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The opening chords to "Cannibal" by Tally Hall—my favorite band of all time—played loudly from my phone, disrupting my peaceful sleep. I stirred in my bed, groaning from the sudden noise. It's one of my favorite songs ever (I have a lot), but when it interrupts your morning, you begin to form a grievance with it. I hoped that it would help me wake up quicker since I adored it so much, but it just turned out to be annoying.
Either way, I began to mutter the lyrics with my face stuffed into my pillow.
"Looking for a cavern... A place where she can stay..." My voice was slurred and hoarse, but I didn't care. "Waiting for the darkness... When she leaves obsessed to make her way to me..."
I pressed my paws onto the mattress and lifted my head from the pillow, doing a yoga pose of sorts to stretch out my limbs. "Because it's getting to the time when she will need to feed..."
I turned around in a blaze of glory and threw the blankets off of me, exposing my bare dirty-brown fur.
"And I am..." I jumped up from the bed, grabbed a hairbrush off of the bedside table, and placed it towards my mouth, signifying a microphone. "...the willing victim of a CANNIBAL!"
Never mind what I said before, I still love this song. I began to jump around on my bed, making a mess of the already disorganized pillows and blankets. I shook my head back and forth rapidly, enough to give me head trauma, shouting off-key vocals into the hairbrush. "She rips out my bones just like I'm an ANIMAL!"
I jumped off of the bed, landing on the wooden plank floor with my bare feet. I had slept in my jeans, which was uncomfortable, yes, but I was insanely tired last night, so I threw off my t-shirt and hit the sheets the moment I got home. "And right when I'm feeling like my blood is drained... she calls it a game..."
I looked around the bedroom, admiring the view of it. "But the wound that she leaves is unmistakable..."
Some people would think my room had an ugly color scheme, but I thought the many browns and grays suited my personality and my fur. The walls were painted those exact colors and adorned many posters, displaying my favorite bands; such as Tally Hall, Neutral Milk Hotel, Big Thief, Quadeca, Women, Roar, Duster, Broken Social Science, and much, much more. Music was my way of seeing the world. I grew up with the sound of guitar strings and drum snares constantly ringing in my head. I wouldn't be who I am today without these bands.
"I am not the only one that she has come to see..." I opened the door to my room and walked out into the hallway, my phone in hand with the song still playing. "Dig up the skeletons of men who thought that they would be the one like me..."
I barged into the bathroom to see my twin-coyote sister, Rosie, a towel around her chest and her head. She's one year younger than me but very short in height. I think she got that trait from our mom. She turned around from the sink instantly, a toothbrush in her maw.
"What the hell are you doing?!" She shouted, toothpaste blocking her jaw from opening wider.
"Like they could be the ones to make her believe..." I kept singing, ignoring her. I began to unzip my fly and pull off my jeans, much to Rosie's dismay.
"Ew, what the fuck, Harvey?!" She screamed, covering her eyes and racing out of the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.
"But for now..." I placed my phone on the sink counter, turning up the volume as my voice got higher once again, ready to sing the electric chorus that I had memorized for so many years. I stripped down naked and clasped the handles of the shower, turning the water back on. I jumped in, shut the curtain, and shouted, "I am the willing victim of a CANNIBAL!"
I squirted shampoo into my paw and coated my fur in it, scrubbing my entire body. "She rips out my bones just like I'm an animal!" I backed up into the stream, drowning in the hot water. I was surprised there was still some left since Rosie had already taken one earlier. I thrust my face towards the shower head, water catching into my mouth as I mumbled the lyrics through the stream. "And right when I'm feeling like my blood is drained, she calls it a game—" I stuck my head out from the stream, catching my breath. "—but the wound that she leaves is unmistakable..."
Once the shower was over, I brushed my teeth as Rosie had done earlier, still singing the song through the brushing. I was unable to stop. "Hiding in corners, disguised... She's a phantom, a glimmer inside..." I spit out my toothpaste and reached for the dental floss, shoving the string in between each and every sharp and pointy tooth in my mouth. "She keeps on feeding while I am conceding... So, please won't you tear me open wide..."
During the short bridge section with no lyrics, I took the time to swish mouthwash within my maw, spitting it out into the sink. I snatched a stick of deodorant and applied it to you-know-where and grabbed two towels, folding one around my damp waist and one over my shoulders. I obtained my phone, holding it back up to my mouth, hearing the notes ascend to a peak. The chorus was coming back, and I was ready to sing, this time, with flawless and on-point vocals.
I swung open the bathroom door.
"I am... the WILLING VICTIM OF A—"
Hayley, my mother, stood in the doorway with her arms crossed and eyebrows raised.
Caught off guard, I pressed pause on the song and looked at her, a little awkward.
She raised her paws and maneuvered them in certain ways, swiftly and fluently, allowing me to interpret her hand gestures into words using ASL.
