After the People Lights Have Gone Off by Stephen Graham Jones

Author:Stephen Graham Jones [Jones, Stephen Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Ghost, Short Stories (Single Author), Horror
ISBN: 9781940430256
Google: 8kn-oAEACAAJ
Publisher: Curbside Splendor Publishing
Published: 2014-09-30T04:00:00+00:00

•

The next few weeks were quiet.

We were living in the panhandle of Florida, slapping bugs off our necks every few soggy breaths. Uncle Darren was working the boats at night, like Grandpa never had. There weren’t any cannons on them. Just contraband. It was why he had to work naked: so they’d know he wasn’t smuggling anything himself.

Aunt Libby was taking coupons and making change at an oil change place. I worked down in the pit. I wasn’t old enough, but they didn’t have to pay me as much, so it all kind of worked out.

Down there turning my wrenches, that liquid clicking of the ratchets swelling up all around me, I ran through Doc’s story from every angle I could, trying to peel it back to a different truth, a better truth.

All I kept hearing, though, it was what Grandpa had really been telling me, his one eye pressuring up to burst back into his brain.

All I kept hearing was what he’d really been apologizing for.

My mom.

It had to be.

If Aunt Libby hadn’t thinned her lips that night when I said Doc’s name, I probably never would completely flashed on what Grandpa was saying.

But she had.

Still, there was some assembly required.

Another story Grandpa told me, it did have proof, is maybe the only werewolf story in the whole history of werewolves to ever have proof.

It was where dew claws come from. Why they are.

On dogs, they’re useless, just leftover. From when they were wolves, Grandpa insisted.

It was about birthing, about being born.

Just like baby birds needed a beak to poke through their shells, or like some baby snakes have a sharp nose to push through their eggshells, so did werewolf pups need dewclaws. It was because of their human half. Because, while a wolf’s head is made for slipsliding down a birth canal, a human head—all pups shift the whole time they’re being born, can’t help it—a human head is big and blocky by comparison. And the momma-wolf’s lady parts, they aren’t made for that.

That’s the reason for the dewclaws. So the pup can reach through with his paw. So that one claw up on the back of their forearm can snag, tear the opening a bit wider.

It’s bloody and terrible, but it works. At least for the pup.

And I’m reminded now each time I reach up to wrap the strap around a dull orange oil filter.

On my forearm, there are two pale slick scars that I’d grown up thinking were from the heating element of a stove in Arkansas, when I’d reached in for toast before I understood anything. Two slick little divots in my life that I always figured were my secret connection to Grandpa: he had a scar from a stupid tick, I had one from some stupid toast. It was the story I’d been told. I’d never had call it to question.

Until now.

It wasn’t a skunk-bit dog Grandpa dragged out behind the barn that night, to take care of in the most personal way.

I can see it now, in his words.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.