When Red Expands

Mistress Howlar-haelia Turim (sketch and digital)

Milk-red expands and expands. You awaken. You see your knees raised under night-blue covers in front of you. Your back is resting on the pillow. The book is still in your lap. That shadow… your coat hanging on the doorknob, so yes, it’s okay… it’s not anyone at all. Warmer red. Eyes must have slipped shut again… the red expands.

What was it the temp said, at work today? About the date typed wrong. How do you misspell Wendsday? Wendsay? Wednesday? It’s stupid.

The red, simmering, expands…

At lunch, they put mayonnaise on the sandwich after you were explicit, said no—threatened no, and your sword drawn. The golden one, with the chink in the blade. How dare they?

Boiling red now, she expands.

Your book drops to the floor. It must have slipped from your lap when you moved to lay flat. You heard it. Should you go get it? Trip over it in the morning… Turim will get it. She is a good beast, Turim. Walks herself. Hunts for herself and feeds herself. One day, the two of you will conquer beautiful Draenia together…

Your body is warm. Your world now red. Turim is resting by you as you sleep. You can feel her breath. Your finger, tired, raises to feel one of her scales. Frozen as ice. Just the way a wyldehound should be. Thank the baying gods…

In the morning you awaken, stirred by Turim’s icy breathing at your shoulder. Not your cheek. 

You’ve trained her never to do that again. You open your eyes and see that the world is finally as it should be.

The sky and trees beyond your den are all crescendoing reds, and then the grass, the rocks, the canopy, are many decrescendoing shades of sunstruck black. You are an animal. You lick your leg of gray fur, lick and swallow the first crisp breath of a new morning.

Turim greets you, her slender leg lain over your middle. You wag your tail and so does she.

You are the best animal the gods ever made, and Turim, she knows it. You are the born leader of the wyldehounds, and Turim is so grateful to have found you, she would kill for you.

You, Master Baruther, the gold-blooded, are what I have worshipped, and all that I have wanted to be there in the sky for me, my entire young life, and I need you to save me from this terrible, black and gray world of waking, working and sleeping off the pain of a half existence.

I beg you, Master Baruther, deliver me!

I am ever yours, the Mistress Howlar-haelia Turim.

I am your bitch.

We go on twos when we have to do. We argue over things like mayonnaise on meat—what are they? Sandwiches? Sand-witch-is? This helps us to fit in. We puppet ourselves while we stalk the shadows of this world, half-aware of our enemies. We are down in the town, going in and out of the stone temples, pulling our paws long into crooked fingers (the fleshy claws humans think and make with instead) meanwhile, our lupine spirits are soaring down the roadways, off the highways, racing alongside the car windows, carrrs… garrrrs… grrrrs… and children swear that they can see us running as their parents drive on, yes they can. But we see only red and black, like real animals. So they are either meat or dead to us. Mostly, they are dead, so we leave the young ones alone. We turn into the trees, we try to get in as deep a forest as we can, my love, and we mate, and sniff around, and mate again, and wag our tails and wonder how long we have before the bell calls us back, and we have to return our human bodies to their homes. Then we must perch on the puppets’ shoulders, pretend we weren’t very naughty, and not be too wild while the humans are out drinking, or dancing, no longer drones. They fuck each other and we watch. We wait, wait, wait-wait-wait… now, yes… Until they slumber again. The, we have another chance to float and live out our true lives, my love, 

Master Baruther.

Soon, we must find what we came for here, because I crave ending this curse of being tied to this lesser third-rock and its yellowing sun in its damnable black sky… I loathe it as badly as I crave you in the rutting season. And we will have our heirs soon and they will help us, I promise you. Have I ever lied to you? No, never, ever, Master Baruther.

In your life, I am pathetic. I am a fool woman you always see on the train, and she doesn’t dare to look up and know you. But, D.C. is a small place. People don’t realize—it may be a city, but it can be exactly as life among the trees. With scents, and tracking, and staying in the rain to wait and see if the pitiful prey will come out again, for us to snatch its neck. People wash and wash themselves of scent, but still we know who we are… we see the woman with the thick, thick mane and the good, round legs. The taught buttocks that raise pert and fall as she tries to shift round people in the crowded aisle of the train. Through her coat, through her dress, beneath the thin web of her stockings, you can still see her, imagine yourself united with her in heat at last—though she only stands, and she is far away, and you know her because you notice her sometimes down the train while you read your phone… that horrid black thing. Drop it and break it and pick her up! My Baruther…

The times, what terrible lonely times we live in. That they live in.

