"Captain Jackson," she interjected. 

"I'm sorry?" 

"It's Captain. Not Miss." 


"Oh." Cooper felt his face go slightly red with embarrassment, "| 
apologize. Captain Jackson." Cooper tried to get back on track, "I'm 
sorry about your friends. Ulner and Leonard were good men." 


"The Ace and Jack crews knew what they were getting into. They 


saved lives, there's no greater tribute than to keep living in their 
honor." 


"Still. Leonard sacrificed himself by cutting in front of that last 
swarm. And you accounted for half of the downed clusters." 


"| just happened to be in the right places at the right times." 


"I've been empowered to grant field promotions." Cooper pulled a 
sheet of paper from one of the stacks in front of him. "Since you're 
probably the best pilot we have right now, this seems to make 
sense." 


Jackson took the sheet of paper and glanced over it. "You want me 
to take on Leonard's old command?" 


"We do, yes." 
"| can do that." 


Cooper stood up, "| have another meeting in an hour | have to get 
ready for, but later today the command staff will be having a 
meeting. 1300 hours." 


"I'll be there, sir." Jackson stood and saluted Cooper crisply. 


Cooper was caught flat footed by that, and tried to do his best to 
return it properly. The two stood there for a couple of seconds 
looking at each other before Jackson laughed. Cooper didn't quite 
keep it together either. 


"We have to work on that salute, sir." Jackson said, turning to the 
door. 


"Yes we do." Cooper said, sitting back down. 


« All Along | Straight On Till Morning Hub | Pitch 
Meeting » 


Subjects are allowed to request photographs of themselves. 
Remember, people, just because some of the photos show 
distasteful things doesn't mean that you're going to do them. ~ Dr. 


Testing Log 


Log Format 

Subject: 
Photographed Activity: 
Photo Result: 


Testing 05/ / 
Simple study of basic research team. 


Subject: Research Assistant James 

Photographed Activity: Smiling for the camera, neutral pose. 
Photo Result: Subject is shown looking much more tired and 
unprofessional, drinking from a flask. 


Subject: Research Assistant 

Photographed Activity: Smiling for the camera, neutral pose. 
Photo Result: Subject is shown in casual clothes, as if heading out 
for the night. Subject admits that she wishes to go home. 


Subject: Research Assistant 

Photographed Activity: Smiling for the camera, neutral pose. 
Photo Result: [DATA EXPUNGED] - Research Assistant is 
placed on temporary psychiatric leave. 


Subject: Dr. 
Photographed Activity: Smiling for the camera, neutral pose. 
Photo Result: Subject is shown wearing a different tie. 


Subject: Dr. 
Photographed Activity: Smiling for the camera, neutral pose. 
Photo Result: [DATA EXPUNGED] - Dr. expresses extreme 


embarrassment and apologies for this. 


Well, the first round of tests wasn't so bad. Except for those two... 
let's try this thing on some Class-D and other personnel, see if we 


The Ways in Which We Are Starved (or, The Special 
Kind of Solidarity between a Butch Wendigo and a Magic 
Twink) 


Blood. 

And flesh and. 

Bone. 

Ground beneath you. Your paw pads patter on the hard earth. The 
smell of pine. Of prey. Swirling, and all of them. Wet nose. Despite 
bone. Sleek. In the night. Antlers moving between the limbs and 
branches, 

(like puzzle pieces) 

soundless. 

You never make a single sound. Unless you want them to hear. And 
sometimes, it's more fun when they can feel you coming in the deep 
down of their guts and in their bones. When their fear rides high in 


their chest, and sometimes don't they just start piping with a terror 
so high-pitched and beautiful? 


The smell of it all comes together. The prey and the predator. It is an 
easy meal that offers much pleasure. They are not what you fear, 
and the very thought of it is 

(sacrilegious?) 

ridiculous. 

Does the cat consider the mouse? 


Does the wendigo consider the man? 


Only as much as it gave pleasure. And oh, did they give so much 


pleasure. Even as they rot and turn putrid and break. Sometimes, 
especially when they rot and turn putrid and break. 


The hunger that drives is insurmountable, and the coldness is 
pervasive and whirling and swirling. An open sky, a tundra that is 


(a taiga like you saw on nat geo didnt you always wanna go to the 
steppes and see it didnt you always want to feel the land beneath 
you where your ancestors came from where they were born and 
traveled and left and raised babies and) 


all open before you, and there is no food but what can be killed, and 
what can be killed is man. 


The hunger claws at your insides even as you feed upon flesh, even 
as you craft bone through sinew. 


When you are bored, when you are restless, when the taste of blood 
and marrow has not touched your tongue in so very long, you 
sometimes take the little ones. Their lives do not satisfy. But then 
again, nothing fills the depths of you. 


Nothing has ever been able to make you feel complete, for as long 
as you could remember. 


Except for one. 


