In the House of Spite Ch. 15

"Whaaaaaaat?" Pearl climbed out of the truck's bed. Her filthy socks didn't protect her feet at all. The concrete floor hurt. She leaned into Darren's bare torso and blinked up at him. Her forehead had so many wrinkles that she could feel them. "I'm so confused. Am I high? Did someone drug me?"

He patted the top of her rumpled head. He still looked pissed, but something in his eyes seemed to tone down. However, the sclera in his eyes were pink.

"Listen," Darren said, "We're going to go to bed. We both need to sleep at least a few hours or else we'll fall to pieces. I'll set my old alarm clock, and we can take the dogs to the vet tomorrow. When that's taken care of, I'll clean up the blood in the house, and then I'll sit down and explain everything." His fingers slid down her cheek, and then he held her jaw. "If you call the police, something bad will happen. I'm going to hide the phones. Okay?"

Her lips scrunched up. Then she closed her eyes and rubbed her cheek on his warm body. "There's a werewolf or something. It drove me here, and I was so scared that I let it screw me. I might have to be tested for some weird disease." Despite the information she was giving him, she was so tired that she lost the ability to convey concern and urgency. Her voice was nearly emotionless.

"It's okay. I'll explain tomorrow, Honey. I promise."

"I got kidnapped, but I got out." Pearl yawned into his body hair, sucking his aroma into her mouth and then blowing at least some of it back. "I thought they were going to rape me, but they didn't get the chance."

He groaned and gripped her right shoulder with his left hand. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, but we need to get to bed."

"That beast that drove me here, it ate up at least one of those guys."

She felt the left hand's short nails dig into her shirt.

His chest froze with his breath.

Then she heard his thinly edged, gritty, almost enraged phrase.

"Damn it."

"Darren ... are you sure about not calling the police? What will happen if we call them?"

He sighed. "We need to sleep. Please. Please just trust me."

She was so miserably tired that she agreed to it. Besides, if they called the police, they'd spend more time awake, giving the police their accounts of the events. And would the police even believe them? Werewolf? Seriously? They'd assume this couple did some crazy drugs.

"Okay," she mumbled. "Sleep time. Then we take the dogs to the vet." The nearest veterinarian hospital didn't typically accept customers twenty-four hours a day, although they did have an area to keep patients overnight with night-shift staff.

In the house, Pearl saw the dogs look up from their beds. Their body language seemed mostly happy, but they were overall slow. They might've been in some pain. There was still some blood on them, and there was blood in the foyer, where they'd attacked the intruder that had first grabbed Pearl. "I'll wash the blood off them before I take them to the vet," Darren had weakly said as he locked the door.

Fine, at least she knew he'd be gentle with the poor, dear babies.

"I'm going to take a shower," Pearl said when they were in the bedroom. She needed one.

After setting a digital alarm clock, Darren just fell on the bed, still wearing his pants, and snored not long after that. When Pearl was as clean as she could get, her hair squeezed yet damp, she too fell on the bed and let sleep come.

***

The dogs were pretty bruised up, but the doctor confirmed that they'd be fine as long as they were treated with kid gloves. Still, he prescribed some painkillers to hide in cheese. They were bruised, yes, but there weren't any problems that required surgery or anything particularly major. The morning walks should be shorter. They should be discouraged from roughhousing, although they probably wouldn't be in a mood to roughouse for a while.

On both the drive to the animal hospital and back, and during the waiting period and examination between, Pearl would stare out at nothing. She wondered if what had happened to her was a dream. But she'd seen Darren clean up the blood in the foyer, and she still had bruises and scratches on her body. She'd wanted to ask questions, but she knew she needed to wait.

Gunner and Baby Blue were given a special treat when they got home. Not only did they get their cheese medicine, but Darren chose to grill steaks with charcoal outside, and each dog got one steak to gobble up. The couple ate the other steaks with baked potatoes. Then Pearl washed dishes while Darren seemed to mentally prepare himself by playing a sad little song on his acoustic guitar.

When all the dishes were drying out on their rack, Pearl sat down on the couch in the living room and nursed a water bottle.

The music stopped soon. Looking like he was chewing on his tongue, Darren got up and carried the guitar off to put it away. Then he returned and sat down beside Pearl. The springs in the couch scrunched up with their metallic noises.

Awkward silence ...

Except for the napping dogs in a corner of the room. They snored and that was cute.

