Hollow Back Girl Page 4

  I’m clearly not versed in sasquatch biology so I couldn’t tell you if the two standing over the three little ones were a mother and father or if baby bigfoot has two daddies. Regardless of their gender, they were staring at me, the one on the left watching me scratch my head as if I was completely crazy.

  Maybe I am crazy; maybe all the things I’ve seen in the last year have been just figments of my imagination and I’m actually locked up in a loony bin with Buffy Summers and Sam Winchester. In that moment, though, it felt pretty damn real.

  The creatures were possibly twice my height and wide enough that you could easily hide two of me behind each furry back. Shaggy shadows in the forest, they had wide foreheads, heavy brows, and thick upper lips. Their short chins and heavy overbites made them look obstinate, as if no matter what I asked of them, they would refuse. Judging by the fat tusks tucked under their droopy upper lips, I wouldn’t be risking asking anything of them any time soon.

  One of the taller pair stepped forward a bit and, yes, its feet were gigantic. Had they shoes, I could have worn each one backwards on my shins and walked around easily on my knees without getting my pants dirty. They had massive hands, too, but Big-Feet-and-Hands just doesn’t have the same ring to it, I guess.

  The creature pointed at the sack near Owen’s feet and then pulled its hand back to make motions similar to the ones Owen had signed. Delight and a little bit of relief flitted through Owen before he returned the hand gestures with some new ones of his own.

  The sasquatch made a grunting sound that may have only sounded happy because I could feel the emotion behind it. His hands made one quick gesture and then I watched Owen grab for the sack and step forward.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed toward him, still scratching the top of my head.

  “Paying them. You don’t have to whisper; they can’t understand us,” he said, holding his arm out. The sasquatch took one giant step forward and grabbed for the bag, lifting it up in the moonlight. I let out a small, nervous giggle, but no one seemed to notice.

  “Are you speaking … er, I mean. Are you communicating in sign language?”

  “Yes,” Owen said, before rolling his hands out toward the sasquatches in more signs and gestures. Standing there shivering, rubbing at my skin like a junkie, I considered the fact that even mythical forest creatures had more skills than me. I was probably not even that well versed in my own language, whereas these fuzzballs knew at least two.

  Owen and the sasquatches continued signing as two of the smaller creatures came forward, grabbing for the bag. The taller one grunted at them, before lowering the bag toward them slightly. I jumped when one of the furry kids let out an excited sound that was somewhere between a toucan’s scream and a puppy’s bark. It grabbed for the bag, tried to yank a carrot through the hole in the side of the fabric mesh, and found the fattest part of the carrot was caught. A third child appeared from behind the parent holding the bag and thumped its sibling on the head, before tugging gently on its parent’s wrist.

  The taller creature ignored the little ones, still watching Owen communicate with its mate.

  Still itching, I watched the kids fight and tug on the bag, each of them grunting with frustration and annoyance. Their grunts took on a pattern that I couldn’t help but feel I recognized from interacting with my own sister and brother as a child. It seems sibling rivalry is a universal language. It made the side of my mouth tug up in a half-smile.

  Meanwhile, one of the older kids who was hanging off to the side just watched, amused and somewhat anxious. This bigfoot was about my size, though beefier through the shoulders and waist. It probably could have fit into the sweatshirt I was wearing, but it would have been a stretch. The possibly-teenaged sasquatch kept a bead on me as I stepped around Owen’s side to move into another position. I wanted to help the kids get to the carrot and the onion they seemed to so desperately desire, but the parents were making me nervous.

  I elbowed Owen gently and, when he turned to me, I jerked a chin at the bag.

  “Can you ask them to let the kids have a snack or something?”

  Thoroughly distracted, Owen blinked at me but didn’t agree or acknowledge me otherwise. Annoyed that he’d gone back to signing with the adult sasquatch, I stepped closer to the family, pointed at the bag. I tried to catch the teen bigfoot’s eye, but it turned its head deliberately away as I did, snubbing me.

  Sighing, I waved an arm, trying to get the attention of one of the parents instead.

