As the Fire Burns

November 27, 2012January 14, 2014 ~ Tyr Kieran ~ 27 Comments

The flames are hypnotic.

Fingers of light play against the night in contrast like a calico kitten beneath a massive ball of black nylon thread. Its harmonious colors of red, yellow, and orange blend and battle in a dance that never ceases to lose its novelty.

Fire is damn fascinating—the breath of dragons and gods and other mythical beings bent on destruction. Yet, its beauty is beyond compare. One could lose his soul gazing into its fiery maw. It’s not predictable and monotonous like most would think after a cursory glance; it’s more fluid, impulsive, opportunistic. After all, it is a living thing. It breathes. It consumes. And, at times, it even appears to fear and hate.

The heat warms my prickled skin with the friendly itch of a wool blanket. Despite the outer comfort, it chills my heart—my leadened chest now burdened with an irreparable chunk of ice. I’m not here for recreation. My childhood memories of joyful campfires with toasted treats, spooky yarns, and hickory-smoke aromas are irrelevant tonight and I struggle to keep them at bay. The nature of flames may be intriguing, but I hate this fire.

I hate it and it knows.

When my glare falters and my focus succumbs to the rhythm, easing into a hypnotized gaze, the burning creature stokes my hatred anew with a taunting flare streaked in blue or green like it’s flipping me off.

I try to rationalize the event—must’ve scorched its way to a copper pipe or pocket of propane—but, I’m not buying what I’m shoveling. It knows it’s in control now, too strong to quash. Its hungry fingers claw up past the second floor windows and reach for more.

Those were the kids’ rooms.

When we moved from D.C. to West Chester fifteen months ago, we got more space for less cost and the twins gained their own rooms for the first time. Their playful argument over the larger room nearly killed me… literally. I was choking on inhaled chunks of soft pretzel from an ill-timed bout of laughter. Karen, my loving wife, was too busy to help. She was leaning sideways in her own giggling fit while struggling to keep Caleb and Rachel within the eye of her phone’s camera.

They fired up the competition with a spirited debate. Their deductive reasoning and good-natured mudslinging is what almost got me to perform the self-Heimlich Maneuver and what, ironically, aided in coughing my airways to freedom.

With the debate too close to call a clear winner, they took the next logical step—who could eat their lunch the fastest.

Rachel was chewing her last bite of sandwich when she noticed her mother’s phone held in their direction. “Recording this? Oh, now you’ve done it,” she crowed spitting food particles.

“I don’t know about you, Sis, but I’m still hungry,” Caleb said, grinning at their mother. Rachel matched his smile and added, “Yes, me too and Mom looks awfully tasty!”

They both lunged at Karen, grappled for the phone and pretending to devour her while I moved our drinks to safety.

After catching his breath, Caleb realized the dispute was still unresolved. He stole two tomato slices from his mother’s hoagie and smashed them against the nearest window; the last slice clinging would earn its designated owner the bigger room.

That very window was now engulfed in flames. They’ll never have the chance to play in those rooms again. The house was beyond rescue and repair. Karen’s phone and that memory’s video were now lost forever, along with the rest of our belongings.

I shouldn’t have left without grabbing a few things, but the damned flames spread so fast. With a gasoline drenched carpet, I guess the sprinkling of whiskey was overkill—not to mention a waste of good drinking.

I could barely hear the roar of the blaze over the pulsing blood in my head, droning on like a swarm of salacious cicadas.

The flames taunt, trying to drive me mad with guilt, but I had no choice. Fire was the only recourse—it all had to burn.

They had to burn.

My sweet children, my true love, may they rest in peace and walk through Heaven’s Gates together. Please God take them in!

Reflecting the fire’s light, tears tumble from my eyes like orange diamonds, melting as they slide down my warmed skin.

They didn’t deserve this. This fate of fire was not meant for them. They were so innocent and pure… until tainted by the infection.

Who would’ve guessed that it would originate from something in plain sight, something long thought benign? It didn’t come from an overzealous lab with lax security measures. It was from a fuckin’ museum in eastern Pennsylvania!

God, this house… we moved right next to ground zero.

Some poor sap accidentally broke open a pickled punk or some other fermented mutation at the Mütter Museum a few miles from here. He sliced open his hand trying to clean up the mess and contracted the wrong bacteria.

It spread from person to person faster than this goddamn fire. We didn’t have time to doubt or panic before it struck our community.

