Finishing, he took another swig of the Heineken. Why, if he didn't have some alcohol down his throat, he might die of too much air.
"That's Vampire Slayer," Lorna said.
"Huh?" Ralph turned to look at the foxy lady.
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer, not the Demon Slayer."
"Well then!" Ralph lifted the beer can high in the air, "I don't have anything to worry about from her! I'm no pale-skinned blood-sucker!" He took another drink to celebrate, teetered on the edge of the bar stool, then regained his balance.
"Yeah." Lorna scanned Ralph up and down with curiosity. "And…just what the Hell are you, anyway?"
Max interrupted. "Ze didn zus kill ze vameres, ze alzo killz all ze demon creaturez."
Ralph turned to Max. He seemed to contemplate this, really hard, like it was important. Lorna watched it with delight. She could see his face twisting with the agony of thought. She could see his brain trying to fight away the Dutch ale just for a little bit and breathe a breath of intelligence.
"So why the Hell did they call her a vampire slayer, then?" Ralph said.
Max shrugged. "I dunno, juz zome ztupid TV zow, anyway." Max took a drink of his rum and coke, chewed one of the ice cubes from the glass.
"I'll tell you why," Ralph said, slamming his beer down on the counter. "Those damn pale pantywastes get all the attention!"
"Now, Ralph!" Buzz said, trying to glare at him, even though he couldn't hide the smile forming on his face. "We have some fine vamp patrons in here, don't insult them." Buzz was the bartender, and Max's brother. They all knew Ralph, knew his bigotry towards vampires, knew his usual ranting when he had too much to drink, which was almost every time he came in. But he was harmless, all-talk, and he never really got nasty with any specific person, just kind of vented anger. And besides all that, he was amusing to listen to.
Would there ever be a 'Buffy the Mummy Slayer'? No. Would there ever be a 'Buffy the Incubus Slayer'? No. Would there ever be a 'Buffy the Werewolf Slayer'? No. For that matter," he pointed at Lorna, "'Buffy the Werefox Slayer'?" Lorna bowed. "No. Or 'Buffy the" he pointed at Max and Buzz "…uh, Bee-people Slayer'?" Max and Buzz nodded at Ralph. "No. Or," he pointed at his chest, "a Buffy the…"
Ralph went silent. A pair of arms-the slender, but strong, arms of a woman--wrapped around his chest, and another pair of arms…well, not really arms, maybe legs, or to avoid inaccuracy in the matter: a pair of furry, sticklike but strong, limbs, wrapped around his stomach. A moment of utter terror held Ralph completely still. Lorna, Max, and Buzz had never seen Ralph that scared before. They were a little afraid for him, because at first, they weren't even sure what was wrong. They thought, maybe he's just finally had one too many, maybe he's just going to fall off the stool and drop dead of alcohol poisoning. But then they saw the woman who had four of her…limbs around him. Everyone tensed up and looked at Ralph. This was the new girl, she'd just started coming in a few days ago. No one really knew her or talked to her much, but they did know that although she wasn't a vampire, she did drink blood. Maybe Ralph's comments had pissed her off.
Ralph felt two tiny pricks at the back of his neck. He knew what they were. The ends of a pair of mandibles. They just touched him lightly, not even breaking skin, but he could feel how sharp they were. He gulped air. He wanted to reach for his beer, take a big gulp of that. His eyes quickly glanced at it. But he didn't dare to move.
"Would you like me to slay you?" Charlotte said in a mockingly seductive voice. "Or drink your blood?"
There was a moment of agonizing silence and stillness. Everyone looked at the potentially fatal embrace. Would they have to intervene to help their friend? Would they, if they had to? Ralph was nice and all, but was he really worth it?
But after a few seconds, Lorna began to smile. She could see Charlotte barely holding back a smile herself. Though of course Ralph couldn't see that. Max and Buzz saw it as well. Buzz actually couldn't hold in a laugh; he turned his head and covered his mouth and let out a little "Cmph!" sound.
Ralph's voice came out stuttering, comically high-pitched: "H-hey, w-w-what are you g-guys all grinning at?"
Charlotte retracted her "limbs" and mandibles. Standing behind Ralph now, she looked like a normal human woman. Well, maybe not just normal, but a very beautiful woman: tall, almost six foot, with long, silky black hair, delicate, ivory skin, etc. She was all the clichés and more.
"They're not laughing at you…" When Charlotte patted Ralph on the shoulders, he jumped clear off his stool. This made everyone who had been watching burst out into laughter. Lorna looked at Max, who was making those comical, high-pitched, insect-like wheezes that he made when he laughed hard. (Max was a little more insectlike than his brother, Buzz, who had a fairly normal laugh.) This made Lorna laugh even more vigorously, and Max and Buzz followed suit. Everyone was shaking. Even Ralph was involved. He didn't quite know why he was laughing, especially since it all seemed to be at his expense, but he couldn't help it. When it died down, Charlotte was gone. She hadn't even ordered a drink. She must have slipped into some corner, met up with another of her "dates."
"Shit, man," Ralph said amid the last few snickers, and took a swig of beer.
"Who eats babies now, anyway?" Peter said. "That's so sixteenth century."
