The Chicago Rat Shifter

Chapter 8

Atticus read the crowd as they approached him. All young women, wearing winter jackets and carrying placards that could become murder weapons.

“How about you stop torturing rats and we’ll stop chasing you?” someone asked.

He glanced down the street to the entrance of the Alsatius Building. A police officer sat in a squad car, facing the opposite direction.

The hair on his neck rose. Something told him to run, and he did, straight toward the stairs of the L station a block away.

Footsteps scudded on the sidewalk behind him.

“We’re going to hold you accountable!” someone shouted.

Jesus. They were going to rip him apart. And that was if he was lucky.

Distance was on his side. He was bolting up the riveted stairs to the L station faster than he thought his feet would carry him. On the first landing, he paused and looked back. The protesters were just starting to climb. At the back of the group, the woman in the puffy coat followed them, wandering as if sleepwalking, her eyes locked on him, a stunned expression on her face.

What was the matter with her?

matterHe took the stairs two at a time now, rocketing onto the train platform. At a turnstile, he fumbled in his coat for his transit card and tapped it on the terminal. It beeped red at him.

“Damn you!” he said, tapping again. The system beeped in acceptance, and he pushed his way through.

He glanced at the overhang display screens with transit times. Two minutes until the next arrival. In about 30 seconds, he’d be ripped to shreds.

He dashed for another set of stairs leading back down to the street. By now, some of the pursuers were hopping the turnstiles, pointing after him.

Where was a boy in blue when you needed him?

One of the protesters must"ve been a sprinter because she flew forward, arms blading the air, yelling after him.

“We have demands,” she cried. “Listen to our demands and we’ll go away!”

He reached the top of the stairs and started down, but he looked back at the crowd. He misjudged a step and, suddenly, the world was spinning madly around.

His shoulder hit the ground with a c***k. He bounced, flipping on his side, smashing his nose, sliding down the stairs in a half-surf, half-roll.

It happened so fast, he could barely react except inhale as he slammed onto a landing and his body folded upon itself like a camping chair.

Voices, footsteps, train brakes, and car horns swirled together, distant now, like a reverie.

“Oh my God!”

“Learned his lesson the hard way. Damn.”

“The train"s coming. Come on, let"s go.”

Then screams. Were they screaming at him?

“Somebody get a medic!”

Shuffling feet. Train brakes squealing. A computerized voice announcing that the doors were opening on the left.

A warm hand touched his. A woman"s face hovered over his.

The woman in the puffy coat. She was…smiling at him. Her face was full of color again.

“I was wrong about you,” she said, her voice multiplying itself in his delirium. “But everything is going to be okay.”

He found solace in her voice. Her face circled his, and she tilted her head, smiling so brightly that her eyes closed a little. If he didn"t know any better, he would have sworn that his vision filled with heather and honeysuckle just before he blacked out.

* * *

He woke in a field. He lay, covered in dust and dirt, staring up at the twilight sky. Prairie grass wavered around him. A river roared in the distance. Golden evening hour rays eased across his face.

He blinked several times and sat up. Despite the twilight sky and in the ribbons of gold, orange, and brown that streaked the sky, there was no sun—not even a glimmer of moon or stars. Just endless shimmering yellow, and orange.

He rubbed his shoulder. He’d cracked it on the stairs, but there was almost no pain now—just ghost pangs that reminded him of his pursuers.

“Where am I?” he asked.

A woman was suddenly right next to him. Naked, with red hair pooling on the ground, grass and yellow flowers strewn throughout. She looked at him with emerald-green eyes.

“I told you everything was going to be okay,” she said, taking his hand in hers. Her hand still burned like a furnace. “You wouldn"t believe how many favors I had to call in to get you here.”

He pushed her hand away. “What the hell"s going on?”

“I healed you,” she said.

He glanced around, taking in the endless countryside. The place seemed oddly familiar, and then he wondered if this was what Chicago looked like before Chicago was Chicago.

“You had us riled up,” she said, stroking a finger across his cheek. “We don"t take kindly to animal abuse.”

“Who are you?”

