Javin: Erm...Javin? [waits, anticipating he might know something]
C.R.: Javin? The hell kind of a name is that?
Javin: [mumbles] 'Dunno. [clears his throat] I had a message
C.R.: So? What's that got to do with me? How'd you get my number?
Javin: That's what I'm tryin' to tell ya. I had a message on my phone from this number about a bike? You were giving it to me?
C.R.: A bike? ...Ehh, I've got one out back. Yamaha. Black...I'm giving it to you?
Javin: [stills as he realizes it's a motorbike] Yeah. According to my message. [massages the bridge of his nose] This is going to sound rather odd, but...was I to pay you for this?
C.R.: Uh..well I don't know.
Javin: O..kay..
C.R.: Tell you what...Javin? Come by.
Javin: Your address?
C.R.: 789 Cliff--wait a second. How'd you find out about my bike if you
Javin: [thinks quickly] I would've had to know about it from you, so...
C.R.: Eh...guess so. 789 Eagle Cliff Drive. If you're not here in the next hour, I don't wanna hear from you again, y'hear?
Javin: [cracks a smile] Loud and clear. Thank you, sir.
I don’t think anyone’s ever threatened me so much before in a single breath.
But she knows now. It was more than the “unbelievable” strength in the punch (but truth be told, I held back a lot) that had her grilling it out of me. She saw my eyes and that, she couldn’t ignore. It’s always my first dead giveaway although sometimes I can pull it together fast enough where people think they had one too many drinks. We weren’t at a bar though—we were at home and her pride about participating in a week of full moons got the better of me. The witch's Sabbath, she said it was. 'A load of shit' was my reply.
I still haven’t gotten enough sleep, so I’m gonna do that. I'm overdue for that. But I punched her. I’m not proud. Why would I be? And yeah I know hitting anyone is a shit thing to do--man or woman. It's the reaction that I had though when she explained more about all the 'no changing days' shit. I know I shouldn't have done it. But I know it when I’m calmer than I was. Like now.
It’s this kind of shit that bothers me about what I am though, sometimes—the lack of discipline, and the amount of energy that goes into me having it, or even faking that I have it sometimes. I lose control sometimes though. My anger makes me blind and any moral lines that might exist when I’m more present in myself are gone as well. Delia could have been a man and I would have done the same thing. The way she laughed about how “it worked” and how she wasn’t home as much as I thought, because she’d been in the woods too. She’d been so caught up in everything that she stripped and pranced naked in the forest for a few days. Or nights with other goddamn witches. She’d been a part of the fucking hyena laughs that I couldn’t stop hearing. It was too much and I won’t rehash anymore on it unless I wanna lose it all over again.
Sometimes I do like not having the control. I like letting free of the restraints I put on myself because sometimes I don't hurt anybody who matters to me. Sometimes I don't kill complete strangers. Sometimes I don't maim people and take off, not knowing if they survived or not. Sometimes I just get freely test my speed, or look for other animals to challenger or hunt.
Sometimes I can let the beast in me go without remorse afterward. But not this time. I need to apologize to her—make it right somehow.
She wants to know more about me, now that she knows I’m not just Javin—the world-weary roommate with sporadic anger issues. I don’t feel like I owe her that because of what I’d done. With that, I’ll start with flowers. And a genuine apology.
Tagging: Javin Kapoor & 2 unnamed.
Location: Tartarus Bar & the forest; Sangren, CO
Time Frame: Nighttime/well after midnight, June 12/13, 2014
General Notes: In which Javin's flimsy lid was triggered off a few hours early.
Javin finally moved, craning his neck around slowly, catching sight of the pair who brought the smells with them. They had reddish brown skin, with an excessive amount of hair along the exposed forearms. Both were dressed similarly—fitted clothes, in two tones of grey—and both were dancing with a woman they sandwiched between them. A few seconds later, when Javin turned back around to the bar, the smells grew stronger and he knew exactly why.
“The boy from the forest,” he heard from his back.
Javin turned around to see the two giving him identical, amused stares. One of the tricksters jerked their head toward the front doors. Javin slid the water glass away and got off the stool to follow them, already feeling the tension gripping his shoulders and chest. After they reached the bar’s parking lot, the tricksters looked over their shoulder to him.
“Catch us if you can, wolf.” And with that, the pair clasped hands and took off with Javin on their heels. The pair’s giggles filled the air as the three moved like a blur—Tartarus shrinking behind them and the forest coming into full view. They were welcomed by the dense fog, licking the ground at their feet and prickling their faces with coldness.
After putting some distance between themselves and Javin, the tricksters abruptly stopped and about-faced. One raised its hand and forced Javin to stop, as though an invisible wall now stood between them.
They mocked Javin’s visible anger with more peals of laughter. Both of them bore manic smiles on their gaunt faces—their teeth, short and pointed. They mimicked each other’s spindly movements like Siamese twins, teetering their torsos back and forth and with bushy red tails swishing behind their spidery legs. One sniggered, “So determined for meaningless garments.”
