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A coyote has been following him.
He hasn’t seen it, per say, not in the daylight or in the open. He’d seen the animal through his peripherals, the shape of it, the gangly limbs and long maw and heard its heavy paws pad distantly behind him. Though, Curly has never quite seen the animal’s yellow reflective eyes even when squinting into the foliage to try to see a little further past the shine of his torch. He’s never quite seen it, only he knows it's there.
A coyote has been following him.
“That sounds scary. Has it seemed aggressive at all?”
The speaker phone clips at parts and grates at others. The signal has never been too good out here and even less so with Anya not having much either on her end. The curse of both of them using budget cell services. “No,” he said, after a moment to make sure Anya had finished speaking. “It’s just been hanging around here. I’ve never seen it. Maybe it’s waiting for me to feed it?”
“Well, don’t do that. Wild animals should be left alone. If it approaches you it could have rabies or worse. You just never know with them so best just leave it be and it should move on.”
“I guess you’re right.” He hip nudges his fridge closed after pulling out a few airtight containers of leftovers. He holds them in his arms in a careful balance act as he approaches where he left his phone atop of the end of the counter. This RV he impulsively bought was decently sized and he’s still not really used to all this space. He sort of misses those tight quarters and the vastness of space. “What about you? How’s the new job?”
“Oh it’s good. Not quite what I expected but it’s nice to be useful again.” Anya pauses, or at least he thinks she does. It’s hard to tell at times, but either cell service continues or she does because she cuts back in, “makes me miss the old job a bit sometimes.”
“I know how you feel. I catch myself missing it too. It was a good job.”
“I suppose.”
“The cake was the best part, in my opinion.”
“… Okay, I don’t miss it anymore.”
Curly chuckles. “I swear, I’m in the majority opinion of all the ex employees concerning that cake.” Having opened the containers, he plates up a shoddily assembled dinner and sticks it into the microwave. He’s pressing the buttons as he continues, “but really. I get you. It’s strange to no longer be up there. The opposite of claustrophobia, is there such a thing?”
“Agoraphobia.”
“Right, that. Still the expert, aren’t you nurse Anya?”
“Oh, please. I’m not much of a nurse anymore nowadays.” Curly watches the plate revolve inside, lap after lap under the flickering bulb, air and heat blowing out the sides. The phone crackles and cuts again due to the microwave signals colliding against the radio frequencies, like a bad faraday cage. When the microwave beeps, Anya’s voice returns unsmothered, “a guy keeps coming by the office, too.”
“Oh?” Curly takes his plate out, wincing a little at the accelerated ceramic heat, to place it to the side. “What kind of guy is he?”
“Strange. I don’t think I like him much. He makes sort of weird jokes to me and it makes me a little uncomfortable. Everyone else seems to like him though.”
Curly runs his fork through the steaming mashed potatoes to evenly distribute the heat. “Maybe he just got on the wrong foot with you,” he says. “He’s done nothing weird to you, right?”
“… No, he hasn’t.”
He tries some of the potatoes since they reheat the worst. Mixed with the frigid parts, the side dish becomes somewhat palatable. “As long as he doesn’t, he might be okay then. Bad first impressions, y’know?”
“Right.”
“I know I gave you the worst first impression, way back when you first started, and look how far we’ve come. I don’t even faint anymore from the sight of my own blood.”
Anya laughs, a soft tinny noise coming from the speaker phone. “That was different, but I understand where you’re coming from.” The audio crinkles again, grates, chopping up her voice, “gotta get going. You — how it goes with — yote.”
“Bye, Anya.”
“—ye, Curly.”
She hangs up.
Curly sets his fork down to pocket the phone. He picks up his plate to head outside. The door latches behind him.
Evening is beginning to settle. On this side of his RV, the plains reach as far as the eye can see. There’s some foliage and smatterings of trees and brush here and there that break the horizon line but little else. Little farther beyond are the giant wind turbines but they don’t spin anymore, no longer doing their due diligence once it became clear the world wasn’t going to unfuck itself. Instead they continue standing, groaning in the wind, rusted and unused.
He sits down in his repurposed patio furniture. A small cushioned bench, a metalwork table, and a few lawn chairs in case he has company, which is rare if ever. But it’s just fine to Curly, who enjoys sitting outside to watch the sun set.
There’s some soft rustling coming from his right, but he doesn’t turn. He doesn’t jump when something brushes his leg, purring.
“Hey, girl,” he greets down to the small cat that presses her face against his shins. “I haven’t seen you in a while. How it going? You hungry?”
The cat jumps up to the bench beside him and rests her front paws on his thigh to sniff at his plate. She’s a dark colored cat with dark brown markings scattered here and there, especially at the tips of her ears and tail. Two of her paws, a front and hind, are dark brown too, like socks. She’s been here long before him, something he inferred on her bitten clipped ear, and eventually took enough of a liking to approach and, of course, steal his scraps.
He gives a gentle scratch under her chin which she purrs even louder for and pushes her soft face further into his hand. In his other, he hangs a piece of steak out. “You need this more than me. Hope you enjoy.”
She snatches the greasy warm meat from his fingers and chows down. As she gnaws through the tough delicious meat, he starts eating his own food.
The sky reddens considerably, washing everything into a sepia as the sun dips into the horizon. Photons riding these short wavelengths emitting this light of one energy level to the next from the electromagnetic spectrum, explainable and common phenomena but there is something incredibly calming about it. Like he’s home, for once in his life.
The evening cools as he’s watching the sunset. The cat settles against his thigh to doze in the last of the day’s warming rays and sap his body heat, purring like a motor.
Maybe this is what peace feels like.
Stars begin to twinkle down from above as the sky goes from red to violet to darkness. The moon shines from above in a waning gibbous. The lights from his RV are still on and aids in letting him see at least his immediate surroundings.
Then there is rustling again. Barely there but present.
The cat shoots to her feet and growls deep and quiet from her throat, her hackles rising. Before Curly could soothe her, she hisses something nasty and scampers off into the brush. He’s left alone.
