The Gag Gift

TW: Animal attack/minor violence and body horror.

A bright red ball is pressed into Katie’s hands. Her mind goes blank as she grasps it limply before giving an experimental squeeze: it emits a high-pitched squeak. 

This is a dog toy, she recognizes numbly. My girlfriend just gave me a dog toy.

That is if she even still has a girlfriend. Logically, she shouldn’t, but the world feels so nauseatingly topsy-turvey right now; logic doesn’t appear to entirely apply. 

“What… what is this?” She stammers, referring to the general situation rather than the ball; she knows what a ball is. Her mind whirs with panicked thoughts that only momentarily cease its terror-induced motion upon the realization that there are so many better, more pertinent questions she should be asking. 

“Wait, what are you even doing here? You– you saw what happened last night. You know what I am.”

A monster. That’s what she is. 

It was irrational to think she’d be able to keep this from Sonya forever. For one, she’s never been very good at lying, and Katie’s spent the past three months doing an overwhelming amount of it. This isn’t the kind of thing one can sweep under the rug and pretend to forget about, not that she hasn’t tried. She can’t count the nights she’s squeezed her eyes shut and begged whatever force might be listening to cut her loose from this nightmare. 

“It’s not fair!” She’s screamed aloud so many times alone in her bedroom, tears running down her cheeks. “It just isn’t fair!”

She just wants to be normal; she had been normal not so long ago. But now, the simplicity of the past feels so distant and separate from her that it’s as though she’s yearning for a life that was never truly hers. 

Sonya stands before her in the living room, regarding her as she always has with a look of inexplicable fondness. Her brown eyes are wide as they meet Katie’s green ones, but, somehow, no fear shines within them. She looks confused and more than a little out of her element, but not scared. If anything, she seems worried for Katie. She can’t wrap her head around it.

“I thought it would be funny,” Sonya says with a shrug aiming at casual that doesn’t quite make the mark. “It’s kind of a gag gift, I guess. Y’ know, to lighten the mood a little.”

Katie squeezes the ball again, if only because it’s something to do with her hands. Her heart is rabbiting so fast she thinks it might just burst out of her chest. 

I’m going to pass out, she thinks, her vision going spotty as her stability suddenly weans. Her knees buckle, but before she can hit the ground, Sonya braces against each of her arms and helps settle her down onto the couch. She doesn’t lose consciousness like she’d expected, though she certainly feels like she’s slipped into some dream. She clutches the ball like it’s her tether to reality; if she lets go, the world will become incomprehensible. None of this makes any sense.

She’s unsure how long she sits there, her pulse pounding in her ears and the room’s silence punctuated only with shrill squeaks. Maybe the gift was appropriate, she surmises with horror. She is part dog. 

“Are you okay? Do you feel like you might be sick?” Sonya asks from beside her, finally breaking the tension. She doesn’t answer. “Katie, honey, do you need me to get you anything?”

Katie shrinks against the couch, pressing hard into its worn back as though it might swallow her up and cocoon her safely in its old foam and leather. She stares at Sonya with wide, unblinking eyes, and an overwhelming sense of fear takes hold of her. For the first instance in the months since she’s changed so irreparably, she feels more prey than predator.

 “Katie…?”

“Sonya,” she responds, flurried, “You… you know. You saw me! I– I never, I mean, I didn’t ever want you to see me like that. I didn’t want to do that to you.” She buries her face in her hands, her eyes burning with unshed tears.

She shouldn’t have been walking home alone at night. She shouldn’t have been walking the wooded dirt road that twists on the edge of her neighborhood. But she’d walked that road almost every day for a year since she’d moved into her place, and nothing had ever happened. Hardly anyone even walked it, which had seemed more pleasant than ominous at the time. Katie liked the solitude of her little shortcut that always got her home at least five minutes faster than any other route. The peaceful chitter of birds and the canopy of prodigious trees made for an environment that she loved.

Had loved, anyway. 

 It all happened so fast. One moment, all she heard was the sound of her sneakers padding against the dirt. The next, the startling loud sound of paws hitting the ground with thunderous speed. She barely had enough time to turn around before the thing was upon her, all teeth, claws, and dark, scraggly fur. Before she could even take another breath, Katie was thrown to the dirt, and the beast was on top of her, front paws pressed hard into her chest. She struggled against the immense weight, wincing at the thing’s fetid, rotten-meat-smelling breath. She screamed loud and shrill. As for what she said, she can’t recall. She probably shouted “Help, please help!” and maybe just the word “wolf” several times, not that it mattered. There was no one around to hear, and Katie would never find solace in this secluded path again. 

