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I am sitting on the ground in a gray room, legs stretched out awkwardly. The atmosphere is stale, thick enough to feel against my skin. I fight a crushing, unnatural gravity just to move my fingers. My skin is ashen, face sunken, eyelids heavy. All around me, others sit in the same state, pinned to the floor by an unseen force.

There are fourteen of us—seven pairs. My brain is too fuzzy to count at first, but the pattern becomes clear. Gripping the wall with dirty nails, I pull myself across the room. I reach for the man beside me, grabbing the back of his t-shirt. He is surly and confused, but after a struggle, he helps me stand. Together, we reach a girl sitting cross-legged. Four hands lift her. She tries to speak, but only hollow, underwater bubbles of sound emerge.

As a trio, we are better equipped to pull up the rest. Eventually, we are all standing. Our clothing ranges from clean to shredded. One man wears a nametag, but the letters are indecipherable shapes to me. The girl wears a cocktail dress; were her skin not ashen, she might radiate. They try to converse, but only more hollow bubbles float in the thick air. The girl gives up, pointing to a large crystal tear hanging under her left eye.

I do not understand. My attention drifts to the center of the room, where a long black table hosts a sumptuous feast—meats, fruits, cheeses, breads, and goblets of amber liquid. Gravity draws us to the bench. We sit, staring at the food with fear and wonder.

The man with the nametag pulls at a turkey leg. As he tears it from the joint, a cloud of ash mushrooms into the air. The meat is black, empty of protein—straw held over a fire. I tear a loaf of bread; it crumbles into nothing. The girl holds a bright red apple. I bite into it, and for the first time, my senses sharpen. The taste is wretched—bile and mildew. I spit it out, painting the nametag man’s face with black pulp.

We laugh, a guttural, unnatural sound. Miss Cocktail Dress takes my hand and points again to her crystal tear. I pluck it from her cheek. It is solid, consistent as glass, and deep inside, I see happy, vibrant faces cycling through a fog. I hold it out to her; she swallows it.

She plucks a similar tear from my own cheek. I swallow, and needles prick behind my eyes. My teeth grind.

“I hope that worked,” she says.

“I can hear you,” I reply. “Do you know your name?”

“I don’t. Me neither.”

Others begin to consume their own tears. Within minutes, they are speaking, though the essential questions—Who are we? Why are we here?—remain unanswered.

Then, I hear it: a song. It is a song I love, though I have no data to confirm why. Mr. Nametag begins to sway, dancing all by himself. We join in, no longer self-aware, but moving as a single entity. The tempo accelerates. The black table vanishes, replaced by rows of chairs.

The music halts. “Get a chair!” Miss Cocktail Dress screams.

We scramble for the metal seats bolted to the floor. When the dust settles, one man is left standing. A door grinds open, and a tall man in a tuxedo enters. He bows with grace, then tap-dances across the room. He takes the standing man by the wrist and leads him out. The door vanishes.

The music starts again, faster.

The game continues. Each time the music stops, there are fewer chairs. We watch as the “losers” are collected by tux-clad men or pulled through trapdoors in the ceiling by a girl in a red leotard who moves like a spider. I do not know what happens to those who lose, but I am terrified to follow them.

Finally, there are only two chairs left. Mr. Nametag lunges for one. I tackle him, our bodies colliding. I drive my legs into his chest, kicking him away, and collapse against the last chair. It is mine.

Miss Cocktail Dress stands beside me, shaking. “It’s just us now.”

The girl in the red leotard appears and leads Mr. Nametag away. Then, Miss Cocktail Dress stands, pulls me to my feet, and steps into my arms.

“This is the last dance,” she whispers.

Our song is a slow one. We rock gently, holding onto each other with the only life we possess. The room fills with the tuxedoed men and the girls in red leotards, our captive audience. I stop moving. She presses her lips to mine. There is a sudden, miraculous sensation of warmth.

I seat her in the chair. I kiss her hand. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” she replies.

A tuxedoed man places his hands on my shoulders. He bows, tipping his hat. The others follow suit. I do not see a door. I only see bright light and her fading smile.

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It isn’t the animal kill instinct that bothers me. It’s the shedding I hate.

