#literally i would come home and turn these lps videos on the tv

[mintaikcorpse]

Rewatching those LPS videos after a while and wanting to cry

[beatnikwerewolf]

Chapter 1

Epigraph My mind has changed my body’s frame, but God I like it. -TV On the Radio Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness. -Allen Ginsberg I’ve played the Red River Valley. Sat in the kitchen and cried… We was friends, me and this old man. -Guy Clark Chapter 1 Joanie-17, Tommy-22, Maxie-Dead On this day people excused Joanie’s rudeness, her father had just died. She was rude every day, but today there were extenuating circumstances. No one she was rude to on that day knew that Maxie Lore wasn’t really her father. Or her grandfather. Or any sort of blood relation. He was her guardian, though not a legal one. He was her sire, but that implied the events that led up to Joanie ending up in his care had been intentional. They hadn’t been. Well, not entirely. This complicated relationship was probably one of the causes of Joanie’s persistent rudeness. The other cause was the fact that Joanie had been raised by wolves both literal and figurative. Figurative because Joanie had been raised by Maxie Lore and his foster son Tommy Amaryllis. They lived in a cabin in the woods and saw no reason to change their bachelor ways once they found a girl in their midst. Literal wolves because Maxie and Tommy were both werewolves, as was Joanie. The funeral director didn’t know the gory details of Joanie’s home life, but he did know people tended to fall into set categories when grieving. One group became incredibly polite and reserved. They held a strong belief that as long as they spoke softly and didn’t dicker over the casket price then their dearly departed would look upon them with a smile. Another group wanted to get the departed in the ground as quickly as possible. Belligerence and frequent trips to the hallway to hide tears ruled the day. Because of this the funeral director did not take it personally when a 17 year old girl missing a finger on her right hand and wearing a large men’s tweed blazer lit a hand rolled cigarette in his casket showroom. “Sorry miss, no smoking in here,” the funeral director said, his voice kind but implacable, trick of the trade. The girl nodded, she lifted her foot and stubbed out the cigarette on the sole of her shoe, gently so as to save it for later. She tucked it behind her ear. The shoes also looked like they belonged to a man. Clunky, leather, brogue boots. The funeral director was glad that she hadn’t argued. It marked the first time she hadn’t argued all afternoon. Joanie eyed a simple pine box stained grey to resemble barnwood. “This one,” She said. “How much?” “That one is one thousand dollars,” the funeral director said. “Though I’d be willing to come down on that,” He added hastily when he saw her face darken. He had the feeling if he pushed her too hard she’d just plant the old man in the woods. “How about nine hundred fifty and I’ll include a dirt dispenser and the deluxe program and guest book package?” “How about eight hundred and you keep your dirt dispenser and deluxe package,” Joanie said. “Very well. Eight twenty-five and we’ll call it jake.” The funeral director said. Joanie stuck her hand out and they shook. She nearly crushed his hand, but the funeral director didn’t think it was on purpose. She just didn’t know her own strength. She smiled. The funeral director was pleased. Among the groups of grievers there were those who felt better the more they spent on a funeral. Others felt better if they’d won. He’d finally found the group Joanie belonged to. With the funeral all planned, Joanie climbed into the silver 1987 Dodge pickup that had been Maxie’s and was now hers. She had to slam the door three times before it finally stayed closed. Maxie had told her it had been that way ever since the original door got torn off and had to be replaced. It was still light out, but she’d cut it a bit close. Full moon tonight. She had to be ready. *** Joanie-9, Tommy-14, Maxie-62 It was four o’clock. He figured he’d have enough time to buy some rolling papers and go harass the kid at the record store before he had to head back to his house. He hadn’t eaten since 9am two days before. When he was working he only ate hungry man meals they sold at Martin’s food center. He didn’t know what the kid ate, but he never missed an opportunity to rank Maxie out so he must not be starving. His mouth tasted like cigarettes. The knuckles on his left hand screamed. Too much scribbling and not a single decent page to show for it. He was hungover. Max stopped at the store for provisions. He bought the kid a Dr. Pepper in a glass bottle, he knew it was the