Waxing off, p.1
Waxing Off, page 1
Waxing Off
A Novella
E.E.W. Christman
Pride with a Bite
Pride with a Bite
www.pridewithabite.com
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© 2025 by E.E.W. Christman
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Contents
1. Dedication
2. Prologue
3. Chapter 1
4. Chapter 2
5. Chapter 3
6. Chapter 4
7. Chapter 5
8. Chapter 6
9. Chapter 7
10. Chapter 8
11. Chapter 9
12. Chapter 10
13. Chapter 11
14. Chapter 12
15. Epilogue
16. Acknowledgements
17. Accompanying Playlist
18. About the Author
19. Information on (TERFs)
20. About Pride with a Bite
Dedication
To all the closets.
Every egg needs a shell to protect it as it learns and grows.
While a shell’s destiny is to be broken, its first purpose is to protect.
Prologue
Hunters hunt. Predators know prey. This is the way of the world.
For beasts, the distinction is clear enough. It is written into the craters of their skulls that house the eyes and the palette of their flesh. They inherit their roles. “It’s the law of the jungle.”
Then there’s people. People who have mastered the art of camouflage, who cloak themselves in the trappings of society and circumstance when they prepare to hunt. Predators who hunt with their eyes facing forward, showing their teeth in faux submission.
Ken Moore waited near the bushes outside of Skippy’s Fish Fry. It was a good blind spot; the nearby trees created enough cover to obscure him in shadows while allowing him to watch through the restaurant’s big front windows. The new girl, Ken thought. She’s something special.
The employee in question was last to leave the illuminated parking area. While others drove or walked deeper into town, “the new girl” lingered, pretending to look at their phone. They didn’t move until they thought they were alone, and when they did, it was down Doe Road, which only had two things of interest: an overgrown path that used to lead to the warehouse district but now served as an unofficial hiking and biking trail, and a public bathroom with no toilet seats that sported the town’s (and perhaps the world’s?) only Sprite Remix soda machine. Ken wasn’t sure who owned it or who kept refilling it, but he did remember a summer where it only dispensed Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper. On a different sort of night, he might be inclined to see what the mystery soda machine had on offer. But tonight, he had other desires.
Ken followed in the dark. Somehow, his quarry didn’t need a light to guide their way. Perhaps they had taken this path so many times, they knew it even in the dark. At the time, Ken only thought it passing odd. Nevertheless, he managed to not stumble through the woods, and soon enough, the trees parted and there was the Puget Sound, its waves bright with moonlight. Ken lingered, waiting for the gap between them to grow before descending the hill to the abandoned warehouse district’s docks. What is she doing all the way out here? he wondered. Maybe it was one of those home conversion things; turning a space you weren’t supposed to live in into a space you did. Or maybe she’s squatting. Isolated. Alone. Ken licked his lips.
The fog was thick by the water. He followed a shadow, a silhouette barely visible by moonlight. It was much more difficult to stay quiet on the boardwalk; every step creaked. Still, a lot of things were creaking out here. And anyway, what did it matter if he was heard now, so far away from town? His heart spiked with adrenaline. The chase was intoxicating.
The shadow hastened and turned, perhaps hearing Ken and fearfully trying to escape by cutting between two half-collapsed warehouses near the pier where the trawlers used to dock. Ken picked up the pace, excitement gathering in his abdomen and below. But when he turned that same corner, he found himself alone with a long stretch of misty boardwalk. There were no entrances to the warehouses here, and he hadn’t heard the telltale sound of running footsteps. There’s no way he’d lost that much ground in the few moments it had taken him to follow his prey here. Ken stood stunned, swallowed in fog, unsure of how to proceed.
When Ken heard the howl—far too close—his body felt the shape of it in his abdomen. The noise filled him, crowding out all modern human thought. Cat’s Cove had wolves. They could often be heard, distantly, singing in the woods at night. It was always an “out there” noise. A distant thing that belonged to a world of wild and wood. Ken had never even seen a wolf. They had no place in the life of the average person in an island fishing town. At least, not as more than a backdrop.
A primal shadow was cast on the wall of Ken’s consciousness, a holdover from somewhere down the evolutionary track when humans often found themselves crouching in the dark from monsters. Even Ken’s darker urges recoiled and were replaced by something ancient and sniveling.
The fog was too thick, so at first, there was only the creaking of wood and footfalls. Something approaching, something hunting. The sound of the waves beneath them was suddenly cacophonous. He saw the eyes first, luminous orbs hovering like will o’ the wisps. Beneath them, a snarl of teeth manifested, wet and glistening in the moonlight like a more vicious Cheshire Cat. The grin widened, revealing a chasm in the fog, its jaw a black hole waiting to swallow Ken up. Not a monster, Ken thought. But the instinct unfurling inside him whispered, How could a mere canine make a noise so loud it froze you like a rabbit? “Wolf” isn’t adequate. “Wolf” is a small word for small creatures. There is only “monster” and “victim.”
