Chapter Text
When they pull into Grandpa’s, Michael immediately understands how this man managed to marry a wolf without noticing.
Eccentric. That’s the word he’d use if he was being nice.
But the long trip shared with Nanook in the back seat has made him a bit more callous, and he eyes a huge bear carving with less grace than it perhaps deserves. Fucking freaky, he thinks, pulling his bike up besides the truck.
The wood tells the story of a man left alone too long, he reckons. Eyes the sharp wooden spikes he’d used instead of strainer posts. Paranoia? Or artistic choice? Yeah, way too long.
He thinks this all before even noticing grandpa lying still on the ground. It’s only the scent which tips him off – the smell of a warm body, breath tinged with coffee, a distinct hint of sweat – that he’s playing dead, not stone-cold.
Michael has fond memories of this place. Remembers it, somewhat, from when he’d been younger and they’d made the trek to Santa Carla every third school holiday. That’d stopped, as his father had gotten more… Well. More.
Sammy must’ve been young then, ten or so. Michael wonders what he remembers of the man in front of them, sharing a reunion with his wilful, wolf-of-a-daughter.
Not much, Michael realises, considering one of his first questions is about a TV. He cuffs his head with a palm, cut it out, Sammy, he says with his eyes.
“We’re flat broke,” he says, and Sam seems to take it on the nose.
It’s weird, being in a human house.
He’d gotten used to the little things. The little idiosyncrasies he, Lucy, and Sam did. The open windows at all hours, the designated spots that still smelt like them, the lack of cups - they preferred to drink the running water straight from the tap.
In comparison, grandpa’s house is dusty. The scents are stagnant, the flow still. It all smells like borax - and under that the smell of fat and clay.
Ew.
Lucy seems to think so too, throwing open windows as she goes, chatting aimlessly with her father. Grandpa had married grandma when they were both in their thirties. He had apparently taken to the knowledge his bride was a wolf once a month with surprising grace.
He and Sam had long since tired of the stories about his motorbike - an old modified Honda super cub - which he’d used to go out running with grandma and Lucy when the moon-night happened.
Michael wonders what that would’ve been like. Racing his bike against two wolves, unable to understand the elation of paws – but still feeling some approximation of it, wheels churning, the wind in his face – point is, grandpa had given Lucy as idyllic a childhood as any sometimes-a-literal-wolf child could possibly have.
Sometimes Michael thinks she feels bad. That she hasn’t been able to give them the same experience.
Michael accidently catches his mother’s eye as she passes, and musters up a smile. Her eyes have been so tired recently. The move and the divorce and him, just another problem for her to deal with.
Deep down, Michael knows he’s the real reason for the move. For his mother’s fatigue.
It was his damn wolf.
Their wolves were different from his. His family shifted whenever they wanted, only felt forced to on moon-nights. Sam described his change as itchy, like pent up energy after a long car trip. He’d shift as he ran out the door, wolf-form chasing and being chased with Nanook, the two of them lapping the fields as they shook out energy like dew from their backs.
Lucy too described good things, a good stretch, a comfortable spot in the sun. He’d come home from school to see a palomino heap of fur napping in the north-facing room. She’d cheekily described her wanderlust growing up, waking up after a full moon miles away from home – secret weekend trips and dreams of running away, further, farther. A night spent as a wolf in Golden Gate Park, the rumours after. How much freedom there was. There was no doubt those two were related.
Michael was.
Well.
Michael was different. There was something wrong with Michael.
His wolf didn’t want to play. It wasn’t a creature of sun. In the days leading up to a full one, he dreamt non-stop of gore, teeth-visions, thoughts obscured by blood. No playful chase here, the sleep-plains saw him pursuing figures from his waking hours – Nanook, his gym teacher, his father – ground disappearing under him, too fast – always too fast – his prey no match for his speed. Catching, then tearing the catch to pieces.
He thinks sometimes he is more like his father than he’d like to admit – and yet even then he is nothing like his father, because he had nothing to back it up. At least his father could fight, fix things up, had a body which followed through with his commands. Michael was uncoordinated. Was untalented. He liked to do things but was never good at the things he did. As they said, all bark and no bite.
His wolf wasn’t good, like his brother’s or mother’s, his wolf was something failed. A twisted-up piece of paper chucked over a shoulder. He thinks nothing makes this clearer than the fact he never remembered his moon-nights.
He’d lock his bedroom door, bar the windows. He told his mom and brother he liked the privacy, liked to be alone and nap it off in his room, safe.
He remembered, vaguely, a time when he’d go with them, driving out to the desert to run off the moon. They’d stopped that when the first round-ups of the lobo mexicano – the real wolves of Arizona - had started, their animal-cousins being interred after threats of extinction. Ever since Lucy and Sam had made do with staying in, boarding up the lounge as Michael boarded up his room. It’d be no good for Sam to blink open human eyes in some wildlife reserve, no excuse for how he got there.
In this way, Michael had hidden his secret from his family. They’d never see him, that restrained hidden bit of him, the one that wanted things it shouldn’t want. And when he shifted, he’d wake up in the morning exhausted, room ruined. No recollection of anything.
Yeah, Michael and his wolf-self weren’t on talking terms.
Sam hated the way Michael talked about it – those rare few times that he did. Thought it was weird when Michael described it as ‘his wolf,’ would frown and argue that they were one and the same, that there was no distinction between bodies. Said, in his experience, it was still Sam, functionally. Wild, yes, wolf-instincts intact, speaking in animal languages and bowing to animal wants – but his personality, his memories, his motivations all him.
Then again, Sam could remember his wolf-hours, and he never dreamed hunt-dreams.
Lucy shrugged it off as teenage angst, he was sure. And that’s why Michael thinks the move had been partially about him – his family hadn’t seen his wolf since he was fifteen. He wonders if Lucy thinks being able to run outside again would draw him out, open his bedroom door.
It wouldn’t.
But he had three weeks before he had to worry about that, and he was going to spend them reassuring Lucy that he was adjusting to the move, keeping Sam from complaining. Making this easier, for everyone.
So, when Sam asks to visit the boardwalk, it’s easy to offer a ride. Save Lucy the trouble.
“Oh honey, are you sure?” She’s standing at the top of the stairs; box of linens balanced on her hip. “I can take you both – you know it’s no hassle.”
Michael smiles, noting Lucy’s responding smile softening around the edges.
