Page 56

Oh Christ, Karl, CHRIST . . .

Christ but I’ve missed this, you could-be-dead-for-all-I-know Nazi nutbar of mine—missed doing this, with you—

But: It’s not true, and I know it, even as the charge begins to build. It’s just my fume-filled mind tricking me, my body looping back into those painfully pleasurable patterns of hurt and hunger it knows so well. And the idea that I could be such easy prey, even for my long-lost lover’s ghost . . . the mere idea of me overtaken by dumb ecstasy, rucking the sheets and howling, then sagging forward like I’ve just been disemboweled: A corpse myself, skinned and gutted and left to soften like the splayed remains of some—

(bear’s)

—last meal—

Jesus, it all just makes me so damn . . . mad.

And I come awake, mid-spurt, amid smoke and mess and oh fuck, are those flames? Fucking cabin’s on fucking fire, how the fuck did that happen—like I kicked the oil-lamp over in my sleep and it hit the rug, spread and sparked across those bare pine boards where my boots fell and shit, can’t believe I’m gonna have to run barefoot through this crap—slamming hard into the wall where I think the door should be and bouncing, spinning into that filthy screen, my Berkana-arm punching through in a spray of wounds, broken metal threads already hot enough to cauterize on contact—

Stumbling out into the cold night air, with pine-needles stabbing the soles of my feet; turning back, squinting and gasping, to see the whole damn thing engulfed beyond saving. Shivering in the bear-shirt, clutching myself. Thinking—

Hey, look, boys ‘n’ girls . . . a real live Viking funeral, just like on TV. Everything Karl ever had, gone up in flames—

—all except me.

More questions, though, as the ash flutters upwards: Where’re my glasses? Inside, of course—unsalvageable by now, mere melted slag. But . . .

. . . I can still see.

And that smell, mounting, that back-of-the-throat strong stink—that must be me too, right? Burnt hair, burnt flesh, burnt bear-hide. Looking down to confirm it and seeing the charred palms of my hands

poking from the bear-shirt’s paws, my shins already swollen with water-blisters . . . but why can’t I feel it? And—what—is that—

(other)

—smell?

At which point I turn again, further, towards the first shadowy rim of trees, and see the bear come out of the woods.

Five feet at the shoulder. Twelve standing up, clawed hands tentatively drooping inward, childish as a Tyrannosaur’s vestigial clutch. Its fur is sandy, touched with dull hints of gold; its muzzle matted with blood and honey, underbelly-fur shaggy with burrs. I can smell its breath from here, even over myself, over the fire: Old bees, fresh carrion. Honey-sweet blood-reek.

The bear is huge. The bear seems hungry. And its tiny eyes, so dull and atavistic, which widen almost beyond the limits of their narrow orbits as they turn my way—as it catches my (familiar?) scent, and moans with goony ursine lust—

—are blue.

(Karl.)

Karl, in his shirt, in “his” bear. In his natural animal form.

(That bastard.)

Because if this is Karl’s shirt I’m wearing . . . and that’s Karl, then . . .

. . . I have been seriously screwed.

Find your bear, kill it. Wear its skin—

Yeah, okay, got it. But once you put it on, once you change—

(as is becoming more than obvious)

—you can’t ever take it off again.

Which makes this not Karl’s shirt, then, at all. Made by Karl, for certain-sure, back when he still had hands—imprinted with his musk, his enticing flavor, before he traded his tender human skin for the far less permeable coat he now wears. But not on his own behalf. No.