I stalked through a silent house, blood patterning the furniture and walls in splatters and swipes from people’s flailing hands. Beautiful. Blood had dried on my body as well, matted through my hair. I grinned, and barked a yelping laugh as I heard a whimper. A girl tried to crawl away through a trail of blood, legs dragging uselessly because I’d broken her spine just above the hips. I pounced and she cried out. “Do you want to play?” She swung her head, nonono. I just grinned and leant down to lick some of the blood of her back. “Oh, you taste good. All that fear…”
“Let me go, please.” Broken harsh whimpers. I
frowned.
“You don’t wanna play?”
“Please, let me go. Don’t hurt me.”
“Awww. And I wanted to play.” I pouted, then
reached down and broke her neck with one easy twist. She went limp. No playmates
for me today. I wandered through the silent rooms, one hand streaking blood
along the walls. Just one more swipe of red among many. Red everywhere.
Crumpled bodies in heaps, some in pieces. I gazed at my hand coolly, and
watched as it metamorphed into the hand of a beast, furred and clawed. Another
whining, yelping laugh tore itself from my throat, a lonely but evil sound of
predatory anticipation as I dropped to all fours. Fur grew and muscles changed
as I screamed a sound of the damned, pain rippling through me like a bright
light of epiphany. I was a beast. Nothing more, nothing less.
And I laughed through my pain, laughed through my
human horror of the lives I’d taken, the blood I’d spilt and that clung to me
like a second skin, even over the fur, laughed and howled my amusement into the
silence of the slaughter house I’d created. With my own two hands. Darkening
shadows crept through the windows and I howled to the moon that gleamed like
milk against ink in the night sky above me. Lady light above me, drifting in
the darkness, and I’m lost in the skin of an animal. Fur and ears and tail and
fangs and claws and blood scent pulling me down into a hunting fever. To run
and to scent, to track and to follow, to spring and to pounce, to kill and to devour. Aye, I could feel it burning away at my
humanity. Stripping me bare of human frailty and replacing it with something
meaner, darker and more malicious. Something bestial. And I laughed and
laughed.
Four paws padded through the puddles of blood, nose
nudged at cooling bodies as I continued to snicker, teeth gleaming in an
overlarge mouth, eyes bright and black like chips of jet. Cold. Hard.
Merciless. Because I could smell their weakness, and it woke in me a dark
desire to rip my eye teeth through them, canines slicing and jaws coming closed
in inexorable might. Just because I could and was able. Ah, the beauty of it
all. A shadowed and loathsome beauty, riddled with pain and fear like a worm
eating through the heart of a rose. Reddened petals falling to the floor in
soft sweeps of colour, and I could see that the sky was torn in two like a
scroll, parchment edges rolling up.
Outside somehow in a dream dislocation, I put my
nose to the earth and then into the wind. Seeking something. A darker dream then
the one I was cruising through. A desperate need for my fangs to sink into
something and rip it apart, jaw fair aching with it as I travel over drifts of
moon silvered grass like a shadow. Oh, the wonder of the night as I snuff the
wind, tasting air flow over my lips like a wine as red as blood, drool dripping
from my muzzle in long strands, mouth watering with anticipation. A toss of my
head and I halt, pausing with one paw uplifted. Something calls. A howl
drifting to my ears, sinister thready strand of discordant music seeking my
attention. I howl back to it and another drifts in out of the night, one like
me, madness gleaming in animal bright eyes and teeth bared.
Snap of my jaws to warn him off, telling him I
was just as strong as he and nasty with it. Snickering laughter as he sprung,
shoulder knocking me over heavily and paws scrabbling for purchase on the
earth. I whipped my head around, teeth snapping at coal black fur so close to
my own and froze as jaws closed on my throat. A whine of appeasement came from
my panting jaws, shudders melting through my body as he forced me back to the
earth and defenceless stomach exposed. White gleaming daggers so close to my
vulnerabilities, submitting to the superior strength of this older male.
Knowing how it will end and strangely resigned and yearning for the claiming at
the same time, knowing that I will be taken in as worth protecting, guarded and
nurtured if not loved in a strictly possessive way.
Rocketing upward out of sleep, gasping and
panting for breath as sweat pours off me as my dream self, the beast wolf
creature I had been, is thrust into, hard. Screaming pain and howling of
fulfilment as teeth fastened themselves around the ruff on my neck to
immobilize me. Nothing human in that embrace, only animal want, the need to
procreate. Equally shared by both partners, at the same time my dream self
hates it and protests the necessary submission.
I put my hand down on snowy white sheets and
stare at it, willing it to remain five fingered, pink and slender. Not four
claws and a dew claw high up on what was my wrist, black furred and animal.
Just a dream. Just another dream…
To be continued...