Sonya patted Peter's hand. "That's what we're having for dinner tonight, dear."
"Oh," Peter said.
"You people are terrible!" Lorna said. "Talking about eating children. I think they're just lovely. I'd like to have some myself one day."
"Don't worry," Sonya said. "We don't usually eat werefox spawn." Sonya and Peter were werewolves. They seemed to think less of other werecreatures, even though they were always here at the Exotix Bar. Some of their pack members came with them sometimes, but the place was such a mix of people, creatures, and things of all kinds, Lorna wondered why they bothered to defile themselves by mingling with such a number of "lesser beings." It bothered her sometimes. Here in the states, werefoxes weren't all that common. It made it lonely. Now, over in China and Japan, and most Asian countries, werefoxes outnumbered werewolves. Plus, she heard that more humans knew about their kind there, and that they were accepting, unlike here, where most of the time the knowledge of what she was would be met with fear and hatred. She'd thought about going to one of those places; it would be exotic, lovely, and probably a lot less lonely. But she didn't have the money, and was kind of scared of traveling. The idea of going to a foreign place, where maybe many people didn't even speak her language, was frightening enough by itself, but then she was also a little claustrophobic, which made the idea of flying on a plane frightening as well. No, for all the Ralphs and Sonyas and Peters, and all the bigotry here, human and nonhuman, she was used to this place, this country and this bar, where she'd been coming for years, and knew many of the people. It was good to know who you were around, even those that didn't like you much. It was better to have enemies around who you knew than enemies around you didn't know.
No one really paid attention to Sonya's comment. They were used to her bitchy attitude. But Max could see it had affected Lorna. She had her head down, slumping, looking dejected. He remembered the many times she had talked of having children, and how lonely she had been not knowing another werefox. "Zu vould vake a vunderful mozer, dearie!" He looked at her, smiling as wide as he could.
She looked up. Max's smile looked so fake, but it cheered her up to know he was trying. And she couldn't help but find some amusement, some small lifting of the spirit, in his insectile voice. He sounded like some nervous Frenchman with a cold, she thought. How did he manage to pass in the human world? He must be lonely, too. She didn't think there was a mass of bee-people walking around. And could he even have many human friends? She felt a little selfish, and scorned herself for wallowing in self pity. She looked at Max and smiled.
"Thanks, Max. Hopefully some day I'll have little werefox spawn running around! And then I'll regret ever having wished for them!"
"And vaybe, zove day, I'll have zoveone to have little bee-people zpavn viz!"
"Here's to 'some day,'" Lorna said, and raised her Sex-on-the-beach.
"To 'zome day,'" Max said, raising his coke and rum. They clanked glasses and both took a nice big gulp. Both of them felt the warmth of alcohol, but after a minute of realizing the nature of the toast, they both felt an unexpected chill of loneliness.
***
The night was set: beer, popcorn, movies. What else did you need after a hard day at work? The problem was, Max wasn't there yet.
Lorna had just gotten to Buzz's place herself. She twisted off the cap to a bottle of Guinness, and took a quick drink. "Where's Max?"
"He was supposed to be off work an hour ago. I don't know, maybe he got held up." Buzz walked into his living room and sat down beside his girlfriend, Cynthia. She smiled and put her arm around him. Lorna turned her head slightly as she grimaced, and forcefully wiped the discomfort from her face. Sometimes it pained her to just see people together. She was happy for her friend, of course, but she couldn't help wishing there was someone's arm around her. Then again, Buzz hadn't told Cynthia anything about what he was. Cynthia thought Max a little odd, but Buzz seemed completely normal to her, so there was no problem…yet. Images of a horrified Cynthia pushed their way into Lorna's mind, and Lorna couldn't help but get a little satisfaction from that. The small, petite blonde backed up, mouth gaping, as she looked at the lover she had once thought she knew, now transformed into some hideous half-bee, half-human creature. Lorna had never seen Max or Buzz in their altered state, so she made something up, a furry, twittering thing, with spindly limbs extending out the sides of its body, and two cold-blue many-lensed eyes staring, antennae wiggling at the top of its head, it lurched closer and closer towards the frightened little human….
Lorna shook her head and pushed the thoughts from her mind. She had watched that old movie "The Fly" too many times, not the one with Jeff Goldbloom, the one with Vincent Price, where the girl pulls the bag off the Vincent Fly's head and screams in horror at what she sees.
"OK," Buzz said, "we have 'Fright Night,' 'Dog Soldiers,' 'The Thing,' and 'Don't Look in the Basement.' Which shall we start with?"
"Shouldn't we wait for Max?" Lorna asked.
"Yeah, but I just wanted to let you know which movies we rented, and see if you have a preference for which we watch first."
"Oh, OK. What's 'Dog Soldiers'? Never heard of that one."
"The Scottish military fighting werewolves!"
"Seriously? That sounds like a good one."
Cynthia giggled. "You guys have a weird taste in movies."
"And you have a weird taste in boyfriends."
Buzz took a few quick pecks at Cynthia's neck. While she squirmed, Lorna thought, Weirder than you could ever realize!
