The Dogs: Litany - Episode II
It was a five minute drive, probably
less, and at that hour of the evening, barely six and everything closing for
the day, it should have taken them
less, but no - Bligh's Ranger was out of gas, he was going to fill up Monday,
but tonight was Sunday, and he now he had to stop because it was almost out.
Why hadn't they just taken
Andrew's car? Jesus, Bligh really never did plan anything...
Such a rush to leave the house
and now there they were, sitting on their ass at the Circle K - Andrew didn't
have to look to know what Bligh was doing, he was leaning with his back against
the truck, arms folded, one shin draped over the other, smoking, even though
the sign very clearly told him not
to.
Around them, ambient, the
faint buzz of the canopy lights above them, the vague chatter of people coming
in and out of the c-store, the dull roar of the road with the lazy Sunday
traffic.
There was a strange stillness
around gas stations - they were permanent features of the cityscape, and yet
they were designed exclusively for transience, cars and people in and gone,
anonymous, faceless, back out into the drunken lights of the outer Tampa
suburbs that clung to the inky shallows of the Bay...just a breathless pause in
the nightdrive, a time for reflection, wanted or unwanted.
And reflect - Andrew did.
The only reason they were out
in the first place was because Bligh had insisted on it, had made that lethal
inference that Cody working after hours for inventory would endanger his pups, his pups, his - puppies, not even human children, no, actual puppies, they would nurse at Cody's
teats and play-fight with each other and bark and yowl and whimper, there was a
nagging sense that Andrew needed to buy bottles from the pet store and buy raw
meat for them, as though it was completely normal and everyday that his
boyfriend, now husband, would be whelping puppies.
They'd look, he figured - he
assumed, something he despised doing - like Duke, probably exactly like Duke,
who was the whole catalyst of this giant mess, if Bligh and he hadn't--
He forced the thought from his
mind. It didn't even bother him, and he was shocked as Hell it didn't bother him, but yes - Bligh was a
zoophile. He was sexually attracted to dogs, to dog genitalia - but what of it?
He was living in some tiny, forgotten corner of eastern West Virginia, that
sort of thing probably happened all the time, and there was some footnote in
some course he took at USF a year or so ago that basically said it did happen all the time...
...to someone else. But Andrew
had found these past weeks - it was happening to him, too.
The orgiastic honeymoon period
he had enthusiastically shared with Bligh and Cody - exploring each others'
bodies, seeing how their tails and ears and penises worked, the thrill of the
fur and the fangs being so new, and being theirs,
secret, together, and with the studious zeal of the scientist he had always
dreamed of being - had passed, and what had started out as sexual fun had
devolved, like Bligh hinted that it would, into addiction.
He found himself, abashed and
sometimes afraid, craving the strange alien substance that spurted from the
strange alien phallus that Bligh now had, not the one he was born with, but the
one that Duke, with his DNA-altering semen - worthy of a funded graduate study,
as if he'd ever bring that before a
Biology department - had given him. And it was wrong to call it strange or alien or any adjective that meant it was altogether different - it
wasn't. Functionally, aesthetically - it was a wolf's, a dog's. Just as his own
penis was - there was no difference between him, and an improbably blond,
smooth-furred husky, at least below the waist, with his chubby sheath and his
fur-covered testicles, like a faun, or a satyr, but canine instead of caprine.
Sometimes, and right now,
especially, it became a burningly uncomfortable thought - but this was life
now. This was the new normal. He had changed.
He adjusted himself in the
seat - it wasn't particularly painful to sit on his tail but after awhile he
needed to fidget around - scrolling through the science blogs he followed on
his phone, tabbing over to the Wikipedia article about Fried chicken because he had never bothered with the history of his
favorite food, feeling the brittle peace of the new life Bligh had inducted him
into silently shatter, the cracks forming, small at first, but growing larger,
second by second.
He loved Bligh - he kept
telling himself that, and even when it wasn't enough to keep saying that and
let that be that and ignore that there was something deeply and unsettlingly
wrong with their living situation, it was still objectively true. The only thing
worse than being with Bligh, than trying to make the best of a situation that
made him feel like a refugee or a targeted minority in a dictatorship
somewhere, was being without him.
He glanced out the truck
window, idly watching two well-dressed Mexican men have some sort of heated
discussion about the tire pressure machine:
"¿Por qué no es
gratis?"
"Yo no sé, yo no sé, el otro es--"
"¿¡Y
por qué no eso?!"
Andrew watched them with
amusement - only a few years down here he had picked up enough Spanish to
understand what they were yelling about:
"Of course it ain't
free," he muttered. "Ain't nothing free anymore - not even air..."
His Pa had taught him that -
nothing in this world is free, everything has a price, everyone has their price.