“You’ve been driving all day,” he replies. “Catch up with grandpa. Me and Sam will grab something out – don’t worry about us.”
She smiles again, and Michael can almost read her thoughts, My sons, dutiful and sweet, as Michael pushes Sam towards the door, the latter already asking about comic stores and the possibility of a TV.
--|--
As city-experienced as they are, neither of them are ready for the reality of the boardwalk.
Michael feels it hit him like a heat-wave. Feels near assaulted by it as they step off the bike. It feels like cotton candy fluff gone sticky with the humidity. The way your fingers subtly stick together when you clench them. An unnatural smell, something less pedestrian than it sounded – territorial markers.
The whole boardwalk – from Ferris wheel to beach - was marked, claim so potent it could have been spray-tagged and painted. And it was, to be fair, graffiti thick on every available surface, tags piled up and abandoned in corners like dirty clothes.
Sammy scrunched up his nose. No doubt he was smelling it too.
“Let’s not make waves, yeah?” Michael says, bringing an arm around him for a half hug. Sam half-heartedly pushes at him, eyes darting around like finches.
“Yeah yeah,” he’s saying, “say’s you – trouble-maker”
Michael doesn’t bother to answer, sticks a finger in Sam’s ear and pretends he’s unaffected whilst Sam splutters.
But still, he feels that weight – there is something here in Santa Carla. Something old. They’re in someone else’s territory now.
It’ll hide our trail, at least.
He resolves to keep a look out. They were young inconsequential things, back in Phoenix they’d stayed under the radar of beings more powerful than them through this dubious virtue alone.
Heads down, he thinks. Shouldn’t be too hard.
It’s a nice evening after all, once they become accustomed to the new scents and sights. And there are so many sights. The lights flash constantly, every new corner a new sound, a new distraction. Michael buys a second-hand leather jacket to replace the last one - torn to shreds, he resolves to put this one higher up, maybe on top of his wardrobe? Somewhere the wolf couldn’t reach it.
Sam begs him for a loan to grab some comics, but turns out he needn’t have bothered – the two Rambo types at the stall had been giving out horror comics for free. He watches the crowd as they banter. He’s just glad there’s kids Sam’s age – hadn’t seemed like many out and about, but that might just be the hour.
They use the saved cash to buy food. It's a hard choice – surrounded by all kinds of street fare. Really, this isn’t too different from Phoenix, but the novelty of the salt in the air is still fresh, and he and Sam camp out on the boardwalk sea wall as they squabble over loaded fries and some random deep-fried bullshit.
It’s nice. Sam isn’t even being too annoying. He thinks maybe he’ll come out again tomorrow. Give the bike a spin, sans passenger. It’s been good, to be near the waves, feel all that moving water - as if that churning tide could move the calcified pillars of his thoughts. Like maybe this move would change something after all, like he could be a different person, unburdened by the constant weight of the sun.
Yeah, right, the universe says, as Sammy suddenly sits up, as the hair on the back of his neck sticks entirely on end.
Sam barely gets out a spluttered do you feel that, Michael, what? Before they both get hit with the smell of candy-floss. But now it’s closer, there’s a smell under it – rock, cavernous salt-encrusted rock, the still-smell of something deep underground. Then metal, rust, cloying candle-wax, diesel, leather. Flesh, cold like refrigerated pork, turning clammy in the heat of the night.
“Let’s-” Michael starts, but Sam’s already finishing his sentence by going, food abandoned for whatever scavenger comes across it.
He thinks they’re both confused with the way they instinctively move towards the sea, rather than back into the crowds of the boardwalk – hurriedly run-walking through the sand, half-sinking with every step, until they’re soaking the hems of their jeans and their boots are filling with salt-water. There’s no questioning it though, and they both feel safer as soon as the moving water is lapping over their legs.
It’s quieter on the shoreline, Michael thinks. He looks over and sees the whites of Sam’s eyes. His nostrils flaring. They’re both bone-silent. He cocks a brow, you okay? Sammy’s eyes dart around, then back to Michael – where is it? Michael shrugs. Wonders if they should walk away, or if it’s safer to just stand here – random tourists being weird about the beach.
The wind has shifted, the smell carried away. He opens his mouth to get a better sense, but that rock-smoke-copper has faded under the smell of oil, sand, and sea. His feet are starting to freeze, and he waits another second before making eye contact with Sam again. He inclines his head towards the south side of the beach. We go? Sam nods, decisive, and they turn, the splashing of their feet loud against the distant song of carnival music.
The lights of the boardwalk ruin anyone’s night vision, Michael reasons. They can’t see us out here. Back on the sidewalk, pedestrians pay very little attention to the two figures, slogging calf-height in the oncoming tide. He feels like an outsider looking in, but that pervasive feeling of weight never truly leaves, and so he and Sam stay on the outskirts. Strangers.
They keep their eyes open, but nothing else happens. They’re back on Michael’s bike and running home before whoever, or whatever, catches up.
“Aw man,” Sam says, shaking himself as he hops off the bike. “We missed the Saxophone guy!”
Michael huffs, and pushes his bike into the garage.
And so passes the first visit to the boardwalk.
--|--
Sam can’t seem to help pestering grandpa about it when they get inside, following him from garage door to fridge door and back again, (but never into the garage itself, Michael notices with a laugh, wimp.)
“You know I don’t have your nose,” grandpa’s saying, root beer in hand. “How would an old man like me know what rock passes for around here?”
“Aw, come on, you’ve lived here forever, you’ve gotta know when something is,” Sam pauses, slicking his hair back with a hand whilst he looks for the word, “well… strange?”
Grandpa chuckles, and then slaps Michael’s hand away when he goes in for the double-stuff Oreos.
“I barely noticed your grandma, and she ate her steak so rare it was still mooing.”
Sam rolls his eyes.
“Yeah, alright grandpa.” Something visibly occurs to him, and he perks up. “I’ve got stuff to be doing anyway.”
He’s racing up the stairs before anyone can reply, and Michael shares an amused glance with grandpa.
Just as Michaels about to leave, grandpa clears his voice. He glances back, and anything jovial has been cleared from his eyes – which look out from his brow with an uncharacteristic severity.
“Grandpa?”
He sighs.
“You two did the right thing tonight,” grandpa says. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders.”
Michael feels incredibly uncomfortable. He thinks Lucy wouldn’t take them anywhere dangerous – but, she didn’t know everything, but, anywhere with Michael was dangerous, and if she couldn’t spot him, if she – grandpa was talking again, face still grim.
