By: Tony Williams

“Fuck . . . Fuck . . . Fuck . . . Not right now, please God, not right now!” but there was no point in begging. The traitorous body works how the fucking traitorous body works and it damn sure don’t care that your hiding from a group of ferals.  All that running you just did probably helped to bring the flow down. It’s a wonder you don’t feel the need to take a shite, but that probably has more to do with your not having eaten since day before yesterday.

Damned menses and damned ferals. How the fuck did I get here? Just a few years ago I was walking around William Sonoma with a dear friend, what was her name? Doesn’t matter I was walking around William Sonoman, shopping for a few things for my place. Margo, that was her name. Poor things probably dead now. If she survived the pandemic, then the infected may have gotten her, and if she got past them then these damned ferals. I fucking hate these feral, but, it’s better to hide from them then shoot them unless you know exactly how many there are. They can be some vengeful fuckers.

What the fuck am I going to do about this damn blood and holy hell why fucking cramps. Umph! It’s times like these I hate being a fucking woman. This is when the fucking praying and wishing gets intense. Can’t wish for the blood to stop or the cramping to go away, probably passing a fucking clot. Anyway, no point in wishing for what ain’t gonna happen. Wished it would all be gone, not that I wasn’t a girl, but that that part of me would go away. Instead I wish that those damned ferals would move on so I can take care of what’s going on between my legs. 

Stop breathing so fucking hard, those heavy sighs your making aren’t helping you and they damned sure could hurt you if one of those bastards hears you.

What to do, what to fucking do? Universe, universe I ask you to please put these ferals on another path and let them leave from here so that I can get down from this tree take care of my immediate needs and get back to my group. Not that I want to be with them either but it’s better than being alone. Do you hear me universe? I’m not trying to strike a bargain cause I got nothing to bargain with but I’m asking. 

What the hell?! I whispered and jumped just a bit. I wasn’t alone.

“Do you want them gone? There are only five of them I could get rid of them for you?” said a disembodied raspy voice somewhere over my head. I looked up into the dark leaves of the tree I’d climbed and there on the branch above me sat. . . 

“What exactly are you?” I whispered.

“Does it matter, if I’m willing to help” said the human shaped outline. It had skin not skin so dark it was like looking into nothing and yet . . . were those stars within that darkness. It’s eye sockets? were like the glow of the moon and . . . that was it. 

“What do you want in return for helping me?” It smiled, I think. There was a tilting of the darkness where a head should be and something about where the face should be shifted, stars moved closer or further apart. An outline of teeth perhaps but. . . 

“Who are you?” maybe it would answer that.

“I don’t have a name. Would you like to give me one if I help you? Are you hurt, I smell blood and you keep wincing?”

“No, I’m not hurt but I need to get down from here. You talk like a human but you’re not human.”

“I know humans, may have been one a long time ago. Do you want me to help you?”

“You want to help me? Why?”

“Because I can.”

“Then help, why get my permission first?” I’d been whispering the entire time huddled in the corner of the tree, but I realized he hadn’t been whispering he just sat there and talked like the ferals weren’t down below us somewhere.

“Permission is important, what if you have another plan and what I do gets in the way.”

“I think it’s obvious my plan is to stay out of sight until they leave.”

“So, can I help you?”

“For fuck sake, yes, help me.” Before I could get the whole sentence out he reached toward me and touched my forehead. The coolness of it began to pull something from me. Me, I was being pulled out of my body. With a blink I was sitting beside him looking at my body. It looked weird without me. It wasn’t me. I reached out and then pulled back when I saw. . . What the fuck is this?

“What the hell have you done?” In a voice so much calmer than I expected. 

“Helped you. Made you more like me”

 “What do I do now?” I asked him instead of whatever else I could have said. I took stock of my new self. I was without pain or discomfort, without the stench of my own body odor, the bad taste of my mouth. I was unencumbered, without the weight of what that body had endured. Free, at least physically.

“What do you want to do?”

“Be anywhere but here, damn it.” 

He reached toward me, and I toward him and together we lifted through the leaves and branches up through the sky, up and up until we were passing the moon.

A sense of wonder that had died in me came back, the horror movie that was my life turned into an actual adventure. I was Peter Pan and Wendy and Tiger Lilly all rolled into one. This new life would be my fucking Neverland.

I didn’t fucking look back.