Running With the Pack (21 page)

“They both minister to the sick . . . ”

“Goblins and vampires?” Yvette asked.

“No, prostitutes and priests. I’d even hazard that they’re equally likely to endure distasteful things by squeezing their eyes shut and thinking about the good they’ll do with the money.”

“Zowie, self-induced hallucinations are confusing.”

Yvette splashed hot water on her face, trying to make sense of the situation.

“If you’re going to talk to me, please don’t do it in exclamatory asides.”

“I wanted this to help. None of this offers a doorway out.”

“You’re right.”

“Plus, and I know I’m whining, they go and call it bispecial, but there’s no way to combine them. I’m so fed up with this externally-imposed inertia that I’d consider the willowy grace of a vampire if it was coupled with the low center of gravity and brute strength of a goblin . . . ”

“No, you wouldn’t. You’d still have to kill to live and you’d rather go splat from great heights than succumb to murdering innocent people. By the way, from two dozen stories, water does as much damage as concrete.”

“That’s not comforting.”

“You’re not locked here in the name of comfort.”

“They know I’m having trouble deciding. I can leave whenever I want.”

“Stuck in neutral isn’t a decision. And you can’t
live
whenever you want, so what’s the difference?”

The hot water suddenly went cold and Yvette mumbled about how much she disliked the bind she was in, how she’d rather be a prostitute or a priest, but the ghostly voice was gone. She was afraid her hallucination had gotten bored and decided to ignore her. Sometimes it felt that way with dead friends too.

Yvette wasn’t sure why her dreams were always about Timothy. No amount of pondering got things to make sense.

She barely knew the boy. Originally, the dreams had been about strangers she’d met during the day: someone who came by the supper club on a tall ladder to change the dead light bulbs in the ceiling, an elderly woman who played chess in the park, a stockbroker who fed pigeons on her break.

Timothy, she presumed but didn’t tell anyone, symbolized innocence. He was twelve, with longish hair and a quick wince of a smile. They’d had two conversations of less than three minutes but she considered him a good kid. A kid who shouldn’t be eaten by vampires or goblins, even if they were fastidious, using a silk napkin, fine china and antique flatware.

In short, problems filled her head by the cartload.

Yvette wondered if vampires or goblins could reproduce. The answer had to be no, because no one had photographed a vampling or a gobblekin, but there were rumors. Couldn’t there be a way to get darkness or souls without having to eat people? Even in her dreams, even with the decorum of napkins and cutlery, it was horrid to imagine. No amount of imaginary black pepper or imaginary hot sauce made the idea even remotely palatable or digestible.

Shivering, Yvette turned the water off and dressed in the shower stall just in case someone else entered the bathroom, putting her baby blue robe and matching flip-flops back on. Quietly, she went to her room and locked the door.

Her music machine read her mood and played a cacophony that sounded like she was smashing every smashable object in the room: mirror, bed, the clock above the door. Yvette heard the sound of her clothes being torn apart and then the sound of the music machine being destroyed.

Then the machine played silence.

A few hours later, Dr. Rothgate shook her awake and dragged her to his office.

Something was very wrong with Dr. Rothgate and it took Yvette a while to figure it out.

She was so sleepy, as the wild-eyed psychiatrist bade her rest on his couch, it seemed like she woke up mid-conversation:

“ . . . but I have no desire to eat people . . . ”

“Appetites grow over time, like tumors or allergies. Existence, be it breathing or pogosticking or wandering around trying to remember where you’ve lost your keys, requires extremely complicated machinery. Taken as a vast enough ecosystem, every sprig of existence needs predation. Everyone needs a twinge of
momento mori
, a reminder that we’ll eventually die.”

“Even monsters? I thought monsters lived forever.”

“Oh, well,” Dr. Rothgate said while adjusting the strap holding a strange pair of goggles to his face, “it’s one of those conundrums of negative capability. You have to keep two conflicting ideas in your head at the same time. My research suggests that the best results come from a simultaneous belief that you’ll live forever and that you could die at any moment. It reinforces the Zen koan where you attempt to have both complete commitment and complete detachment. Then again, that’s only useful if you care about outcomes . . . ”

The sun coming through the shaded window seemed to grow brighter, forcing Yvette to squint her eyes.