  “Hey! Hi. Um. They’re hungry,” I offered, hoping they’d figure out what I was saying if I gestured vaguely toward the kids. The adults ignored me but the little ones turned to look me over, hands still on the edges of carrots and clutching the papery skin of an onion they couldn’t free. I took another step forward and they grunted disparagingly at me before turning back to the bag, tugging, grabbing, yanking. Still, they were ignored. They just couldn’t reach the opening of the bag, but I figured I was tall enough.

  “Owen, can I help them? Will they be mad?”

  “Yes,” he said, still signing.

  I took another step, turning to face him as I did, as I reached out toward the bag.

  “Yes I can help or—” I was already flying through the air before I realized what happened next.

  Fur and a knuckle the size of a doorknob had hit my chest, sending me back into the leaves. A chorus of outraged grunts flooded out with an itchy wave of anger, fear, and shock. I wheezed out into the cold air, trying to clutch my own heart and make it stop hammering a dent into my ribs. I wanted the thing to keep pumping enough for me to stay alive, but good god it didn’t need to be such an overachiever about it.

  As Owen stepped between me and the shadows moving closer, I felt his frustration, heard the angry growls being leveled toward him as he thrashed his arms in communication. He was probably signing something apologetic and explanatory (or possibly agreeing with them that I’m a complete moron; I wouldn’t blame him.), but I was too busy coughing into the leaves to pay any attention. Finally, as I was able to take one full breath, I felt a hand on my arm. Owen yanked me upward, turned me to face the creatures. I coughed, doubled over, pressing a hand to my aching ribs.

  “Oh god.” My voice was strangled as I tried to decide if I wanted to vomit or breathe. Another angry chorus of grunts paired with madly shifting moonlight and I peered up to see both the taller creatures gesticulating wildly.

  “Sorry,” I wheezed, trying to make them understand that, while I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d done, I was damned well never going to it again. “I’m sorry!”

  I coughed and Owen grabbed my shoulder, straightening me up. He pointed at me, then at the produce, and finally at the little bigfoots (bigfeet?) clinging to their parents’ legs. Then, he made one quick gesture toward them and stopped moving completely. Everyone went silent and I tried to do the same, despite the fact that I was still fighting irritated skin and a pair of lungs that apparently wanted to crawl through my throat and go for a brisk jog.

  Finally, as I gave in and coughed, the taller of the two parents lifted its head skyward and let out a series of grunts that sounded like Tim Allen impersonating a gorilla. I lifted a brow at what I recognized as amusement and gave a nod.

  “That’s right,” I said, before groaning at the pain speaking caused. “Laugh at the stupid human. Better than beating her to death, right?”

  Owen stepped past me, gestured back toward me, and then signed something quick and concise. The shorter parent signed back, pointed unhappily at me, and then every one of the creatures disappeared from view. I knew they remained there, as my skin still felt like I’d been dunked in cayenne pepper, but I was guessing this meant the meeting was over.

  Chapter Five

  “I think all my ribs are broken,” I whined. Owen smiled next to me, but his emotions didn’t match the look. He was being nice, but he wasn’t exactly happy with me. I turned to point at him accusingly; the motion only made my entire torso ache more.


  “Don’t pretend this is entirely my fault,” I snapped. He turned to me, stopped walking. He watched me for a moment and I felt the annoyance within him build. When he spoke, his voice was much too calm for what I felt stirring.

  “It isn’t?”

  “No! You didn’t tell me what we were doing or why. You just plopped me down in the middle of a bunch of bigfeet—”

  “Bigfoots.”

  “Shh! In the middle of a group of creatures that could probably eat me alive and then left me to my own devices. You know I am not to be trusted! With anything! Especially not vegetables! Don’t put me near those! Come on.”

  Emotions easing, Owen's lips tugged up in a grin and he stepped closer to wrap his arms around my shoulders. He hugged me as gently as he could and then pulled back to look me over.

  “They wouldn’t eat you; they’re herbivores. But, you’re right. I shouldn’t have assumed you would be competent.”