"So," Darren said as he laced his fingers together between his open thighs, "you need an explanation, right?"

Twisting the plastic cap closed on her bottle, Pearl said, "Yeah. I'm still pretty fuzzy."

He sighed and kept his face down, his eyes hidden behind his hair. "When I got home, I saw the van driving away. It didn't take long to figure out you'd been kidnapped. I put the cap on the truck, the mattress in the bed, and I tracked you down."

"Why didn't you call the police?" She put the bottle on the coffee table.

"I thought I could get to you faster."

"What in the world did you think you were going to do once you found me?"

He got to his feet, releasing the springs. But he was still looking down. "I'm about to show you a big secret, and you need to keep quiet about it."

Folding her arms, Pearl asked him, "Are you on the run from the law?"

He pulled his shirt off and casually tossed it on the seat he'd been in. "No, but I need you to calm down and keep an open mind."

"I am calm," she said as she watched him take off his jeans. "Why are you getting naked?"

It was like his eyes were trying to avoid hers. "It makes things easier." His underwear was slipped off. Yep. He still looked fine as hell.

Pearl knew he felt awkward when he turned around. His ass, back, and legs all made her want to hug him from behind. "Hey," she said, "you okay?"

Something ... something in his limbs loudly popped. His back and arms contorted in a way that made Pearl cringe.

Hair? It was just ... coming out, like it had been hiding in his skin and was waiting for permission to say hello. His feet stretched up as the heels rose. Fingernails darkened and even lengthened, more so on the left hand. The fluffy hair on the head shrunk back as if it wanted to hide while straighter hair took its place.

Pearl stood up and said out loud, "Okay, I have questions. Not sure what they are, but ... yeah. Questions!"

The beast turned around. His head tilted to one side, and a tongue flopped out. It looked like really, really well made special effects from a good 1980s horror film. He even had pretty black eyes.

Angrily stomping off, Pearl yelled out, "Okay, this is some straight up bullshit! I'm really high!"

But suddenly she was hugged from behind. Then she was in the beast's lap again. He was sitting on the couch and nuzzling her hair. She had to catch her breath. Then she squealed, "Let me go!"

"Nah! Nahhhhhhhh!" That last sound rolled right before cheek and ear were sniffed at.

"I don't know what the fuck's going on and I don't want to fucking know!!" She gasped, her belly shaking, as she felt his body rumble with his growling on her back and thighs. Then she whined as he ran his tongue right over her ear. Not behind the ear. Not on a ridge or a lobe. Nope. Just ... over the thing.

Then, as she was held, she felt and saw the fur fade away, pulling back into the body and leaving room for the black body hair she was accustomed to. The odd feet shrank back into the normal, if big, pair she'd rubbed on so many times. The claws were soon gone.

"Baby," Darren's voice whispered at her wet ear, "that was Reese, and he loves you just as much as I do."

***

"Okay ... so it's like two different personalities."

Darren was sitting at the kitchen table across from her, an elbow on the tabletop and his chin on his palm. "Not really, but that's the closest thing to it ... I guess."

Pearl's fingernails tapped and drummed on the tabletop. She was looking at the man's grave face, desperately searching for a sign of a lie. "And ... because of some weird, out there genetic science stuff I don't understand," she said, "your body changes with the personality." She refused to use the word magic. She didn't believe in magic.

"Pretty much, yeah." His free hand went to his fluffy hair. Frowning, he scratched his scalp a little. "But it's like, when one guy's in control the other sits back. You still see and feel everything. You just don't get to control anything."

Crossing her ankles, Pearl tried to wrap her head around this ridiculous concept. "So, in your head, you're never alone?"

"Haven't been since puberty," Darren said.

"That's creepy as fuck."

Without even a shrug, he told her, "I think it stopped being creepy after a year."

"Is this thing hereditary?"

"I think so. My dad can do the same thing. His beast's name is Joshua."

Pearl sighed and fiddled with a chunk of her hair. "Is there some secret werewolf society around here?"

"It would be the first I've heard of it." His long fingers interlaced on the table. "And I don't know if I'm a werewolf or not. I don't even know what the word for this is."

"Is this thing just restricted to your family?"

"As far as I know, and I think it's a rare thing. There's isn't a long line of beast kid after beast kid."

Pearl licked some of her teeth and worried over a small tangle in her hair. "Any particular reason why this hasn't been revealed to the public?"