The door flung open, and someone stormed in. The whoosh of the refrigerator being opened, and the clanking of bottles. Lorna got up to see. It was Max, standing in the kitchen, swigging at a bottle of Guinness. He was covered in sweat, and his skin was red. Really red. It looked like he had sunburn. But once he swallowed the beer, lowered the bottle, and breathed deeply, the color began to fade rapidly away, and his skin returned to its normal, lightly tan color. He looked at Lorna and smiled. "Hey."
"Hey. Stressful day?"
Max threw up his hands. "Don't even get me ztarted. Ze other programmerz: idiots! Anyvay, I don wan think any more bout vork." He sighed. "Let'z get zome zerious beer-drinkin and movie-watzin done!"
"I hear that."
They walked into the living room, where Buzz was looking at the box for Dog Soldiers.
"I hope ze verevolves killz lotz of people in this one."
"Oh, it looks like they do!" Buzz rubbed his hands together.
"That's pretty morbid," Cynthia said.
"No, ze real morbid if I vent and killed ze people myself."
A flash of surprise and fear stretched Cynthia's face wide. Lorna wanted to snicker and slap her. Little did Cynthia know that Max was highly pacifistic, and a gentle man who would never hurt anyone or anything, not even a fly. Of course, she would probably never bother to get to know Max well enough to know that, because he didn't seem normal enough. In that moment, Lorna hated Cynthia and Buzz. Why didn't he ever stick up for his brother? Did the tight little body of some human bitch mean more to him than his own flesh and blood?
Oh, stop overreacting! Lorna told herself. As if Max really cares. And he's a big boy, he can take care of himself.
Lorna looked at Max. He didn't seem angry at Cynthia; in fact, he had a grin on his face, and was drinking cheerfully at his Guinness. Cynthia's fear, so strong Lorna could actually smell it now, seemed to have pleased him. Now that was a little morbid, but sometimes morbidity is a good thing. But then again, did she know Max well enough to know that he wasn't capable of violence? Could he in fact be the one that would lurch dreadfully closer to a screaming Cynthia? Though they had been friends for over a year, Lorna realized she just didn't know all that much about Max. Buzz, she knew plenty about. He was always talkative, especially about himself. Max was more reserved, and he offered virtually nothing about his personal life. When he talked, it usually was about some movie he'd seen, or some book he read. He loved to read, she knew that much about him. Kafka, Borges, and some Spanish guy, Marquez or something. And poetry, too, though she didn't remember the names of the poets he had mentioned.
They had just started hanging out apart from seeing each other at The Exotix, so it wasn't too surprising how little she knew about him. Still, she was curious, about both of them. What was the whole bee-people thing about? What did they look like in their hybrid forms? What was their family life like? Did they ever really know their family? Were they bee-people, too, or were they human?
"Hey, Max," Lorna said, "How come we don't have one of these movie nights over at your place?" She wasn't sure why she even asked the question, but she figured that maybe if she saw how we lived, she'd understand him better.
"Because his place is an inhospitable dump!" Buzz laughed.
"Oh, like your place is always sparkling clean?" Cynthia playfully chided.
"Look around now, darling." He spread his arms and with a grand gesture opened up the room to them.
"Yeah, zat being becoz I came and helped you clean it ziz morning. I alvayz keep my place clean. Ze books iz everyvere, zat's all. But I don't lave ze dirty cloz on ze floor, or dirty dizhes zitting everyvere, like zome people." He glared at Buzz, then looked at Lorna. "I keep my place rezpectable, ezpecially if I know a lady is coming over."
"A respectable bachelor! Ha! Now that's a good one," Lorna said.
"Don't worry," Buzz said, "when he gets married, he'll never clean again!"
"I vill have no vife," Max said emphatically. His whole demeanor changed; he narrowed his eyes, not really looking at anyone, and sat very still. Lorna saw something very sad in him, in the way he sat stiffly on the couch, squinting with pain. It was the shape, sharp and angry, of loneliness.
"Let'z vatch ze movie, OK?" Max said, noticing Lorna staring at him. He tried to look more cheerful. "And get zome popcorn made before ze previez are over." Buzz put the tape into the VCR. Max got up to make the popcorn himself. Cynthia watched Buzz, unabashedly staring at his ass as he bent over. Lorna raised her bottle in the air. Here's to some day, Max. She took a long swig from the bottle.
***
While Buzz was on the phone, Bastetia, one of the other bartenders, catered to the thirsty customers. With a tight-fitting black belly-shirt and shiny black leather skirt on, most of the male customers didn't mind. Many people asked her about her name. She told them it wasn't her birth name, but the name her grandmother had called her, after the Egyptian goddess Bastet, deity of joy, music, and dancing, whose sacred animal was the cat. (Depictions of Bastet showed her either as an actual cat, a lioness or domestic cat, or as a woman with a feline head.) Bastetia, or "Bassie" as many called her (no relation to the Jazz musician Count Bassie, she would quip), was known to have an extraordinary relationship with cats. Domestic cats who were completely taciturn around others would show her affection. Often, these creatures found their way inside the bar, would go up to her leg and rub against it, look up in admiration and purr. Even larger felines, to the amazement of onlookers at the zoo, were drawn to her, pressing their bodies against the bars of their cages, as the girl and the felines exchanged silent stares. There was something in her short, lean build, her slender hands and fingers, her mellifluous grace even as she moved among the dimly lit, smoke-obscured, drunk inhabited room, and her slanted, green eyes that seemed particularly catlike….