The rustling continues, louder. Distant but louder, closer. His heart picks up a bit, even though he knows it’s alright. It should be alright. There’s no one for miles except fields and roads and —
“Oh, it’s just you,” Curly says with flooding relief. “Got me spooked for a moment thinkin’ you were someone trespassing, but you’re just hungry aren’t you? Smelt my dinner or something?”
There is no response. The rustling has stopped.
Curly stands up. He tries to squint into the distance to catch a glimpse of the coyote but he’s night blind with the lights shining behind him. Everything just looks like black nighttime. He shakes his head at the lost cause. “I’ll tell you what,” he says, picking up his plate and heading to the RV, “I’ll fix you up something. I only have leftovers right now but something beats nothing, right? You’re probably not finding a whole lot of food out there.
But a little won’t hurt. Just between you and me, okay? I always make too much anyways so really you’re helping me. I hate wasting perfectly good food. I just can’t eat that much anymore, not like I used to. I’m pretty sedentary right now.” He comes back with a full plate of food, mostly meat and other items. Just what he thinks a coyote could eat. “Don’t think this will be a habit though. Anya says I shouldn’t go feeding wildlife, but maybe you need it. It would explain why you keep poking around here. You’re just hungry, yeah?”
Curly sets the plate at the edge of where the light reaches in the direction of the noise. He’s not sure if the coyote would go for it, maybe it’ll just be full of ants come morning, but it doesn’t hurt to try.
“I’ll leave it here, alright? Take as much as you want, if you wanna. Though, if you could leave the plate, that’d be good. A man only has so much dishware.”
Curly heads back inside and latches the door behind him with a lock.
After he prepares for bed, toweling his hair still wet from the shower, he opens the window part way above his bed. From what he could make out, the plate of food remains untouched. Disappointing but he’ll just clean it up tomorrow.
Turning off the rest of the lights and double checking the locks, he turns in for the night.
At some point as he doozes further into sleep, something steps around his body delicately. He doesn’t need to open his eyes to know it’s the cat snuggling up against his chest. “Sorry, girl,” he murmurs, sleepthick. He strokes her fur lazily and down her back. She’s purring loudly again. “He was a little scary wasn’t he, but he seems alright. Hope he didn’t bug you.”
Then he fully drifts off with purring reverberating in his ears.
He wakes up the next morning later than he’d otherwise like and alone. The cat had long since left out the window.
He used to consider, once upon the time, of keeping her inside and having her as a proper pet cat, he’s heard that it’s safer for them, but that felt too cruel. The RV was too small for a cat used to the outdoors and she’s been okay before he came around and will probably be okay long after he leaves.
Or, at least, that is what he likes to tell himself when he shuts the window closed.
Though, the plate was missing.
“Huh,” he said.
In the daylight, the white ceramic could have easily blended into the growing long grass but the way the wind blows, strong gusts that part the grass and make the looser parts of the RV tremble, he can tell the plate and the food atop it is no longer there. Only a depressed area where it once laid.
Sometime in the night, the animal must have carried it off. He sighs at the twinge of the loss of yet another plate.
Curly goes about his morning with brewing coffee and pottering about his routine. The propane is slow to heat, but soon a nice warmth settles in the trailer and brings the sleep back into his eyes as he struggles to bite back a yawn. He manages a valiant effort though, even if he loses.
After tying his running shoes, he steps out the door and nearly steps on something large and flat and white.
“What the?”
He picks up the object. “The plate,” he observes, in awe.
How weird.
Nonetheless, Curly puts the plate back inside in the sink and goes out to his usual morning run, through the trail down the road and back.
Animals can be quite smart, he supposes as he jogs in place to let a family of ducks and ducklings cross his path to the nearby pond. Like returning a cup of sweetner from one neighbor to another. Animals must be no different.
In the quieter parts of the run, where Curly can only hear his own breathing, the blood rushing in his ears, and his unhurried footfalls, he catches the soft distant sound of rhythmic tapping against asphalt. Though when he looks over his shoulder, there is only road and sky and field.
“Someone has been stealing my lunch.”
“What, people still do that?”
“I guess so. It’s annoying. They put my lunchbox back in the communal fridge so when I go to get it on my break, it’s already emptied.”
“Do they wash it at least?”
“If they did, I would probably forgive them but no they don’t. So I’m just washing the dishes of food I didn’t get to eat and spend my break still hungry.”
“Those monsters,” Curly said.
Anya’s sigh crackles through the speaker. “It’s only me, though. I asked around and no one has ever gotten their food stolen before. It just never was a problem.”
“That’s weird. Did you tell your bosses about it?”
“Yes, they’re putting signs up on the communal spaces so maybe it’ll help… But I can’t help but feel it won’t solve anything.”
“It might,” Curly said. He had just finished washing his dishes. It’s been taking him more time since nowadays it hasn’t been just him eating. “Might scare the ne'er do well straight to know people are catching on.”
Anya chuckles a little, faint. Like she was tired. Curly frowns and goes to speak, to share some wisdom or another — be her captain again like way back when the Tulpar was still hale and whole, but. He hesitates a moment. He hesitates and so Anya continues,
“I’d like to think it will. To hope like that again. But I can’t really. I don’t think leadership would help because they don’t understand that it’s more than just stolen lunch.”
When Curly doesn’t respond, there is a sigh at the other end of the line.
“I’m sorry. I ruined the conversation, didn’t I?”
“No, no,” he quickly replies. “You were just being honest. I’m sorry about that. Really, Anya, I’m sorry.”
“Please don’t apologize, it’s not your fault. If it’s okay with you, can we change the topic? You said you were going to town today?”
Right. He was. Is. He did say that. How could he forget? “Yeah. I need to pick up a few things. Groceries mostly and some other household items. Proper cat food too. The works.”
“That’s good to hear. I get a little worried about how long you stay by yourself sometimes, all the way out there in the middle of nowhere.”
“Oh, I’m perfectly fine here — Don’t worry, Anya!” He turns and leans against his counter to look out his window. It’s so blue and clear. “It’s like I told you before, this feels necessary. Something I had to do, y’know? For myself.”
