The Werebat Chronicle: Part 4
WEREBAT focuses on a gay guy who discovers that he’s a werebat, and follows his experiences from there.
THE COLONIES, PART 1
Zé woke slumped over the console between the front car seats, his elbow in a cup holder, his head in the passenger seat. As he curved up, a breeze winding through the open windows caressed him. A monarch butterfly fluttered over the dashboard. He remembered driving through downtown and over a main highway into a part of the city he wasn’t familiar with. He remembered graffitied warehouses next to gentrification, and a tall wooden driveway gate sliding open, and the woman whispering “Stay.” He’d leaned into his driver’s door then, so sleepy.
How long had he stayed, sleeping? He stretched. The butterfly pumped its wings on the steering wheel. He admired it for a few moments, then gazed over it and through the front windshield. Dozens of monarch butterflies covered the space in front of him, blinking. Within the myriad slivers of black and burnt orange, he saw green vines and patches of a tall stone wall above him.
Where was he? Where was she?
A strong puff of warm air hit his ear as if to answer him. Turning, he saw brown fuzz, then a plastic sheen, then…it was an ostrich, ducking in through the passenger window, a dissatisfied look on its face. He slapped his left side against the door but it didn’t respond; it stayed, staring with dissatisfaction as he popped open the car door, bent out, and slid sideways into tall weeds and squishy persimmons.
As he scanned the overgrown yard between him and a two-story adobe building painted black and gray, he and the ostrich seemed alone. A soft curve of bent overgrowth trailed from the side of the building to his car. If he didn’t feel his keys in his pockets, he could imagine parking near the building first, falling asleep, then rolling forward until stopped by the wall. Unless he climbed the wall, he’d have to follow the trail to leave this place. He wished he’d crashed through it completely into some alleyway or field through which he could escape now so he wouldn’t need to worry about who was in or around the building and whether or not he could pass undisturbed. Driving out would be noisy even if he didn’t have to contend with an ostrich now snapping at his stirring wheel. If that woman with her fantasies waited in the building, she’d have time to respond.
That woman...
He thought he remembered the entire encounter but he’d been so sleepy: meeting her on the sidewalk them both of them on his patio without walking out onto it; him asking her repeatedly to leave; her almost kissing him; her saying he was a bat; her shouting; him feeling she wouldn’t leave unless he agreed to drive her wherever she wanted to go. Was she dangerous, though? His judgment had been impaired. What could he do if she were dangerous? Throw fruit at her while calling 911? Hit her with his car and drive away and tell the police that he’d hit her because...he hadn’t been kidnapped but still felt kind of forced to leave his apartment against his will?
One plan: he could request a driver through Uber or Lyft or a similar driving service app then and there, climb over the wall, find the driver, and ride off. On the ride, he’d plan his return for his car, maybe ask a friend or the police - if he could determine a legitimate reason to bother them for assistance - to join him. Maybe his driver would look tough enough to help him fight off any danger. They’d walk to his car, the driver would help fight of any danger, he’d give them a ride back to their car, and then they’d negotiate payment for their time. Even if they didn’t seem tough enough, maybe they’d be carrying a gun and/or a taser and/or pepper spray with them.
He could climb onto the hood of his car and try to grab the edge of the wall and pull himself up, but he didn’t know how the ostrich would react as he bounced the car; he didn’t have much faith in his ability to pull himself up the wall either. Scanning the yard again, he noticed thick branches of a tree rested on top of the wall. He could climb over those. Between the trees and the building, he noticed a bell-shaped stone fireplace blending in with the color of the wall. He could easily climb over that. Abandoning his car in this place for any amount of time bothered him. He was neither rich, nor well-insured. He needed his car, needed it fully operational. If the woman was dangerous and saw him escaping, so much could be done to his car in retaliation—it would be as easy to cut the tires as it would be to set it on fire. He squished over persimmons to the shade of the tree. He’d stare at his phone there and further plan.
As he neared, he noticed that a patch of red behind a thick branch he’d assumed was also butterflies was actually a fringed macramé hammock. The afternoon light turned it the bright, corn syrup red of blood in old horror movies. A curved stick poked up from the hammock and a passing butterfly landed on it. Then a thin, brown-and-white headed animal with the face of an electrocuted squirrel popped its head over the branch, snapped at the butterfly, then ducked down out of view.
Zé hollered.
Below the branch, a mass turned within the hammock until two delicate eyes blinked and stared at him through the webbed fibers.
“Hiya,” a cheerful male voice said above Zé. He glanced up to see a thin man in over-sized clothes squatting on top of the branch, adjusting a riding helmet. “You slept all day,” he said, smiling with rows of tiny, bright white teeth and a pair of jaundiced eyes. Or were his eyes as orange as the persimmons all around?
The hammock swung below the man and he glanced down without moving his head. “She’s grabbing snacks. Butterflies aren’t for her."
“What’s going on?” Zé asked. His faced flushed. “Where am I?”
The man reached out to Zé with a finger that seemed three times as long as his other fingers; its cool nail tapped Zé on the nose. “Aye Aye,” he said. “I don’t know about bat things.” Zé opened his mouth to ask another question but the man shouted, “Ollie! Leave the car alone,” and was on the ground jogging toward the ostrich, which now pecked at the driver’s side mirror.
“Don’t know what you eat,” an unexcited female voice said beside him. “But this is what I snack on.”
