Life Journey: A Werebear's Story. By. Housecubct housecubct@gmail.com
Authors Note: This is largely autobiographical in nature, written as catharsis. Its the readers job to decide where the fiction stops and starts. Special thanks to a Furry Family that I am now a part of. I could not have done this with your help. Sometimes the hardest step is the first one.
Prologue
It's often said that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. In this case we would tend to agree. What has always haunted us is that if something does not kill you, should you have been in the situation to begin with? No worries though, let us tell you ,the reader that this book is a journey through time, pain, love, and the joy of two guys who found each other, and then lost each other. It's a joy that I get to tell you, the reader, what this book is about. It's the account of a life, or better yet, the lives of two people and their journey together.—Marty, Pat, Alec, David, and George
"All men may, if their will is strong enough, walk in a Beast's shape, for in their hearts there sleeps a Spirit of the Wild. Come then, if you have the strength. Come see what manner of Beast waits within yours." -G'Harron
The Crumb Trail: Part Zero
In life, people are prepared for different things. Fate, destiny, everyone has a different name for it. Parents attempt to prepare their children, hoping to give them the skills they will need to survive. Matt had often thanked his father and mother for those skills, sparring with his father and meditation with his mother. Working out for long hours on Saturdays and being taken to the local pub, he would "play fight" with his father's friends. He never found it strange that he was sparring with men his father's age or much older. Most of them were British, French, Polish, or Canadian expatriates that hung around after the WWII, married local girls and started families. Those men formed Matt's extended family, and he mourned each of their deaths. Those skills saved Matt's life, and the lives of others on more than a few occasions. The young man had used those abilities to become an asset to his co workers. This had earned him accolades throughout his military career. However, that career was now over, merely falling sand in the hourglass of time and life.
His last injury had placed him in the unable to deploy category and forced his exit from active duty much faster than expected. The send off at his retirement had been nice enough, but it still left a hole in his life. Matt always knew he could not stay forever, but he loved what he did and the difference that he made. He protected people; he saw to their needs helping them through whatever they were dealing with. That had been enough to motivate him through multiple severe injuries including twelve titanium screws, several plates in numerous major bones, more stitches than he could count, and so many sprains it became a running joke with coworkers, family, and friends.
From outside, the squeal of tractor-trailer brakes snapped Matt out of his reverie and back to the present. The semi-truck he had hitched a ride on stopped at the Petro Canada truck stop in Chase. The driver let Matt out of the trailer and wished him well. He had been riding in an empty cattle/livestock car since the cab was full of the driver's family. The driver and his family were taking a vacation after he dropped the load of cattle; Chase had been his final destination. In a short stroke of luck, the driver was also a retired military veteran and had noticed the sage colored fleece Matt had been wearing. They had actually been deployed to the same locations, although at different times.
As Matt moved after sitting for so long his whole body cracked and snapped, the cold air cut through him all the way to his bones. The pins that held most of his limbs together ached. The cold reminded him of every fall, bruise, break, or sprain he had ever had. After grabbing his pack, and slinging it over his shoulder he made his way across the street to the service station office. The area around the station was pretty enough; fairly typical of what he had found in the other Canadian towns he had visited.
"Hi, I'm looking for maps of the area and lands to the north of here," Matt asked the very burly, hairy attendant.
"Over there under the coffee counter," remarked the attendant, not even looking up from his texting as he pointed.
"Thanks!" Matt smiled and walked over.
After looking over several of them, he chose a forestry map that showed logging roads and trails. This would be very helpful. He also picked up a small tube of toothpaste and a bottle of hand sanitizer while he was there. "Hey, is there a local job board in this area and a shelter I could crash in for the night?" he asked the clerk.
Looking up at him, the clerk smirked, "Up the street six blocks, take a left. The job board is part of the shelter."
"Thanks, hey one more thing ... have there been any bear sightings recently or within the past year?" Matt locked eyes with the clerk.
"Bears, you say? No ... no, I've lived here for a long time; we haven't seen any bears in this area for some time. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, I'm searching for a location mentioned in several stories I read. I guess I'm on a fact-finding journey," Matt said, never breaking eye contact. They smiled at each other; the clerk wished him well and told him to be safe as he exited the store. Matt turned and looked back at the clerk. The guy was husky, to say the least, looked to be in his late 40's maybe early 50's, and wore a red button down shirt with black suspenders. He was handsome and reminded him of Luke.
As Matt walked he thought back to the argument with Luke a few months before. It was bad, the worst they had ever had. Luke was upset with Matt's obsessions over finding locations and people mentioned in the stories. Luke dismissed the stories as online-fiction and passed the whole thing off as coincidence. He thought Matt's focus needed to be on their business, not this silly search. Finding these locations and people had led Matt to call in favors and shrug off his household responsibilities. He would spend hours online looking over the data and cross-referencing every fact he could. It would have been easy with the tools and resources he had before he retired, but being a civilian had its drawbacks.
Matt gathered land sale data from open records searches across the United States and Canada. He even cross-referenced animal sightings in relation to the mentioned locations, using them to determine bear movements. He poured over aerial photographs and forestry survey charts. Matt contacted a friend that worked at the CDC in Washington to gather death statistics for missing persons. Matt went further; contacting park rangers and animal control officers to inquire about bear sightings and unexplained deaths.
Matt did as he was trained to do; he extrapolated the data into core facts, adjusted for human error and displayed the data out into a visual model format. Even after seeing all the evidence and validated data that Matt gathered, Luke would not even consider believing him. He had begged Luke to come with him during their seasonal work break to visit the locations to see if it was fictitious or if Matt had really followed a trail and found something. Luke had harshly refused.