"We don't have much faith in humanity," he said, "not the government, none of the universities, and especially not any corporations. If too many people found out about this, we might be secretly forced into weird experiments to make super soldiers ... or something."

Pearl left her hair alone and turned her head away. "So ... you aren't mad about me ... getting crawled on by ... by Reese?"

No beats missed. "As long as he doesn't hurt you, I don't fucking care. It felt good anyway."

She touched her jaw as her eyebrows rose. "Oh ... even with sex ...?"

"Yep. We both felt that pussy." Darren almost had a bit of pride in those words, almost. "Sex for me is always a weird secret threesome."

"Did your first wife know?"

"Nope. Never told her, but I think she knew something was wrong. That might've been why she got so fed up with me sometimes."

Pearl didn't want to dive into that can of dead worms. She turned her head back to look up at his face again. He had the faintest smile. She pointed out, "All that fur I used to find ... it didn't come from Gunner."

His teeth peeked out. "I'm sorry, Baby. If I don't let Reese out sometimes, he'll eventually force himself out. He needs to have his time too. It's kind of like using the bathroom. It has to happen."

"Is that why you get so ill sometimes? You were both just crabby from not doing this thing?" Hunger, the need to urinate, or anything else one needed to do but put off, those things could really make a person go nuts.

"Sex kind of helps, but it can only do so much." Darren got up and walked over to the fridge. "I'm thirsty as hell."

Rubbing at one of her temples, Pearl muttered, "This is like a bad dream."

He'd taken a bottle of flavored water and now he was taking the cap off. "It's reality for me." He took a few gulps.

"Maybe life will be much easier if I pretend none of this happened." Pearl got up, pushing her chair back. "I just want to go back to normal."

With a satisfied exhale, Darren said, "Good luck with that." He was full on grinning now, reminding her of a certain famous fictional cat. "Now that I don't have to hide this shit from you, Reese can hang out in the daylight again, even in the living room!"

The hand that held the bottle moved in the direction towards said room. "I'll have to keep the blinds and curtains closed," the man said, "just in case, but yeah. You'll have to clean up a lot more fur, like when you were the housekeeper."

Imagining a big beast man in the recliner, reading a magazine or watching Netflix, Pearl practically slapped her own face as she hid her eyes.

***

The rest of the day and the day after that were both normal. For the most part, normal is good. The dogs seemed to be recovering, but Pearl wondered if they were more eager to receive pets and pats. It certainly felt that way. She rubbed snuggled the darlings a bit more often, and they soaked the attention up, happily sighing and closing their eyes.

Pearl wasn't in the mood to wear any cute dresses. She was still out of sorts. Frayed blue jeans and loose T-Shirts. That was the outfit she used when scrubbing the toilet, which was actually pretty sensible. She didn't like wearing cute stuff while doing the dirtier jobs anyway. Later, the smell of bleach clung to her mind because she'd just scrubbed out the tub. That bleach smell followed her around, or it felt that way, even when she was downstairs.

Darren was home.

The sight of him made her hop a little. She hadn't expected him home so early.

He was taking some ingredients out of the fridge and putting them on the kitchen counters. When he saw her, his cheesy grin stretched out. He went to her, bent over, and kissed the top of her head. "Hey, Pearlie. Are you tired?"

"No." The finger joints in one of her hands were popped. "Do you need something?"

"I want some tacos. Is that okay?"

"You'll have to wait for the meat to thaw." Pearl watched him saunter off. "What are you up to?"

Making a dismissive, but cheerful waving gesture with one of his large hands, Darren said, "Reese wants a shower!"

Her pupils shrinking, Pearl folded her arms, almost hugging herself, as she remembered all the nonsense that had happened. Darren was acting like this was all just ... how it was.

But she distracted herself with silly questions, silently told in her head.

Did Reese use a hairdryer? If so, where didn't he use a hairdryer? Did he point it at his balls?

The laughter she couldn't hold back calmed her nerves. Then, as the meat thawed, Pearl did a few chores. Sweeping the floors, wiping spots off random surfaces, gathering oddly placed dog toys and putting them in a neat pile near the doggy beds, things like that.

When she went upstairs to rearrange things in there, she was caught off guard by a huge beast man just casually exiting the bathroom, the wet dog smell filling up the room. As he walked past her, his eyes briefly touched her and he licked his chops.