“Might be a good idea to stay away from the boardwalk, yeah? At least after dark.”
Michael nods.
“Yeah, grandpa. Sure.”
So there was something out there, he thinks, something stalking the boardwalk. Something grandpa knew about. Something dangerous. Another wolf?
The conversation is over now, grandpa literally shutting the door on it – sliding garage door closing in front of his face. Michael sighs, heads to his room.
He wakes up the next day before he’s even realised he’d fallen asleep.
Breakfast is muted; Lucy had headed out before he’d woken up. Out to find a job! :-) The note had read, and Michael snorted, then resolved to do the same. Sammy had actually been the one to wake him, accidently, chatting loudly on the phone to some friend back in Phoenix.
Whatever. It was no concern of his. Michael had no one to call.
He sips on coffee whilst he surveys the kitchen.
There’s bacon in the fridge, but he finds the smell of flesh from the boardwalk is still in his nose, and it discomforts him - dreams still too fresh with rip-and-tear to sit comfortably. He settles for eggs. Makes enough for Sammy, bringing it up to his room and slipping out into the sun.
He eats rubbery eggs on the porch, trying to remember his dream. He was chewing something, he thinks, poking at his cheek with his tongue. There was a fire. The coffee is a saviour, his second cup washing out the taste of eggs and phantom something.
There was enough to do without making problems for himself, he reasons. He cleans up his mess and heads out again. Theres an itch building, the house and its fields weren’t theirs yet. He wonders if he was really imagining that candy-floss all the way up here, miles above the boardwalk.
Even if it was making a statement, he drags now-sharp claws over the posts grandpa had lined the border-fence with. Marks their new territory. Feels the change even as he does so. Like the windows Lucy had cracked open in the house, marking the territory brought through a wave of fresh air so quickly it gave him a headrush.
The candy-floss smell was real, and present over the house – he realises only now as it got whisked away, being replaced with something he’d realised was distinctly Emerson, something like the last real cold-snap before spring.
Ours now he thinks, somewhat viciously. One little corner of Santa Carla. Wonders if that old thing would make its way up the hill to reclaim its lost area, whatever it was. Wonders if grandpa was ready for that – the old man certainly had some idea of what it was, considering.
The sun was really starting to beat down now, and Michael allowed himself to enjoy it. Imagined it burning out his dreams and leaving him hardened and hollow. It was nice. Almost reminded him of Phoenix.
It takes him a few hours, continuing on like that. Stalking the borders of grandpa’s lot, scratching a claim into the trees and rocks. It feels good, to carve out the space for them, clean, like he was removing spiderwebs from an old room. When he’s done, he lies down in the grass. Feels his jeans sticking to him with sweat. Relishes in the almost-too-hot burn, the same sun from Phoenix, following him to Santa Carla.
The more things change…
He stays like that for a while, secure in the knowledge that he heals too fast to sunburn. The hurt is nice. It’s gratifying to have something about this whole situation sting.
Nanook finds him a bit later – he must’ve fallen asleep.
“Hey there,” he mutters, giving him a scratch behind the ears as he attempts to push his nose under Michael’s chin. “Good boy, what’re you up to?”
Nanook huffs, breath rancid, but Michael can parse a question in the air. It’s always harder to read a real animal’s body language, but they’re more alike than not. He thinks Nanook is confused, asking something like aren’t you hot? Or, inside cold, water, what are you doing?
“Yeah yeah,” he says, leaning on the dog’s shoulders as he stands up, “you’re not wrong.”
He’s halfway up before a blur of blond fur is barrelling into him – Sam, running from the house on wolf-paws – leaping up and crashing them both back to the ground. Michael laughs with the impact, bringing his arms up to try and spin his wolf-brother over. They tousle like that for a minute, breaking away to laugh in each other’s faces, before going in for the tackle again. Nanook barking all the while, tail thumping away an uncoordinated beat against the brittle brown grass. Finally, they collapse, Michael half on Sam, his fur soft and warm in the sun.
“What’re you doing out here, huh?” He asks, panting a bit.
Sam wuffs, a soft noise. Michael interprets it as being why, do I have to have a reason?
Michael pushes his face away playfully.
“God, we need to get you some doggy toothpaste. You stink.”
Then Sam’s trying to breathe on Michael, and the scuffle starts back up again.
That’s how Lucy would find them, a half hour later, spreading grass seed through the paddock. Spooking the horses.
She laughs, probably happy to see them happy. Heads into the house.
It’s that more than anything that makes him end the fun.
“Come on Sammy,” Michael laughs, pulling himself up to his feet. “I don’t want mom to have to unpack everything.”
Sam woofs again, rolling over beseechingly, but grudgingly lopes back to the house when Michael turns to leave without him.
They spend the rest of the daylight hours unpacking, reminiscing as they encounter their packed belongings again, and it’s a simple happiness.
--|--
They all eat dinner together that night, grandpa at the head of the table, Michael and Sam on the same side (they weren’t allowed to sit opposite each other since the great food fight of ’81,) facing Lucy, who was laughing softly.
It was nice, Michael thought, to see his mom smiling, to see Sam speaking up at the table.
It’s less fraught than Phoenix.
Sam’s talking about the comic shop, something about frogs and his elusive batman number fourteen. Lucy’s reminding him that school’s starting soon – God, Michael had been glad to graduate, less glad to spend the next two years picking up work wherever he could, his future as the gas station night shift clerk settling around his shoulders with disappointing ease.
A cough. He looks up from his dinner into the eyes of Lucy – evidently waiting to ask him a question.
“I was thinking,” she starts, tentatively, “that we could go out.”
So much for ‘less fraught,’ thinks Michael.
“Out?” he repeats, strictly monotone.
“Yeah,” says Lucy, turning her wedding band on her finger. Nervous. “Out. We have a few weeks to plan it, and I know Phoenix was hard, but it’s more open here – and we have the farm - and I was wondering if you’d like – “
“Mom.”
“To come out with me and Sam.”
“Mom. I’m fine, I don’t need- “
“It’s just been so long! And, you know, I’m worried about you,”
“You don’t need to worry about me. I just like my privacy, that’s all.”
Lucy sighs, slumps her shoulders, then looks back at him. It’s hard. He knows she genuinely cares about him, that she wants to help, but he can’t seem to convey that this isn’t something he’s going to budge on.
