Tiger's Heart: Perfect Version

Wow, that was embarressing! I didn't realize this had so many formatting problems. Now this really is the "perfect version". Enjoy.


Cherry came home early from work. Mr. Seligman, the "Big Man" at her ad agency, had given her the week off, worried that she was working to hard. Cherry would have protested, but she realized she had been neglecting her husband lately, and she wanted to spend some time with him. Okay, honestly, she wanted a good boning.

"Wafers?" She called out, after dropping her keys and purse on the kitchen table. " I'm home early! Where's my Vanilla Flava?" Early in their relationship, they had made a joke out of having different skin colors. Since Cherry was black, Derrick called her Cocoa Puffs, and since Derrick was white, she called him Vanilla Wafers.

Cherry found Derrick in his workshop, a small building not attached to the house, out back. Derrick was in the process of shaping the legs on an arm chair with a small chisel. Cherry walked up quietly behind him, hoping to get a better view of what he was doing.

"Cherry? Home from work early?" Asked Derrick, not turning around. His wife froze, then stomped her feet in frustration.

"How do you always know when I'm in the room?" she asked. "I swear you are some kind of psychic!"

"Do you need me to fix something? I already know the sink in the kitchen is leaky, I'll get to that later." Derrick replied.

"This is what our relationship has come to? You're just the fix-it man that I sleep with?!" Cherry exclaimed.

Derrick didn't look up from his chisel. "You're busy. I understand that. You've been working hard on your client's accounts after you got that promotion."

Cherry sighed. Derrick would not be baited into an argument. "I didn't come up here to ask you to fix a leaky faucet." she put her arms around him and kissed his neck, running her tongue along the side of his stubbly cheek. "It could be a plumbing problem though, depending on how you look at it..." she murmured into his ear.

Derrick stopped what he was doing. "Are you asking me to lay pipe?"

"You bet your ass, I am Wafers." she whispered. "Now what are you going to do about it?"

Derrick stared at her for several seconds, his gray-green eyes showing little emotion. He looked like he had never seen her before. "I'm going to finish this chair." He started hammering his chisel again. Cherry released him roughly, pushing him a little. She wanted to call him a jackass, but that would be childish. The woman walked back into her house heavily, feeling the first drops of a downpour bounce off her hair.

Normally, she would have called Derrick, and warn him about the weather, but when he was in a weird mood like this, she left him alone. The woman went into their bedroom and turned off the lights. It was an old house, and had been struck by lightning before. She didn't want all of the appliances to blow. Cherry lit candles, hoping half-heartedly that her husband would come in from the rain and give her some physical comfort.

She waited 5 minutes, then gave up and blew out all the candles. Derrick could be such an asshole! The room darkened. Storm clouds were moving in quickly. Cherry kicked off her shoes and stripped down to her bra and panty set. "What a waste!" her exclamation was accompanied by a clap of thunder. She jumped right into her husband's arms. "Oh my god!" She hit him hard on the chest. "Derrick, what the fuck is wrong with you, sneaking in here like a criminal?"

Derrick cut her off with his tongue, stroking her mouth in all the right places. Cherry's knees weakened, but Derrick steadied her. "Does that count as an apology?"

"Almost." Cherry pulled her bra up over head and pressed her breasts against his naked chest. The cold rain had soaked him, and was having an immediate effect on her nipples turning them into hard little kernels. Derrick eagerly ripped her thong apart. Now Cherry could tell Derrick was very naked, and very ready. He rubbed his condom encased erection against stomach lingeringly before picking her up and setting her on the bed. "Derrick?" she asked as he made a trail of hot wet kisses down her body. "I want to feel all of you tonight."

Derrick's face looked absolutely wicked as it was illuminated by lightning flashes. "Getting impatient? I'll fix that..." He started to enter her.

Cherry placed a hand on his chest to stop him. "No that's not what I meant. I want you to make love to me without a condom."

She felt him grow completely still. "We talked about this, Cherry. We've only been together a year. A baby changes everything. Can't we at least wait another year?"

"It's just that...I don't know. I'm not getting younger, and we have financial stability right now."

Derrick laughed out loud. "You're twenty-six."

"And you're thirty-two. What are we going to do, wait until we're in our forties? Come on, can't you let go for once?"

"You're just being impatient. I'm just trying to make sure you don't have any regrets."

"I wouldn't regret having a baby for you Derrick. I know how much responsibility it takes-"

Derrick cut her off with his mouth, almost making her forgot what the conversation was about. "Ssh, Puffs. Let me take care of you, right now. Will you let me do that?"

Cherry nodded, and her kiss told him she accepted his terms...for now.