Buzz put down the phone and turned to the customers. "Guess what, guys! In two weeks we're going to see S.E.X. on stage, right here at the Exotix!"
The eyes of many lit up. But many just looked at him bewilderedly.
"What do you mean?" said Leah, one of the werewolves who had been coming there regularly for the last month.
Her girlfriend, Sabine, answered: "It's a band, honey."
Leah's eyes widened. Sabine, although obviously liberal to a degree, with having a lesbian werewolf lover and all, was nonetheless only a human, and seemed to Leah fairly reserved and to have a rather tame lifestyle. She hadn't even really wanted to come to the Exotix, but Leah had convinced her with some persuasive massage techniques.
"How do you know about them?" Leah asked.
"Oh, I know LOTS of things that would surprise you," Sabine answered with a devilish grin.
"You mean you listen to bands with names like S.E.X.? I thought you were into Debussy and Rachmaninoff."
Sabine laughed. "I heard the French guy talking about them while you were in the bathroom." She pointed at Max. Leah and Sabine had taken to calling him "The French Guy." They thought he sounded like a nervous Frenchman with a cold.
Max heard Sabine's comment. "Zey're only my favorite band!"
"Strange name for a band," Leah said.
"It's an acronym. Zupernatural Erotic Xenomorphz."
Leah laughed uncontrollably, trying to repeat the words, but spitting out random syllables instead. Sabine just rolled her eyes.
Max laughed a little himself. "Ze can be quite ze zilly band. But ze muzik is good, really, really good. And ze wordz, oh, ze wordz!" Max patted his chest, where his heart was. "Ze zing about ze life of ze misfitz, of our kind of people." He held out his hands, palm up, as if in supplication, or as if trying to scoop up everyone in the room. "Zose who are called freakz!"
"Well, you're passionate about music!" Sabine said. "That's good at least. But you don't suppose they do Gershwin or Prokofiev pieces, do they?"
"No, zey are rock 'n' roll."
"But they sound interesting, don't you think?" Leah asked her partner. She didn't quite share Sabine's interest in classical music. She preferred Black Sabbath to Beethoven, or Motorhead to Mendelssohn. Sabine often pointed out the oddity of this, since she figured that werewolves, with sensitive hearing, would prefer quieter music. Leah's answer-always delivered with a toothy grin--was that heavy metal spoke to the primal beast in her.
Sabine wouldn't look at Leah or answer her. Her face pointed forward, though Leah could feel the glare of her sharp blue eyes. She placed her hands on the bar, delicate hands, nails neatly shaped and glossed with pink polish. Undeniably soft and feminine hands, and yet, when she positioned them a certain way, they gave the impression of being incredibly strong. The way the fingers pressed down into the wooden counter, it seemed like they could bore through the surface if they so desired. The message was clear: I'm not happy about it, but I won't say no.
"So when is this show?" Leah asked Buzz.
"Two Fridays from now-the 14th."
"Damn! It would be exciting if it was on a Friday the 13th!"
"We should go," Leah said to Sabine.
Sabine sighed. "As if I didn't have enough to put up with: being a lesbian, and having a werewolf for a lover. She also has to listen to blaring guitars and ear-piercing screaming that mocks the artistry of music."
Leah said, "Oh, lighten up. One day you can make me sit through Swan Lake or something."
***
The song troubled the bodies of many children. They shifted; they shook; they imagined themselves in distant places, peaceful places, in front of TV sets.
"Please try to make an effort to sing in tune," pleaded Mr. Cochran, the music teacher.
There was one girl, though, who was singing in tune. He wished he could banish the rest of the group and just listen to that one lovely voice sing for him. After chorus practice was over, he called her over to him, to talk to her alone.
"You know that all those things I said don't apply to you, right?" he asked her.
Her eyes lit up. The harsh comments had troubled her as the singing had troubled the other children.
"The others don't know what a song is, much less how to sing! But you know - your heart knows. I hear it in your voice. It is the sound of the world coming to life."
The girl rode home in her parents' car, content beyond any happiness she ever felt. She wanted to sing every minute of her life; even then her throat was vibrating with the rhythm of a new melody trying to be born. But singing was only appropriate in certain moments, so she was glad that she had an opportunity to indulge in such moments.
Her father asked her during the ride: "How was practice?"
The girl said: "Mr. Cochran said that my singing is the sound of the world coming alive."
"That's nice," he said.
When they got home and went inside, he said, "Your mother and I have to have a talk with you."
"OK."
The mother and father explained to the little girl how she couldn't go on singing, not in front of an audience. She couldn't put herself up on a stage because she was "different." If she exposed herself to the public eye, she took the chance of revealing herself - and that would be dangerous.
She would have to quite chorus.
The girl went on to sing, but now by herself, and the sound it made was the sound of the world dying.