“I don’t want to go out,” Michael says. I don’t want to hurt you, he doesn’t say. I’m dangerous. I’m not right.
“Michael, please. We’re social animals, we’re not meant to – “
Michael stands before he even registers he’s grown annoyed.
“We’re not meant to turn into a wolf at all,” He snaps.
Sam’s hunched in on himself, moving his spoon around his plate. It’s that more than anything that hurts Michael.
“I’m going out,” he says into the silence. Lucy stands – to stop him, maybe, to hug him – but he ducks under her arms and races out the door.
--|--
It’s not till he’s on his bike and away that he realises he’s followed the only path he knows. The gravel road that takes him down the hill, out of their new territory and on to the boardwalk.
The thought of all those lights, distractions, - it sounds like exactly what he wants right now. Wants a spectacle to divert him. Wants a miracle. Wants to stop being Michael, even if for a night.
When he gets there though, parking his bike and pushing through the throngs of people, he finds it’s not as interesting as it was when he had Sammy to share it with.
Nothing manages to catch his attention; nothing fills the gap left within him. He’s still Michael, family disappointment.
He spends the next half hour stalking up and down the boardwalk, at once wishing for trouble and shirking from it.
By the time a little kid had almost spilt his entire coke all over Michael’s shoes, he decides enough is enough. Heads back towards where he’d parked the bike, stuffs his hands in his pockets and resolves to try harder tomorrow.
He’s so caught up in his thoughts; he doesn’t feel them till they’re pushing past him – uncounted figures treating him like a rock that the river breaks and reforms around.
Who was that? He thinks, until the smell fully registers and he draws up short.
Candy floss, rust, rock-and-water.
In front of him, four boys are pushing past more people. Ducking under barriers, cutting queues, they bypass the ticketer and step onto the moving carousel.
Rocking style, Michael thinks despite himself, categorising motorbike boots, glinting silver earrings.
Leather-adorned, the boys weave past the carousel riders. Ancient painted horses hide their legs from view, whilst their hogged manes frame young, laughing faces.
Though they move like people, muscles bunching under their clothes, faces mimicking emotions, Michael can feel all the way through to his wolf-bones that these were something else.
He suddenly remembers grandpa’s warning. So inconsequential in the light of their lounge lamps, meaningless in the safety of their den on top of the hill.
It doesn’t feel inconsequential now.
He moves back, feels the crowd close up around him. Moves out of the light of the attractions, tries to tuck himself into his jacket, fold himself into an unnoticeable ball. His bike isn’t too far away. He can still get out of this.
But still, he lingers.
Something about them was hypnotising. His chest taut with some unnameable thing. He can’t help but watch them a moment more, eyes sticking to their movements, energy cutting through the air like sparks from a downed pylon. His wolf draws close, ready within him to fight or to flee.
It takes him a moment to realise the feeling in his chest was jealousy.
It’s in the way they’re moving, completely aware of the world around them – yet interconnected, intimately aware of their proximity to each other, every move a perfect orbit around a dark-sun. He wants, the way they’re together – hunting, his wolf seems to say, though he has no idea what they’d be hunting for. Their eyes pick up and put down almost as quickly, scanning the crowd. He should leave, melt away and press his grandpa for answers later. He should – but even as the thought materialises, he catches the eye of one of them, the shorter one with a patchwork jacket.
Fuck, he thinks, averts his gaze quickly – but that only causes him to look over into blue eyes, peroxide blond – fuck fuck fuck – if Michael thought he could get away with standing in the shadows, watching this pack hunt the boardwalk, he had miscalculated. One by one, their eyes snap on to him, finding him unerringly in the dark. And throughout it all, those blue eyes – pinning him down.
It’s a discomforting feeling, how vulnerable he feels, even ten meters away and protected by a crowd. Isn’t there safety in numbers? He reasons, though it feels more like an attempt to convince himself. Though the carousal keeps moving, and the boys stalking, their eyes remain fixed on him– ducking and weaving around horses and riders, like they’d been there before the ride, like life was a wave breaking around them, like the tide of Santa Carla would go out- and they’d still be there, standing, laughing. Watching. Watching him, Michael, who was looking back from the cover of a crowd.
What are they? They’re not wolves, he can tell that much from here. They’re something else. That smell of flesh again, and metal – blood, maybe? One of them, tall – sandy-blond – says something, and they all laugh. He thinks it might have been hey, batter batter, his lips shaping out that ‘t’ sound perfectly, face gorgeously angular under the harsh carnival lights.
Michael wants to move, but his feet feel staked to the ground, like candle-wax, like a pillar of salt. Restless, his wolf thinks, running – and he’d agree, but there’s something in those blue eyes that’s telling him to wait, and he doesn’t seem to have a say in the matter.
The time for running is over, those eyes say, and as he watches, they’re stepping off the ride, sure-footed and even. Lithe, like river otters, they cut their way through the crowd.
He’s still holding eye contact. He needs to leave.
They’re doing something to him. He feels sick, like a hole has been punched through his gut, like his lower ribs have been turned into empty space. The night suddenly feels cold, even though it’s a Californian summer.
The panic turns to anger. He feels his hackles raising, thinks, who do you think you are, you fuckers? Thinks of his corner of Santa Carla, up on the hill, where candy-floss and blood had blown away to reveal grass-after-snow. I’m here to stay, and it’s him and his wolf thinking that, for once in agreement – even as his rational brain begs him to reconsider, even as he knows he’s in over his head, even, even, it doesn’t matter. His thoughts grind to a halt.
Come closer, the wolf thinks. I bite!
Those blue eyes widen a bit, surprise painting his pale face. And just like that, Michael can move again – though he’s already made up his mind to stay put. Instead, he widens his stance, braces himself for their arrival.
Swing, batter batter.
“What do we have here?” the peroxide-blond man says when he reaches earshot. He looks like a violent slash on the colour of the carnival, midnight leather coat biting at his heels, buttons replaced with watch faces – all ticking a discordant time.
“I dunno,” the sandy-blond rings out, swinging around him, flicking his earing with one bored arm. “I haven’t seen him before. Who is it, Marko?”
“A tourist,” patchwork jacket, presumably Marko, responds, a hint of a sneer in his voice. “I assume. Whaddya think, Dwayne?”
Dwayne shrugs, saying nothing.
Michael feels what they’re doing, the way they were cornering him, cutting him off from the crowd. Moving, always moving, like he won’t notice them closing in beyond the glitter of their appearance.
