Is That A Deer?

Good Evening all. We are Geri and Freki, two friends of Cynic Flawfinder and Ngiammy and have been invited by the two previous owners of this blog to contribute things to it. We were told we must make contextual paragraphs to introduce our work, but we being wolves are not funny at all, and we don't believe that our jokes translate effectively from the Lupine languages (yes, plural).

So we decided to write a human story, as we don't believe that humans would understand the intricacies of the Lupine yarn, as it is not yarn at all but stories (really - how could such things as yarn be linked to tales) and are much longer due to the fact that humans DO NOT HAVE TAILS. But setting aside clumsy puns, we shall endeavour to write a boring human story about boring human things. There may be bear fighting and vikings in there. We haven't decided yet.

A pinstripe suit marched through the darkness. Dark black, with splinters of a dark grey. Looking from behind he was thin – the kind of thin which made parents worry but was completely unremarkable to others. The pinstripes only exaggerated it, that and an unnaturally uneven gait gave his back a certain hunger. It definitely didn’t communicate vulnerability – the shoulders were thrust back and the left arm hung by his side in a sort of poise which told of a bodily awareness ready to move at unnatural speed. But he was wearing black, and was thin. Which is probably why I hit him with my car.

It wasn’t raining, nor had it been for some time. The sky was too bright, and the pale orange clouds hung in the night reflecting the lights of Sydney in an insipid sheen. So much for clear skies and stars. But there wasn’t much else to place faith in anymore, the weatherman seemed as good a choice as any. At least he was predictable, punctual and well-dressed. It didn’t really matter I guess – most of the sky was blotted by a leaf canopy which couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be Australian or European – the gum trees swayed gently next to the deeper green shades. But he wouldn’t have seen it either, because while it hadn’t rained for some time he still had an umbrella poised above his head, as to block out the orange sky or the street lights which stood vigil not often enough.

Watching from behind I could make out a mane of dark brown hair resting gently on the collar of the jacket. That’s how I knew he wasn’t in business. Business people have different hair. His was too thick and too long to be foppish, but if you’d slammed someone’s face between two halves of a hardcover Austen until they believed they were caught somewhere in the nineteenth century that’s how it would probably end up. I could almost hear it swish in his ears with each step. But a slightly odd swish due to his shortened right step. An almost metallic grating of individual hair on hair. As if they decided to mirror the foliage around.

The hair and the umbrella are important because one ended up in the front grill of my car and the other ended up on the bonnet.
“Oh for fuck’s sake.”
You can’t really summon the energy to be legitimately surprised at three in the morning, just as for some reason my brain couldn’t summon the capacity to swerve the car and apply the brakes and kind of just sat there marvelling at the spectacle of a little blood trickling down my windshield.

And I can’t even put the windscreen wipers on because there’s a body on my windshield.
But then the intelligent part of my brain pushed through the doona of a couple of drinks. Brakes were applied with vigour and hands clenched on the wheel. The flaw in this plan became apparent as the head then vanished towards the front of the vehicle. But not before I’d come to a complete stop.

Without the body on the windscreen it would have been easy to completely ignore the incident. Just hit the wipers, douse the screen with cleaner and take off. The dent in the bonnet? Oh some teenagers jumped on the front of the car while I was at the pub. Yeah, bloody teenagers. Well I might have got it fixed, but apparently it’s not the kind which can simply be un-dented – I’d have to replace the bonnet completely and my insurance minimum is too high to cover it and I don’t have that much hanging about.

The engine was cluttering and the headlights hovered on the road. But I could make out the silhouette of something cresting the curb on the left hand gutter. The flickering of a curtain of hair. The pommel of an umbrella resting on the side of a house on the right. Plus the static electricity running my arms, the thick glue clumping on the inside of my ribcage and the claws which had suddenly replaced my hands and were tearing away at the steering wheel. I wasn’t entirely sure whether I was in shock or whether the shock was in me. Or whether the alcohol had extended my metaphors to uncomfortable places.

There was a momentary fermata as everything simply hovered. Then the door clunked open and I was out in the street.
“Holy crap.” The man sat with his back to the bumper of the car, holding his head in his left hand.
I stopped, once more. “Are you okay?”

He looked at me without moving his head, brown eyes glaring with determined irritation. “What do you think you stupid clot? You hit me with a goddam car. I’m pretty sure I should be dead.”
I found myself agreeing with him. I was driving slowly, of course, it would be irresponsible to drive quickly when drunk but still...I peered over at the windscreen to confirm the narrow trail of blood which was congealing on the glass.

He managed to get on his feet and sat on the bonnet of the car, left hand still on his head, right hand reaching blindly for the umbrella which was mangled into uselessness. His front mirrored his back – the near-foppish Romantic hair hanging loosely over his eyes, a face which was slightly too thin to be handsome and a chin which seemed to have been formed using a set square. Not in a heroic sense, like some idiotic action hero whose disproportionate face should lend them incapable of most feats of coordination, but some arrogant jutting which framed the current fierce aggravation. Lowering his hand he exhaled, breathing a plume of mist into the air.
“Yeah I’m alright.” Rubbing his back he managed to get to his feet. This time he deigned to turn his head to grab me with a glare. “Drive safely.”
With that he continued to walk down the road, his journey now taking on a swerving and tottering route. I quickly jogged over.
“You can’t seriously be walking home after being hit by a car are you?” He seemed entirely serious, in both his conviction to walk and his conviction to wholeheartedly ignore me. “You can’t walk – you should go to a hospital or something.”

Again he simply ignored me and continued tottering along the road. I grabbed him by the arm and immediately recognised it as a mistake. A snarl marred his face as he whirled about. Now it was not irritation, it was downright anger. The conductor this evening was a little too Romantic for my taste. Another pregnant pause disrupted the exchange.

Both of us were waiting for the other. His lip slowly quivered its way down and his face resumed a look of restraint, with all of the physical effort it appeared he could muster. His hands had curved into talons and his right foot vibrated far too rapidly to be considered tapping. Lowering his head, two angry eyes shot anger indiscriminately across the road.

He gripped my wrist tightly and removed my hand from his arm. “I need to get home.”
What a bastard. I just let him go – what could you do in a situation like that? He tottered off up the road, and despite my headlights I quickly lost sight of the black suit and the walking mop that inhabited it. I inspected the damage to the car. It wasn’t bad; I could probably drive it for a while and it would be fine. Giving the windscreen a quick blast of fluid, I started the ignition and my car trundled along.

This time it was a blind corner. At a T-junction on Bradfield Road, where the lax arms of some evergreen reached down to the road, to pick it up and show it the view over the rooves of suburbia. On the other side some square concrete-coloured monstrosity had barrelled its way to the nature strip and obstinately squatted there, leering from beneath a slate-coloured brow and with blackened patio teeth. There wasn’t a streetlight either. But I sat there for a good twenty seconds, and considering how time stretches the closer to dawn one gets I calculated it to be at least four minutes.
There was a thump.

And this time there was no pause – the conductor, noticing a slightly green and sickly looking clarinet player is rushing this evening towards its final destination. He stood up immediately, hands on the bonnet as it to simply push it beneath the tarmac, brown hair waving very slowly - understanding it was an awkward moment – and eyes red and gleaming. A plume of mist barrelled up to the sky as he yelled through the glass.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Enjoy the cliffhanger humans, because it will take us a while to write the next section, as we have paws which are not compatible with keyboards. Which is sadly why there will be no Chopin to accompany this.

Geri & Freki