The overwhelming stench of something familiar begins wafting my way as I focus my energy and it distracts me from listening. I know the smell, it’s not metallic it’s a scent. A wolf scent, familiar … someone I know.
I don’t know what’s happening, but instinct makes me push back, despite the world tilting and swaying around me and I slide backwards under the nearest bed. Scrambling flat again and using my palms and all the strength I can muster to force myself into the shadows of my only protection. I inhale sharply and that scent forms a picture in my mind of the face it belongs to, so clear, now it’s almost upon me.
It’s Vanka’s. It’s her smell, her scent. Strong as though she’s afraid, or in wolf form. I don’t know.
I claw and pull myself under, breaking nails in the painful process as I scramble in panic. Something telling me to hide. Until I’m concealed by the sheets she leaves hanging over with her refusal to make her bed, and for once, I’m glad of their untidiness. Thankful her bed is always a mess, leaving chaos around it which now conceals me, and I curl into my own body to fit in one corner. I peer out, gut telling me that I should be quiet and stay hidden. I hold my breath and cover my mouth with my own hand as tears begin to fall quietly down my cheeks. Fear trying to consume me, making me shake so badly I’m sure it’ll give me away.
My door is still open, and as I start to become accustomed to the dark, my nocturnal eyes coming out to play for the first time since my turning, I make out something passing by the open space and inhale quickly to quiet myself into stillness. Heart bursting through my chest, pounding my ribs erratically as tears drench my hand and wrist.
Something tall and dark swaggers by in the space out there, imposing, and blurry as I adjust, but it pauses and stops, right outside. Almost like it senses me and I recoil some more, trying to make myself as small as I can. I’m so scared. It turns slowly to peer my way, everything in me turns to ice as a terrified feint drains me of all blood. I close my eyes, screw them shut tight and clench my fists in a bid to become completely cut off and invisible as best I can. Praying to the fates that they don’t see me. Whatever it is, I know it’s not a friend. It’s not one of us.
“Here puppy, puppy… where are you hiding? I know there’s at least one more up here….” The bloodcurdling words make me scrunch my face up to combat hysterical tears, the voice alien to me, almost satanic, low, and husky, with a heavy accent in the depths. Foreign, yet I don’t know what. I don’t know this voice.
The scent is nothing that I ‘ve ever encountered before and dampening over the one I vaguely recognize. It’s not Vanka but I can smell her close which only confuses my fear addled brain. The sadistic laugh that follows his bold verbal’s, turn my insides to mush, and I physically weaken with a cold wave as whatever or whoever it is, steps inside the room with me.
“I can hear your heart beating little one……. Bumpity, bumpity, bump, bump, bump. You’re scared…. Why don’t you come out and play, like your friends are doing? I want to play with you too….” He laughs again, a sound that curls my toes and sends shivers across my scalp and down my spine, so that I shudder uncontrollably. The sound of someone truly deranged, and evil, and I almost lose control and freak out. Tightening myself stiff and holding my breath to keep myself together.
I cover my mouth again, tighter, as the urge to break into a sobbing cry hits me harder and I shake, holding my breath and praying to god he leaves me alone. I don’t know who he is, and I’m so disoriented, the smell overpowering my senses, that I ‘m trying hard not to gag while keeping my focus on this stranger. I can taste something foul in the air, hitting my tongue, invading my lungs, awful and cloying. So metallic and potent that it makes my eyes sting and water with its toxicity.
He’s not one of us. I don’t know what he is, but his intentions aren’t good. I can almost taste his desire for blood, and it renders me completely useless. Frozen and afraid. He ventures in further from the doorway, dragging something heavy along behind him that identifies the thud, thud, I heard coming my way.
I choke on instant bile as it rises up my throat and almost suffocates me in the process. My heart near imploding as my body convulses at the sight of the lifeless and headless body, he’s dragging behind him. Gagging on my own vomit, I can’t block out her scent…. Panic, hysteria, and the crumbling of my mental state as I identify what and who he has with him. There is no mistaking who has fallen foul to whatever this is, I can’t unsee or blot it out no matter how much I try and turn away, wash it out of my eyes and mind with snottery tears.
It’s Vanka. She’s dead! She’s right there, feet in front of me, dragged by this monster and being used as a toy for his sick twisted game.
“I know where you are, Puppy. Why don’t you come out and do me a favor…. I don’t want to have to drag you out from under there. It’s not fun if I have to do that.”? There’s a sneer of venomous hatred in his voice, and I imagine the way his face curls into a sadistic grin, glaring my way through the darkness. Enjoying every moment of this.
He drops her lifeless form on the floor fully, with a dull thud of weight, her body splaying her arms out in a star shape and I recoil, tears blurring my vision as I try and get as small as I can back here. Whimpering internally.
I don’t know what to do, I’m terrified, and if Vanka was no match for this thing, then I’m not either. I don’t know how to fight; I’ve never had to. I’m not a warrior or even aggressive. I’m a nothing, a reject from a farmer’s family who is worth nothing to no one.
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