Michael smiles, feels his teeth grow sharp. They’ll find him harder prey than usual, he thinks.
“So,” says peroxide, his blue eyes no less arresting for their lack of effect on him. “Who are you?”
“Who’s asking?” Michael snipes back, short of a snarl but not far off.
They all ohh at that, young twenty-something-year-old boys, as vicious as ever. He thinks maybe he should’ve asked what’s asking, but to acknowledge the way they’re not quite right feels as if it were an invitation to shed whatever skin they were wearing. Sudden wolf-agreement non-withstanding, he doesn’t know if he’d be willing to get into such a public scrap.
“Well, boys. Let’s not be rude.”
The short one laughs around a brown leather glove, gnawing on a knuckle whilst his eyes flick up and down.
“I’m Marko,” he says, rolling his shoulders. The movement catches something – Michael sees sinuous green, the sparkle of glitter, before his brain catches up and he realises Marko’s shoulder-pads were adorned with squid lures. They almost blended in to the mish-matched patch pattern beneath them, no mean feat considering their length. His eyes are knowing in a way that makes Michael bristle.
Michael refuses to nod, but he feels his eyes narrowing anyway. Faux politeness, he thinks. Probably better than wolfing out on the boardwalk.
“Hey Marko,” he replies sardonically.
That gets a laugh from tall-sandy-blond. Michael flicks his eyes over. He’s wearing scuffed white pants, a gold chain belt that matches his jacket, jodhpur boots clinging to his calves. There’s a barely repressed franticness to his motions that intrigues and repulses Michael. He wants to grab him and throw him down – It’s vulnerable, somehow. Child-like.
“Paul,” he says, giving him two finger guns. Michael tips his head up.
It becomes evident Dwayne isn’t going to introduce himself. Michael’s glad they’d done their little back and forth joke, allowed him to snatch the name as it had been thrown between them like a badminton birdie. Dwayne. Dark eyes under dark hair, Dwayne stands like a fixture on the earth, unmovable except by divine intervention. His neck is wreathed in metal and twine, adorned by a mouse skull, a key, bottle caps. He inclines his head, graceful, doe-like.
Catching peroxide’s eyes again is like touching a live wire – a full body thrill. Had he been staring at Michael the whole time? He feels himself categorising all the tiny details he couldn’t make out before. How he has a cigarette tucked behind one ear, how Michael can just hear over the din of the carousel the quiet crunch of leather, as he flicks a zippo between his gloved fingers. His hair curls softly around the back of his ears. His scruff can’t be more than a day’s old.
They just stare at each other for a beat too long. Michael feels his lip sneer without his permission, feels ugly and raw, thinks fuck off and fuck you and fuck, what am I doing?
“David,” he finally says, once he seems to decide it’s time to speak. A smile is blooming on his face that is entirely too self-satisfied for Michael’s taste. Everything has gone quiet, the carousel, the boys, the world.
“Michael,” he feels himself responding, unprompted.
“Michael,” David repeats, rolling the name around his mouth. His voice is mocking, but his eyes are gun-metal serious. “Nice to meet you, Michael.”
Another loaded silence.
He wretches his gaze away from David’s, glaring at the boys surrounding him, eyes scanning the crowd around them – the crowd he had forgotten was there. He should really head home, reassure Lucy, start getting his room secure for moon-night.
He’d been braced for a fight, but these boys seem unwilling to give it to him. He’s about to open his mouth, drawl, well, this has been fun, but – but David beats him to it.
“You ride?”
“Huh?” Michael responds eloquently, confused. David inclines his head, never taking his eyes off Michael’s. He glances behind him and sees a line of bikes, bob-jobbed and stripped down of their exterior plating, after-market additions gleaming dully under the chromatic lights.
Of course they’re a biker gang, he thinks deliriously. His bike was a few meters down, red plastic protecting its old model insides. A gift from his grandpa, apologising for missing his 20th birthday.
“Sure,” he says noncommittedly.
“Know where Hudson's Bluff is? Overlooking the point?”
Fucker, Michael thinks. Fucking dick measuring contest, bullshit hazing, fuck you. Even a brief glance had told him his bike was no match for their machines.
“I can’t beat your bikes,” he admits, hating him for making him say it. But even as he says it, he’s thinking beat their bikes? Michael, you’re not even meant to be here. He thinks of Lucy at home, probably waiting up. She always said she couldn’t sleep until she knew both her boys were safe.
The thoughts spear through his mind like rays of the sun – but as he thinks them his eyes lock onto David’s, piercing blue, and a cloud covers the sky. Is he meant to stay inside forever? He’s a twenty-two-year-old man, who’s Lucy to keep him down? Who’s grandpa to tell him what to do?
The thoughts ring hollow, bringing the scent of stagnant water and cigarette smoke. Somewhere in his hindbrain he recognises them as foreign, intrusions on his psyche. He waits for his wolf to fight them off. Instead, he feels it settle, lie down flat in the plains of his mind, let the still water fill the empty space left behind.
Yeah, he knows where the bluff is. Sure, a ride sounds like exactly what he needs right now.
“You don’t have to beat me Michael,” David is saying, head tilted slightly, smug half grin fixed on his face. “You just have to keep up.”
It’s so easy, letting that voice command his thoughts command his body. It’s the easiest thing in the world. He straddles his bike, boot hitting the kickstand out, as the boys whoop and yell around him, pushing and shoving as they too start their engines. The only thing that remains still is David, watching Michael, like he’s making sure he’s still following.
He doesn’t look away until their bikes peel away into the night, and Michael’s following – as predicted, lagging behind, no match for their rides.
One by one they leap off the boardwalk and on to the beach. He stops at the top of the stairs, looking out after them.
One last chance to back out.
But the images of driving home, apologising to Lucy, to Sam, beginning the process of boarding up his windows, installing a lock on his door – it all makes his skin feel painfully tight. His shoulders tense. It’s a boring malice. Whilst he doesn’t know what this is, he feels intuitively that there’s something at the end of it – a promise of release, maybe. The prospect of forgetting who he is, if even for a moment.
At the very least there’d be an adrenaline rush.
Really, he’d made up his mind when he returned to the boardwalk.
He guns it down the stairs.
The back wheel skids on the sand as he lands, bike moving out from under him, but he quickly regains traction and rights himself – already whipping his head around to see where his quarry had gone.