***
Through the sound of clanking beer bottles and unintelligible rambling, Lorna walked in and sat down at the bar.
"The usual?" Buzz asked. She nodded, and he began to mix her Sex on the Beach. She saw the flyer announcing the S.E.X. concert, but looked away from it after a quick glance.
Max came and sat beside her. "You going to ze concert?"
She didn't look up. "I don't know…maybe."
"Maybe? Why wouldn't you? You alwayz come to ze zhowz."
"Yeah!" Buzz said indignantly. "Support your local underground otherkin gathering place, why don't you? And besides, how often do we have S.E.X. in here?"
Lorna looked away from the bar, out at the space in front of the stage, full of tables and chairs. This would all be cleared out for a "dancefloor" during the show. Though during a S.E.X. show, a plethora of activities occurred there, everything from mosh pitting to slow dancing to goings-on inspired by the name of the band. She erased all that occupied that space right then-the Cthulhoids, barely anthropomorphic octopus-like things; the reptile-kin, creatures that fit anywhere on a spectrum of "half-reptile, half-human" to "mostly human, partly reptile," to "mostly reptile, partly human"-some of the reptile forms resembling living species, others having a more ancient and dinosaurian appearance; the werekin-werewolves, werebears, werebirds, werefelines, wererats, and even a weredolphin; a centaur couple; and a table of human-looking vampires, weighted down by black leather and inverted crosses and pentagrams and all manner of "really gothic" things.
She inserted a crowd into that space, which included some of the bar's regulars: Max, Ralph, Sonya, Peter, Charlotte, Leah, Sabine, Buzz, Bastetia. The rest were space-fillers he invented, some of course being werefoxes. She saw the band S.E.X. playing on stage, but the guy who usually sung played guitar. Lorna manned the microphone this time. The crowd cheered, and her voice ached to join their exultation. The rest of the band's instruments merged with her singing. As she shared the words with the world, the singing felt not like an act, but like an extension of her body-her singing was her vibrating vocal chords and throat, her heartbeat, her bloodflow, her expanding lungs, her brainwaves, her disseminating liver and intestines. An external function of her biorhythm. Her singing wasn't just an instrument, it was an internal organ, it just happened to be on the outside tonight.
But that internal organ had been surgically removed years ago, by her parents.
"I don't know. I've been a little busy lately. A show might be a little too much for me…." She examined the floor at her feet, all fantasies of the dancefloor dissolved.
Max pondered this for a moment. He could see Lorna looked troubled. He knew of her passion for singing, had observed it at Exotix Karaoke nights (which featured such staples as The Misfits, Blue Oyster Cult, Iron Maiden, and other bands whose songs were about the supernatural or horror movies). However, he failed to make the connection between this and her lack of enthusiasm about the S.E.X. show. She had come to many concerts at the Exotix, after all, and enjoying music didn't seem to bother her then.
Lorna wasn't sure herself why it troubled her now. She had dealt with the issue most of her life, since she had to give up the dream of professional singing when she was eight, and had kept it from eating her for twenty years. For whatever reason, she was realizing what she was missing in life-a werefox mate, a career as a musician, some semblance of a normal life. She was thinking that seeing the band play would be too depressing of a reminder of what she didn't have.
Max tried to think of something to cheer Lorna up. Nothing came to mind. They sipped their drinks in silence for a while. Then one of the regulars, Vic, came up to the bar. "Labbat Blue, Buzz. Hey, Max. Hey, Lorna. You're looking particularly lovely tonight, Foxie."
Lorna rolled her eyes. "Don't start, Lizard Boy."
Vic smiled a lipless smile of pointed teeth. He was just barely twenty-one, though he had been coming to the Exotix before that. The age restriction wasn't so strict here, especially since it was a secret place anyway, and anyone who came here was likely to know someone already connected with the bar. So long as no one got out of hand, the rules could be more lax.
Vic's legal guardian, Dr. John Mahler, had brought Vic here when he was sixteen. Not so much to get Vic drunk, of course, but to allow him to socialize with others of his kind. Mahler had been a friend of Vic's father, who had died when he was fourteen. It was quite a sad story. Vic's father and Dr. Mahler had been doing medical research into the cancer-fighting properties of reptile DNA. Their findings were far from conclusive, highly controversial, and untested on human subjects. But when Vic's father found out he had cancer himself, he tried to bind reptile DNA to his own, with the reluctant help of Mahler, who was not only a colleague but also a good friend. The experiment ended up killing the cancer, but it had a price: the reptile DNA ended up acting like a cancer itself, eating Vic's father's human DNA. The process had already begun when Vic's father impregnated Vic's mother, who died in childbirth. Vic's body seemed to perfect the human-reptile combination. He was human in build, though certain attributes, such as having no lips, eyelids, or hair, were certainly not human. His skin was a palish green, and though not completely covered in scales, was more bumpy than the average human's.
Mahler had felt guilty about the whole thing, and became a sort of surrogate father to Vic. The young reptilian adult seemed to be doing fine now, though. Dr. Mahler rarely came to the bar after Vic turned twenty-one. Vic was actually somewhat cocky and flirtatious now, and often toyed with Lorna, who made it clear that she had no intentions of interspecies interaction.