One of those things barged onto the twins’ school bus when the driver opened the doors at a railroad crossing. Their terror must have been unbearable as they watched the rancid thing chew its way toward them—the kids never got the emergency door open, they were trapped morsels like sardines in a can.

My children, corrupt and infested, made their way home. By the time I arrived they had torn their mother into three gnawed-open pieces. The twins attacked and Karen’s parts slunk their way toward me with the same vicious intent. I will never forget that sight or what I did next.

Their warm, healthy flesh had putrefied. As I pushed and pulled them away from my body, their skin slid from the meat of their limbs, further amplifying the eye-watering smell of roses and rotting roadkill.

Were they still in there or were they empty corpses? I couldn’t take the chance that they were suffering. I ripped my ornamental sword off the wall, finalized their death march, and set a cleansing fire to work.

Sirens wail in the distance now, and I finally notice the chaos around me. Other homes were in flames too. Cars were left abandoned in the middle of the street. Gun shots echo in the distance and screams stop short every few minutes.

It won’t be long now.

My time is dwindling.

I probably won’t see my loved ones in the hereafter—the crimes of taking their… lives may have stolen that right from me.

Guilt weighs heavily on my will to live, like the crushing stones of a Salem death sentence.

The night is filled with fire. Such a beautiful creature it is, fluttering plumage as it climbs higher and higher.

The flames are hypnotic aren’t they?

One could certainly lose his soul staring at them too long…

~ Tyr Kieran

The Enforcer

November 13, 2012February 8, 2013 ~ blazemcrob ~ 22 Comments

He stands before the large bay window, looking down upon the streets below, not really needing to see the evil happening. The visuals, courtesy of all his sensory perceptions, attack his mind.

And yet, The Committee condones such sadistic behavior as this. “Let them do as they will. It will all be sorted out later,” they say. “Their feeble minds can not grasp the concepts of good or evil: not enough for them to advance to an elevated status at any rate.”

“Elevated, my ass!” he thinks. “All of us on The Committee were once like these weaklings. We found it difficult to reason, to discard depravity and debauchery for the less than obvious elements of good inherent in humans and the world surrounding them.”

Pacing back and forth, the raw energy of evil present in this city sickens him. Someone in his position should distance himself from what is present here. After all, it has taken him many lifetimes to achieve his elevated status. Yes, he has evolved beyond the rabble scratching around to make ends meet, to find a reason for existence, and perhaps…just perhaps, to find at least some happiness from the filth which is ever-present here.

But through it all, he remembers. How can he possibly forget the times when he was beaten down by those wanting to keep him, and many others, in a state of abject slavery? Maybe the absence of freedom wasn’t slavery as many envision it to be, but when one’s soul is torn from the physical embodiment of humanity, what else would it be? One becomes nothing more than a Zombie, a dancing, unthinking, undead persona manipulated by a necromancer concerned only for his own welfare. And, his own power.

He laughs. Now the power belongs to him, an advanced being capable of an existence beyond human understanding. Yes, to those like him, the ones who have reached the “most perfect” stage of development, a utopian society exists, one in which Heaven is a state of glory residing within the minds of those fortunate enough to have reached the pinnacle of all that is.

Truth be known? They are Gods. And yet, should Gods look the other way when the unfortunate ones wallow around in ineptitude and suffer at the hands of the evil ones?

Ah, the Gods might have lost any semblance of previous humanity when their ultimate tableau was achieved.

Selchor, on the other hand, still retains compassion within his soul. It pains him when the unfortunate ones suffer as he once did. There is no reason for this. Those who can help, should help.

He dresses for the evening, donning the clothing of the time, and grabbing his walking stick when he leaves the apartment. Once he reaches the streets, he blends in with everyone else around him.

His cane beats a staccato along the sidewalk as he walks towards the place of supreme evil manifestations. For too long, this street has been a sinister one, hiding secrets, exposing pain . . . pain shoved upon those much too young to experience it.

A large man, easily 300 pounds, bald, and wearing an expensive suit, embroidered shirt, and fancy wing-tips, comes out of the adjoining alleyway and motions for him to stop.

“I take it you’re here for the young girls,’ he says. “Name your age, and we can fulfill your fantasy and allow you to live life to the fullest, doing what so few are able to experience.”

Selchor smiles at the man. “Yes, my good man. I am here for the children. Your fame has spread farther than you can imagine.”

The pimp gives the stranger a funny look, wondering exactly what this man is talking about. “And exactly what are you looking for, might I ask?”

