Chapter 3: The Super Knows
The scent lingered.
It wasn't just a memory. It was a physical imprint on Viv’s sheets, a faint, musky trace on her skin that resisted three consecutive showers. She’d wake in the middle of the night, her hand between her legs, the phantom ache of being filled so completely both a horror and a thrill. She’d stare at the wall separating her bedroom from Poppy’s studio.Silence. A thick, profound silence that felt like a held breath.A week passed. Viv went to work, catalogued brittle manuscripts on tidal patterns, and smiled vacantly at colleagues. Her mind was a locked room where a single, monstrous event played on a loop.The feel of fur under her palms.The taste. The sound of her own voice saying show me. Shame was a cold stone in her gut, but beneath it, coiling warm and alive, was a brutal curiosity. She hadn’t just seen a secret; she had participated in it. She was now a data point in a paranatural event.The historian in her was ravenous for the rest of the record.
On Saturday, she gathered her laundry.The mundane task felt like an act of profound normalcy, a rebellion against the madness. The basement stairwell smelled of damp concrete and old paint. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, flickering in a dismal rhythm that made the shadows of the rusted, humming machines seem to twitch.
She was loading a washer when a voice cut through the mechanical drone.
“Heard you met the moon.”
Viv jumped, banging her knee on the open door. Margot, the super, stood by a sagging shelf of orphaned detergent bottles.She hadn’t heard her approach. The older woman was leaning on her toolbox, her silver-streaked hair escaping its bun in wisps, her eyes the colour of old pennies.They missed nothing.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Viv said, too quickly, shoving a bundle of sheets into the drum.
“Smell it on you,” Margot stated, her tone flat.“Even over the Tide. It’s not a perfume.It’s a marker. Like ozone before a storm.”
Viv’s face burned.She focused on measuring the liquid soap, her hands trembling slightly. “I helped a neighbor. That’s all.”
A dry, crackling sound escaped Margot’s throat—a laugh worn thin by years of seeing too much.“Help. Right.” She set her toolbox down with a metallic thud that echoed in the cavernous room. “Look, I’m not the morality police.What two consenting… beings… do in private is their business. But I saw you slipping out of 3B at dawn last Saturday. You looked like you’d been pulled through a knothole backwards. And you had that look.”
“What look?”
“The ‘I’ve just seen God and She has fangs’ look. Followed by the ‘I think I might want to see it again’ look.” Margot crossed her arms, her gaze unwavering. “Poppy’s been here six years.Longest she’s stayed anywhere. She pays her rent on time, she keeps the real damage contained, and she doesn’t bother anyone. Except once a month. And even then, it’s just noise.”
“You know.” It wasn’t a question.“I’m the super. I know which pipes rattle and which tenants howl at the moon. Found her during my first year, mid-change, tangled in her own sculpture, crying.Not snarling. Crying.” Margot’s voice softened for a fraction of a second.“I brought her a bucket of ice water and a tarp. We’ve had an understanding ever since.”
Viv closed the washer door, the latch clicking loud in the quiet. The rhythmic slosh of water began.“She said it was a cycle.A need. That it hurt.”
“It does,” Margot nodded. “Imagine the worst period cramps you can conceive, combined with a ravenous lust, all wrapped up in bones that want to break and reshape themselves. It’s a biological imperative with a hair trigger.The full moon is just… the peak. The big show.”
“Just the peak?” Viv echoed, leaning against the warm, vibrating machine.
Margot sighed, pulling a rusted wrench from her toolbox and tapping it absently against her palm. “The full moon is when the… transformation… is complete.The appetite is strongest. But the build-up starts days before.And the come-down lasts after.She’s volatile.More emotional. The beast is closer to the surface. A sudden anger, a spike of passion… it can pull it out of her.Not the full thing, but a glimpse.A snout elongating for a second. A claw where a nail should be.” She met Viv’s eyes. “It’s not safe.”
“She didn’t hurt me.”
“You satisfied the imperative.You fed the hunger. Of course she didn’t hurt you.” Margot’s lips pressed into a thin line. “But what about when you have a fight? What about when you leave a dish in the sink and she’s two days pre-moon and feeling prickly? You think that human part is always in the driver’s seat?”
Viv thought of Poppy’s eyes, the human intelligence drowning in that golden, animal haze.The immense control it must have taken to be so gentle. “She’s in control.She spoke to me.”
“She wanted you. The beast and the woman were aligned. That’s a powerful incentive.” Margot tossed the wrench back into the box.“Look, I’m not telling you to run. Hell, she could use a friend who doesn’t scream and call a priest.But you need to know the rules. The moon phase isn’t a suggestion, it’s a law. She’s stronger, faster, her senses are dialled up to eleven all the time.She can smell a lie. She can hear your heartbeat from across the room.And she’s stubborn as hell. Pushes people away ‘for their own good.’ Has a whole tragic back catalogue of folks who thought they could handle it and bolted at the first sign of a fang.”
The washer churned behind Viv, a mundane counterpoint to the surreal conversation. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you’re still here,” Margot said simply.“You didn’t move out. You’re doing your laundry like a normal person, but you’ve got that look.The curious one. And curiosity around something like Poppy… it gets people eaten.Or worse, it gets her hurt. If you’re gonna walk toward the fire, you should know it’s not just a campfire. It’s a forge.”
Viv stared at the bubbles swirling behind the little porthole window.She thought of the silence from next door.Not a peaceful silence.An absence.A waiting. “What do I do?”
“First, you finish your laundry.” A faint, grim smile touched Margot’s face. “Then, if you’re dumb enough to go back, you talk to her.In the daylight.When she’s just Poppy. The sculptor who drinks too much espresso and listens to angry jazz.Set boundaries.Learn the signs. And for God’s sake, buy a first aid kit that’s heavier on the gauze and antiseptic than the Band-Aids.”
Margot picked up her toolbox, the conversation clearly nearing its end in her mind. She turned to go, then paused.“One more thing,” she said, her back to Viv. “It’s not just about the moon pulling the beast out. Strong emotions can do it, too.Joy, grief… love.The big ones.The beast feels everything, deeply. It’s just as likely to try to lick you to death as tear your throat out if it gets overwhelmed.Doesn’t make it less dangerous. A happy monster is still a monster.”
She walked off, her footsteps echoing into the labyrinth of pipes and shadows, leaving Viv alone with the humming machines and the swirling, soapy water.
Viv stood there for a long time, the damp air clinging to her skin. The warm, vibrating bulk of the washer against her back felt like the only solid thing in the world. The shame was gone, evaporated under the glare of Margot’s pragmatic truth.What remained was a map of terrifying, exhilarating variables.A problem to be studied. A person to be understood.
She pulled her now-clean sheets from the washer, the hot fabric heavy in her arms. They smelled of artificial meadow breeze, but underneath, she imagined she could still catch that wild, dark musk.A marker.
She ascended the stairs, her mind no longer a storm of confused shame, but a focused, determined calculation.She had the facts.She knew the risks. The archival record was incomplete, and Viv Cross had never been able to leave a mystery unresolved.
As she reached her floor, she didn’t turn toward her own door. She stood in the hallway, looking at the scarred wood of 3B.The silence behind it was different now. It wasn’t empty.It was charged, like the tense pause before a thunderclap.
She took a deep breath, walked to her own apartment, and unlocked the door.She had research to do. Moon phases.Lore she’d previously dismissed.And then, she would have a conversation. In the daylight.