As he plunged through the platinum corkscrew he was being carried on the hip of a round-faced Black woman—this must have been Mother when she was young; he was playing paddy-cakes with Granddaddy; he was making mud pies with Grandma; he was being stoned by other Black kids for playing with the Mexican kid down the street; he was bringing Granddaddy an ice cream sandwich; he found Granddaddy dead with the ice cream sandwich melting in his hand; Regal was switching off the safety as he leveled the “nickel-back” at the crazy homeless Whiteman…who was now vaporizing into a bolt of lightning before him, a bolt that reversed course instead of exploding…

He did not float in the void for long. The howls of victorious warriors and the screams and moans of mourning and raped women came to him across the centuries and he was sucked like spaghetti toward the sun fire. He recalled the chant of the Sunfire Women as he took form and exploded into being under a high canopy of ash, elm, birch and chestnut. He smelled the Allegheny River in May, a clean clay and bark smell he could never forget. White-faced holy warriors lay dead and scalped to his left. To his right were as many weeping women, dressed in white buckskins and dove feathers, the prettiest squatting and attempting to use her own tear-soaked hands to wipe the blood and semen from her vagina.

He was buck naked and holding the platinum hoop he knew so well. Before him kneeled a middle-aged woman who he thought he might have known when she was a child. Her head hung in shame, but no tears streaked her face. Next to her, towering head and shoulders above him stood a broad-shouldered war-chief, perhaps thirty years of age. A blackened wolf-snout was laced to his short thick Mohawk, and hawk feathers were stitched to pierced hoops that ringed his plucked skull just above the ears. The man had two steel knives on his hips and held a spiked steel battleaxe over his head in triumph as he pointed to him with the other hand, one long finger stabbing at his broken nose.

He could feel the muscles in his back flex and hear the matted hair on his shoulders spring up in anticipation of the feast! His ribs expanded to suck in the bloody air that smelled like iron filings in Pap Bracken’s workshop.

He could feel Don Tinoco’s warhorses clomping up the base of Copper Mountain as he hefted the crossbowman’s head by the beard and drew his claymore…

Thag snorted as they ran the Other through as one…

He stood above her butchered groom at the altar before carrying her off…

Behind the chief were three vicious looking warriors wearing wolf-head hats. One was just arranging his breechcloth to conceal his privates. They and the rest were dressed in breechcloths and moccasins only, with bows strung across their backs, steel or bone knives at their belts, and an assortment of weapons in hand: axes, spears, war-clubs, serrated and spiked canoe paddles, and one ornamented and spiked musket butt. There were about twenty warriors in all; each and every one wearing wolf-ears or wolf-tails in their scalp-lock and sporting necklaces of wolf-teeth and wolf-nails. They were all painted red and black for war.

I was a wolf once—ate the Big Waters alive in their camp after they killed my mate…

He felt the hunger—no, the thirst, and could hear the chief’s heart beating in his neck...

He was grappling with the Raccoon warrior on this very stretch of river—on the stony bank on the far side, some distance south…

Entrails entangled his sword arm…

He could taste his face, could hear his throat rupture like the boxed drinks he used to shoot with Randy’s Crossman .760 when he was a little yard ape…

As always happened when he traveled back in time, Jay felt gorilla-strong and his senses were keenly amplified. He could smell that black bear crapping a mile up the ridgeline; could hear the piss pooling at the feet of the biggest wolf-head just behind Big Chief; could feel the air turbulence caused by the crow waiting in the birch above as it steadied itself in the breeze; could see the veins in the leaves of the big maple across the river; and could taste the fear that seeped from the pores of every woman and warrior here, except for Big Chief, who looked just plain crazy.

You know he’s the only one of the lot that will taste any good.

He felt much different than his last trip: his sense of taste and smell were hopelessly comingled; a deep base drum beat in his hands; and he had a very painful involuntary erection.

“Jay, I am Eggshell, your granddaughter through ElkTail. I was forced to summon you by Wolf-Paw of the Mahicans, who asks that you lead him in battle against his enemies the Wappinger. We…”

He felt a big beast rumble in his chest and heard a sickening, slathering, inhuman roar as if a cat could howl or a wolf could purr—or both. The bright brown eyes of Wolf-Paw bugged out as Jay’s speared hand ripped into his upper abdomen beneath his heart, sounding like a vinyl seat-cover being shredded at Raphael’s chop-shop.

The other meat-puppets are just pissing and quivering—feast on this...

His subconscious was dragging his imperiled conscience along into his own private slathering slice of Hell-on-Earth. He could hear his nostrils flare and feel the rumbling purr of a cougar in his chest—and he was in. He shoved up behind the ribs and through some moist fluttering tissue—Lungs I guess—and flexed his claws around the pounding heart, and tore down even as he shoved the three-and-a-half fingers of his left hand into the man’s open mouth and down his throat at the same time…

The screams of women and the moans of men danced like fireflies around the ravenous slurping and tearing beast that attempted clumsily to suck the juice from the still-beating heart of the gurgling thing at his feet. He crushed the noisy throat beneath his heel as he tore the heart free of the messy tubing and squeezed the contents into his open mouth. As good as it felt to hold the now still heart and stand with one foot on the gaping chest of the prey, the meal itself was a disappointment. The blood really did not taste too good—kind of rusty actually, like well-water from an old faucet—and was too thick to clench his thirst. The flesh of the heart was chewy and stunk of some bitter chemical.

Never had he felt so thirsty. But never had he felt such an alien hunger either. How had he ever coexisted with so much meat without feasting in the past?

How could he slack his troubling thirst now?

In frustration he threw down the heart and picked up the carcass, holding it overhead by the pelvis and the throat as he stood beneath the gaping abdominal cavity and opened his mouth wide to receive the blood that gushed out—Yessss!

The crying, slurping, moaning, and now chanting, continued as he drained the sagging meat-sack. The heat shields deployed over his eyes; his snout twitched; fur bristled; claws retracted; tail-stub wagged…

He guzzled, nuzzled, growled, snarled, chomped and slurped until the sack of meat and bones that he was once told had a name, would drip no more. As he cast it aside he felt exhilarated, spread his forelegs and talons, pointed his snout skyward, and howled! Then he remembered he was just a wolf.

No more pudding Mom…beets thank you Ma…

He ran through the bloody haze, past the cringing meat-puppets, down to the river. His body was overheating, putting out a lot of energy. His penis hurt and the sky rushed by in heat waves, behind which he could see the stars obscured by the sun’s light. His eyes were frying, his belly was pounding like a kettle drum and his balls were on fire. He had to cool off. He ran in, swam into the deep water, and dove. He could taste the bottom and feel the Earth turn as he let the current take him downriver…

My, I never realized that this planet wobbled on a tilt until just now. My ears are drooping…