Body of Immorality (16 page)

His thoughts gelled, liquefied.

Darkness behind your lids is the only song to which you belong.

Harper smiled. He hadn’t realized he had a knack for rhyme.

But was it
his
voice or someone else’s?

Just sleep. You’ll find it eventually, stay with me forever, dream in magic and simplicity.

How could he
not
go willingly into the dark?

Vaguely, Harper remembered going to work, Corey sending him home. He’d lost the day, but what did he care? He needed rest. He had the whole week off, and he’d already forgotten. That made lying here in even better.

He didn’t have to go back until…Monday. That was…He counted the days on his fingers. He couldn’t remember. Forgetfulness soothed the edges of memory.

That’s what I love about sleep. You’re never responsible for what you dream.

A knock at the door startled him, however, pulling him from his solitude.

Grumbling, Harper stood up and ambled almost drunkenly to the door. He pinched the bridge of his nose, cursing as he unlocked the door. He pulled it wide, letting in a brisk wave of cold air. It curled around his legs, making him shiver.

Who would want to disturb him at this hour? What time was it anyway? It must be four in the morning!

Trying to focus, his eyes unglued to copper curls, a face scrunched in anger and worry. God, he missed those green eyes!

“Helen?” Harper said, as if needing confirmation. Maybe
this
was a dream.

She wore a yellow and purple ski-parka. Her hair was a corona of burning embers with the light from the streetlamps behind her.

“Are you drunk?” Helen said, clearly upset.

“Why? Do you have some?”

She shook her head. Harper pulled the door wide, motioning her inside, and closed the door. Helen took off her jacket, revealing a warm, white sweater underneath. She wore tight blue jeans, white and purple tennis shoes.

Harper sat on the couch, and Helen instantly drilled him:

“What the hell’s the
matter
with you, Harper?”

“Just tired,” he said.

Harper shook off Helen’s irritation with a wave of his hand. What a nuisance girlfriends could be!

“Don’t you think you’ve been ‘just tired’ for long enough? How long have you been doing this? Are you taking drugs, Harpsey? Do you need a doctor? Are you trying to avoid me?”

Why did everyone call him Harpsey? He wasn’t a
girl,
for God’s sake! And how many questions were people going to ask before they gave him time to answer? No
wonder
he slept all the time!

Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes. “No sweety,” he said. “I fine. Just tired, doctor, all the time. Want sleep. Nothing more.”

“Haven’t you
been
sleeping?” Helen’s said.

Harper nodded. “More sleep.”

“I’ve been trying to
call!”
Helen said, exasperated. “I’ve been coming
over,
and you never even answer the
door!”

“Sorry,” he managed, salvaging a moment to calm her.

“What’s the
matter
with you?”

Harper tried to shrug, not making it, and replied with the same muted voice: “Doh-no. Jus-tire.”

“Tired?” she asked, incredulous. “For
eight
weeks?”

“Is that how long it’s been?” Harper said.

“Jeez!” she said. “I can’t believe you never even tried to
call!”

“I’m sorry, babe, sugar cake,” he said. “Pie, plumb, sexy softy, lovely thighs.”

Helen forgave him by giggling. She sat beside him on the couch.

“Eight weeks!” she said, mostly to herself. “I thought you were through with me. I almost didn’t come
over!”

Harper smiled, drifting off to sleep.

“Not to be rude or anything, Harpsey, but Corey’s right. He said you look like ca-ca. Not
cocoa.
Ca-ca. Normally I try to be nice. But he’s right. You look like shit, Harp. Won’t you tell me what’s wrong? You’re not quite the sugar cake I remember. Don’t you love you’re dancing girl anymore?”

Harper smiled and let out a relaxed sigh.

Did she dance?

“Yes,” he said. “My doll, my spice of life, gunny-sack. I miss you terribly. Tears in my eyes.”

Helen attributed this meaningless ramble to exhaustion. She rolled her eyes and shook her head, cursing under her breath.

“Is that how long it’s been?” Harper said.

“Harper!” Helen said, impatiently.

He went away again for good. He leaned over and put his head on her lap. The warm comfort of her thighs was better than soft pillows.

