The Vodka Brutes

Panting in the wet grass, hip bones to clovers,
Dew to denim,
Skin to itchy blades,
I can see that your chest goes on pumping, heaving up and in.
It appears as a violent duel between air and meat.
Your insides are changing, your outsides too.
You breathe in coarse, heavy roars, throat on fire.
Your hard fixed eyes searching through sky and night static.
Your primitive mind translates the blowing of wind, the scent of coming rain and you’re laying so still. A trap perhaps.

I look down at my own hands. They have curled into knoblike claws and I feel my legs tense with an ache to leap, access large tracts of land paw by paw. I feel the grass crush beneath my feet, the freeness of the air, the lift of the atmosphere.

The wood and moss, the slimey creek rocks call out to me. You cackle madly and howl back. You hear them too.

Look at us. We have reverted back to fur and slit-eyed stares, surveying the yard for sharp movements, keeping our ears perked for the sounds of splitting twigs in the surrounding brush.
We indulged in pure animalistic havoc tonight. Lapped up all our liquid treats and stumbled outside to where we belong. We’ve hollowed out our passioned hearts, emptied the veins of connection, history, and charm. Allowed the blood to rage, rumble and roar around our insane pelts.

I hear voices inside the crowded house, but they have become foreign grunts and moans, high pitched squeals and yelps. Some involved in heated mating dances, others from sulking beasts in dark corners, licking tenderly at shallow wounds. Some heave themselves into savage quarrels and the rest to mad clan antics.

We finally meet each others narrowing gaze. You lift your panting body off the wet grass to lean against a wooden water logged gate. I slide up the side of the rain speckled house on my arched spine … and suddenly, we’re off. Come green, come dark, hidden pray. We are coming.

We trudge through the dripping pricker bushes, drag our stressed and tussled torsos through the mud and pebble crusted paths of the forest. At some point I feel my hind legs trounce down the steep slope of soil slop ahead of you. You let loose a bellowing howl as I take a dive into a black basin of cool mystery.

I don’t even realize how crazy we’ve become until I come-to: I have just emerged all glistening, soggy wet from the creek water, all cold from hidden sun, back where the street lights' mellow glow can’t reach us. I hear you rustle through the bushes on the hills above and I thrust myself further out of the freezing glop rushing around my ankles. The shock and shrill of the arctic pool still penetrates me, flesh to bone, and I find it difficult to shake the chill off my fur, still subsiding into blond hairs loosely covering pink, goose pimpled skin.

You finally tumble down the embankment after me, barely missing the sharp splinters of fallen tree trunks, boulders and bone snapping crevices in which blind limbs could easily slide into. All these dangers suddenly become less like instinctual thrill and more like a child's night terrors: the trees become chilled, dangling skeletons, the night air becomes stiff, heavy like cement, and you become one of the terrifying nocturnal beasts, untamed, unruly and rabies ridden. You growl and snarl somewhere beyond the creek bank. I feel like a runaway babe in the dark and sinister woods of my worst nightmares. Yes, I’m becoming myself again.

That’s when you see me, all soggy and pathetic like a tub-dipped cat. I can see fire in your eyes, still animalistic and crazed. I feel I must tame you, poor wild thing of the night. You’ve sunk way too deep into this game. I want to take you home.

I call you to follow me back towards the party. We crawl up the leafy banks on our twitching man paws, panting and groaning, claw through the roots and loose clumps of soil, slide on our knees, trudge with our dusty pads to higher ground. I hear my thoughts now. No longer do I hear the pouting of hungry pups or quarreling brutes in the distance. I hear cars, and loud, thumping music. Wild laughter and cheers, words.

You stumble back against a prickly log, all stressed from lightning, life. You feel all these things, but cannot sort them out in your primitive mind. You have not discovered words again. The tears leak out, splash against your bare chest exposed to the fragmented moon, the boughs and breaks cradle the swollen luminescent gut of the night. You see my tears now, hear my cries to follow me home. You roar, beat your chest and suddenly, you are gone to the night. I stand in the streetlights and the shadows they cast knowing I can’t save you now.

A crumbling beast, I watch you run through the thorns and twinkling drops of dew dipped shrubs until the dark trees envelop your heaving soul. I imagine how you will live there, through the night, in these woods bordering the limits of our lush town. You will howl at the moon along with the disillusioned neighborhood dogs, trapped in their fences, choking on their rusted chain collars. You will hunt down small rodents and birds, fill your blood thirsty belly, bones and all. You will dig boroughs, nests among the thorns and night critters of the forest, suffering your bewildered animal mind as the sky lightens to day. You will awake amidst a pile of leaves packed with mud cold, and confused, your nimble fingers mindlessly buttoning and unbuttoning the small sweater I lent you around your trembling torso.