Chapter 6 #2
“Very dedicated of you,” she notes. There’s something faintly accusatory in her tone, as if I am doing something wrong by caring.
I don’t like it at all. I notice that she has not joined the search.
She is still in her corporate attire and heels, and her hair is smooth and entirely devoid of bits of twig that would indicate she’s been out looking.
She must have driven out just to see what is happening rather than help.
“A man is missing,” I reply.
“You must be very attached to him.” There’s that tone again. That smug, vicious judgment. There’s something triumphant about it, too. Like she’s won something.
I just stare at her. I don’t really owe her politeness, and I definitely do not owe her an explanation.
“Don’t overexert yourself,” she says. “Simon has ways of looking after himself.”
“Is that why the forest is overrun with search and rescue right now? Because you think he is looking after himself?”
She smiles at me in a frankly maddening way, and I only just manage to bite my tongue and avoid telling her to get the fuck out of my car.
“Sleeping with your boss doesn’t mean being obligated to save your boss.”
“Get the fuck out of my car,” I say.
Not so avoided after all, I guess.
Her smile fades. “You’re rude,” she says.
“So are you. And I’ve been told I can’t quit. Which means I can’t be fired. Which means I don’t actually give anything resembling a semblance of a fuck as to what you think. Now get out of my car and leave me alone.”
The look she gives me as she gets out tells me I made an enemy. I hope that the look I give her in return tells her that I do not care.
What did she even want? To wind me up? To test me? To tell me what to do? I think she wanted me to go home so I wouldn’t see whatever happens next. I bet the company has some means of retrieving their property.
It is almost fully daylight. I spend the day searching for him again.
And when that day’s search fails to find a body, I stay overnight again.
I do go home once or twice for a change of clothes, and for some snacks, but not for long.
I want to be here, near him. As long as I am out in the forest, I feel as though I am helping.
When they quit searching each day, I get back to transcribing his notes.
I peruse them intently, hoping that I might uncover some secret to finding him. I find nothing.
* * *
Simon
My senses are addled. I know I should hunt, but every time I get near prey, they run. I am not fast enough. Wolves are not designed to hunt alone. We are pack hunters. Even relatively small animals are faster than I gave them credit for. Even the mice are perfectly tuned for their environment.
So I drink from the stream and I let the hunger guide me.
Humanity seems ever more like a dream. Was I a man once? I do not think so. I was always hungry. Always roaming. Always seeking. Even if I had a human body, I don’t think I was ever truly human.
At the beginning I thought I knew who I was, but as hours and then days passed it began to feel as though I was only ever this form. The moon grows full, then wanes again.
I am animal.
Only animal.
While roaming, I catch a familiar scent. I cannot place it, but I know it smells like home. I orient my nose to it, and follow it. Slowly at first, but then with greater urgency. It is at a great distance, but I know that if I find the source of it, everything will be okay.
The journey is long. It continues through the day, into the night, and through another day. I have roamed far and wide in my furred form, and covered more ground than I realized.
Another day fades into night. I feel the pull of the moon, the hunger of my stomach and my soul. I cannot get sustenance in this form. I am weary. I am starving.
Each step seems to take more effort than the last, and the freedom of four paws begins to feel like a burden I yearn to put down.
Finally, I draw close. The scent is coming from narrow gaps between smooth panels of something unnatural. I nuzzle at it, get my nose up under a latch and push until something clicks.
The scent I followed washes over me, rich and feminine and healing. I look down and I see that the animal is receding finally after three continuous days.
I have hands.
I can fit in a seat.
I slide in and I close the door, quietly promising myself I will never take an opposable thumb for granted again.
* * *
Lydia
I’m still out here in the forest, though weeks have passed, and I am pretty sure I’ve been let go from the job that told me I couldn’t be let go of.
Veronica wants to move on. Someone has petitioned the court to declare him officially dead so that assets can be transferred.
I stay out of all of that. I keep myself in the only place that makes sense to me, out in the wild.
The professional searchers left weeks ago. They said it was too unlikely he’d be found because they couldn’t get a single scent or find a single trail. I’ve stayed on, wandering the woods, looking for a man who melted into the wild. This is the only place I can still faintly feel him.
Every night, I make noodles in the lifted rear of my car, then settle in behind the steering wheel to do a little more work. I’ve transcribed a lot of his material now, and I think I am starting to understand it, though that might be arrogance on my part.
Yet again, I fall asleep in my car. I expect nothing to have changed when morning comes.
And yet, it does.
A bad smell comes.
The stench is so ripe it filters through into my sleep. It smells like animal. Like a big wet dog, or a wild thing that needs to be taken in. My eyes open with the dawn and I turn to see a naked man asleep in my passenger seat.