kid’s favorite. After the food center he walked across the street to the record store. It was the only source of entertainment in the tiny town of Lorraine. It was empty. Which is why it was the only source of entertainment in Lorraine. The town could barely support the one they had. Roller rinks, revival movie theaters, video game stores, and billiard halls had all fallen in the face of the town’s apathy, indifference, and hereditary alcoholism. There were three bars though and every weekend the hills were alive with the sound of gunfire as the denizens hunted coyotes, deer, and mountain lions, paying little attention to seasons or endangered species lists. “You can’t smoke in here, Max.” The kid behind the counter said as he stacked CD’s on a wire shelf. The kid’s name was Blake. Not the type of kid you took home to mother from the looks of him. Dressed all in black, tattoos, stupid ring in his lip, but perhaps he was the type you should take home. A big teddy bear once you got past all the spikes. “Music and smokes go hand in hand, Blake,” Max said. “I know Belkin makes the rules. And it’s really darling of you to try and enforce them, but the fact remains that-” He cut himself off when he saw the kid’s hangdog expression. That Blake was able to pull off hangdog while wearing eyeliner was quite an accomplishment and Max decided to reward him for it. He put the cigarette out on an anonymous boy band CD, blackening the face of the dead-eyed youngest one. “Come on man!” Blake said. “Just saving someone from a life of mediocrity, kid.” Max said. “Old man’s prerogative.” Max turned to a milk crate full of vinyl. He rifled through it. “You know,” he said. “Maybe you should spend a little less money on that garbage and use it to buy more than two jazz albums. Blake sighed. He’s heard this lecture more than a few times. Their exchange was a well worn groove in his mind, he knew where to chime in even when he wasn’t paying attention. “No one buys jazz, Max.” “I do.” “No, you just come in, look at the same records, complain, and leave,” Blake said. “I already have these.” Max said. “We can put in an order for you. I can grab the catalogue.” “Takes the joy out of the find.” Max slid an LP from its sleeve and examined it. “B-side is scratched.” “Three bucks.” Blake already had his hand out for what came next. “Play it for me?” Blake took the record and soon “All The Things You Are” filled the store. Max smiled and Blake. Blake smiled back. “Gonna buy it Max?” Blake said. “Not today, Max said. “Can’t spare the scratch. But that Charlie Parker is one gone guy don’t you think?” “The gonest,” Blake agreed. Max had shut his eyes to better hear the warbling sax. Now, they shot open. “Say, what time ya got?” Max said. “‘Bout 5:30,” Blake said. “Fuck,” Max muttered. He grabbed his shopping bag, containing the essentials of life i.e. smokes, gin, and hungry man meals, off the floor. He ran out of Belkin’s Records without another word, save for a few low “fucks” as darted to his ancient pickup. He slammed the door three times before he got it to catch. The replacement door just didn’t quite fit. Max’s rusted out silver dodge with one mismatched blue door on the driver’s side burned rubber as he turned onto the tree lined highway. Max eyed the setting sun through the bug studded windshield. Too close, he thought. Way, way too close. He could already feel the change clawing at his guts. He drove down the winding forest road that led out of the town of Lorraine and meandered into the thickly forested outskirts. One side of the road followed the path of the Chusi river, and the other was populated by evergreens. In this area vision was always obscured either by fog in the spring and winter or smoke from distant forest fires in the summer and fall. Max tried to squint through the former. The river roiled and bucked, sending up sprays of icy grey. A sharp cramp wracked his arm and he swerved, nearly clipping a tree. He righted the pickup and continued toward his home deep in the woods. The speedometer edged from a relatively reasonable 70 to upwards of 90. It still wasn’t going to be fast enough. The change was happening now. The change was going to happen at 95 miles per hour down a dirt road if he didn’t pull over quickly. Maxie saw a small path barely wide enough to drive his truck onto. Once he was satisfied his truck couldn’t be seen from the road he locked the doors, rolled up the windows, and killed the ignition along with the headlights. He hadn’t engaged the locks to keep anyone out, they were to keep himself in when the change was complete. Maxie gripped the steering wheel of the Silver Bullet as he called his rig. His grip was so strong that his fingernails managed to