Page 59 of Cognac Secrets

“Yeah,” True said, nodding. “They teach you in wilderness camp that if it goes quiet like that, there’s a predator around.”

“Exactly!” Louie declared clapping his hands together making both True and I jump and laugh nervously like we weren’t sitting outside one of the busiest cafés in The Quarter in broad daylight.

“So, what happened next?” True asked, and I could tell that like me, she was hanging on every word.

“First, what kind of wilderness camp did you go to?” Louie asked. “I always wanted to do shit like that when I was a kid…”

“Oh, no!” True said laughing. “This wasn’t one ofthosekinds of camps like Lake Tittie-Caca or whatever,” she said waving a hand effusively and I very nearly had café au lait come out my nose.

Louie was laughing, too.

“This was one of those troubled teen camps with a religious bender. One of those ones where your parents have strange men come kidnap you out of your bed in the middle of the night, drag your ass out into the middle of nowhere, and not only abuse the fuck out of you trying to scare you straight, but where they try to pray the gay out of you or whatever.”

“Aw, you bat for the other team?” Louis asked and looked disappointed.

“Honey, I was born onyourteam – and I’m not like that… sex is…” True made a face, “Ew.”

Louie blinked several times rapidly and whispered real low, “You mean you hide a salami?” he asked.

True and I lost it and True turned a brilliant shade of pink and said, “I wish Ididn’thave this Oscar Mayer wiener.”

Louis snorted and shook his head and looked mollified, but to his credit? He didn’t freak out.

“So like, if sex is so ew, what was the whole point for you then?” he asked.

“They couldn’t stand the idea of their precious son wanting desperately to be their precious daughter and thought they needed to fix me,” True said with a shrug. “If it makes you feel better, I totally get the whole name thing on a different level. My name is True – but people try to deadname me all the time – or ask what my deadname is when they find out that I’m trans.”

“Not me,” Louis said with a shake of his head. “I get it. I am and will always be Loup Garou from now on.”

“Speaking of, can we get back to that story?” I asked. “I’m sort of dying here.”

“Oh! Right! So we’re walking along these railroad tracks, and we’re walking, and we’re walking, and it’s fuckingdark, man. Like, dark as shit to the point you had to be within like five feet of each other so you didn’t lose track of your homies, right? And then on top of that, it goes like dead silent. Like to the point, like I said, that J-dawg pointed it out to the rest of us. So we all, like, stop walking right?”

“Uh-huh,” True prompted.

“And we’re all standing there looking at each other and I swear to God, man, the hair goes standing up on the back of my neck and we’re all just as dead ass quiet as everything had gone around us and we’re all trading these super uneasy looks.”

“Okay,” I said, following.

“Then what?” True asked and I had to admit, Louie was a damn good story teller.

“Man, we all heard it. Every one of us was looking at each other likedid you hear that?And I’m telling you, I wished I didn’t, but I heard it too. There was this low fucking growling, man. Like Cujo was out there in the fuckin’ dark and then, Isaw it.”

“Saw what?” True asked, scooching to the literal edge of her seat.

“At first, it was just movement, out of the corner of my eye, right? Like it wasdarkdark, but somethingmoved, just inside the tree line and it was justsnarlingout there. At this point, me and the homiesallfelt it. Like we was in danger, and we traded like one last look andall of usfuckin’ booked it man, like we wasrunnin’full tilt up them tracks – hauling ass trying to get away and I’ll never fucking forget it man. That thing out there? In the dark? In the woods? It fuckin’howled, man and I ain’t ever heard nothing like it before or since. Like I totally now know what the phraseblood curdlingmeans, because I was sweatin’ but I was was ice cold and I was runnin’ and it felt like my blood went to motor oil in my veins. Like it chunked up for real, man.”

“Holy shit,” True whispered.

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“So we’re runnin’, runnin’ runnin’!” he said, pumping his arms, puffing out his chest like he was an Olympic sprinter going slow motion for us. “And you know what it sounds like when a homie eats shit in gravel and slides? Well, that’s what happened behind me. My home boy Antony ate shit and I wasn’t going to leave him behind, right? I grew up with these guys, they were my ride or die crew, or so I thought. So, I stop, and as I’m turning around, I hear this abso-fucking-lutely horrendous scream in the dark. I ain’t never heard no motherfuckerevermake a noise like that before. It was… God damn, I don’t even know how to describe it to this day, you know?”

True gasped and I was hanging on his every word.

“Did it get him?” True asked.

“Man, I don’t know – it was so fuckin’ dark, there weren’t no lights, no moon, nonothing, but I stopped and I turned anyway and I just fuckin’froze,man because Antony is laying on his back, right? And he’s lookin’ up – and I don’t know what was over him, man – except it was like a dog, but it wasn’t, and it was fuckin’biglikemansized big, right? And I bent down, not taking my eyes off this thing, and picked up a couple of handfuls of rock from the tracks, right?”

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