Not a Chase

3

Not a Chase

The sky was

a flat orangeish lid, city light reflecting against infinite cloud cover. A slightly brighter spot showed where a full moon hung between the tips of two skyscrapers, but anyone wanting to see the stars tonight was shit out of luck.

Falough had antique streetlights over the jogging loop, but no few of them were burnt out. Gin flickered through empty toothsocket shadows, an ivy-cloaked retaining wall from when they cut the park in half rearing to her right, and had almost convinced herself to take the hard left at the bottom of the hill when her shoe slipped and she went down in a jumble, erasing skin on both her palms and tearing her long black knit skirt, not to mention her tights underneath. Hadn’t she been feeling pretty smart because she’d foregone both pantyhose and shivering by wearing tights and something ankle-length, knowing the plastic Barbie fucks wouldn’t?

Gin screamed when she went down, too, a girly little cry cut in half when she bit her tongue, and the vodka fought for release.

Panting on hands and knees, she spilled onto one hip and sat on snow-scarred pavement, lifting her scraped hands and examining them. “Whoopsie,” she muttered, and a forlorn giggle hitched its way out on a sour burp.

Oh, girl,

Ami would have crooned, with bright vicious glee.

You are a hot, hot mess.

Snow plopped onto her head. Her navy wool coat was all twisted around; she fished for her phone again before remembering it was out of charge, wincing and swearing under her breath. She’d been smart to bring the tiniest of clutches stuffed in her other pocket instead of a purse. It would be

dramatic

to lose her goddamn driver’s license right now, wouldn’t it?

That was when she heard the deep, throbbing animal growl. Her head jerked up.

Falough was deserted, the park’s three slopes like a lopsided pair of breasts over a pendulous belly. It was snowing hard now, and even homeless junkies had enough sense to be inside tonight. Ivy scratched her back, a fingerlike branch worming through to touch her coat collar. It took two tries to get upright, and she was helped by a random, handy protrusion her scraped, questing fingers found. Her knees were about the consistency of mochi and even her ass hurt, she was covered in snow, and to top it all off, she was wheezing.

I don’t have asthma. Bena does.

Ami had claimed to need Bena’s inhaler sometimes, though, when it was convenient or when the limelight threatened to stay on one of the Barbies. And Gin was going to hell for thinking that.

Too late, wouldn’t you say?

The protuberance turned out to be a doorknob of dark metal, rising through a curtain of snow-edged ivy. Weird, but probably for maintenance or something. “Thank you for your service,” Gin intoned, and coughed, wiping at her nose with her free hand.

She heard it again. A low, chilling, basso growl.

What the fuck?

If it was a dog, it shouldn’t be out on a night like this.

Gin blinked. The knob moved under her throbbing fingers, and she was

ultra

-drunk, because it felt…warm. Had her fingers frozen to the metal? Her grandfather had always remarked it took a little less cold to make snowflakes than ice. She couldn’t even tell if she was bleeding, numb from the neck down.

Just not numb enough to fuck Danny, right?

A laugh jolted out of her, high and screamy, interrupted when she bent over and retched, her hand still clinging to the random doorknob. Now she’d horked up a steaming mess of vodka on the pavement; it was a good thing nobody was around to see this bullshit.

Skuf-scrape. Click-tap.

It took her a few seconds to realize she was hearing footsteps with skin-pads and rough blunt nails instead of shoes.

Gin raised her head, peering through the wet strings her hair had become. Of course Amelie would be pretty-perfect in her rosewood box like the Little Match Girl in a snowdrift, and Gin would end up the victim of a wild dog attack in a shitty little park full of used needles.

They’d have to keep

her

casket closed. Did they bother with a funeral when the only other person who might’ve attempted to act sad was dead too?

“Hello?” she whispered, stupidly; falling snow swallowed the sound.

The scrabbling footsteps came again, from her other side. A pair of venomous yellow gleams burned amid whirling snow at about chest level. Gin straightened, blinking and wishing her vision wasn’t so blurry. The doorknob moved against her palm once more, like a small frightened animal, and it was official, she’d had enough booze to start hallucinating.

Go figure

. At least if she lost her mind she’d be put in an asylum, right? Though that would be just

typical

, as Ami would say.

You like to daydream too much, Gin. Your GPA can’t take it.

Her GPA was just

fine

when she could do her damn work. Snow fell in thick white curtains, a real blizzard. Shadows flitted between the vertical white streams, faint yellow eye-gleams winking out and reappearing, glints off dirty ivory teeth contrasting with pure white frozen flakes. She caught a suggestion of shaggy shoulders, horns spreading from a narrow, viciously snaking head, and the doorknob rattled.

What the fuck?

It wasn’t enough to think it, she had to say it out loud, too, just for good luck. “What the

fu

—” she began, but the big monstrous yellow-eyed thing lunged and she cowered, her shoes slipping in fast-accumulating snow.

This time, her scream was a breathless yelp and the growling was everywhere, surrounding her, scraping the ivy, breathing a foul meat-scented breeze against her face. Her stinging hand wouldn’t come away from the stupid doorknob.

The door under the ivy was old dark wood and its hinges creaked alarmingly, squirting bloody rust. It shouldn’t have opened inward because the hinges were on Gin’s side, and the thing in the snow—the animal that shouldn’t exist, the big iron-furred shape with a dog’s snout and wide, stabbing horns—lunged again, a heavy

chuk

sound falling dead between snowflakes as its jaws snapped.

Ginevra went over backward, hit something relatively soft, and scrambled blindly on torn hands and wet ass. The back of her head clipped a hard vertical column and she cried out again, a thin piping noise snapped in half as the jolt robbed her, finally, of consciousness.