The Ghost of Calico

In the town of Barstow, the air was thick with the scent of dust and exhaust, and it was filled with the constant yapping of the people who lived to make others feel small. Cody had lived in that noise for 27 years. He was the man who was always 'wrong', with a silence that people mistook for a void.

When he was a kid in school, people stepped all over him. Every time Coach Corbitt needed to demonstrate a weakness to the rest of gym class, he used Cody. Every time Steven and his friends felt bored, they found Cody and tormented him.

The seed was planted on a hot Tuesday in ninth grade.

Cody was 14 at the time, and he was already a ghost in the hallways of Barstow High. He'd spent the first semester ducking into shadows, trying to outrun the voices of his tormenters, but the Mojave Desert has a way of cornering the weak.

It was after PE, the air in the locker room rich with the scent of Axe body spray and the stink of sweaty teenage boys. Cody was at his locker with his back turned, trying to disappear into the metal slats. He was focused on his shoelaces, praying for the bell to ring so he could escape this wretched period. He hated PE more than anything else. He didn't hear them approach until the circle had already closed in around him.

Steven was 15 and already broad-shouldered with a shadow of a mustache and a heart like ice. He was followed closely by five of his friends. They called themselves the 'Barstow Boys', the boys whose fathers barely saw life outside of a jail cell and whose mothers basically carried them on their hips like infants who could do no wrong. Their eyes were bright with the predatory thrill of an easy kill.

In Steven's hand was a jug of bleach, swiped from the janitor's cart in the hallway.

"Sup, Freak?" Steven said, his voice echoing against the tile. "Think if you stay quiet enough, we'll forget you're here?"

Cody didn't respond.

"I think you should stand out a little more." Steven smiled. "Don't you guys think he looks a little... dull?"

The others grunted in agreement. Without a word of warning, two of Steven's friends lunged, grabbing Cody by the shoulders. He was small then. His muscles had not yet formed into that of a man, and they slammed him face first against the locker. The cold metal bit into his cheek, and the taste of his own blood filled his mouth.

"Keep him still!" Steven commanded, stepping into the center of the circle.

Cody went rigid, his breath hitching in his throat as he felt the heavy weight of the plastic jug tip over the back of his head.

The bleach was cold at first as it soaked through his dark hair and ran down his neck, saturating his shirt and stinging his eyes. Then, the chemical heat began to blossom. It was a searing, white hot itch that felt like a thousand needles being driven into his skull at once. The caustic liquid ate into his scalp and Cody screamed.

The room erupted with high-pitched laughter. No one stepped in to help or told them to stop... because they didn't care. Cody stood screaming in agony while they chuckled, a horrifying sound that filled the locker room, drilling deep into Cody's brain. Steven leaned in close, his face twisted in a smug, disgusting grin as he watched the dark strands of Cody's hair began to shrivel and lose their color, turning a sickly, patchy, yellowish white color.

They stood back with their arms crossed, watching as Cody collapsed to his knees, his hands clawing at the dirty tile floor. They laughed as he wept, not only because of the agonizing burning on his skin, but because of the soul-crushing realization that to them, he wasn't even a human being. He was a prop left there for them to use as they saw fit. Just another weirdo who, in their eyes, didn't deserve the very air he breathed.

"There ya go, Buddy!" Steven said, patting Cody's chemically burned head with a mock tenderness that was more insulting than the blow. "Now you finally look as weird as you act!"

The crew walked out, laughing and high fiving each other. Cody stayed there on the damp, dirty floor for a long time with bleach dripping into his eyes and blurring the world into a stinging haze. He watched locks of his own dark hair, now chemically dead and white, swirl slowly down the drain in the center of the room.

At twenty-seven, Cody had hoped the ghosts of his youth would stay buried in the yearbook pages he'd long since burned, but Barstow was a small town with a long memory where everyone knew everyone. He'd spent the last decade trying to build a fortress out of his own body by hitting the iron at the gym every night at 11 p.m. the hour of loners.

He was in the gym shower with the steam curling around his tired limbs, finally feeling the days anxieties begin to drain away with the water when the curtain jerked back.

There stood Steven, who was now a man with a heavy build and a grin that somehow brought even more darkness into his empty, cold eyes. Steven had always been the one to lead the pack in high school, and he hadn't grown out of that cruelty. He'd only grown larger and uglier. Behind him stood five others with their phones already raised and the small red lights of the cameras glowing like the eyes of scavenging rats.

"Well hey there, Ghost," Steven sneered. His voice echoed off the wet tile, sharp and ugly. "Thought I saw you come in here."