The burn of its needle-sharp teeth piercing her shoulder was unlike any pain she had known. The bite lit up every nerve with blinding, excruciating agony, like every inch of her body was on fire, burning as hot and bright as the sun. That same fire seemed to reside in the creature’s eyes, watching intently as blood cascaded from the wound and leaked onto the dirt. It seemed just about to bite down and take a chunk out of the meat of her shoulder when Katie drove an unrestrained leg forward and kicked its left hind leg with all her might. The creature yipped and unsheathed its fangs, and the look in those yellow eyes was suddenly and alarmingly human. Adrenalin coursed through her as she crawled forward and made to strike the beast, which cowered before turning and disappearing into the brush and foliage. 

She pressed a hand tightly to the jagged bite mark as it wept under the bright, uncaring moon. With her other hand, she fumbled for her cellphone and dialed 9-1-1. She was pulled into the black void of unconsciousness halfway through the call. 

When she woke, it was already morning. She laid in a hospital bed with Sonya by her side, painkillers dulling her senses as she drifted in and out of conversations with doctors about how lucky she’d been. They said things could’ve taken a turn for the worse, but she’d recover fine. They’d look for the coyote, wolf, whatever it was, and euthanize it. She swore it was a wolf when speaking of the attack, but doubt lingered in the back of her mind even as she did so. It hadn’t been a person, of course. But… there had been such a haunting look in those wide eyes. The way it had jumped back when she kicked it and looked at her with fear and confusion had felt profoundly human.

She’d kept this to herself. Surely, she was delusional. The blood loss made her see something that wasn’t there. A wild animal had attacked her, but she’d scared it away, and she was safe now. She’d be fine; the doctors said she would be just fine. But somewhere in the back of her mind, Katie knew that wasn’t true. 

Mere days after the attack, she peeled her bandages back to reveal a miraculously healed wound. The scratches that’d been deeply carved into her skin were gone, just like that. The only physical reminder of what happened was the bite mark the creature had left her with. Though she’d been given a supposedly clean bill of health, that horrible burning feeling lingered within her, pumping through her veins. Conspiracy-theory level thoughts raced through her mind alongside the images of black-and-white monster movies. She’d stamped these thoughts down as quickly as they surfaced, pushing them to the furthest corner of her mind. The fears she had were impossible; she was fine. 

And then she’d turned. The process made that tingling burning sensation feel almost pleasant in comparison. Nothing can compare to the blinding pain of her bones snapping and elongating as her skeletal structure changes within minutes, muscles tensing and twisting into a new and horrible shape and her body growing thick and hot with fur. The first time it happened, Katie was sure she was dying as she collapsed into convulsions on her bedroom floor, spit bubbling from her mouth as she winced at the sound of her own bones crunching. Her nails extended to sharp-pointed claws and her canniness turned to long, imposing fangs. Through the pain and confusion of her first change, Katie’s consciousness wavered and dissipated almost entirely by the time she was more wolf than girl. 

She has few memories of that night or any other in the past months since she’s begun the change every full moon. But she’ll never forget the terror of waking up the morning after the first night dressed in shredded clothing and covered in someone else’s blood. 

As to what or whom she killed remains unclear. She investigated police reports of murders/mauling’s in her town but didn’t find any leads that clarified whether she’d murdered someone without knowing who or meaning to. The thought that she might be responsible – and entirely capable – of taking someone’s life without even having a memory of doing so never fails to send a chill down her spine. For better or worse, Katie has become something horrific and monstrous, and she can’t tell almost anyone without the threat of being sent to a mental health facility. 

Her research on lycanthropy and the potential of a “cure” of some kind has resulted in little more than fiction. There are legends about werewolves and the origin of the infliction, but she doesn’t even know what hint might be more realistic to what she’s experiencing. Even in trying to find the one who did this to her, she’s come up with nothing; they might not even remember turning her. She does know with absolute certainty that no one should know what’s become of her. But Sonya does. 

After the result of her first full moon, she invested in some heavy-duty chains, blackout curtains, and some sound-proofing material. The guy at checkout joked about what she might be using all that rope and chain for, and she couldn’t bring herself to humor him. Whatever he might’ve been thinking could only be tame in comparison to the truth of restraining herself as tightly and severely as possible to prevent her from escaping her own home in search of carnage.   

She’d been putting Sonya at a distance. At first, she had the excuse of needing space in the wake of her attack. She’d told her she “needed time to process” what had happened and how close to death she’d come. But the excuses could only serve her for so long before Sonya called and checked in more frequently. No matter what she said, the intense shift in her personality and behavior was noticeable. Sonya was worried. Of course, she was.

