Page 12 of Below the Shadow of the City
CHAPTER 12
I drain my first glass of wine and begin to stand to procure a second when he jumps from the couch and takes the glass from my hand. “I’ll grab it,” he radiates cheerful, helpful energy like he’s a restaurant server. “You can relax on the couch, you know, it won’t swallow you.” A laugh rumbles from his chest as he walks to the kitchen.
He refills my glass and then quickly drains his in a frat boy-esque chug to be able to refill his own. I don’t even realize I’m staring until he turns back to the living room and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Oh,” he chuckles nervously, “did you…?”
“Watch you chug that wine like it was a red solo cup of Natty Lite? Yes.”
“To be fair, it tastes the same no matter how quickly you drink it.” He walks over, hands my glass to me, and sits back down in his spot. I’m still on the edge of the cushion, feet firmly planted on the ground. He kicks his legs up onto the coffee table, and now I see how decidedly non-human his lower legs and feet are. His feet are much more paw-like than his hands, similar to a lion’s in a way. His tail curls up underneath him when he sits, and I get the sobering reminder that he has a tail in the first place. I gulp down half the glass in one lengthy swallow and flop back onto the couch. My stomach growls, apparently loudly enough that Maddox notices.
“Are you hungry?” He sits up straighter and looks at me.
“I could eat,” my stomach growls at me again in protest of my nonchalance. “We could dig into the cookies?” Not anything resembling proper sustenance, but I was too nervous to eat anything real all day, and now it is nearly 8 p.m.
“There’s a pizza spot around the corner, next to a bodega, if you want to run a quick errand with me and stock up,” he raises himself off the couch and pads to his jacket hanging from the barstool. When he lifts his arms to put it on, his t-shirt lifts and exposes a small glimpse of his waist again. His pants hang low on his hips and outline a gloriously round ass. I picture my arms wrapped around him and my fingers tracing his spine. I’m staring at his body and when he turns to me and gestures that it’s time to go, he gives a half smile that acknowledges he saw my ogling.
Street level feels oddly similar to the Brooklyn above ground. Brownstones line streets that are end-capped with bodegas, coffee shops, and restaurants. The streets are certainly cleaner, and there’s a notable absence of pigeons. I tilt my head up, there are easily three times as many streetlights, and buildings look to be equipped with floodlights dotted along their roofline. Thanks to the excessive lighting, it’s oddly bright out, but not in a sterile way. The glow is warm, as if it’s made to replicate actual sunlight. It’s difficult to see above the tops of the buildings, some of them are tens of stories tall, but it looks like the ceiling of this entire city is just a massive concrete slab.
“Do they ever turn off the lights here?” I ask as I continue to take in the surroundings.
“They dim them around ten, but never totally off, it would be completely pitch black considering we’re about thirty stories below ground right now,” he replies. “It’s not like your apartment basement where you at least get a tiny bit of light.”
“And it’s always been like this?”
“As long as I can remember, I grew up in a townhouse a few blocks over. Some of the buildings have gotten refurbished, and when stuff breaks it gets fixed, but for the most part it looks just like it did when I was a kid.”
We pass a section of green space with a few small trees, benches, and bushes with a playground tucked in the back. A couple, one of them a wolfman and the other a woman with the legs of a goat, sit together on a bench with her head resting on his shoulder as they eat ice cream.
Even though we’re “outside” there’s no breeze or any fresh air. I assume there’s some sort of vent or filtration system in place to cycle the air, because it feels only slightly stale here. Between the artificial lighting and the indoor temperature, it feels more like a set than a place where anyone would live. Notably, there are also no cars in sight, only people, well, creatures milling about.
I don’t stare too long at anyone in particular, but I get a few odd glances from others walking past. But considering I’m in a society built for mythical beings exiled by human society, the reception is much warmer than one would assume. I hasten my steps to Maddox as he strides down the sidewalk, I’d spent too long taking it all in. After a few feet, he turns and checks that I’m still behind him, slowing his pace so I can catch up to him.
We walk a few blocks and are met with a red neon sign advertising Vaccaro’s Pizzeria. A half-man half-snake and a large green-skinned man with tusks sticking out from his lower lip stand under its green awning eating slices off of paper plates. Maddox gives them both a nod and opens the door for me.
The counter is manned by a massive and imposing minotaur leaning on the glass countertop, but its interior is otherwise identical to any cheap pizza spot I’ve been to. Right down to the red vinyl booths, cheesy art of Italian landmarks, and chalkboard menu.
Maddox greets the minotaur excitedly and falls into conversation quickly. They’re clearly good friends, they talk about gaming together and jointly rag on mutual buddies.
I spend much of their conversation looking at my shoes to keep myself from staring at the bull-headed man working the cash register who’s also stolen a few glances at me. He’s handsome, I think, for a mythical creature that until now was fictional. There’s a gold ring in his nose, and the way his fur tufts at the top of his head looks like a boyish haircut.
Maddox orders us an extra large cheese, which from looking at the size guide on the side of the counter, is much larger than the average extra large pie. I quirk a brow when he selects the size but he gestures to his own stature and gives me a look that says of course he’s going to polish it off.