(even before everything started even before you really made your 
moves to make yourself who you wanted wasnt lakshmi always 
there for you she never saw you as anything less and she never saw 
you as anything monstrous until you became a monster and wasnt 
even that only temporary a meanness you deserved a meanness 
long in the coming but she loves you she loves you like no one else 
could and it is terrifying to feel love like that) 


And that is what you fear above all else. That is wnat makes you cry 
out and run inward and downward. 


What you fear is feeling full. A cessation to the hunger that is you. 


The wendigo may not fear any man, but this one fears a woman. 


“Hey, big boy, wanna reach up there and grab me a book? The one 
with the fucked up looking ugly orangey cover. Bad orange. It's that 
one. You can talk, right?” the small man said. 


It didn't strike Avery, immediately, as unkind. She figured that if she 
saw her current self as her prior self that she might not have 
immediately assumed the hairy skull monster to be capable of 
speech. But then again, if she couldn't talk, why did he assume she 
knew colors? 


The book was in a sea of neutral tones and deep earthy greens. So 
it was easy to find it. And with a considerable lack of grace, she 
pulled it out and dropped it into the waiting hands of the grinning 
dude. He patted her on the back. The way someone pets a dog 
when they really would rather not touch something so big and hairy. 


“I'm a girl, you know. Name's Avery,” she said, and it still was super 
funny every time they jumped. They never expected a voice, which 
was pretty fucking hysterical. She didn't know how her vocal cords 
worked either. The jailers probably had an idea, but they weren't 
exactly super up on communicating with escaped objects. 


“Sorry, big chick. Didn't mean nothin’ by it.” It sounded affected, but 
Avery couldn't really detect any malice in it. He held the book loosely 
in his left hand, arms crossed across his chest. He didn't look like he 
ever considered that his grip could loosen even a little bit. “Still, 
thanks for that. I'd've climbed up to get the thing myself, but you 
know how those weird fuckers get when you start breaking rules.” 


“Regular librarians don't like it when you do that either,” Avery said. 
“What's in the book?” 


“Some shit guaranteed to blow your mind so high you don't come 
down.” 


“Are you reciting song lyrics at me?” 


“Shit. | guess | did. Didn't even realize it.” He held the book out. No 
writing on the front, the spine, and when he opened it, it was very 
apparent that there was no writing on it anywhere. “Check out this 
dank shit. Ridiculous, right? We can't even see it. You gotta be real 


fuckin’ on a different plane of existence, realways not drugways, to 
read it. I'm getting it out for my bud, Armand. I'm pretty sure they can 
read it. | mean, shit, if they can't, it's not like this shit costs money.” 


“What's your name?” 


“JJ.” And he tilted his head. “Bigger one's comin’. We're a bit too 
loud. Come to a reading room with me. | feel like we gotta chat.” 


Avery didn't know why, but she followed him through the 
bookshelves. This small man she had never met before. But that's 
what the Library did. Easier to accept the weird stuff and the weird 
people that came with them. 


The beast came out too often, too easily. You were honest when 
you said you didn't remember all of the ritual. Some of it feels like it 
didn't happen the way you remember. Sometimes, you worried that 
was the point of it. They probably did the sewing thing, that was for 
sure. 


But the words they said. You always remember those so different, 
every time you try. 


When it first happened, you really did blame yourself. It felt like the 
repugnance inside of you had come out. Like you deserved to feel 
and look this way. The hunger was always gnawing at the insides of 
you already. The raw jealousy you felt. The fear of ever missing out. 
And didn't your body feel like this to you anyway? Hairy and 
ungainly? Made for destruction and predation, nothing beautiful or 
soft. 


You were never a pretty, vulnerable thing. It was never easy for you 
that way. Years of pills and injections. All thrown out when some 
fucking weirdo with a furry boner decided to make some 
monstrosity. Toss a monster into the world for the hell of it. For the 
general fun of it. 


Sometimes, you'd even take your human body even before you tried 
your best to make it something habitable. You'd take yourself before 
the surgery and all of the hormones. You'd take anything if it meant 


you didn't have huge open wounds on your chest any longer. 


Sometimes, you don't even mind it. It is great to be powerful. To be 
able to run, to meld bone and use it in, really, a lot of pretty fucking 
cool ways. At least this body was, generally, about as girly as the 
one you had before. And the kind of Stantler-slash-Cubone skeleton 
face? Well, honestly, that was pretty fucking metal. 


But, it's hard to really get comfortable in a body when, at any 
moment, if you're not feeling particularly in love, deeply in love, 
something monstrous awakens and curls itself around you like some 
horrible fucking serpent. 


Sometimes it's mad. And that's when it hurts you. Or makes you hurt 
yourself. The thing inside of you isn't stronger than you are. That's 
something you've come to realize. But it has an animal cunning. It's 
patient. And it always hits you when you're at your weakest. After a 
fight. When the nightmares come. Whenever your guard isn't up. 