“I would like to have all the young ladies assembled before me so I can choose.”

“All of them?”

“Yes, all of them. I will gladly pay you up front if you are concerned about my intent.”

The big guy salivates at the thought of his entire assemblage being paid for. “Of course. Whatever you wish, sir.”

He grabs a cell phone out of his pocket and makes a couple of quick calls. Within minutes, a dozen young women of differing ages are paraded before him.

Selchor laughs and says, “I’ll take them all.”

“All of them?” the pimp asks.

Handing him the money, Selchor says, “Yes, all of them.”

The girls are shoved towards him, and Selchor says, “I am setting you free. Go and never return. There is nothing left for you here, and you need not worry about anything. I’m giving you your freedom.”

They are reluctant to leave at first, but something about the calm exterior of their benefactor soothes them, and they scramble away.

The procurer is upset and attempts to shove the cane-bearing man out of the way so he can retrieve the girls, but Selchor holds him, and his henchmen, back. In no time at all the former slaves are gone.

“But . . . but this is not what you asked for,” the bald man says, anger shoved from every pore in his body. “I thought . . .”

“You think far too much, I must say,” Selchor says. “I never said what I wanted the girls for. You merely assumed. You and your henchmen are evil people and should have your eyes opened to the truth of who you really are.”

The fancy-dressed pimp laughs now. “I don’t believe a man carrying a cane will be able to do much damage to the six of us.”

“Do not be deceived by me or my cane. Your time of reckoning has come.”

They charge en-mass, but Selchor touches a button on the cane’s handle, and a knife blade, easily a foot long, comes out from the end. “Looky what I have here, me lads. Guess what? I know how to use it too.”

The fight is brutal: blood, guts, and chunks of flesh fly everywhere. One by one, Selchor deftly removes their hearts, impales them on the blade, and places them in the hands of their owners.

Selchor watches as the spirits rise from the fallen bodies and stare down at what is now nothing more than food for the rats. He laughs, a most unsettling one, and says, “It appears that the time has come for you to go to Heaven or Hell. Which one is it?”

Confusion runs through the souls. This was not expected. Heaven or Hell is a choice left to them? How can this be?

“Yes, you have this choice,” Selchor tells them. “Tell me: which path are you taking?”

Even before they have the chance to say that Heaven is the obvious choice, thoughts jump into their minds, talking to them of all the evil they have perpetrated in their lives. How many times were people, some very young, subjected to pain to supply them with pleasure and a fulfillment of power? Too many times. They grab their heads and cry out in pain, trying to exorcise the demons present within them.

It doesn’t work.

All of them are dragged away to Hell. But…but there is not “one” Hell. For them, there are six Hells, and no two are the same. Selchor smiles as he watches their twisting, convoluted efforts to escape the grasp of the demons pulling them into the darkness.

Silence. The sweet sound of nothing takes over. The pimp and his crew are gone, taken into Hell on the wings of their own guilt. Justice has been served.

Selchor surveys the scene and his former humanity becomes more dominant. He loses none of the knowledge he has gained over time. If anything, he is more advanced than the others on The Committee. Knowledge, power, and humanity all belong to him.

Heaven and Hell are abstracts and reside within the minds and souls of those going to one or the other. If a person believes they have done good during their past life, they will advance to the next level of humanity, or they can happily exist in Heaven as they are. But those who are tormented by the guilt of the past evils they have committed will send themselves to Hell.

How sweet is this? Heaven and Hell reside within one’s self.

Selchor knows now he can not return to the lofty enclave of others of his kind. It is wrong to look the other way.

The world needs an enforcer. Selchor is perfect for the job . . .

~ Blaze McRob

Grieve

October 23, 2012May 1, 2013 ~ Joseph Pinto ~ 58 Comments

Enter.

Sit before the Tale Weaver.

Through this open sash wafts the spice of golden autumn, yet lulled into complacency dare be not. A harbinger, this essence, of sinister entities soon to stalk the sanctity of your threshold. Hastened your pulse, and so should it be. For in due time the graveyards beyond shall be born once more. My skeletal hand now take, and open your dormant senses to such truths as only the Tale Weaver can reveal. Yes. Yessss. One foot fore the other; step now from my tenebrous haunt.

