click clack The keys of the keyboard. click clack This clacking had been going on for an hour, devoted as I was to writing the novel I had started a month ago. It was called The Network and it was about this guy that creates a super fungus, lets himself become infected by it, and starts to take over the world using the land and sea as his media. The humans controlled the air, just to make it fair.
Engrossed as I was in in the adventures of Dan Cooper, known as "Mini" due to his immense height, I didn't hear Scar call my name the first time. It was when she said it the third time that I finally heard her.
She was looking at me like I was insane. And I guess I could be, for writing this novel. You have to be seriously messed up to write this.
"Babe?" she asked.
I saved the file and closed the laptop. I put it on the side table and looked at her.
"What's up, Scar?" I asked in return.
"You remember that day that we came home from the vet after the dog bite thing?" she said, looking me in the eyes. She was alarmingly direct.
I hesitated. "Yeah..."
"You did something to me that day." It was said as a statement of fact, rather than as a question.
I said nothing and just nodded.
"That day, I was too depressed to notice what was going on. But today, while you were writing on that novel, which is kinda strange by the way, I was thinking about that entire series of events and I found something that didn't make too much sense to me.
"When I was in that bush, crying and trying to be left alone, you went inside and got a bowl of water. It wasn't just water, was it?"
I didn't answer at first.
When I didn't, she jumped up on the bed and got nose to nose with me and asked again.
"Was there something else in that bowl of water, Colby?"
I went cross-eyed trying to keep my focus on her, she was so close.
I still didn't answer and tried to sit up, but she put a paw on my chest and pushed me back down, hard.
"Colby!"
I nodded once.
"So there was something else in that water?"
I nodded again.
"Speak!"
"Yes," I mumbled.
"Yes, what?" she demanded.
"Yes, there was something else in that bowl of water."
She nodded like I had revealed some big secret.
"Now that we've got that on the air, what was it?"
I looked at her, my mind speeding like a NASCAR race.
"Colby, what was it?" she asked again.
I stumbled over the first few words.
"I-it... I-it w-was a..." I paused.
She dug her claws into my shoulder as inspiration to keep talking.
"A... Sedative." I finished the sentence.
Her eyes widened. This clearly wasn't what she had expected to hear.
"It was a what?" she growled lowly. Her eyes glimmered angrily.
I repeated it.
She snarled furiously. "You drugged me?!"
I nodded meekly. Her claws gouged deep into my shoulder, which hurt a lot, but I was determined to show no weakness.
"Goddammit, Colby!" she yelled. "How could you do this to me?!"
I opened my mouth to answer, but she snapped at me. I shut it in a hurry.
"Colby, this hurts. This hurts a lot. I trusted you. I believed in you. I thought that you would protect me-"
"Scar-"
"-but it seems I was wrong. I mean, how could you drug your mate?"
"Scar..."
"You were everything to me!"
"Babe..."
"There is no reason good enough for that. None at all."
I swatted her paw off my chest and sat up angrily.
"Scar, you don't know what I was thinking-"
"I DON'T GIVE A FUCK WHAT YOU WERE THINKING!" she shrieked. "God damn you, Colby! I loved you! But I'm done."
Her last two words put a pause in my mind.
"What?" I asked.
"I'm done. I can't trust you," she said angrily.
"What are you saying, babe?" I asked.
"Don't call me babe. I'm not your "babe". Not anymore," she snapped, furious.
"What do you mean?" I asked stupidly.
"What do you think it means, dick head!" She screamed. It means I'm leaving you!"
"But why?" I exclaimed.
She lost it. She snapped her jaws shut millimeters from my nose. I could see the finely serrated edge on her teeth. I swallowed.
"Didn't they tell you not to show fear around a wolf?" she snarled. I felt the tip of a claw tap my throat and did my damnedest not to move. The claw dragged down my throat, drawing the slightest pinprick of blood. She touched her paw to the blood drop and showed me.
"You know what that is?"
I nodded.
"Speak!"
"It's my blood," I said.
"I could sink my teeth into your neck right now..." she hissed. "And I really want to. But animal control would get called and all that shit, so you get lucky."
"I'd feel luckier if..." I trailed off.
She pounced on that statement.
"You'd feel luckier if what?" she demanded.
"-if you forgave me and stopped clawing into my neck," I winced.
She sank her teeth into my right hand, but didn't break the skin.
"I could tear your hand off in an instant," she said around my flesh, enjoying the moment in some kind of strange psychopathic way.
"Please..." I whispered.
"Please what?"
"Please don't kill me," I said softly. "I love you."
"You don't love me. You never loved me. You lied to my friends, you lied to my family, and you lied to me. And that is unforgivable."
That hurt. I felt my eyes getting moist.
"But, Scar, I need you," I said plaintively.
"Yeah, well, I need you like another hole in the head!" she yelled.
I gasped. That was unbelievably cruel. Before I could say another word, she slapped me in the face, her claws drawing a bloody furrow in my cheek, jumped off the bed, and left the room.
"Scar!" I called desperately. "Scar, wait, please!"
I got no response.
The tears, and blood, flowed freely now. I couldn't believe she was leaving. I ripped the tubes and IVs and wires off and struggled into a pair of jeans and t-shirt. It hurt my leg, but I didn't give a shit about that. My only priority was catching Scar and making her see some sense. I hastily slapped bandages on the wounds she had given me.
My gun and its holster were in the nightstand, one of the things that Scar had picked up for me when she and Jon had gone back to our, now just my, place.
I clipped the holster to my belt, cocked the pistol, made sure the safety was on, and put it in the holster. I slipped my feet into a pair of crocs, which were perfect for people with casts on their legs. The last bit of the disguise I would use to get out was a pair of prescription aviator sunglasses and a backwards Jeff Gordon hat.
Seeing that I was due to be released the next day, it wouldn't really matter that I left now.
I managed to make it out of the hospital without being spotted, but I was stalled at the front door.
My phone rang.
I pulled it off the belt clip and looked at the screen. It was Scar!
I answered it.
"Scar, where are you?" I demanded.
She didn't tell me where she was. "I'm going to Jons."
"How?" I asked frantically.
In the background, I could hear a train horn.
"This train makes a single stop in Kettle Falls in 3 hours. You have that long to get there. If you aren't, I'm gone forever." She hung up.
I immediately made a call to my CO, Mike Metcalf.
"Mike, I need your car!" I said by way of greeting.
"Why?"
"Scar left me and I have to get to Kettle Falls in 3 hours, or she's gone forever!"
Over the speaker, I heard Mike fishing through something loud.
"I got the perfect set of wheels. I'll be there in 10." He hung up.
I sat down to wait on one of the benches outside the hospital.
In no time at all, it seemed, Mike was pulling up in one of the most beautiful cars I'd ever seen; the Ferrari 599 GTO. He got out, I got in, and I sped off, tires screeching.
