Errant Creatures

The oranges and reds have been dragged across the sky and away. Somewhere on the other side of the world, the sun is sliding its dirty fingernails through the cracks in the blinds. The morning has arrived, and it whispers:

Wake up, fucker.

But not for us. Here it is dark. We are under the moon’s supervision now. The streets are thinning. The day creatures are all at home watching TV.

So we emerge, coagulating on corners and in parks. And we are hungry. The sun is much too violent for us; we photosynthesize just fine in the moonlight. The streetlights cast yellow spotlights on the concrete, setting the stage. There will be a show, ladies and gentlemen, just you wait and see.

The Great Blue Dragon coils itself around my ribs and squeezes. I exhale until there is nothing left in me, and then it loosens its hold. I breathe deep, snatching up all the oxygen I can just incase The Dragon decides to constrict again. I start at an easy pace down the road. I am in no hurry. I am already where I need to be.

I watch my scuffed white All Stars hitting the concrete. In the sunlight I can clearly see how stained and worn they are. But in the moonlight they almost glow, brand new. White as bone.

The dark changes things. Faces become more interesting, as do the people wearing them. Streets stretch wider and buildings grow taller, their tops lost against the sky. Cars become two little red lights running away from you or two great, glowing white orbs, rushing towards you. Most of our business comes in those cars. You learn to watch for them.

A pair of big white orbs stop across the road from me. I stand on the corner and watch my breath. It resists the exit from my warm mouth, condensing in clouds around my face. The car still has not moved off.

We stare each other down for a moment. Then I make the first move, crossing the road. I stand on the opposite corner now, directly in the driver’s line of sight. The mechanical whine of a window rolling down beckons me closer. I rest a hand on the roof of the car and stoop so as to be admired at the best angle. I meet the eyes of the driver, cobalt blue and afraid. He is a day creature for sure, with neat hair and neat features. He is out of his depth. Boys like this come here looking for one thing only, and it isn’t me.

“You looking to score?” I ask in my most congenial tone.

He stares at me, uncomprehending. I wait. I’m about to repeat the question when he speaks.

“Yes.”

I nod and pat the top of his car, “I know a guy. I’ll show you.”

He stares at me vacantly and suddenly I’m not sure it’s a good idea to get into a car with him behind the wheel. He looks like he already scored. I’m thinking maybe I should cut my losses and carry on down the road when he leans across and opens the passenger door.

He looks back at me and nods meaningfully at the seat beside him. I decide he’s just a little nervous. Maybe it’s his first time on this side of town. And it’s worth the risk; I get five bucks from Wolf for every customer I point his way. I shuffle around the car and slide in. He looks at me in the rearview mirror. I pretend not to notice.

“Drive two blocks and take a left,” I say, staring straight ahead.

The car purrs into motion. It’s a very smooth ride, a very nice car, I enjoy sitting in its humming belly. He’s still watching me in the rearview mirror. Like maybe he’s expecting me to mug him or grow fangs. I meet his reflected gaze.

“Do you trick?” his even tone doesn’t match his frightened eyes.

I hesitate on the verge of saying no.

“Yeah.”

The car slows down and I prepare myself to bail out and run. Straight men in fancy cars generally take serious offense to crusty little faggots sneaking into their passenger seat. And now the cobalt eyes are on me without the help of the mirror.

“How much?”

I am surprised for a moment, but I don’t let it show.

“Depends what you want.”

He focuses on the road.

“There’s a parking lot around the corner,” I offer.

“It’s a good spot.”

He finds it easily enough. There are a few other cars parked there.

There are always other cars.

He peers at their dark windows the way a little kid peeks through his fingers when he’s watching a scary movie. Wanting to know, but not wanting to see. The car comes to a stop. The lights go out and we sit in the buzzing darkness. A nearby streetlamp outlines everything in gold, but aside from that, we are silhouettes. We sit, two quiet black figures. I wait until finally, he speaks.

“Get out.”

I blink.

“Get out.”

I raise my hands to communicate my compliance then go for the handle. It doesn’t move.