Behold my playground! Behold the majesty of rot neath your apprehensive feet, these glorious, rusted arches serving as gateways for the dead. Across the chilled flesh of your cheek doth flit moonlight embers, or so your consciousness should have you believe. Tis the fingers of lost souls caressing your countenance, mourning the shell of humanity you now possess. This wayward wind aches under the weight of their listless repose; cease the shuddering of your limbs and heed their moans! As you are now so once were they; for what they are now so soon shall you be. Death, perhaps for you, is final, yet for these entities only in death do they flourish.

Cautious, ever cautious should you step tween the ever-sentient monuments and moss crusted sepulchers; their domain you tread. Respect these hallowed grounds, respect this kingdom of decay, for to the purveyors of putrefaction tis their crown jewel. The swirling mist; it jerks at your wrist, starving and desperate for your attention. Yes, ignorant one, tis the dead! They watch us…watch you…their doleful eyes shimmering tween the slender silvered cobwebs of the tombs. Their tendrils seek you, enamored with the stink of humanity, and in slow solitaire turns do they wish to dance at your side, their darkened cathedral of sorrow echoing with the strained chords of the damned.

The pathways, the hills, teeming with specters of eras long gone; this necropolis of the horrific busying itself for its grandest day — All Hallows Eve — so bear witness the blessings of death these hapless beings do perceive. In turn, treasure your own worthless existence and end your common grievances, lest you return, doomed and fated to roam deeper chasms of despair than you can possibly comprehend.

Your attention…drawn to the small clearing just yonder. Investigate you may; the ghouls I shall restrain whilst you stride tween the jagged teeth of plot and stone. Yet you turn to me, confusion etched deep into your brow. Aye, tis what you believe it to be…here the obscure sorrow more profound than anywhere else…here the cloying agony more suffocating than anywhere else…here the tiny monuments adorned with docile lambs, yet greater in stature than anywhere else…the final resting place for the young souls given no choice tween exemption and sin.

Dare not judge me, for your God I am not and do not wish to be. Even I cannot fathom the laws of what you call fate; aye, nor abide by its rules if I could. But these younglings I do watch from the distance, ever mindful of their misplaced light in this land so very lost.

You hear her, do you not? The long, drawn mewls of agony and torturous sobbings of a heart long since raped; tis the guardian of these younglings, there…there…tattered wings draped in black strands over the faceless, nameless tombstone upon which she perches. Yes…she…the dark angel for these beacons of light.

Gaze upon her grotesque beauty, this devourer of purity, yet your head turn from her tears. Her anguish respect. Protects these younglings at all costs and yet mourns her greatest loss, this dark angel does. I speak of a soul abandoned by its Maker; a soul denied entry by equal parts Heaven and Hell. A soul delivered from the abyss, cast back to the abyss. For eternity has the dark angel brooded upon her cold throne of shattered dreams, compassionately embracing the young that seek comfort at her thorn laced feet whilst inconsolable her own charred essence bleeds dry. For eternity agonizing over the light left unclaimed as her own.

The dark angel seethes – such is the price of unsatiated grief. Mouth jagged, a twisted hole of silent fury; swarthy locks entombing stricken face. Yearning, yearning for the sunbeam she may never hold. Beautiful, wondrous and macabrely awful…the dark angel bemoans what is beyond even my capacity.

Leave now. I command – leave now! Across unholy crypts do run with tail tween legs, and pray your ragged breath not be stolen by the ghouls at your heels. No longer I offer protection; no longer your welcome honored in our sanctuary of desolation. For on this Stygian night the abomination I am becomes something wholly else; only on this Stygian night do I ignore my own sentence of perpetual condemnation and become something other than the insidious being you loathe. Into these debased arms do I lift the dark angel and remove her from her watch. On this endless night of Stygian nights, protector I become. Upon my lap I lay her wicked head down, my sweet angel of depravity, and so she will mourn. And hold her evermore, until all that remains of us is the rot tween our bones.

Until next I summon you, be gone.

So the Tale Weaver speaks.

~ Joseph A. Pinto as the Tale Weaver

As a proud participant in this years Coffin Hop 2012 blog tour, I’m giving away an e-copy of my novel Flowers for Evelene, plus a print copy of Twisted Realities: Of Myth and Monstrosity featuring my story Memorial.

If you’d like to be one of the winners of my give away, please leave a comment on this post, and on November 1st, two random recipients will be chosen.

Don’t forget to visit the rest of the Coffin Hoppers at coffinhop.wordpress.com!

