Bolt
boogie woogie feng shui
This is something I wrote for my fiction-writing class last semester, but the subject matter I chose was something that I figured would appeal more to you guys than the artsy-fartsy people in my actual group that wrote about swans and trees and ****. The format is a little screwed up because of the way the board organizes text, but hopefully it won't be too disorienting to read. Take a look and lemme know what you think!
Assignment Synopsis: Take a classic fairytale and update it to fit modern language and story development. That was it. But instead of trying to disguise classic characters and situations with allusions or allegorical context, I chose to go in somewhat of a... different direction. Behold! Little Red Riding Hood REDUX.
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The bar reeked of musky sweat and the sour stench of alcohol, punctuated here and there by a nauseating cloud of thick, stone-colored cigar smoke that congregated fleetingly with the rafters and then sank back down to settle heavily on once pleasant-smelling clothing. By this time of night, most of the regulars had long retired to their homes; roadside RVs and trashed trailers or maybe a dark and empty barebones motel room somewhere with an unopened Bible and the smell of liquid cleaning solution their sole source of company. The bartender had begun wiping down the bar top with a sopping old t-shirt, hinting at the remaining vestiges of pitiful nightlife to hurry the hell up and get the hell out, respectively. None of them seemed to pay attention to his subtle threats, focusing instead on the half-empty mugs of sudsy ferment clutched tightly in their trembling, drunken hands. The jukebox slept silently along the back wall. In the corner of the saloon several yards away, shrouded quite deliberately in a darkness impenetrable by the angle of the sloping overhead lights, sat a beautiful young woman, the kind of pure, old-fashioned beauty that hardly finds itself in a bar, and even more seldom is found in one, also silent, sipping daintily on a shot glass full of sparkling water. Her downward gaze was broken as the lopsided stool directly across from her was pulled back with a groan and a screech. She glanced up briefly at the man sitting in front of her before returning her attention to her lap, periodically stopping for another sip without a subsequent look. The man smiled, exposing crooked rows of slimy, yellow teeth. The rotten stink of his breath made even the normally malodorous saloon air a relief. She did not look up when he spoke.
“Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but I been noticin’ you lookin’ mighty shy down there,” he crooned, the words just barely escaping through his ridiculous gaping grin. “I don’t suppose you come to bars to drink water and stare at the floor.”
Without a word, she lifted a delicate hand, the leaves of an open hardcover book fluttering airily with the ascent. After a moment, the book returned to the woman’s lap, and the woman to motionlessness. The man pretended to be astounded.
“Ah, you’re one of ‘em brainy gals! Well I’m right-sorry for interruptin’ your thought process; I’m just always impressed to see a woman take that kind of initiative. May I ask what it is you’re readin’?”
“You may,” she said, finally returning his stare. The man chuckled and surveyed the room as if expecting the whole bar to be laughing with him. He cleared his throat noisily and held up his hands in mock humility.
“Well then, if I may, if I might, I hereby request to be informed as to what the little lady’s been readin’ so intently for the past hour and a half that she didn’t notice her car being stolen?” At this he nodded in the direction of the window adjacent to the table, cocking an eyebrow slightly as if in an expression of victory. “All’s is out there is bikes and bikers. The white van in the back is Buck’s, the barman’s, and that sleek little diddy there belongs to yours truly. I don’t see another boiler in sight and I doubt you walked. Can’t rightly say I’m surprised though… petty theft is a specialty in this party of the countryside.” Licking his lips, he cocked one eyebrow arrogantly, sending up dunes of wrinkled flesh across his bronzed forehead. He reached down to take a obnoxious gulp from his mug, then sighed contentedly and locked his fingers back behind his head. “Now I assume that because your vehicle has assumably been stolen, it’s a safe assumption that I’ll have to assume the role of your chauffeur tonight, unless of course you’d rather hitch a ride with the Jesse James Gang out there.”
The woman reluctantly set the book down on the splintered table, piercing the man with a fierce glare as she did, and turned her head as the sound of a legion of motorcycles being started shook the bar. Outside, half a dozen leather-clad bikers hooted and hollered incessantly, revving the clutches of their rides louder and louder in a deafening effort to outdo the others. After several seconds they sped off, leaving a whirlwind of dust to settle over the three remaining vehicles scattered in the dimly lit parking lot. The woman turned back around smiling.
“That’s my ride,” she said, and returned her attention again to the pages of her book with a smirk. The man followed the suggestion in her voice and froze, finding himself staring incredulously at a spotless chrome Harley Davidson cruiser leaning slyly toward the entrance of the building. His gaze then shifted several spots over to his own vehicle, a rusted maroon late-60’s model sedan covered in flecks of dried mud. One of the rear windows had been broken out and a feeble rag placed over the opening flopped pitifully in the gentle night breeze. The man squinted sourly.
“It’s called The Werewolf,” the woman said suddenly. The man’s face shifted from dumbfounded frustration to a look of blank perplexity as he tried to make sense of her most recent words.
“The bike?”
“The book. The Werewolf, by Montague Summers.” She held it up again. On the charcoal cover was the title of the text superimposed over a shimmering, golden pentagram, below which was depicted a hapless-looking man in Victorian clothing caught in the apparently-unpleasant process of becoming a wolf-like creature. The yellowed, uneven pages were loosely bound and looked thoroughly thumbed-through, some leaves threatening to escape the dilapidated spine altogether. “You asked what I’m reading and I’m telling you.”
She dropped it quickly with a thud onto the table and downed the rest of her drink. The man looked on speechlessly for a few seconds before giving way to the stupid grin once more, scratching at the thick stubble protruding from his squared jaw.
“Wolfs, huh? Heh, I been called worse.”
The woman was reading intently again and did not hear him, or pretended not to. When more time passed with no reply, the man snaked his hand slowly across the table and grazed the back of the woman’s arm lightly with a filthy, bony finger. “’Course… I been called better, too.”
She did not jerk away, but turned her gaze on him once again, her brow furled tightly, eyes narrowed. Her demeanor was all seriousness. She pulled the crimson bookmark ribbon down the center of the pages and finally closed the book and set it aside. Her mouth opened slowly and she exhaled through glistening pink lips, but did not speak for several seconds. When she did, she said:
“They’re real, you know. Werewolves. You can’t make this stuff up. There’ve been sightings and reports of them from all over the country, all over the world. Most of them are pretty consistent. A lot of people think that most werewolf stories can only be traced back to local folklore from… hundreds of years ago, but there are more surviving tales than you would think, even to this day. They aren’t all spook stories coming out of Transylvania or some **** like that. No, there are legends from all around, as close to home as the woods of the northwestern United States, to the Black Forest in Germany, even some in eastern Asian, China in particular.”
An unseen hand had fed the jukebox, and she halted while it sprung to life, the slow blues guitar of ‘Night Prowler’ emerging from its crackling speakers. When the baseline had settled in, she bit her lip slightly, provocatively, and proceeded with a short sigh.