Cody stood naked in front of the group and said nothing.

"Whatcha doin' fucker?" Steven sneered. "Tryin' to wash the weird off?"

Cody watched Steven through the steam, his heart rate dropping into an eerie calm.

"Look what I found!" Steven held up a gallon jug of industrial-strength bleach. "Whatcha say to a little throwback for the fans?"

Before Cody could even think, two of the men grabbed his arms, pinning him against the cold, wet stone of the shower wall. Though he'd been spending time trying to build up his own muscles, they were also stronger now than they were at 15... and there were more of them than there was of him. Steven stepped forward, his face twisted in that same ugly mask of superiority. He tipped the jug.

The chemical waterfall hit Cody's head and that familiar heat set in. He wriggled to get free as the smell of bleach filled his nostrils and searing, liquid fire crawled across his scalp once again, stinging his eyes. It was a horrifying and embarrassing repeat of the ninth-grade locker room.

They laughed. The sound was an obnoxious racket that bounced off the tiles. They filmed the way the bleach turned the water at Cody's feet into a milky, chemical slush and laughed at the way his dark hair began to lose its color, turning pure white.

Cody wouldn't cry this time. He refused to give them that satisfaction. He let the bleach run over his entire body and as it burned into his skin, it felt like a Christening. Through the stinging haze, he looked at Steven with eyes that were darker than the dead of night. The laughter in the room was deafening, but inside Cody, there was only an empty silence. He didn't even flinch as he let the chemicals eat away at the last of his humanity.

When they finally let go and walked out, chuckling and checking their footage, Cody walked back under the streaming shower water. He watched the bleach swirl down the drain, and for the first time in 27 years, he felt pride.

That night, Cody drove his 1994 Ford Ranger toward the Calico mountains, the engine coughing and sputtering like an old smoker. He drove until the pavement gave way to washboard dirt and then to nothing. He stopped his truck, and stepped out into the silence of the Mojave, leaving the sound of Barstow behind. All he had was a gallon of water and a soul that had been picked clean.

The man who stepped out of that truck was no longer the man who had entered the gym earlier that same night. Cody stood against the huge, shimmering horizon of the Calico mountains, his silhouette cutting a sharp line against the early morning sky. His white hair stood out against the bronze of his skin like a crown of ash. He walked with a new confidence, no longer slouching to avoid the gaze of bullies. He moves with a stride that seemed to vibrate with the tectonic plates in the earth. His gaze was fixed on the desert, his eyes reflecting a world that hadn't yet been born.

The first 24 hours were governed by the ghost of shame. Cody walked until his boots were filled with grit and his lungs felt like they were lined with sandpaper. His mind was a cruel projector, replaying those faces, the smell of the bleach, and their fucking laughter.

He found a cave and crawled inside. The heat felt heavy and it was pressing the air out of his chest. He looked down at his clothes. His shirt was reeking of chemicals, and his jeans were stiff with sweat. These were the garments of a victim, and they felt like a second skin he hadn't asked for. He could feel angry tears welling up behind his lashes.

With weak hands, he stripped. He tore the bleach stained fabric from his body, casting the rags into the cactus scrub below. He sat back in the shadows of the cave, completely naked and shivering, despite the 100 degree heat. He spent that first night curled in the fetal position, weeping for the boy in the ninth-grade locker room. He grieved the normal life he would clearly never be allowed to have, his body racked by the realization he was truly and utterly alone and always would be. The wind howled through the rocks, and Cody let it scream for him.

He slept most of the second day. When he finally did wake up, the tears had dried and didn't leave a hint of returning. Blisters had begun to form on the right side of his body where the sun had burned into his unprotected skin. He hadn't eaten at all, but the hunger was eclipsed only by rage.

He stepped out of the cave's mouth and stood naked in the direct glare of the blazing sun and looked up. He watched the vultures begin their slow, elegant orbits above the canyon and clarity settled over him. To them, he was only meat. They didn't care about his social standing, only about the strength of his pulse. He broke the silence with a laugh that quickly turned into a roar. He cursed the names of everyone who had ever made him feel small as he screamed into the canyon until his throat was raw, purging the bile of 13 years of silence. He realized the world's opinion was a lie, and the only truth was the heat of the desert and his hunger.

Cody sat motionless at the mouth of the cave on the third day. His skin was peeling, and his lips had cracked into a map of the desert landscape. He drank only enough water to keep his heart beating. The echoes of voices bitching at him over the years were finally fading into the rustle of the creosote bushes. The obnoxious blast of Coach Corbitt's whistle was drowned out by the thrum of his own heart pumping blood through his veins. He felt peace. He'd been stripped of his clothes, his pride, and his humanity and whatever was left felt beautifully pure.

