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Where, oh where have you been, my love?
Where, oh where can you be?
It’s been so long since the moon’s been gone,
And oh,
What a wreck you’ve made me.
Gigi Murin is cursed.
Her breath rattles in her chest, fighting a losing war against the aches that march up and down her ribs like ants. The spots in her vision writhe with each throb of her headache - but she can’t close her eyes. She can’t stop moving.
She can’t stop running.
She clambers up and over a fence, fingers protesting ruthlessly. It’s just one more hurt to add to the pile. And frankly, the way her ribcage is beginning to feel like somebody is pressure cooking it, she’s not very focused on this new pain.
With a burst of fleeting clarity, she counts the seconds in her head- two, three, four -there’s a cacophony as her pursuer hits the fence, moving more through it than over it. She lost some of her gap with that stunt. It was stupid.
But Gigi Murin can move.
She has wondered more than once if her pursuer was holding back. She’s fairly sure the answer is yes, but even with their… everything, she knows she’s not easy to catch. Molten blood runs through her legs, desperate breaths giving just enough air to keep her in motion.
She blitzes down an alleyway, past some club’s backdoor, not even blinking. She doesn’t want to get anyone else involved. She’d done it, once before. She knows what happens when she chooses not to play this game, and when she decides to break the rules. Lessons learned, she thinks sardonically. So, she keeps running. Her legs turn over like pistons, blood pooling in her shoes and she just keeps moving.
She makes a blind turn, slipping into the next branching alleyway. It’s two-three-four-five-six later when she hears the scrabbling of claws against masonry, and her lip quirks upward just a fraction. It’s the little victories. This alley is tight, but not impossible to navigate. She weaves and twists around a dumpster, grimacing as something in her lower left burns.
There’s a cacophony as her pursuer clips the wastebin, a sharp, inhuman noise of annoyance from behind her. The quiver of Gigi's lip becomes a full-blown grin. I’m losing, she thinks. But I’m knocking you down a peg. Her next gasping breath rattles, and that dumb grin vanishes almost as quickly as it formed.
She emerges from the alley, not sparing even a second’s glance backward. She bolts across a road. There’s not a single sign of human life. She can’t be certain how, but it’s become just another aspect of these runs. It has to be corralling me. It knows where people are, pushes me away. Keeps me alone. She slips into a gap, in-between shuttered businesses. I’m your one-and-only. So romantic!
This space is even tighter than the last, and she has to tuck in her arms to make it through. Her feet feel like they’re melting, pooling and fusing with her shoes. Her knees are grinding into dust. It’s three-four-five again before there’s an angry howl behind her.
Fat fuck. Gigi thinks. It’s so abrupt a thought that she almost laughs, but she doesn’t have the lungs left for it.
There’s a terrifying rasp of claws against brick as her pursuer shimmies through the gap. She’s bought a little time. She emerges into another street- she’s near the waterfront now. Again, not a single soul, other than a few lights left on in the upper floors of brickwork machine shops. The neon haze of downtown bathes the night sky in electric blues, even this far away.
She turns abruptly, capitalizing on her short advantage. It growls behind her, and she flinches despite herself. What? It’s too close. Way too close. How did it close the gap? Bile squeezes up to her chest. Her legs nearly give out on the next step.
She turns again to slip into another alley, and-
Her foot twists. It goes numb. She’s only aware she’s fallen because she lands badly on her right arm. Finally, finally. She wants to close her eyes. She wants to look away. She knows she can’t. Her pursuer is right there behind her, slowing into a stillness like death. It only moves to breathe, but she can tell from the heaving of its lungs that it’s winded.
Gigi Murin is cursed with Lycanthropy.
She wishes that meant she was a werewolf, because maybe then this would be a fair thing. Just a fun game of tag. But no. She’s cursed with a werewolf. It always finds her. Two years of running, across state lines, from city to city. It follows her like her own shadow. It was sporadic, at first, but it’s almost every month now. It comes with the full moon.
She’d taken a camera with her, once. A cheap disposable. It only took one run to realize it was dead weight. She wishes she had it now. The neon blue of the city mixes with the milky white of Luna, highlighting her pursuer beautifully.
I’m delirious. She wonders, deliriously. The pain is really starting to sink in, now that she’s stopped moving. Lava floods her veins. Snot mixes with blood. She spits it at the thing in the mouth of the alley. She’s overjoyed when it actually flinches. Another little victory.
It pads forward, claws rasping against stone. It’s tall - easily 7 feet. Face elongated, narrow. It’s skinnier than most depictions of the creature, almost sickly looking. Dark spots mat the fur, too-long limbs dappled with dried blood of varying ages. She knows the approximate location of every place she has bled onto it, and the few places she’s made it bleed.
There’s a new one- a long gash along its thigh, weeping dark blood that adds to the discoloration. Gigi grins despite herself. She’d lost the knife half an hour and a mile back, but she’s proud of her handiwork. It had bought her time to wiggle away, when the thing had pinned her by her ribs.
She sucks in a breath. She turns her head to the side tiredly, spitting something out again. It keeps shuffling forward. She refuses to meet the thing eye-to-eye, even as it drops lower, hovering over her. Despite everything flooding her own sinuses, she can smell it. The air tastes like copper and wet dog. Its lips pull back, long maw splitting as it opens its jaws a fraction. Her eyes begin to drift, her legs shivering as the bone-deep pain sets in.
“Go fuck yourself.”
It doesn’t respond. She’s not surprised. It has never said anything back. It speaks with action, instead. Its snout lowers, saliva dripping onto her stomach. She feels like throwing up. Her grin vanishes. Too close. Too close. Her primate brain is screaming, kicking, punching, demanding that she fights back. She doesn’t. It presses its nose into her neck, inhaling. The ritual is complete.
Finally, she meets its gaze. Glowing green, dilated, beautiful contrast against bloodied fur. It pulls back.
She feels her lungs spasm back to life, a breath she didn’t know she was holding.
It won’t kill her, but it proves that it can, every time.
Once, she wished it would just finish the job. Her next exhale leaves with a wet cough. Now, Gigi won’t let herself break.
It lingers at the mouth of the alleyway, watching her. She wonders if anyone else could do what she does, if anyone else should have been chosen for this. She wonders if it’s the only one of its kind out there, if she’s the one, single, unlucky target out of millions of choices. She wonders if she’s insane for refusing to give up. Delirious.
“See you next month.” She wheezes.
It turns and runs out of the alley, disappearing into the night.
Cecilia Immergreen is cursed.She wakes fitfully, with no alarm. Something throbs in her leg. She aches everywhere.
She shuffles off the covers. Her eyes snap to her thigh. There’s a long vertical scar, already scabbed over.
Her breathing stops, still as a statue. She imagines that if she doesn’t move, time won’t pass. It won’t cement itself in reality. It won’t exist. Her leg twitches, and the spell is broken.She turns into her pillow. She screams.It’s almost an hour later before she calms down enough to climb out of bed. Her kitchen is a disaster. There’s a trail of bloody prints, leading in through the window from the fire escape.Something rolls in her stomach. She doesn’t remember much from last night. She never does. There’s some barrier, some block preventing her from grasping it. But she can look through the frosted glass, see the vague outline of someone else. She remembers the knife. She remembers one last glance. She remembers see you next month.
She feels sick. The thing inside her, coiled in her chest, it points the way. She knows exactly what direction to head, if she wants to finish the work. The thing inside her hungers for nothing else. Cecilia can smell her, out there somewhere.
She runs to the sink. Head bowed, acid spills from her lips and down the drain.
She leans against the counter, heaving breaths. So much for breakfast.