He turned to find a tall woman extending a slender tray toward him. She wasn’t the woman from his apartment but she had the same eyes that had fluttered from within the hammock. Now they looked at him within a band of skin much lighter in pigment than the rest of her face and the tip of her nose. He stared at her face and blushed at his staring. She said, “Berries, dates, mealworms, cashews, apple slices, and vitiligo, the same thing that Michael Jackson had. Google will answer any questions you have about vitiligo. I’ll answer some of your most important questions about us.” She shoved the tray at him. “Like the question: where am I? You’re still in Dallas, near home, and you slept all day in our backyard.”
“But why am I here?” Zé asked.
She grabbed a date and stuff a mealworm into it. “Because you drove here.”
“Thanks, but why was a certain woman eager for me to drive her here.”
“Because you don’t seem to know what you are. And she’s not someone who thinks you should discover that alone.”
“A bat, you mean?”
She grabbed another date and stuffed a cashew into it. A tall shadow rose across her face and something nudged his waist. He brushed against retreating feathers as he turned. The man with the long finger said, “I’ll be back. It was time anyway.” He leaned onto a saddle perched on top of the ostrich. He opened his mouth and snapped at a flying date. “LAH-vvvv ya,” he said with a mouthful as he turned his bird. He waved his long finger.
“Guess I’ll Google that finger, too,” Zé said.
“A-y-e a-y-e. And he has two,” the woman said.
He introduced himself. She replied, “Yep.” He asked her what her name was, the name of the man, the name of the woman who’d shown up at his apartment and directed him her. She said, “When I get to know you better.” He asked, “Are you also a bat?” She nodded. He asked, “Will you prove it?”
She laughed. “You were already shown proof,” she said. “I could stand her for the rest of the night, wings out, fangs and talons curved at you, and you believe or you don’t the same amount. Your body will prove it to you better than we will.” A phone rang in the building. “Enjoy the food,” she said, then she climbed the tree, leapt from a branch, landed on the chimney of the stove, flipped up into a leap, and landed on a wide balcony of the building.
I’ll escape just like that, he thought, snorting. But as he reached into his pocket, he didn’t feel his keys anymore. That nudge he’d felt must’ve been the ostrich or the man stealing his key. In which direction had the man and ostrich left?
He looked across at the house and sighed. He didn’t want to walk near the building; however, he worried for his car’s well-being even more without his keys. Maybe he’d find the man just around the building. They’d laugh about his pick-pocketing ostrich, the man would give him back his keys, then share directions to the nearest highway.
Imagine it into being, Zé thought. Imagine it in being.
He wandered toward the building.
**
Jayden hadn’t seen the woman who’d spoken to him. Someone with a soapy scent had picked him up and carried him, bent over their shoulder, his body crackling into a space that darkened as they went. A curtain had dragged across his hair and swept away the last of the light. A few moments after, he was laid face first onto a cool cushion. Then the person tugged at the Mylar somewhere around his legs. The material crackled and he heard another sound of scissors cutting. Soon, the someone yanked away the Mylar from his knees down. Then he felt a tugging above one arm. He’d felt the pop of the scissors through the fabric and the fabric lift from his muggy skin until his full arm was exposed up to his shoulder. The person pushed down on his back afterward. Jayden heard their footsteps trail away. Then a fluorescent light buzzed on and flickered before fully illuminating the space.
Jayden slid one bent leg onto the floor and lifted his upper body with the freed arm. His clammy palm and cheek peeled from a leather couch cushion. He blinked. He wasn’t sure if he was still wearing shorts or even underwear but at his arm, he saw the skin of his shirtless torso. He’d been placed on a bulky leather couch in the corner of a small kitchen, the kind typical of office buildings with cabinets and appliances all pushed to one side. On a dining room table near him, steam plumed from a French press near a bowlful of grapes and a visibly steaming breakfast burrito on a napkin.
The same female voice called his name from a walkie talkie next to the breakfast.
“Jayden. Jayden, you’re here because we think you should have some things explained to you before you go back home. Eat your breakfast. Please don’t leave this room.”
On the far end of the same wall the couch was against, he saw a closed black curtain hanging a few inches above the ground. It seemed to be the only exit. If he walked up to the curtain, his feet would be easily seen from the other side through the gap. He didn’t see a light switch but of course they’d see if he turned off the light.
So Freak Show Guy has friends who kidnap his dates when they see him being freaky?
Should he eat the food? Should he free his other arm and try to escape? He could do both. He was hungry. He walked to the refrigerator. The cool fog felt uncomfortable when it met the sweat across his body. On the top shelf, a carton of half-and-half was surrounded by clear bags of blood.
Great. Vampires.
The freezer was filled with individually packaged burritos.
Some vampire frat. All they need is beer and it’s a party.
He grabbed two more burritos. If they were going to suck his blood and/or kill him - because, what else did weird kidnappers who wrapped you in the strongest fucking aluminum foil you’d ever encountered and also stored blood in their office fridges do but suck your blood and kill you? - he’d get more breakfast than they’d served him.
As he turned toward the microwave, someone all in black stepped back through the curtain into the darkness. He threw both burritos at the curtain. Both hit with a thud, then fell.
“Jayden,” the woman said from the walkie talkie. “Just eat.”
He grabbed three burritos from the freezer, slammed the freezer door, opened the microwave, slammed it shut, opened it again to actually put the burritos in, slammed it shut,…
Copyright © 2015 Jacob Richert. All rights reserved.