Snippet #2682908

Suddenly all of the amusement that had surrounded the situation only a moment earlier seemed to be sucked out of the room with three spoken words; her voice deliberate, slicing each syllable with pregnant silence. Jackson's hands formed shameful fists at his sides, nails biting his palms angrily. He towered over his mother but he might as well of been three feet tall. Eighteen years might as well of been six. "What?" He stabbed, tone falsely void of guilt to spite his culpable gaze.

Lauren looked taken aback by the bravado in her son's voice; she straightened her back up and folded her arms across her chest. "What do you mean 'what'? You nearly got arrested! Again!" she exclaimed her voice high with exasperation. She unfolded her arms and pointed back behind her, "That is not keeping a low profile! Do you realize how lucky you are? If it had been any other cop besides John you would be down at the station right now!"

Jackson bared his teeth in the effort to keep accusing words from tumbling out of his mouth, but to no avail. They bore their way through like persistent termites out to destroy the foundation of the house or in this case the foundation of their relationship. "Ugh, that guy's a total perv mom. Wake up! Besides, I wouldn't have to 'keep a low profile' if you'd quit lying to everyone and let me be what we are!" The implication hung there, hovering like a ghost. Smothering and suffocating the never posed question, why?

Lauren, for the most part, rarely lost her temper, but at the present was having a hard time containing herself. She had tried sheltering Jackson from a lot of their troubles, had wanted him to lead as normal a life as a young werewolf possibly could living among humans; yet now she realized this had not impressed upon him the type of caution that he needed to survive. She could also sense the aural presence of his unspoken question. The 'why' behind all her actions which she stubbornly denied any real answer to. "Jackson - I don't lie because I want to- I lie for the sake of us both! If we acted on our natural instincts and people discovered what we are we would be persecuted and sent to the ghetto, or worse!"

"What's so terrible about the ghettos?" He shouted, his voice finding footholds in his indignation on which to climb higher. "Are they really any worse than this?!" He kicked the wall to his left, and the floor moulding coughed out a cloud of dust before abandoning it's place as part of the partition to join the floor. The regret was instantaneous.

His anger fell from his chest to pool in his gut, cold and clammy and uncomfortable. "Mom, I'm sorry...I didn't mean for it to come out like that." Jackson's voice was tired and thin. He looked like a car stripped at a junkyard, form and polish ripped away to reveal a rusted frame, brittle and bare, sanded down to the bone. "I just mean...if we are gonna live like this anyway...why not in one place, with people like us. You know, sure maybe the conditions are crappier but the company could be nice, right?" He shuttered a sigh, never intending to insult all his mother continued to provide. He knew her life hadn't an easy one even if the details of it still remained a mystery to him. He just couldn't take the lies anymore, but he was beginning to doubt she could even find the truth if she had wanted to. Somethings were buried so deep, unearthing them would mean the destruction of everything that made a home above it.

Every muscle in her body tightened for a moment as if she had been given an electric shock as his foot met the molding with a 'bang' and the decorative board collapsed. After the shock washed over her, her face fell blank, almost catatonic as she listened. She was retreating back inside herself and she was having a hard time finding words when it was her time to speak.

"I wish... I wish I could give you a pack. A family. But..." She shook her head, "But it's just not that simple Jackson. It's not. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry, it's just me you have."

This wasn't the complete truth either of course, only increasing the deadening feeling inside her, a numbing cold spreading through her soul like winter. There was Jared. Her first son who still inquired after his little brother in every letter, how he was doing, how tall he was, how got along in each new town they moved to. He was eager to meet him one day... But she was too afraid of letting her old and new world meet.

"I'll be outside." With that she went back out onto the porch, perching herself on the side where the railing had fallen off.

He watched her retreating figure, the silence in her wake stretching thick like mud. All this pain for his defiance and fruitless defiance at that. He swallowed the lump in his throat, and reluctantly trailed after her. The screen door protested it's overuse within the past hour with a few pitiable whines, but then fell prey to the quiet as well. His mother was stooped on the porch, legs dangling over the sides, eyes distant. Jackson lowered himself beside her with a apologetic smile, wrapping an arm around her narrow shoulders. The weight of her against him was comforting, like the press of a Kevlar vest, a shield against the world. "You remember that dumb game we used to play? The uh, the five senses one?" His words were colored with acceptance, a substitute for 'it's okay, you're enough.' He wouldn't ask her to say anymore on the subject of their situation, the argument left behind in the house to be picked up at a later date. It was far from forgotten though, like a rock in his shoe the question would exist, a hard irritant that would tear everything around it until removed.

Lauren smiled against her son's shoulder and gave an affirmative 'mmhmm'. She pulled away, sitting back up with her head erect looking, listening, smelling her surroundings. The sun was starting to go down, a blend of oranges and pinks silhouetting the mountains and barns of the landscape. A cool breeze floated by, ruffling their hair and she closed her eyes, took a deep breath. "What are the neighbors cooking for dinner?" she asked.

There weren't very many werewolf games that Lauren had taught Jackson. She generally didn't encourage him to use any of his supernatural abilities. But the senses she made an exception for; she didn't see any harm in him honing them. They could help him survive even in the human world and were underrated by werewolves even though they were just as important as strength and the ability to transform. You could win a fight without being very strong. Adam had taught her this.

There was always something to draw your focus outside, even in the evening--the huddled mounds of birds, succumbed to the lethargy of the hour, heaped on the creaking boughs of the trees; their lazy mellisonant songs were a distraction. As were the flares of dying light caught in his eyes, the rimose porch beneath him, or the hundreds of overloading divergent scents drafted on the breeze…but Jackson was prepared. They had played this game a hundred different times, a hundred different ways. He knew how to win, how to concentrate and identify. This was the one time when his mother happily celebrated his wolfish side, and he never relented an opportunity to prove himself. He lifted his chin, taking in a few whiffs from their neighbor’s distant direction.


It was consequential and widely unrecognized that to discern the origin of a smell, you had to taste it on the back of your tongue. If you inhaled deeply enough for the air to reach the somatosensory parts of your body, you would discover the source. This was somewhat unpleasant if the scent in question was a particularly nasty one. But the trick wasn’t detecting a smell or espying the fount, but pegging what it was. He grinned, meeting her wide fawn eyes. "Pork chops?" He posed, knowing full and well what her reply would be. He could practically taste the grease popping from the griddle. They’d go on like this for another hour or so. ‘What sides were being served, how many people could he hear in the house, etc.’ This was how she sated his desire to succumb to his true being. It was a distraction but not one that was sustainable. For now though, they challenged one another in blissful denial until the moon crept over their shoulders and chased them into the house for supper and then to their respective beds to lay to rest that lamentable day. Jackson fell asleep with a content smile on his face, burying his concerns and questions in his dreams.