Wild at heart

Emily pursues her prey on four legs. In this form her eyes show the forest as nothing more than a hue of greys. It is her other senses that paint a multi-layered collage of life so vivid and alive that for a heartbeat in time she wonders if she is a girl dreaming of being a wolf, or a wolf dreaming of being a girl. All around her, she is aware of several other wolves pursuing her prey. The rest of her pack moving closer to fence in the tired quarry. Suddenly a new sweet but spicy odour rises into the air overpowering every other scent in the forest. Emily instinctively knows this to be the smell of fresh spilled blood. A sure sign that the injured prey will soon fall. She increases her pace rushing to assist her pack with the kill.

Entering a wide grassy clearing she is just in time to witness the pack run a young buck to ground. It’s antlers thrash through the air threatening a wound as it’s hooves cut tracks through the soft soil. Emily’s human side is appalled and fascinated as she watches the pack slowly move in and tear the bucks throat out. The overpowering smell of fresh excrement mingles uneasily with the scent of blood; with the kill confirmed, Emily watches the pack move back a pace or two to give her first selection from the carcass. She feels sick as her fangs slice through the bucks muscular stomach with ease, but as the bloody flesh slides down her throat she has to admit it is the finest meal she has ever consumed.

Emily awakes with such a start. For a couple of seconds her dream feels so real that she can almost taste blood in her mouth. She lays there for a second before noticing that her alarm clock quotes the time as just after nine am.“ Late again” she groans attempting an athletic leap out of bed. She almost makes it when her foot snags on a rumpled bed sheet sending her bombing head first onto the hardwood floor. Normally amidst the waves of pain and nausea that follow this style of fall, Emily feels stupid. Or even in extreme cases frustrated but as she picks herself up from today’s fall, she feels unusually angry. With her head splitting like a hunk of firewood under an axe she tries to select a reasonable outfit from a wardrobe of nondescript clothing all bought to aid her attempts to blend in at school. That done she gathers her books into her bag and wanders downstairs. The air in the house is as thick and quiet as a jungle before a summer storm, but then again it always is at this hour of the morning since her mother has to leave three hours before hand in order to make it for the first half of a twelve-hour split shift. Emily knows that her mother has had to work harder since her dad died and they had to leave the reservation, but she hates the fact that she does not get to see as much of her anymore.

Her only contact is a note asking her to pick up extra milk on the way home from school since the stores can run low on essentials during the holidays. At the mention of the holidays she suddenly feels bad for being pissed off at her mother. She since is after all just trying to scrape extra cash together for Christmas. Emily throws down a quick breakfast consisting of a single cup of coffee and a dry slice of toast before scuttling off to catch her transport.

The bus is twenty minutes late. Packed tighter than a tin of sardines and due to the constantly terrible traffic in the city gets her to school just shy of the end of first period. This is enough time for Mr. Cunningham, her overweight, middle aged guidance counsellor, to scream at her like a week one army recruit before chasing her off to the games department. More over to a lesson that is always a low point in her week. Sitting there in the empty locker room Emily feels the defenceless feeling Mr. Cunningham inspires in her draining away leaving behind anger and resentment at how he speaks to her. As she changes into her games kit she reads on the notice board by the door that today’s game is basketball, “Thank God,” she thinks to herself, “basket ball is a none contact sport.

The no contact ruling lasts a whole twenty minutes. That is how long it takes for Peter Stuart, one of the classes many resident assholes, to decide it would be good fun to body slam the small framed half Indian girl into the white washed concrete wall. Emily peels off the wall with a painful slowness. Crumbling to the ground blood bubbling from the corner of her mouth she is vaguely aware of people gathering around her. Their voices seem distant and unimportant, like some half remembered dream. The only sound she can hear clearly is the plink of her blood as it rolls down her chin and hit’s the marble effect floor. She senses rather than sees Peter push his way through the crowd to tower over her.

The words falling from his grinning face seem to be an attempt at an apology but all Emily hears is still the plink, plink as her blood begins to form a puddle on the floor. No one notices her fingers grip the underside of the basketball but they notice when she bounces from the floor and slams the ball one handed into Peters face. For a heartbeat the world seems to slow down to a crawl. Peter sprawls backwards on the floor blood spraying from his nose or his mouth. Possibly both. And Emily instead of being afraid of what she has just done is excited. She can feel her anger burning through her body like a drug distancing her from her actions. She moves forward to kick Peters prone body but is instead pulled off her feet by her classmates. As they haul her towards the locker room she has to fight the urge to lash out at them.

