Lunatic Fringe (27 page)

Renee strode between the stations in
her crisp lab coat. Next year, she would graduate with honors and
go straight into a biomedical PhD program. Lexie and half the boys
in the class, including Duane, who hovered over his rat with
empathetic authority, agreed that Renee could rock that lab coat
like no other. Minutes earlier, Renee had demonstrated the proper
technique in picking up the rat and injecting the anesthetic,
causing Kal to growl under his breath. Renee didn’t pay him any
mind as her unnamed demo rat drifted into a deep sleep, the needle
buried in its haunch.

Lexie, though, couldn’t focus on the
task before her. Renee’s hands distracted her, as she recalled them
balled into fists, striking the jaw of the bound man. Lexie bit her
lip, struggling to maintain her composure while flanked by an
alarmist activist and a woman she had been attracted to and now
legitimately feared. At least she had been sleeping well at
night.

“
Our origin myth is fuzzy,
as most origin myths are. Our kind was a species unto itself. For
ages, we lived in the forests and plains, looking to all the world
much like wolves, but stronger, larger, faster, and with some
physical curiosities, most notably our articulated paws and
substantial size. For generations we lived alongside our cousins,
the humans, in what harmony could be expected from two advanced and
territorial species. Though neither werewolves nor humans believed
it was possible to own the earth, this did not stop either of us
from taking umbrage against those who would trespass into a tribe
or pack’s sphere. Territory was sacred to both of us, and we
defended it fiercely. Our fallen were evidenced in the Lupine hides
that the humans used to clothe their bodies, theirs in the human
meat that we used to feed our young. Yet there was respect between
the races.

Some of our human relations
even deified the werewolves, treating us as forest elders from
which all life came, due to our ability shift corporeal forms from
wolf into any other creature in the forest. We werewolves
understood otherwise, that there was a far greater force of the
forest, and that we were no more gods than the humans were. It’s so
silly now that anyone would mistake us for gods; why should
shapeshifting be any more incredible than the other gifts of
nature, those of flight, the breathing of water, of eyeless
navigation, or the human’s ability to manipulate nature to meet its
own needs?

“
Yet, that shared
reverence maintained the peace between two such disparate
communities for generations, until new humans descended on our
territory, colonizing and murdering the native inhabitants of both
human and werewolf kind.

“
These pale intruders
burned swathes of forest to make way for buildings, they tore
through the soil for minerals, and they slaughtered anything that
frightened them. And everything frightened them. The fur trade was
vigorous and brought my kind to near extinction. They would even
clothe their horses in our hides. It was wanton waste, a show of
bravado to demonstrate their sovereignty over the Earth.

“
The werewolves saw their
arrogance as the petulance of adolescence, a childish need to be
stronger than the natural world that gave them life. But it was
also frightening, as the Mother was not fighting back, choosing
instead, in her most feminine way, to attack by
surrender.”

Armed with a needle, a rat, and a
number of crude surgical instruments, each pair of students set to
work on the day’s task of outfitting their specimen with an
electrode buried in its brain’s pleasure center, to be stimulated
as needed to teach basic learning behaviors.

Kal cooed at the rat, which he insisted
on naming Falafel against Lexie’s requests to leave the poor thing
with its dignity before drilling a hole in its skull. He whispered
to it, gripping it tightly against his chest as it squirmed and
squealed away from Lexie’s touch.

She pinched a piece of its skin over
its haunch in yet another attempt to drive in the needle. The rat
scratched at Kal’s arm, squirming out of his grasp and attempting
to escape through the gap between his arm and torso.

“
Ouch! Lexie, you’re
hurting him!” Kal shouted.

“
It
. I’m hurting
it
. I have a huge needle I’m preparing to drive into its muscle.
No shit, I’m hurting it. Comes with the territory.”

“
Christ, why do you have to
be so inhumane? This is a dignified creature, not some
pincushion.”