“The, uh, door’s locked,” I murmur.

He doesn’t look at me. The lock clicks up and I am freed. I escape into the night.

Safely on the corner across the road, I watch Cobalt’s little red taillights hurry guiltily away up the road. I wonder if I am the first person he has propositioned. I wonder if I am the first boy he has propositioned. And then there is no more time for wonder, because a pair of white orbs has spotted me again. It crawls down the road towards me. The back door pops open and I am greeted by a familiar face. A regular. I don’t know the guys sitting in front.

“Piglet,” he says, grinning, showing me his gold eyeteeth, “Get in.”

I lean in through the door.

“Want me to call some friends?” I mumble.

“No. Just you.”

I force a smile, because Goldteeth likes it when I smile. I slide into the car and get my first good look at the two in front. Two more men the size of Goldteeth, or maybe even a little bigger. The driver has gold loops in his earlobes and the passenger wears a baseball cap. Loops gets an eyeful of me in the rearview mirror. Baseball isn’t as subtle; he cranes around in his seat to ogle me.

“Piglet’s an odd choice,” he grumbles, turning to face forward again.

“Didn’t choose it,” I reply, staring out the window at the buildings and faces blurring by.

Goldteeth laughs at that, “The other girls gave it.”

“Yeah? Why?” Loops asks, pinning me in the rearview mirror again.

Goldteeth replies for me.

“Because Piggy specializes in spit roast.”

They all laugh at that. I stare out the window.

They turn up their music so loud that I become mercifully deaf to the rest of the conversation. I nod and smile lamely where I think it appropriate but my guts are knotting. I resist the urge to dive out of the car at every stop street and red light that we race through. I stay firmly in my seat. Goldteeth lets me do a line off the side of his knife, and I almost get stabbed in the face when Loops takes us over a pothole. I cannot hear it, but I see him laughing in the rearview mirror and I wonder if he did it on purpose as I suck on my bleeding lip. The iron taste fills my mouth but I don’t mind. The rush quickly drowns it out.

And then The Great Blue Dragon starts to squeeze again and I am drawn back to reality. I take deep breaths because I’m not ready to die just yet, not now on these ashy lambskin seats. The Dragon punishes me for my defiance, crushing me. It is going to break my ribs. My vision starts to blur around the edges. Goldteeth is talking at me. Goldteeth’s gold teeth fill my eyes. The black at the edges of my vision closes in, until all I can see is teeth. Like the singing mouth at the start of Rocky Horror Picture Show. And then I–

Wake up on a couch. I can smell puke. I prop myself up slowly, and now I can see puke. It probably isn’t mine. I think it belongs to the woman lying in it. I creak to my feet and find I can breathe. The Dragon has gone to sleep. I move slowly, so as not to wake it.

My ass throbs and my throat is dry. I stick my hand into my pocket and my fingers meet money there. I realize I am in the den on Fourth Street.

It is empty this morning; the cops cleaned it out two nights ago. But that never lasts long. We are like fungi. I step over the woman and into the front room and find three more of the regulars. Two are women and one is a man. One is black and two are Latina. One was a pimp, and the other two were his girls. But I only know that because I know that. Looking at them now, they all have the same face. Junk face. They have no race, no gender, no past. They are one and the same. The one still has a belt around its arm. The other two lie on either side of it, nodding. Happy.

One of them sees me, but it does not reach for me. The three crones of fate let me slip past, unmolested.

I am lucky to wake up with my sneakers, let alone cash. Out on the street, the sun is merciful, or just too lazy to push back the clouds. The sky is sick of us today.

I have my shoes, money for breakfast and shade. It is a good day. I find a hotdog stand already open for business and I treat myself. I get two. But I eat half and am nauseated. So I give the rest to the blind man on the next corner. He’s always there in his little cardboard house. He’ll tell you your future, if you care to listen.

“Today you’ll meet a stranger again,” he says, laying into the half eaten hotdog, “What is today?”

“It’s Friday,” I lie, because I never know what day it is.

“Friday. Avoid meat and pot. And don’t trust blue.”

