Eight: Wren

The fever comes back in pulses, like a second heartbeat under my skin. I pace the length of my apartment—six strides from the warped door to the bathroom, five if I avoid the spot where the floor sags. Every lap, I catch a different angle of myself in the sliver of hallway mirror, and every time I look, my eyes seem stranger than before. The iris gone flat, pupil so wide it’s swallowing the brown, eating it alive.

I can feel the moon. I can fucking feel it, heavy and ripe, even before it scrapes the horizon. The air is blue with dusk, and every surface in my place is sweating condensation, like the building knows it’s about to be gutted and wants to get a head start. I strip off my hoodie, then the thermal, but my skin is crawling underneath. It’s not a metaphor—it’s literal, every hair follicle tingling, nerves misfiring so bad I can barely stand to touch myself.

The fever should have burned itself out by now. If this was flu or staph, I’d be on the mend, or at least delirious enough not to care. Instead, I’m locked in: clear-headed and twitchy, every muscle in my body set to vibrate. I try to ground myself. I check the windows: locked, duct-taped at the corners, the kind of job you do when you’re broke and paranoid. I deadbolt the front door and wedge a chair under the knob. I open the fridge and stare at the contents—half a pizza, three beers, a brick of cheddar that smells like old socks—and close it again, because the light is too bright and the hunger is a different animal tonight.

I make myself count the steps again. I even wipe down the counter, the act of cleaning giving my hands something to do besides shake. I grab the remote and flick the TV on. Static. I punch it off, the silence louder than the noise. The only real sound is the steady drip from the bathroom faucet, and it’s so rhythmic, so insistent, that it might as well be Morse code. My skin crawls with every drop.

Another pulse of fever hits. I grab the counter and hold on, knuckles going white, the laminate beneath my hand buzzing like it’s hooked to a generator. I breathe deep, but it’s no use—the apartment reeks of sweat and something darker, a spicy, animal stench that clings to the furniture and the thrift-store carpet. It’s me, I know it’s me, but the smell registers as not-me, and that’s almost worse.

I go to the window. I peel back the blind, just enough to see the slice of sky above the rooftops. It’s purple-black, with a fat sliver of moon bulging over the pines. I feel a twist in my gut—a hook, deep and insistent. I drop the blind, stumble back, and catch my shoulder on the edge of the kitchen table. The pain is sharp, but it only makes my nerves fizz harder.

I duck into the bathroom and flip on the light. I don’t want to look, but I have to. The mirror is clouded with steam from my own body. I wipe it with my wrist and stare.

The face that stares back is raw and unfamiliar. Lips gone pale, cheeks hollow, eyes so dark they look inked. My hair is plastered to my skull, and my skin is shiny with sweat. I open my mouth, half-expecting to see fangs or something just as bad, but it’s just teeth. My canines are long, though. Sharp enough that I have to run my tongue over them to be sure they’re not fake.

I blink, and for a second, the eyes in the mirror flash silver. I jerk back, hit the wall, and nearly slide down to the floor. The air in here is syrup-thick, loaded with the scent of bleach and mildew and the iron tang of blood. I can still taste it in the back of my throat, old and metallic.

I make it to the sink and run cold water over my wrists. It helps, but only for a second. The next wave is coming, I can feel it—a tidal force rising in my bones, pressure building in every joint. I press my forehead to the mirror, eyes squeezed shut, and try to breathe through it.

The first bolt of pain comes from nowhere. It doubles me over, white-hot and needle-fine, running the length of my spine. I gag, bile flooding my mouth. The pain keeps going, sharp as a crowbar, splitting through ribs and hips and knees. I crumple, hands scrabbling at the tile for something—anything—to hold on to.

Moonlight slides through the cracked window and pools across the floor, a pale smear that glows brighter with every passing second. It lights up the mildewed ceiling, the spiderweb crack that runs from the fan to the peeling paint above the tub. It lights up my hands, too, fingers splayed against the tile, the skin over my knuckles gone paper-thin and trembling.

I try to stand, but my knees give out. The next hit of pain is deeper, a twisting, grinding sensation that makes my jaw snap shut so hard I taste blood. I want to scream, but I can’t. My lungs are locked. Every muscle is locked. I can only ride it, each wave hotter and harder than the last.

My temperature spikes. Sweat beads on my chest and runs down my sides, but the air in the apartment is freezing cold. I can see my breath, little ghosts of vapor curling in the air each time I manage to suck in a gasp. The sweat doesn’t cool me—it just slides over my skin and soaks into the waistband of my underwear, pooling under my back when I finally collapse onto the bathroom floor.

The world is made of noise now: the thunder of the faucet, the rattle of my teeth, the bass drum of my own pulse. I can smell everything—the old cigarettes in the drywall, the disinfectant in the mop bucket, the layer of funk from a hundred late nights at the bar. Underneath it all, there’s a cleaner note: pine sap and the faint, medicinal sweetness of snow.

The pain fractures, then coalesces in my hands. I stare as the joints swell, fingers thickening and curling. The nails go black at the tips, lengthening into curved points. I try to flex them, but the tendons are too tight, the muscles ballooning underneath the skin. I rake them across the tile and leave deep gouges, little ribbons of linoleum curling up in the wake.

I roll onto my side, sweat pooling around my face, and try to hold onto a single thought. Just one. I don’t want to die here, I think. I don’t want to be alone when it happens. But the wolf in my chest doesn’t care about want or need—it only cares about the moon, and the wild, and the rip of muscle through skin.

I drag myself back to the hallway, hand over hand, nails scratching the wood with every crawl. My vision doubles, then triples, then tunnels down to a single point of light. The apartment is a haunted house, every shape warped and monstrous, the shadows crawling with things I don’t want to name.

The next wave of pain starts in my jaw. My teeth are too big for my mouth, crowding against the bone, shifting in the gums. I bite down, but the pressure is too much—something cracks, and the taste of blood goes from memory to fresh, hot reality.

I look up, and the hallway mirror is right there. My reflection is a smear of sweat, eyes blown wide and rimmed with silver. My lips pull back in a snarl, and the teeth behind them are animal. The pupils are huge, swallowing the iris, ringed with a flickering light that isn’t human.

The world tilts. The moon rises. The fever breaks, and I break with it.

The last thing I remember is the sound of my own bones, shifting under the skin—like the world’s worst knuckle crack, drawn out forever.

Then everything goes white.