“
It’s a rat, Kal, but
thanks for the life lesson. Can you please hold that thing
still?”

Kal gripped the rat around its
shoulders. By this point, all the other groups had a fully
anesthetized rat and were working on phase two of the
experiment.

As Lexie touched the needle to the
rat’s skin, preparing again the plunge, its hind legs twisted
wildly, kicking the needle out of her hands to the floor. “Kal,
hold that fucking thing still!”

“
It’s not a
thing
, Lexie. It’s an
animal, and it deserves as much freedom as any other creature, but
instead we keep it in a shit-filled cage all its life so we can
learn, what? That pleasure will make an animal do something? Well,
no shit!” Kal dropped the rat back into the open top of its cage
where it fled to the corner and burrowed into the wood chips at the
bottom. “Fuck animal testing, fuck you, and fuck this
class!”

Lexie’s face burned with
rage. “They test
everything
on animals, Kal. Everything! Soap, pills,
everything! If you’re so goddamned indignant about injustice to
animals, never take any medicine, never mop the floor, and go
become a Comp Lit major, alright?”

She picked up the fallen syringe and
tossed it on the table. By the time Renee arrived to break up the
scene, Kal was already on his way out the door and Lexie was beyond
pacification.

The rest of the class, limp rats and
hand drills forgotten, watched the drama unfurl. Lexie stood alone
at her station, holding her head in shame.

“
Lexie, you were doing a
fine job.” Renee approached like an apparition, placing the flat of
her palm on the small of Lexie’s back. “Try again. Be assertive.
Pinch the skin really hard, and ease in the needle. He’s going to
squeal, but he’ll fall asleep quickly.”

Lexie’s hands trembled as she picked up
the needle. She could feel each of Renee’s breaths across the back
of her neck as though she were searching for something in her
scent. She struggled to grab Falafel in a secure hold. His
heartbeat battered the soft flesh of her hand. She exhaled and sank
the needle home. The rat’s flesh gave only a small tack of
resistance before Lexie depressed the plunger and Falafel released
a tiny, sighing squeak and his hot skin turned cool.

“
Good,” Renee said. “Now
give his tail a good pinch to make sure he’s under, then secure him
to the table.”

“
One morning, my mother,
who was the Alpha of our pack, was tending to my brother and me
while the rest of our pack, including my father, was out hunting.
It turns out they were being hunted as well. Many of our pack were
shot down. Those that weren’t, fled. Only my father returned for
us.

“
My parents ran, carrying
us in their mouths. It’s my earliest memory: my paws dangling as I
swayed from my mother’s mouth, the skin on my neck pulled so taut,
holding me tight, protecting me. We finally arrived at a lair so
deep in the northern woods, no trappers or hunters would dare
venture there.

“
For a time, we were safe.
My brother and I grew together, under the watch of our parents, a
meager pack hoping to reclaim our numbers and our future somehow.
We lived quietly and simply, hunting small game and refusing to
communicate with howls, even at our happiest or most desperate. But
the humans continued to expand their territory, and my parents
realized that they would never stop pushing us farther and farther
away. My parents had denied my brother and me our birthrights out
of fear--to howl, to hunt great game, to raise our own packs
without fear of lead or traps.”

Two hours later, each of Lexie’s
classmates had a perky, wakeful rat, outfitted with a cap of
adhesive out of which stuck an electrode linked to a lever. They
looked like tiny space men, their crude helmets transmitting
signals to the mothership. Renee made the rounds, a harsh critic of
the students’ surgical technique. Lexie was still scattered, far
behind the rest of her class. Unlike Falafel’s, her own heartbeat
hadn’t yet steadied.

Duane had finished early and walked
over to keep her company, perching on the lab desk as Lexie wired
up her rat to the device. Renee moved between the two.

“
Lexie,” she said over her
shoulder. “You’re going to have to stay after.”

“
It’s cool, Renee. I can
help her out,” Duane offered.