“They’re not always wolves, though… some are more like dogs or leopards, even tigers, and some are too vague to even be related to any animal we know of through science.” As she spoke, her stern expression softened, and her voice grew faster and higher in pitch with excitement and enthusiasm. She began gesticulating wildly with her hands, occasionally tapping her blood-colored fingernails rapidly on the tabletop while waiting for a reaction. During her outburst, the man had returned to his previous confounded state; this did not derail her speech, but indeed added more fuel with which she continued hastily.
“Most werewolves come about as the result of a curse from a… a, what’s the word? Uh… shaman. A shaman or a sorcerer, or a witch, a yogi, whatever. All the same thing, right? Someone who practices black magic. They take hair from a dead wolf that’s been buried for an entire cycle of the new moon, a sprig of fresh Mountain Ash, and a drop or two of their own blood, then they have this kind of ritual they do where they can lay a curse on whoever they want. That’s why there’s this big misconception that you only turn into a werewolf when there’s a full moon, when really that isn’t true at all, it has more to do with the time of year; it has to be a certain season, when this certain flower blooms… I can’t remember what it’s called. Anyway, when it’s in bloom and there’s a full moon, or just whenever the sorcerer chooses to inflict the curse, that’s when it happens. It’s not one or the other. Actually, in some countries like Brazil it’s written that only the seventh son that can become a wolf, or someone who’s been placed under a divine curse, like they say in Russia, and, uh… I… sometimes ramble when I get excited… sorry.” With the last word, she dropped her elbows onto the table and propped her chin up with open hands, looking cutely back at the man, wide-eyed, as though for affirmation. He simply stared back for a moment, unsure of how to respond. Then he begin to tremble with laughter, face contorted, and finally, when he could hold it in no longer, threw his head back and cackled furiously at the ceiling. His sudden bout nearly caused his chair to tip over, and he clamored and shook and rattled and rolled until he was back upright, face flushed and reddened, tears beginning to stream from his tightly shut eyes. He slammed a fist harshly into the table as he began a new peal of laughter while the woman looked on, unamused. When he was finished, he wiped his face with the hem of his dirty shirt, exposing a swollen potbelly that jiggled energetically as he emitted the last of his chuckling. The woman, unshaken, did not smile.
“It’s true,” she said simply.
“Ah, ha, ahem, okay,” the man spat, then swallowed the rest of his warm beer with a series of deep gulps. He belched before continuing. “So this is the kind of weird **** you’re into? Werewolfs and vampires and ghosts and goblins?” Another renegade chuckle.
“Don’t be silly,” she snapped impatiently. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
The man grinned. Then he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a giant, jingling mass of keys and tossed them onto the table next to the book. His eyes motioned toward them spastically and his faced changed suddenly. He was no longer trying to impress her, and some semblance of mistaken charity now invaded his voice. “Let me take you home. I’ll get you a real drink back at my place.”
She did not reply, but sat with the stone expression, unflinching, unentertained.
“C’mon, I got a place for you to park your bike and everything. You can just follow me back and we’ll make a night of it.”
“No thanks.” She uttered the words slowly and deliberately, with a nearly indetectable pause between the syllables. “I really need to be going. I just stopped in here on my way to visit my grandmother. She lives just through the next valley, right outside Enderby. She’s very ill.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. He did not sound sorry. “It’s late, though, and I know you ain’t gonna go huffin’ and puffin’ and blowin’ her door down at damn near three in the mornin’. Why don’t you just come back, have a drink, rest your eyes for a few hours and then you can set out when it gets light out? It’s too fuckin’ cold out there to be ridin’ on a bike with the freezin’ cold wind in your pretty little hair anyhow.”
As the man spoke, the woman rose from her seat and began gathering her things, piling a thick scarf and an army-issue satchel onto the book while she retrieved from the back of her chair a thick leather riding jacket, crimson as her fingernails, and put it on, doubled up over a hooded fleece sweatshirt of a similar shade. With a quick tug she flipped the hood up and over her crimped cascade of long dishwater-blond hair, zipped the jacket to the neck, and coiled the scarf loosely around her neck and shoulders. Then she slung the satchel around her midsection and gave her chair a kick, scooting it with more irritated groans across the tiled floor until it rested against the chipped edge of the table.
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
The man turned where he sat and followed her with his eyes as she shambled to the door. A burst of freezing wind peppered with the first inklings of snow pushed into the bar as she flung the door open and, stopping for a moment to heave the book up into his line of sight with a wink, exited the building. The weary bartender called hoarsely from somewhere in the back.
“Alright straggler, closin’ time. You don’t hafta go home but ya sure as hell can’t stay here.” The lights in the front of the bar were shut off one by one, leaving only the dim neon trim of the jukebox to light the way to the entrance. The man tilted his head sharply as he heard the percussive rumbling of a motorcycle engine being started, and listened as the sound mounted, changed directions, and zoomed off into the distance. Enderby. The man turned the word over and over in his mind. Then he put on his coat, threw a dollar on the bar top, and left.
Outside, the wind had picked up considerably, and the scattered snowflakes fluttering to the earth had mounted exponentially since the woman left the bar. She cruised along at an easy pace, loose gravel crunching and giving way under thick tire tread. The wooded terrain on either side of her grew darker and more dense with every passing mile, until eventually she rode blind to the moon, with only the occasional pale ray giving vantage to her singular trail. She rode for half an hour, taking her time, grimacing against the cold wind and squinting through the melted snow blurring her vision through small, round goggles. There had been through the entire journey only one other vehicle on the road, traveling the opposite direction, its ghostly, disembodied headlights startling behind the veil of trickling snowfall, and all the while the woman maintained an air of uneasiness at the prospect of being followed. This had not caused an increase in her speed, however, and she tottered along slow enough almost to have to balance her steed manually.
Several more minutes passed, and then, with unexpected suddenness, a brilliant strike of lightning lit up the sky with a bold latticework of sporadic black and purple cloud cover, illuminating the woman’s surroundings for several uninterrupted seconds. In the brief gap between blacknesses, the woman feverishly surveyed the landscape surrounding her, as though expecting to catch a glimpse in the waning instant of some object of importance she had intentionally arranged to come across on her unhurried trek through a heavily forested lonely highway in the middle of winter. What she viewed was not the Aurora Borealis, nor the glimmering of a family of fireflies in the distant overgrowth. She was alarmed to see, running alongside her vehicle amidst the gnarled, leafless black trees, a shape that was at once human and animal, though she could not be sure that the figure in question had indeed been moving, or had been there at all, perhaps being the result of her scattered perception in the bleak climate or simply a specter conjured by memories of the night’s earlier encounter or choice of literature. The belated peal of thunder growled ominously. Her surprise was brief, and with little enough deterrence to be seemingly within her boundaries of expectation, causing her neither to stop nor to cry out, but simply to peer on with heightened awareness and perhaps concern for the objective of completing her venture safely and on time. When she did not see the shape again, she steeled herself and smiled, pressing on with newfound speed and fervor into the stormy horizon.