*

Helen, with Harper’s head on her lap, dragged her fingers through his hair. At least he was still alive, she thought, living, just incoherent, but sleep-deprived. She wondered what she could do to help him.

Suddenly, though, Harper twitched violently while on her lap. Helen frowned and looked down at him. What was that…
sound?

Harper’s extremities hummed with vibration. The twitches turned violent, virtually catastrophic. Harper, scaring Helen now, underwent a series of lunatic convulsions. To Helen’s bleak and abominable horror, a series of spasmodic, life-threatening fits rocked his entire body.

Her eyes grew wide. Harper rolled off of her lap and onto the floor. She screamed in panic:

“
Harper! Harper! Oh my God! Baby! What’s wrong!”

She didn’t know what to do! Delirium raced through her mind!

Run to the phone,
her mind screamed.
Grab him, take him, hold him close! Get him to the car! Where the hell is the nearest hospital?

Something had seized Harper from head to toe. It wasn’t epilepsy, a rearing, teeth-clenching pain. This was something violently nightmarish in every way.

As Helen’s eyes grew wider, Harper’s appendages…
lengthened.
He sucked in air, clenched his eyes shut, biting back on the pain.

Helen shouted and screamed at the same time:

“
Harper! Oh, my God! What’s wrong? Harper! Please, oh, God! Baby! Baby! Tell me what’s happening! Please, Harper! What-in-God’s-name-’s-the-matter?”

In the vault of Harper’s brain, he thought:

Not to worry, love. Still dreaming by the shore. Nothing to concern your pretty red curls about. I think it’s something to do with folklore.

Manipulation steered his flesh.

Stricken with horror, Helen thought:
Phone, door, hold him tight, lover, Harper, phone, door…

She watched him grow—his body lengthening under the throes of change—and couldn’t think of a single thing to do. Not realizing she was doing it, she retreated instead, climbing up the back of the couch, where she pressed herself against the wall. Her head was under a Bugs Bunny clock. Bugs stood in a pose with a caption over his head, reading: “I like Harper more than carrots.” Helen had bought it for him for Christmas. Harper had always liked Bugs Bunny. He’d always referred to him as, “That cute, obnxious little bastard.”

Helen closed her eyes and screamed in horror.

Not happening not real not happening not real! Harper is still there! Save him!

Phone! Pick up the phone! Hospital hospital hospital!

On his hands and knees, Harper lifted his runny snout to the ceiling and tried to bay. Instead, he shrieked in agony. Black hair rustled with incredulous speed over his naked body. Despite the barbaric and monstrous scene, Helen’s boyfriend wept while undergoing his change. A new carapace emerged at an impossible rate. Girth materialized from nowhere. Slithering, shifting sounds erupted under his skin. His bones popped, re-aligning themselves, moving and stretching to adjust to his new integument. His ears stretched to long, elfish points.

It’s like a bad, horrible B movie not real, not alive!
Helen thought.
You do not open your eyes and see this kind of thing! That’s why we watch and read about it. Because it’s
not
real! We laugh at how
unreal
it is, and this is
not
real!

Sharp nails split the cones of Harper’s fingers. Blood spilled onto the carpet. The transformation wreaked havoc on his torn and mangled body. Blood oozed from his hands, feet, and mouth. The size of the beast was too big for Harper’s body to withstand. Helen’s boyfriend was not on drugs, but he
was
sick. Something was definitely wrong because he was…
a werewolf?

Helen thought:

He’s a giant, berserking, crazily wacko, monster wolf! My boyfriend is a howler, and ancient myth in modern society!

A large, dog-like snout emerged on Harper’s face, long, lolling tongue, nefarious eyes, and claws.

Harper was a crazy killing machine, a freak of all things…a
werewolf?

How is this possible?
Helen’s mind shrieked, and for a split-second, she suppressed the urge to bray with donkey laughter.

Strands of blood ran down his arms and legs. Blood spilled over his lips. Massive teeth ripped open his guns.

Was he still in there, somewhere inside? Did he know it was happening, what he
was?

Harper’s spine rippled, growing, threatening to tear his back open.

