Dislocated Read Online Free PDF Page B

cry for help before I pulverize the thing into a million little pieces. I take out the bedposts, then go swinging for the mirror above the dresser, daring the Universe to grant me seven years of bad luck. A crack and explosion of what could be a hundred shattering light bulbs comes raining down around us. I swipe at every trinket, every piece of memorabilia, every framed photograph along every surface, sending them all into oblivion. When there’s nothing left to attack, I go for the walls until plaster splatters my face and swirls in the air around us, until I’m breathing in dust and paint and can’t feel my arms; until I can’t see through the tears and the spit. I drop the bat. I don’t even pause to catch my breath. I don’t even bother to say goodbye.
     
    I find the same, sad story in Viv’s room, and in Victor’s. I leave them undisturbed, the need for going ballistic having subsided.
     
    I try the phones. All the landlines in the house: dead.
     
    I trudge back down the stairs and prepare for the arduous journey of returning home.
    But home to what?
    I skip the garage, open the front door, and there, a wolf on the porch, lips curled. All three hundred razor sharp teeth appearing to be accounted for, but I’m in no mood to be eviscerated this afternoon. 
    “Is there nothing else in this town to eat today?” There’s a smorgasbord of gazelles and birds around here this afternoon, but somehow I am the easiest target? I’m talking to her like I’m hoping she’s learned the art of negotiation since we’ve last met. My hand is still on the knob, and I am still inside the house. All I have to do is shut the door and this whole debacle will be over with. The house has yet to become fetid from its dead occupants. I am sure there’s plenty of food to eat. I can outlast this son-of-a—
    The wolf makes her move. I’m not fast enough.  This directly affects my ability to close the door hard enough to cut the bitch in half, but it certainly slows her down. She lets out a whimper and a sneeze so human I almost say, “God Bless You.”
    The stairs are directly behind the front door, so I go scrambling up them instead of running into the kitchen where all the knives are. The beast is on top of me before I make it three feet, her teeth slipping into my shoulder. I scream, I cry, and instinctively roll over, slamming the overgrown mutt into the wall. Twenty teeth slipping through my flesh with the ease and precision of surgical scalpels. I flip back onto my butt. I kick and I thrash and my boot lands right on her snout, but she’s too quick, taking a mouthful of my pant leg. I shake and twist, making my way backwards like a crab, but her jaw is a goddamn bear trap. I will not win this unfortunate game of Tug of War.
    I bang the edge of my free foot against the stairs until my boot falls off and goes tumbling down. I’m hoping this werewolf will go tumbling after in a game of fetch, but her yellow eyes haven’t yet left mine. The undomesticated hound just tugs and tugs, harder and harder, my jeans ripping, her snarling growing louder. I can feel drool on the skin of my ankle, and for some reason I am most disgusted by this. I am about to have a heart attack. I can’t make it up the stairs. She’s too strong.
    I unbuckle my belt, undo my pants. I slip the belt from its loops, and down my pants go, to my ankles and beyond. The wolf stumbles back, mid-tug. I scramble up, my socks making the climb increasingly difficult. I watch as the wolf tears my jeans to shreds in a matter of seconds before she realizes I’m no longer in them.
    By the time I get to the top of the stairs, I can already hear this relentless machine slinking up behind me. I take two seconds too long assessing my next move, knowing there is no way out of the house or back to the first floor from here. There are no balconies or roofs outside these windows. I look back just in time to see my new friend arrive, all wild-eyed and smiling. The belt