leave small crescent holes in the rubber of the steering wheel. A shudder ripped through his body and with something akin to relief he stopped resisting. After letting go the change began immediately. His bones slid out of joint and began to meld into different configurations. Small popping noises accompanied the change. The sounds of bare feet walking through broken glass, when the glass breaks but bloody feet muffle the sharp crack and you’re left with a low painful pop. Max wished he’d remembered to leave the radio on so he wouldn’t have to listen to that terrible sound. Though with his luck he’d end up listening to Freebird for the duration so perhaps it was just as well. In any case his hands were now too malformed to work the ignition or the dial. His fingers curled back on themselves and the skin between his knuckles melted and fused together so he appeared to have five stumps on either hand, like a fleshy paw. The skin on his palms coarsened and blackened until it was the pad of a paw. His nose fused to his upper lip and elongated. His teeth grew into fangs. Color’s grew less saturate as his eyes turned from brown to yellow. His ears drifted to the top of his head and grew pointy. Once his nose had turned into a snout he could pick up the smell of diesel and the subtler scents of butted out cigarettes in the ashtray and the frozen meat from one of the hungry man meals he had purchased not an hour previous. The joints of his knees and elbows dissolved and solidified inverted. His chest pushed forward as his neck receded. He could no longer sit properly in the driver’s seat. He slumped over on his side, his paws dangled off the edge of the bench seat. He felt goosebumps cropping up over his entire body as he grew black fur with a silvery tint. The transformation wasn’t exactly painful, only resisting the change truly hurt. It was more a feeling of quesiness paired with the feeling of cracking his neck too far. The momentary panic. The flash that this time he had broken his own neck. This feeling but all over. All scored by the sinuous popping and cracking. It was dark and the change was complete. Maxie Lore was no more. In his place was a large black and silver wolf trapped in a piece of shit pickup truck. He paced in the cab of the rig. Crawling from the back seat to the front and back again. After he grew bored of that he nosed through his shopping bags. He ripped open a hungry man meal. He tore the cardboard into tiny pieces. His fangs punctured the cellophane. He gingerly licked the frozen salisbury steak. Disgusting. He devoured it. He then worked his way through the beef tips, meat loaf, “fried” chicken, and the Mexican Style Fiesta! Maxie licked some thawed beef gravy off his paw and settled down for a quick snooze. Something rattled a branch outside on the driver’s side. Maxie barked. A racoon bombed out of the tree and skittered away. Maxie lunged at it and smacked into the glass. He snarled. He stood with his paws on the door to get a better look at the fleeing racoon. One of his paws slipped. When he repositioned it, he placed his paw directly on the lock/unlock button. All the locks disengaged. Maxie’s ear twitched at the unexpected sound. Then the driver’s side door creaked open and he jumped out of the truck. The smell of fresh blood overpowered the scent of the racoon. He ran in the direction of the dank coppery smell. *** She sometimes went into the woods when her mommy was being sleepy and weird. The house smelled like nasty smoke and she didn’t like her mommy’s friends. They talked fast and laughed too loud the later it got. She wanted to go to bed but their music thumped and kept her awake. So she would wander into the woods that butted up against their little house with the rusty cars and broken trailers in the yard. There was a creek she liked to sit next to. She’d throw rocks into it. She had a friend, a little boy as hungry and angry as she was. He sometimes came with her to the creek, but he wasn’t around that night. His father sometimes came and worked on cars in her yard and brought him, but not today. Not when it was so cold. She had a little atlas that she’d stolen from the local drugstore. It had an american flag on the cover and pretty pictures amongst the maps. There was a picture of a waterfall that was her favorite. She’d sit by the creek and imagine the water gushing over rocks into a dip below was a sixty foot waterfall instead of a six inch one. She’d look at the maps, not really understanding what they meant, but loving them just the same. It was too dark to look at the maps tonight and her flashlight had run out of batteries. A nice lady who said she was her caseworker had given it to her. Now it was dead. Her