Andrew's price, he reasoned,
trying not to giggle at the first Mexican, tie askew, ketchup stain on his
white dress shirt that Andrew surmised had come from the tire on their SUV
giving out while he was holding the burger he had thrown in the trash when he
had exited the vehicle, bellowing, gesticulating at his cowering companion -
Andrew's price was too high to ever put down to numbers, blood, and treasure.
The only price was Cody and
Bligh - and it always had been. That's what he returned to, every time, when
this cosmic parlor game played out in his head - that they were worth it, both
of them, no matter the challenge.
That was the conclusion he had
reached earlier that day he was being cozy and domestic, he was pretending that
living as a new tribe of half-dog people was only a mild inconvenience, and
practically speaking, it was - a little more extra precaution, changes in diet,
no huge deal.
As long as they weren't
caught.
That was the fear: one peek,
one glimpse, and they'd be plucked out of their homes and studied, poked,
prodded, humiliated - there'd be some sort of scientific-spiritualist
revolution, there'd be government panels, testimonies before Congress, an
international debate as what to even do with them, like the mutants in X-Men except no Stan Lee to give them a
decent ending. Suddenly it was a very
huge deal.
He'd mocked Bligh for even
entertaining what were, at the time ridiculous notions - but no, Bligh was
right, the danger was real, real and everywhere.
And it begged the question -
were they alone? Since they hid so well, did that mean others could, and were,
doing the same?
It had haunted him briefly
that first day, his mind, the mind he had trained to be scientific, had been
exploded with the notion that the ordered universe he so cherished was an
illusion, that though what he was, what Bligh was, what was happening to Cody -
that though all of these could be explained by science, it was a queer and dark
science, it was a science that leered out of the myths from mankind's early
years, it was a science that, if proven, would undermine the science he knew
and loved once and for all.
He thought about this more
than he ever told Bligh or Cody...as his ancestors had been, trekking across the
Appalachians for the first time, and laid claim to that nighted wilderness of
American virginity - quite literally, Virginia,
and you could still hear the courtiers of Elizabeth I doffing their plumed hats
in a grand sweep as they said it - he
was in uncharted territory, absolutely alone.
Alone - he could not shake the feeling that had slammed into him, a
tractor-trailer t-boning a convertible, back at the apartment. He was carrying
so much, patiently, quietly, trying to make normalcy out of low-fat madness,
and he was doing it all by himself. As he was for Stephen in the past, and for
Cody, and sometimes for Bligh, so too was he fated to be again - the strong
one, the one always depended upon.
At least it had never been
thankless. Even wordless thanks, from all three of them, was thanks enough.
He put his phone between his
legs, sliding down in his seat, relishing the sensation of his tail pressing
against his leg inside his khakis, an oddly pleasurable discomfort - the
headliner above him was fairly new, Bligh had taken great care of the truck he
and Andrew had both learned to drive in...Pappy had seen to that. Andrew's Pa had only let him touch the
Mercedes 300 SEL that he was conceived on - or so the story went - and which
Stephen would later wrap around a tree, once, for his junior prom...it would have
been twice, for his senior prom too, had not Stephen's Beagle, Walker, died and
Andrew had to stand up his girlfriend, Betsy Barnes, to protect his brother
from utter and complete collapse.
Stephen - what would he tell
him, what would he say, when the time came, and he had to know that his own
brother was no longer human? He hadn't texted him since that afternoon -
perhaps he had given up the siege of trying to bully Andrew into saying yes to
hang out at last.
The two Mexican businessman,
or who he assumed were businessmen, either way too cheap or too arrogant or too
wrongly-principled to pay for tire-air, had gotten back into their SUV, the one
in the tie still berating the other, and drove off, the flat tire making an
unpleasant noise that sounded like a dry fart. The space they occupied was
vacant ...it was the same space where he had pulled over, just over a year ago,
and saw Cody, shirtless, skateboard in hand, desperate and alone, framed
perfectly by the sunset.
The memory played out, again,
as it always did, eidetic and perfect, but lately it was tinged with something
- a bitterness, a possessiveness, a victimhood, an outrage that this boy's life
was owed to Andrew, but now he was pregnant with someone else's puppies - the cascading absurdity of the statement
passing into reality, where it crystallized into something he had tried not to
feel, even when attempting to talk it out with Bligh earlier, but no, there it
was, fully-formed and pulsating like a diseased heart: jealousy.
He swallowed hard. As Stephen
liked to say, fuck everything.
Again that shuddering truth
crept into him, how lucky indeed that he was bisexual and had the option,
should he have chosen it, of not to
trying to reproduce with a human female - there was a reason Stephen was so small, why he had been born so premature, it
was because the tightening strands of DNA were becoming nooses for the
Lightfoot offspring, generation after generation of cousins marrying cousins
marrying cousins...their mother was the first Lightfoot woman not already related to the Lightfoots, and
it was for this reason alone, probably, that Andrew was as comparatively normal
as he was.