  “Exactly. Now, I need a hospital.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, sliding his hands down my arms.

  “But my everything is broken!”

  “I’m sure that’s not true.” Hands on my hips, he dropped to his knees, before reaching up and tugging down the zipper I’d yanked up to my throat.

  “If you’re trying to seduce me, I have to say your timing is terrible.”

  He laughed but ignored my unhappy whine as he shoved the hoodie aside and slipped his cold hands under my shirt. Head turned to the side, eyes unfocused, he felt along my ribcage gently. I allowed myself a few whimpers as he prodded, one whine when he pushed gently against my kidney, and a very offensive string of cuss words when his hand hit the space just above my left breast where the sasquatch’s knuckle had hit me. Lowering his hands and my shirt, Owen looked up at me.

  “Nothing’s broken, but I’m sure you’re pretty badly bruised. Unless you want to explain this to your family, I’d stick to turtlenecks.”

  “No hospital?”

  “If you really think you should explain to the nice doctors and possibly police officers that you were attacked by a bigfoot because you tried to get to close to their offspring, I guess I can drop you off at a hospital.”

  “You wouldn’t even go in with me?”

  “Haven’t you even seen an episode of Grey’s Anatomy? The first thing they’d do is assume I was abusing you.”

  “Making me stomp around the woods in this flimsy thing? You kind of are.”

  “Shh,” he chastised, a smirk on his beautiful lips.

  I glared down at him, my hands resting on his shoulders. When I didn’t have any further smart remarks, he pushed to his feet, catching my snarling lips in a kiss on the way.

  “Come on. We can go back to my hotel and I can get you out of that jacket, show you a good time.”

  “In my state, only cookies and a nap would constitute a good time.”

  “Are you seriously turning me down for sex?” Despite the shock in his voice, I knew he was teasing. I thought about it. I had shown up two hours before specifically to get laid; was I really about to turn that down because my torso was turning the color of an eggplant?

  “Yes,” I admitted, my voice small. “It just hurts too much, right now.”

  “Well, then we’ll have to buy you some cookies.”

  Owen stayed true to his word and bought me cookies, effectively making me forget that he’d been meeting the creatures for an actual reason and not just to get me knocked around. I’d finished off half the plastic tray of chewy chocolate chunks before he’d walked me to my mom’s car and kissed me goodbye.

  We’d agreed to meet up the next day and I’d promised to get hold of painkillers of some sort to ensure that we could finish what we’d started. Now that it was morning, I was craving the other half of the tray of cookies, as well as the painkillers that I hadn’t figured out how I would procure. I was also hoping that the skinny arm draped over my face would move itself and that the body attached to it would let me free.

  “Move,” I grunted, still half-asleep. I heard a delicate snort from the person sharing my bed but that didn’t faze me as much as the fact that said person had cookie breath. Someone had taken half—make that three quarters—of my bed and eaten my cookies? That someone was going to die.

  “Hey!” I said, shifting to shove at the narrow ribs pressed against my chest. The arm over my face shifted downward to yank me into a choking hug. I recognized the smell of Chloe’s perfume along with a slightly musky body odor that I knew but couldn’t quite place.

  “Hey,” I said again, panicked this time. My brother, having been a teenage boy the last time he’d slept in this room, had put up a pretty heavy-duty pair of black-out curtains; the room was too dark to see much of anything and, unless I was going to shove my guest off the bed onto the floor, I was effectively trapped.

  The bony-armed hug let up as a hand reached out to swat at the curtains next to the bed. Light streamed aggressively into the room and I let out a growling yelp, clapping a hand over my eyes and then moving it to clutch at my sore ribs.

  “You’re making it worse,” a voice said. I squinted against the light, recognized the dark hair flopped over the delicate features inches from my face.

  “Izzy?”

  “Uh huh,” he grunted through a giant yawn, before he reached for my arm and pulled it away from my torso. “Don’t prod.”

  “Where—” I looked around the room, suddenly wondering what the hell had happened in the last few hours to make me wake up next to my best friend’s boyfriend. “What?”