mother had said they were going to the movies tonight to make it up to her after what happened, but her mother often said things she didn’t mean. Just because this happened often didn’t make it hurt any less. The creek was close enough to her house that she could still see the fender of an old car that she knew rested up on blocks. Once her mother had found her crawling under it and had smacked her. More scared than angry. Her mother told her it could have fallen on her and squashed her like roadkill. She always kept her distance after that. She didn’t want to see that car today. Not when disappointment made her chest ache and tears hovered near the surface. Not when her mother had told her she’d make it up to her, she’d make it up to her, please don’t tell anyone she’d make it up to her. Not when the burn on the back of her hand was still stinging red. She wandered deeper into the woods. She heard heavy breathing, coming out in great snuffing snorts. She walked toward the sound, her head cocked to the side to listen but staring at her feet. She always stared at her feet when she walked. She’d stepped on still burning cigarettes that people had tossed out into the yard from the porch more times than she cared to remember, so she always watched her feet. She came close to the sound. She looked up. In a tiny clearing was a deer. It laid on its side. A hot trail of blood thawed the snow leading to the deer. There were claw marks on its hindquarters. There was a bite on its neck. She approached the deer. It tossed its antlers at her but didn’t move. She crouched down and kept moving toward it. Hand outstretched. The whites of the deer’s eyes rolled into view as it watched her. She got within touching distance. She stroked its fur with the very tips of her fingers. Its muscles seized. She froze, scared it would jump up and trample her, but not so scared that she ran away. She petted the deer again. This time using her whole hand. She sat like that for several minutes. Then she heard a low growl behind her. She turned and saw yellow eyes. Then she saw black fur tinged silver. Then she saw nothing at all. *** Animals aren’t know for their long memories. They make associations but don’t form actual memories. They only know if they like water or hate the vacuum cleaner and if a certain scent means friend or foe. Humans are better at forming episodic memories. The ones that allow someone to remember the last time they heard a Jerry-Jeff Walker song or road on a four-wheeler with their dad. Tommy was never sure if having a human memory was a good thing or a bad thing. He’d had it both ways, so it left him uniquely qualified to judge, but he never could make up his mind. Tommy’s first memory was from when he was four years old. He was crawling around on the cracked yellow linoleum of the kitchen at his old house. His mom was browning hamburger for chili. Their old cowdog Cap ate from a gigantic pitted aluminum bowl in the back corner of the kitchen. He cracked gigantic kernels of stale meat scented food between his teeth. Tommy stumbled over and sat next to Cap. He played with Cap’s ears. Cap had been there to raise Tommy’s older sister so he was used to this type of good-natured abuse and endured it with a long-suffering resignation. But then, Tommy blew in Cap’s face. He’d done it a thousand times before. Cap had always blinked in consternation then returned to his doggy business. However, Tommy had never done it while Cap was eating. Tommy had the terrible knowledge that when a dog bites your eye you can see down its throat for one moment. Tommy shrieked. His mother clocked Cap in the side of the head with the still sizzling frying pan. Cap yelped and huddled in the corner. He unconsciously licked blood off his chops. His mother turned back to Tommy and screamed. His eyeball laid on his cheek, dangling by the optic nerve. She stuffed Tommy into the front seat of her car, not bothering with the car seat. Tommy held his eye up near the socket with a paper towel. When they got to the emergency room the doctor popped his eye back in like it was nothing. He said they were lucky the dog hadn’t bitten down. He gave Tommy an eyepatch and told him he was a pirate for six weeks. The family gave Cap to a guy Tommy’s dad had used to ride saddle-broncs with. None of them blamed Cap for what happened, not even Tommy eventually, but Tommy was so scared of the dog after that he couldn’t sleep. He kept dreaming about Cap sneaking into his room and eating both his eyes. So they got rid of Cap. Tommy was always scared of dogs after that. He had no problem believing they were descended from wolves. This fear turned out to be a good instinct, but did nothing to save him. When