TRACKER
NaNoWriMo Novel Idea # 5
TRACKER
Based on the short story "Damocles" by Roger C. Lubeck, Published in Transitions, the 2024 Redwood Writers Prose Anthology, Janice Rowley Editor, Redwood Writers Press, Santa Rosa, CA, 2024.
I
am surprised to find Bert’s All-Night Diner and Bar empty. New Orleans never
sleeps. At three in the morning, the bar stools and booths are normally filled
with hookers, sleeping drunks, and drug addicts. Originally, Bert’s was a
shotgun house built a century ago for Black workers employed by a now-abandoned
factory. The bar runs half the length of the building with a kitchen behind the
bar. There is a window booth at the front and five booths across from the bar.
At the back, past the two restrooms, is a curtained-off room with a small stage
and dance floor. Bert’s has music on Friday and Saturday. This is Sunday.
Bert
is behind the bar reading the daily racing sheet. He and I go way back.
“Mr.
D,” he says. “What will it be?”
“Coffee
with room for cream and extra sugar,” I say.
“Not
hungry?”
“Any
donuts?”
“Not
until four.”
“Just
coffee,” I say.
Good
news. Donuts mean cops. Cops and I don’t mix.
Coffee
in hand, I check out the bathrooms and peek through the curtains. Satisfied
that I am alone, I sit at the last booth before the rest rooms and sip my
coffee, waiting for the caffeine and other drugs to kick in. Tracking is never
easy. The older I get, the more I question the sensibility of it all. The need
for it.
A
college crowd, two boys and a girl, stagger in from a bar down the street. The
girl is an overly made-up blonde with large half-exposed breasts. She collapses
into the window booth at the front, laying her head against the window.
A
small skinny boy takes the seat across from the blonde. The other boy is large,
with broad shoulders and a beer belly. He orders a burger and fries from Bert
and then sits beside the blonde putting his arm around her shoulders. Alone, the
blonde might be a good choice for a hunter, but her large boyfriend would make
the play more difficult.
A
second girl stands at the diner door, scanning the room. She is pale, with
short jet-black hair, violet eyes, and a wide mouth. Her lower lip has crimson colored
lipstick. Her upper lip is painted black like blood. Her eyebrows have been penciled
into a V-shape, giving her an exotic look.
She
turns and glances my way. The blood coursing through her jugular makes the skin
on her throat glow pink. Her violet eyes dart back and forth.
Tasting
the air, I sense something hiding beneath her cool, dark demeanor. She might be
a first-time hunter going through the change.
Taking
a dollar from my pocket, I select E-17 on the mini-jukebox in the booth. “I
Feel Love,” by Donna Summer. The electronic beat sets the mood. Donna and disco
made hunting easy in the 1980s.
I
stand and slow-walk toward the front booth. My eyes focus on the violet-eyed
girl. I stop and wait for Donna to begin.
“Ooh,
it’s so good, it’s so good, it’s so good,” she sings.
I
approach the girl.
“Would
you like to dance?” I ask.
She
gives me an appraising look. Wetting her lips, I see sharp teeth.
“Fuck
off, old man.” says the fat boy.
“I’m
not talking to you. I’m talking to the young lady.”
I
give him a hard look.
“Tommy,
call the manager,” says the blonde to the fat boy. “He looks dangerous.”
“I
don’t know about dangerous, but he certainly stinks,” says the other boy,
trying hard to sound both brave and clever. His eyes betray his fear.
“I
mean no harm, and I smell as nature intended.”
I
stare at the girl. The connection is there. I lean down. “Donna Summer,” I tell
her softly, “stirs old memories in me, and I feel the need to dance. To dance
with a pretty girl “
“Where
can we dance?” the girl asks.
“There is a small dance floor at the
back of the diner.”
I
take her hand.
“Violet, stay where you are. Freddie,
get the owner,” says the blonde to the skinny boy.
“Violet, beautiful like your eyes. Dance
with me. I think you are ready. Ready for the dance.”
She
looks deep into my eyes.
“I
am ready,” she says, walking ahead of me toward the curtains.
Sensing a threat, I turn as Tommy
reaches for my shoulder. I grab his hand and twist his arm backwards, driving
him hard to his knees. Freddie is hiding under the table.
“Violet
will be fine. You should go.”
“I’m not afraid of an old man like
you.”
“I am not the threat. Violet is going
through a change. I want to help her, but I can’t if you are here. Go before it
is too late.”
Tommy
looks at the other boy. Confusion and fear. They want to leave.
“There isn’t time to explain,” I say. “If
she comes back out, none of us may survive. Take your friends and go.”
I lift Tommy to his feet and push him
toward the door.
“Run,”
I shout.
The
three flee the diner. Bert, holding a tray of food, gives me a sour look.
“Bag
it up,” I tell him. “I’ll take it home after my dance.”
I
walk to the back of the diner and part the curtains. The stage is dark. The
dance floor is illuminated by a single spotlight. Violet sways to the music.
She has her eyes closed, dreaming of some long-forgotten place.
“Are they gone?”
“Yes.”
I
move close to her, and I put my arm around her waist. Her body is on fire. She
is electric.
“Are
you a hunter?” she asks.
“When I was younger, I hunted. Now I
am more like a tracker. I help new hunters.”
I
take her in my arms. We move as one, letting the music guide us.
“What
about the owner? Is he one of us?”
“Bert only knows burgers and the ponies.”
She
looks back through the curtains. Bert is sitting at a booth eating a plate of
fries. Her green eyes sparkle. She wets her lips; the hunger in her is clear.
“We
need to get out of here,” I say.
“I don’t know if I can. The transition has
started.”
“I
live close by. I can help you.”
