Page 3 of Bread By the Grim
“Bernice, how are you doing?”
She lets out a long low breath. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
I sigh and ignore her real question. “There’s some debate about how to get you out of here. They’re afraid to move you, so they want to try to get through the counter.”
“Don’t they know it has a concrete base?”
“Yeah, I told them, but they’re determined not to move you too much. Is there anything I can get you?”
“A few shots of rum?” she asks hopefully.
I can’t help but huff a laugh. We don’t sell alcohol, but I do keep some on hand for special desserts. “We probably still have some back there. Do you want a straw?”
“You’d give me some rum?” she asks, her voice a mixture of pain, incredulousness, and amusement.
“Of course I would.” I slip off to find some rum and come back to a group of mostly human firefighters trying to break through the counter.
“Have you fucking lost your mind?” I yell as pieces of wood fly in the air. They’ve got a tarp to block the wood chips from hitting Bernice, but it only helps so much. Her arm is littered with little pieces of gray wood.
I growl under my breath and hunch down next to Bernice, putting the straw in her mouth and doing my best to shield her from the flying debris. They continue on for a good twenty minutes until they reach the concrete.
“Fuck, it’s concrete!” someone says as the saws they’ve been using whine against the impossible material.
“That’s what he’s been telling you!” Bernice calls from the floor.
“Call back to the station,” one of the men hollers. “See what they have!”
A man who’s been hovering nearby pipes up, “Lieutenant, Fort Pines Fire Department has a hydraulic saw. We can probably get them over here in thirty minutes, tops.”
“Sounds good.” The men hop up from where they’ve been huddled around the counter and begin to file out of the room, leaving me and Bernice alone.
Is this a fucking joke? I haven’t lived in Ghostlight Falls that long, but the level of incompetence is astounding.
“Hold on, Bernice. I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll be here,” she says with a hiccup.
“HEY!” I yell after the men as they walk back to their trucks. “What about Bernice?”
The goat-man turns to me. “Sir, I understand you’re upset.”
“You’re damned right I’m upset. You haven’t even evaluated the patient. You just left her there.”
“Sir, I’m going to need you to calm down.”
My heart begins to pound as I take a deep breath. “I am calm, but I’m going to need you to fucking do your job. Bernice has been on the ground for thirty minutes with a fracture?—“
“Sir, if you’re going to continue to speak to me like that, I will have you detained.”
I can feel it coming on.
The rage.
It’s so intense, it feels like a wave crashing overme. There’s nothing I can do now but let it pull me where it wants me to go.
“Detain me?” The words come out in a growl as spikes begin to form on the back of my neck and down my back. They rise from my flesh and tear through the thin fabric of my T-shirt. The muscles in my body tighten and bulge, pressing against the fabric of my clothes, until I’m standing in front of the men in just boxers, a long reptilian tail giving me greater balance and an extra weapon to fight with, if necessary.
The group takes a collective step back, fear and disgust obvious on their faces. I tell myself it’s not a big deal. I’m used to it. Before I could fully control myself, the looks were commonplace in my life. But it seems like here in Ghostlight Falls, where creatures and humans live together in relative harmony, I shouldn’t be that horrible to look at. I can’t help who I am.
