kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"MemoirOfTwoBecomings.0"

words

Memoir of Two Becomings -----------------------

May 28, 2005 11pm -- May 29, 2005 4am

2450 words

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I fantasize that the next operation will make it real.

The fangs, the hair...

I'll wake up.

And the stretched muscles of my throat will rip out a true and bestial ode to the moon.

I fantasize, and it gets harder to hold a job; harder to walk down the streets.

Even my friends, those hardcore wannabes, even they look at me funny these days, and still I'm nothing close to my dream.

I met this chick at the office, though.

She smiled at me.

I would have smiled back, but I'm sort of self-conscious about the fangs.



I asked about her, last visit.

Of course, privacy and all that. But I have a first name.

It's funny how much that matters to me.

I'm sort of stuck for how to move further, though.

Maybe I'll just see her again.

I don't want her to think I'm stalking her.

I mean, stalked by a werewolf--that's just creepy.

I'm trying to remember her face, but the only thing that comes to mind is some angel--no, some saint, some renaissance saint.

I wonder if that's what she's going for.

Somehow, I don't think so.

Jen.



I ran into Jen.

Actually, I was in the coffee shop next to the office, hiding myself behind a newspaper.

I guess my hairy knuckles really do stick out as much as I think they do--or she's sensitive to that sort of thing.

Anyway, she came up to me. I was listening to some Anthrax, because it's loud and angry, and because it helps drown out people talking about me--or at least, it drowns out my imagination.

Then, my hearing is getting pretty good.

Let me tell you, dog whistles piss me off like the fucking Hulk.

Anyway.

She came up to me and tapped me on the finger; her hand was cold--I could feel the chill through my calluses. Rough.

But her voice.

Like the whispering waves, rolling, oh man. I can't describe it.

And her face--if not a saint, then a goddess. Something so compelling in it.

She didn't say what she was becoming. I didn't have the nerve to ask, though I'm trying to put bits together. For instance, I think her breasts were smaller--that could just be the clothing, I know that makes a difference, but I really think they were smaller.

And the coldness of her hands--and something else. Her skin was odd, though I can't say how.



Yeah, I didn't mention--we set a date, last time we met.

A movie, if you can believe it. Some werewolf movie. Her idea, a midnight drive-in showing near the beach.

You'd think I could remember the movie, but all I could think about was the goddess sitting next to me. Cold to the touch, but oh so warm inside. Her smile could, you know, like Helen of Troy and all that shit. RAH. Yeah, I want to scream. I want to howl. The hormone therapy is definitely kicking in.

Jen was apparently lost in other thoughts as well.

We spent several hours talking, walking down the beach, with the car parked back in the movie lot.

That's a funny story, but I'll get to it later.

Anyway, she fessed her becoming.

Can you believe it took me this long in the entry to say it?

A mermaid.

She's gonna be a fucking mermaid.

Jen's gonna be a fucking mermaid.

Man. Okay, I can't write anymore.



Sorry. That was lame.

I'm just.

I'm just really all over the place.

I mean, I'm really liking her.

And that sucks.

That just really sucks.

FUCK!



I don't know. She'd turned my world upside-down already. I mean, the flowers already smelled different--I could tell what dogs had marked them, and I really didn't want to get my fingers rubbing up against their stems. Colors are fading, but in their place I have a much greater sensitivity to luminance.

I don't even fucking like the ocean. Salt water, the cold hard wind in the ears, it's just not for me.

But her--she's everything.

She talks to me, looks at me; she laughs with me. She smiles at me.

She fucking smiles at me.

And in her tearless eyes is an eternal sadness.

She knew what she was giving up, when she started it. She'd already distanced herself from the world as a whole, consciously.

Jen was one of those girls that had always been popular, loved; she had her choice for the prom. Queen of the prom and all that. She'd been more than that, though, and that's what nobody else could see. Why she'd renounced everything.

