared into the back of the store. Had she come here to get a book to read? I wondered if I should follow her, wondering what damage she might be doing to the stock back there, but just as I was about to set off after her she reappeared. She had a book in her jaws, which she placed at my feet. I picked it up and wiped the slobber off on my jeans. Women who run with the wolves.

I looked down at her, and her lips pulled back, revealing her large sharp teeth. She was grinning.

I felt like I was in an X-Files episode or some horror movie. She’d run with the wolves, and now was one. I wondered if she were one of my customers. Instinctively I wanted to reach out and pat the top of her head, comfort her by saying “It’s all right,” but I didn’t think it was appropriate.

Instead, I put the book down on the counter and looked out the still-open door at the dark night. “Kansas,” I said, “I’ve a feeling this isn’t Toto anymore.”

The wolf and I sat on the front steps as I smoked another cig and tried to think of what to do. Or at least, what to do next.

At first I kept trying to think of ways to cure her, since I’d fallen into the kinds of thinking that assumed that was why she had come to me. But as I looked at her, sitting next to me, I got to wondering more. Was there anything wrong with her being a werewolf? Maybe she’d come to me because I knew her, or because she knew I’d understand. I had no idea how it had happened, whether she’d wanted it or not. She didn’t seem in any distress or anything, so why fix something that wasn’t broken.

Although with canines, one did have them fixed as a preventative measure . . .

I watched the smoke drift upwards. There was just a tiny sliver of moon peeking over the edge of the building, like the slivers of moon on my fingernails. I looked over at Wolf. Would she turn back into a woman as soon as that sliver disappeared? But no—just because we no longer saw the moon didn’t mean it had set. Not yet.

I wondered about clothes. Would she have any when she changed?

I couldn’t help wondering how long it had been since I’d seen a live naked woman. Not that I don’t practice what I preach. It had just been a long time is all. I tried to remember exactly how long and gave up before I became depressed.

I tried to imagine what it would be like if it was me instead of her who’d wound up as a werewolf. And as I tried to figure out how I’d feel, I realized how much I’d changed.

I’d grown older.

I’d become such a goody two shoes. I no longer went to rallies, ACT UP meetings, no longer did any civil disobedience of any sort. I didn’t have the time, struggling to keep the bookstore open and alive.

I’d turned into a solid, conservative businesswoman—a model citizen. I was a member of the chamber of commerce. I paid my taxes like a good little girl and didn’t even complain all that much about how they were being spent. About the most radical thing I did anymore (besides run an all-night feminist bookstore) was sign petitions.

I felt sick.

I was disgusted with myself.

I’d betrayed all my earlier dreams.

Suddenly, I shoved my hand in her mouth. “Bite me,” I said. What was I thinking? Was I even thinking? As the words flew from my mouth I realized I should’ve had her bite me someplace else, that I’d be crippled with only one hand to use. Still, sometimes sacrifices must be made for the greater good and I didn’t pull my hand back.

She waited for me to reconsider, then bit down.

I flinched, but it was only a pinch, and then a prick, like having your blood type tested at the doctor’s office, the kind of prick you had to give yourself in biology lab.

And then the world dropped away in a flash of pain as her teeth broke skin.

I howled.

I have no idea what my body did. I think I thrashed about and convulsed. But my mind was numb to anything but pain. That pain was liberating, setting me free from my body. I looked down at myself, sitting on the porch of my bookstore with a wolf biting my hand, and I thought: Well, why don’t I do something?

That was when I snapped back into my body. She released my hand and I stared down at the neat puncture points her teeth had made. I was calm and detached about the blood that leaked from them; my mind kept repeating one phrase: Why don’t I do something? I’d been feeling this way for a while, I only now realized. Maybe this is why the werewolf was here, to wake me up from this stupor, reclaim me as a lesbian avenger. Not a loup garou but a lesbian garou. My mind began to race through imagined scenes, the power we would have.

I was already beginning to act like a werewolf: the bleeding was slowing as my new super-fast metabolism began to kick in. I figured I could get to liking this. I’d even get a humane fur coat out of it.

Of course, I had still to see how painful the Change would be.

“Watch the store,” I told her, then went upstairs to get gauze and neosporin.

When I got downstairs again, the wolf was gone.

In its place was a naked woman. “How do you feel?” she asked.

I looked her over: mid-thirties, dark brown hair that hung to her shoulders, slightly overweight but seemingly unselfconscious about her body. Here she was, buck naked in a used bookstore, and she was able to hold a conversation. I liked that.

My hand throbbed. It felt swollen big as my thigh. “I’ll live,” was all I said.

And a part of my mind whispered that I would, that I would heal from any ordinary wound, heal from anything but silver.

She smiled and before I could help myself—I generally had more presence of mind, but perhaps I was too flustered at seeing a naked woman again, after so long, or maybe I was just rusty from lack of practice flirting—I blurted out, “Why me?”

She closed the coffee table book she’d been leafing through and put it down on the counter. “It was the wolf. Instinct. My feet just knew where to take me. I guess they knew you’d be able to handle this.” She looked away from me, as if suddenly shy, and then added, “The wolf is not a solitary creature.”

