Good Dogs by Brian Asman

Author:Brian Asman [Asman, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

EIGHTEEN

What the hell is wrong with me? Linnae thought.

Though she was pretty sure she knew the answer.

Linnae’s saving grace, such as it was, was that she knew herself to be a monster. That was her thing. Her schtick. She exuded bad vibes through her pores, like pheromones. On fucking purpose. And if you were dumb enough to keep getting closer to her?

Then you were just the sort of dipshit who deserved whatever was coming.

She stopped by her tent, shrugged on some leggings and a hoodie—the flirtation with nudism was only to fuck with the others, and she was actually getting kind of cold despite the sun—and stalked off through the woods, working out her frustration with every stomp of her hiking boots on the forest floor.

Joey was kind of a dumbass, and sort of deserved whatever he got, but he kind of didn’t at the same time. If he’d come on to her, sure, all bets were off, but she’d toyed with him, emotionally vulnerable as he was, for no other reason than she could. Like, it wasn’t funny to swipe a blind guy’s cane and watch him fumble around, now was it? Maybe Joey wasn’t physically disabled, but what was a disability, anyway? He was too trusting and naïve, preventing him from achieving anything close to satisfaction in the world. It wasn’t right for her to mess with him like that.

Right?

Not for the first time, Linnae wished she could wave a magic wand and completely rework her own nature. She knew the difference between right and wrong, or her versions of such, and had fairly strong, complex justifications for what constituted which. When she looked back on something like her most recent interaction with Joey, she wasn’t looking to rationalize the way she acted, but to understand.

Why am I the way I am?

A therapist might’ve helped her answer such questions, but how could one if Linnae couldn’t give them the full picture? So, I can’t help myself from tormenting people like some teenage Redditor, and also, every few months, I transform into a literal werewolf, which is actually something of an improvement, morally, because as far as I know, I’m not a huge bitch to my prey before I kill and eat them.

No, she’d be committed faster than you could say Britney Spears.

Linnae was a very self-aware person, very introspective—a consequence of actively trying to push people away all the time—and over time she’d come up with part of an answer. Her ex, a much older man, had used her in all kinds of fucked-up ways, and if she was a weaker person she could’ve left it at that. Blah, blah, trauma, men, am I right? But she couldn’t accept the simple answer. There was something deeper there because she’d had a mean streak before she ever met Kyle, and she didn’t get it from her parents either. They were nice and supportive. Maybe she was born with something missing, some essential piece that might’ve made her fully human.

At least part of the time.

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.