Tommy was ten, four years before Max bit Joanie, he also met Maxie Lore in the woods. Joanie found the family she never would have had. Tommy lost his. The morning Max brought Joan home, Tommy woke up in his cage in Maxie’s shed behind his shake shingle house. The scratches on his face weren’t as bad as they had been in years past. Tommy took this as a small victory. All his victories were small in those dark days. He glanced over and saw Max’s cage was empty. The old man had never made it home. He’d been running free during the change. Tommy’s stomach curdled. Tommy stretched his arm through the bars of the cage and grabbed the key to the fat padlock that held the cage closed. He popped the lock open and stepped out of the cage. For a few minutes he paced the shed, waiting for Maxie to come back, praying nothing terrible had happened. When Max didn’t return Tommy pulled on jeans over his basketball shorts and put on his duck boots. He’d left his shirt in the house, but his carhartt jacket laid on the floor. He pulled it on and stepped out into winter morning air. He blew vapor into the air and eyed the sunlight filtering through the trees. He thought it was eight or nine in the morning. He entered the house and stepped into the mint green bathroom to see to his scratches. The scratches were numerous but they weren’t deep. He dabbed them with a twisted tube of neosporin. No stitches or butterflies needed. They would be healed up in a week. He examined where a new scratch crossed a scar from three years previous. Maxie told him he was lucky he didn’t lose the eye. Tommy told him he didn’t know shit about losing eyes. Maxie also told him he’d eventually stop hurting himself during the change. He’d gone through a similar period in the early 50’s, but it got better. Usually cooking relaxed Tommy, but Max still wasn’t back and the sound of crackling bacon wasn’t taking any of the tension out of his shoulders. He made a deal with himself, if Max wasn’t back by the time he finished eating, he’d track him down. This deal lasted about thirty seconds. Tommy’s capacity for self-delusion was incredibly low and he was certain Maxie had fucked something up and he couldn’t waste any more time. He turned off the burner and pulled on his coat. The doorknob turned just as he was about to grab it. Tommy stepped back. Max opened the door. He had a little girl in his arms. She was unconscious, her head lolled on Max’s shoulder. She was covered in blood, there was a bite mark on her shoulder. Expletives and accusations flew through Tommy’s mind. They all sounded like cliches. Maxie dismissed cliche. When Tommy spoke he didn’t want to be dismissed. Max carried the little girl past Tommy into the living room and laid her gently on the couch. He brushed a piece of hair out of her mouth. Tommy watched from the kitchen. Maxie turned and looked at him. Tommy’s face curled into a mask of hatred. Max suspected that this face was how Tommy felt at all times and his generally neutral demeanor was the true mask. Today he had not bothered to put on his mask. Tommy spoke low and slow, as to ensure his pubescent voice didn’t crack and betray the gravity of the situation. It quavered a bit anyway. “God. Damn. You.” Tommy walked to the bathroom and got his first-aid kit. He’d foolishly thought he wouldn’t need it today. He knelt beside the girl. Her coat wasn’t thick enough for the cold outside. Her purple snow boots had holes in the soles. He moved her shoulder to get a better look at the bite mark. Something creaked and cracked, bones ground together. “You broke her collarbone.” Tommy said. Max wetted a dishrag under the faucet and handed it to Tommy. Tommy wiped blood off her face and neck, revealing rended flesh underneath. “These claw marks will scar.” Tommy examined her little hands. “I think she’ll lose this finger and…” He trailed off. He’d wiped more blood from her arms and saw little circular scars. Cigarette burns. Some old, some waxy and new. Tommy swabbed the girl’s wounds with hydrogen peroxide. He sucked air through his teeth with sympathetic pain as it fizzed. He was thankful she was unconscious so she wouldn’t feel the sting. “Take her to the hospital,” Tommy said. “Then call DHS.” Maxie knelt beside Tommy. He touched one of the girl’s scars. “Tell them you found her in the woods. She’d been attacked by an animal.” “The Oregon system is terrible,” Maxie said. “They’ll send her back to them.” “Not right away,” Tommy said. “She needs a hospital.” “When she changes it will heal,” Maxie said. “But it won’t heal right,” Tommy said, his voice going fierce. Maxie ignored the scars on Tommy’s face and his own fingers, crooked from years of breaks, “It never heals right,” Tommy said.