A passing police car snapped Matt into the most painful of the memories from the last few months. He remembered Luke telling him to leave, saying he was going to take his daughter, Susan, and raise her since her father was a nut case. Luke told Matt that he had lost his mind and that the military should have committed him two years ago, and then told him to leave. Luke had exploded, shoving Matt into a wall. A momentary flash of anger had crossed Matt's face. Luke yelled again, told him that it was only a matter of time until he cracked. Matt, as a defensive mechanism, shut off his emotions, became stoic and gave in. Luke was everything to Matt. Luke was the reason he survived his last tour. That night, Matt left. He took his laptop, bug-out bag, passport, all the cash he had and walked out. Matt knew he would return eventually, vindicated or dead, but either way he was going to find the truth and see where the crumb-trail ended.
Matt arrived at the shelter and checked in. The attendant was nice, and Matt had another light conversation about why he was in the area. After he grabbed a bite of hot food he was shown to his cot where he slept fully clothed, with his pack strapped to his chest. It was peaceful, but still he felt vulnerable in this space. It reminded him of so many transient deployment-holding areas. Lines of cots, no security, and people piled on top of one another.
When Matt slept, the dreams came. The dreams had been more and more intense since Matt left home. Matt had rationalized it was the separation and intense focus on survival and discovery. Although it had been a horrible experience, it was a liberating one as well. He was becoming self-confident again. Matt was gaining back his physical prowess, and it felt good. His mind and senses had sharpened, and he actually felt his body being re-tuned. In the dreams, bears of all shapes, sizes, and colors would walk past him, look over at him and then continue walking. They were always walking away from him, leaving him behind. As the bears passed, he heard the jingle of bells. The bells would become louder and louder until Matt woke up.
The morning came, and Matt woke rested, but somehow deeply restless. Something was tugging on Matt to go faster, to go search, to be anywhere but where he was. After thanking the shelter supervisor, he left to find an ATM. On the walk over to the local bank, he was struck with the feeling he was being watched or followed. Matt pushed that thought away, looked behind him a few times and kept walking. Finding the ATM he withdrew his last $20. It would be that way until his pension hit the bank. He would have to buy staples, and stretch the funds as far as he could. It would seem that trapping, catching, or scavenging the remainder of his food would have to suffice. It was going to be a long nineteen days. Taking out the local town map, he oriented himself and started to make his way out of town.
Along the way, he stopped at several diners and service stations, asking if anyone had seen the pond he was looking for; or if any Bears had been seen in the area. At the edge of town he spied a coffee shop nestled beside a service station, almost unnoticed except for the sign, which was a tree of life with two Bears walking under it. Curious! Entering, the waiter looked up and motioned for the small man to sit at the end of the counter. Walking up, the waiter looked directly into Matt's eyes and asked if he needed to eat. Matt nodded but said nothing. The waiter brought back a large bowl of cereal, whole milk, fruit and coffee. The waiter asked a few more questions about Matt and why he was in such a remote part of Canada. The waiter's voice was soothing him, calming him, putting him at ease; the scent in the shop was inviting and somehow nearly intoxicating. Through the conversation, the waiter was pulling much more information out of him that he would have usually given up.
At the end of the conversation the waiter grabbed Matt's hand tightly locking eyes with him, "Whatever you are looking for, I hope you find it." Matt nodded smiling but kept his silence.
Matt noticed that the waiter was actually the owner and was an average height, hairy guy. His beard was closely trimmed, and his hands had just as much hair as his chest and face. Something about the man put Matt at ease. Matt's crotch twitched, and he had to reposition himself, blushing as he did so. In the months since Matt left Luke, he had not had a single orgasm. He only had eyes for Luke, but something about this man piqued his interest. Before his mind distracted him further, he finished his food and quickly got up to leave. Grabbing a pen from the counter, he wrote "Thank You!" on a napkin, laid $10 under it and left.
Outside the air was cool and crisp; which brought Matt back into focus. While making his way out of the town and toward the mountains, Matt passed a grocery store where he noticed that he was being watched by a local police officer.
"Hello Sir, do you have a few minutes to talk?" Matt asked, bending forward so he could look into the window of the cruiser, deciding to make the first move before the officer could question him.
"Yes, let me get out so I can talk to you," replied the officer. Matt noticed two things; the man was just as hairy as the men he had met in the diner and service station, and just as attractive. He was at least six feet tall, broad shouldered, and had a belly but he carried it well. "So what can I do for you?"
"Um ... I'm looking for a pond, stream fed and clear, with a sand beach around its perimeter ... it might be on someone's property. Also, I'm curious if there have been any Bear sightings over the past year or so?"
The officer looked Matt in the eyes silently, before answering his question. "I don't recall any location fitting that description, but I'm not an outdoors kind-of guy, so I wouldn't be the best to ask. Bears ... well, we haven't seen any close to town in a long time," said the officer. He was about to speak again when his radio chirped to life. The officer hastily excused himself, climbed into his patrol car, and sped away.
As he left, Matt watched the car intensely. He was struck that the answers he had gathered through the day were similar and expected. What bugged him was that of the three places he visited the answer's seemed to match almost exactly, like they were rehearsed and part of a cover story. A car honked, and Matt realized he was standing in a daze, in the way of parking lot traffic. Blushing, he excused himself and walked into the store. His last $10 would not go far; hopefully it would be enough for some dried meat and beans.
Please feel free to comment and give me some feedback: at Housecubct on Bearforest.com or direct email at housecubct@gmail.com