"Why is your sister complaining about you to me again?" She signed, returning to her arms-crossed stance. She glared at me, expecting an answer.
I raised my own paws, communicating back to her through sign language.
"I was just being annoying, my bad."
"Why do you always use two towels? You only need one."
I looked down at the towel around my waist and the one slinked around my shoulders.
"Right, sorry," I signed, clutching the soaked towel from my shoulders and handing it to her.
"No, I don't want it, I'm just telling you," She mouthed with no voice, using her hands again, pushing the towel away.
"Oh," I said, aloud, without my hands, putting the towel back around my neck. "Sorry."
"Quit saying sorry," She told me, her strict and intimidating glare changing to a more tenderhearted glance. She brushed her paw through the fur on my head and ruffled my damp hair, containing a bit of laughter. She knew that I knew that Hayley could never get angry with me. I chuckled, swatting her paw away.
She slapped the back of my head as a way to say, 'Get outta here', entering the bathroom after me. I walked back into my bedroom and shut the door. I reached into my drawers and seized a pair of underwear, corduroy pants, and a vintage Nirvana logo tee (very original, I know) and threw them all on. I tucked my shirt into my pants and slid a belt through the loops, adding my fall flannel to the mix. I picked up my black backpack from the floor and fit my arms through the straps, ready for another boring day of school.
Before I left, I looked at a certain area of my room. On the wall, above my bed, hung my special electric guitar on a wall mount hanger. I only ever used that guitar, the one my father had gifted me, for performing or writing music. I had given my first acoustic guitar to Rosie after I had received the Fender Stratocaster. I saw my reflection in it and winked at the instrument.
"I'll be back for you tonight."
I raced down the stairwell of my house since my room was on the second floor of our three-story brownstone. Once I had reached the bottom floor, I found my sister, sitting at the dining table in the kitchen, gnawing on a few pancakes that my mother had been baking on the stove. I ran over and grabbed one pancake from the pile that sat on the plate on the middle of the table, placing it into my mouth and turning around. I moved hastily towards the front door and shoved my feet into my brown Converse shoes, leaning over onto one knee and tying the white shoelaces of my left foot. As I knotted the threads, I could see my mother's slippers walk into my peripheral vision. I looked up at her as she continued to flick her hands around.
"You're leaving so early," She signed.
"I'm late for school," I signed back, swapping onto my other knee, tying the shoelaces of my right foot. After tightening the laces into a bow, I stood up and kissed my mother on the cheek, heading for the door. "Bye, idiot!" I shouted at my sister.
"Bye, fuckface!" She shouted back.
My mother was against cursing, but since she couldn't hear us, Rosie and I had a grand time using swear words in front of her. Sometimes, she would read our lips and catch us in the act, but only sometimes. Once, at a family dinner, Rosie and I said all the curse words we could think of, one after another, right in front of her. My father tried to stop us, but he also found it pretty funny, even if he tried to deny it. Mom just looked around at all of us laughing, confused, and adorably oblivious.
My mother had always been an innocent, sweet, and timid young woman. She was a small fox who had fell in love with a large coyote who had swept her off of her feet in high school, being the shortest in the family. We all loved her for her harmless and genuine disposition, especially my father. He was so in love with her when he was around.
I walked out of the house and jumped down the front steps, reaching my bike. I hopped on and set my paws on the handlebars, planting my feet onto the pedals. Before I could ride off down the sidewalk, my mother ran up to me and held onto the bike, not letting me go.
"What's wrong?" I questioned.
She held up a bicycle helmet and attempted to place it on my head.
"Mom, I'm not a kid, I'll be fine," I rejected, shooing her arms away as she tried to give it to me.
"I want you to be safe," She signed fiercely, crossing her fists and pulling them out to her sides repeatedly so that I could get the word 'safe' in my head. "You know why I'm like this."
Slowly, I nodded my head.
Dad had died in a car crash.
Mom has never been the same since.
I took the helmet from her hands and put it on my head, my ears fitting through the two small holes on the top. I clicked the chin straps together, securing it into place. I knocked on the top of it twice with my fist and looked at my mother, who had shown me a weak smile.
"I'll be okay," I told her with sincerity, placing emphasis on every hand movement in order to convince her.
She placed her paw on her chest where her heart was and nodded back.
I touched my finger to my own chest.
"I..."
I crossed my arms to form an X across my upper body.
"Love..."
I pointed at her.
"You."
Her smile grew wider as her eyebrows tilted with emotion. She signed the same three words back, but in a different way, with her pinky finger, pointer finger, and thumb stuck out while the middle and ring fingers pressed against her palm. I smiled once again.
I kicked the bike stand with my left foot and placed it back on the pedal, giving Hayley one last look of assurance before biking off.