Katie often thinks of how she should’ve just broken things off with her when she first realized what she’d become. It would’ve been easier for everyone to sever the tie in one clean cut. That was the obvious and safest option. But she could never bring herself to do it. Maybe selfishness kept her clinging to Sonya and her former humanity alike. Despite what she’s become, Katie cannot stop herself from loving her. 

That selfishness is why Sonya is here now. Last night, she dropped by unannounced to check on Katie. She brought a Tupperware container full of homemade cookies; she’d always been so sweet to her. She was just trying to surprise her but instead found her girlfriend barely resembling herself at all, fully turned and thrashing against her self-inflicted confinement.

Katie doesn’t understand why she didn’t run away as fast and as far as she could right then. She vaguely remembers the horror on Sonya’s face when she opened the door and found her. After that, her recollection is too frantic and hazy to decipher much more than the knowledge that Sonya had stayed with her, at least for a while, risking her life in doing so. And now here she is, having just given her a squeaky toy as a “gag gift.” She thought life couldn’t get any more bizarre, but Sonya's certainly proved that assumption wrong. 

“You saw me,” Katie repeats through a pained sigh, her hands still shielding her face. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Yes, I… I did see,” Sonya says after what feels like an eternity. Her voice is so raw with emotion that it breaks Katie’s heart. “And I know you didn’t mean for me too. Katie, honey, I’d known you’d been avoiding me for months. I was so worried about you. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew something was wrong. I’ll admit, last night was… it was a surprise.”

“A surprise?!” Katie asks, her voice rising with incredulity. She raises her head and faces Sonya with wide, tear-filled eyes. “A surprise? That’s– that’s the biggest understatement I’ve ever heard!”

“Fine. It was a big surprise,” Sonya says through a sigh as if “big” even begins to cover it, “It was shocking, okay? Of course, it was. But I’m here right now. I didn’t run away.”

“Yeah, you are. And I can’t imagine why. I’m a monster, Sonya. You should’ve run for your life when you saw me, but you stayed. I could’ve killed you!”

“I don’t think you would’ve if I’d let you out,” Sonya says, placing a hand over hers. Katie’s mind is spinning.

 “If you’d let me out?! If you had, I would’ve torn you to pieces! I– I can’t believe you’re suggesting such a thing. Jesus, Sonya, why didn’t you run?” 

She remembers waking this morning out of her chains and lying on the couch with a blanket draped over her. Sonya had to have released her from her confinement and treated her so gently, even after all she had witnessed. Squeak, Squeak, squeak goes the ball clenched tightly in her hand. Her face is damp with tears.

“Because I love you,” says Sonya with the utmost sincerity, taking the ball from her and setting it aside, “So, so much. Nobody’s perfect, Katie. We’ve all got our secret. I just wish you’d come to me. I would’ve tried to help.”

“Secrets? I’m– I’m a werewolf! Y’ know, like in the horror movies. Full moons make me fury, and my teeth and nails get all sharp. And I barely remember whatever I’ve done until the morning after! I have to restrain myself! You saw. If I don’t, w-who knows what I might do.”

“And I don’t care. At least not enough to just cut off contact, just like that. I’m not running away from you, Katie. Especially not when you’re struggling like this.”

“Struggling? I’m –.”

“A werewolf,” she sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose, “I know. And this is… Well, it’s a lot. And it’s scary. But Katie, sweetheart, I’m not scared of you.” She interlocks their finger and squeezes Katie’s hand. 

“You… you should be,” Katie sniffles, staring at their joined hands in awe. 

“Maybe. But I’m not.”

And though she tries to find fault in her conviction, Katie realizes Sonya is being entirely serious. She isn’t scared of her. 

“I want to help. You’ve been suffering so much, haven’t you? Thinking you need to go through this all alone."

“I might’ve killed someone,” Katie can’t stop herself from blurting. The admission is like acid on her tongue. “I don’t know. I woke up, a– and I was covered in blood that wasn’t mine. I might be a murderer.” Sonya goes quiet for a terrifying moment and then sighs, saying,

“If you did… if you did, then it was an accident. I know you didn’t mean to.”

“Sonya–!”

“I’m not going to judge you for a mistake you made when you were barely conscious. It wouldn’t be fair. Let me help you research and understand this. I want to help, and I can’t bear the thought of leaving you alone.”

“You… you still love me?” Katie whispers, trembling and meeker than she thought she was still capable of being. “Even now?”

“Even now,” Sonya answers honestly, wrapping her arms around her. 

Katie collapses into the embrace, hugging her hard and sobbing into her shoulder. Wave upon wave of relief washes over her. She can’t help the burst of hope that blooms inside her despite the fear she’s harbored for these three long months. To her utter disbelief, Katie feels safe. 

The End