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"Sergio." I said slowly, firmly. "Sur-Jee-Oh."
Sergio roared in my face.
I blinked, lowering the driver's license I had been holding up.
"...Alright." I nod patiently. "We'll try again next time, okay?"
The mammal chained up in the empty room of my house is a strange one. He never speaks. He never indicates he's heard me. The extent of our interactions are my feeding him, and the extent of his acknowledgement of me is directed at the plate in my paws.
Three meals a day, primarily fish. He naturally rejects any non-meat substance I present to him, which is expected, but I found myself mildly surprised at his steadfast refusal of bug meat, too. I've personally always preferred it, but all of my attempts to introduce him to the modern amenity of Bug Burga, even just the patties, has fallen flat.
When I'm not with him, he still commands my attention. He's never quiet, not even at night. I have no idea when he sleeps, but if he does, it must be as restless and loud as his waking hours are. The noises he makes carry through air vents to wherever I am, in the cases where it doesn't simply reverberate through solid wall. I'm never allowed a moment to forget him.
Not that I often try to.
After feeding him, I spend some time sitting in front of him, just out of his reach. I watch how he eats, and pay close attention to his features.
I show him his old driver's license, every time. I say his name as clearly as I can, watching for some reaction. I never get one.
Even after several days, it's uncanny. I've seen those claws, those teeth, that muzzle, on many people in day to day life. The cashier at the local grocery store, a driver who nearly hit me walking down the road, a mother pushing her son in a stroller. Every time I see a polar bear now, I can't help but squint, drawing ties. Like to like.
But it always stops at the eyes. I could never have conceived of anything like that gaze before meeting Sergio. It shares more in common with the fish on his plate than any member of his genus.
But the fish stare off at nothing, cold and lifeless.
Sergio stares at me.
Within them, emotion curdles and sneers, pure distilled fervor without any restraint or patience to hold it back from its potential.
My bite force is around 300. A polar bear's is around 900, but that's not what it could be. A polar bear's brain, as with all of our brains, contain fail-safes to prevent injury to one's self. Just as you cannot without great challenge cut your own finger off, you cannot without a great challenge bite at full force, lest you risk dislocating your jaw. None of us can.
None of us except Sergio. He will tear himself apart if it is what he must do, and he will never think twice.
I try not to look into his eyes often.
It makes me want to hate him.
Age. Name. Sex. Species. Location.
The worker had only told me the bare minimum about the bear. Sergio had been an enigma even before the shot was taken; No family to contact, only a few scant living records on hand that indicated a tendency to move frequently.
I had forgotten I had even signed up for it when the worker came to my door. I don't know why I did it. The savage epidemic had been strange for all of us, even once we found a single strain of flowers to place the blame on.
When I was with him, watching him eat, I often found myself wondering. Did he have a favorite color? A favorite sports team? Did he like cars, videogames, anything? Had he ever been in love? Had he ever had his heart broken?
Whatever the answers were, he wasn't keen to give them up. In the current day, any interests started and ended at eating. The current scientific understanding was that any and all pieces of a personality were ripped to shreds by the virus, like a real-life zombification.
I wondered if Sergio still had a soul.
"What do you think of me as?" I asked him one day, sitting on the cold floor. "Not a name, surely. But when you see me, do you register me under any descriptor? Anything of the sort? Do you recognize that I'm a wolf, or am I something more nebulous in your eyes? What could that be?"
Then I searched them, hoping for an answer.
And when I did, I got the distinct, worrisome thought that the answer may have been 'threat'.
A few months before Sergio, I got fired from my job.
Allegedly.
Were I to claim such with any intent behind it, I would of course have to prove it in a court of law. By all fine print, it wasn't 'firing'. It was something else, a more nebulous term trying to escape judgement whose letter escaped me.
Changing the word didn't make me feel better about it, but then again it wasn't supposed to. It was supposed to make the other side feel better.
A pretty rabbit lady, fur orange like well made toast, with splotches of white around her muzzle. She smiled sweetly as she delivered the news, sympathetic to my cause. She continued to be sympathetic as she shot down every suggestion of working from home or changing departments I offered. She continued to be sympathetic as she assured me upper management were the culprits here.
