Memory in Flash Friday

Ever since Facebook started offering to share old memories … shit. You know how facebook offers to share old posts? A lot of them are linked to OD. This came from a Flash October prompt. I like it, unedited and raw as it is, it’s how a longer flash works, longer in inspiration takes you to the end of the time limit.

It’s been a bad week, month, year. I got trouble on my mind. So I opened my present early, figuratively. I wrote a flash Friday prompt from Amygdala this afternoon twenty three minutes from seeing the prompt to spell check. Now I am writing this intro. I think I’ve forgotten how to speak in my own voice or maybe I’m tired of the sound of it.

It is her and I, she smells like cedar roots and snow; I am loving her we hunt. She turns sharp on a forepaw, digs with both hind paws, her tail all thick and sex furious, we smell blood. I see the thick sinew under her fur as I feel mine shift and growl deep in my throat. The prey has darted in the bush and we take a side each. The prey sees only one, can see only one, head cocked, his eyes on the side of his head, and fear almost palpable in the air around him. I think how horrible to see the world sideways, how frightening, how tasty.

She circle her way I circle mine we rub fur as the circle tightens. Everything shatters. First the sound, the manmade sound, like butting ram heads only higher in pitch and with the timbre like the taste of one’s own blood. The prey bounds, I leap, know I will be a step behind loving her, cedar, snow, suckling teat. I’m not. I am on her. She lays, almost sanguine and leisurely except for the soft whine, the prey darts, into the open, into cover, kicking pine needles back to the forest floor.

I howl. The pack isn’t close enough to hear, we hunt alone, I howl because I howl, because love lies bleeding, because my veins pump with howl and my heart races with howl, because love lies bleeding. And then I smell, I smell before my hunter eyes see, before my ears that can hear a twig snap in a bush fifty leaps away, before the hair can raise on my back, I smell the change, like a spreading of the human trap, like a sickness taking over the healthy wolf, one that cripples and changes the fur, that eats from inside, that leaves the old wolf or the puppy eyes closed forever in the cave.

There are the stories we tell pups to frighten them, to keep them from obsessing over their bellies on winter nights, to sharpen their sense of caution and know even the predator can fall. It’s a story, only a story. It’s told that some wolves, those who have betrayed the pack or hunted foolish ground (depending on whose pups are being told and why) become cursed with the blood of the enemy, not the prey, but the enemy, and when the moon is gone, when the cycle leaves night black, they will turn into humans. The way it was told to me was that bad little puppies who are greedy and eat more than their share, acting like humans, become them. Even as a pup I knew this smelled false.

But I smelled. I saw. I howled. Her thick black and gray fur thinned, her strong hind quarters lengthened and thinned, for paws and torso, her thick muzzle shortened, until this pale pink ugly naked human lay in the trap the melancholy whimpering of a thwarted hunter became the shrill screech of human, and the scent I am loving, cedar, snow, earth, suckling pups, changed to the sweat fear stink of the big predator man.

And voices, the screech brought voices, human sounds from the far clearing coming fast, fear and that strange human scent like wrath or bad meat came in front of them in sickening waves.

I run I am running, and I hear them and they make those loud booms with the burning smell, I’ve seen it kill, but it also mutes the ear and nose with its harshness and bluntness. The pups cry themselves to sleep this night in the den. I am alert and listening through the night, and watching the pups whimper in their sleep and have this horrifying image of them lengthening, their beautiful thick muzzles shortening, their fur turning pale and red as blood. I am loving her and her scent is fading from the den and the woods around.

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