It’s easy work to take off after that, feeling the engine starting to mutter as he kicks up the gears, starts to build some real speed in his pursuit. He’s surprised by how good it feels, his eyes adjusting to the night easily. Tapetum lucidum. That bright tapestry that has him looking out into the dark like it was daylight, wolf-eyes keeping him away from the random pits and impediments of the beach.
In front of him is the short one – Marko – who looks back with a grin to see where Michael is. He visibly starts when he sees him, because he didn’t expect Michael to catch up so fast? Or because his eyes might catch the light, reflect in a way human’s eyes didn’t? Michael has no way to know, and Marko’s look slides into a cheeky grin regardless. He turns back to the beach and speeds up.
Michael’s caught up now, boys next to him, David several meters in front. Though the wind is whipping past too fast for conversation, he feels judged, skin prickling as if he was being assessed.
They aren’t looking at him with their eyes – and yet he feels it still, the weight of their awareness. He’s being watched, make no doubt about it, minute reactions as they adjust for his bike in their midst, as they leave a path for him around the upcoming obstacles. Together they whip down the beach, dodging around bonfires and party-goers alike; Headlights lance-like as they skid through the sand.
He feels almost like a part of it. Giddily realises he’d look like one of them to an outsider. That same awareness of each other they’d displayed on the carousel including him now, another piece of the solar system, another part of the constellation.
And yet its not enough. His soul knows he is still an interloper. A piece of shore-trash picked up by beach-combers.
Nothing makes this clearer than the way they check in on him. Though David had posed this as if it were a race, goaded him into it like a competition it didn’t take much time before he realises it was a farce. The boys keep time with him, never quite pulling away. Too fast to leave him truly in the dust. Never too slow that he’d pick up on the fact he’s being pandered to. A casino-like push and pull.
As they draw out from under a wharf, the boys form a phalanx around him, goading him on into the shadows. He has no doubt their bikes could go faster. That they could cut tracks so deep in the grit it’d scar the earth, leave him in the dust – almost as if they and their bikes could lift off the ground all together.
And yet they allow Michael to keep pace.
Despite feeling slightly condescended to, it is still exhilarating to ride like this, and he feels himself start to smile despite himself.
His wolf gives him senses and reflexes beyond human capabilities, and he uses that to his advantage now. He can lean corners longer, react faster – these boys must have something similar, to be giving him such a run for his money. It makes him a bit cocky, less scared to be caught. Makes him start taking corners a little faster than he would usually. He keeps waiting for the rug to get pulled out from under him, for his riding to fail, to hit a rock, get the death wobbles and run off the track. But with every successful gambit he gets more confident, and he can feel rather than see when the boys start reacting to it, start pushing their bikes faster, stop keeping time with him as much – confident he can actually keep up.
Flashes of white grins spark in the night like gunshots. He feels the bristle of fur below his palms, the wind whipping through his hair reminiscent of wolf-ears – He can’t help it, the howl bursts from his chest before he can contain it, moon-song snatched by the dark night sky and whipped away from him.
The boys love it – whoops start up from in front and behind him, joining in, a pack communicating their location, their claim on the beach, running, always running, supplicant in active prayer, caning it down the coast.
They fall through the forest like a storm, spotlights cutting tracks into the air, reacting on instinct, minute movements adjusting for tree trunks and roots as they appear like apparitions out of the fog. There is nothing in Michael’s mind but this – no thoughts, wolf or otherwise, - just the thrill of running, the surrender of speed.
How far are you willing to go, Michael? David’s voice whispers, perfectly legible despite the deafening speed-wind grabbing at his hearing. It’s too perfect – Michael must be imagining it, conjuring his words from the dark.
All the way, he responds feverishly, as the world blurs into unrealness, into in front and behind, everything else falling into irrelevant nothingness, wheels exchanging leaf litter for rock as they hit the bluff for real. However far it takes.
He feels David’s laugh vibrate under his teeth, feels his bike hot under his thighs, keeping time with David’s speed like two comets. David is no longer in front of him but parallel, neck-in-neck along the peninsula. They’re speeding along the strip of rock, the flat open plain allowing them to hammer down and gain some real speed – no fast reflexes needed here, no quick-time reactions. Just speed, and the people willing to take it.
He hears rather than sees when David begins to brake, the way the air slices differently over his silhouette, catching in his coat. Michael follows his lead. The two of them skidding out almost as fast as they had been riding – they’re going too fast, they didn’t slow down gently enough, and there’s a swoop in his stomach as the angle of his skid turns into him falling. He feels his jeans grating along the gravel, the weight of the bike bearing down on him, denim giving way to flesh as the momentum carries him along.
He drags to a stop just as his back wheel hits open air.
Somewhere far below him, Michael feels the might of the Pacific Ocean, eroding the cliff away into grit.
A beat of silence.
He hadn’t even noticed they’d left the boys behind.
The cliff edge had come out of nowhere – one final test he thinks as he looks up at David. The cocky fucker had managed to stay upright, he notices, and Michael finds himself laughing and unable to stop.
Around him the boys catch up, answering wheels skidding into halts, bikes screeching, all lit up by the giant beam of a distant lighthouse.
Michael feels like he’s left reality behind.
He’s shed something on the ride, something heavy, something cloying and claustrophobic. What’s left is ecstatic, unwound, almost euphoric. He catches David’s eye and feels his mouth stop laughing, curling into a toothy grin instead, feels a considering gaze interrogating him in return.
He slides himself from under his bike, skin healing as he pulls it from the ground. He hauls his ride away from the edge as he goes. Stands, staggers a little, legs shaky and fawn-like in the dusk.
David’s much more composed, kicking out the side stand on his bike, dismounting, stepping regally onto the rock. Michael thinks in another life he’d be angry – the hazing, the death drop, the mocking charade – but in this one, he hadn’t let himself be unfettered in twelve years, and can’t find it within himself to lash out after finally, finally -
“Woah,” says Dwayne, the first words he’s ever heard him say. “You alright?”
Michael looks up. Realises he must look a bit out of it, sucking on his lower lip and swaying above the open ocean. He wants to reply yeah, never better, or, can’t you see, it’s all alright, finally, but instead he just laughs again. They’re all exchanging slightly incredulous glances around him, but he can’t even find it within him to mind. They’ll see, the wolf is saying, they’ll get it, soon.
Finally, Paul laughs, claps him on the shoulder and jumps off.
