Chapter 2
“Did the beast scare you?” he repeated, much slower this time.
“W-what?”
He was still looking at me, all over. All over.
He stopped trying to skin me with his gaze alone and turned a little—not so much that he was looking away from me, but far enough to block the exit with his bulk, almost like he knew I’d try to run…if there’d been anywhere to run to.
“The monster.” He pointed with his thumb. His hands were remarkably human looking. “Did it scare you?”
I swallowed, but my throat was still dry. Like, really, really dry. “It was going to eat me.”
“Yes. You would have been easy pickings.” The pupils of his cat eyes had widened and now almost eclipsed the dark indigo irises. “You’ll be safer now, with me. You won’t have to be scared. Would you like that?”
“I… No! I don’t even know you, and you’re…you’re…blue all over!”
That wasn’t the problem. It was actually kind of a nice color, come to think of it. The problem was the licking of the lips. I didn’t want to even consider what he was planning on doing with me.
He tilted his head to the side and those massive horns almost touched the wall of the changing room.
“You can call me Inkiri.” He put the stress on the second syllable of his name and rolled the R. “And you?”
I licked my lips. My mouth was so dry. Oh, the things I’d do for fancy coffee. And the things I’d do not to think about fancy coffee in a life-and-death situation such as this.
I glanced past him, but there was no way to get out of the damn corner I’d backed myself into, even without the curtain.
If I was lucky, he really wouldn’t want to eat me.
I wasn’t naive enough to think he was offering me anything for free though, and if he hadn’t let his gaze roam all over me to judge how tender I was…
well. He’d want something else with me then.
That wasn’t going to happen, but for now, I had no option but to play along.
I raised my chin as if this were an audition with a bunch of scary production people staring at me. “I’m Rory.”
He nodded. His horns moved and caught the faint light. It looked impressive. “Good. Now we know each other, and you can come with me, Rory.”
“Right. Okay. That should be okay.”
It absolutely wasn’t. His logic left a lot to be desired, but he had a sword and knew how to use it, so I was going to keep my complaints to myself for now.
Inkiri seemed to see my agreement as an invitation, and with no hesitation whatsoever, he leaned forward, disentangled me from the curtain by simply tearing it apart, and pulled me up along with him.
He was a good head taller than me, or more than a head.
And his arching horns made him taller still.
“Hey!” I flinched, because my calf was still cramping and hurting like someone had rammed an ice pick into my leg.
“Are you injured? Is that why you were hiding in here?”
Inkiri looked at me as if he were trying to figure out what was wrong with me, where I was broken. I had looked at myself in the mirror like that a few times over the past two years. I’d come up empty apart from the obvious stuff, but maybe he would see something I hadn’t.
I did my best to display a look of painful normalcy. Functionality. Yes, I was super functional, and definitely not the type of person who cried himself to sleep half of the time.
“It’s just a cramp. I’m fine.” I reached over to grab my backpack, which I’d shoved into a corner so the purple monster wouldn’t see it.
Inkiri was still blocking the exit, and he gave me what seemed like a thoughtful look.
“Do you have a uterus?” was the gem that eventually came out of his mouth, and I just…turned red as a cabbage, was what I did.
“Why would—I’m a dude, okay?” It occurred to me that he probably didn’t understand human anatomy, which was actually comforting, because it meant he’d never butchered a human.
Or…done anything else that required a human to be naked.
“I’m fully male all the way. From how you speak the language, you must’ve been here a while. Why would you think I have a uterus?”
Inkiri tilted his head to the other side, once more narrowly avoiding the changing room wall with those ibex horns. They were a deep midnight blue, and their tips looked sharp enough to take out an eye.
“It’s difficult to tell just from looking at a human.
You said you had a cramp, and I know some women suffer from that.
You also look frail, and human women—especially those with uteri—can appear so because they are smaller and not as broad.
You look frail, and it says ‘women’s fashion’ on the signs over there.
I was reasonably sure you had a uterus. Does the assumption embarrass you? ”
Oh, was I ever sorry for causing the apocalypse and bringing this discussion upon myself. So very, very sorry.
“You do realize women have boobs, don’t you? You can’t tell me boobs are invisible to you.” For my show and tell, I mimed boobs. It wasn’t my proudest moment.
Inkiri nodded and put a hand on his sword, which was when I realized he had more than one on his left hip. There were three, in fact, all varying in lengths and in their hilt decorations. Who needed three swords, and whatever for?
“That made sense at first, until we helped a woman who explained she was a trans woman, which meant she had no uterus, among other things. And she explained that you shouldn’t just assume from the looks, though I did notice your lack of boobs.
But she said asking was better than assuming, so I asked. Did I offend you?”
That was a lot to unpack right there, but I didn’t intend to stick around long enough for that. I would get away from this weirdo just as soon as I could. Maybe I’d even make a run for it as soon as he stepped aside so I could finally, finally get out of the changing room.
But two things stuck out. “I’m not offended. But you said you helped another human? And did you just say ‘we’? Or do you use that like the queen would?”
“Yes, we helped another. As for the others, I’ll take you to meet them.”
Inkiri finally moved, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
I most definitely did not want to meet anyone else who carried an assortment of swords attached to their body and who thought about uteri more in a single conversation than I’d done since before my first crush on a boy, but I had to be smart about this.
I had to play along, at least for a little while.
Behind Inkiri, the monster’s blood had started to congeal. Death hadn’t improved how it looked at all, but to be honest, I’d seen worse. Worse was always an option during the apocalypse. That was one of the first things I’d learned.
I followed Inkiri toward the store’s exit, but to my right, behind a skirts-and-tank-tops display that had collected dust over the years, I saw a door for staff.
Wally, my high school buddy, had worked in a department store like this, and she’d told me that usually, the staff area had storage, and more importantly, a back door.
That back door, if I played it right, was going to be my getaway.
Inkiri looked over his shoulder to make sure I was following, and once we got outside the store, he slowed down so I could catch up.
That was when I summoned all my acting skill—and yeah, people had told me there wasn’t much of that to be had.
I’d been a fucking tree in the third-grade play for a reason, but I’d given the role of second tree on the left my all.
I’d made up for what others didn’t see in my acting with passion, and I was going to give this all my passion as well.
“Oh, shoot.” I was aiming for distraughtly apologetic.
“I forgot something in there. Can you stay here and make sure no other monster tries to get me?” Seeing as how my play-acting repertoire consisted entirely of damsel in distress or tree, I gave the blue monster my best doe eyes before my brain’s quality control could stop me.
Inkiri focused his slit-pupiled eyes on me, then rested his wrist on the hilt of one of his swords. The competence came off him in waves.
“Best be quick.”
I nodded, and went to seize my freedom. Back inside the store, I made a beeline for the staff door and carefully opened it, hoping I wouldn’t make too much noise. Luckily, the mechanism wasn’t creaky, and I didn’t think Inkiri could see me from where I’d left him.
It was dark beyond the staff door, and my eyes needed a moment to adjust. When they did, the dull gleam of the Exit sign way over to my left was a blissful relief.
It came close to the time I’d found a huge pack of candy at the very back of an already raided store six months ago.
I’d had chocolate bars for dinner that day.
Careful not to fall over boxes and whatnot, I maneuvered toward where I could only hope my monsterless freedom waited for me. My cramp was a lot better now, and once I was outside, I’d run until I couldn’t anymore.
I’d treat myself to the remaining candy bar in my bag as a treat for surviving this shit show of a shopping trip.