It’s as if I’ve opened my legs a thousand times for you, my mate, whenever our spirits were free of ourselves, to be wyldehounds in the sorry dream of the nine-to-five, but you never take me fast on the train, nor see me very well, though I know you are watching hard. You should know me, my poor love, but you don’t. I hate you.

Master Baruther…

We walk the same trail every morning.

You know the scent of my soap when I pass. You idled in the store once, turning bars and bars of plastic wrapped stuff over, sticking your nose in at the edges, flicking open pastel-colored tops of bottles to desperately huff scent with your instinct to try and see… not realizing that you’d gone in a panic to know, which one I was.

I smell like lychee. I luxuriate in it.

People walk the same paths as animals, don’t they?
People have the same hearts as damned beasts, they can sure love like it.
I’ve never known you to be brave whenever my eyes have seen you—

I’ve only sworn to myself and prayed to the polite puppet-god, not the real, baying gods,

But I adore you.

One day, we will break the curse and we will find the ancient golden stone, and we will be truly united with our wyldehound bodies again. I as icy as your furious heat. Be one again. dangsingwa na…

But that could take forever,
We could be borne into many bodies—

A man,
A woman,
Two women,

People who are passionate and refuse for gender to be finite…
Three men who want one another at once… Oh, I don’t know.

The red is smoking now and it rescinds. Turim whines at you pitifully. Her scales are a deep bloody red, looking so soft, but if you touch them, they burn. Cold burning… she is nearby in the bed. She creeps in close and whines at you through her pointed nose. She loves you so much that she wishes she was you.

And she always misses you, even though you are in the same city.

You awaken and the disgusting glare of so many colors oozes round your eyes, washing them in thick, foul discordant nonsense. Your eyes are stinging and you throw the covers off, rush out of your bed to wash your face.

But that is worse. Even water has color. So many morninglights in one liquid. Grays, whites, silvers, the overpowering quicksilver of the faucet screaming at you to wake the hell up. Too bright.

The red rescinds, into twin blood drops on your fingertips. Maybe it was that you scratched your face.

You think of the woman on the train, with the exceptional ass and how she smells like lychee—how you went and bought a lychee bubble tea (you’d have never, ever touched it otherwise)… you sipped it through the wide straw. That evening, you let the slippery round tapioca balls slip over your tongue. These felt very… too good, and you were standing in the sidewalk cold and alone. You wondered if that was the feel of her… warming you up now… how you wondered it. You stood there for a long time, waiting for the rush of arousal to end…

Karen Jung (sketch)

6:30 and the alarm goes off. It blares through even the bathroom walls.

Your dog’s nose is cold and she’s not supposed to be sleeping in the bed with you.

The woman on the train would slap the glasses off of your face if you ever tried anything.

You really do need a girlfriend.

And, Brandon, you’re going to be late for work.

You try the last of it out as you fish around for your toothpaste in the cabinet and the faucet runs, 

“Master Baruther… Master Baruther… Oh, Master Baruther…”

That must be it. Life isn’t so good… nor, easy.

I should be ashamed of myself, for not knowing exactly where she is from… or if she was born here? Or her family… I’m being so stupid to assume she wouldn’t have been born here, aren’t I? Brandon, you are an idiot. And it was wrong to have gone and bought that damned tea, and thought of her… Can’t you do better than that? She deserves so much better than that. I’m such an ignorant, sorry fuck. She would never look at me… tu e yo…

Maybe I’m a racist, then.

Beautiful woman… lychee-loving woman… I can’t do anything for you. Have a beautiful day.

On the train home that night, Karen Jung angrily sheathed her phone and walked on her black high heels almost straight down the crowded aisle. Nearly almost. She squeezed herself through all the people on the train, winced with embarrassment at her big ass that kept forcing people to press into the plastic seats and onto one another, or release the metal poles to fit her through. But when she did get there, flushed and breathless… as he was pulling his perfect lip and turning to walk off of the train, she grasped the spiked hair at the back of Brandon Moreno’s scalp, moved him, and kissed him directly on the mouth.

“Hey, so I’m Karen, and I always stand there, thinking… you look real good in red.”