“Yeah, I know. I just can’t help but worry. I know it’s been a while since we all worked together, but I still do care for you.”
“I appreciate your calls, always,” he said, a tad teasing.
“Call it a responsibility I’m more than happy to take, Captain.”
Curly keeps looking out the window. There’s a subtle breeze outside that makes the wide expansive knolls look like waves of an ocean. “I should get going while there’s still daylight out. The nearest town with a decent store is a good hour or so away. Talk to you later?”
“Yeah, talk to you later. Bye, Curly.”
As he said, the town is a good hour and a half away. There are ones a bit closer, though there are little more than a handful of general stores and some storefronts. Food deserts, or so he’s read up on, where it’s hard to find a proper fresh vegetable.
The general stores do him just as good, in honesty. He thrived on frozen vacuum sealed meals meant for space travel, hot when ready to eat if you ignore the slight plasticy taste, so grabbing a few indistinguishable cans and TV dinners wouldn’t do anymore harm.
The only difference is that only some things can be purchased at those larger proper stores. He’s still not quite used to the sight of them and the endless amount of options.
And, of course, the amount of odd looks he receives as he piles raw meat packages on raw meat packages into his cart.
Though he’s intentionally grabbing the cheapest cuts, he winces at the cost this trip will be. He does have a good amount of savings pre-decently sized severance package, but life is dwindling. He should be careful how he spends the next few months.
He swings by the pet aisle before he goes to pay and grabs a small bag of cat food and a couple pet bowls. Before he leaves the aisle, he reaches for a collar. A black one with white stars and a small silver bell that tinkles quietly.
He jingles the bell a few times with a smile. Hopefully the cat would be persuaded to wear it. Just for his sake.
When he turns the corner again, the bell chiming softly from the movement of the rickety cart, he hears… tapping. Slow and cautious, like nails on hard ground. Somehow the measured tap, tap, taps overcome the noise of the market, making everything sound distant, muffled, as Curly focuses on the careful, trailing steps.
Closer, shadowing, a faint low rumble from the throat like a growl.
Crouching, smaller, lighter padding, claws click click clicking like the slow rotation of a windup toy. Of gears on metal. Of a lever pulled down and down to reduce momentum to begin a planetside descent. Of —
Curly turns around and there is nothing there.
Huh.
He pays for his items.
After he piles the paper bags of goods into the bed of his decades old pick up, he loops around the front. Before he sits inside, the door pulled open, he pauses and furrows his brows.
There, sitting on his windshield is a rabbit’s foot.
It’s a fresh thing, he realizes when he picks it up and blood stains his hands. It’s also crudely chopped. Bits of shattered bone are exposed where the ankle is, the surrounding meat torn and hanging in short strips. The fur is bloodied and bloodier, making the short hay-colored fur look brown and matted and disgusting. Inexplicably, the entire thing is wet.
Curly looks around the lot but nothing strikes anything of interest. Just other old shoddy vehicles and people minding their own business. If this was some kind of practical joke, then the doers are too long gone to witness the fruit of their endeavors. Even if Curly doesn’t understand the punchline.
He tosses the mangled foot into the passenger seat and climbs in. Before he turns the engine over, he wipes his wet hands over his pants the best he can.
Best to keep the foot. Curly could use some more luck.
It becomes dusk soon enough when he returns home. Waiting for him at his steps is the cat. Upon seeing him as he lugs his large bags to the RV, the cat canters up to him with her tail high up in the air and brown tip crooked in a question. He has to walk carefully as she rubs her body from nose to tail against his calves to not trip from her underfooting, but he manages well enough and he’s able to juggle his items enough to unlock the latch of his door and slip inside. The cat follows him in, too, as expected.
“I gotcha something,” he said as he put the items away. “I know you’re a free little thing, but I thought this would be pretty nice. If you don’t wanna wear it, then you can take it off easily. One of those break away collars.”
He taps at his rarely used table and the cat jumps up, already purring. He places a filled bowl of cat food beneath her chin. She gives it a curious sniff or two and begins to eat quickly. As she does, he slips and clips the collar on with no issue. It jingles happily at her movements.
“There you are. It looks nice, doesn’t it?” Curly pets her a few times and the cat lifts her body to meet his hand with each stroke. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this but you remind me a little of someone I know. Probably because of that dark fur of yours.
I should probably name you, but it’ll be a little weird to name you after her, so I hope you don’t mind.”
Before he turns in for the night, he goes to the edge of where the light reaches outside and sets down another filled pet bowl, much larger than the one belonging to the cat. Inside it is raw red meat, cut up into bite sized pieces. Red liquid oozes out the cuts and pools at the bottom of the bowl as grease, fat, and bone cover the insides. There’s a stale smell to it, like the flanks sat just too long in display, on the cusp of turning spoiled. Washed rot.
Cheap cuts.
Curly sets down the bowl as far as he can and retreats back inside the RV. He watches for a bit through his opened window but if there was any motion, the night blindness overtakes it. When enough is enough, he double checks his locks and turns in for the night.
The cat follows suit, resting comfortably on his chest and warm, bell ringing.
As he drifts off, he’s sure he hears the rustling out there in the foliage and the coyote beginning to eat.
Curly is upside down on his small couch. It’s the middle of the day and he had finished all of his chores earlier. An RV doesn’t have much in terms of upkeep, which he supposes he should appreciate. His barely lived in apartment he once had was the same, though mostly was a place to sleep at night in between haul jobs. Little personal effects and little effort. At least he didn’t keep his mattress on the floor and had a couch.
His captain quarters was much the same, only difference was that he had an excuse in the form of company policy. Personal items should not exceed 25 lbs and a 22 x 18 x 10 inch dimensions. Enough space to keep your underwear, socks, and then some. Otherwise the weight calculations and fuel costs get thrown off. Sometimes extra weight could mean life or death.
What did Anya ask again?
“Sometimes,” he answers when he remembers. “Do you?”