“It"s a long story,” she said. “But you won"t have to worry about us anymore. You"re all right, Dr. Atticus Thurston.” She emphasized the word doctor. “Maybe you aren’t so bad, Mr. Rat Man. You showed me your inner love light. Now that I"ve seen it, I"ll never let it go.”

He should"ve pushed her away. He distinctly remembered that there was…somewhere he needed to be. Someone waiting for him. His stomach roiled, but her touch healed it, sending ripples of joy through him until his soul hummed.

“I just…” he said, straining through the joy, “I just want to thank you.”

She pressed him into the grass and straddled him. She put a finger to his lips, leaned in close, and said, “Why don’t we focus on healing the rest of you that’s broken?”

He breathed her honeysuckle essence, let her put his hand on her face and trace an outline of her. He closed his eyes with pleasure as his world erupted with passion, bare skin, spinning fractals and flowers, and honeyed light.

* * *

He gasped awake into the L station, a dejected mess lying on the steps. People skipped down the stairs and around him.

He pulled himself against a railing, rubbing his shoulder.

He startled at the thought of the protesters, but a quick glance at the platform confirmed they were gone.

The last bits of twilight hung in the sky as swaths of navy overtook the Chicago skyline.

As he gathered his leather bag, stretched his perfectly healed body and caught the five forty-eight train, he thought of the woman in the meadows and still tasted her.

“There is something you can do for me,” he remembered her saying as buildings flew past the train window. “But you really should go home first, Atty.”

His stomach churned like the last time he’d had food poisoning.

The rest of the ride home and the walk through his neighborhood of wavering trees and old graystones was a blur. He moved on autopilot as he climbed the limestone steps to his apartment building, slid the key in the lock and crossed into the lobby, rode the elevator to his floor, and stumbled down the dark hallway to the green door at the end of the corridor.

His autopilot canceled when his key didn’t fit in the lock.

He checked his key ring. It was the right key.

was He rapped on the door, his stomach churning harder. He remembered that he’d forgotten to pick up dinner like he promised.

Footsteps padded to the door. There was a pause. The security chain jangled and his wife flung the door open.

She looked at him with confusion. She wore a blouse with a golden necklace. Her blonde hair was tied into a bun. She leaned against the doorway.

“Babe,” he said. “I got attacked at the station.”

Should he tell her about the woman? He would have to. But his stomach hurt too much and all he wanted to do was lie down.

“That’s all you can say?” Eva asked.

“I don’t…know what else to say,” he said. “I’ve got to rest.”

“Not here you won’t,” Eva said, her face twisting into a rage. “You left me alone for a year and come back talking gibberish?”

Thurston’s eyes widened. “I just spoke to you an hour ago.”

A blonde-haired girl toddled across the living room, making grabby hands at him.

His daughter hadn’t known how to walk. She could barely crawl just an hour ago!

“I don’t know how else to say this,” Eva said, “but we’ve moved on.”

She moved slightly, revealing stacks of cardboard boxes in front of the bay window in the kitchen. The apartment was mostly empty.

“Eva,” he said, “I don’t know what’s going on.”

She hung her head. “Atticus, I can’t do this anymore. The constant phone calls asking where you’ve been. The sleepless nights worrying sick about you. And—Bronwyn. Spending so much time without her father. It’s just…I can’t—”

“Eva, please. I just need to—”

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” she said. “But I can’t talk to you tonight. I’m sorry, Atticus.”

Tears welled in her eyes as she shut the door. The last sentence had hurt. She said his name with such coldness, as if she had never loved him.

Thurston stood in the hallway as if he had been struck in the chest with a hammer. Autopilot kicked in again as he stumbled down the hallway, the world teetering as he rode the elevator to the ground floor and stepped out the back service door into the alley. A streetlight flickered on.

He finally got to sit down—next to a dumpster overflowing with trash. Something shifted in one of the bags in response to him. A brown rat stood on the lip of the dumpster, chewing and staring at him. Then it disappeared into the trash.

Visions of Eva and the woman in the meadow swirled around his mind, becoming one.

He wept for everything that had been. His life, his wife, his rats, and many more things that he couldn’t explain. But mostly, he wept for the woman of heather and honeysuckle who had loved him.