The Flock

October 16, 2012February 28, 2013 ~ Thomas Brown ~ 22 Comments

The boys flock screeching to the locker room, their faces red and wild from the cold. One runs, arms outstretched, as though attempting to take-off. Another rushes, flapping, to his locker. A third hops onto the benches at the centre of the room and, his head thrown back, croons loudly. His throat swells, victorious; his was the winning football team.

One boy follows afterwards, calmly and more quietly than the rest. He does not screech or flap his arms, and if his face is red or wild from the cold, it is because it is his face, and helpless to be otherwise. He cannot change his face, although he has wished for this many times before.

The room fills with the flutter of sleeve arms as the boys begin to get changed. Socks grow long where they are pulled from the toes; longer, longer still, until they tear from ankles and snap like synthetic sinew through the air. It is early afternoon and the autumn wind is playing with the tree outside the window. Red leaves press like outstretched hands against the opaque glass.

The same boy pauses, his sweatshirt around his shoulders, and studies the scarlet palm-prints. Their redness reminds him of other things: burst berries, flushed cheeks, the colour of split lips and the stains down the arms of his school shirt. He wonders how a colour can be so many things, how it can mean so many things, and still be beautiful. It is just a colour, after all, the same wherever it is seen.

He stares intently for several seconds, the world around him fading beneath the bright red of the leaves. Then he loses himself once more in his sweatshirt. The name label, which tickles his neck and then his face, reads Bran Thomas. The room smells damp and feels cold against his goose-pimpled skin.

Around him, the others prance and preen. Sometimes their faces are expressive, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Other times, it seems, they barely have faces at all. One is studying himself in the mirror above the sink, moving left, then right, his reflection doing likewise in the glass. From where Bran stands there is no nose, no mouth, no face that can be seen, but he imagines a sharp beak and two unblinking eyes in their place. He knows that beak. He has felt it before, or one like it, and the ceaseless peck of its words.

Shouts ricochet from the locker room walls. When they reach the communal showers they distort, in that way all sounds do when they bounce from bathroom tiles. Bran hears jubilation in those sounds, and taunts, and mimicry; so much mimicry. It is cacophonous in his head. He wishes that worms turned in the ground beneath them, or that the pink throats of their parents hovered above, come to regurgitate food into their mouths, silencing those hungry beaks for one solitary minute!

The shrieks escalate, grow shrill. He steps back to his locker, which is already open, and shields himself behind the metal door as the boys fly into a flurry of movement. His little heart rattles, like a cage of frightened lovebirds in his chest. He fears for his sanity in the midst of such madness. He fears he is the mad one, the outsider of the flock.

He thinks of lovebirds, and wonders why they are called such. Do they love? Are they more than birds because of it, or indifferent except in name? What of scaredbirds too, and deadbirds, and whatdoesitallmeanbirds?

One of the boys falls into his locker, so that the door swings into Bran’s face. It is a senseless gesture, accident or otherwise, and Bran feels reaffirmed. He feels pain too, where the door has struck his nose. He sinks to the floor. The rich metal-taste of red fills his mouth.

The tiles are cold beneath his feet. Blackness encroaches on his vision, then whiteness, growing from the strip bulbs above. The bird-boys circle overhead, beaks clacking, and he hears malice. He hears stupidity and joy and inconsideration. If there is an apology, he cannot hear that. He does not think there is.

Bran’s toes scrunch slowly, over and over, feeling the mud that has been trawled in from the playing fields. With conscious effort he takes a long breath. The fluttering in his chest begins to slow. The grit between his toes is grounding. It is a moment, the moment, in which he realises he is not like the other bird-boys. They hop and screech and peck for giblets, their beaks black, like the crows in the ditch behind the football field. They are a faceless flock, drawn to shiny things, or thrashing insects in the ground. Their bones are light. Their forms slight.

Bran’s chest is heavy with petrified lovebirds. They sit like stones behind his ribs and he knows he will never fly. He will never be as the other bird-boys: the crows, the magpies, the voracious playground vultures.

They swarm from the locker room, these other boys, the corridor ringing with their shrieks and the beating of their feathered arms. Bran is left alone, with the grit between his toes, the slap of scarlet at the window and the taste of the colour in his mouth.

~ Thomas James Brown

Wolf Song

August 14, 2012February 18, 2013 ~ Thomas Brown ~ 22 Comments

The babies are coming. They’re coming and Friedrich is not there. After everything they have been through; the heartache, the treatments, he is not going to miss this moment. He puts his foot down on the accelerator. The sigh of warm air from the heater blows against his face. He drives fast through the snow-flecked night.