“More than I’d like to admit. It was nice, in a way, quiet. None of this hustle and bustle like it is here planetside. I get overwhelmed sometimes, to be honest, with how loud and rushed everything is down here.” The speaker clips the end of her sentence, the poor signal returning, but clears up when she picks up again. “Whenever we’d have a long job, I always thought it smelled a little like meat afterwards. When we had landed.”
“Meat, really? I don’t think I ever noticed a smell.”
“Yeah. A little like spoiled meat, like it was left too long out in the sun. I’d be a bit nauseous from it as I readjust. Maybe it was just me.”
Curly hums. “I did hear similar things before. It makes sense. All we’d ever breathe is filtered recycled air for months on end when we’re up there, so it makes sense real fresh air would smell strange — well, as fresh as Earth’s air can be. Kind of like noticing a smell in your house after being away for a while.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
He readjusts himself when his lower back starts twinging. He won’t be able to keep this position for long. “What else do you think about the Tulpar?”
The other end of the line crackles, the speaker sounding not unlike static, that Curly starts to lift himself up to check if the call dropped when the phone picks up Anya’s voice, “shouldn’t be the one hogging the conversation. You answer that question first.”
He chuckles and rests back down. “Sure, sure. Let me think.”
What does he think about? He tries not to, if he were to be honest. He doesn’t like thinking about the years he gave aboard that ship or the company that promised to take care of him. About the opportunities he got from them in exchange for his years. Of all the climbing.
But it’s not really about him he thinks about, it’s — “You all. I think about all of you, the crew. The many years and long hauls we’ve spent together. I miss that.” His back is groaning now but he pushes through it because, “—I tried my best, Anya. I know I shouldn’t have told you all like that, but I couldn’t think of any other way. I tried my best to protect you all.” Curly laughs, light and quiet and humorless. “Maybe I wasn’t that good of a captain after all.”
“Don’t say that. You were. You are. You did what you thought was right at the moment. I know you did your best.” There is shuffling at the other end and then she continues, so soft that the phone just barely picks it up, “I miss everyone too. It felt… safe up there. Nothing like down here.”
“Yeah.”
Both sides go quiet. There is nothing really left to say.
“I should let you go,” Curly says. “Let you enjoy the rest of your lunch break. Did that thief situation get solved?”
“Sort of. I’ve been picking up food at a local place lately. Not terribly expensive but it beats going hungry. They’ve learned my name, I think,” Anya said. “Goodbye, Curly. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Bye, Anya.”
The line dies and Curly gets up. He’s somewhat lightheaded now from the blood rushing to his head.
He sits for a bit, properly this time, to let the blood settle and blink away the fuzziness in his eyes. As it passes, he continues to sit because there isn’t much else to do.
This is something he hasn’t really gotten used to. The time of it all. There had always been something to do, reports to finish, meetings to hold, flight plans to chart. Double shifts and barely squeezed in coffee breaks. Up till the wee hours of the artificial day-night cycle to come up with morale boosting activities. Play mediator. Play enforcer. Be friend. Be family. To make sure everything is in place and smooth, down to the last tightened screw.
The flying of it all.
As lead pilot, be responsible for all the lives aboard the Tulpar.
When Curly sighs, it’s a heavy burdensome thing. His shoulders ache with phantom sensations of the hours, weeks, months, years given he gave, the ones he’s dedicated. And now, when everything came under his feet, the idea of time. The endless, abundant time of it all. Well, he doesn’t quite know what to think.
So he doesn’t.
Curly gets up and ties on his running shoes and runs out the door and keeps running until his legs feel like stones and jelly at the same time. Sweat soaking and splattering on the hot asphalt and parched soil. Until his eyes sting and his grown out hair sticks and obscures his vision.
Until the sun begins to set and wash everything in red. Deep, hot, burning red that makes everything look so angry and bloody and endless. Like something he can just fall into and burn from.
Really, it is quite beautiful.
He stands and watches the sun’s journey, covered in its high energy emitting red rays, the ones disturbed by the increase of atmospheric particles they collide and bounce against like pegs on a board until it reaches him. Hole in one. Jackpot. Radiation.
By the time he returns back to his RV, it’s violet outside, edging into pitch darkness. Nighttime. He should eat something, but his appetite isn’t cooperative.
But he comes back all the same because this is where he decided his life will be.
“Hey, girl,” he says, forcing himself to crouch down despite how weak his legs feel. “Sorry I didn’t feed you on time. I bet you are pretty hungry, huh? I’m here now though, I’ll fix you up something.”
The cat brushes against his calves and knees over and over again, her small bell ringing. He gives her a few scratches behind the ears and pets down her body, which she enthusiastically accepts in a way he’d like to think is forgiveness. Then he gets up and heads to his RV to do as he promised he would. Fix up dinner.
She climbs in after him and watches him with her large gray eyes as he portions out a fair amount of kibble. He gives her another pet as he lets her have at it.
As the crunching and snapping echoes in the small quarters, teeth against teeth to expose the filled innards and lick up as much as her tongue can, Curly pulls out the large bowl to begin filling.
The meat feels wet in his hands as he pulls the cuts out from the plastic packaging. Solid, spongy. Slippery. Fat and tendons keeping the marble shaping. He tears at it with his hands. Digs his fingers between the grains and cordings and pulls. There’s a soft ripping sound to the action that makes his stomach squeeze, but he knows it’s necessary. Bite-sized, so eating won’t be a struggle.
His hands feel so cold he almost can’t feel them when he’s done. The cut of meat barely recognizable to what it once was, now just a jumbled mush of flesh, fat, and bone.
Redness stains his hands, the off-brand of watery diluted blood. He turns them back and front to inspect how red they are. He can barely see his own skin underneath.
Tasting it too makes him grimace. Iron and sour. He washes his hands clean with water as hot as it will go.
Darkness has fully settled by the time he takes the bowl outside.
Somehow, it is even harder to see. He has to blink several times to force his eyes to adjust to no avail. The lights to the trailer are too bright to properly illuminate the surrounding darkness. Still, he reaches the edge of where the lights ends and already he can hear that familiar rustling. The slow padding and pacings. If he strains hard enough, the heavy panting like a dog desperate to relieve the heat from its body.