But he and Stephen - he
guessed but dared not prove, confirming as it would the inevitable doom of the
Lightfoot name - were probably infertile. It made sense, given how sickly
Stephen had been, how long it had taken his parents to conceive them both. The sins that the Lightfoots had committed,
dancing madly in the blood of the natives and the raised scars across the backs
of Negro slaves, stoked the flames of the Hell they would all, Lightfoot after
Lightfoot after Lightfoot, no matter how kind or mindful or generous, march to,
in procession, hands clasped, two by two.
There would be no
superfecundation. Bligh got there first - Bligh was always first - and he, yes, he,
Andrew, Bligh's sidekick, never out of Bligh's shadow, always together, how
they must have whispered and how they must figured, Andrew and Bligh, Bligh and
Andrew...Andrew was jealous.
It was high school all over
again. Bligh had the bigger dick, Bligh was better at sports, Bligh was taller
even if only by two inches, Bligh had the father figure that actually gave a
shit about him, and working and playing and hanging together as best friends,
blood-brothers, eased it all, but it was always there, the jealousy, the need
to be around him, to be around someone better
than he was, even when his family practically owned the Goddam town.
Bligh had been unkind their
first day as lovers about how true it was Andrew just followed Bligh around and
did whatever Bligh wanted to do because, enormous wealth and privilege or not,
Bligh was more commanding in himself, in his character, than Andrew, de facto brains and leader of their
little triad now, ever could be - he was unkind and Andrew was glad of it, he should have been unkind, how pathetic
Andrew was, needing him so much.
Fuck everything, yes indeed. What a mess - what a horrible fucking
mess.
He shifted again in his seat,
frowning deeply. The unsolvable paradox: Bligh owned him, as someone owns land,
and Andrew let him and even enjoyed it that way because, in Andrew's own words,
he loved Bligh that much, but in that descent into willful emasculation,
transcendent bitchdom, Andrew was still the caretaker of the house - repaying for out-mating and out-sexing
him and wedging himself into he and Cody's relationship, and any resentment
that Andrew should rightfully feel had been erased in the name of new harmony
and love...even if his life had sucked without
Bligh, was his life really better with
Bligh, now that the afterglow had faded?
He gasped aloud at the thought
- no, no, that was tantamount to blasphemy, a terrible thing to think, and a
worse thing to believe.
Didn't Bligh still dazzle him?
Didn't his smile, his gratitude, his very presence, make it worth it? All the
furry, warm cuddles and the debauched sex and the domesticity that worked so
well despite how grotesque and insidious its underpinnings were? Even now, with
the frankly creepy design - a spade needed to be called a spade - to make Cody
quit his job because he was pregnant, even though it was anathematic to
everything Andrew himself believed relationships should be, but he was going along
with it because Bligh wouldn't have it any other way?
He loved Bligh more than
anything save Cody but...
...but there was a line, a line
as faint and ephemeral as the dying trill of the Autumn crickets, that
demarcated the two parts to the half-Moon beginning to rise, and the glare of
the lights of the Circle K, a line, between love and--
"Ey - ey man, yew
thirsty?"
Andrew jerked his head at the
sound of Bligh's voice coming from the rolled-down driver's window - Bligh was
smirking, a little bashful , his hands gripping the frame of the door, leaning
outward in an awkward stretch.
It seemed like he was aware of
how deep and how dark Andrew's introspection had gone - no, of course he was aware, it was impossible
for him to hide anything from Bligh, how long they had known each other, how
much they knew about one other's moods and feelings...
He smiled, feeling his ears
struggle inside his cap - a small chuckle escaped him. "Y-yeah, actually
I'm - yeah, I am."
Bligh gave one of his little
nods. "Aight, lemme, uh--" One arm dropped into his back pocket to
fumble with his wallet, worn black leather that was badly in need of replacing.
"Lemme git ya that water ya like, I'm-a git me a Coke."
Andrew leaned forward, shaking
his head. "Dude, no, you don't--"
"Ev--Evian, right? That
French stuff?"
Andrew swallowed hard and
nodded with a grateful smile that he was surprised was not forced - he blushed,
and in the half-light of the gas station's light he was thankful Bligh could
not see it.
"Y-yeah - Evian. It's um
- it's naïve spelled backwards, did
ya know that?"
Bligh tittered, but in the
corner of his eye there was a wistfulness, a regret. "Used ta say that all
the time back home, man." He relinquished his grip on the car, and nodded
again. "Be back," he said.
"Alright," Andrew
answered, watching him pace away into the c-store.
Bligh had to have seen his
face - he had have to seen the conflict and the questions in it, he had to have
read his thoughts written in his eyes and mouth.
He waited until the door to the
c-store shut behind him and he disappeared amidst the chips on his way to the
cooler to get him his bottled water to cringe, hanging his head, his ears again
struggling to flatten, humiliated, inside their USF cap prison.
"Fuck everything,"
he said under his breath. "Fuck - fuck everything..."