Page 20 of Save Me Enemy

The tent collapses around me and I tremble in fear. I have no hands to lift it off me, and the more I thrash, the more tangled I get. Why am I a dog now? Why does her blood on my teeth taste so good? What happened to me?

Someone is tugging on the tent, shushing me furiously…Mother. When she gets me out her face is a mask of anger, lips pressed tight to her teeth, and eyes alive for the first time ever. She grabs me by the back of the neck and dangles me in the air and slaps my face.

“What have I told you about getting worked up, Zeta?” she whispers fiercely. I yelp, looking around for help, but we’re alone now. “Gods you're an ugly dog, aren't you?” My mother throws me to the ground, crossing her arms and glaring down her nose at me.

“Mommy’s friend left without paying. That means no food for her for another night. I have no use for a dog, so choose. Be a little girl people feel sorry for, or be a mangy mutt that I leave in this alley?”

I don’t understand her, I don’t understand what’s happening. I whimper and curl up against the brick wall behind me and try to hide my face from her. She rolls her eyes, and her graying brown hair starts to shorten, her cold eyes flash yellow, and her own body begins to change into a wolf. My momma is huge, gray fur over white paws, and her yellow eyes are somehow even colder than her human eyes.

“I knew the moment you were born you were a Zeta. I’ll never understand why DeeDee named you. Bet she regrets it now. Watch me change back and do as I do or I’ll drop you in the river and forget you were ever born.”

Her voice is in my mind, I can't escape her, but her mind opens to me as she shifts back into a woman and I can see how I’m supposed to do it. I close my eyes, struggling, and my bones start to ache again. It hurts so much, it’s too hard, but after trying three times I’m finally a little girl again.

Momma grabs me by my hair and hauls me up, yanking something out of my back and holding it in front of my eyes.

“This is what happens when you show people what we are. Remember this day, or the next time you get stabbed you’ll die.” She wrinkles her nose in disgust at me, throwing the short knife at my feet, and starts to dress herself. My shoulder is bleeding, hurting more than anything I’ve ever felt, but Momma makes me get dressed too.

“We can't stay here now, thanks to you,” she hisses between clenched teeth, and the moment my body is covered she grips the back of my neck and hauls me out into the city streets.

* * *

The scene morphs, and my consciousness welcomes it. I have many painful memories, but that’s one of the most agonizing.

Except I’m drawn into another time in my past.

One I already know I don’t want to visit.

* * *

The beeping of medical machines echoes throughout the too-white room. Bea, my mother, has a tube down her throat to make her breathe. She hasn’t opened her eyes in two weeks. I reach over and touch the scar on my shoulder. It got infected, of course, and the scar is much bigger and uglier than it ever should have been. Sometimes it still aches, and it always hurts when I shift.

The IV in my arm itches, but the doctors say my episodes might be triggered by dehydration. They’re treating me like a science experiment. If they only knew what would happen if I get over stressed. They’d never let me leave again.

For years after that first day I shifted, momma refused to talk about it. She called me Zeta and told me I didn't deserve to know. If I shifted she’d beat me, tell me she never wanted to see that. I never saw her shift again.

Now I’m an adult, and she’s dying, and for some reason I can't leave her side. The doctors say she has the same thing as me, that her body has quit. That on top of the HIV, it's a miracle she’s still alive. This is my future.

This is what the doctors are trying to fix.

I clutch her diary in my hands so hard my knuckles are turning white. I have a father, he’s like us, a monster. She ran away from home because of him, and never wanted the consequence she got. Me. The pages are full of her ranting about me, how much she hates me, how much of a burden I am. The only reason she kept me around is because people felt sorry for her and gave her money.

When my body developed, I earned money just like she did, with my body. I can still feel every man who’s touched me, every man she sold me to. I hate her. Hate her like she hates me. Standing, I grab my IV stand and walk to her bedside. I want her to die, truly I do, but watching her suffer has my heart in a vice grip.

Sitting on the end of her bed I flip through the pages of her diary. At the back there’s an address with her name. The town listed, Zenith, isn’t far from here. Just a couple of hours. I could go look for this terrible father. Surely he can't be worse than her, surely he can tell me more about what I am.

No one checks on momma anymore, so when the alarm blares I know they won't get here in time. I don’t know how to feel about it, she’s my mother, I should want her to be saved, right? Her chest stops moving, she looks like she’s sleeping, and before long her skin grows cold and ashen. No one arrives in time, rushing in long after the peel of the beeping and alarm sounds are burned into my mind forever.

My mother is dead, gone, just like that. I feel adrift, unsure of what to say or do, as fate pulls me in yet another mysterious direction in my life. She isn’t here to tell me what to do, isn’t here to force me to use my body to support us. Relief floods through me.

I’m free.

* * *

Itense when the scene morphs again, only to be filled with sweet relief when I see who’s here with me.

Jax is standing in a field, there's a man with him but I can’t see him clearly. Both are naked, looking down over a small town below. The man I can’t make out puts a hand on Jax’s shoulder and squeezes before he vanishes like mist. Jax sighs, shoulders rising and falling. He seems sad, so lonely. I step beside him, but he doesn’t look at me.

“You were everything I’ve ever wanted…” he says, wiping a tear away. “You just couldn’t fight it, could you? You took yourself away from me, and if that wasn’t enough? You let me think I could have a family, but you took my son to the grave with you.”

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