Deep in the midst of the tangled blanket of black tree silhouettes, crouched, nose to the ground and certainly unseen, a pair of phosphorescent yellow eyes burned hotly through the underbrush as the shadowed form of a motorcycle and rider coasted by, the vibrato of the engine coughing further and further down the road. On a trampled bed of fresh snow a heavy paw met the earth, then another, sharp and twisted claws cracking twigs and stirring nocturnal wildlife from their positions of rest. As the speed of the rider increased, the creature cracked and stirred with elevated vigor, until at last it broke into quick and nimble trot, dodging through the maze of looming coniferous statues in an effort to stay level with the noisy passage of the sputtering machine. Their destinations were doubtlessly one and the same.
A quarter of an hour later, the taxed motorcycle slowed and halted completely, sending chunks of tightly packed snow cascading onto the uneven rocky surface of a sunken weathered footpath, mostly devoid of snow due to the network of intertwining oak branches high above the roadside where the woman’s jaunt had come to an end. She hesitated to move, breathing plumes of smoky condensation into the backdrop of the black night sky, occasionally shooting nervous glances in all directions, keen eyes in pursuit of possible dangers. With no remarkable distractions halting her progress, she dismounted the chilled cycle and produced, wedged and hooked securely behind the storage compartment flanking the seat, a large wicker picnic basket, draped in windblown checkered cloth. The sinewy squeak of stretching leather was the only audible sign of life in the silent desolation as the wrapped a gloved fist tightly around the handle and lifted it heavily from its fastened position. The contents of the basket bumped and clanged with the movement of the container, and the woman quietly cursed herself for disturbing the tentative yet strangely calming anxiety of the soundproof wilderness. With the toe of her boot she dropped the kickstand on the bike and tightened her scarf around her frigid neck and chin, then began walking, down the embankment leading from the road’s edge to the cleared entrance of the beaten dirt trail.
Further down the embankment, huddled inside an algae-caked drainage pipe, the beastly stalker looked on as its prey began trudging lithely through the thickets of decaying, snow-soaked redwood jutting inward from a barely-visible opening in the blank wooden fortress. Its claws dug into gritty metal, muscled pulled and tightened, and it took off, talons ripping at the frozen earth as it picked up speed.
The path proved to be more arduous than the woman had remembered. Her breath came in short, quick draws and her feet were heavy as her boots were wrenched repeatedly from the plopping, sucking mud. More than once she had to reach out a hand to take hold of a tree or mossy stone, holding the basket high to keep it from slithering into the mire. Above her, the full moon was now entirely visible, naked, shimmering steel and teal waves like a blanket over the marshy track. Her legs and shoulders ached. Despite the cold, tiny beads of sweat had begun forming on her brow, and she felt belts of hot air escaping the neckline of her loose-fitting undershirt.
At last, the trail widened and turned its course upward, rocks and roots becoming a more frequent foothold alternative to the sticky muck covering the wet wintry woods, and the trees in front of her submitted to a clearing, bowing graciously away in the face of her hike and granting her access to a small, remote gully beset in increments on three sides by the smooth faces of sheer limestone cliffs. In the center of the clearing, pushed back a little ways into the corner of the ravine, sat a decrepit old cabin, fashioned of redwood and tar, and apparently many moons old; the once sturdy siding had over the years warped and bent and the house now stood as a mocking effigy of its former self, made all the more noticeable by the bone-straight spears of a rusting wrought iron fence encompassing the property. The fence stretched hundreds of feet behind the ancient abode, and on its innermost edge held in a tightly packed family graveyard, where crumbling headstones pointed accusingly towards the heavens, obscured by the canopy of oily, creeping clouds. The woman emerged from the thicket and inched cautiously toward the paint-peeled front door of the cabin.
The interior of the house was in substantially better condition than its outer shell, having not fallen into quite the manner of disrepair as the exterior and its grounds. There was no indication of recent activity inside the residence, but the antique stove fireplace still smelled faintly of cedar, and there were many candles lit, scattered all about the narthex, particularly concentrated on the mantel where behind each burning light was propped a small portrait of each of the grotesque cabin’s owners, spanning more than five generations. Behind the last candle was only dusty emptiness.
The woman crossed the crookedly-carpeted floorboards, creaking painfully as she went, and set the picnic basket and satchel on the small dining table beside a double windowbox. She glanced outside and up at the sky. The moon was now struggling to stay afloat in the sea of billowing onyx and lended the stray candles little aid.
From out of the small cupboard filled with chipped dishes and moldy handtowels the woman withdrew a stinking item from the latter category and wiped roughy at her clogged boots with the slimy rag. The floor creaked again with a comical pitch of questioning. She had not moved. Her eyes darted from her raised foot to survey the faintly-lit room, at the far end of which a curiously designed door shuddered and tapped against the doorframe. She had not moved. She remained motionless, daring only to breath shallowly, waiting for the next symptom of movement elsewhere in the house. It came in the form of a muffled scratching from behind the door, and lower, somewhat. She set her foot to the floor, slowly, softly, then picked up her other boot, still saturated with black ooze, and put it in front of her, mindful to reclaim the basket from the table before continuing. She repeated, the tips of her boots meeting a dull creak with every descent, until she had reached the door, grasping and turning the tarnished handle-knob with the same delicacy and mindfulness she had exercised in crossing the incriminating wood floor. The knob was loose and threatened to detach from its outlet as she turned it, with excruciating patience, and pried the long unopened door gently from the frame, exposing an untrustworthy staircase sloping into absolute darkness. Dust swarmed her moist nostrils; an odorous cocktail of dread and mildew flooded the doorway. She descended.
The scratching she had heard upstairs had indeed eminated from the basement. It was accompanied now by a persistant popping and buzzing, and the cacophony prevented her momentarily from adjusting to her new location. She started tremendously when the scratching sound reached an apex and loud reverberations of old music attacked her senses. A record player. From inside her jacket pocket she fingered the flint of a cigarette lighter and held away from her face, exposing only slightly the cramped, useless clutter piled in heaps around the basement floor. The feeble glow was rendered useless by the instantaneous lighting of a kerosene lamp hanging from an old coatrack. A hand withdrew from its oil cage and snuffed a match; a long, twisted, bony hand. The man from the bar sat under the coatrack in a derelict rocking chair, grinning his demented grin. The flickering firelight played across his face and added new shadows to preexisting ones. The music seemed to grow quiet as he spoke.
“To grandmother’s house we go, eh?” He chortled. “I don’t see her around anywhere. Maybe we caught her on bingo night?”
The woman stood transfixed, mouth open but not attempting to speak. Her head lobbed and the scarlet hood dropped from the crown of her skull, crowding around her tensely hunched shoulders. She leaned slowly and placed the picnic basket on a worm-eaten sofa next to the record player.
“Fascinating stuff, that werewolf junk. Really makes ya think. We think we live in a world where we know damn near everything, where anything can be explained in terms a’ science. People like science ‘cause it’s concrete, they can identify with it. It don’t have none of the unpredictability of… the supernatural.” With the last word his black eyes twinkled, though it could have been the reflection of the flame.