Anyway, she also has these kooky ideas, like her great grandfather was a sailor seduced my mermaids. Real ones. She thinks it's in her blood, she's done past life regressions and seen a long history of mermaids. She's lived as a scullery maid in Atlantis.

Yeah, Atlantis. Somewhere off of Crete, she says.

I don't even know where Crete is, other than it's Greek. I think it's Greek. An island, right?

I couldn't tell her that, though. Be that ignorant.

God, girls don't like me. I've always been the geek--smart enough to get along, quiet enough to not get beat up, doodling dragons and succubi, and yes--mermaids, in my books, in my notes.

Werewolf.

Who wouldn't want to be a werewolf?

So I invented a couple small things, just gimmicks, really, but I managed to patent them, and--

Yeah, you know this.

I don't need to go through it again.

She--gods, if you can believe it, she's been married and divorced, already. She's just twenty-three.

So beautiful.

Apparently he was a twit. A rich one--blue blood sort of thing. Pure ass.

She divorced him.

And severed ties.

Her parents are dead--train wreck. So she's searching her roots.

Rootless roots.

Why?

Why did she choose me?



I haven't been avoiding her.

Really.

I mean, I don't know. I just can't find the right thing to say. My world's still spinning.

I've stopped caring what other people think, at least. I don't know how much of that is what I've bulked up to, how much of that is just part of the becoming, and how much of that is her.

It's funny--it's getting harder to write, but I'm finding more to say. Almost like the last bits are afraid they won't make it out. Nail clippers don't work on my claws anymore. I bought a grinder that works pretty well, but they grow fast. I'm thinking I might try some voice recognition software.

This is not going to wind up like Flowers for Algernon.

I miss her.

She scares me.

But--do I not scare her?

She wants to be with me. Who am I to judge that?

Who am I to judge?

I'll call her.

No, I'll--yeah, I'll call her.



We didn't talk long on the phone. She was just honest, maybe a little more reserved than before, but maybe I'm just reading things in in retrospect. Don't worry, I'll get to it, not like the parking lot incident. That's the point of this entry.

I mean, her being reserved. Her being reserved is the point of this entry.

So I got to her place--walking, or loping more like. Took about twenty minutes, and I was really invigorated by the end of it--the car doesn't really fit me anymore. Funny, huh? Oh, right, haven't gotten to it.

She's got her legs spliced.

I knew it was coming, I mean, if I'd thought about it at all it would have been obvious.

I mean, she's doing the full becoming, or as full as science can do these days, which is a fair amount. Her lungs are going to be a work of art, let me tell you.

She's starting to feel a little cramped, but she's a ways from being able to actually swim away.

I bought her a wheelchair. A powered one, with good fat wheels for the sand. And we went to the beach, we took a cab to the beach--why does that seem such an extravagance when we're both spending a ransom on these procedures? We took a cab to the beach, and I pushed her along the surf for a couple of hours, just her and me and the sound of the waves.

It was peaceful, I guess.

Sad.

I was sad, I don't know if she was. You don't tend to think of mermaids as sad--but then, there's always a bunch of them at the shore, waving to the sailors, right?

She showed me where her skin's starting to differentiate into scales; webs are growing out between her toes, and between her fingers, too.

She's still unbelievably gorgeous. But they started with a masterpiece, right?

Yeah, so I just pushed her along the beach, and at the end of the night she kissed me on the cheek, and it was like a fish had kissed me--but not. Like, it should have been gross, sounding like that, but it was the most loving sensation I had ever felt.

On my cheek!

So we got a taxi back to her place, and I said good night, and then I just sort of meandered back to my own place.

I think some folks tried to heckle me from an alley, but I just kept walking. They weren't worth my time.

Oh, and that voice recognition software didn't really work. A large part of it is likely to blame on my voice--it's growly, really growly; I could front for a heavy metal band with no problem. Actually, I might try that. I wonder how many metal bands have werewolves to front for them.