  Izzy shifted to let my arm free and fling his limbs outward in what might have been a stretch, but could have been a seizure. I wasn’t versed enough in him to know if that was a danger, but I was pretty irritated and told myself I wouldn’t have helped if it had been.

  “Who, why, when?” Izzy asked after a moment, laughing at his own joke.

  “What?” I asked, jerking my head back to avoid another spastic arm flail.

  “You said that already. Are there any more cookies?”

  “You ate all my cookies!” I accused, reaching out to slap at him. He managed to hop to his feet and avoid my attack at the same time and I grunted painfully as I rolled to follow his movement.

  “I figured you left them for me.”

  “Why would I leave you—what are you doing here?” I asked, pushing myself gingerly into a sitting position. Izzy shrugged.

  “Was in the area.”

  “What area?”

  “Here,” he said, rolling his eyes. “What other area? Jeez. You think there’s waffles yet?”

  Leaning to the side, Izzy yanked open the closet door, and dropped his narrow butt to the ground as he made a grab for the shoes there. He pulled one bright red sneaker on over his left foot, grabbed a brown, leather loafer and pulled it over his right foot. Lying back, he wiggled his feet up in the air, snorted like something was hilarious and then looked up across the small room at me. I realized he’d put on two left shoes.

  “So, you think there’s waffles?”

  “Do I what?” I asked, shifting against my body’s discomfort. My ribs ached and I tugged down the neckline of my sleep shirt to look my chest over. Purple, blue, and deep shades of magenta decorated my collar, breasts, and upper ribs like a smoggy sunset. I winced, barely noticing that Izzy had gotten to his feet to stroll over and look down my shirt at my naked chest. I'd spent enough time around him and could read his emotions well enough to know there was nothing sexual in the glance. Izzy and I could not have been less sexually interested in each other if we were two rocks.

  I squinted up at him and let my shirt drop back against my chest. Being Izzy, he bent at the waist, grabbed my shirt and yanked it up so he could see my belly.

  “Not so bad down here. You’ll be fine in a week or so.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Depends on when here is,” he said, dropping my shirt and grinning into my face. I sighed, already sick of his confusi
ng turns of phrase, even though it had been awhile since I’d last been subjected to them.

  Despite his dreadful manners, Izzy is quite a looker. He’s small, with fine bones and big eyes; his lips would make any model jealous and the awkward way he carries himself probably would, too. Sometimes he reminds me of a baby deer just learning to walk; other times he kind of looks like an excited puppy taking its first steps on slippery linoleum. Right now, he just reminded me that Chloe probably had no idea he’d come to harass me.

  “Does Chloe know you’re here?”

  “Maybe. So—”

  “Don’t ask about waffles again. Focus!” I snapped, pointing at his face. His expression got serious, but the gooey emotions in his inhuman mind oozed toward mischief. Despite that, the globule of hunger at the forefront of his mind was still jiggling wildly.

  “Like a microscope.”

  “Why are you here and why were we sleeping together?”

  “You were sleeping, I was napping,” he said, as if that was a thing. “And there’s gonna be waffles. Just maybe not today.”

  “Gwen, your father said—” I heard mom call from the staircase. Izzy shifted positions, grabbed for a robe hanging next to my brother’s bed and tossed it at me. It covered my face and head, making me breathe in my own morning breath. I heard the door creak open, felt my mother’s shock and Izzy’s delight.

  “Cora!”

  I yanked the robe down just in time to see Izzy wrap his spidery limbs around my mother and yank her into a hug. I think he started purring, but my mother just looked calmly down at him for a moment, before turning to me curiously.

  “Gwen?”

  “Ah,” I said, clutching the robe close to cover the bruises along my neck. “This is my friend Izzy. He came to visit.”

  “Oh, all right.” My mother nodded, hugging Izzy back absently. When he didn’t immediately pull away, she patted his head like I’d seen her do with the kids, and then looked back to me. “I’m not sure we made enough batter, but I can make more. Izzy, do you like waffles?”