Helen thought:

It had once been you, my dearest Harpsey-chord. In there somewhere, it is always you. Can you hear me? Do you love me? Sing those songs of yours!

According to what she saw on film, heard about in folklore, it was all wrong. Nothing merited the sight before her…

Helen breathed heavily, losing her breath. She was hyperventilating. She didn’t realize she’d
stopped
breathing altogether.

News broadcasts drilled her brain, anchors smiling—

Late breaking news senselessly slaughtered don’t know what or whom could’ve caused this developments as they come why this would happen such a nightmarish thing for our families children the shocked community and surrounding areas continue their investigations horrendous thing impossible to imagine what to whom any information calls greatly received more at ten—

But how?
How?

Helen wanted only a second to think.

She darted a glance out the window and looked at the sky.

But there’s no moon,
she thought.
No moon at all.

The massive, ridiculous thing that
used
to be Harper swung its wolf-like head toward her. Wild black hair bristled over its head. It took Helen a second to realize she was under a spell.

Diabolical eyes like polished black glass studied her above a wide, wet snout. Angry lips rippled backwards over rows of sharp, destructive teeth.

It was Valentine’s Day. That’s why she was here. If ever a day called for reciprocation, today was the day.

Helen braced herself for impact. She clenched her eyes shut, stiffened her shoulders, and turned to the side. She did not scream.

When it came, it was like a screaming locomotive. Harper leapt from the floor and drove Helen straight into the wall. The impact alone was enough to kill her.

Teeth and claws dug into her flesh. Harper locked his mouth onto Helen’s face, shaking his head back and forth, claws like a whirlwind, raking through muscle and bone. Helen’s blood erupted volcanically through the air. Bit by bit, she arced out and over him like ribbons of confetti. She showered the walls, the ceiling, the floor…

Not full enough, Harper discarded what was left of Helen, jumped off the couch, and sailed through the living room window, making a terrible crash. He turned his face to the sky and howled at an empty moon. He sniffed cold, February air, then leapt off the balcony and to the ground. His stomach had high demands, and Harper Ellis was a beast that didn’t like to go hungry.

*

If someone had cast a spell, he couldn’t remember. Hadn’t he taken Helen earlier to the zoo earlier that month, so she could photograph wolves, a class she was taking?

When it was over, he thought of himself as Harper Ellis, local driver for Benny’s Cola, Helen’s beau, and nothing more. He wasn’t aware of a change, how it could’ve come about
should
he remember. Why was it important to deliver cold soda in February anyway? No wonder Corey let him take a vacation.

Harper found his way home after each slaughter without trouble, as if the wolf (a separate entity) steered him where he needed to go. For two months, he’d encountered no trouble at all. He used his instincts as a wolf to understand what he needed, where to sleep, and where to get up in the morning.

Frozen in the snow, he was able to slip—without conjecture—through the public eye. He was aloof to his life as a driver, his quiet time alone.

To sleep.

The taste of blood filled his mouth from the nights before, but he passed it off as morning breath. He would’ve questioned his miraculous recovery, if he’d been awake enough to understand. How could he be so extreme in his double existence? How could he live two completely separate lives?

Unaware, traveling naked—despite his return to mortality—the beast took control.

How strange this life, unaware of my present plight, far from the streets, impossible to roam, I keep thinking of Helen and her obsession with phones.

Why would I need a doctor? I've never felt this good!

From the fields, he ran. The beast guarded Harper’s life as much as its own. It protected him in order to assuage its thirst.

Harper was oblivious to Helen’s remains, the destruction to his apartment. She was merely a new coat of paint, a figment of his imagination. His neighbors said nothing about the broken window. The scene was too frightening for them to knock and inquire.

Purple fabric, yellow shreds of her coat hinted she’d been here, but Helen remained in the back of his mind, similar to his double life. He knew something was wrong, but he was too tired, too confused to understand. He attributed any wrongdoing to his sleeping mind. When cognizance came to the foreground, his only dilemma was sleeping too much.

The winter, fewer passersby on the street, allowed him to continue his rampage. He was as unsuspecting as anyone else. If he’d seen the news broadcasts, he’d have been just as shocked and horrified. He might’ve begun to wonder…