Eh. Maybe one is too many.

I found a nice ortho-friendly pen. Large mid-section makes it easier to grasp. Still, I'm writing slowly. But I'm writing. Whether that's worth anything is certainly up to debate.

Who could beat "Memoirs of a Werewolf", though? I mean, it's not "I Was a Teenage Werewolf", but that was crap. This is real.

Yeah, I'm getting silly. It's time for bed. I think the sun is coming up.



I took Jen for a swim, tonight. We took a taxi back to the beach, and I carried her out into the surf. The cold water didn't bother me as much as I expected--there're parts of my mind that just haven't gelled with the body, yet. Things I just haven't experienced as the "new" me.

I took her out to where I still had some solid footing--low tide, so that was a good sixty feet out, and let her practice with her--her fins, I guess. Her legs. She had some trouble moving them together, in synchrony--she kept trying to kick, but by the end of the night she had it down pretty well. And some massive cramps, I suppose. I spent a couple of hours back at her apartment trying to massage the cramps out of her legs, but finally she just took some Percocet. It's a good thing my hands are as tough as they've become, or these thousand slices from her scales would have cut to the bone. As it is, they just sort of itch. They'll be healed when I wake--just need to make sure I eat extra.

My fridge--I can't believe I've mentioned this. It sounds so gross, but I've got a fridge stacked with raw meat, bottom to top. Double-fridge, really, no freezer. Freezing does nasty stuff to meat. I eat a couple pounds a day, depending on what I do.

At first I worried I'd get sick of the same thing in and out, but bodies are funny like that. They want what they need, and what they need is the sweetest ambrosia when you give it to them. I suppose I could over-eat on raw meat, but I really am a lot more sensitive to my body. The pleasure of eating what I want has diminished compared to the pleasure of having eaten what I need.

She's so gorgeous in the water. Really, she had no right to be so graceful for her first night, even with the problems.

I could worship her; place her on a pedestal, and all that. I am beast and she is goddess. But inside, she's so--so--I don't know. Caring and loving are not the right words. She's definitely more reserved than that, but not so reserved it would be calculating. Sincere. She's so sincere.

Sincere.

The pen's aggravating my hands, regardless of... yeah.



Sorry. I ripped out a couple of pages. I really did fall in love with her. And she really did leave. And my temper really is a bit more than it used to be.

If I hadn't burned the pages--but there wasn't much in them besides repetitive drivel and angst. I think I even wrote a couple of poems. How absurd is that?

Anyway, she said she'd be there. She said she'd be at the pier tonight. I've been going back and forth on whether I'd show, back and forth on whether she'd show. But why would she lie? She's been nothing but honest. I'm just scared.

I'm so scared.

Poor fucking coward of a were-wolf, scared of a little old mermaid.

Not old.

Man, she's still so gorgeous.

I love her.

I love you, Jen.

I wish it weren't so blatantly mean to tell her that for real.

I wonder if she knows.

I wonder how she feels.



She was there--of course. My indecision kept her waiting a bit, and I felt bad about that, but she didn't mention it. I asked her all sorts of silly questions--had she found any other mers, any underground kingdoms; had she learned to speak with the dolphins or the whales; had she found what she was seeking?

Finally I found the words to find Jen's heart, and she spoke eloquently, so eloquently any attempt to put it down on paper would cheapen it. Probably part of that is her magnetic voice--when she sings, a Scrooge would melt.

The marvels, like a child--so many firsts, so much to see; she was upset at how spoiled things were, though she'd known that going in. She was enthralled by how much there was man had not touched.

It's an amazing world.

She's an amazing creature.



You know? I don't really want to be a werewolf anymore. No, that's not it--I don't care about being a werewolf anymore. I just marvel at this being that's found the ultimate freedom, the wilderness of soul I thought I wanted, that chooses to come back to me, once a month, and just sit. Just sit together, and think, and feel.