My scream fails to wake him up, which makes me terrified that he’s dead. A big, hairy, dead naked man in my car. That’s about the worst I could imagine. I wonder if I’m even properly awake, or if this is a nightmare my brain has manufactured just to torture me.
Then, slowly, it dawns on me that I do recognize this man. He’s more bearded than I ever knew him to be, but it’s him. It’s definitely him.
I am so relieved I could cry. I am crying.
“Simon!”
Finally, he wakes up. He opens his eyes and lunges at me in a hug. His arms wrap around me and the feeling of loss I have been struggling with for weeks, the yawning hole in my heart, fills up in an instant.
“I missed you so much,” I cry against his bare shoulder. He is filthy. He smells like an animal, and he smells like the wild, all dirt and moss and hunt and decay.
“I’m sorry,” he rumbles. “Have I been gone long?”
“Three weeks, almost. They’re going to declare you dead.”
“Then we have to get back before they can do that!” He panics a little at the news, then pauses. “Why are you still here if they declared me dead?”
“What do you mean?” I am too happy to see him to fully get the question.
“I mean if they called the search off, and if they are going to declare me dead, why are you still here, in the parking lot?” He looks around at the back of the car, where the camping supplies I’ve used to look after myself on this long vigil are stacked somewhat haphazardly.
“Oh, Lydia,” he says, his eyes filling with emotion. “You never left?”
“Of course I didn’t leave. I knew you were probably running around out there in an animal form. I was going to start going further out into the woods soon, but, here you are, saving me that job.” I smile a little, wiping the tears of relief out of my eyes.
“I didn’t know you cared for me so much,” he says.
“To be fair, I didn’t know that either,” I reply.
He laughs, and I smile and everything just feels good for a moment.
Then I hear his stomach rumble.
“Sorry,” he says. “I’m a little peckish.”
“Oh, my god, you must be starving!” I realize he obviously hasn’t eaten well; hunting is probably harder than it looks, and the energy needed to sustain a wolf is kind of massive.
I get out of the car, open the rear door, grab handfuls of non-perishable snacks, and come around to him. He’s opened his door and is standing naked in the rising morning sun as I push fruit juice and jerky on him. He needs to eat.
I watch to make sure, then my eyes drift down a little, and…
“What the fuck did you do to my car!”
The outside of my car door looks like the world’s biggest German Shepherd spent an hour clawing at it. I don’t know how I missed him breaking in that way. I must have been absolutely exhausted.
“I was stuck in wolf form, and I couldn’t remember how the door worked for a bit.”
“I thought that might have happened.”
“You were right,” he says. “It did.”
“The search teams gave up because they couldn’t find your scent,” I add, because sometimes making obvious statements is just what conversation is.
“Makes sense,” he says.
“You should put some clothes on. You’re very naked.”
“Have anything that will fit?”
He looks down at me with a smirk and the implication that nothing I have will fit him is correct.
What he doesn’t know is that I picked up one of his lab coats early on in case the dogs needed something more to scent.
I thought that it might contain the compounds that he uses to transform, and that might lead them to a more accurate detection rate.
They didn’t use it because, in their words, they had ‘plenty of personal items.’ I let one of the dogs sniff it anyway, but it didn’t make a difference. I hand it to Simon now, and he puts it on.
He’s lost weight in these weeks. He’s lean. Very lean. He’s lost the softness that is usually associated with a healthy human man and become more wiry. I make a mental note that our first stop will be at a burger place.
He makes a face as he slides the coat over his shoulders.
“Do clothes always feel this bad?” he asks. “Just with the way they… touch you all over? Oh, my god. It feels awful. Like being lightly sandpapered.”
“You’re not used to it,” I say. “But, yeah, probably. To some people, that’s how they feel all the time.”
“I need something softer,” he says. “And probably pants. I guess.”
“We should call someone,” I say. “Let them know you’re alive.”
“No.” He stops me as I reach for the phone. “It’s going to be much funnier not to.”
“After everything we’ve all been through, you want this to be funny?” I narrow my eyes at him. “Simon, you’ve fucked up my head, you’ve fucked up my heart, and none of it is funny…”
He wraps his arms around me again, holding me comfortingly. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “I don’t think it’s funny to mess with you. But I do think it’s hilarious to fuck with Veronica. Has she been particularly good about all of this?”
“No,” I sniff. “She basically told me to not bother looking for you and then I think she fired me, but I’m not sure.”
“Right, so she’s due to be messed with, right?”
I sniff and laugh, because he’s so fucking incorrigible. He should be freaking out on his own behalf right now after all he went through, but he’s not. All he wants to do is get back to work and back into trouble. I guess I have to respect that.