Wolverine: The Masochist

Every few years I get this twinge in the back of my skull, sometimes from a boot, but other times it's like I need to run right out of the mansion and into some trees. I leave without telling anyone. It's a headache explaining myself when I get back, but I say screw it. It'd be like a wolf explaining why it howls: it doesn't have to, it's a goddammed wolf. Needless to say, during these "excursions" I let myself go a bit. I worry less about the way I look and more about the way a bear is trying to punch through my skull. But a man's got to have some standards, and blood is always a bit suspicious looking.

The worst part about having a beard is having to shave it, so I don't, usually. But today is a special day; it marks the five hour anniversary of me getting my ass-kicked outside a bar in Thompson City, Manitoba. I gotta work real hard to get drunk, but when I do I've got this big-ass problem called a mouth. I can smell a lot of different things, and a lot of 'em I can't stand, but I get a whiff o' bull-shit, and that's something I can't let waft around.

Late last night, this asswipe in the bar keeps going on an on about what a hard-ass he is, how many faces he's busted, how many women he'll be going home with tonight. I politely tell him across the bar that I've seen some ugly mutants in my day, but he's first-prize material. He tells me he aint no mutie sonofabitch. I ask what's wrong with being a mutie sonofabtich and if he'd like to repeat himself. He does.

So I put this asswipe in the gutter. Problem is, asswipes got thirty friends on a biker tour of the great north. I broke a few faces; then it was my turn. An adamantium skeleton doesn't do shit for your face, which a lead pipe and a few chains are more than sufficient to bust wide open.

I've taken more than a few whippings in my life. I've been broke as shit. I've been put through the ringer more than a few times, had this metal grafted to and then ripped off my bones, only to have it put back again. For those few moments the world is on fire, and I'm as close to hell as I can be, bub.

But here's the thing I can't shake: the fat bastard, the first asswipe, he gets up outta the gutter, walks up to me when I'm already down, puts a cigar out on my face and then spits right in my eye. What kinda bullshit is that? I remember a time when you put a guy down and he stayed down, and if he did get up, he ran home with his dick between his legs. But this piece? No, he can't just take a lickin' like a man. He's got to go all Frank Castle on me with tobacco and slobber. When the spit puddles in my eye, the claws almost, almost come out. It's probably for the better; I'd have a rough time explaining to Chuck and Scott why I gutted thirty bikers on my unannounced joy-ride.

I lay there for awhile while they kick the shit out of me. After a few minutes it doesn't hurt anymore; the healing factor's kicked in. Problem is I'm stone cold drunk, having just consumed a year's worth of Moose Head. Plus, the sicker and stupider I act, well, the more likely they are to not see me coming the next time. And there'll be a goddammed next time, real soon.

Which brings me to the present, shaving my face with a plastic razor in some whore's hotel room. She's passed out on the bed. I had nothing to do with her. The door was unlocked, so I let myself in to clean up a bit. I normally don't shave, but I also normally don't let blood freeze and crust over the hair on my upper lip. When I'm done dragging the hairs out of my face and watching the cuts heal after each bloody stroke, I ask the whore for a beer from the fridge. I take her silence as a yes. There's a half-eaten sandwich on the fridge, so I help myself to a meal. I don't recommend eating a whore's leftovers, especially when the whore is barely breathing with a needle in her arm, but I figure hepatitis and HIV aint got shit on my healing factor, and I'm hungry as hell.

I drink a couple of the whore's beers in the shower. Jean thought this habit was disgusting. I used to ask her which: drinking in the shower, or at 9 A.M. She just smiled, rolled her eyes, walked away. I'd give anything to smell her hair again, red with a curl just above her shoulders. Right now all I can smell is hotel shampoo and mildew in the cracks of the tile. As I'm drying myself off, the whore walks into the bathroom and starts to take a piss. I keep drying myself off. Whatever this chick's on, it's strong. She starts talking to me like I'm someone else. Then she realizes I'm not. She stands up and screams long enough to pull her panties up and pass out on the bath mat. I use someone's aftershave from the counter, put my shirt on, and walk out of the motel room.