At the bar, Vic's skin began to writhe with a bright, yellowish color. He had the color-shifting ability of chameleons. It wasn't as spectacular as people thought. Chameleons didn't actually change color to blend into their environment; it was more connected to emotional responses, which triggered the skin's changing into a limited number of hues (brown, yellow, and red). Vic had the same limitations in selection but more control, and he tried to use the ability to impress women sometimes.
Vic's yellow burned into red.
"Oh, Foxie, you get me so hot!" he said to Lorna.
"Choke on it, Fork Tongue," she said.
Vic flicked his black-and forked-tongue out at her.
"I was asking Lorna why she won't be going to the S.E.X. show," Max said to Vic.
"You aren't going?" Vic asked disappointedly.
"If you're going-most definitely not."
"Come on, Foxie! S.E.X. always puts on a bad-ass show."
"Which is something I don't need right now…."
"You need to loosen up, Foxie." Buzz came over with Vic's beer. He paid for it but didn't pick it up. Instead, he went to Lorna and began to massage her shoulders. It was such an unanticipated act of boldness, even for Vic, that she didn't even realize what he was doing until he had already his hands on her. At first, she tightened her muscles and straightened her back, but when she felt how soothing Vic's fingers were, she relaxed a little. "Let some of that nasty old tension go."
Lorna thought in her mind, I should swat him away! How dare he touch me! And yet she just rolled her head side to side and sighed. "Vic," she said in half-hearted scorn.
Max watched curiously.
"Just relax, Foxie. Just take it easy."
His fingertips pressed skin, pushed tensions away. She felt lighter. Stronger. Aroused. And yet at the same time she felt the opposite things. Heaviness. Weakness. Disgust.
Unconsciously, her body had begun to change. Her skin reddened with bristly hair. Her face began to elongate. Her whole body was shivering. Her head was titled back. She moaned. A moan like the dying of the world. A moan that was the shape of loneliness.
"See, Foxie, not so bad?"
Vic jumped back in surprise as a bushy tail flicked out at him. With vulpine swiftness, Lorna dashed from the stool and out the door before Vic even realized he wasn't massaging her anymore.
"What's wrong with her?" Vic asked.
"Nozing zat you could fix, yougling," Max said, returning his attention back to his drink.
***
The place was nearly filled wall-to-wall. A collage of creatures, everything from normal humans to vampires to werewolves and wereanimals of all kind to generally amorphous gelatinous goo, formed in front of the stage. The band was almost done setting up. The air was already becoming hot and sweaty and clogged with the smell of cigarettes and beer. Chanting rose from the floor. "We want S.E.X.! We want S.E.X.! We want S.E.X.!" A multitude of fists, claws, paws, and less definable grasping parts beat the air in time with the invocation.
Max was in front of the stage, cradling a bottle of Guinness, not quite as ebullient as the others. Inside, though, he was just as passionate as the others; he watched in silent and still approbation. The only thing that distracted him from his favorite band was wishing that Lorna was there. He looked around for her, but she wasn't there. Then he saw a sight that made him temporarily forget the beautiful werefox.
Buzz walked through the door-with Cynthia on his arm! Max laughed out loud at the look on her face. Her eyes and mouth stretched to take in as much of the room as they could. She went to the bar. Poor girl! thought Max. Buzz didn't seem too concerned as he followed her. Max laughed again and shook his head. He also blinked rapidly at Buzz, who saw it and blinked back at him. It was a form of visual communication across a distance, in place of wiggling antennae. Brother! Max's blinking said. What a way to introduce our world to the girl-a bar full of drunken otherkin! Oh well, she'll be OK, Buzz's blinkding said. If she can deal with my obnoxious, arrogant, and eccentric ways, she'll deal with this.
Up at the bar, Cynthia tried to process the strange and impossible creatures she'd just seen. While she trembled all over, Vic and another, much larger reptilian came up beside them.
"Come on, wussy!" the larger creature goaded.
Vic was swigging from a bottle of vodka, and struggling to keep at it.
When she looked at the scene, Cynthia nearly fell off her stool. A hairless, bumpy guy standing a bottle of alcohol so potent she could smell its caustic odor. And his skin changed as he drank, deepening into a dark pine. He only got a third of it before he quit.
"Little hatchling!" his companion scorned. "Watch how a real reptile drinks!" He opened long, slender jaws and put the bottle inside his mouth. Since he couldn't put his lips on the opening, he kind of just poured the clear liquid down his throat. The creature towered over Vic, perhaps eight feet tall. His large head and short neck reminded Cynthia of one of those dinosaurs, the ones who were always eating people in the movies. Except that his arms weren't as disproportionately small compared to the rest of his body, he looked like…a T-rex. A smaller version, of course, yet he was big enough.
Buzz slapped the T-rex-thing on the back. The bottle was drained. "Holy shit, Das! That was hardcore! You just downed almost a whole bottle of Snake Venom!"
"Hey!" Vic said. "I drank a third of it."
"Was that just…snake venom that he drank?" Cynthia asked horrified.