*************************************************

Cherry was in the middle of having sex when she noticed that her husband's teeth were growing longer. She could only see his face in flashes of light from the storm, so at first she thought it was a trick of light. Another flash of light revealed that it wasn't. His face...it was changing into something furry and definitely predatory. Cherry could feel the fur erupt from his back under her hands, could feel the muscles of his body contract from something that had nothing to do with his making love to her.

Cherry screamed when another lightning flash lit up his face again. He was completely transformed, his lips could barely contain the large canines that were obviously made for ripping and tearing flesh. His nose looked like it came from an animal. Cherry looked at his eyes, and she knew her man was gone for good, for in place of his dark green eyes, there were dark slitted irises in a sea of orange.

*************************************************
Cherry woke up from the dream screaming, kicking and clawing under her sheets so wildly, her husband thought she was having a seizure.

"Cherry? Wake up! What's wrong with you?" He asked shaking her.

" Oh my god, Derrick!" She said gasping for air. She hugged him immediately, running her hands down his back just to make sure. Of course, it was hairless. She looked at his eyes. They were the same green eyes he had always had, though this morning they held more bewilderment than normal.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

Cherry squeezed him hard enough to choke off any man's air supply, then she kissed him again. "I had the worst dream of my life! I thought that you were-" she stopped herself. It would be best if she kept this to herself. "I'll get over it. I'm going to make breakfast. Do you want anything baby?"

"Well... I have been missing those little sausages you make with that sweet sauce. and I have been in the mood for some spinach lately."

Cherry shook her head. Only her husband would want spinach for breakfast and not something normal like oatmeal. She kissed him. "Whatever you say baby. It's all about you today." Her words were followed by a loud clap of thunder. She glanced out of the window. The trees were swaying wildly, and forest debris were flying all over the place. "It hasn't stopped raining yet? Is this a hurricane so late in the year?"

Derrick shrugged.” Everything’s crazy. It's a wonder it doesn't snow here." The couple lived in a remote part of Florida. Cherry didn't mind the hour long commute to work each day. Derrick's privacy was very important to him. He said he couldn't concentrate on his work without it.

Cherry put on her robe and turned on the stove to heat it up for the sausages. Nothing happened. "Derrick?"

Derrick walked into the kitchen. "The power's out again?"

"Yes. Would you mind-"

"I'm already ahead of you." He put on a rain jacket. "I'll go check on the generator. Chances are lightning struck it and it overheated. This will probably take a while." He went to the back door.

Cherry kissed him. "Be careful. I don't want you to get struck by lightning either."

Derrick kissed her back. "I'll be back as soon as I can. Start a fire in the fireplace just in case the generator doesn't start back up." He opened the door, letting in all kind of debris thrown around by the wind. Cherry had to struggle a bit with the door just to get it to close. When she looked up afterwards, Derrick was gone.
*************************************************

Cherry sat by the fireplace for two hours before deciding to go out looking for her husband. She put on a heavy raincoat, boots, and hat and ran out into the storm. It was very hard to see with all the tree limbs and leaves whirling in the air around her, and the blackish gray clouds blocking out the sun didn't help either. She would have been grateful for the intermittent lightning flashes providing visibility if they hadn't been accompanied by thunder. Cherry stumbled her way to the generator, using her memory more than her vision.

Derrick wasn't there. At first Cherry thought he was playing a joke on her, that maybe he was hiding on the other side of the groaning boxlike device. He wasn't. She checked the garage to see if he went there for tools or spare parts, but he wasn't inside. Cherry went back into her house again, thinking that maybe he'd gone there, but he hadn't.

Cherry was scared. Where was he? All of their cars were there, so he hadn't driven off somewhere. Why would he leave her alone like this, in this weather? Had something happened to him? With that thought, Cherry bit her lip and went out into the storm again. She called out his name, screaming it, but she couldn't even hear herself with all the wind. Cherry didn't want to go into the woods, but she didn't see what choice she had. There was no other place her husband could be.

She walked only a few feet before discovering a pile of clothes. She recognized everything, Derrick's raincoat, sweatshirt, jeans and boots. There was even a pair of underwear! Why would Derrick strip completely naked out in this storm? If he was hurt that badly there would be blood on the clothing, even if it was raining. And why not try to make it to the house instead of the woods?

Now Cherry was confused instead of worried. Was her husband some kind of freak? Was he watching her right now, getting a kick out of all this? Derrick did have a kinky side, but this was out there. Cherry hid herself behind a tree, guessing that if this was a kinky sex game he'd be near his clothes, just in case she didn't come looking for him.