The second they clear the doorway her classmates roughly drop her on the floor before making a hasty retreat back into the games hall. With nowhere to direct it Emily feels the strong warm rage leak from her body until she is laying there trembling wondering what is happening to her. Ms Jameson the games teacher bursts into the locker room a look somewhere between scared and angry painted on her face,

“What in the name of Jesus, Mary and the Saints was that?”

“I don’t know,” She replies scooting backwards on her rear until she is almost cowering under the bench. Ms Jameson is scary but Emily is more worried that the hostile tone of her voice makes her want to lash out again so that she has to dig her nails into the palm of her hand to stop herself.
.

“I don’t have time for this. You get dressed and come see me after school,” her teacher orders suddenly looking more scared than angry.


For the rest of the day Emily feels like a fox in the henhouse. People who normally would not have noticed her actively move out of the way in the corridor to avoid her. By the time she gets to the end of the day her anger is like a physical presence which extends out from her body. It is bad enough that she feels like a freak without everyone else treating her like one. She heard in the lunch room that Peter Stuart lost his two front teeth during their encounter and as shuffles down the corridor to the teachers lounge she prays that it’s true.

The door to the lounge is open when she arrives the room beyond empty and dark. From down the hallway she can hear voices. Walking towards the noise Emily feels all the hairs on her body stand on end like a animals heckles rising in challenge. Unable to see anything to be afraid of she swallows the lump in her throat and opens the door. She walks into the hall and instantly knows she has made an awful mistake. In the seconds it takes her eyes to adapt to the thick multi-layered blackness, Emily can sense people moving around her like a pack of jackals surrounding their prey cutting her off from her exit. When her eyes do adjust to the gloom she can feel fear worm it is way through her intestines, because there in front of her stands Peter Stuart sporting a bloody toothless grin and a wicked looking Kris blade.

In that moment, as scared as she is, she is angrier that they have tried to ambush her. Every inch of her wants to lash out and hurt Peter all over again just to wipe that smug smile off his face. She keeps this urge under tight control because she knows that if she lashes out here that she could get hurt.

For a second the world seems to freeze, but this is merely the quiet before the storm for on the next breath they rush her. She attempts to avoid or at least parry their blows, but her attackers are careful to keep her flanked at all times. And a couple of stinging punches and slaps from her blind side are enough to convince Emily to keep her eyes firmly on where Peter is, bruises simply heal better than knife wounds. The moment she stops following the others someone throws her to the ground, tearing her shirt wide open as she falls. Something about Emily’s exposed flesh and faded white bra seems to drive her attackers into a frenzy and suddenly she understands that if she survives this she may have more lasting injuries than even a knife wound.

Something deep within Emily’s psyche snaps. Without a second warning, Emily finds herself a passenger in her own body. As in her wolf dreams her senses sharpen to the extent that she no longer needs to use her eyes to see, every one of her attackers stalls in his steps as her frame rapidly expands in height, mass and fur content, until she finds herself staring down along slender snout at them. Her fear mixes freely with her anger so that she feels a scream building in her. However, when it comes out of her it is not a human scream, but a wild sorrow filled howl that fills the hall.

Everyone, including Emily, can do nothing but watch as her already narrowed fingers sprout four inch barbed talons. This seems to break what ever spell her attackers are under for they scatter as Emily howls in anger this time, the sight of fleeing prey is too much for the beast within her and she finds her logical mind washed away in a breaking wave of angst filled red mist.


When this mental mist clears Emily is human again dressed in rags and covered in gore, for a second all she can do is stare at the thick scarlet pools and pieces of bone scattered all over the floor. Her mind feels numb around the edges and she can still feel the beast just under the surface, she knows she will begin to scream in a minute.

“It is time we where gone child.”

The elderly male voice startles her, and Emily snatches Peter’s dagger off the ground as she spins around. Instead of the teacher or police officer she is expecting, she finds a grey Haired Indian holding out a heavy coat for her. He resembles how she remembers her father and his scent catches in her nose, she finds her muscles relaxing. He may look like a man but he smells like a wolf, more to the point, he smells as if he was one of the dream wolves. She follows him out of the hall, wrapping the coat around her body as she goes. She figures he is leading her to some kind of new life, and as she slips the dagger into the coat pocket, she swears she is never going to look back.