“Who are you?” She asked the question mostly out of desperation, not caring to know his identity, and yet, not wanting his words to dominate the silence of the tomb-like basement.. He shrugged.
“The big bad wolf.”
With a steady hand, the woman unshrouded the brittle basket.
“You see, I go to bars, I drink, I buy drinks, I spread cheer,” he said. “And sometimes, just sometimes, when I get a little, uh, juiced,” the words rolled lazily from his tongue, “I try to pick up beautiful women such as yourself. I’m a hunter. I always get what I want…” He eyed her figure hungrily and sat forward in the rickety chair.
“Sounds like you need a hobby,” said the woman.
“You are my hobby, chickadee. You and girls like you. Hot blooded, all-American gals with beach bodies that don’t know the meaning of ‘yes.’ Hard to get, I like that.”
“I’m a little harder to get than you’re used to.” She nudged the wooden flap of the basket open. It tilted and dropped against the upright handle. The man seemed not to notice. His eyes were still roaming her up and down. He wet his lips.
“My, my, my, what gorgeous green eyes you have.” After speaking this he shuddered and shot upright in his seat, twitching sporadically. His gaunt, bronzed fingers dug into the armrests and the woman could see pulsating veins surfacing through his mottled flesh. She looked away from him long enough to reach into the open basket and place the battered book, open, on the tabletop. She flipped through the smudged pages carefully.
The man’s legs were quaking and the heels of his leather loafers clacked against the hard dirt floor. He appeared to be puffing his chest out, his clothes tightening around the expansion. He gurgled when he spoke again.
“And my, what perfect milky skin you have…” His voice escaped rugged and unnaturally deep. The woman slid her finger across lines of faded ink, glacing up at him periodically. The thick black stubble on his chin had thickened, and new hair was sprouting on the backs of his sweating hands and face. She heard the sound of his shirt tearing. He quivered in the chair and knocked against the coatrack, sending the kerosene lantern swinging and the broad circle of light hugging one damp wall then the next. Eyes bulging, the man bit down hard on his lip until warm rivets of blood ran through the matted clumps of fur overtaking his facial features. The fingernails embedded in the chair’s arms lengthened into knives and splintered the flaking wood into chips which rained onto his feet and the ground. His next words were the last before his voice lost all human vocalization; before the articulation of individual tones was swept away in a tidal wave of rumbling throaty growls.
“A-and… what… beautif-ful… ra… aaaaeeeeeerrggggh!” The sentence trailed off into a deafening howl. For a moment the woman feared her eardrums would burst. With both hands covering her ears and face, she staggered backwards and stumbled into the frayed chair. A startled rat scampered from underneath the cushion and crawled blindly across her lap. In front of her now, the man’s metamorphosis was nearing completion, and she watched helplessly as his squared jaw lengthened into a narrow snout, ears perking upright, bloodshot eyes darting insanely. Tatters of demolished clothing fluttered aimlessly from the furry monstrosity as it stood upright, tall enough nearly for its head to collide with the ceiling beams.
The woman ricocheted from the chair not a second before a razored fist sliced through the rotting upholstery and shattered the wooden structure. As it wheeled around for another swipe, she circled the opposite direction, confusing its motion long enough to pivot and slam her heel hard into the man-wolf’s solar plexus. Something jolted against her bicep, but she ignored she pain, ducking low behind the beast and flinging her body forward, rolling and coming up at the other side of the phonograph table. In one fluid motion she snatched up the book and swatted the open picnic basket onto its side, spilling out dozens of bladed and projectile weapons with a loud metallic clamor. One petite hand gripped the book by its fragile spine while the other attached itself to the stock of a loaded crossbow, which she swung upwards in an arc and aimed squarely at the creature. Before firing, she raised her voice to its highest level and uttered a flowing chant of cipheric modulations:
“Formulae ueteres exorsismorum et excommunicationum strigas et fictos lupos credere, daemon pellem lupinam, in trunco quodam cauae, arboris occultandum!” *
The recitation of the passage acted as a shockwave, radiating an invisible ripple of condensed energy through the air and sending the beast careening into the hard stone wall. Its flesh and fur shook with the collision and it toppled headlong to the floor. As it dropped, the woman trained the notched sight of the crossbow on the shuddering mass and pulled the trigger, springing back and releasing the taut bowstring which selected a silver-tipped missile and launched it forth with incredible velocity. The savage arrow whirred as it split the ancient air and buried itself inches into the wolf’s chest, pinning it to granite and hardened clay. She did not wait to take three more shots, listening to the bolt drop and relock with each firing, until no advantageous appendage was afforded the beast that had not been fixed to the wall. It writhed under its thick-shafted constraints, deepening the wounds. Tiny liquid rubies dribbled onto the dirt. It howled again, this time in pain, followed by a series of meek, whining groans, like a scolded hound. Eventually, when the sturdy oaken arrows refused to yield, the creature ceased its struggle and resigned, panting, to its semi-upright position tethered against the basement wall. The book fluttered shut on the table. All was still. Righting her overturned basket and returning the crossbow to its depths, the woman approached slowly and crouched in front of her captive, leaning until her face was inches from that of the man-wolf’s. She could smell the coppery stench of blood on its breath.
Her unzipped coat now hung open, and from somewhere in the small of her back the woman produced a quaintly-sheathed dagger, roughly a foot in length and carved down both sides with avatars of open-mouthed skeletal screams. An asymmetrical beaded talisman and sprig of fresh mistletoe hung from the hilt. It sang as the drew it from the scabbard.
The eyes of the beast blinked upon the unveiling, and the woman thought she detected a hint of fearful knowing within them as they studied the sacred weapon. Its expression did not change when she thrust the dagger into its heart.
Back on the road, dawn’s first golden rays had already began to thaw ice and trampled snow, the steep embankment slippery with its afterbirth as the woman emerged from the narrow pathway entrance, powdered with dust and trembling with adrenaline’s afterparty, cheered by an early morning chorus of chirps and coos. Her motorcycle stood steady and lopsided right where she had left it, like a faithful companion, guiding her as a lighthouse with reflections of the moon’s last efforts and the sun’s most recent. She deposited basket and satchel and shimmied into the seat, allowing her head to drop wearily between the handle bars. Golden locks of sweat-damp hair lay plastered to her forehead, and as she lifted a hand to wipe away the strands she felt again the burning in her left arm. On the outermost edge of her forearm, partially concealed by tassles of shredded leather, three parallel lacerations smiled up at her, leaking hot blood into her sleeve and down her fingers. She rubbed her thumb and forefinger together, smearing the red warpaint across and into the shallow grooves of her fingerprints. Her blood. Wolf’s blood. Her head fell back once more and took in yellow-gray firmament. Last night’s bleak overcast had temporarily fled and as she lay, motionless, expressionless, she was bathed in the warm sunlight given charge of the sky while another storm system made its way in. It would break by early afternoon.
After a lengthy sigh, the woman took one last look at her tainted wound before reaching up to tug her burgundy hood down over her crown, obscuring her features in shadow. Then she jammed a key into the bike’s ignition and rushed into the distance.