It seemed she waited forever, being miserably soaked by the rain and deafened by the wind and thunder, until she saw what appeared to be a large animal. It looked in her direction, and Cherry immediately knew it was a cat. She could tell by the shape of the eyes. Even though she figured it must be a cougar, Cherry remained absolutely still. There was no telling if it had rabies or something like that.

The cat sniffed the pile of clothes, and for a second, Cherry came up with a plausible reason for Derrick's discarding them. Maybe the cougar had been tracking him, and he took off his clothing to trick it. It was a perfectly logical explanation to her, until the cat lay down, and started to writhe.

The cat convulsed violently, shaking and quivering. It rolled closer to her, and she could see that it was no cougar. It was a very large tiger, probably 7 feet from tail to nose. Now she could see that something was happening to it. It's striped orange fur was flying off into the wind, and it's backbone was taking on a new shape. It's paws were shrinking, and it's claws were shrinking, becoming less pointed. Cherry thought of her dream and she almost screamed.

What the fuck is this? She thought as she saw the tiger change form. It was like watching a scary movie. She closed her eyes for a few seconds hoping that it would stop, or that in reality, she was dreaming again. When she looked again, there was only Derrick lying naked on the ground breathing hard like a marathon runner.

Cherry started shaking. I have to get out of here! she thought. What if he finds out I know? Will he kill me? Just then, Derrick raised his head and looked right at her.

"Cherry?" he asked weakly. Cherry, startled, backed away from him and tripped over a tree root. She fell on her butt, and made the mistake of looking her husband in the eye. They were too big for his face, making him appear almost ghostlike. They looked like two black orbs ringed with orange. Then he started dragging himself towards her on his arms, as if he was still too weak to pull himself up.

Cherry got on her feet and ran. This time she didn't fall down. She had to get away. Cherry didn't want to go back to her house. Derrick knew many ways of getting in, so she wouldn't be safe. She got the spare key for the Volkswagen Beetle from the garage, and got in the car.
Cherry jammed the key into the ignition, not worrying about her seatbelt. After breaking through the shed door, she got onto the dirt road that led to the small town of Ridgemond.

All she could think about was getting away. "What the hell is he?!" She screamed to herself as her little Beetle roared down the road. "Never mind, I don't want to know, and I'm not letting that...that thing close enough to me to find out. He'll probably try to kill me now that I know the truth." She accelerated, trying to go as fast as possible. Going over 80 miles an hour, in the middle of a freak storm, in a little VW Beetle, wasn't very smart, but neither was staying in the same place as some monster who was obviously trying to keep a secret.

Cherry probably would have made it to Ridgemond, if the road ahead of her hadn't been washed out. One second she was on a muddy but drivable road, the next she was trying to drive through a flash flood. Even though she was going fast, her little VW was no SUV. Her car got stuck. Cherry tried backing up. All she ending up doing was spinning her wheels. She spent several minutes trying to get her car unstuck, but nothing worked. She didn't want to get out of her car, but there was no other way. Cherry wasn't about to let Derrick catch up to her.

She stepped outside and realized that she was in a hurricane. She immediately pulled her rain jacket hood down over her face to shield her from the stinging rain and debris that seemed to attack her. She stood in about three feet of water that soaked through her denim jeans and made her very cold very quickly. It was a struggle trying to get to the back of the car. Twice she was almost hit by jagged tree logs floating down the flashflood, and her boots felt like iron. Finally, she got behind the car and pushed. The car moved a little. Cherry pushed harder, digging her feet into the mire. The car moved more. Cherry stopped for a break, catching her breath. This was like a workout for her!

While she was resting, Cherry saw two bright lights off into the distance down the way she had just come. She went right back to on the car, cursing, putting all her power into pushing it out of the water. She looked back several times at the headlights to keep herself going, using panic and fear as fuel. It took her less than a minute to push the car out. Cherry didn't look back again as she jumped into the driver's seat and took off again.

Fear got the best of her and she looked back in her rearview mirror. Derrick's pickup truck crossed the flash flood as if it was a little stream. Cherry pushed the accelerator down to the floor. She wasn't going to let him catch her. Not when she so close to getting away. The road that she knew so well was completely different now. Parts of it was washed away, and she continually ran over small logs and pieces of trees. It was like it was all a dream. The only thing that kept her driving down that road, at close to 100 miles an hour, was the pair of high beam pickup headlights in her rearview mirror.

Suddenly up ahead, Cherry saw that a large tree had fallen down onto the road. She instinctively put on her brakes, but they failed. She pumped the brakes, looking at her feet. The next time she looked up, she was hitting it. Cherry's body was pushed back into her seat, then against the windshield with tremendous force. She crashed through the windshield, not unlike a superhero, and landed some 25 feet away. Cherry was knocked unconscious, but when she came to, Derrick was standing over her, as dark as a shadow.