The three men laughed. "No," Buzz said. "It does have snake venom in it, but only a smidgeon, that's only the name of the drink. It also has a dash of komodo dragon saliva for kick. The rest of it is just traditional vodka. Most of us just get hammered on it, though it can be paralyzing, even lethal, to humans."
"Bartender! Strangely, I feel like a drink myself…just nothing with venom in it."
"What'll you have?" Bastetia asked. Cynthia saw the girl had pointed ears, whiskers poking out of her cheeks, and claws on her fingers. It didn't affect the human at all; after what she had just seen, it didn't seem all that shocking.
"Uh, how about a wine cool-no, wait, a Scotch. Double Scotch. Straight."
"Don't overdo it, hun," Buzz said. "The shock will wear off."
Bastetia arched an eyebrow at Buzz. "Your girl's got a healthy thirst."
"Be gentle with her, Bassie."
"One Scotch for the lady, coming up." As she turned, Cynthia saw a long, black-haired tail sticking out of her pants.
Das swayed with inebriation. Vic siddled up to Cynthia. "So you're the lovely Cynthia?"
"The one and only," Buzz said proudly, and a little threateningly, putting his arm around Cynthia and glaring at Vic.
"You're quite stunning-for a human!" Vic apparently thought this was so hilarious he fell into the bar and knocked over a stool.
"Too much for the little hatchling!" croaked Das.
"Watch it, Mr. Tyrannosaur," Vic spat back.
"Daspletosaurus!" Vic growled. "Daspletosaurus!"
"Whatever, Godzilla!"
"Don't make me leap over this bar and pounce on the both of you," Bastetia said as she sat down Cynthia's Scotch. Fine black fur now covered her skin, and her face had taken on a triangular shape. Her slits of green eyes scowled at them.
Another reptilian came up to the bar, this one just a little bigger than Vic, but not quite Das' size. It looked like an iguana, with the spikey projections going down its back (its shirt, a belly-shirt with an open back-OK, the shirt was actually more like a bra--anyway, the "shirt" showed off these projections). "Are you guys fighting again?" it said in a somewhat feminine voice. Cynthia squinted at it. Besides the bra/shirt, it looked female…sort of. She guessed.
It/she batted its eyes at the two distinctly male reptilians-yep, it was female alright, Cynthia decided. And a tease. These two schmucks must have been fighting over her all night. "Well come on!" she said, grabbing their hands. They let themselves be pulled along obediently. "The show's about to start!"
The crowd was shouting ever louder: "We want S.E.X.! We want S.E.X.! We want S.E.X.!"
"Damn scalies," a voice said. "If there's one thing worse than vampires, it's scalies!"
"Oh knock it off, Ralph," Buzz said.
"And this music, look at these long-haired freaks. I don't know how you can stand to listen to it-all the songs sound the same."
Cynthia looked at Ralph, at Buzz, then back to Ralph again. She had taken a few sips of her Scotch and was feeling emboldened by it. "And what the hell are you supposed to be?"
Ralph banged his fist against the bar. "Why, all the world knows of my kind. We may not be in Anne Rice novels like some otherkin or have Lon Chaney, Jr., portray us on screen several hundred times, but we are one of the most honored creatures on the planet. Don't you recognize greatness when you see it? Of course, I'm a-"
The revelation of Ralph's nature was drowned out by a loud, discordant twang of feedback. A tall, gaunt man appeared at the microphone. "Do you want sex?"
"Yes!"
"You want it loud?"
"Yes!"
"You want it hard!"
"Yes!"
"Good! 'Cos that's how we're gonna give it to you!"
The other band members broke in with the guitars and drums, slamming the room with heavy metal thunder. The crowd roared in pleasure. But even as the music began to play, the audience now seemed less focused on the band. That's not to say that the music wasn't affecting them anymore. To the contrary, their bodies moved and thrashed more than ever. It was now the music itself, rather than the band on stage, that all their energy was fixated on.
Those who were shapeshifters began to change. It wasn't really a conscious decision. Max wanted to just take in the concert, absorb every note, and perhaps he was, but not in the way he thought. The vibrations pounding out of the speakers didn't just go to his ears, they resonated throughout his entire body. He felt a warmth and the need to change, be free of his illusory human form. His skin reddened, flashing heat, and he felt his true nature pouring out of him. Two limbs came out of his torso, and his arms and legs began to take on a more insectile form. Wings leapt out of his back, and a large and menacing-looking stinger emerged from his backside. He could no longer just stand there. He left the floor behind, and began fluttering around the room, circling above the stage, barely even registering the dissonance emanating from below. He felt freer than he had in a while-he rarely took this form, or took to the air-and beat his wings faster, faster, driven on by an energy greater than any he'd ever had.
Others were having similar experiences. Peter and Sonya had taken on their werewolf forms, but they weren't running around the room on all fours. They had turned the energy on each other-mating with an intensity that was making their howls rise above the din of the band.
Leah, too, had taken on her werewolf form. Sabine had not expected this…but when Leah approached her, Sabine was not frightened, despite the fact that they'd never done anything sexual with Leah in her "other" form. It could be dangerous, but only if the two creatures did not know each other well. Sabine even found herself aroused by Leah's claws and fangs, by this immensely powerful physical presence of the wolf side. Their hands raked over each other's bodies, and their mouths worked in frenzy on each other.
