Water and Oil
Chapter 2:
When his mother was going through her yoga craze, he had heard her recite a bunch of ancient eastern religion mumbo-jumbo. He didn't remember most of it, of course, but there was something that did stick with him. The Chakras. There were seven of them – the base, the sacrum, the solar plexus, the heart, the throat, the third eye, and the crown. He had never known that his memory was so strong, but there it was…
He could now feel each of those Chakras turning, isolating the pain to each region in turn while his body twisted and writhed, the wolf trying to establish its dominion over each cell. And the kicker was that it was just starting… he couldn't even imagine how bad he'll be howling in several hours' time when the wolf would try to take over completely.
When the pain allowed him a moment's reprieve, he wondered what sort of mutation this was that seemed to serve no real purpose at all. Unless, the whole purpose of this transformation was to test his perseverance in tolerating pain. Or maybe… maybe, the assumption was that anyone having the gall to kill someone also had the proverbial "thick skin" that allowed them to suffer through the torture of this night? But he hadn't killed anyone on purpose… not that there was any werewolf jury to make his case to… it didn't matter though… Someone had died at his hands. As much of a dick as he was, even he knew that what he was about to go through tonight wouldn't be enough justice for taking a life.
He wondered if anyone had died during their first time. He wondered what would happen if he survived tonight. Strangely enough, the possibility of death did not faze him all that much. He wondered, not for the first time, why Forbes was helping him. He wondered many things, not that it did him any good.
The pain struck him suddenly without warning. It was the chakra in the sacrum now, having moved up from the base. It contorted his body in half and was so intense that it cut off his power of speech for a few seconds. When it passed, he emitted the growl that had been stuck in his throat, although he couldn't help but feel cheated that it came out as a very pale imitation of the pain that had preceded it.
She was near him in a flash; there was some advantage to being able to run at the speed of light.
"Tyler? Are you okay?" He heard her crouch down behind him gently and when he didn't respond, she took his head onto her lap and smoothed her palm over his sweaty forehead.
"Are you okay?" She asked again.
He tried to speak, but his voice came out so hoarse that he had to stop and start again.
"You know, Forbes. This pain is like thunder and lightning. By the time I make whatever embarrassing noise that I am making, the pain has already come and gone."
He could see that she didn't know how to react to what he said, so he helped her out by trying to crack a smile. It was not his best effort, especially because he had partially lost feeling around his lips.
"Don't worry Forbes. It's not too bad yet. You'll know when it gets really bad. That's when I'll be trying to tear your non-beating heart out."
And this time she did smile while she absently smoothed his hair back. He couldn't tell her how much that touch meant to him. It would be the only thing carrying him through the rest of that horrendous night when the pain got so bad that he wondered how his nerve cells didn't explode from the intensity. He had hoped for a certain level of numbness, maybe an out-of-body experience, even some hallucinations, anything to distract him from what was happening to him, but nothing like that happened. He felt it all… He felt it when he turned on her that first time, forcing her to leave the room and lock it behind, he felt it when he tried to claw his way out of his shackles and out of the cellar, he felt it when he couldn't run away and the animal in him stalked back and forth in that claustrophobic space, taking its rage out on the human body that it saw as its sole restraint.
When it was all over and the beast receded, leaving behind only his battered body and withered soul, the only thing he remembered aside from the pain was a hazy image of an angel who had smoothed his hair back. He didn't remember that it was her until she came back to him as the dawn broke through. And when she hugged him to her and once again gave him her nurturing touch while telling him that he had made it through and that he was okay, he finally did tell her the truth.
"I am not okay, Caroline."