I meet the owner of the aftershave in the parking lot.

"Hey, did you just walk out of room 315?" This punk is probably twenty-one, twenty-two at most. He's got a pack of cigarettes in his front jacket pocket, and one stuck above his left ear. "You owe me some money. She aint free."

"I didn't sleep with her."

"Oh yeah? What'd you do, play bingo? Talk about your feelings? Pay up!"

I punch the kid in his solar plexus, not hard enough to break anything, but hard enough to get my point across: I don't pay for what I don't screw. While he's bent over, I take his wallet and a zippo from his pocket, the cigarette from behind his ear, and light it up. He's got a hundred or so dollars in the wallet, so I take fifty or so and shove the rest in his mouth. When I'm halfway across the parking lot, I hear him yelling behind me.

"You're dead, you freak piece of shit!" He pulls heat. I turn to stare at him, walk towards him, slowly at first, with the pace quickening as I get closer. He fires a round into my forehead, which gives me a terrible kink in my neck. I cut his gun with my left claws and catch him with a right hook (no claws: I don't need a bloody corpse for the Mounties to find). He makes some god-awful noises on the ground because it's hard to make words with your jaw in your ear. The round falls out of my forehead next to his face. I take another twenty for my trouble. But you know what I don't do? Spit on him. That's fucking gross.

I'm going to head farther north for a few days, get my head right. Sometimes that feral stuff fills me up to the point of overflowing, and when it bubbles over people get hurt. Bad. I'd rather take it somewhere it belongs, to a place where life and death are a bit more concrete.

Before I hit the road-or lack thereof-I stop by the bar where I got the shit kicked out of me. It's a humbling experience walking in the front door, having the bartender stare at me like I'm garbage.

"We don't serve your kind here."

"What kind is that?"

"Mutie shit."

"I just figured since this place is a toilet that I'd feel right at home." He pulls a shotgun from behind the bar. I make it a sawed off. It feels good to flex the claws, especially after my uncharacteristic restraint last night. "Now, unless you want me to do the same to your pecker, how about some service? Jack. The bottle. Now." The other patrons leave the bar. I order some nachos, no spit, and drink the bottle slowly in front of the bartender. He stares at me the entire time. I ask him if he wouldn't mind turning around so I don't have to stare at his goiters while I eat. When I'm good and finished, I throw a couple of twenties on the bar, grab a handful of peanuts, and walk out the door.

Outside are a couple of motorcycles. I use the claws to cut open the ignition and take myself a borrowed joyride up the two lane highway. The air is cold and it stings. It's late spring here, but anyone from south of the border wouldn't know spring from winter. But the people here do. So does the wildlife. The cold in spring will kill you; winter will bury you. It takes a helluva lot of survival skills to live out here, so whatever does manage to stay alive through the winter months is ripe and pissy when it wakes up in the spring.

I'm not three miles outside of town when I smell blood, fresh and warm. The blood is human, but the sounds I hear when I shut the bike down are not. Probably some jackass walked into the wrong part of the woods, woke something up that wasn't quite ready for breakfast, but is about to make an exception.

When I get off the highway and over the first hill, I find that there are two jackasses that walked into the wrong part of the woods, and one angry, pissed off mama grizzly that has cut up one of the hunters badly. Dental records badly. But I can hear him breathing, a wheeze through the blood in his throat that he's choking on. His friend's not cut up, but he's in no better shape. He's shooting this bear in its winter fat with a tiny handgun, maybe a 9mm. All he's doing now is pissing it off, which pisses me off cause now I'm going to have to kill a bear that didn't need killing.

And maybe a yuppie hunter with a peashooter.

When I get closer, I see the real hunting gun lying on the ground. The one who's firing the 9mm smells like piss. I'm guessing this is his first hunt, and I'm tempted to let it be his last. I let the claws free and the bear pauses for a moment to take in the more dangerous predator. It bows its head a bit, stamps its foot. The yuppie with the 9mm fires three rounds into my chest and one past my arm. Why do we give guns to these people?