Buzz, like his brother, had changed form. And Cynthia, like Sabine, found his appearance startlingly exciting. Buzz's wings beat insanely as he thrust into Cynthia, thrashing on top of the bar.
Ralph looked around, confused. He wasn't sure what to make of all of it. Then he heard a high-pitched growl, turned, and saw a large pair of claws coming at him, and the two piercing green eyes of a large cat staring hungrily at him. The paws grabbed him and pulled him over behind the bar. "What the-Bassie?"
"Ralph…whatever the hell you are, come here and fuck me!"
Vic and Das were no longer fighting over the iguana-girl; both of them were enjoying her, Vic in front, Das in back.
The whole room transformed into one big extremely bizarre orgy.
"Thiz is one hell of a zow," thought Max, some of his reason starting to come back into him. "Even S.E.X.'s zowz aren't uzually ziz wild!"
He saw a large web on the ceiling, and a huge, black creature crawling along it. Charlotte. Better not get too close! he thought. Who knows what that crazy bitch would do!
"Don't worry," she said to him, "you're not really my type. Besides, I've got plenty of companions right here." He looked and saw a couple of the vampires wrapped up in the web. They didn't seem too unhappy, though-in fact, a look of pure ecstasy was on their faces. "They're enjoying themselves, believe me," she said, forming the best semblance of a smile as she could with her fang-like mandibles. "I'm not going to kill them…just feed on them a little…it seems to be just as a sensual act for them as when one of them feeds on a human." As she turned and went back to the vampires, Max saw the bright red hour-glass shaped mark on her back. The giant spider leapt onto one of them vampires, bouncing up and down, apparently even such an unlikely pair could copulate. And at the same time, Max saw her mouth working at his chest, slurping up liquefied tissue. It was a disturbing sight, and yet Max saw a grotesque eroticism in it. After all, she was actually ingesting a part of her lover's body, making him truly a part of her, making them a oneness that transcended the insertion of a body part into a bodily orifice.
And then, suddenly, the band stopped playing. And just as abruptly, everyone stopped doing what (who) they were doing. This met with a bunch of disgruntled words and profanities. Others merely chanted: "We want S.E.X.! We want S.E.X.! We want S.E.X.!"
"Sorry, everyone," the singer said, smiling and not seeming too concerned about the audience's unhappiness. "A brief intermission and explanation. As one of the most appreciated bands in the underground circuit, we just wanted you to know how much we enjoy playing for you! And since the Exotix has always treated us well and you guys have always been great to us, we wanted to give you back a little gift tonight. That's why our show is more…pleasurable than usual! We've had our instruments enchanted for the night, so that anyone hearing our music feels an intense sensation of arousal and satisfaction! This goes out even to those who don't have a partner, we wouldn't want anyone left out-although everyone seems to have found someone or something to share their pleasure with! All except two…."
He pointed to Max, still hovering up above the stage, and then to the back of the bar, where heads were turning to see Lorna standing there, looking somewhat shamefaced.
"Come on, you two! Don't leave yourselves out!"
Lorna began walking towards the stage. She was changed into werefox form, so she was covered in orangish-red hair, and yet Max could swear she was blushing.
When she got to the stage, the singer grabbed her paws and pulled her up.
"Sorry everybody," she coughed into the microphone. "I don't mean to interrupt everybody's 'fun.' I didn't even want to come here tonight-I was feeling sorry for myself. I guess that kind of interfered with the band's enchantment. I felt it, but only to a degree, it was clouded somewhat by my troubled mind. And while I felt like I wanted to be enraptured like the rest of you, I just stood there and watched everyone…and saw Max up there, flying around."
She looked up at Max, smiling as if exchanging a secret, but he just shook his antennae in bewilderment. "Max, I realized something tonight…you're one of the most beautiful creatures I've ever seen. And that's not the spell talking, as I said, I was only partially under it."
"Me?" Max said skeptically.
"She's not under the spell right now anyway, Max-only when our instruments are playing," the singer said.
"I looked up and saw this golden and glowing form whisping around in the air, I didn't know what it was, and after watching you for a while, I realize who it was, and I felt such an awe for you, I felt afraid to approach you-again my mind being stupid and making me crazy. But now I wish you would have shown me yourself before-your real self."
"But…me…beautiful?" Max was incredulous. "I always thought I looked like a reject from a Mothra movie."
"Not at all…not at all…."
Max began to descend towards Lorna, and as he did so, the singer saw it was time to get started up again.
"All right…time to get back to business…time to get back to S.E.X.!"
The band began to play again, and as the first few notes rose up, so did Max, Lorna with him. It took a lot of energy to carry her, but the music was flowing into him again, enlivening him, strengthening him with ecstasy.
"Just watch that stinger, huh! I've never had sex in mid-air before!"
"It's one of the pleasures of being part bee…once you have air-borne intercourse, it seems boring on the ground!"
Lorna found herself singing out-not words, but a kind of singing all the same-a melody the rest of the room was joined in on, the sound of the world coming alive.