Assignment Synopsis: Take a classic fairytale and update it to fit modern language and story development. That was it. But instead of trying to disguise classic characters and situations with allusions or allegorical context, I chose to go in somewhat of a... different direction. Behold! Little Red Riding Hood REDUX.
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“Even a man who is pure in heart and
says his prayers by night may become
a wolf when the wolfbane blooms, and
the autumn moon is bright.”
says his prayers by night may become
a wolf when the wolfbane blooms, and
the autumn moon is bright.”
I
The bar reeked of musky sweat and the sour stench of alcohol, punctuated here and there by a nauseating cloud of thick, stone-colored cigar smoke that congregated fleetingly with the rafters and then sank back down to settle heavily on once pleasant-smelling clothing. By this time of night, most of the regulars had long retired to their homes; roadside RVs and trashed trailers or maybe a dark and empty barebones motel room somewhere with an unopened Bible and the smell of liquid cleaning solution their sole source of company. The bartender had begun wiping down the bar top with a sopping old t-shirt, hinting at the remaining vestiges of pitiful nightlife to hurry the hell up and get the hell out, respectively. None of them seemed to pay attention to his subtle threats, focusing instead on the half-empty mugs of sudsy ferment clutched tightly in their trembling, drunken hands. The jukebox slept silently along the back wall. In the corner of the saloon several yards away, shrouded quite deliberately in a darkness impenetrable by the angle of the sloping overhead lights, sat a beautiful young woman, the kind of pure, old-fashioned beauty that hardly finds itself in a bar, and even more seldom is found in one, also silent, sipping daintily on a shot glass full of sparkling water. Her downward gaze was broken as the lopsided stool directly across from her was pulled back with a groan and a screech. She glanced up briefly at the man sitting in front of her before returning her attention to her lap, periodically stopping for another sip without a subsequent look. The man smiled, exposing crooked rows of slimy, yellow teeth. The rotten stink of his breath made even the normally malodorous saloon air a relief. She did not look up when he spoke.
“Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but I been noticin’ you lookin’ mighty shy down there,” he crooned, the words just barely escaping through his ridiculous gaping grin. “I don’t suppose you come to bars to drink water and stare at the floor.”
Without a word, she lifted a delicate hand, the leaves of an open hardcover book fluttering airily with the ascent. After a moment, the book returned to the woman’s lap, and the woman to motionlessness. The man pretended to be astounded.
“Ah, you’re one of ‘em brainy gals! Well I’m right-sorry for interruptin’ your thought process; I’m just always impressed to see a woman take that kind of initiative. May I ask what it is you’re readin’?”
“You may,” she said, finally returning his stare. The man chuckled and surveyed the room as if expecting the whole bar to be laughing with him. He cleared his throat noisily and held up his hands in mock humility.
“Well then, if I may, if I might, I hereby request to be informed as to what the little lady’s been readin’ so intently for the past hour and a half that she didn’t notice her car being stolen?” At this he nodded in the direction of the window adjacent to the table, cocking an eyebrow slightly as if in an expression of victory. “All’s is out there is bikes and bikers. The white van in the back is Buck’s, the barman’s, and that sleek little diddy there belongs to yours truly. I don’t see another boiler in sight and I doubt you walked. Can’t rightly say I’m surprised though… petty theft is a specialty in this party of the countryside.” Licking his lips, he cocked one eyebrow arrogantly, sending up dunes of wrinkled flesh across his bronzed forehead. He reached down to take a obnoxious gulp from his mug, then sighed contentedly and locked his fingers back behind his head. “Now I assume that because your vehicle has assumably been stolen, it’s a safe assumption that I’ll have to assume the role of your chauffeur tonight, unless of course you’d rather hitch a ride with the Jesse James Gang out there.”
The woman reluctantly set the book down on the splintered table, piercing the man with a fierce glare as she did, and turned her head as the sound of a legion of motorcycles being started shook the bar. Outside, half a dozen leather-clad bikers hooted and hollered incessantly, revving the clutches of their rides louder and louder in a deafening effort to outdo the others. After several seconds they sped off, leaving a whirlwind of dust to settle over the three remaining vehicles scattered in the dimly lit parking lot. The woman turned back around smiling.
“That’s my ride,” she said, and returned her attention again to the pages of her book with a smirk. The man followed the suggestion in her voice and froze, finding himself staring incredulously at a spotless chrome Harley Davidson cruiser leaning slyly toward the entrance of the building. His gaze then shifted several spots over to his own vehicle, a rusted maroon late-60’s model sedan covered in flecks of dried mud. One of the rear windows had been broken out and a feeble rag placed over the opening flopped pitifully in the gentle night breeze. The man squinted sourly.
“It’s called The Werewolf,” the woman said suddenly. The man’s face shifted from dumbfounded frustration to a look of blank perplexity as he tried to make sense of her most recent words.
“The bike?”
“The book. The Werewolf, by Montague Summers.” She held it up again. On the charcoal cover was the title of the text superimposed over a shimmering, golden pentagram, below which was depicted a hapless-looking man in Victorian clothing caught in the apparently-unpleasant process of becoming a wolf-like creature. The yellowed, uneven pages were loosely bound and looked thoroughly thumbed-through, some leaves threatening to escape the dilapidated spine altogether. “You asked what I’m reading and I’m telling you.”
She dropped it quickly with a thud onto the table and downed the rest of her drink. The man looked on speechlessly for a few seconds before giving way to the stupid grin once more, scratching at the thick stubble protruding from his squared jaw.
“Wolfs, huh? Heh, I been called worse.”
The woman was reading intently again and did not hear him, or pretended not to. When more time passed with no reply, the man snaked his hand slowly across the table and grazed the back of the woman’s arm lightly with a filthy, bony finger. “’Course… I been called better, too.”
She did not jerk away, but turned her gaze on him once again, her brow furled tightly, eyes narrowed. Her demeanor was all seriousness. She pulled the crimson bookmark ribbon down the center of the pages and finally closed the book and set it aside. Her mouth opened slowly and she exhaled through glistening pink lips, but did not speak for several seconds. When she did, she said:
“They’re real, you know. Werewolves. You can’t make this stuff up. There’ve been sightings and reports of them from all over the country, all over the world. Most of them are pretty consistent. A lot of people think that most werewolf stories can only be traced back to local folklore from… hundreds of years ago, but there are more surviving tales than you would think, even to this day. They aren’t all spook stories coming out of Transylvania or some **** like that. No, there are legends from all around, as close to home as the woods of the northwestern United States, to the Black Forest in Germany, even some in eastern Asian, China in particular.”
An unseen hand had fed the jukebox, and she halted while it sprung to life, the slow blues guitar of ‘Night Prowler’ emerging from its crackling speakers. When the baseline had settled in, she bit her lip slightly, provocatively, and proceeded with a short sigh.