When he sees that I'm a man, he's temporarily relieved. His heart rate slows and the cold sweat that's mixed with his own urine begins to dry on his leg. But when he sees what kind of man I am, he sweats like a fat kid stuck in a jungle-gym. He's lucky I'm not some park ranger or hiker, dead in my own blood with three rounds from his gun. He's lucky that I don't cut his balls off for shooting at a bear with a 9mm. He's lucky I'm watching the bear, which is now charging at him while he's staring at me. The bullets push out of my wounds. The last little snap is what stings, when the hot metal is pushed past the skin. The bullets make steam in the the red snow. The yuppie finally sees the bear charging, rearing up on its hind legs to take a nice swipe at his fat, meaty face. I hate to rob the bear of a kill that is rightfully his; I'm no stranger to the joy of sinking claws into flesh, a tug followed by a gentle tear.

But instead I play the X-man and I throw myself in front of the bear and it's my face that's bloody and hanging off my skull like pizza cheese. The bear is confused. It was a killing swipe. For me it just stings like all hell and makes it hard to see with my left eyebrow hanging past my cheek. I give the bear a couple of stabs to the throat with a twist of the claws. I want the death to be short, painless, and honorable. I want it to die like it should, not from some infection from the bullets lodged in its winter fat. Not at the hands of some piss-stinking yuppie asshole. When the bear gives its last, deep breath, I take the claws out and turn to the yuppie, now ass-first in the snow and shaking.

I scream at him.

"What the hell's the matter with you?" These are the words I'm forming with my mouth, but they're muted by my face that's slowly reforming over my jaw. He hears nothing more than the incoherent screaming of a dead man who's impossibly alive. He wets himself again. I laugh long and deep and slide my face back over my broken nose. I hold my face on at the temples just long enough to say "get him to a hospital" and I leave him in the snow and his own piss. I walk back down the hill towards the highway, and I turn to see him still sitting in the snow.

"Now, piss-ant!" I yell, and he scrambles for his supplies and fallen partner.

On the highway I get the scent. The same animals who beat me half to death last night have been down this road within the past few hours. The wind shifts, points north. I start the bike up. I smile. It's going to be a good evening.

A couple of hours later I'm tied to a wooden pole next to bird-girl and her sidekick puss 'n boots. We were captured by the same biker trash that spit in my face last night, and you know what? His friends think spitting is funny, too. Since I've been tied to this pole I've been hit with rocks, sticks, and two liters of saliva. I swear to god...

But I'm only chained here until they set me on fire, and I want to be set on fire. I'm going to give these guys the night of their lives. Which is why I came here, and which is why-for the time being-I'll put up with getting doused in beer-stinking biker-spit. For the time being.

About two hours ago-just before sunset-I caught the trail of these bigots and followed it up the highway and into a small canyon. From the cliffs I saw that they'd set up a makeshift campsite, and had two badly beaten mutants tied up in one of the tents. Every few minutes a new biker went in the tent, and every few minutes later, he came out, zipping his pants and waving for the next guy. It took everything I had not to leap off the cliff and drive my claws straight through their mouths and out the back of their skulls, but that would just get us all in trouble, and I needed those kids free and safe. What happens to me isn't important; I gave up on redemption a little while ago, say WWI. I've seen what men can do to one another, and I've seen what men can do to mutants. But they haven't seen what I can do-seen what I'm best at.

So I kicked a rock off the side and it hit one of the dumb bastards right in the head. I tried to fake surprise when he saw me, when he yelled "it's that mutie sonofabitch from last night". I even tried faking pain when they "caught" me in the woods. What can I say? I'm a terrible actor. But they bought it. And now I'm tied to a pole and they're pouring gasoline on the two kids and me. When they gas cat-girl she screams and hisses; the bird just stares at them, the kind of stare that tells me that all that stands between her and murder is a half inch of rope around her hands and feet. I like this kid. She's got spunk.