She screamed, trying to backpedal on her hands and knees, but couldn't. Cherry couldn't move her legs. Looking at them, she realized she had broken both her legs just below the knee. She looked back up at Derrick, who was looking at her with an emotion she couldn't understand.
"Stay still so I can stop the bleeding." He told her calmly, bending down to her.

"Get the hell away! You're trying to kill me!" she screamed. "Someone! Help! He's a monster! He's a -" Her words were cut short by a powerful slap across the face that knocked her out again.

*************************************************

When Cherry came to, she felt like she had the worse than ever. Her throat was raw from screaming, her head ached from being hit by a log and her husband's hand, and she still couldn't move her legs. Upon further inspection of herself, she realized she couldn't move her arms either. She was back in her home tied securely to her bed. When she began struggling against the ropes, Derrick came into view.

"Good. You're awake. I didn't hit you too hard." He caressed her head lovingly.

She pulled her head away from him. "You bastard! What are you going to do to me? What are you going to do?" Cherry started to sob.

"I'm not going to do anything to you." He pulled up the blanket covering her legs. They were splinted with scraps of wood from his workshop, and cloth from clothing ripped apart hurriedly.

"Is this supposed to make me feel better? I don't even know what you are anymore!" she screamed at him.

His face took on a dark expression. "I'm the same man you married! What's any different?"

Cherry laughed bitterly. " Besides the shape changing into a gigantic fucking tiger? Nothing!"

Derrick growled deep in his throat, in warning. Cherry gasped. "Why don't you get it over with?"

Derrick bent down over her and looked her in the eye. "I don't want to kill you!" He rasped in an catlike hiss. " If I did, you would already be dead! I could have left you there on the road, and the storm would have finished you off. "

" So why do you want me alive? Are you going to eat me? That's it ! This is the storm of the century! You're going to need something to tide you over!" she tugged at her ropes, wildly.

Derrick got out of her face and watched her struggle. " You don't want to come to the obvious conclusion. It scares you more than me wanting to eat you."

" And what conclusion could that be after you knocked me out and tied me up? "

Derrick sighed. " How else was I supposed to save you without you hurting yourself? You lost a lot of blood, and you had two broken legs, Puffs." He touched her face. "Tell me that's not love. Tell me that's the cold, calculating instinct of a tiger stalking food."

"Wha-aat?" sputtered Cherry. "How can you love me, being what you are? Tigers don't love!"

" I do love you Cherry. That's why I'm giving you a choice now."

" Oh great. Are you going to ask me if I want to live through your mauling or not?"

Derrick growled again. " I'm giving you the choice of dying a human, or living as I am."

" Like that's a fucking choice!" screamed Cherry through her tears.

" You've lost too much blood. I stopped it, but you lost too much." He showed her the jagged wounds she had on her thighs, exposing bone. "I'm sorry. I can't do anything else."

" Shit." said Cherry simply, trying to take it all in. Now that she had stopped moving, she was starting to feel dizzy from the pain. The shock was wearing off, and she could feel the pain in her lower limbs. It was the most painful thing she had ever experienced. She cried out, and Derrick went to her.

"There isn't much time left. You have to tell me now." He told her. For all his face's blandness, Cherry could see tears welling up in his eyes. "You've got to tell me now." he repeated.

" How is it? " asked Cherry, trying to smile through the pain. " Is it something I would want if I wasn't about to die?"

" I'm not going to lie to you, Cherry. You won't be able to live without being near some kind of forestry, you won't trust as many people, and you'll have an unquenchable urge to mate once a month."

Cherry's eyes widened at the thought of sex in a situation like that. " Changing won't be easy. You might find it uncomfortable, even painful, and you might be stuck in an in-between form until you get used to it. You'll have to kill living creatures for your food, or else eat raw meat every few days. If you can live with all that, you'll live through it."

Cherry was quiet for a long time. " I'm going to live like you then. " She told him. "I'm not going to die here like this."

Derrick pulled out his hunting knife and cut the rope off her wrists. " I wish it didn't have to be this way." He said softly. " I always fantasized about telling you about me. I never thought you'd find out on your own. I'm sorry about all of this."

As soon as she was free, Cherry reached out for her husband. When she felt his warmth, his familiar strength around her, she knew she could trust him to do this. " Just make it quick okay? I don't want to miss Oprah at three." she said, jokingly. For the first time that day, Derrick smiled, and for Cherry, it was like the storm clouds had disappeared.

"I'll try baby, but I think you'll have to settle for the re-run tomorrow."