His huge, clawed feet made temporary, odd impressions in the carpet. Pearl imagined he'd make noises on the hardwood floor similar to the dogs'. Since she'd never seen any major scratches in the wood, she didn't freak out about that, but she did worry about Reese being a daily thing for her.

Did that mean she'd get fucked a lot more?

Pearl put a hand on her cheek and stared at the exit doorway. The image of that furry thing was still branded in her eyes. She was so nervous about it, but she wondered about the biological logic of it all. The existence of Reese was something that gave the finger to so many laws of physics ... and probably some other laws Pearl didn't know about.

She didn't have a rapport with this slobbery, apparently dangerous creature. She didn't know what to expect from him. As frustrating as it was, Darren didn't like talking much about this beast's personality because ... well ... it bored him. It was the oldest of old news. The most informative statement he'd given Pearl was, "He's basically me, but he doesn't think hard about what he does."

Downstairs, Pearl saw Reese, a massive pile of fur curled up on the floor. Baby Blue and Gunner were snuggling with him. They seemed perfectly fine with Reese. They probably knew him very well. Baby Blue moved his head up at one point to lap at one of Reese's funny looking ears, which made the big thing twitch and snort.

He wasn't doing what Pearl considered to be "werewolf things." He wasn't running around in the forest, although Pearl assumed he'd done those things before. He wasn't out hunting deer and other animals. He certainly wasn't eating anyone.

The bloody, gory memory that she wanted to forget returned to her mind, but she put it aside.

Baby Blue's tail bounced a little. Reese didn't have a tail but his butt seemed to move like he wanted to wiggle.

Cute?

Pearl shrugged and checked on the meat package. It was still pretty cold and hard, even with the hot water it was kept in. She left it alone and wondered if Reese liked protein shakes. She decided to make one. Once she had the full cup she cautiously went back to the living room, practically tiptoeing. Then, she knelt down on the floor near the three beasts, and she said in a tiny voice, "Hello? I got a shake. You want it?"

Yawning, showing off a set of frightening teeth, Reese sat up and took the cup with two hands. Then he tilted his head back and poured most of the contents down his throat. He swallowed so quickly!

Thinking he just might be pretty easy to please, Pearl got up to do a little dusting and other maintenance in all the other rooms. No pests, thank goodness. Then she straightened up some stray papers in the office. She didn't read them. She just made the stack neater. The vacuum had to be used after that.

Downstairs, she saw Reese gently caressing one of Gunner's ears with his fingertips. Then, like a cat, he went to a sliver of sunlight on the floor that was peeking through some curtains. He laid on his back and gazed up at the ceiling as if it was quite interesting.

It was like he was just happy to be in control. He didn't need to go out and do werewolf things.

The meat was ready. Pearl put it in a frying pan to be browned. Her lips pursed as she wondered if Reese would be the one to eat the tacos. A beast guy in full fur mode eating tacos. Not the raw flesh of a wild animal. A damn taco. What was next? An ice cream cone?

Claws on tile. Curious sniffing. The direction and height of the sniffing told her that it wasn't one of the dogs sneaking around. Pearl turned her head back and saw him.

His head tilted to one side. He seemed to be watching her separate the block of ground meat into manageable chunks.

The only thing she could think of to say was, "Do you like raw meat?"

The mouth opened, and she saw him growl out, "Nah."

"Okay, then." She turned back to focus on the cooking. So, maybe he didn't go around eating up deer, at least not raw. "Anything I can do for you?"

"Fine." She heard him go over to what she assumed was the kitchen table. Then one of the dining chairs was pushed. Yep. He was sitting down.

"So you're fine," Pearl said.

"Yeah."

"You don't talk much, do you?"

After a little hiss, Reese said, "Ca ... can't."

Whatever. Not his fault, or Pearl assumed it wasn't. "Oh, it's like you're autistic or something?" Not that all autistic people had difficulty speaking, or that all speaking problems could be explained by autism.

He didn't respond to that.

Pearl kept her eyes to the meat. Soon, she believed it was properly loose and cooked, and she turned the burner off. She carefully slid the meat into a strainer that was put on a plate. The plate kept the grease from going down the sink's drain.

When she thought she got enough of that extra mess off the meat she put it back in the pan. She looked at the kitchen table. Reese was basically purring, resting his head on his folded arms, but his eyes were open and he was watching her. His nostrils were twitching.