Strays (38 page)

So tedious.  So, very, very tedious.

“My life, man.  It’s all I can handle right now.”

I can offer more. 

Rhino noticed that Jack seemed closer now, having somehow covered half the distance between them without the slightest flex of a muscle.  It wasn’t as if he had floated so much as he was just there, wavering in the morning sun one minute in one place and then the next.  The wind was picking up, fluttering Jack’s longish hair hard to where it rolled up and back away from his head, extending out in two pointed triangles. 

“Not sure I want it.”

Of course you want it, Rhino.  You know you want something … something beyond the quiet death of your own existence.

“It’s not like that.”

It is like that.  You are waiting to die, Rhino, waiting so patiently that it is as if you are dead already. 

Jack’s face, which was now catching splashes of sun, was changing.  The nose dipped downward as if melting, and a quilled rash of fur the color of dead leaves was sprouting from its bridge.  The blackish eyes twisted and tilted, the inner corners pointing down, and Jack’s stretched smile was splitting wider like a gaping scar.  The hair receded to a growth of short grayish fur, and the triangle tufts that had pointed from his scalp now revealed themselves to be huge canine ears, larger than any Rhino had ever seen.

I offer you life. 
Jack’s unearthly voice scraped hungrily across Rhino’s mind. 
Not the living death that awaits you, but life.

“What are you talking about?”

I’m talking about you, Rhino.  You and me.  The things we can do together.

“Things like what?”

Whatever you want.  We start with the cats.  We start by disposing of those miserable, bawling cats.  You’d like that, wouldn’t you?

Rhino considered it and smiled.  “I can think of one in particular,” he said.

Good.  Allow yourself to hate. 

Jack’s face was no longer human but more like a wolf, but even that was not right.  Rhino had seen wolves before, and they had never had ears this large.  No, this was something else, something fierce and predatory, yet a scavenger when needed, scraping up the remains that others had left behind.

Let us do this together, you and I …

Rhino watched as Jack lifted his left hand, palm up and empty, offering an invisible gift.  It only took Rhino a moment.  He killed the Datsun’s engine and tugged on the door handle.  The door popped open, and Rhino stepped out into the last traces of dust cloud.  He stood there, alone in the road, facing this creature with the bastardized wolf’s head.  It should have been terrifying, but for some reason it made him smile.

“All right,” he said.  “Whatever you say, Jack.”

I am not Jack,
the thundering voice replied. 
I am Jackal.