What was she asking of me? Or had I already decided, when I’d asked her to bite me? Was I now part of her pack?

She looked to me like I was the alpha female. So I took charge.

“Human’s aren’t either,” I said, and reached for her.

I didn’t bother to open the store the next day. For one thing, it had been so long since I’d had someone in bed with me, I didn’t want to get out of it. And I’d just have to close up at sundown, anyway, which would confuse people. What if I couldn’t get rid of all my customers in time, I wondered, if I turned into a snarling bitch right in front of them. Every store needs a gimmick these days, but that just didn’t seem right for mine.

The Change began like a severe case of cramps, only it was all over my body at once, not localized to my belly. I wondered briefly if taking Midol or aspirin before the Change would help dull the sensations. I resolved to try it next time, just as my body convulsed and I lost all conscious thought to the pain.

When I uncurled my body from the floor and stretched my limbs, I knew something was different but I couldn’t place my finger on what it was. Perhaps it was because I no longer had fingers per se. I yawned, my jaws gaping wide, and I knew suddenly how sharp my teeth had become. I’d felt them, the night before, when Laura bit down on my hand.

And Laura. She, too, would have changed. I could feel her near me, the heat of her body picked up somehow through my new wolf’s senses.

I didn’t bother to look for her, but nosed open the apartment door we’d left ajar and ran down the steps. I was oddly comfortable in this new body, as if I’d lived in it once before. Perhaps being a werewolf was like riding a bicycle, a skill you didn’t forget. I jumped up and pushed open the outer door, which we’d blocked open with a rock, and ran out into the night.

This was nothing like riding a bicycle. This was like riding the wind.

I ran through the city’s streets, hearing the click of my nails on pavement, and the echo of Laura’s behind me, as we raced.

I remembered how one night a friend and I had gotten dressed in male drag and gone out. We were packing dildos in our jeans, and it gave us a glorious feeling of power. It made us feel cocky, in all sense of the word. We didn’t know where else to go, so we went to a gay bar, and we watched the men cruising each other, and were ourselves sometimes cruised, sometimes cruising, wondering what we’d do if one of these big men took us up on our offers, how they would react when they got us home and found out our dicks weren’t real. Would they want us to fuck them anyway? We never found out.

I remembered that heady sensation of power I’d felt that night, but compared to this packing was just playing a wolf in cheap clothing.

This was power. I could feel the energy coiled in my limbs as my silvery pelt stretched and moved across my wolf muscles and sinew.

This was taking back the night.

I felt the familiar anger begin to burn in my belly, a hungering for justice and retribution. I wanted a fight, to test my newfound strength, to redress the balance. The night wasn’t a safe place, only now it wasn’t as safe for the people who made it unsafe.

I could be shot, I realized. I could be knifed.

Only silver can harm a werewolf, a voice inside my head reminded me. Although I didn’t doubt that an ordinary bullet or knife would hurt like hell.

I prowled. My ears strained to pick up the sounds of a disturbance of any sort. The city seemed eerily empty of that sort of activity.

How come nobody warns you that being a vigilante is boring as hell most of the time? Where was a rapist when you needed one? Were they all off having a pot luck somewhere?

Laura seemed to know my restlessness and pulled suddenly ahead, leading me off on a new path. Had she heard something I’d missed, more accustomed to discerning stimulus from her lupine senses? Or did she just fear that I would attack some innocent passerby if I didn’t find release for this building anger soon? We passed a Dumpster with an enticing smell, but I didn’t stop to investigate. I loped after her, anticipation building as we dashed through the alleyways behind buildings. I had no idea where we were, and wondered if I’d even be able to recognize this part of town if I were on the street looking at the fronts of these buildings.

I heard a scream, and all musings ceased as my body took over. I sprinted ahead of Laura and into the alley, my body working on instinct as it leapt. A man crumpled beneath me, and I could sense another body, the screamer, nearby, cowering against the wall. His body collapsed beneath my weight, my jaws gnashing as they closed upon cloth and flesh. Even as I bit I thought of Laura’s pale thighs, like an atlas with blue vein roads leading towards the moist center of her sex.

And as my jaws locked on his shoulder and I shook my head back and forth, digging my teeth deeper into his flesh as he screamed, I had an epiphany, in the part of my brain that was still me and not fully animal: I must kill this man, or he, too, would become a werewolf, having been bitten. I must kill him or he would not merely run free, he would have this same power I now felt, use this force to attack others.

It was not hesitation when I released him, let him try to scramble away. I leapt on him again, and he twisted beneath me, rolling onto his back, his arms coming up to cover his face. My muzzle pushed through these weak defenses. My teeth sunk into his throat and tore and blood spurted into my mouth, warm and delicious, and I growled deep in my throat with the sound of the release of pleasure, as if I were coming, or had my face buried in the wetness of a woman who was coming.

There could be no turning back now.

I had tasted of the forbidden fruit, Adam’s apple, and I now had knowledge of good and evil.