My mind is drawn back to The Dragon. I assure him I never trust blue and then I put a dollar in his hat and go on my way with my bullshit fortune and three dollars less. It isn’t safe for me to be out in the sunlight. I am surrounded by day creatures. Vendors and Salvation Army pamphlets and soccer moms and teenage girls with cellphones and adolescent boys on skateboards and two Italians arguing on the corner and couples holding hands and Chinese tourists and dog owners walking dogs and a guitarist busking and a saxophonist busking louder and a six-year-old girl holding her mother’s hand who looks at me with little blue eyes and knows exactly what I did for the money in my pocket and screaming taxicabs and fat friendly day time cops and my fellow wilted night creatures. Hung over and counting the hours until sunset.

I buy myself coffee, but it scorches my raw throat on the way down. So after two sips I give it to another blind man on another street corner. I find my way to a park, and then I find my way to a park bench. My body aches as I sit. I am ready to go back to sleep. I slouch. My eyelids droop.

“Heard you had a party last night, Piglet.”

I sigh internally. The Dragon twitches, sensing the threat. I make myself look up.

Vee is standing over me. The girl who loves him, Krissie, stands to his left and the boy who loves him, Danny, to his right and the girl who loves no one, Savannah, stands just behind them, looking bored.

I have no response for that. So I shrug. Vee sits heavily next to me and swings his arm around my shoulders. I feel The Green Dragon swish its tail in my direction. Danny and Krissie are seething jealousy. They can have him. They can take Vee and fuck right off. I don’t want him. I want to sleep.

“How much did you make?” Vee continues.

I can see the spark in his dark eyes. His coppery face turns handsome and cruel. He welcomes The Dragon. He loves their jealousy.

I shrug. My social interactions are restricted to me playing dead until I am left alone. But Vee is a hard cat to shake.

“I’m tired, let’s go,” Krissie tries to sound offhanded but hisses her words.

Her skin is two shades darker than Vee’s, and she hates herself for it. Her face is just shrewd enough to fall short of pretty.

“You can go on ahead,” Vee shoots back, not looking at her because I feel his eyes on the roof of my skull, “I’m talking to Piglet.”

“He won’t talk back,” Danny mumbles, “He never talks back.”

Danny is a skeleton with peroxide shoulder-length hair. Twice my height and half my weight. He has a dirty cast on his left arm and I can’t remember how he broke it, but I know it was Vee’s fault.

“Maybe not to you,” Vee says.

“Fuck’s sake Vee. Let’s just go. Piglet doesn’t want to talk to you,” Savannah stays within one octave the whole way through her sentence.

I look up at her. We make eye contact. Her eyes are too dark to see into, like tinted windows to the soul. Her thighs are thick and she can slap you hard enough to dislocate your jaw. Her accent flavors her words with a lisp and when she lapses into Spanish you know you’re in danger.

“It’s not all about us, children,” Vee chides his posse, “Piglet’s tired too. He had a strenuous night. Didn’t you, Piggy?”

I shrug.

“How’d you like to share our room? You can hide from the sun with us. How does that sound?”

Despite myself, I am tempted. But I maintain my façade and shrug again.

“You can’t just invite him!” Krissie splutters, all sticky lip-gloss and smudged mascara, “We’re all paying for–”

“Piggy can afford to pay one fifth of the price,” he cuts her off, “You should be glad, means we all pay less.”

Krissie chomps down on her sticky lips and hates me with her eyes. It is sad to see her in the palm of Vee’s hand like this. Vee’s palm is not a safe place for any living thing to be. I am acutely aware of this as he slides it down my back. Krissie turns and storms off ahead. Danny hesitates and then sadly tails her. Vee laughs, then takes me by my bicep and yanks me upright with him. I consider resisting. But then I remember getting arrested for vagrancy a few weeks back. I decide maybe this is cosmic intervention and allow myself to be lead by the shoulder. Vee keeps his arm around me, talking loudly the whole way and staring at the backs of Danny and Krissie’s heads. Savannah walks between us and them. She glances back every few blocks. The hate in her eyes is meant only for Vee. I am transparent.

