Page 27 of Below the Shadow of the City

I try to picture young Maddox, a smaller version of himself klutzy and tumbling around, and then I think of myself at that same age. Back then, my parents were the center of my universe. I’d stumble out of the school bus to warm homemade cookies and my dad would pull into the driveway at night and burst through the door with a bright smile. Then, when I came out a few years later they tried their best to not change how they saw me, but things shifted. Sometimes, I wish my memory of them was frozen in that time before. In a way, I envy that he gets a glossy, rosy view of his mom forever.

“And your parents?” He asks almost perfectly on cue, not wanting to delve further into this particular piece of him.

“They live on Long Island, in the same house I grew up in. They don’t come to the city often, maybe a few times a year, and almost never to Brooklyn. I usually only go out there for Thanksgiving and Christmas. You’d think there was more than the Long Island Railroad separating us. But, those chocolate chip cookies?” I nod to the plastic container I dropped on the counter when we first walked in. “Those are based on my mom’s recipe, all I did was tweak the recipe a bit. So in a way, she’s responsible for us meeting.”

“Tell her I give her my many thanks,” he smiles slightly, with the rest of his face making a knowing expression that bringing him up at all to them is relatively complex.

A piece of me would love to face that conflict, because that would mean we were a true couple. Any other person would also want the same outcome out of this meeting. It’s what I should be pursuing.

Our weeks of virtual communication back and forth were easy. As badly as I had wanted to meet him then, I think I had secretly hoped that we never would.

If we never met, I wouldn’t subject him to my curse, and I wouldn’t inevitably lose him. Instead, I let things go too far already. He’s real now, our chemistry in person is all too obvious. I can’t let it go on. Maybe I’m giving this curse too much power over me, but if I let things go any further, it’s going to get harder and harder when the end comes.

So instead tonight has to be reduced to two strangers waiting for an appropriate time to fuck each other and never see each other again. Because that’s all I could allow this to be.

CHAPTER 12

Idrain my first glass of wine and begin to stand to procure a second when he jumps from the couch and takes the glass from my hand. “I’ll grab it,” he radiates cheerful, helpful energy like he’s a restaurant server. “You can relax on the couch, you know, it won’t swallow you.” A laugh rumbles from his chest as he walks to the kitchen.

He refills my glass and then quickly drains his in a frat boy-esque chug to be able to refill his own. I don’t even realize I’m staring until he turns back to the living room and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Oh,” he chuckles nervously, “did you…?”

“Watch you chug that wine like it was a red solo cup of Natty Lite? Yes.”

“To be fair, it tastes the same no matter how quickly you drink it.” He walks over, hands my glass to me, and sits back down in his spot. I’m still on the edge of the cushion, feet firmly planted on the ground. He kicks his legs up onto the coffee table, and now I see how decidedly non-human his lower legs and feet are. His feet are much more paw-like than his hands, similar to a lion’s in a way. His tail curls up underneath him when he sits, and I get the sobering reminder that he has a tail in the first place. I gulp down half the glass in one lengthy swallow and flop back onto the couch. My stomach growls, apparently loudly enough that Maddox notices.

“Are you hungry?” He sits up straighter and looks at me.

“I could eat,” my stomach growls at me again in protest of my nonchalance. “We could dig into the cookies?” Not anything resembling proper sustenance, but I was too nervous to eat anything real all day, and now it is nearly 8 p.m.

“There’s a pizza spot around the corner, next to a bodega, if you want to run a quick errand with me and stock up,” he raises himself off the couch and pads to his jacket hanging from the barstool. When he lifts his arms to put it on, his t-shirt lifts and exposes a small glimpse of his waist again. His pants hang low on his hips and outline a gloriously round ass. I picture my arms wrapped around him and my fingers tracing his spine. I’m staring at his body and when he turns to me and gestures that it’s time to go, he gives a half smile that acknowledges he saw my ogling.

Street level feels oddly similar to the Brooklyn above ground. Brownstones line streets that are end-capped with bodegas, coffee shops, and restaurants. The streets are certainly cleaner, and there’s a notable absence of pigeons. I tilt my head up, there are easily three times as many streetlights, and buildings look to be equipped with floodlights dotted along their roofline. Thanks to the excessive lighting, it’s oddly bright out, but not in a sterile way. The glow is warm, as if it’s made to replicate actual sunlight. It’s difficult to see above the tops of the buildings, some of them are tens of stories tall, but it looks like the ceiling of this entire city is just a massive concrete slab.

“Do they ever turn off the lights here?” I ask as I continue to take in the surroundings.

“They dim them around ten, but never totally off, it would be completely pitch black considering we’re about thirty stories below ground right now,” he replies. “It’s not like your apartment basement where you at least get a tiny bit of light.”

“And it’s always been like this?”

“As long as I can remember, I grew up in a townhouse a few blocks over. Some of the buildings have gotten refurbished, and when stuff breaks it gets fixed, but for the most part it looks just like it did when I was a kid.”

We pass a section of green space with a few small trees, benches, and bushes with a playground tucked in the back. A couple, one of them a wolfman and the other a woman with the legs of a goat, sit together on a bench with her head resting on his shoulder as they eat ice cream.

Even though we’re “outside” there’s no breeze or any fresh air. I assume there’s some sort of vent or filtration system in place to cycle the air, because it feels only slightly stale here. Between the artificial lighting and the indoor temperature, it feels more like a set than a place where anyone would live. Notably, there are also no cars in sight, only people, well, creatures milling about.

I don’t stare too long at anyone in particular, but I get a few odd glances from others walking past. But considering I’m in a society built for mythical beings exiled by human society, the reception is much warmer than one would assume. I hasten my steps to Maddox as he strides down the sidewalk, I’d spent too long taking it all in. After a few feet, he turns and checks that I’m still behind him, slowing his pace so I can catch up to him.

We walk a few blocks and are met with a red neon sign advertising Vaccaro’s Pizzeria. A half-man half-snake and a large green-skinned man with tusks sticking out from his lower lip stand under its green awning eating slices off of paper plates. Maddox gives them both a nod and opens the door for me.

The counter is manned by a massive and imposing minotaur leaning on the glass countertop, but its interior is otherwise identical to any cheap pizza spot I’ve been to. Right down to the red vinyl booths, cheesy art of Italian landmarks, and chalkboard menu.

Maddox greets the minotaur excitedly and falls into conversation quickly. They’re clearly good friends, they talk about gaming together and jointly rag on mutual buddies.

I spend much of their conversation looking at my shoes to keep myself from staring at the bull-headed man working the cash register who’s also stolen a few glances at me. He’s handsome, I think, for a mythical creature that until now was fictional. There’s a gold ring in his nose, and the way his fur tufts at the top of his head looks like a boyish haircut.

Maddox orders us an extra large cheese, which from looking at the size guide on the side of the counter, is much larger than the average extra large pie. I quirk a brow when he selects the size but he gestures to his own stature and gives me a look that says of course he’s going to polish it off.

When he pays, he lays a hand across the small of my back, a motion that happens without so much as a second thought. His claws barely graze my shirt before they jerk back at the realization of what he’s done. At even the smallest touch from him I feel like I’m about to leap from my skin, it’s completely electric.