“They’re not always wolves, though… some are more like dogs or leopards, even tigers, and some are too vague to even be related to any animal we know of through science.” As she spoke, her stern expression softened, and her voice grew faster and higher in pitch with excitement and enthusiasm. She began gesticulating wildly with her hands, occasionally tapping her blood-colored fingernails rapidly on the tabletop while waiting for a reaction. During her outburst, the man had returned to his previous confounded state; this did not derail her speech, but indeed added more fuel with which she continued hastily.
“Most werewolves come about as the result of a curse from a… a, what’s the word? Uh… shaman. A shaman or a sorcerer, or a witch, a yogi, whatever. All the same thing, right? Someone who practices black magic. They take hair from a dead wolf that’s been buried for an entire cycle of the new moon, a sprig of fresh Mountain Ash, and a drop or two of their own blood, then they have this kind of ritual they do where they can lay a curse on whoever they want. That’s why there’s this big misconception that you only turn into a werewolf when there’s a full moon, when really that isn’t true at all, it has more to do with the time of year; it has to be a certain season, when this certain flower blooms… I can’t remember what it’s called. Anyway, when it’s in bloom and there’s a full moon, or just whenever the sorcerer chooses to inflict the curse, that’s when it happens. It’s not one or the other. Actually, in some countries like Brazil it’s written that only the seventh son that can become a wolf, or someone who’s been placed under a divine curse, like they say in Russia, and, uh… I… sometimes ramble when I get excited… sorry.” With the last word, she dropped her elbows onto the table and propped her chin up with open hands, looking cutely back at the man, wide-eyed, as though for affirmation. He simply stared back for a moment, unsure of how to respond. Then he begin to tremble with laughter, face contorted, and finally, when he could hold it in no longer, threw his head back and cackled furiously at the ceiling. His sudden bout nearly caused his chair to tip over, and he clamored and shook and rattled and rolled until he was back upright, face flushed and reddened, tears beginning to stream from his tightly shut eyes. He slammed a fist harshly into the table as he began a new peal of laughter while the woman looked on, unamused. When he was finished, he wiped his face with the hem of his dirty shirt, exposing a swollen potbelly that jiggled energetically as he emitted the last of his chuckling. The woman, unshaken, did not smile.
“It’s true,” she said simply.
“Ah, ha, ahem, okay,” the man spat, then swallowed the rest of his warm beer with a series of deep gulps. He belched before continuing. “So this is the kind of weird **** you’re into? Werewolfs and vampires and ghosts and goblins?” Another renegade chuckle.
“Don’t be silly,” she snapped impatiently. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
The man grinned. Then he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a giant, jingling mass of keys and tossed them onto the table next to the book. His eyes motioned toward them spastically and his faced changed suddenly. He was no longer trying to impress her, and some semblance of mistaken charity now invaded his voice. “Let me take you home. I’ll get you a real drink back at my place.”
She did not reply, but sat with the stone expression, unflinching, unentertained.
“C’mon, I got a place for you to park your bike and everything. You can just follow me back and we’ll make a night of it.”
“No thanks.” She uttered the words slowly and deliberately, with a nearly indetectable pause between the syllables. “I really need to be going. I just stopped in here on my way to visit my grandmother. She lives just through the next valley, right outside Enderby. She’s very ill.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. He did not sound sorry. “It’s late, though, and I know you ain’t gonna go huffin’ and puffin’ and blowin’ her door down at damn near three in the mornin’. Why don’t you just come back, have a drink, rest your eyes for a few hours and then you can set out when it gets light out? It’s too fuckin’ cold out there to be ridin’ on a bike with the freezin’ cold wind in your pretty little hair anyhow.”
As the man spoke, the woman rose from her seat and began gathering her things, piling a thick scarf and an army-issue satchel onto the book while she retrieved from the back of her chair a thick leather riding jacket, crimson as her fingernails, and put it on, doubled up over a hooded fleece sweatshirt of a similar shade. With a quick tug she flipped the hood up and over her crimped cascade of long dishwater-blond hair, zipped the jacket to the neck, and coiled the scarf loosely around her neck and shoulders. Then she slung the satchel around her midsection and gave her chair a kick, scooting it with more irritated groans across the tiled floor until it rested against the chipped edge of the table.
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
The man turned where he sat and followed her with his eyes as she shambled to the door. A burst of freezing wind peppered with the first inklings of snow pushed into the bar as she flung the door open and, stopping for a moment to heave the book up into his line of sight with a wink, exited the building. The weary bartender called hoarsely from somewhere in the back.
“Alright straggler, closin’ time. You don’t hafta go home but ya sure as hell can’t stay here.” The lights in the front of the bar were shut off one by one, leaving only the dim neon trim of the jukebox to light the way to the entrance. The man tilted his head sharply as he heard the percussive rumbling of a motorcycle engine being started, and listened as the sound mounted, changed directions, and zoomed off into the distance. Enderby. The man turned the word over and over in his mind. Then he put on his coat, threw a dollar on the bar top, and left.
Outside, the wind had picked up considerably, and the scattered snowflakes fluttering to the earth had mounted exponentially since the woman left the bar. She cruised along at an easy pace, loose gravel crunching and giving way under thick tire tread. The wooded terrain on either side of her grew darker and more dense with every passing mile, until eventually she rode blind to the moon, with only the occasional pale ray giving vantage to her singular trail. She rode for half an hour, taking her time, grimacing against the cold wind and squinting through the melted snow blurring her vision through small, round goggles. There had been through the entire journey only one other vehicle on the road, traveling the opposite direction, its ghostly, disembodied headlights startling behind the veil of trickling snowfall, and all the while the woman maintained an air of uneasiness at the prospect of being followed. This had not caused an increase in her speed, however, and she tottered along slow enough almost to have to balance her steed manually.
Several more minutes passed, and then, with unexpected suddenness, a brilliant strike of lightning lit up the sky with a bold latticework of sporadic black and purple cloud cover, illuminating the woman’s surroundings for several uninterrupted seconds. In the brief gap between blacknesses, the woman feverishly surveyed the landscape surrounding her, as though expecting to catch a glimpse in the waning instant of some object of importance she had intentionally arranged to come across on her unhurried trek through a heavily forested lonely highway in the middle of winter. What she viewed was not the Aurora Borealis, nor the glimmering of a family of fireflies in the distant overgrowth. She was alarmed to see, running alongside her vehicle amidst the gnarled, leafless black trees, a shape that was at once human and animal, though she could not be sure that the figure in question had indeed been moving, or had been there at all, perhaps being the result of her scattered perception in the bleak climate or simply a specter conjured by memories of the night’s earlier encounter or choice of literature. The belated peal of thunder growled ominously. Her surprise was brief, and with little enough deterrence to be seemingly within her boundaries of expectation, causing her neither to stop nor to cry out, but simply to peer on with heightened awareness and perhaps concern for the objective of completing her venture safely and on time. When she did not see the shape again, she steeled herself and smiled, pressing on with newfound speed and fervor into the stormy horizon.