He watched a vulture land on a nearby rock. It tilted its head, its eyes reflecting the empty sky. He sat there for a long time watching the sun dip below the horizon. The 'weirdness' everyone hated so much that was apparently burrowed into his marrow begin to sing with a new, dark energy. His shame and grief were gone. In their place was a vessel waiting to be filled with moonlight. He looked at his hands in the twilight and smiled.

By day four, he could feel his insides pulsing. Everything inside of him felt hot and intense. Maybe he had finally snapped. Maybe he wasn't weird, maybe he was bat shit crazy. He didn't know, but he could feel his internal temperature skyrocketing, and he felt as though his blood had been replaced with molten silver. He retreated into the throat of the cave, seeking the cold stone floor. He collapsed, his entire body shivering with something unlike anything he'd ever felt before.

As he lay on the cool floor trembling, the transformation began. Even his bone structure began to quiver. He felt as if he could hear the movement of insects a mile away. He could feel the tectonic plates shifting inside of the earth beneath him and he knew that he wasn't Cody anymore. He laid there going in and out of consciousness for a long time. His body aching and trembling in a way that was no longer in his control.

Night melted into day and back into night, dissolving the boundaries of time into hazy memories. A fever burned through his veins, rewiring him from the inside out. He lost count of the days. Had it already been a week? He wasn't sure.

What he did know is that he was no longer a victim and for the first time, he was thinking clearly and he saw the town of Barstow for what it was, a feeding ground. A low growl started in the back of his throat, a sound he didn't recognize as his own. His sat up straight and his upper lip curled back in a snarling reveal of teeth that felt suddenly too tight in his gums, aching to break through. He bared his new canines, and they shined like ivory daggers.

His rage was a wildfire now and it was roaring through his nervous system. He could feel the exact moment his humanity became the anchor he was itching to cut loose. He would never be the weirdo again. He was going to become the consequence of their actions. He leaned forward, his dirty fingers digging into the rock until the stone crumbled and his eyes locked on something in the distance. Cody was finally hungry, but not for food. He wanted to devour every last one of the assholes who had tormented him.

The full moon rose over the Mojave like a silver orb. Cody crawled out of his cave and looked up in awe. He screamed out into the night as his entire body cracked and snapped.

His spine elongated with the sound of a tree trunk splitting in a storm and his ribs cracked one by one, resetting themselves and widening his chest into a powerful cage. His legs shortened at the thigh and lengthened at the calf, and his feet became enormous white paws with long, dark claws.

Fur erupted from every inch of him, covering his nakedness with a blinding, pristine white that glowed with its own internal moonlight. It was soft as silk, but tough as wire. He watched his hands become weapons as his fingernails lengthened into long daggers of onyx bone. His paw pads and the tips of his nose were the same oily black, looking like ink spilled over a brand-new piece of paper.

His eyes shot open, and they were no longer the dull, tired eyes of a bullied boy. They were two frozen spheres of electric blue. He let out a howl that shook the whole desert. He could feel the creatures that resided in the shrubs cower and scamper in fear. He was seven feet of silver muscle and pure hunger.

Cody moved across the desert like a monsoon. He was a white blur against the dark scrub, a beautiful ghost in the moonlight. He knew exactly where they were. He could smell the cheap beer and the arrogance hanging in the air.

He found them at Owl Canyon. The Barstow Boys were having a bonfire. They were sitting on the tailgates of their lifted trucks, their shadows long and ugly against the canyon walls. They were staring at their phones, yucking it up over some new footage of another tortured soul. Cody stepped one huge paw into the light of the fire, ready to be seen.

Jackson saw him first. He stood up, his beer bottle slipping from his hand and shattering on the rock. "What the fuck? Is that a coyote?" He said stupidly. "That bitch is huge!"

A low growl blossomed from inside of Cody's throat and then he launched. He hit Jackson with the force of a falling boulder. With one bite, he tore into him and dismantled him with the power of a god. With one swipe of his claws, he raked across Jacksons chest, peeling back the ribs like the lid of a tin can. Jackson didn't even have time to scream before Cody's jaw closed around his head and squeezed until it popped like a grape. The sound of his skull collapsing was lost in the roar of the fire.

Ryan lunged from his seat, grabbing a heavy iron fire poker. "Get fucked, Cujo!"

Cody caught it in his teeth and snapped it like a toothpick. He pinned the man to the dirt, his muzzle inches from his terrified face. He wanted him to feel the power he had spent a lifetime mocking. Cody reached down with his claws and, with agonizing slowness, unzipped the mans torso from naval to chin. He used his mouth to toss the organs into the fire, watching them hiss and rupture like smoked sausages.