She continued to be sympathetic as I clenched my fists, tight enough to draw blood from my palm.
She must have been taught somewhere that looking at the person you're firing makes the process go easier, but she relied on it too much. Had she stopped looking at me for a second to glance at her desk, or the clock, or the door behind me, I may not have noticed as easily that it wasn't quite eye contact.
Her eyes were concentrated to the fullest of their ability- quite a bit, for rabbits- on my teeth. Just below my eyes, just barely outside having the courage to face me, she chose to watch the teeth in my mouth.
I could still feel her watching me as I left.
It may have been shortly after that when I signed up for the rehabilitation program. I don't really remember.
Every morning, I file my claws and teeth. I shave and wash my fur. I brush my teeth and rub on deoderant.
Sergio does none of those things. When I look at him, I try to imagine the dark ages, when everybody looked like him, prowling on all fours without the aid of the spines we own today.
I've tried washing him while he was awake. I've tried cleaning his room while he was aware. It went as well as you'd expect.
I'm not stupid.
I just can't stand to watch when I tranq him.
In our entire time together, I only did it twice, and both times I focused on his jaw as the needle went in. His lips went slack, his drool began to flow more slowly, his breathing calmed. When he finally slumped over, I knew it was safe again to look at his shut eyes.
I made it count both times. Hosed down the room, cleaned up all the excrement and fluids that had been pooling. I trimmed his nails and cut his hair, and sank my paws deep into his pelt to scrub out every microorganism that had taken up residence within his fur.
I held this creature, so much larger than I was, and I reached as deep as I could into his maw to brush and floss the fangs near the back.
I never filed them, though. I couldn't stand to make them dull.
Unlike myself, he never needed to impress anyone.
My last day with him, he struck me as unnaturally quiet.
I went about my business (with some stretch of the definition, being unemployed) through the house with fur on end. I constantly waited for the moment he'd snap and I'd hear his vocalizations again. He never did.
He ate his breakfast and lunch with a strange reservedness, lapping it off the plate and leaving the poor dish mercifully unharmed for once. When he was done, he almost seemed to copy my stance, sitting all 800 pounds of himself down on his tail and licking his chops idly while we watched each other. Without his usual attempts to escape, I found it easier to admire his features.
Sergio was a beautiful creature.
Or was he handsome? I couldn't imagine myself developing an attraction to him, as much as I tried to mammalize him in my head, if it was even ethical. But I couldn't deny the aesthetic appeal of his form, as common as polar bears were around here.
After several minutes of staring, searching for some meaning in my fascination, it occurred to me that I may have admired Sergio. He didn't unconsciously hide his claws in fists. He never felt the need to keep his mouth shut, to not laugh too loudly, lest his fangs show. Even when he wasn't furiously flailing, he wore his body with a detached carelessness.
Whoever had granted him those traits had given it to him for a reason.
When I brought him dinner that night, I didn't give it to him right away. I set it down just out of reach, and approached him, closer than I may have perhaps been comfortable to before.
"Hey, Sergio." I said softly. "You've been good today."
Sergio grunted.
"You're right, sorry." I corrected. "I don't mean to say you were bad all those other days. I just mean... I like you like this, I guess. More civilized. It's nicer."
Sergio tilted his head.
"I don't- I don't know if I'm anthropomorphizing you too much. Or not enough." I admitted. "I keep wanting to think you're in there, somewhere. Or- Like, who you were before, I mean. I don't know if I should treat you differently from the other Sergio, or just try to ignore the elephant in the room. No offense to elephants."
Sergio snorted.
"It's just my instinct, to assume you understand me. To interpret your actions as statements. Do you not do that? Do you just see my speaking as... As not directed at you? I know I'm a wolf. Where you come from, I wouldn't be a friend. But am I your superior, then? Your inferior?"
Sergio continued to say nothing.
"It's wrong of me." I admitted. "To assume you're just some big teddy. But it's also wrong to chain you up and treat you like a beast. And any middle ground there... I don't know what it looks like."
My hand goes down to my pocket, where Sergio's driver's license is. I don't pull it out.