“You’re crazy man,” he’s saying, “Buck wild!”
Dwayne laughs then too, a quiet thing deep in his chest. Pats his hand onto Michael’s back and releases him. Marko looks between them. his eyes are knowing, lips curving up like a sickle moon.
They’re all watching David, who smiles back, pleased and obvious with it.
He gestures with a gloved hand.
“By all means,” he says, and Michael watches as Paul and Marko race each other over the edge, jumping from rock to scaffolding as they pick a precarious path down the cliff face.
The cliff face he and David had almost gone over together.
Dwayne gives him a heavy glance, as if checking in. Appears to be reassured by what he sees, nods to himself, and confidently makes his way after Paul-and-Marko.
Finally, it’s David and Michael, alone again.
They say nothing. Really, what’s Michael to do? When David turns and walks into the night, Michael follows.
--|--
When he enters the cave, it’s not at all like what he’s expecting.
It’s huge, is the first thing – and bigger than what he can see. He feels the wind currents moving, fresh air coming from his right – another entrance – that characteristic stagnant-water smell he’d sensed all night coming from his left. And all around him the echoes of noises, the boys jingling as their metal adornments ring like bells together, the soft coo of rock pigeons, the almost undecipherable clash of the waves outside.
Dwayne throws a lit torch into a barrel, whatever’s inside catching alight instantly and lighting up the dark. Marko slinks past him and collapses into a heap in the corner of the room, emptying the pockets of his chaps, small metal findings clinking onto the floor around him. David slides into the space at Michael’s left shoulder, blunt between two fingers, gloves taken off somewhere between the open sky and the hotel.
“Appetizer?” he offers, and Michael, still high on the chase, accepts, lungs filling and emptying, having a body a mechanical requirement so far below how he’s currently feeling. The cherry burns, a small red light reflected in David’s blue eyes. He feels a whine building up in his throat, and swallows it – wolf closer to the surface than it’d been all month.
The smoke calms his heart, but his spirit still feels untethered. It’s almost like a part of him was still at the top of the bluff, above them, wheel spinning, always spinning, casting rocks into the crashing water far below.
“This was the hottest resort in Santa Carla,” David says, voice echoing lowly in the open space, answering a question Michael hadn’t thought to ask. “Back, about seventy, eighty years ago.”
He’s smiling that smug grin Michael’s beginning to learn often graces his face. His teeth glint dully under his pale lips.
“Too bad they built it right on top of the San Andreas fault.”
Dawyne huffs a laugh, pulling a boom box from a pile of random shit. He’s heard this spiel before, Michael thinks with unearned fondness.
“In 1906,” David continues, oblivious to his mirth, “when the big one hit San Francisco, the ground opened up and this place took a header - right into the crack.”
Michael looks around, noticing now the graceful pillars, the Grecian architecture of the Californian nouveau riche. Thinks it’s fitting these boys would move in, breaking up white marble with technicolour paint. Turning a faultline into a home.
When he turns back from his assessment, David’s sharing a loaded look with Dwayne. He glances back at Michael, grinning, then steps off into the dark. Instinctively, Michael goes to follow him – but Dwayne blocks him casually, body stock-solid in the space between them.
The man huffs, amused by something, and Michael feels shame begin to crawl slowly back into his mind. He looks away, back into the room, away from wherever David was disappearing off to.
It’s not like he cares.
On the plinth in the middle of the room, Paul’s stepping around all the detritus on the ground, another joint hanging from the corner of his mouth. He’s poking at the boom box, muttering something about rock boxes and I don’t wanna dance with nobody!
He takes his time picking through cassettes. It’s a tough choice. Finally, he appears to pick one out from the rubble, a flash of red and yellow, before he’s kicking the cassette deck shut and prancing off.
“Come on baby!” Paul yells, “come ride the snake with me!”
Behind him the music seems to agree, low voice ringing out as the sound starts to banish the haunted stillness of the cave.
“You’re not Jim,” Marko yells back, not looking up from his lap – tying a seagull wing to plastic cassette case, “you’ll never be Jim!”
“Jim?” Michael asks, and Dwayne huffs a laugh, hair falling over his eyes.
“Morrison,” he replies. Looks down through his lashes, “you a fan?”
Michael shrugs, feeling a step behind everything. His brain feels big, empty and echoing. It’s been awhile since he smoked, he reckons, whilst in the background his thoughts run slow like snow. The Killer Awoke Before Dawn, he thinks. Where do these guys sleep? he thinks. He Puts His Boots On. Then, Fuck, I should cut my hair.
He blinks, and Dwanye’s still looking at him, somewhat bemused. Oh, Dwanye had asked him a question. he has no idea how long it’s been – there’s some strange haze to the air, the smoke, the incense, he idly wonders if the air is even breathable down here, vague recollections of danger signs at the top of the entrance, science classes mentioning fungi and dust. Histoplasmosis. Shadows on the wall.
“Sure,” he replies slowly. “I love The Doors.”
Dwanye laughs like he’s said anything worth hearing. They both turn back in silence. Chatty, isn’t he? Michael thinks – off kilter. Was it always this warm in here? Pauls climbed up the rocks by the entrance, and as they watch he lights his joint, and breathes out the longest stream of smoke Michael’s ever seen.
“I’m the fucking lizard king!” He yells, throwing his lighter over his shoulder.
There’s a scoff from Dwayne.
“What music do you like, then?” Michael asks impulsively. He’s fascinated with the way music seems to mean something to these boys – more than just sounds, like it was a thing, like it informed the way they were, the way they existed, moved, dressed.
“Oh baby, I was Born to Run all the way.”
Michael huffs a laugh; takes a swig from the warm beer they’d passed him. Remembers hearing Darkness on the Edge of Town for the first time, knowing he was who it was about – that type of man, dragging that secret, letting it pull him down.
Sammy had loved the Born to Run album enough he’d come into Michael’s room to show it to him. They’d listened to it together, Michael aping like it was his first listen. Like he didn’t know who Bruce fucking Springsteen was.
“Fuck yeah,” Michael responds. “I love the boss.”
Dwanye shrugs, apparently his response to most things.
Michael wonders if Dwanye had ever wanted to change his hair, his clothes, his face. He can’t imagine him, or any of the boys, feeling the way he feels – but he imagines they must of, once. No one dresses like this without the world shunning them first. He feels inadequate in comparison, boring, his jeans more Grease than Springsteen.