The second howl shook something loose inside his guts. The smell trailed behind him as he ran from the beast, back across the docks and up the hill toward the woods, trying to ignore the feeling in his shoes. It was hard—but not impossible—to feel shame when his heart was a fist against his ribs. Ken hadn’t known he was capable of running so fast. Not even falling in the dark could slow him down; each tumble was a mere punctuation mark in his urgency to return to town, to streetlights, to civilization. Pine needles and brambles scratched and snatched at his clothes, but Ken merely plowed through the foliage, the memory of that horrible maw driving him onward. When he saw a yellow square of light glowing in the dark, he nearly wept. A window! A house! People! He was yards away from safety.
I made it, Ken thought, as a silent hand reached out from the dark and slit his throat.
Chapter 1
The man ran, because of course he did. Predators were always cowards. Drew could smell it on him as easily as they could’ve smelled cologne; the stench of a man who wanted to do harm. But in the end, he’d run. That made Drew’s life easier. If he ran, Drew wouldn’t have to hurt him. Hurting men, even when more than well deserved, always complicated things.
Drew picked up their hastily discarded uniform; they couldn’t afford ripping their clothes all the time. The cool fog felt good on their bare skin, now dotted with sweat. They’d already been exhausted from a day of minimum-waging. This nonsense had drained them completely. Worse still, Drew could still smell the man’s malintent hanging in the air—along with the pungent aroma of his shit. It reminded Drew of old onions and BO. At least he was gone. The smell would disappear soon as well.
The Gomez was moored at the end of a loading dock near one of the larger warehouses. Even with the roof caved in, the old building was huge enough to easily conceal Drew’s little sailboat from view. Drew had learned the hard way to value their privacy above all else. They dumped their clothes into the stern and lowered themself into the salty waves. The cold ocean relaxed their aching muscles and stung their cuts in a way that reminded them of disinfectant (although open wounds in salt water was likely the opposite of restorative). The pain was refreshing nevertheless, like aquatic acupuncture. They floated on their back for a long time, drifting too far from the dock and watching the moon. Not yet full, yet still hypnotic. A thrum ran through their entire body. They felt it rippling into the water, the force of residual power that was always there but would reach its zenith so on, not unlike the rising of the tide. Drew looked at the moon—their patron, their captor, their world—their body suspended in its mirror image, and imagined a world without it. Cities flooded, coasts obliterated, skyscrapers rising from the brine like steel coral—but perhaps, freedom? It was a selfish fantasy, one Drew wasn’t even sure was true. But it was a cathartic solace, and after running that man back into the woods, Drew felt it was deserved.
Drew dove down into the abyss, away from their orbiting master. In the black ocean, they could almost taste normality. After a time, they swam back to their boat and hauled themself up, their slick frame flopping onto the hard stern like a caught trout. Drew stood up and saw their blood mixed with the seawater, runny like a broken yolk. They cursed. It came like clockwork, but that didn’t mean their period was welcome. They rummaged around their tiny cabin for tampons. Last one. Drew made a mental note to get more tomorrow and hoped one would last until morning. They dried themself and put on some relatively clean clothes before slipping into their tiny bed—less a bed and more of a large, misshapen pillow that sat on the floor—in the cabin. Sleep came quickly, and was followed by the sweet absence of dreams.
Drew’s uterus hauled them back into the waking world at the crack of dawn. Yellow light spilled in through the tiny blue drapes over the windows in their cabin. Disgustingly cheery, considering the state Drew found themself in. It felt like they’d been kicked in the abdomen repeatedly all night. They groaned. They reached for painkillers and found only empty bottles. Fuck. The walk into town would suck ass.
Drew floundered through their morning routine, racked with cramps. They spat toothpaste into the sea with disdain, scrubbed their hair in disgust. Not even their favorite cereal cheered them—after the last time Drew had docked for an extended stay, they’d promised themself they’d invest in a minifridge for the Gomez. Eating out constantly (ha) depleted their funds too quickly. They hunched over the battery-powered fridge, sucking on their spoon, absolutely joyless. As badly as they wanted to crawl back into bed, they needed tampons and food. Drew got dressed and began their slow trek toward Cat’s Cove, moving northeast through the trees.