Deep in the midst of the tangled blanket of black tree silhouettes, crouched, nose to the ground and certainly unseen, a pair of phosphorescent yellow eyes burned hotly through the underbrush as the shadowed form of a motorcycle and rider coasted by, the vibrato of the engine coughing further and further down the road. On a trampled bed of fresh snow a heavy paw met the earth, then another, sharp and twisted claws cracking twigs and stirring nocturnal wildlife from their positions of rest. As the speed of the rider increased, the creature cracked and stirred with elevated vigor, until at last it broke into quick and nimble trot, dodging through the maze of looming coniferous statues in an effort to stay level with the noisy passage of the sputtering machine. Their destinations were doubtlessly one and the same.
II
A quarter of an hour later, the taxed motorcycle slowed and halted completely, sending chunks of tightly packed snow cascading onto the uneven rocky surface of a sunken weathered footpath, mostly devoid of snow due to the network of intertwining oak branches high above the roadside where the woman’s jaunt had come to an end. She hesitated to move, breathing plumes of smoky condensation into the backdrop of the black night sky, occasionally shooting nervous glances in all directions, keen eyes in pursuit of possible dangers. With no remarkable distractions halting her progress, she dismounted the chilled cycle and produced, wedged and hooked securely behind the storage compartment flanking the seat, a large wicker picnic basket, draped in windblown checkered cloth. The sinewy squeak of stretching leather was the only audible sign of life in the silent desolation as the wrapped a gloved fist tightly around the handle and lifted it heavily from its fastened position. The contents of the basket bumped and clanged with the movement of the container, and the woman quietly cursed herself for disturbing the tentative yet strangely calming anxiety of the soundproof wilderness. With the toe of her boot she dropped the kickstand on the bike and tightened her scarf around her frigid neck and chin, then began walking, down the embankment leading from the road’s edge to the cleared entrance of the beaten dirt trail.
Further down the embankment, huddled inside an algae-caked drainage pipe, the beastly stalker looked on as its prey began trudging lithely through the thickets of decaying, snow-soaked redwood jutting inward from a barely-visible opening in the blank wooden fortress. Its claws dug into gritty metal, muscled pulled and tightened, and it took off, talons ripping at the frozen earth as it picked up speed.
The path proved to be more arduous than the woman had remembered. Her breath came in short, quick draws and her feet were heavy as her boots were wrenched repeatedly from the plopping, sucking mud. More than once she had to reach out a hand to take hold of a tree or mossy stone, holding the basket high to keep it from slithering into the mire. Above her, the full moon was now entirely visible, naked, shimmering steel and teal waves like a blanket over the marshy track. Her legs and shoulders ached. Despite the cold, tiny beads of sweat had begun forming on her brow, and she felt belts of hot air escaping the neckline of her loose-fitting undershirt.
At last, the trail widened and turned its course upward, rocks and roots becoming a more frequent foothold alternative to the sticky muck covering the wet wintry woods, and the trees in front of her submitted to a clearing, bowing graciously away in the face of her hike and granting her access to a small, remote gully beset in increments on three sides by the smooth faces of sheer limestone cliffs. In the center of the clearing, pushed back a little ways into the corner of the ravine, sat a decrepit old cabin, fashioned of redwood and tar, and apparently many moons old; the once sturdy siding had over the years warped and bent and the house now stood as a mocking effigy of its former self, made all the more noticeable by the bone-straight spears of a rusting wrought iron fence encompassing the property. The fence stretched hundreds of feet behind the ancient abode, and on its innermost edge held in a tightly packed family graveyard, where crumbling headstones pointed accusingly towards the heavens, obscured by the canopy of oily, creeping clouds. The woman emerged from the thicket and inched cautiously toward the paint-peeled front door of the cabin.
The interior of the house was in substantially better condition than its outer shell, having not fallen into quite the manner of disrepair as the exterior and its grounds. There was no indication of recent activity inside the residence, but the antique stove fireplace still smelled faintly of cedar, and there were many candles lit, scattered all about the narthex, particularly concentrated on the mantel where behind each burning light was propped a small portrait of each of the grotesque cabin’s owners, spanning more than five generations. Behind the last candle was only dusty emptiness.
The woman crossed the crookedly-carpeted floorboards, creaking painfully as she went, and set the picnic basket and satchel on the small dining table beside a double windowbox. She glanced outside and up at the sky. The moon was now struggling to stay afloat in the sea of billowing onyx and lended the stray candles little aid.
From out of the small cupboard filled with chipped dishes and moldy handtowels the woman withdrew a stinking item from the latter category and wiped roughy at her clogged boots with the slimy rag. The floor creaked again with a comical pitch of questioning. She had not moved. Her eyes darted from her raised foot to survey the faintly-lit room, at the far end of which a curiously designed door shuddered and tapped against the doorframe. She had not moved. She remained motionless, daring only to breath shallowly, waiting for the next symptom of movement elsewhere in the house. It came in the form of a muffled scratching from behind the door, and lower, somewhat. She set her foot to the floor, slowly, softly, then picked up her other boot, still saturated with black ooze, and put it in front of her, mindful to reclaim the basket from the table before continuing. She repeated, the tips of her boots meeting a dull creak with every descent, until she had reached the door, grasping and turning the tarnished handle-knob with the same delicacy and mindfulness she had exercised in crossing the incriminating wood floor. The knob was loose and threatened to detach from its outlet as she turned it, with excruciating patience, and pried the long unopened door gently from the frame, exposing an untrustworthy staircase sloping into absolute darkness. Dust swarmed her moist nostrils; an odorous cocktail of dread and mildew flooded the doorway. She descended.
The scratching she had heard upstairs had indeed eminated from the basement. It was accompanied now by a persistant popping and buzzing, and the cacophony prevented her momentarily from adjusting to her new location. She started tremendously when the scratching sound reached an apex and loud reverberations of old music attacked her senses. A record player. From inside her jacket pocket she fingered the flint of a cigarette lighter and held away from her face, exposing only slightly the cramped, useless clutter piled in heaps around the basement floor. The feeble glow was rendered useless by the instantaneous lighting of a kerosene lamp hanging from an old coatrack. A hand withdrew from its oil cage and snuffed a match; a long, twisted, bony hand. The man from the bar sat under the coatrack in a derelict rocking chair, grinning his demented grin. The flickering firelight played across his face and added new shadows to preexisting ones. The music seemed to grow quiet as he spoke.
“To grandmother’s house we go, eh?” He chortled. “I don’t see her around anywhere. Maybe we caught her on bingo night?”
The woman stood transfixed, mouth open but not attempting to speak. Her head lobbed and the scarlet hood dropped from the crown of her skull, crowding around her tensely hunched shoulders. She leaned slowly and placed the picnic basket on a worm-eaten sofa next to the record player.
“Fascinating stuff, that werewolf junk. Really makes ya think. We think we live in a world where we know damn near everything, where anything can be explained in terms a’ science. People like science ‘cause it’s concrete, they can identify with it. It don’t have none of the unpredictability of… the supernatural.” With the last word his black eyes twinkled, though it could have been the reflection of the flame.