The others scattered on drunken legs into the dark, but Cody could smell the stink of their sweat. He caught Tyler by the legs as he tried to climb a rock. He swung the boy like a ragdoll against the stone until the sound of his breaking bones became an empty thud. He tore Tyler's limbs from their sockets one by one, piling them in a heap like firewood.

He lifted his blood-soaked face and sniffed the air deeply. He could smell Eric, the man who had pinned his arms in the gym shower while Steven held the jug. Eric was hidden behind Steven's jeep, and Cody could hear his life blood pulsing through his body. He could smell his fear. Eric was sitting on his knees, frantically trying to pull himself up on shaking legs. He didn't see Cody until he was standing on the roof of the cab.

The thick, white fur was shimmering in the moonlight and dripping with blood. Cody growled low, but Eric felt it deep within his core. He looked up, his face pale as the moon, his hand reaching for the holster on his hip. He never had the chance to clear leather. Cody descended like a falling star. Three hundred pounds of muscle crushed Eric into the dirt. Cody reached out with one claw and hooked it into the corner of Eric's mouth. With one violent snap of his wrist, he unmade him. He sheared the jawbone clean away from the skull, a wet, sickening crack of ligament that was lost only to the scream coming from the inside of the jeep.

Eric's own scream was cut short as Cody buried his claws into the man's chest, finding the gaps between the ribs. With a guttural roar, Cody pulled in opposite directions. The ribcage bloomed into a garden of gore. He tore the torso open like a book, exposing the steaming guts that kept this dickhead alive to the desert sky. Cody reached in and claimed the heart while it was still trying to beat.

He swallowed the muscle whole, letting the flavor of Erics strength fuel his own. Then he turned his lightening blue eyes to the jeep. He launched himself on top of the vehicle with whatever remained of Eric dripping from his muzzle. His claws clicked over the top of the vehicle like a countdown.

Finally. There was Steven.

He'd scrambled into the driver's seat, his hands clawing at the ignition. He looked up into the white-furred face filling the windshield like a drive-in theatre show. Blood and drool dripped down like tree sap from the beast's muzzle. Cody watched him, he wasn't in any rush. He wanted this to last as long as it could. He almost smiled as he watched tears explode from Stevens petrified eyes. He stared at the man who loved to film others pain and relished as he realized no one was coming to save him.

He punched through the glass and dragged him out by his hair. Steven lashed out in a panic and tried to make a run for it, tripping over his own feet and falling to the ground with a satisfying thump. He shot a quick glance over his shoulder and tried to scramble away on all fours. Cody walked slowly behind him and slammed one heavy paw onto his calves. He hooked his claws deep behind Steven's ankle, clamped his jaw around his heel, and pulled back, ripping the Achilles tendon completely from his leg in a beautiful spray of ruby and sinew.

Cody leaned in, his hot breath fragrant with the scent of gore. He reached out and used that same claw to slowly scalp Steven, pulling away the dark black hair and the skin with it. Cody sat back, licking his paws as the blood gushed from the wounds pooling around the son of a bitch. He wouldn't eat him. He wasn't a fan of junk food.

As the sun began to creep over the horizon, the white wolf returned to his mesa.

He was human again, but the change was permanent in his soul. He stood on the edge of the cliff, naked and steaming in the cool morning air. His body was vibrating with adrenaline, and his veins were swollen with life. He was a vision of beautiful horror. The snowy fur of his transformation had left a legacy on his human skin, but for now, he was only covered only with a thick, drying crust of crimson. It matted his hair, which was a permanent bone white, and stained his lips a deep, dark ruby. The blood of the Barstow Boys was caked under his fingernails and smeared across his chest like a badge of honor.

He looked down at his hands. For the first time, they didn't shake. They were strong. They had succeeded at the only thing that mattered, saving himself. He let the desert sun bake the blood into his skin, a permanent tattoo of his victory. He lay naked on his back, smirking and digging his toes into the warm sand, those electrified eyes were the only part of the wolf that remained and they were pulsing with pride.

The world felt quiet now that the bullies were just pieces of meat scattered in a canyon and the "weirdo" was the only one left standing. Cody wiped a streak of drying gore across his cheek and smiled. He closed his eyes, enjoying the remnants of blood and the morning air. He let out a soft laugh that echoed off the canyon walls.

Authors note: There is still a little time to get your entry in for this challenge hosted by S.A. Crawford! She wants to be grossed out. Do it!