Curly sets the bowl of old meat down as far as he can reach and crouches down himself to try to appear not as threatening. “Hey there, boy,” he whispers. “I know you’re hungry too. Sorry for the wait. I know it’s later than usual.
I haven’t really ever seen you out and about. Sometimes I think I see you, like in the corner of my vision sitting there, but I don’t know if it’s my mind playing tricks on me. Is that weird? I hope not. The last thing I want is to go crazy.” Curly laughs, a collection of out of breath huffs more than anything. “Wouldn’t that be something? Star pilot and captain laid off and goes crazy in the wilderness. Talk about a front pager. Or not. Maybe they’ll put me next to the sports sections, though I hope it’ll be next to the Sunday comic strips instead.
I really hope I get to see you,” he says and then waits, as if the animal will understand what he said and would come right out in presentation and bow. But no such thing happens. Only soft rustling and heavy pants just outside the light. “Listen to me, ranting off. You probably just want to eat huh? Waiting for me to mosey on out? That’s okay, I understand. I don’t like being disturbed much while I eat, either. Though, not many things to bother me these days.”
Curly sighs. He wonders if getting closer would help but he decides against it. Like Anya said, it’s still wildlife. Maybe eventually.
“Anya said not to feed you, but you’re alright. I know you’re dangerous, but I don’t think you would hurt me. Maybe that’s weird to say.” The lights to his back feel brighter for a second. The wattage buzzing and humming loudly as the propane generator hurries along. The cooling fan whirls something sharp, adding to the night ambiance of distant insect cricketing and wind blowing through the grass fields. Somehow, it all feels warmer and louder. The generator is clicking and the bulbs grating and — “You remind me of someone I once knew. His name was—”
And the lights go out.
Curly can’t see a thing. His eyes were too night blind. All he sees is black and black and black.
Then, the rustling sounds louder.
“Fuck,” he said, getting up properly. He’s blind and there’s barely any moon. New moon at the worst of times. He tries to step toward where he thinks the trailer is with his hands in front of him as a guide. The generator must’ve blown a fuse. “ Fuck,” he repeats when his foot catches on something on the ground he cannot see. A stick or branch or rock or something.
Panting. Why does he hear panting? Can’t be him, it’s coming from…
The brush shakes, soft and subtle. He tries very very hard to focus on his hearing, the only thing not lost to him right now, to deduce where the noise is coming from. Behind him? Beside him?
He tries to keep going in the direction he’s chosen but the shifting of the grass sounds closer and he veers in another direction to avoid it. He doesn’t delude himself on what the sounds could be, but that doesn’t stop his heart picking up from the lack of confirmation. Just, don’t panic. Don’t panic. Walk calmly back inside and he will be safe.
Just, fuck, where is the RV?
Eat the food, please. Get distracted by the food and don’t bother him. Should be easy right? It should smell so delicious that he should be the last thing it thinks of to approach. Fuck. Shit. Fuck.
He keeps his breathing leveled as he slowly walks. His vision is acclimating bit by bit but too slow to rely on. He’s been in difficult situations before so he knows how to keep calm. Panicking is a captain’s worst enemy, or so the training guides and modules have said. Everyone is counting on him so he cannot panic.
The barely there sounds of crunching grass and heavy steps are even closer. Enough that he can picture the animal creeping behind him, ears flat against his head, eyes glowing, and the lips of his maw pulled wide to reveal saliva dripping teeth.
It’ll be okay. He’ll be okay. Just…
Keep walking. Keep walking, that’s all he can do.
And so he walks.
When his eyes adjust enough to see the outline of the RV, he realizes he’s being corralled. The animal had used his hearing against him to bring him more out in the open and away from refuge.
Shit.
So, against all his better judgements, he books it.
The snarl is horrible. Loud and awful and so fucking close. He doesn’t even try to turn his head in fear that the moment he does he’ll trip. So he just keeps running, hearing the jaws snapping and clicking, the snarling so deep that it reverberates in his bones. Wet, saliva slick, and hungry.
Something catches the back of his shirt and pulls, ripping and tearing it off his body from the opposing force of it all. He refuses to let it slow him down as he vaults up the steps leading to the door and swinging it open. There’s another angry, rageful snarl when the animal realizes it didn’t grab its prize and instead has a mouth full of sweat soaked fabric. Before the coyote launches itself at him again to sink those teeth in his meat, Curly clambers in and slams the door.
He can barely breathe in relief until he’s sure the door is locked tight behind him.
Fuck, he might throw up.
He doesn’t throw up, but it’s a near thing. Instead he curses at the sound of the yeowling within his refuge. Almost shrieking. And the sound of a small ringing bell.
Fuck, the cat — the window.
Curly runs and shuts the open window. If adrenaline wasn’t coursing through his system, then he’d be shocked that the glass didn’t break.
The hissing, shrieking, yeowling still continues. So fucking loud that Curly’s heart drops down and down and down until the shape of the cat finally shows itself on his bed, back arched and hackles raised and so fucking angry and scared. Like him.
Curly swallows. “It’s okay, girl,” he whispers, too scared to raise his voice anymore, not with the blood roaring in his head. He raises his hand and approaches very slow. “It’s okay, it’s okay. The coyote won’t hurt you. He’s outside now and he won’t be coming in. Okay? It’s okay.”
This settles down the cat marginally. Her tail whips less severely. When she’s almost coaxed into calming down, there are scratches at the door that make her hiss and swipe her open paw at him, catching blood. She runs off to hide somewhere in the darkness.
Curly can’t hold it against her. She was just trying to protect herself, after all.
The scratches at the door are unnerving. Though, there is nothing to be done about it now.
His heart rate settles soon enough even if the sounds outside don’t. Curly sits on his bed and listens to the scratches, the pacings, and the pantings outside. He doesn’t try to catch a glimpse of it out the window. It might just reinvigorate the animal.
Eventually, the sounds do stop. That, or he falls asleep.
Sometime in the night, the cat comes and curls up in his lap. The weight is comforting.
He doesn’t feed the coyote for the next few days.
“Oh my god, are you okay?”