The men cheer. The gasoline burns our eyes. I try to tell the kids it'll be okay. They look at me like I'm crazy. Like I'm a masochist or something. They don't know the half of it.

The fattest one, the one with the spit fetish, drains the bottle of beer into his mouth and on his beard, throws the bottle into the air, and screams as it smashes into the crowd.

"Boys, let's have a bar-bee-que!" He walks towards the cat-girl and takes out a lighter. I need to get his attention.

"Hey, bub. You got a spare set of assless chaps? I feel a bit overdressed for this sort of thing." He closes the lighter and walks towards me.

"What'd you say, mutie?"

I smile. "I said that if I'd known it was this kind of rally, I'd have brought some vaseline."

He punches my jaw, then recoils a bit and rubs his fist.

"I think we'll start with the smart ass," he says. He takes out his lighter and holds it up for the crowd to see. They cheer and drink and stumble. Half of them are too drunk to piss straight, let alone fight. This is my kind of crowd. "You got anything else to say, mutant?"

"I'm going to gut you."

"We'll see how you feel in a few minutes here." And he's right. I'll be feeling all out of sorts here real soon. That's bad for me. But it's worse for him.

He flicks the lighter and drops it at my feet. The flames start with my boots, melting the rubber and leather off of my feet. The flames lick at my legs, singeing my jeans and making my belt buckle molten hot. It burns a hole through my shirt and leaves a circle tattooed on my stomach. The fire eats away at my beard; it creeps up my face, past my ears and onto my scalp, burning everything in between. I take out the claws to let them get nice and warm and ready for cutting. The fire burns at the ropes on my wrists, slowly weakening them.

The biker walks towards the cat-girl, gives her a big tongue kiss and licks her face, then laughs and flicks open the lighter.

"You've been good to us," he says. "I hate to waste such a fine piece of ass." She hisses at him. "Whoa, kitty. Bad girl." He punches her in the jaw. I've seen enough. Engulfed in flames I start to laugh. I laugh because it's funny. I laugh because they don't know. I laugh because I see what's coming, and not a one of these drunk assholes has a clue. But the party stops to watch me. They watch as I laugh and burn and laugh some more. They watch as the skin drips off of me like marshmallow in a camp fire. They listen as I scream and laugh and lean way forward, putting stress on the ropes. But when the ropes break and I'm smoldering in the snow and my claws are glowing in the dark, well, nobody's laughing anymore.

The biker pulls a pistol.

"Don't you fuckin' move."

I walk toward him, leaving steaming footprints in the snow. He fires a clip into my face and the muscle spits it back out. Before he can reload I cut his left hand off. I hold his new stump up in front of his face, and with the other set of claws I cauterize the wound. He screams something wretched. I pull the claws in and backhand him hard enough to break his jaw. When he falls to the ground the crowd is silent. With every one of them watching I step on his balls. They cringe. But I don't spit on him. I'm not like that.

I cut the kids free. The cat stretches, flexes her claws. The bird is in the air immediately, swooping over the bikers as the shoot wildly into the air. The rate she's diving, they haven't got a prayer of tagging her. She's taking big cuts out of their faces, grabbing some and then dropping them. They're screaming and yelling and the smart ones are trying to ride away. But the bird is the least of their worries. They've got a pissed off kitty and a wolverine at their backs.

I offered the kids a ride back into town. They turned me down. Turns out they like living out here. The animals are less interested in killing them than the people. I can't say that I blame them. That's why I come out here; sometimes you just need a little company that understands you when you growl.

I rode the bike back into town, back to the same bar where all this started. I walk into the bar in a leather jacket and some jeans. I didn't look for boots or a shirt. My feet are still red hot and I didn't feel like scraping the blisters off with boot leather. My hair is starting to re-grow, but whenever it gets burnt off it grows in kinda crooked.

The bartender gives me a bottle of Jack without a word. I could grow to like this place. I eat a few peanuts and down the bottle when I feel something wet on my foot. I look down at the brown liquid between my toes. A man with a wad of chew in his lip nods at me.

"Sorry mister," he says.

God I hate spit.