In the last three days my camper has gone from white trash chic to the floor of an Atlanta barbershop. I do not mean to casually dismiss the horrid curse of uncontrollable man-slaughter, but rather illustrate a point. I’m a big, itchy mess, in and out of the snout.

And who says man-slaughter is such a bad thing? When I take a life, it’s not out of hate, surely. Not like Nazis or KKK or extremist Christians firebombing abortion clinics. I’m no better or worse than the mountain grizzly bear that eats more than just the pic-a-nic basket. And when they get me cornered, and they are armed with a little more than buckshot, they’ll put me down.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

And hell, I mostly kill goats and cows and stuff. In my non-stop travel over the past two years I’ve been responsible for exactly four human deaths. I’m not a sociopath. I know they had families and jobs and goals or whatever. And yes, I feel plenty sorry for my actions. So I visit the gravesites.

I leave them flowers. Orchid flowers with big blooming petals you can’t find everywhere, and which are not cheap by the way.

And exactly three of them were bad guys. Johnson was a career criminal. He knocked over gas station after gas station all over Texas and Arkansas. It was a matter of time before he would pull the trigger on his .45 and put out some poor Korean kid.

I’m not being judgmental. I have no room to speak on character. But after Johnson was Wes Harper. That SOB was one of those big time energy guys. Swindled all their employees out of their 401Ks.

After Harper, who was evidently ‘mauled by mountain lions,’ I fled way up north, and in the snows of the Montana mountains met up with a little man named Scruggs. We palled around drinking and playing at Indian Casinos here and there. In the end, he did not heed my warning and I woke one morning to find him in pieces out back of my camper. When I buried him and went to turn myself in, I met his teenage daughter. She was this tiny little thing, happier than anyone that her touchy-feely father upped and disappeared for good.

Three men, who were all assholes, died not out of malicious intent, but out of some karmic moon-cycle of judgment. In their end, I was nothing more than the kill stroke, a blow dealt by some deity, something that made me what I was. I’m nothing but a tool for this Universal retribution.

For a while, I believed this. And even when it didn’t happen again, I went looking for the scum of the earth. Along the way I was sure to shed a lot. I bought a ROOMBA vacuum robot and it runs around while I drive, sucking up those clumps of brown fur that fall over the floor.

That time there were three days during which I would revert to feral form. I caught the newspaper article in a diner out of Waukegan. My server watched me sitting in the corner drinking the hot coffee she poured, nothing but wheat toast at my side.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, over the last two years since it happened, I have produced a certain pheromone that women in a certain “lunar” phase themselves cannot resist. I don’t mean to get gross here, but I have taken advantage of that carnal lust, much to the detriment of certain articles of my clothing and bedding. This server, Annette, was putting on the act. The redhead teased me with her easy looks.

She pouted her lower lip. She dropped a napkin on the floor. She bent real low to pick it up. Arching that part of the back, you know the one. The act was working too, and between the breakfast and lunch rushes, she and I were coupled together in the back of my camper.

ROOMBA bounced off the back of my ankle. I kicked it away. She moaned. We fell silent. She lay across my body.

All dewy and out of breath she said, “I don’t know what came over me.”

“I know.” I watched her light a cigarette.

“Do you mind?”

“Who would mind?” And she lit me one too.

“You married? Anything?”

“I was going to ask you that question. Didn’t see a ring.”

“Had one. Didn’t like the fit.” She made a smoke ring. “I learned that in college.”

How did a college girl end up the hell out here? Probably got bitten by some small town were-waitress, she is now compelled to serve hash and sausage to truckers. I don’t question her on the fact. We all have our own demons.

Mine’s just more outgoing.

“You gonna be around long?” She asked. Maybe she asked too sincerely.

“Half-a-day. I’m going up to the woods east of here.”

“Big time camper?”

“Something like that. Get some game. You know the drill.” Call yourself a hunter and they all accept you.

“You don’t have a gun.” Some time on her back or on her knees, she must have done the once over in the camper.

“I’m a spear trapper. Old school, fix it out of bark, burn and sharpen the tip.” I had the monologue memorized. “There’s no sport in rat-a-tatting a deer. How hard is that?”