***
We
walk the three blocks to my house in silence. It isn’t much; a colorful shotgun
in a block of similar homes. The inside is neat and orderly, like its owner. I
show Violet around, pointing out the bathroom and the guest bedroom. While she
is using the bathroom, I set out cheese and crackers, pour glasses of wine,
turn on Miles Davis’, “Kind of Blue,” and sit in one of the two easy
chairs by a fireplace.
“Is this your first?” I ask when she is seated
across from me.
“My
first was an infant. A neighbor’s little boy. The change happened in the summer
before I entered college. My parents helped me. It was awful. After, I felt ashamed,
but I also felt alive for the first time. My father says human sacrifice is
necessary for us to live as true Gians. We must feed or die.”
“Feeding during a change keeps the
cycle alive,” I say. “In my experience, if you can keep from hunting and feeding
on humans, you don’t die, you just return to normal.”
“For
how long?” Violet asks.
“That’s
up to you. If you are willing, I can show you another way.”
“Isn’t
it too late?”
“When
I was in high school, I only needed one hunt to sustain me for a year. When I
was thirty, I was hunting all the time. Consuming more than I needed.”
“Why?”
“I
loved the hunt. In college, I used sex to capture my prey. I found in the act
of sex, as the woman climaxes, she is most vulnerable. In consuming her life, for
an instant, I had a vision of Gia, before the great death. Back then, even
sated on human life, I hunted and fed, if only for that brief vision.”
“I’ve
had that vision. How did you stop?”
“The newsfeeds talked about the police hunting
for a serial killer.”
“I
suppose in their eyes, that’s what we are, serial killers,” says Violet.
“On
Gia, hunting was a way of life. We are hunters. From birth, we learn to track
and trap our prey. One day I caught a young woman, very much like you. Her name
was Faith. Beautiful and clever. In hindsight, I didn’t trap her … she trapped
me.”
“How?”
“We
were hiking on a trail along the coast. The area was remote and isolated. At
some point, I stopped and tried to kiss her. She pushed back, saying she wasn’t
ready for sex.”
“Did
that matter?”
“It
did for me. I didn’t rape my victims. I never used violence. Their lives ended
in a moment of shared ecstasy. She took my hand. ‘Look around,’ she said, ‘what
does this remind you of?’”
“The
windswept coast, untouched in its beauty, made me feel like I was back on Gia
and my hunger was gone. ‘I’m on another world,’ I said. ‘Gia,’ she said. Only
then did I realize she was Gian.”
“Finish
your story.”
“Off
the trail, Faith took me to a meadow of flowers. We lay together and I slept.
When I awoke, Faith was kissing my chest. Soon we were naked, and the urgency
of our lovemaking overwhelmed me. Nothing in my experience prepared me for the
magic when we came together. My sense of being one with another person—not two—not
human and alien. Gian and Gian. One being in a moment of ecstasy. To my
surprise, when I lay back exhausted, Faith continued to climax; wave after wave
of pleasure washed over her and onto me. When she finished, I realized my need
to feed was gone. All I wanted was to make love again. Lying on the flowers
with the sound of the waves, I wanted nothing more in life. I slept for a time
and when I awoke, Faith was dressed and I was bound with my zip-tied hands
behind my back.”
“’Are
you with the police?’ I asked her.”
“‘No,
I’m a healer,’ she said.’”
“Healer?”
Violet says.
“’Healers
find Gians. They are like anglers who love to fish, but they release the fish
once caught. Faith was like that. She tracked Gians and when caught, she helped
them overcome the need to hunt and kill. Like a fisherman who catches and
releases his prey.”
“Is
that possible?”
“Faith’s
parents didn’t believe in hunting. They taught her a different way. She told me
her role in life was to help hunters like me become human. ‘I don’t want to be human,’
I told her. ‘To be human is to die inside.’”
Violet
is staring at me intensely.
“Faith
asked me if I had ever wondered why it is we look like humans; why we can
breathe their air and eat their food. Why we can have sex.”
“I’ve
wondered the same thing,” says Violet.
“According
to Faith, the human’s idea of a supreme being may not be that far off. It was
her belief that billions of years ago, a race of aliens visited our two worlds
and planted the seeds for life. Similar worlds with the same seeds and after
millions of years of evolution, we are cousins.”
“Where’s
the proof?” Violet asks
‘There
isn’t any. That is why she called herself Faith. She had faith that Gians can
live with humans without hunting. Faith is the reason I became a tracker.”
“You
mean healer,” says Violet.
“No,
I’m a tracker. On Earth, trackers find the prey for the hunters. They don’t
hunt and kill. They track and find. What happens then is up to the hunter. I
found you. What happens now is up to you.”
“I
don’t know your name.”
“I’m called Damocles.”
“Like the story of the sword?”
“There
is a sword hanging over your head. Life or death. Determined by your actions.”
“How
long will it take?” Violet asks.
“Tonight
may be the worst. I’m putting you in my spare bedroom. If your hunger is too
strong, wake me and I will keep you safe until your need to hunt is over.”
It
is hours later when I feel her slip under the sheets, her sweating body
naked. The first rays of sun have turned the sky dark blue. In the Quarter,
they call this time of morning l’heure bleue. The blue hour.
Our
lovemaking is violent at first and then tender and sweet. As we climax, I
expose my throat, giving her the option to change; to complete her hunt.
Instead, she writhes on top of me, allowing me to share in her ecstasy. In that
moment, I take her life, as I had Faith’s all those years ago, and I am back on
Gia. A prime hunter. The lord of a dying world. The joy of being on Gia doesn’t
last. It never does, but it is enough. I am a true Gian again. Tracking and
hunting my own kind. Faith wanted to heal Gians of their need to hunt humans.
On Earth, we only hunt humans because they are so plentiful. For me, predator
and prey are two sides of the same tarnished coin.