“Where’d you get your earring?” The words fall out of his mouth. He doesn’t remember weed making him this loose lipped.
Dwanye grins, and it feels like a real one this time.
“Paul,” he says.
“Yeah?” says Paul, right behind him. Michael can’t help it, he jumps – looks back at the entrance, as if it’ll tell him how Paul got from there to here without him noticing. Paul notices the look, and laughs at him.
“Too much wacky backy?” Paul jokes, bringing his hand up to making a smoking motion, hair sticking up mane-like behind him. He’s got a feral energy to him, constantly moving, bracelets jingling as he shifts his weight around. How’d Michael not notice? He doesn’t get to ask, as Dwayne punches Paul rough in the ribs, and then the two are off scuffling, Dwanye lifting him off the ground whilst Paul kicks and laughs.
The boom box screeches, and Michael looks up and locks eyes with Marko, who seems to have finished his craft and instead monitored them and their conversation. He doesn’t even have the grace to blush when his scrutiny is noticed, just smiles, cocking his head to one side.
Michael doesn’t know if he’s reading it right, doesn’t have the ease of practise he has with Sammy, but it’s almost a dare. You alright? Michael shrugs again, movement shivering down his shoulders and into his hands. Tips his head back. Yeah, I’m alright.
He hasn’t missed the way there’s always someone there to pick him up when he’s dropped. As soon as David was gone, Dwanye was there, now Marko – standing, hanging up his macabre creation, stalking over. It makes him imagine a flock of birds, dropping and catching their quarry, mid-air dog-fighting.
Wolf-fighting, and the thought makes him laugh out loud.
“What’s so funny?” Marko asks, smile already in place. Michael gets the impression he’s always keen to share joy – they all seem buoyed with it, a lightness to them that belayed their scent of rocks and depth.
“Just wondering where you sleep,” Michael lies, looking over Marko’s jacket now he’s close enough to get a good eye-fill.
Marko cracks up at that, though now Michael’s the one wondering what’s funny.
He’s about to ask, but he looks over and his words get stolen, like those damn pigeons had grabbed them as they left his mouth. Instead, he lets out a breathless huff, rights himself, embarrassed, fuck, he must be high-
In front of him, Dwanye’s got Paul pinned, straddling him with his hands pinned above his head. His leather jacket is bunching around his arms, keeping him down – hair obscuring his face, his strong legs tapering down into thick calves.
It’s a study in contrasts – black hair with blond, leather jacket draping over a white tank top riding up over Paul’s v-line, black boots a stark contrast to Paul’s white pants.
They’re both straining, breath coming staticky through the echoing cavern. Paul’s trying to bring his legs up to kick Dwayne off, Dwayne’s got a thick hand around each of his wrists and is riding it out. They smell like tobacco and weed, two different types of smoke intertwining.
He can’t help it, he feels at once too hot and too cold, feels like he’s on a plane, thousands of miles above the earth – and a trap door has opened up in his chest and everything is falling into the air. Every thought he has drops out beneath him. He’s losing It all.
Dwayne finally seems to have enough. He lets go of Paul’s wrists, only to latch on whip-quick to his shoulders and bang him hard, once, twice, against the rock floor. His head hits the rock, but the impact is mostly through the arc of his back, the middle part of his spine. The air woofs out of him, and he lies there winded for a second – frantic energy expelled for a moment. Still, temporarily exorcised.
Though Michael can’t see it, he suddenly tastes blood in the air – the warmest thing in the whole hotel. His wolf is so close to the surface, it’s opening its mouth, and he’s thinking about licking blood off the rocks, of getting his hands on Paul, of being Paul – getting roughed up by Dwayne’s solid grip, bruises being pressed into his shoulders as he added his blood to the tacky stone.
Deep in the shadows, Michael hears the near silent ticking of watch faces. His eyes snap up and he sees David, eyes almost alight with some nameless thing. Staring intently into the light. Staring intently at him. He smells dark, almost blood-red, he must have gone further into the cave, Michael intuits, and he cradles an ornate bottle in his un-gloved palms. His pupils seem to dilate as he notices Michael noticing him, and he suddenly realises he shouldn’t be able to see David, as far back in the cave as he is. Shouldn’t have noticed his arrival at all.
He snaps his eyes back to Paul and Dwayne, but it’s already too late. Fuck, he thinks. David knows, not everything, sure, but knows enough to realise something isn’t right.
As they stand there, Michael feels his body catch up with his mind, coming back to earth in that sunken lobby room under the bluff. A low droning noise rings out from the speakers. What was he doing here?
He wonders how he looks to Marko – who had seen the whole thing, - his mouth slightly parted, his hands loose at his side, how distracted he’d been by two men fighting in front of him. He closes down. Shuts his damn mouth, clenches his fists – the desire to get away almost physical.
Michael had learnt the hard way that people could always see more into him than he intended. He knew how his open wounds bled through polite exteriors.
I should never have followed them, he thinks viciously, boots already starting to back up without his permission. Around him the boys seem to have felt the temperature change, and they’re looking to him like he might clue them in. The wolf is whining, a pitiful noise, and he pushes it down and away, violently shoving it into the dark. He should’ve known, there’s a strange energy to the air now, nothing that damn thing wanted was good, was right. These weren’t boys, he could sense as much – and he’d just followed them into their home, made them notice him, shown his soft underbelly and exposed neck like some damn idiot.
He makes some half-hearted excuse, words sudden in the silence. Feels David hold up a hand behind his back as he scampers up the rock, holding the boys off as his boots covered in rock dust run their way out of the cavern, out into the open air and up the sea-side cliff-face.
It’s a blur – finding his bike, revving it and disappearing, away, back from the bluff’s edge. He throws his bike down when he gets home, barely coming to a complete stop.
Stands there in the silence of the night. Breathing heavily though he hasn’t even done anything – what was he doing? Freaking out like – they all knew – pointless to ever – fucking thing!
He runs a dirty hand over his face, nose still full of weed and tobacco, leather and still-rock.
This is what I mean, Michael thinks distantly, body a thousand miles away, standing with a wolf on a desert plain, knowing intimately that there was something unnaturally wrong about him. This is what I fucking mean.
If he’d been asked to explain it, he doesn’t know If he could.
The shame settles down into river silt, until he’s standing alone in the dark outside grandpa’s house. He’s left with nothing but the last few lines of a song, the end of nights, alongside blue eyes like lighthouses, as we tried to die.