“You a real He-Man, huh?”

“Something like that.” She had that look in her eye and we went again.

A bit later, she hiked her too-cool knee high boots up on her little white feet. Her third cigarette lit, ROOMBA zoomed off her in another direction. “You got a dog?”

She was brushing that brown fur off the breast of her IHOP uniform.

“Had one.” I lied.

“Go into the woods, there’s a real creep lives out there.” She pointed to the newspaper I brought in. “Say he killed a little boy.”

Some hermit named Talley lived without much more than a peep to anyone for twenty years. Paper did research on him back over fifty years, spent a stretch in prison for gutting a man in Alabama. Came out to here to live alone, he built a cabin in an uninhabited part of the forest. He was a woodsman that lived off the river and the trees. Drove an old Ford pickup into town twice a year for supplies with money he made from collecting sap and selling antique rockers he whittled from hand.

IHOP had four of the sturdy chairs. Solid craftsmanship.

He’s an old man, not a word to anyone until this kid goes missing. Hiking up near his house, kid gets disappeared all of a sudden. Found some of his clothes out by Talley’s place, fresh human blood on a stone by the river junction not a mile from the cabin. Maybe he tried to hide from his demons as long as he could, but they always come back to bite.

Sounded like karma to me.

Waitress Annette tells me I should stop by the honky-tonk, she wants a dance. Need to get cracking, I tell her. I’ll be by in a few days. We’ll call it a date then.

I drove the camper out his way, through a broken old latch gate, up a winding path that led to a fork of trees and a hideaway pasture. Evening would be there in hours, its high heavy moon giving my body orders.

I hit my old checklist. Lock up the things that need locking up, grab the length of chain, the hardcore collar and a ten inch stake and hammer. I put them in a pack, and walk out into the woods. Surrounded by all the familiar woodsy sounds, I hear jays, crickets, and smell big pine with sticky needles. I pause at the river junction. There is evidence a search was well underway out here, probably some days ago, there are cigarette butts and related human scat.

Up the creek, around the bend, is a little log cabin with a wide open wraparound porch set with dozens of rocking chairs swaying in the light breeze. Up a promontory is a woodshop, forty hand cut logs all stacked and tied with wire. I see no sign of Talley, but press on, finding that perfect spot to go all-nat-u-ral.

So I’m less than a mile from Talley’s cabin, and pleasing my own sense of morality, leave just enough chance I could miss him in the night. Covered by shade, a break in the brambles that opens to the sky, I drive the stake into limestone earth, link the chain and close off the collar.

I was naked, stuff stored in a bush, collar clamped around my neck when the sun set. I popped two pain killers and I sat, feeling stoned and woozy off the stuff when that old itch came over me. The moon is barely over the lip of the Earth when it happens. My body is on fire, like a million flames in the cells of my skin. I scratch at my face with sharp fingernails turning into talons. I scream the baritone of a man until that voice takes on a bestial quality.

Birds flee in terror, breaking out of the trees, all manner of wildlife spooked. I am both unnatural and as much of the ground and muck as any of them. I am the one that straddles both great Kingdoms, a hybrid. I’m just a made by that bitch Mother Earth.

The chain is taught around my neck. I scramble, losing conscious thought, losing morality and all that shit they taught me from K-12. Everything is images now. Fur on my arms, power in my legs, drool dripping off my wagging tongue, bent low over the land waiting to spring on whatever comes my way. I hunt without favor or quarter, small game to big game; I am the big damn king of the jungle here.

Morning breaks and there I was, naked and alone in the woods, my leg cracked so the ugly bone shows, a gash of split red meat across my shoulder. Spoiling chunks of a big black bear are close at hand. I’m bleeding, losing my mind just as I come to. I passed out from the blood loss.

Hank Williams brings me out of my sleep, All these years I’ve set and cried- a thousand times my poor soul died- you have treated me so bad- you killed all the love I ever had.

From what I could see, the thick pine logs, the smell of crackling cedar wood, I must have been in old Talley’s cabin. He had on me heavy wool clothes, my head was drenched in sweat, hair matted. I was feverish.