“ . . . my dear, these conditions aren’t brought on by loveless marriages, solipsism, drug addiction or manic-depressive paranoia. Early on, before she freaked out, back when she babbled more and shrieked less, my first patient told me that, ‘Anguish was her prey.’ Now I know what she meant.”

“Was it Larissa?”

“Don’t say her name. It was far before her.”

“How long have you treated bispecials?”

“Since the beginning, quite a long and desiccated span of time.” Dr. Rothgate cleared his throat. “It was her mother. She was the first of the goblins.”

They both turned away from the bright window shade. Dr. Rothgate had a long draught from his brandy bottle, then handed it to Yvette.

“I thought it couldn’t pass to kids. And why didn’t Larissa choose goblin like her mom?”

“It can’t. Anastasia Blackweight birthed Larissa before she was afflicted.”

“Remember when we met? You wouldn’t have called it an affliction . . . ”

“I say many things.”

“What did she mean, ‘Anguish is our prey?’ Larissa said the same thing to me. Skip the hemming and hawing about how she was a suicidal lunatic. I know you want answers.”

“I want to help you, Yvette. It’s all I want, I think.”

He took the brandy bottle back.

“I’m the only way you can save yourself,” Yvette said.

“I’m beyond saving. Anyway, she hated her mother. I shouldn’t tell because you’re still trying to sort things out—we don’t believe in shock or confrontation here—but the anguish that twisted and tortured me has vanished now that I’ve succumbed, er, finally decided.”

“Yeah, you were like me, but I can’t figure out which way you’ve gone.”

“Good. I don’t want you to know.”

“This process has taken quite a toll on me. I just want to do what’s right.”

“In France, a sixteenth century judge sentenced six hundred shapeshifters to death. The
Malleus Maleficarum
has a section on how people change and that was written in 1484.”

“I’ve changed my mind again. I’m going to leap off a bridge if that’s the only way to keep from hurting people.”

“You know she talked like that, don’t you? Are my notes right, did you know her?”

“We talked a few times. Only one conversation stands out. I didn’t realize how momentous it would seem in retrospect. I try to hallucinate semi-lucid conversations with the imaginary version of her that I remember, but she’s dead.”

“If you only sleep once or twice a week for long enough, everything’s dead.”

“Dr. Rothgate, you’re freaking me out.”

“I’m sorry. We theorists aren’t good at forcing outcomes,” the doctor said, before thanking Yvette for her time and encouraging her to rest. He stumbled out the door, leaving her alone in his office. Yvette couldn’t tell if he was having difficulty walking because of drunkenness or because his back was changing shape.

Amidst shelves warped with arcane books, two paintings dominated the walls. One was an abstract and roiling sea of red purples and purple reds. A three-dimensional claw, presumably sculpted from modeling paste, reached out from the bloody waters, reaching out to grab the painting’s viewer.

The other showed a young goblin girl staring at a storefront window. The window displayed a pink chiffon dress fit for a fairy princess. Tears rimmed the eyes of the girl with pointy ears and green skin.

Rising from the couch, Yvette resolved to delay her decision until she liked one of the options before her. It seemed better to suffer and try to talk to the dead than become an evil creature. In the past, she’d chosen deadlines like Arbor Day or Oscar Night, but her self-imposed deadlines had come and gone, just excuses.

Conversely, Yvette had accepted that she and the rest of the world were going crazy and getting worse.

Over the next two days, she felt like she was sleepwalking. Dr. Rothgate didn’t come to find her, preferring to stay in hiding. She understood. Their talk had left her even more fragmented than she’d been before. If Yvette had possessed a belfry, it would’ve been overflowing with bats.

Another day passed, lethargic and soggy. Yvette dreamed of being a mother, envisioning her children as a bouncing brood of vamplings or gobblekins. The consequences were so dire. Why did it have to be binary? She imagined how pussy willows wiggled in the wind so they wouldn’t break. Was the process like having a totem animal? Perhaps body modification would help with her transition. Whiskers implanted, stripes tattooed and teeth filed to little points. And, suddenly, her nightmares weren’t always about being a vampire or a goblin. She felt less weird, occasionally picturing her dream self as a wolf-creature. She would need surgery to make her outsides as freaky as her insides, but it struck her as a splendid compromise. She fell back asleep, briefly.