When he pays, he lays a hand across the small of my back, a motion that happens without so much as a second thought. His claws barely graze my shirt before they jerk back at the realization of what he’s done. At even the smallest touch from him I feel like I’m about to leap from my skin, it’s completely electric.
Fuck the pizza, fuck grabbing sodas at the bodega, I need to be thrown atop his mattress, and soon.
What I need to get this lust out of my system so we can go our separate ways and I can spend the next few months pretending none of this happened.
We don’t skip the bodega. A gray tabby weaving through the aisles jumps up and turns into a middle-aged portly woman who greets us warmly. Every nerve in my body leaps from my skin at the surprise, but Maddox tugs at my sleeve with his free hand not holding the pizza and directs me towards the goods he’s after. We wind up and down the aisles, most of the shelves carry brands I recognize, but there’s a few I don’t.
I read over a few unique bags of chips while he openly deliberates between Sweet Chili or Cool Ranch Doritos.
“You really don’t have a preference?” He asks. I shake my head. I’m ready to get a move on back to his place and satiate my hunger, both literal and figurative.
He stands up and walks closer to me, I tilt my head up to meet his eyeline.
“I’m just trying to make sure you get exactly what you want tonight, Sigrid.” His voice is a low growl and his eyes track my body as if he knows exactly how needy I am for him.
I swallow. Hard. Heat rushes to my cheeks. I want you ravishing me atop your mattress, I think. The register is within earshot, and I’m not entirely positive I want the shop owner hearing me beg.
I hold up a bag that’s completely unfamiliar to me instead, the label is non-descript save for a few buzzwords that tell me whatever's inside is a “taste sensation.”
“What’s the deal with these ones?” I ask.
“The ‘taste sensation’ they’re advertising is vague meat flavoring to appeal to the more carnivorous types down here.” I gently place the bag back on the shelf and give it a pat and Maddox bursts out laughing. He ultimately selects Cool Ranch, but not until he’d asked over and over if I had a preference. To which I’d insisted over and over that I didn’t.
The coolers near the front hold sodas, iced teas, juices, and thick red liquid with A’s and B’s and O’s on the label. Next to the prepackaged foods there’s raw meat cut into chunks, neatly placed in a plastic cup with a lid like they’re slices of mango or pineapple. It looks so natural in the fluorescent-lit case that I forget what I’m actually looking at.
He clutches two lemonades with unfamiliar branding in one hand while the bag of chips balances atop the pizza box. I look at him, clearly unsure if these are similar to the bottles of blood in the cooler or meat flavored chips. “Locally made,” he says. “Nothing magical, or made for carnivores, or poisonous, just really good.”
In a whirlwind we return to his apartment. I was still taking in his neighborhood and its residents and his apartment building. He flips the pizza box open and waggles his fingers a bit before pulling out a slice. He folds it in half and eats the piece before I even have time to grab one for myself.
“More wine?” He asks. I nod, the tingling buzz that was at the back of my head before we left on our excursion has faded. I need to recoup my liquid courage. He eats another piece in a few bites as he walks across the kitchen and pulls a different bottle from the pantry, “I know this one is really expensive, but fuck it, I haven’t drank it yet, and there’s no time like the present.”
Our glasses are topped off, and he tosses two more slices of pizza onto a plate before settling back onto the couch.
“Okay, so like, what exactly do you call this place?” I inch back into baseline small talk since climbing across the cushions and straddling his hips is off the table for now.
“…An apartment?” Maddox says slowly, his eyes meet mine with a look that’s a mix of concern and amusement.
“I know what an apartment is, I mean like, this city, this whole underground place. There’s gotta be some cool name for it or something?”
“Metro Underground is usually thrown around, the Below Realm is used by some older people, or weirdos who like to make it sound more mysterious than it is. I usually just say Williamsburg,” he shrugs.
I slump onto the couch. “How on earth do you live in a magical underground society that is somehow boring?”
“I don’t think I ever said it was magical?—”
“No, no, it’s a nice place, I just assumed that there would be more, you know? Like some enchanted castle, wrought iron gates, mysterious voices, hidden caverns. Instead you’re in what looks like a nice loft in a good, walkable neighborhood.”
He laughs and shakes his head at my comment.
We continue talking about nothing in particular. He points out the art on his walls, the tchotchkes and books on his shelves, and the vinyls in his cabinets. The kinds of conversations we had on the phone are seamlessly replicated in real life, which makes it all the more difficult to know that it’s going to have come to an end after tonight. It doesn’t have to, you know, a quiet voice tells me in the back of my mind. I brush it off, I can’t let naivety take over right now. I’ll focus on the present and the beast of a man sitting across from me.
There’s a silent standoff between the two of us to initiate something physical. A hand wandering closer, a body shifting towards the other. Subtle movements that would be hardly perceptible to someone on the outside, but are just enough to make the other notice. It’s been so long since I’ve tried to make the first move with someone that I don’t remember exactly how it all falls into place. The casual hookups of my early twenties were far quicker and sloppier than what’s happening right now.
As badly as I want to rush through things so they can be cleanly severed, just being in someone’s presence like this is really, really nice. It's a fact that I truly hate admitting to myself.