Talley was listening to the radio by his little window, foot drawn up on a leather footstool. He was carving what looked like a woman’s pleasant face into a chunk of birch. When I stirred, he turned his Bald Eagle head my way and gave me the thinnest of smiles.

“You up now?” He asked, but I wasn’t sure how long I’d been down.

“M’okay.” I pulled the thick blanket off my legs, saw the real good splint the old man gave me and tried to move my leg. I was in pain.

“Got you-self mauled by a bear out a ways.”

“Damn.” I said, playing dumb.

“Never seen that happen and the bear come off worse. Didn’t see no weapons or nothing.”

“Must not have been looking real hard, I guess.”

“Way you was bleeding, thought I’d have you dead in an hour.” He stood and tapped a wooden keg, and something like cider came out in a cup.

“I appreciate it.” I said, trying to size him up while he handed me the brew. “I don’t know where I’d be now.”

“I was gonna put in a call to the sheriff. Have some real hospital take you in.”

“No. Don’t have to do that.” I said abruptly. “I’m fine, just need rest is all.”

“We all gots our own reasons for that. Wouldn’t be a problem though, got a working CB right here. Handle’s Tin Man.”

There was still some light out. I’m a fast healer, but it could get real ugly in there. I drew back on the cup and felt the warm liquid, like a hot brew of tree sap and brown sugar.

“What you doin’ out here all the way from civilized folk?”

I spun him the tale about hunting. Left out the hand-made spears, the James Fennimore Cooper stuff.

“Indians way up here knew to keep away from bears.” He smiled, carving a bit around her nose.

“Don’t have sense to come in outta the rain sometimes.”

“It’s not like I never did nothin’ stupid.” He carved around her lip.

The drink was pretty tasty. I could feel it all warm right on down to my stomach. I thought it best to get a grip of him through talk. “What’s that you’re carving there?”

“This here’s Bette.” He pronounced the name like something you put down on a poker table.

“You got her face pretty good?”

“Would know it were I even blind.” Talley’s voice was thick in his throat. “Me and her was always a pair.”

“Take some time to carve in a piece of birch like that.” I said, praising his work.

“Worth the time to see her face again.” He reminisced. “We was to be married some ‘bout thirty years ago. She got herself killed in a car accident. Drunk bastard behind the other wheel.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sheriff in Montgomery County wouldn’t do nothin’ about it. Found that drunk son of a bitch drowning himself in Johnny Walker at the local saloon. End of the night I put a knife in him.” Talley looked up at me with wet eyes.

“I’d a done the same.” I said.

“Been payin’ ever since.”

He was remorseful. He wasn’t a monster. There was gentleness to him, and he had even spent time in jail for his actions. He paid his debt to society. What more did the moon want from him?

The CB radio crackled. “Tin Man. This is Blue Bird. Over.”

Talley put Bette’s face down on the table and lifted the chorded mic, thumbing the button on the side. “Tin Man. Over.”

“John. I just wanted to let you know. We got the boy. Some hunters found him. Bad concussion, ‘bout this side of dead and on a buncha machines at the hospital. Triedswimming in the river. Real numnuts kid.” The voice had on a sincere tone. “I just want to apologize for everything.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m halfway through your porch chair. Knew you wouldn’t arrest me ‘til I finish it.”

“See ya ‘round.” The voice said.

“Ya. Tin Man out.”

And the CB crackled away. Talley breathed a deep sigh of relief and looked back at me. “That was the Sheriff. I can let him know you’re out here.”

“No. It’s all right.” I said. “What was that all about?”

“Been round in the papers a bit, says I had somethin’ ta do with disappearin’ some local kid. Dug up all that about my stretch. My lock up. Made things uncomfortable.” He smiled sheepishly.

“They found this kid?”

“Sure did. Good thing, too. People thinking the worst about me. I only go in town a few times a year, but I can’t have that kind of stigma on me. My livelihood’s all wrapped up in what they buy off me. And I don’t feel like runnin’ anywhere else.”

“I know what you mean.” I tried to sit up. I’d made a huge mistake.

He was a sweet old man. Talley was the kind of man that had truly loved once in his life. It wasn’t karma leading me, it was blood thirst. My inner-self was tricking me. It had the taste for human flesh.