All the bitterness rises up off of them like a vapor into the grey sky and condenses. The clouds get fatter and fatter until finally they fall down on our heads. We shuffle run two blocks in the rain. A blinking blue neon arrow points us into the mouth of the motel. Vee and I are the last through the revolving doors. His posse waits for us behind the dirty glass. Danny’s yellow-blonde hair is plastered to his skull; Krissie’s purple-black hair stands out in a damp bush around her head and Savannah’s stays compliantly in a bun.

They are sad, angry and disinterested respectively. We each hesitantly reveal our share of the money and Vee takes it and gets us a room.

One double bed with an en suite on the second floor. Room 203. We move in a swift, sullen group up the stairs and along the terrace. Only Vee is in high spirits, or at least is trying very hard to appear to be. The rain cannot reach us, but it dribbles and trickles and pours just past the edge of the roof, furious.

We shut the chipping door behind us. It’s painted blue. I have not forgotten the blind man’s warning, but I’ve already paid my share. And sleeping outside just isn’t an option today. But I won’t let my guard down.

“I’m soaked,” Vee announces, throwing off his jacket, “Piglet and I’ll shower first.”

Hostile eyes find me again. The Green Dragon coils itself along the walls of the room and The Blue Dragon shivers in its presence. I try to resist but Vee drags me after him into the bathroom. It’s all blue tiles and tiny. We cannot move without rubbing against each other.

We both undress, knocking elbows and shoulders and knees. But from the moment he closes the door he does not look at me even once. I am just happy he is not trying to elicit a blowjob from me in the shower. I suppose there is no reason to fuss over me in here where envy cannot see us.

It waits for us in the room beyond.

He looks at me for the first time since entering these close quarters when he pushes past me to reach the shower. He notices the creature on my ribs and sneers.

“Let me guess. It’s supposed to protect you or some shit?”

The opposite.

He does not wait for me to reply, which is fine because I was not going to.

“Where’d you get money for a tattoo like that anyway?” comes his afterthought as he opens the taps, “Sugar daddy pay for it?”

The hiss of the water isn’t enough to drown out his voice. It’s not a tattoo. Not really. The Dragon was always there. The ink just made it visible.

I slide out of my jeans and take a piss, then get into the shower after him. We share a nasty little bottle of motel issue body wash and slide against each other in the confined space. None of it is sexy. None of it is intimate.

I discover green and purple reminders of the previous night all over my body. We dry off and I put my t-shirt and underwear back on, but Vee just stands staring at himself in the foggy mirror. He wipes it clear so he can admire himself more closely. I avoid my reflection.

Vee is infatuated with me again as soon as the bathroom door opens. Krissie and Savannah take the shower after us. Vee lies down and makes me rest my head on his chest, feigning intimacy and talking loudly about nothing. Danny sits on the edge of the bed looking sad. Danny has it bad. But I realize it’s not The Green Dragon. That one is here for Krissie. I begin to suspect Danny’s looks a lot like mine when Danny glances back at Vee. I look at just the right moment and catch the longing reach of Danny’s pupils. It is nothing like Krissie’s jealous rage.

Danny’s Dragon is red. Danny is in love. Real love. Nothing like Krissie’s petty, obsessive jealously. I am sad for Danny as I lie with my cheek pressed against the chest of the man he loves, listening to the thudthudthud of the empty heart beneath it. The heart with no room in it for Danny. But my creature does not stir for Danny’s suffering. It only has a taste for mine.

Danny takes the bathroom last. The girls join us. Vee makes a point of resting his hand lower down my back. Lower, lower, until it isn’t on my back anymore. I hear growling beneath the bed, smoke rising from under the sheets. Krissie sits facing away from us while Savannah plaits her hair into a tight, thick braid. Savannah has let her own hair down and it lies damp and dark on her back. When Danny comes out of the bathroom, sad and clean in a vest and boxers, Vee orders him to roll us a joint. Danny smiles, blooming in the light of Vee’s attention.

“I’ve still got one from earlier.”