Curly winces. He’s outside today and the sun is high in the sky and he’s looking over his ruined shirt he found in the foliage a half of a mile away. “Yeah, I’m okay, I promise. The guy just nipped on my heels a little bit. Spooked the daylights out of me. But I promise you, I wasn’t bitten or anything.”
“Still… It's scary to hear. I know I’d be terrified in that situation. Why do you think it attacked?”
“Didn’t attack,” he corrects. “Just… snapped at me. It really wasn’t bad at all, I swear. And I’m not sure. Maybe it smelled some food on me and got interested?”
“You haven’t been feeding it, right?”
“No, no, I haven’t,” he lies. He touches the edges of the tear marks. There’s marks of dirt and blood. Not his, of course, just the ambiguous kind. “I think it's just persistent and got mad I had nothing for it. Which, yeah, I get it. I’d get mad too if I saw a guy eat in front of me while I starved.”
When he ends it with a light laugh, Anya doesn’t immediately respond. Instead the phone crackles as usual, weighty and prolonged. “I wish you’d be honest with me, Curly,” Anya finally says. “Though, I understand why you wouldn’t want to.”
“I am being honest.”
“Okay.”
There is only crackling and clippings from the line then. Grating, like an old radio set unable to find a station. Though the reception goes in and out, the lack of conversation says more than words ever could. Curly sighs.
“I promise I know what I’m doing. This,” he says, “situation was just a one time thing. I don’t think he’d do it again. And if it does, well, know how to take care of it. Please trust me, Anya.”
It’s another long, long moment until Anya does answer. “Alright, Curly. I trust you. It’s just — It’s just the world is scary. And I worry something bad will happen to you.”
Curly stops stroking the torn fabric. His brows furrow and he looks over to where his phone rests on the other side of his repurposed patio table. “Anya. Is everything alright?”
He hears her choke. Her inhale is sharp and struggling, like she’s biting something back. “I— It’s just.” She breaks off and he can hear her breathe a few times, slow and steady to resume her composure. Something tightens in his chest, winding taut with each passing second as he waits for her to continue. “I think I’m being followed.”
When Curly cannot find the words to even start — anything. Anya keeps going.
“I wasn’t sure at first. I didn’t believe it. I thought this couldn’t have happened to me — but… it did — has. Is happening. And I’m scared.
I started noticing when… items began appearing. On my apartment complex entrance. Then on my mailbox inside. Then at my doorstep. I never opened them, I just threw them away, because it was weird and scary and I didn’t know what else to do.
I don’t know who it is. I’ve never seen them. It’s not like I can report it when I don’t even have a description — they’d think I’m crazy. But I know I’m not. I’m just scared, Curly. I’m just really scared.”
“I know you are,” Curly says because it’s the first thing he can think of to say. “It’ll be okay, Anya, alright? It’ll be okay. We’ll get you through this — Do you have a place to go? Family, friends?”
“Haha… No, not really. I don’t have any living family and I just moved here so there’s really no one I could think of to intrude on.”
Shit. He knew that didn’t he? All those years working together would have surely brought this subject up? “Why don’t you come visit me, then? I know I’m a bit ways away but it’ll give you enough distance to shake off that pervert.”
“I couldn’t ask that of you.”
“I insist. I care about you, Anya, and I want you to be safe. You can stay as long as you want and I don’t mind the couch.”
“I care about you too, Curly,” Anya says. “I’ll talk to my work and I’ll come. Thank you. Really, thank you.”
“Of course. I’d do anything for you, please know that.”
“I should go. My lunch break is almost over and I should go talk to my boss as soon as I can. And please stay safe too, Curly.”
“Bye, Anya. Take care.”
Before she hangs up, the receiver picks up the beginning clips of another conversation. A stilted hello and a what are you— before the line dies.
Curly tries not to think about it too hard.
Instead he goes about cleaning up his space. Sweeping the linoleum floor and into the tiny crevices, decluttering the small counter space, wiping down and opening the window to let the cleaning fumes out, scrubbing his toilet and making a mental note to get into the habit of keeping the seat down. All the little things he would otherwise pass over in the complacency of living alone. He’s too old for a bachelor pad life but it is very easy to get used to certain things when alone.
“You’re going to meet one of my friends,” he says to the cat curled up on the only cushioned chair. Her posture is loose and languid and her only tip off of hearing him being the way her ears twitch toward him. “I hope the two of you get along, but I’m sure you both will. Just don’t prefer her over me. That’ll just break my heart.”
He chuckles a little bit over his own words and keeps cleaning.
He doesn’t know quite when Anya would visit, if she even can, but the prospect of it makes him feel far better than he has felt in the passing time. Like he’s needed again. He hasn’t realized how much he missed that.
As he goes outside with a full rubbish bag in hand to toss in his bin, hesitance settles in him. Because though he can get this small trailer as pristine and lemony fresh as he can, there remains a genuine issue. The prowling coyote.
There hasn’t been an incident since that time with the power outage. In fact, there hasn’t been anything at all. Almost as if the coyote up and vanished when he woke up that next morning, like it was all a bad dream. Though, that couldn’t have been the case, no matter how much Curly would have liked it to.
After all, he had found his shirt bloody and torn and stinking of animal musk. The door had scratch marks. And his claw wound still hurt occasionally from where the cat had swiped at him from her fright.
For the better, he supposes, that the coyote had gone. Even if the thought makes his heart clench something fierce. It’s for the best, really, that the coyote is gone. He doesn’t think he’d have the heart to chase him away himself.
Curly tosses the bag into the bin and pins another mental note to swing by the dump to properly dispose of it all.
Because Anya is coming.
He’s walking down a corridor.
It’s expansive. He cannot see the end.
Each footfall reverberates. Solid soles against grated metal. Below are the innards, pipes and wirings of various sizes gurgling, humming. Living.
There’s a strange heat to this. A humidity. The kind that has him sweating his bangs sticky and shrugging off his overcover to let hang at his waist. He doesn’t know where he’s heading. Though, it feels urgent.