Renee scanned him and moved on to the
next station.

“
One blustery evening when
I was still a pup and my parents were out hunting, I wandered out
of the cave and fell into an abandoned badger den. When they
discovered I was missing, they panicked, chattering and barking,
searching everywhere for me. Finally, deep into the night, my
father found me, no more than twenty yards from our camp. I had sat
silently for hours waiting for them to find me. I didn’t howl or
make any noise. I was terrified, absolutely terrified, but I
refused to howl; we’d been admonished for making noise our whole
lives.

“
That I never learned to
howl, even to protect myself, crushed my parents with guilt; they
were raising their pups as mutes to keep us safe, yet in doing so
denied us one of our greatest gifts: our song, the identity of our
species.

“
Our parents stayed up all
night and through the morning, speaking to each other in hushed
tones as my brother Sage and I pretended to sleep. I knew they were
debating something fierce, as they kept losing track of their
voices and would sometimes nearly shout before hushing the
conversation back to whispers.

“
The next night they lead
us to a human encampment. We crept to the edge of the woods and I
saw my first campfire. Around it were men and women, banging drums,
dancing wildly, smoking long, carved pipes and eating fire-roasted
game. I watched my mother’s heart break as she recalled the joy of
her own pack. It was clear how she longed for that feeling again.
Men sat on a log beside one another, buck-skin drums of different
sizes in their hands or wedged between their knees. The rhythm
shook me, wild and intense. Each strike of their mallets and
fingers was like a blow to my chest. Beyond them, a woman danced in
the orange firelight. She had long mahogany hair and her lean body
was covered by a scant suede dress. She looked like one of the
kinds of humans I had known around the time of my birth, but there
was something different about her. Her eyes were bright blue and
her skin was fairer than the people of my homeland. She was a mé
tis woman, not uncommon in that time and area, the product of a
love between one of our indigenous folk and a pale immigrant. She
was exquisite, smiling and spinning, whipping her hair about her
like the tail of a horse. She gave herself over to the rhythm of
the drums. Her dress strained and twisted on her strong earthy body
as she spun. She threw her arms towards the stars, her bare feet
kicking up dust, the audience’s faces glowing in the sienna clouds
as they swirled about.

“
She enraptured the crowd
with her dance. The drummers played as hard as they could to please
her, to keep her moving, to keep her praising their skill, spirit,
and vitality. The other tribespeople passed the pipe among
themselves, never removing their eyes from this passionate vision
of beauty and vibrance.

“
The rhythm in her hips
ensnared me as well, as did the smile on her face as the drumbeats
moved her soul. Her eyes would close as she spun, but her smile
never faded. I could have watched her all night, and she looked as
though she could have danced as long; her feet never stumbled, her
shoulders never slumped. She was pure energy made of that music, of
community, of movement. I had never known that kind of freedom. It
was . . . a revelation”

“
I can’t believe I let you
convince me to take this class,” Lexie said, glaring at Duane as he
rocked a lab stool with his feet.

“
Oh please. You were always
good at biology. This is really interesting stuff.”

“
Yeah, I
love
getting lambasted by
self-righteous vegans.”

“
Don’t blame me for that
protein-deficient crazy man. I just thought you’d get a kick out of
the anatomy stuff,” Duane said. “Anyway, I wanted to apologize for
the other day. Brian’s a cool guy, but kind of an ass when he’s
drunk.” He pulled a bright green apple out of his bag, rubbed it on
his sleeve and took a bite.

The crack of his teeth breaking the
chartreuse skin rattled Lexie’s eardrums like an ax through a tree.
From across the room, Renee said, “Duane! Put that away. You’re in
a lab, not a cafeteria.” Duane rolled his eyes and tossed the apple
into the trashcan near the door with a perfect swish.

Lexie squeezed a line of glue around
the braided wire sticking out of Falafel’s head, making it easy to
avoid eye contact with Duane. “It’s not your fault your friend is a
dick.”