“Who are you?” She asked the question mostly out of desperation, not caring to know his identity, and yet, not wanting his words to dominate the silence of the tomb-like basement.. He shrugged.
“The big bad wolf.”
With a steady hand, the woman unshrouded the brittle basket.
“You see, I go to bars, I drink, I buy drinks, I spread cheer,” he said. “And sometimes, just sometimes, when I get a little, uh, juiced,” the words rolled lazily from his tongue, “I try to pick up beautiful women such as yourself. I’m a hunter. I always get what I want…” He eyed her figure hungrily and sat forward in the rickety chair.
“Sounds like you need a hobby,” said the woman.
“You are my hobby, chickadee. You and girls like you. Hot blooded, all-American gals with beach bodies that don’t know the meaning of ‘yes.’ Hard to get, I like that.”
“I’m a little harder to get than you’re used to.” She nudged the wooden flap of the basket open. It tilted and dropped against the upright handle. The man seemed not to notice. His eyes were still roaming her up and down. He wet his lips.
“My, my, my, what gorgeous green eyes you have.” After speaking this he shuddered and shot upright in his seat, twitching sporadically. His gaunt, bronzed fingers dug into the armrests and the woman could see pulsating veins surfacing through his mottled flesh. She looked away from him long enough to reach into the open basket and place the battered book, open, on the tabletop. She flipped through the smudged pages carefully.
The man’s legs were quaking and the heels of his leather loafers clacked against the hard dirt floor. He appeared to be puffing his chest out, his clothes tightening around the expansion. He gurgled when he spoke again.
“And my, what perfect milky skin you have…” His voice escaped rugged and unnaturally deep. The woman slid her finger across lines of faded ink, glacing up at him periodically. The thick black stubble on his chin had thickened, and new hair was sprouting on the backs of his sweating hands and face. She heard the sound of his shirt tearing. He quivered in the chair and knocked against the coatrack, sending the kerosene lantern swinging and the broad circle of light hugging one damp wall then the next. Eyes bulging, the man bit down hard on his lip until warm rivets of blood ran through the matted clumps of fur overtaking his facial features. The fingernails embedded in the chair’s arms lengthened into knives and splintered the flaking wood into chips which rained onto his feet and the ground. His next words were the last before his voice lost all human vocalization; before the articulation of individual tones was swept away in a tidal wave of rumbling throaty growls.
“A-and… what… beautif-ful… ra… aaaaeeeeeerrggggh!” The sentence trailed off into a deafening howl. For a moment the woman feared her eardrums would burst. With both hands covering her ears and face, she staggered backwards and stumbled into the frayed chair. A startled rat scampered from underneath the cushion and crawled blindly across her lap. In front of her now, the man’s metamorphosis was nearing completion, and she watched helplessly as his squared jaw lengthened into a narrow snout, ears perking upright, bloodshot eyes darting insanely. Tatters of demolished clothing fluttered aimlessly from the furry monstrosity as it stood upright, tall enough nearly for its head to collide with the ceiling beams.
The woman ricocheted from the chair not a second before a razored fist sliced through the rotting upholstery and shattered the wooden structure. As it wheeled around for another swipe, she circled the opposite direction, confusing its motion long enough to pivot and slam her heel hard into the man-wolf’s solar plexus. Something jolted against her bicep, but she ignored she pain, ducking low behind the beast and flinging her body forward, rolling and coming up at the other side of the phonograph table. In one fluid motion she snatched up the book and swatted the open picnic basket onto its side, spilling out dozens of bladed and projectile weapons with a loud metallic clamor. One petite hand gripped the book by its fragile spine while the other attached itself to the stock of a loaded crossbow, which she swung upwards in an arc and aimed squarely at the creature. Before firing, she raised her voice to its highest level and uttered a flowing chant of cipheric modulations:
“Formulae ueteres exorsismorum et excommunicationum strigas et fictos lupos credere, daemon pellem lupinam, in trunco quodam cauae, arboris occultandum!” *
The recitation of the passage acted as a shockwave, radiating an invisible ripple of condensed energy through the air and sending the beast careening into the hard stone wall. Its flesh and fur shook with the collision and it toppled headlong to the floor. As it dropped, the woman trained the notched sight of the crossbow on the shuddering mass and pulled the trigger, springing back and releasing the taut bowstring which selected a silver-tipped missile and launched it forth with incredible velocity. The savage arrow whirred as it split the ancient air and buried itself inches into the wolf’s chest, pinning it to granite and hardened clay. She did not wait to take three more shots, listening to the bolt drop and relock with each firing, until no advantageous appendage was afforded the beast that had not been fixed to the wall. It writhed under its thick-shafted constraints, deepening the wounds. Tiny liquid rubies dribbled onto the dirt. It howled again, this time in pain, followed by a series of meek, whining groans, like a scolded hound. Eventually, when the sturdy oaken arrows refused to yield, the creature ceased its struggle and resigned, panting, to its semi-upright position tethered against the basement wall. The book fluttered shut on the table. All was still. Righting her overturned basket and returning the crossbow to its depths, the woman approached slowly and crouched in front of her captive, leaning until her face was inches from that of the man-wolf’s. She could smell the coppery stench of blood on its breath.
Her unzipped coat now hung open, and from somewhere in the small of her back the woman produced a quaintly-sheathed dagger, roughly a foot in length and carved down both sides with avatars of open-mouthed skeletal screams. An asymmetrical beaded talisman and sprig of fresh mistletoe hung from the hilt. It sang as the drew it from the scabbard.
The eyes of the beast blinked upon the unveiling, and the woman thought she detected a hint of fearful knowing within them as they studied the sacred weapon. Its expression did not change when she thrust the dagger into its heart.
Back on the road, dawn’s first golden rays had already began to thaw ice and trampled snow, the steep embankment slippery with its afterbirth as the woman emerged from the narrow pathway entrance, powdered with dust and trembling with adrenaline’s afterparty, cheered by an early morning chorus of chirps and coos. Her motorcycle stood steady and lopsided right where she had left it, like a faithful companion, guiding her as a lighthouse with reflections of the moon’s last efforts and the sun’s most recent. She deposited basket and satchel and shimmied into the seat, allowing her head to drop wearily between the handle bars. Golden locks of sweat-damp hair lay plastered to her forehead, and as she lifted a hand to wipe away the strands she felt again the burning in her left arm. On the outermost edge of her forearm, partially concealed by tassles of shredded leather, three parallel lacerations smiled up at her, leaking hot blood into her sleeve and down her fingers. She rubbed her thumb and forefinger together, smearing the red warpaint across and into the shallow grooves of her fingerprints. Her blood. Wolf’s blood. Her head fell back once more and took in yellow-gray firmament. Last night’s bleak overcast had temporarily fled and as she lay, motionless, expressionless, she was bathed in the warm sunlight given charge of the sky while another storm system made its way in. It would break by early afternoon.
After a lengthy sigh, the woman took one last look at her tainted wound before reaching up to tug her burgundy hood down over her crown, obscuring her features in shadow. Then she jammed a key into the bike’s ignition and rushed into the distance.
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