The worst thing isn't the constant assault on your senses from 
something bestial, obsessed with rot and never being fed. 


The worst part is that you worry that it isn't something outside of 
you. 


You worry that the monster is just you when you're hungry. 


JJ leaned back in his chair, on two legs. Sometimes he lifted the 
chair up, trying to balance on just one. It never lasted long enough to 
satisfy him. So he kept doing it. 


“Well, that's kinda fucked up,” he said at last. 


“Kind of an understatement.” But Avery smiled. It was nice that he 
didn't go on and on with it. Sympathy could be poisonous in large 
enough doses. That was something her grandfather had said. He 
probably made it up. 


“| mean, the whole monster in the brain thing aside, it's pretty cool. | 
hope that's not rude to say. Personally, | love the look. And you're in 
a relationship? Weird for a wendigo.” 


“What do you mean?” 


“Hunger can mean a lot of things, can't it?” JJ shrugged. The chair 
slipped, but his feet hit the ground, arms grabbing the table. Fingers 
gripped with surprising strength as he positioned the chair with his 
butt. He stuck to two legs after that. “Loneliness. Wendigo with a 
girlfriend doesn't exactly jive, does it? You figure a wendigo'd be too 
busy eating people to fuck them. But not you, baby girl.” 


“What are you talking about, dude?” 


“There's something, like, about it, isn't it? | think that's what's kept 
you from getting it all in, you Know? | don't know, but when | talk to 
you, | don't see anything weird. Maybe they took you for someone 
else, when they did the shit to you. Another kind of person.” JJ 
settled on four legs, stretching his long legs out in front of him. He 
almost kicked her in the shin. “Or maybe we're all hungry. Isn'ta 
wendigo just a dude who got fucked up hungry? Enough to hurt? 
And maybe sometimes, you can make them fresh. By possessing 
them with a hungry spirit.” 


Avery nodded. 


The chairs were never exactly comfortable for her. The chairs were 
designed for the human and inhuman alike, certainly, but they didn't 
see to accommodate for someone with the unique combination of 
her physique and size. And, well, it wasn't like the antlers ever 
helped anything on that point. 


So she sat on the ground. It was doglike. But then again, everything 
about her that wasn't cervine was canine, wasn't it? 


“You're lucky you're the way you are. Someone made an artificial 
one, that's what | think. Or tried. And | think you really must feel 
something powerful for this girl. Enough to keep that at bay? You're 
a strong chick, Avery. You're beautiful. You carry your look well, if 
that means anything from me.” 


“Even with the open wound thing?” Avery's smile was even more 
doglike. It betrayed the same emotion. The same wide-opened joy. If 
she had been a furry, she had always thought, hers would've 


probably been a dog. Sometimes she thought of that and laughed. It 
only bitter some of the time. 


“Kind of got this cenobite swag going, if you ask me.” 
“Weren't they those perverts from the Clive Barker movie?” 


“Dude, Pinhead got good at the end of one of them or something. 
It's cool. Did you ever get into that series?” 


“Not really.” 


“Makes me think of you, just a little bit. The cenobites are people, 
you know. But they're chained inside. | read some wikia entry on 
them or something, it was wild as hell. They're, like, chained and 
wrought and boxed like steel inside of themselves, and the ways in 
which they're a monster come out.” 


“I'm not a monster,” Avery said. 


“No, you're not. And that's what's so impressive to me. No one in the 
movie really escaped the box or whatever you wanna see it as 
without wild help. And it never lasted long. But you, you're barely in 
it. The thing inside of you that's starved for everything can't beat 
you.” JJ beamed. “So, you stay here?” 


“Pretty much.” 


“Yeah, cool. Well, wanna walk me to the check-out? The fucking 
dudes here, the what do you call them? Docents? Scare the shit out 
of me. I'd like to get a bigger lady between me and then, if you're 
cool with that.” 


“Whatever, man. They sort of freak me out sometimes, too. But they 
don't bother you, if you don't bother them.” 


“Like sharks.” 
“Book sharks.” 


JJ shivered and slid out from the chair. Elegant. Sometimes, Avery 
had wished she was that elegant, before she had embraced the kind 


of woman she was. Elegance wasn't the only road to womanhood. If 
she had been femme, maybe, this transformation would've killed 
her. 


Instead? Well, she didn't want to kill herself, that was for sure. 


Blood flowed and. 

Flesh tore so easily with the. 
Bones breaking and cracking and. 
Marrow. 


That you sucked straight from the bone, yielding wantonly toward 
you better than any lover could. It was all a dance. Romance was 
the same as the hunt was the same as feeding was the same as 

fornication. 


But there was nothing that tasted greater than marrow soaked in 
fear. What is womanhood and what is manhood to a predator? What 
is beauty to something that is beyond all of that, a hunter made 
perfect and efficient and hungry oh-so hungry?