Javin ground his feet further into the ground, his heels forming divots into the soil. He was about to reach for the stunning potion when the one shrieked at him.
“Must you insist on clothes?” asked the second. “You were much more appealing to look at without them.”
“Even with all the fur. Yes, we like fur,” added the first.
“And we very much liked making you undress for us,” the other confessed, twisting his red-brown wrists back and forth to make Javin’s shirt hem dance up and down his front.
He reacted immediately, giving a warning growl to the two as reddish-brown smoke swirled tightly around the slender demons. A second later, Javin was glaring down twin girls staring expressionless up at him, not unlike The Shining. Their once gaunt cheeks were now plump and stained with blush; their narrow eyes were wide and persuasive and when they smiled at him, they donned oversized square teeth.
“You wouldn’t hurt an innocent little girl, would you?” asked the child on the right with an adolescent’s voice. For a long second, Javin hesitated. But it took him an equally lengthy second to come to his stronger senses and advance the tricksters, due to their unchanged odors. In a well-timed maneuver, he reached back for the vial Johnny gave him and threw it down at the ‘children’s’ feet with blinding speed.
The tricksters gasped as the potion fizzled and transformed into bright white miasma that swirled up around them. Javin took a few long backwards strides to avoid inhaling the concoction. On his final retreating steps, he stepped out of his boots while yanking his jacket off, but his eyes remained glowering at the two who were quickly becoming paralyzed. By the time the smoke cleared, all they were able to move were their mouths and eyes. Their gazes went wide, eyeballs shifting back and forth while they wailed behind barely opened mouths. After realizing that it actually worked, Javin advanced the two, moving like a blur until he had one clawed hand bound around each trickster’s neck, squeezing slow at their windpipes. The low growls continued low and long like a souped up car sitting idle as he lifted their small bodies off the ground.
“Kill us…” one wheezed.
“And you won’t get your property back,” finished the other. Their voices were stuck sounding like that of a six year-old child.
“I don’t fuckin' care!” Javin barked back, his stinted muzzle a meager inch or two from their faces. Regardless of their attempts at deception, he could plainly see how frightened they were. In a matter of seconds his English words would be lost to nothing more than growls, barks and howls. His fingers were already thickening without his grasps loosening, and the bristles of facial hair were growing both in length and in numbers. His chest rose while his torso widened a few inches, driving tension into his already fitted shirt until it tore wide open.
One of the tricksters looked like its eyes were going to pop out of its skull when it gasped, “Alright!”
“We’ll tell you…where your things are!” the second insisted.
Forfeiting from their games hadn’t granted them any mercy from Javin yet, nor did it slow or stop his gradual changing.
“Our pockets.”
Still bearing his elongated canines at them, Javin released their necks, knowing that they were still stuck. He stood a little more upright as his spread claws raised above his shoulders and came down deep across the skirt of their teal dresses. The apron-like pockets fell open. His beaded necklace thudded softly on the forest floor while his rings bounced before settling in the dirt and brush.
The second trickster sucked in a noisy breath and went on to whimper, “We sold your clothes.”
“To…someone.”
Javin’s growls roared in their ears, but his exceptional hearing allowed him not to miss the first say, “A-….nother, in the forest.”
“We don’t know—”
“What they wanted.”
“And we didn’t care.”
The words leaked out of the barely breathing tricksters. But Javin had heard enough. He had been pushed past a sense of reason or restraint toward the pair of tricksters. Keeping the two arrested in his large claws, Javin struck at the one on his left, opening and closing his razor sharp canines into its belly. Hot, bright red blood gushed from its side, burning Javin’s gums and flew. His short muzzle whipped back and forth while he reflexively closing his paws into fists, crushing the entirety of the pair’s little necks. Bone from their spines popped and crunched and more blood oozed onto the meat of his palms. When he let go to nuzzle his face and palms into the grass, the tricksters’ heads lolled hard to one side. By the time Javin lifted his short muzzle one of the heads was sitting sideways near his nose. He backed away enough to see the severed corpse better—yellow eyes darting between it and the nearly decapitated second—and then immediately stomped on the bulbous skull and flesh while his talons scooped up the body. After pitching the one, he kicked the other, sending its raggedy carcass sailing into the trees.
Once he wiped the sizzling blood from the bottom of his feet in the dead leaves and moist soil, Javin sought out his reclaimed belongings. Though his self-control continued to dwindle, he swiped the rings and necklace discarded them onto his abandoned jacket, balled up the garment and shoved it deep into the burrow of a nearby tree trunk before taking off into the woods. Unlike usual burns and bruises, the demon’s blood still burned on his hands, lips and soles of his feet. He knew nothing about remedies for burns from demon’s blood, but found himself hoping that a good amount of cold night air might help remedy the seering pain.