Condensation appears along the metal walls the further he goes down. Small droplets collecting, growing, heavying down the walls and leaving thick cutting trails. A distant dripping sounds. Syncopated and not quite right.
Is there a flooding? Has the water filtering system combusted? Or, worse, the engine’s cooling system bursted a pipe? Something like that could leave them stranded, or worse. This flight path has them nowhere near any spaceports for months. He needs to find—
There’s a tapping behind him. One after another in quick successions. Multiples of two. Tap-ta-tap-ta-tap-ta-tap. Again and again, getting closer. Like a stalking.
He looks over his shoulder as he continues walking — he can’t stop because he needs to find — but there’s nothing. Just the gurgling floor and the weeping walls and darkness beyond where the light doesn’t touch. Just barely out of reach.
Even if he squints, he cannot see. He turns his head back around. The following taps continue after.
Somehow, it gets wetter. The corridor begins to bend this way and that and the pipes overhead are sizzling. Steam wafts in plumps where the pipes are bent and crushed, adding to the humid hot sauna. Curly wipes at his forehead to no avail as sweat keeps pouring out of him and stinging his eyes.
He cannot panic. A captain does not panic. Not when the crew relies so heavily on him to keep them all safe. That is his responsibility, even at his own expense.
It is flooding.
The water soaks through his boots and to the shins of his jumpsuit. The materials are too cheap to keep him properly dry. Nothing he can do about it now. He has to find the source of this problem. He has to fix it before it kills the crew.
He wades further through the water. It’s hot and steaming, lapping up to his knees as he pushes through the currents. The pipes overhead and beneath the floor are actively spraying now and gurgling out gallons after gallons of water. Far more than he could even conceptualize the Tulpar holding. He’s getting closer now.
There’s splashing behind him and somehow still the sound of nails against hard ground. Hard, deep panting. The beginnings of a snarl. He cannot look behind him now. Whatever it is, he’ll deal with it when it comes. Right now the whole crew is in danger and that takes precedence.
The water gets deeper and deeper and soon it’s to his waist and rising. The steam makes it harder to see by how concentrated it is now that he’s so close to water level. It hurts but he bears through it.
Then there’s an ending. He sees it. There, deeper into the cooridor’s dead end is the lever to the emergency hatch. If he remembers the layout correctly, the hatch leads right into the boiler. If he can pull the level, it will drain everything and buy him more time to think of solutions.
Of course, the downside is that the lever is right next to the hatch on the ground and the dead end is entirely flooded and boiling.
He takes the biggest breath he can, the water now reaching past his chest, and dives.
It burns.
He can feel his skin shrink and twist from the water. Like it’ll burn right off his body. Like it is burning off his body. It’s so hard to move but through the agony he forces one hand after the other, his feet kicking again and again, to pull him through. He has to reach it. He has to. For the crew.
He’s getting closer. He’s diving blind but he knows he’s getting closer. Whatever feeling remains in his hand he can feel the metal of the lever and grab and pull.
The hatch groans open and all the water rushes through. No matter how desperate he holds the level, the current sweeps him away and he goes through the hatch like a drain.
The scene changes when he passes through. He’s no longer submerged now. Instead, he’s standing in a white space and there is a door in front of him. He opens it and passes through.
It’s his old apartment. It still looks as empty as he remembers. The barely made bed, the old lumpy couch, the dusty disused breakfast table and the two chairs. His answering machine is blinking.
He goes and clicks it.
“Curly,” says a deep and gravelly voice, made gratey by the analog tape, strikingly familiar. “It’s me. I know we haven’t talked in a while since — well, since. But uh, I thought I’d give you a ring. Your ma passed along your number so don’t go thinking I’m a stalker or something. You’re not that great.
Shit sorry. Didn’t mean to say that. Anyways. I hear you're a pilot captain now? What a dream you must be living. People over here keep saying that. That you’re doing great and whatever.
Listen… I caught a little bit of trouble here. Nothing big, just lost my job, some other stuff, and well, it’s not great. I hate to ask. I really, really hate to ask. But, can you hook me up with a gig?
I’m not asking for money or anything. I have some self respect. Just, help to get my foot in the door.
Call me.”
There’s another message. He clicks it.
“Wow. Never figured you as a type to ignore your friends. Not even a ring back? I’m not asking you to bend over backwards for me, just a good word. Help a guy out.
Whatever. It’s not like I needed it or anything. Trapped in space with you sounds really fucking awful now that I think about it. Probably be as unbearable as you were when we were kids. Always telling me what to do. So fucking annoying.
Enjoy your shitty ship. I bet you’re a shitty captain anyways. It’s a wonder your crew hasn’t blown their brains out already. I know I would.
Fuck you.”
He remembers why he didn’t respond back. Pony Express had given the Tulpar a last minute haul job that lasted over a year. Curly had to pull so many unpaid overtime shifts just due to the lack of a co-pilot. Anya had him sleeping in one of the gurneys in Medical anytime he could.
Then the scene washes away and he’s laying down in one of those gurneys. Someone is crying but he can barely move his neck to see. It hurts too much too.
“I’m sorry,” she says, in between sniffling. “You didn’t deserve that. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
He wants to tell Anya it’s okay, that it’ll be okay, but he can’t. He can’t move his jaw.
Then she drowns away too and he’s left in this room covered in the red sunlight. The sun is stuck in a perpetual sunset, glitching and looping the same frame over and over again. It’s calming. Peaceful, in a way. It distracts him how much everything hurts.
Something grips his throat. Tightening hard, hands and fingers interlacing like snapping jaws. Burrowing, digging, crushing. He can’t
Brown hair, familiar, brushes against the remains of his face. Weight heavy against his, like he’s trying to use all of his to —
Words mix with a deep horrible snarl. In the blurriness of his eye, the image flashes between two. A superimposition he can barely decipher. Pulled lips, teeth exposed, white white white. Angry, slitted eyes of yellow brown yellow brown yellow brown — is this — ? This is —
“I hope you feel fucking better.”
Curly wakes up.
He wakes up and he’s freezing.