It wanted me to deliver.

“Don’t get up. Where’s your head?”

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Got somewhere to go?”

“How long till sunset?” I pleaded.

Talley looked out the window. “Few minutes. Ain’t no light to do anything long.”

I threw my body up and tried to stand. My woozy, feverish self almost failed me. I was racked with pain.

“You do need a doctor.” Talley reached for the CB. I pushed the radio off the table. It fell to the ground and broke like an egg with wires for yolk.

“Can’t do that. I gotta go.” Talley had a walking stick all carved like the face of a hawk leaned against the bed. I took it in my hand and used it awkwardly as a crutch.

“Boy, you’ll owe me for all that.”

“I’ll make good in a few days. I’ll be back this way when it’s all over.” I took a step and my broken leg almost gave. I limped half to the door when that itch came over me.

“You’re in no condition to move.” He was right, I wasn’t.

“Got yourself a shotgun?” I asked, almost screaming.

“Out in the shop.” He said.

“Go. Arm yourself. Slugs. Not buckshot.” I choked back as my skin lit on fire. “It’s coming.”

“I ain’t leaving you like this.”

“God-dammit.” I fell to my knees and pounded on the ground with ever-growing fists.

The seams around my wool shirt were giving. What had once been big on my frame was too small, too fast. Smell of cooking, like boiling chicken, putty for skin. I turned my face at him, gave him a view of my hard animal eyes. He trembled.

“Jesus-H-Christ.” Talley mumbled.

“Back door!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. ‘Door’ coming out in that awful beast howl and the old man turned on his heels to get his Remington from the wood barn.

I hoped he had time to load the shotgun. Hoped it had stopping power. Hoped he had aim. Aim for the head, take that beast apart. Sorry I had been so easily used, too easily tricked by the moon, by the beast. And then I hoped for nothing.

That human desire was gone. Like all that morality. Like all that shit they taught me K-12. Just images came. I had my arms, all power and sinew. I had the pounce of a demigod, the jaws of a demon. I relished in the taste of blood.

Did not shrink away even from the loud blast, even from the missing flesh. Like that bear that fought all ferocious, and came apart so easily at my tooth and claw.

I was king of the mother-fucking jungle.

My sore, cracked ribs, broken leg aside, I was alive and in one piece not two hundred feet from my camper as dawn broke. I scrambled through the brush and pulled myself into the Winnebago. I knew what happened. I was fat, bloated from meat and I didn’t have to guess what kind.

Waitress Annette was wrong. She might have missed it with her once over, but I had a gun. A .45 I liberated from that dead criminal Johnson almost two years before. The gun was locked up good in a tool chest under the passenger seat, loaded with a full clip, eager for me to use it.

I thumbed the safety. I cocked it slow and deliberate. I held the black barrel right under my chin, sincere that I would paint the roof with my gray matter.

My index finger sweat, touching the trigger, my eyes closed tight.

I have to say, this was the closest I ever came to doing it.

I couldn’t. I deserved to die. Not this way, how a beast should die. How it would want to die.

Thumbing the safety back on, I stashed the gun again in my toolbox. I drove north as best I could, and I healed on the way. Set myself out that night far from humans, far from buses and phone lines. That night, let the beast out and it played its game. Came to the following morning, knowing I bought myself near another month before that cursed moon made me kill again.

I drove back to Waukegan and had a little breakfast at IHOP. I was putting out those pheromones, but Waitress Annette wasn’t exactly on the rag. Not like before. Past her time of the month, I guess. She sat across from me, not under some uncontrollable carnal desire, but in genuine ardor.

“You in town for a while, He-Man?”

“For a bit.” I said. “I heard there was some honky-tonk. Some girls like to dance there.”

Annette put her lips on my cheek. “My dance card ain’t exactly full.”

She helped the other customers and glanced back at me from time to time. We did another roll in the camper, traded a couple more cigarettes and she had a lot more hair to clean off her cute little uniform.

“Sure you ain’t got a dog?”

“He comes and goes.” I said.

You see, it’s not the animal kill instinct that bothers me.

It’s the shedding I hate..

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