Abstract Bike Rack Kennedy Otto

er direction and begin to walk. For the average person — and, for all that she wasn’t a person, she was at least quite average — six blocks of walking is more than enough to begin doubting the memory of an irrational fear. What feels so visceral and absolutely true in the heat of the moment becomes blurry, uncertain, because the mind is eager to discard the confounding, and will look without thinking for reasons to do so.

By the time she stepped into her brownstone and considered actually contacting Angelo, she didn’t just feel silly — she felt ridiculous. Was she really going to give Mr. “Angel of Angels” and his bookies a foot through the door of her privacy because she had gotten spooked by a sleeping homeless man on the bus? It was two in the afternoon, for heaven’s sake — broad daylight! The idea that the haggard man on the bus might have planned their meeting and deliberately stalked her, now, when the world was white with sunshine and stark blue skies, was completely absurd. Even if he had gotten off at the next stop, he would have had no way of knowing where she’d gone from there. She was not going to call Angelo.

She did take the revolver out of her closet and load it, but she placed it on the coffee table when she sat down in her loungewear to read and listen to a record, and after an hour she had nearly forgotten about it. By four, she had forgotten about it, and got up to make herself a late lunch, leaving the gun in the living room. When she discovered that the trash was fully beyond her ability to jam it back down into the can and, grumbling, slipped on shoes to take it out, she did not take the gun with her.

The sunlight had taken on an oversaturated hue as early afternoon became late, but the day was still dazzling, and she took a moment to breathe it in before padding down the front steps and heading around to the dumpster between her building and the next. It didn’t smell half so pleasant in the alley — it didn’t matter how much you paid per month, alleyways in The Palms always smelled like wet garbage — and she held her nose as she flipped the dumpster’s lid up and dropped her bag inside. She held it, and did not smell that polecat musk when it mingled with the rest of the alleway stink.

If the shriek and crash of a fender close by hadn’t startled her into turning, she would have died immediately.

A heavy carpenter’s hammer cut through the air inches from her head with a sharp whoomp, and she uttered a breathless scream, turning to see the man from the bus, his shock-white hair windblown, chapped lips drawn back over his teeth. Surprise and fury mingled 25 with a pair of wide, wild, red-rimmed eyes. She tried to scream again, but could manage none, because it wasn’t the hand holding the hammer that had arrested her attention, but the other arm, clutching what she realized was her book between ribs and elbow. Forgotten on the bus, her book, with her name and mailing address written inside the back cover. His ratty right sleeve folded over on itself, unfilled.

“No, no, no, please,” she hissed, backing further into the alley. He advanced on her, and in the avidity of those mad eyes she thought she read not just rage, but fear. Was he scared? Afraid now that the element of surprise was lost? She was afraid, oh yes, but she was also a predator, and even when fearful a predator is crafty - perhaps especially then.

“Please, I don’t understand — I haven’t done anything to you!” Her voice quailed, and as she made her body small and held her tiny hands in a warding gesture, she was sure this time that she saw him hesitate, swallow, saw those strange eyes flicker. The thing inside of her with its low cunning scented the air, smelling vulnerability.

“I don’t have any money — it’s all inside! Bu-but... but you can have my jewelry!” She started to frantically remove her sapphire earrings, then went for her ring as well when she saw an expression of horror dawn on his face. “Here, take them!” She shoved her palms out at him, and he actually took a step backward, raising his truncated arm as if to say ‘oh cripes, I’m so sorry, my mistake.’ His mouth worked soundlessly. Her book lay abandoned on the cement, cracked open where she had left a business card tucked between the pages.

“Please, I don’t want to die.” She played up the pathos as much as she could, hearkening back to decades-old memories of what it had been like to feel, and he staggered back another step, arms dropping to his sides, bamboozled by doubt. When his fingers went lax around the handle of the hammer, she knew she had him, and lunged.

There were tulpae more powerful than she — most of them, in fact — but even she could dominate this human given an opening. Her strength would surely match his, even if it didn’t exceed it. Her glam shattered like a champagne glass, and there was wrinkled gray hide and bristling black quills along a backbone steep as the barren, jagged alps.

Serpentine fangs slit through her gums with shocking abruptness as she pounced on the stranger, hooked her claws into him in a nightmare mockery of an embrace. Her jaw unhinged with a sinewy crack, and she opened her great, gaping mouth over his throat. 26