He joins us on the bed and lights up. They pass it around. But I remember the blind man’s horoscope and when it gets to me I decline. But Vee pins me down and forces me to shotgun it anyway. The Green Dragon has a fit at the sight of it, making the whole bed shake beneath us.

And once it’s burnt down to the roach, Vee says there isn’t enough space for five of us in the bed.

“It’s a double. So four fit comfortably, but one of us has to take the floor.”

Krissie’s gaze jerks to me.

“Piglet can take the floor.”

But it’s too late for that. Vee’s eyes are fixed on Danny. I try to save him.

I start crawling towards the edge of the bed.

But Danny doesn’t let me, “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

I try to get to my feet, but Vee drags me back.

“I want you here with me,” he says, nuzzling against my neck.

Vee tosses Danny a pillow and the gross crochet blanket that was draped over the foot of the bed. Savannah looks like she might argue, but she thinks better of it, rolling her eyes and turning away. I can feel Krissie scowling at me, but the smoke from The Green Dragon’s nostrils obscures her face, making her hard to see.

“Don’t look so sad Danny,” Vee croons, “It’s carpeted. You’ll be cozy.”

Danny smiles, but only with his mouth, “Yeah.”

I watch him make his sad nest on the floor at the foot of the bed.

“I’ll set an alarm for five,” Savannah says.

She flips the blinds and draws the dirty curtains on the gray light outside. Krissie drags the top pillow from her side of the bed across the gap in the middle. Vee has me right at the edge. Krissie lies on the other side of him. Pressed close against his back. Desperately trying to draw love out through his skin. Absorb it somehow. She does not realize that there is no love to be found within him. I can feel this as he wraps his arm around me. It is a weight on my ribs like a fallen, rotting tree branch. I want his loveless body off and away from me. But I lie still. I play dead. Savannah switches off the lights and the mattress creaks as she lies down beside Krissie. The room is soon filled with sleeping breath and smoke. But I lie awake. I know I should close my eyes and drift off, the nocturnal creature that I am. But I can’t. I feel I am waiting for something.

There is a shuffle and then a long dark shadow stands at the foot of the bed. Danny walks to the door. Silver grey daylight stretches in a long rectangle across the floor as he opens it a crack and slips out. I wait for the door to click shut behind him. And then I slide out from beneath Vee’s cruel weight and follow. Danny stands leaning against the wall beside the door, lighting a cigarette.

His wet eyes slide disinterestedly over me as I emerge.

“Let’s swap,” I say.

He shakes his head slowly, staring out over the balcony at the rain.

“No point,” Danny says, “He doesn’t want me.”

I do not respond. I join him in staring at the rain. I find I am feeling chatty.

“He’s an asshole.”

Danny takes a deep puff and lets the smoke out through his nostrils.

“I know.”

He offers me a cigarette. I shake my head. We stand watching the rain a little longer. The shush of the water hitting the tar numbs me. I suddenly want to be standing in the rain. I want to be soaked and shivering. I want to feel my teeth chattering against each other and my skin breaking out in violent waves of gooseflesh. I am just about ready to throw myself off the second floor balcony when Danny speaks again.

“What about you?”

I shrug. And for the first time today it is because I genuinely do not understand the question.

“Savannah says there’s someone.”

I feel The Great Blue Dragon waking up beneath my thin t-shirt, roused by the cold and the quickening of my heart.

“Who?” I whisper.

Danny says the name and a high-pitched whine fills my ears.

I feel scales coiling against my skin.

“He has lots of someones,” I reply quickly, before The Dragon cuts off my air, “I’m no one.”

“That’s not what Savannah said.”

I do not respond. I do not want to waste my breath.

“You know he’s dangerous, right?” Danny mumbles.

I nod.

“You’re in danger with him.”

“I’m always in danger,” I gasp.

Danny nods slowly in return. The Blue Dragon growls and I can feel the vibrations in the walls of my chest. It squeezes me. The pain is immense.

“You should stay away from him,” Danny says.

I cannot reply, because I have no breath.

“Hide,” he says, “hide away.”

And then he–