Instead, I take a risk.
"I'm going to approach you. I'm going to- to touch you. Only for a minute. Can I do that?"
Sergio breathed shallowly. His gaze pierced through me like a needle.
I stepped forward, closer. I extend my fist.
"Sergio." I repeated breathly. "Sergio. Sergio."
Closer. Closer.
My fist unfolded, and my pointer finger extended to him. Beckoning.
His nose twitched as it approached, sniffing it. Inspecting it. Searching for any sign of a threat.
"Your name is Sergio." I breathed.
He found one.
When I came to, I heard chewing.
Did I black out? I reached a paw up to my forehead and felt something wet and sticky.
Not from my forehead.
From my paw.
I looked down at my paw, the same one I had offered to him, and inspected it.
Thumb, little finger, ring finger, middle finger.
Full stop.
Bloody, shredded, full stop.
Maybe I blacked out again, for just a second this time. When I came back, my index finger was still gone.
Chewing.
"...What did you... do...?"
Coming out of my mouth, the words didn't sound vitriolic or accusatory. They sounded confused, as if I genuinely didn't understand what's happened.
Sergio glanced up at me impassively.
"What did you..."
I hugged my hand into my shirt, and looked down from my attacker at the cloth its pressed into. The white began to dye red, and the sight snapped me out of my shock.
Agony.
My shoulders shook and my fangs ground against each other. My chest heaved, struggling to breathe, and my hand shook so fast I felt a few dewdrops of warm blood hit my chin.
"I helped you..." I whined. "I helped you. I kept you warm, I gave you a roof, I gave you food! I fed you, I'm helping you, why don't you understand that?"
Sergio's teeth were stained red, the only clue that they've been used. Everything else that went in- skin, bones, muscle- it didn't exist anymore. Rended to nutrients.
He sniffed the air. Still hungry.
My blood boiled.
"You need me!" I screamed myself hoarse. "Do you know what they'd do to you out there? There's no place for you anymore! There's nothing left for you! We've moved on! If they saw you, they- They would shoot you! They'd kill you without a second thought! Like a bacteria, they'd destroy you!"
Sergio sensed my aggression and growls, warning me of more to come. It's only my tone, my actions, my volume- Deaf to the meaning.
My good hand scrambled inside my pocket, and I tore out his license, thrusting it out in front of me as I stood on shaky knees.
"Sergio! Your name is Sergio! Why can't you see that? How could you fall back to this? How could you turn into this? They don't see you! I- I'm trying to see you! Why are you making this so... so... so hard?"
I began to feel lightheaded. My legs gave out, and I slumped onto my ass again.
Tears were welling, and before long I started to sob.
"I- I- I know it seems like capture. I know you want to be free, but there's... There's nowhere left for you. Nowhere you can go. You've got to change. You've got to leave this behind. You've got to be like them, or they'll... They'll just..."
Sergio watched me. Vacant. Cold. Nothing.
I didn't finish my sentence. I dropped his license, and I cried into my paws.
I gripped my own skull tightly, and I felt my claws dig into my skin.
All nine of them.
They came to relieve me of Sergio the next day.
My knuckle was bandaged in scarlet red, hand still shaking even as I tried to ignore it. In bed the previous night, I felt my index finger curling and uncurling as if it still existed.
It felt itchy, in a place I could never scratch.
The same worker who had passed him on to me commanded the removal, and stood beside me on my porch as we watched him get dragged into the truck.
Sergio never looked back at me as he left.
"You did well, sir. Most people wouldn't have lasted as long as you did." She assured me. "You're lucky it wasn't worse. You will, of course, be receiving a nice check in the mail for your damages suffered at Sergio's paws. A week at most."
"Not his paws." I murmured feebly.
"Sorry?"
"Not Sergio." I shook my head. "He didn't do anything. I was- It was my fault. Don't do anything to him. It's not his fault."
The worker gave me a sympathetic look.
Not quite to my eyes. Somewhere just lower.
I clench my fists without realizing it.
"You have a good day now, Mister Moyer." She said.
And she stepped off my porch.
A cure for Night Howlers was found seven weeks later.
I never saw Sergio again.