Howl

Chapter one: Insanity

Snow drifted down from the sky like petals falling from a cherry blossom. An agonizing silence roared in my ears, and I laid them back on my flaked neck, wondering if silence could make one deaf. The sky rained its dandruff so heavily on my body that I believe there was more snow than flesh padding through the thick sheet of winter.

I shook myself with an agitated grunt. I flashed out my bleached fangs to the merciless heavens, but I sheathed them in my lips again just as quickly. Mother Nature has an indifferent heart toward my kind. With an irritated snort I flattened my hackles and dipped my tail. Now was not the time to spend precious energy.

I had been walking like this for several days. Without food or company for over a week, my madness was growing with each passing hour. More than once I had pawed at the ground in vain, the pain of hunger eating away at my stomach. My pads had long ago cracked due to my non-stop running. I suppose that my body had turned on itself to fuel my legs, for my ribs stuck out and my eyes bulged as though I was one of the walking dead. My fur was falling out although it was the middle of winter. I was aware that if I did not eat soon, I would join the snow on the ground, the merciless, pounding snow, the silent stalking beast that forever waits your embrace…

I shook myself violently, teetering on my unsteady legs. My vision was going black. If I sleep now, I may never wake up, I told myself, and forced my legs on again in that monotonous rocking motion. The snow kissed my face with the anticipation that I would someday stop and fall into its cold arms and become one with the snowflakes on the ground. I shivered hopelessly but drove on.

What seemed like a second later I heard a piercing crack that ran clear through the silence, ripping it apart like tissue paper. The sound ricochet around the icy tundra as though there had been a million of them. I found myself on the ground and realized I had fainted from exhaustion. The funny-looking man-prints were beside my head, not an hour old, and I shuddered at the thought that he had not been two feet from my head. My back ached where he had kicked me. Thinking me to be dead, he had moved on.

Quietly I dragged my limbs toward the scent of man. Either I would live or I would die by the man’s gun. I was ready to accept either choice.

As I drew near I could smell other things. Gunpowder. A dead life-bringer wolf. Blood.

I stopped in my tracks and just barely resisted the urge to howl in anguish. Better three, even five rough-ones dead than a life-bringer. Although I did not know her, I would have given my life to save a life-bringer, for every life is precious and the ones with the gift of bringing more life are all the more precious. I came upon the scene.

The man stood over the freshly killed life-bringer wolf, running his long-toed paws through her gray-white hairs. He made small noises to himself and had a pleased look on his face, as though he had a great kill for his alpha. I watched, sickened, as he took out a long, sharp claw and began to saw at the wolf’s neck. He made deep, throaty grunts until he had completely taken the head from the body. The rough-one man wrapped the head in a clear substance and then, with a goofy grin, took off at a proud trot in the direction of his den.

I gaped at the headless mound of flesh staining the snow. Why hadn’t he eaten, or at least buried the meat in a cache? He had taken the most useless part of all, the skull, but had left behind the whole reason for the kill! I wondered at his logic and decided not to let the flesh of the life-bringer go to waste.

I approached the female, wondering at the feminine curves of her body. For some time I stood as though in a trance, and then with no warning my anger, hunger, confusion, sorrow, and pain bubbled up in my blood like a lethal poison. With my saliva flying, I tore into the flesh and savored the sweet taste of meat. My madness had gripped me, and I snarled at the silent sky, warning it not to take my food, threatening it with death should it not heed my words. I ate beyond fullness to the point that I made myself sick, but still I ate with the toxin of insanity burning in my eyes.

At last nothing remained but the chalk-white bones, and I slept with my paws over the rib cage in a possessive gesture, snarling and bristling at the demons in my dreams.