He almost doesn’t know where he is, still expecting to hear the familiar whirling and humming of the Tulpar’s insides but he doesn’t. There’s only insect cricketing and the wind. He’s in his RV in the middle of nowhere and it’s night. He can’t really see anything from how enveloping the blackness is.
He’s also cold. Freezing. Which is strange because the recent nights have been temperate inside from all the collected body heat. Stuffy, really, that’s why he used to keep the window open.
Fuck, did he —?
He starts moving and there’s a disgusting wet squelch. Then drippings. Thick and viscous, heavy drippings. He realizes how wet he feels. Sticky. But not tacky in the way dried sweat feels. Just, slippery.
Unease piles in his stomach and into his throat. He’s nauseous.
Slowly, he climbs out of bed.
The path to his phone is only the length of a handful of paces but it feels like miles. He turns on the torch and nearly drops it.
Blood covers the floor. Wet and smearing, staining the linoleum. Prints are the only thing that makes sense in the mess. Large and pawed, leading to his…
The bed looks grisly. The white sheets are covered in it and when he looks down at himself he can feel the nausea and bile surge up his throat like he will vomit. He’s covered in it. He was sleeping in it.
It can’t be his. There is no way. It’s not possible. Even though he wishes it was. He doesn’t feel any injury on him and even he wouldn’t survive having lost so much blood — fuck , he wouldn’t even be walking!
So… who’s was it?
Curly doesn’t want to know. All he wants to do is look away, but this is his space. He needs to do it.
Curly approaches, slowly. He follows the prints. The blood roaring in his ears makes it impossible to hear anything but his own heart beating wildly.
When he is at the precipice of the bed, he shivers at the sudden gust of wind. He shines his torch in the direction of his left open window. Blood covers the sill awfully. Clawing out. It’s gone now.
He turns back. The blood looks thicker and darker now, uglier. He swallows rapidly to keep the vomit down and at the same time control his breathing. It’s a hard endeavor when all he can smell is the gore.
He should do this quickly.
He takes the cover and pulls.
There’s even more blood. There’s so much it looks black. All of it is barely dried. Pooling and sticking and soaking into the sheets and mattress below. The smell is so overwhelming that it’s shocking that he didn't notice before.
The bed is empty, save for large heavy paw prints and a small undone black collar with a bell softly ringing.
Curly doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night.
He keeps the gun on him at all times.
He rarely goes outside now too.
It took some time to clean up the ruined awful sheets and beddings. He tossed what he could but the mattress was a lost cause. He put it outside just so he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore. All that blood.
He also tried looking for the cat. Fuck, he really should have given her a name or something. It feels too cruel to just call her the cat like she meant nothing. But then the thought of naming her what he wanted to name her is nauseating now.
Nonetheless, he looks for her and cannot find a trace. Nothing except the undone collar and all that fucking blood.
He even sleeps with the gun, sometimes. Whenever he can sleep, that is. There are eyes on him, he knows, watching and waiting and pacing for the right moment to get him. What he doesn’t understand though is why the beast didn’t maul him in his sleep when he left that window open. Why didn’t the thing go for him instead of the cat? Surely he has more meat on his bones and whatever challenge he may have posed is gone because he was fucking asleep . He was laying there, utterly vulnerable and helpless and the beast didn’t go for it. Instead, it had gotten into his bed and –
He doesn’t know what it did. Only that the beast didn’t kill him when it had the chance. Soaking blood on him.
It’s all his fault. If he had just closed his window…
The coyote comes often, too.
At night only. Far after the sun had fully set below the horizon and the moon began rising. He can hear it padding through the overgrown grass and move through the brush. Hear its fur catch on bramble to get near. The scratches at the door trying to dig through. The heavy panting and the soft growling behind those snapping fangs. The beast comes nightly, every night since the cat disappeared. Desperate to get at him.
This night will be different, though.
Curly checks the bullets in the revolver for the nth time. There are only six. He doesn’t own any more than that.
The light spilling through his windows begins to turn red. The ultraviolet particles of the plasma inferno that is the Earth’s G-type main sequence star are traveling and colliding long distances through denser atmospheric matter. Red and redder. Energy ablaze.
He shuts the barrel with a loud click.
This is his responsibility. This is what he has to do. To protect Anya, to keep her safe.
He goes outside and thumbs off the safety. He walks.
The sun is coming down. Everything is washed in red. Like blood. It’s fitting this is how it ends. After all this, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to look at the sunset ever again.
“It’s my fault, wasn’t it?” He speaks aloud. “Not just the window, but the caring for you. I cared for you. I fed you. I even named you.
Anya was right, I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry. It was wrong of me. It’s just your nature, isn’t it? I should have seen that. I should have known better than to think we were friends.
But it’s okay, Jimmy. Yeah, I named you Jimmy in my head. You reminded me of him. So fucking much. I haven’t seen him in years. I would have given him a job just because he asked, if he had waited for me. I would have given anything for him to be my co-pilot, that empty never filled position that had me breaking my back. But I guess it was for the better. The company was always going to go under. I should have seen that.
Yeah. It was for the better.”
Nighttime surrounds them both. Beast and man. He can see those yellow glaring eyes now. Glowing in the darkness from the distant light’s reflection. The stare is pinning and full of judgment, but it’s okay. Curly was never that great of a man.
He raises the gun. The beast growls at him.
Later, when he’s crawling up those steps to his open door, blood pouring out of him and clogging what vision remains in his eye, he reaches for that ringing ringing ringing ringing ringing phone. He can’t think, can barely breathe, but he knows he has to answer it. He has to.
Whatever is left of his hand is wet and shaky but he somehow answers despite the exposed bone.
“Curly,” comes a cry from the other side of the line. It’s crackling and static and he can barely hear what words are coming through. “-ly. H—p. I – He came in — he – my bedroom – couldn’t – I – ped.”
There’s heavy steps behind him. Those claws clicking tapping rapping on the pooling floor and he begins to laugh. Laugh so fucking loud as he can, but it sounds like wheezes and sobbing in his ears. His crushed throat.
“–ly?”
The coyote reaches over and hangs up the phone.