When Yvette woke, she was licking her lips and horrified to be doing it. White roses had been delivered. And they were turned inside out, puckered by the rapid advance of her sorrowful condition.

It was still called Willis & Rothgate, even though Dr. Rothgate’s presence was barely felt. New crops of bispecials meandered in and crept out. Yvette stood still while the world of sickness, wellness and horrible compromises scrolled past her. Over time, it felt less and less natural, more and more artificial.

Even though they’d said they weren’t coming back until she’d made up her mind, Yvette’s parents did finally return. They spoke in harsh but hushed tones.

“We heard you’re considering vampire,” her father said.

“I’d rather die.”

“Then perhaps you’ve decided on goblin,” her mother said.

“Have I mentioned that it’s not like a costume party? I don’t know who I want to be. The whole thing’s permanent, you know. The last thing I want is to despise myself for choosing to be someone I shouldn’t be.”

“Permanency’s better than trickery. You’re going to have to live your consequences,” her parents said in unison.

Yvette called several candystripers and demanded that they show her mother and father out. Yvette pretended that her parents would’ve apologized if she’d given them enough time. But she knew it was pretense. She invented people inside her head because it was better than being let down, continuously, by everyone she’d ever met.

The flat sterility of the halls and walls had greater echoes of life than Yvette did. Every breath was drudgery. She shambled to her room. The mood music played one of the Berlioz symphonies about getting hanged then some mopey darkwave ballad that Yvette kind of liked. She thought she’d smashed the machine. For now it was okay, but she’d imagine smashing the stupid thing again if she had to, in dreams or reality or somewhere in between, whatever it took to scrabble together a half-pretty sense of place . . .

Yvette resolved to stay institutionalized, as long as it took. Anything to prevent herself from eating people.

What was there to do?

Tired, always sleepy, Yvette went back to bed. Dr. Rothgate came in the night and took her to his office again. He had trouble walking, his shuffling gait making double-footfall patters in the hallway. He’d lost the distinctive goggles of his last visit and seemed to be having problems with his vision.

“I’m here to warn you.”

“You sound like everyone else.”

“You haven’t been out of the Institute’s walls for quite some time. Things have gotten eerie and ridiculous out there. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that days are still their normal lengths or that maps lead people where they’re going . . . ”

A gooey dollop of blood was clinging to Dr. Rothgate’s forehead. She still couldn’t tell which way he’d gone. She wanted to clarify or crystallize her decision but wasn’t sure how knowing Dr. Rothgate’s choice would help. Yvette still hated both her options.

“You’re summing it up perfectly. I want to be a person who rescues people when they’re lost in those dark nights you described. I want to bring them a warm blanket and a candle, maybe a backup snack if they’ve been foolish enough to get lost without one. When the world goes creepy, everyone needs comfort and snacks.”

“Wait. What do you want?” Dr. Rothgate asked, his face gnashing and sliding sideways like he’d become a demon or something far worse than a vampire or goblin.

Yvette didn’t see any pruning shears anywhere. She decided she was awake, not having another nightmare.

“I want to be a giving and noble werewolf who wanders late nights when the walls between the worlds are thin. I’ll have a large framepack with lots of helpful supplies like: needle-nosed pliers, bandages, protein shakes, safety pins, extra batteries. You know, I could walk the night and have a ready array of supplies to give fellow travelers: new, accurate maps, clean, dry socks, small musical instruments, aspirin . . . ”

Dr. Rothgate interrupted, talking into an indestructible tape recorder, “I’m afraid the patient is not responding to treatment. Her politics are the politics of madness.”

Dr. Willis appeared from nowhere, head lolling from side-to-side like a weary jack-in-the-box. Dr. Willis shouted, “This isn’t about getting to do whatever you want. Life is a brutal, complicated, and messy adventure . . . ”

“Right! And I want to a be a considerate and helpful werewolf . . . ”

Now Yvette was of the opinion that she was dreaming after all. She used her hands to stop her chin from trembling.