They heard the voices before they saw the flashing blue and red lights at the end of the road closest to the woods. Drew froze and ducked behind an elm tree, listening and sniffing at the air. Hurried voices in urgent tones; several sets of boots marching back and forth across the dirt; the electric shutter of a camera; the strangely tangy aroma of sweat, rich with cortisol. And yes, the smell of flesh. No longer warm, but not yet rotting. Drew’s stomach twisted at the familiarity. It couldn’t be the same man that had followed them last night. Drew had chased him off, nothing more. And yet there were other smells in the air: adrenaline, saliva, dried blood, fur. It smelled—they didn’t even want to think about it—like Drew. And they could catch snippets of the conversation between the sheriff’s deputies and the coroner: claws… animal… what could…
Drew marched east, away from the crime scene. They swallowed bile as they took the long way into town, avoiding the roads and prying eyes. They hadn’t killed him. So, what had?
And the tantalizing thought dangling in front of them, almost begging to be true: were there others like Drew?
Cat’s Cove was a small town with little to celebrate. It had a dying fishing industry that was barely kept afloat by the local tourist industry. It wasn’t as popular as the nearby San Juan Islands, but the Pacific Northwest had enough whale watchers, kayakers, and hikers to go around. The campgrounds were packed every summer. But come September, the island emptied, save for its meager residents, who prepared for the coming cold of winter and the financial dry season.
The light in the nine-month dark was upon them, however. The Fisherman’s Festival was part harvest festival, part pre-Halloween celebration, part cash grab. A chimera of holidays that brought one last influx of tourists. The ferry ran from the mainland to Cat’s Cove non-stop, opening earlier and closing later. The campgrounds reopened, people rented out spare rooms and guesthouses for the weekend, and every restaurant and bar hired extra help in preparation for the event. That’s how Drew had scored their job at Skippy’s without much fuss. The manager was too busy to worry about something like references, of which Drew had none.
The town had transformed in the lead-up to the Fisherman’s Festival. Businesses put out jack-o'-lanterns, their orange fleshed carved in the shapes of salmon and orcas; string lights hung from every pole in neat arches; and everywhere Drew looked, they saw fishing poles, nets, and depictions of fishermen. There was a whole fleet of them, made of bundles of bound straw and decorated like maritime scarecrows, sailing in little rowboats on sidewalks and in the town square.
Drew hurried down the sidewalk toward the pharmacy’s neon sign. They heard snippets of whispered conversations: did you hear…a body in the woods…an animal attack, they’re saying…
Eventually, Drew even caught the man’s name. Ken Moore. And, unsurprisingly, he wasn’t very well-liked. Drew picked out more than one good riddance as they ducked into the store.
Maybe it had just been a random animal attack, Drew thought as they loaded up their basket. After all, they’d heard there were actual wolves on the island. Maybe they’d even been drawn to that part of the woods because of Drew’s scent. This calmed Drew down. They felt so much better, in fact, they decided to get themself a treat—a giant bag of beef jerky and a chocolate bar approximately the size of a VHS tape—before getting in line. They’d go back to the Gomez until work, then spend the rest of their day curled up in bed with a hot water bottle and snacks.
Drew wrinkled their nose. They sniffed. There was the chemical smell of drugs, the intoxicating aroma of cheap perfumes and body washes, the coppery smell of Drew’s own menstrual blood. But beneath that, there was something else. Something primal. The scent of a predator on the hunt, hard to explain and yet unmistakable. Drew had to remind themself to breathe.
There was no mistaking that for an animal. They felt and smelled the cold panic beading on their own neck. It was here. So close that Drew could taste its musk on their tongue.
Drew made very precise movements as their nose hunted frantically for the source. They needed to breathe, they needed to step forward, they needed to smile at the teller as they handed over their debit card. Drew couldn’t broadcast their alarm. They focused on their breathing. But it was no use. There were too many people and too many competing smells in here to pinpoint who was the font.
Instinctual gears started to turn. Drew repressed a shudder as a wave of transformative desire washed over them. Not here, not now…
They had to force themself not to run as they left the store. Even outside, Drew didn’t start to feel normal—or what passed for normal—until they had made it several blocks away onto a nearby residential road, where they proceeded to vomit into a drainage ditch. But beneath the heaving nausea, there was something bordering on elation.
They weren’t alone. Finally, there were others.
Too bad they were a murderer, whoever they were.
Chapter 2
Hours earlier, in the darkness of very early morning, two women walked through the woods. Neither carried a flashlight; there was no need. Both had been raised on Cat’s Cove and knew the terrain as well as they knew their own bodies.
“I can smell it,” one said. She was a tall woman. Her skin had the slightly leathery look of someone who had spent a lifetime working in the sun. She was frowning, her hooked nose sniffing at the air.
“Yes. Sal said it was this way,” her companion responded. She was much shorter and smoother. Her body was unsmirched from hardship, with pale flesh, soft hands, and perfectly coiffed hair. Despite being the same age, it was clear they walked very different paths.
“I remember,” Kathleen muttered. Victoria smiled at her walking companion’s short fuse. It had always been this way, ever since they were girls. Kathleen had a temper like a wildcat.
“Of course.”