The road seems endless. A stretch of black tarmac and black ice and black night. Eventually he sees lights. Not the moon, which is full, swollen in the sky, but other lights. City lights. He navigates the icy side-streets as only an expectant father can. Two minutes now and he’ll be home and everything will be all right. He has waited for this day for so long. He has wept at the thought of this day coming, and at the thought of it not coming, when it seemed that way. Her blood, his tears. They said she was barren. But now the day is here. One minute, if that. He brings the car round the corner, faster than he should –

A figure lopes across the road, running towards him, beside him.

There is a dull thud as it hits the driver’s side of the car. He catches it with the front wheels. Then a bump; violent, horrible, to match the feeling in his stomach, as it vanishes beneath the chassis. It might have been a dog. He only half-glimpsed it, before it was drawn under the vehicle, flailing then gone. He knew dogs didn’t flail; that helpless, human gesture, but then he had not seen it properly and a car’s wheels could do terrible things to an animal’s shape. Broken apart by wheels, a dog could flail. A dog could die –

He takes the turn and pulls into his drive. The car grows quiet beneath him. He tumbles out into the cold night, which hits him with a force; stings his face and brings sharp tears to his eyes. He moves towards the house.

It doesn’t strike him as odd that the front door is open. It saves seconds in unlocking it himself. He steps into the hallway with its long, lavender walls and family pictures: their wedding, that holiday in Morocco, Christmas with her parents last year. The hallway is cold. It is filled with night air. Why was the door open? he wonders briefly. He calls out to his wife.

Screams reach his ears. Infantile and distressed, they are the most beautiful things he thinks he’s ever heard. Almost slipping, he follows them to the front room.

His steps falter. He is unsure quite what he’s seeing. Two figures roll on the sheepskin rug. They are baby-sized with four limbs each but malformed mouths, like battered snouts. Their eyes, thin, unseeing slits, are his wife’s pale blue and each is covered in a growths of matted hair, black and slick with birthing fluid. On hearing a presence they scream and mew and roll a little faster on their backs. Short, angular limbs peddle the air.

His stomach heaves and he turns from the things to vomit. His sick splashes the expensive curtains his wife and he bought when moving in together. He is wiping his eyes when he sees the spots of red across the carpet – a heavy flow, petering out as he pursues it through the hallway, a bloody breadcrumb trail leading back into the cold dark of outside. He follows the trail; the movements of his wife, he guesses, as she sought to reach him, to escape the wolfish things that have crawled out of her.

He reaches the street. The night seems vast, as though he could drown in its depths. Struggling for breath, he follows the blood spots to the misshapen figure in the road. He realises that they would always lead here. He studies the shape, which is heaving and moaning. It rolls over, hand-paws slapping the pavement, and he stares into the face of his wife.

Lights flicker on down the street. Figures appear in their doorways, drawn, he supposes, by the sounds. His wife is crying, her jowls quivering, a whimper slipping from her throat. He begins crying too. He kneels beside his lady, taking her matted fur in her hands. He thinks of the first time they met, in a queue at the bank. Their first date on the seafront, the salty breeze in their faces. The first time he cooked for her. He tells her their babies are beautiful, and that their curtains are ruined.

He smells salt now, but it is coppery and rank. A crowd is forming, shapes drawing closer. The vastness of the sky is replaced by a pressing constriction, formed by the figures around them.

He smells other things too. His wife’s blood, the stench of exhaust fumes, the hot wetness of animal breaths. He hears panting and the slop of tongues against teeth. Under the light of the moon he sees his neighbours, his friends, their snouts long, eyes shining in the moonlight.

Kneeling over his wife he takes her in his arms, to cover her, to protect her from the circling beasts, before realising his hands are also paws. His flesh is covered with hair, his teeth long and sharp in his mouth.

He hears a mewling again. His ears twitch, rising to attention. He turns, smelling blood and urine, and finds their neighbour walking towards them. She moves upright as a person and is fully clothed, but sloped eyes bridge her face, her muzzle glistening in the moonlight. In her arms she carries their two children, struggling in that way all new-born babies do, when first faced with the enormity of the world. As she approaches him, one of his neighbours howls. Another joins it, then another, until the city fills with the haunting sounds.

The pups are deposited against his flanks. Beneath him, his wolf-wife turns her face and smiles. Then she shudders and expires. The wolves continue to howl, their cry at once celebratory and mournful. They sing of life and death, blood and heat, the earth and the sky, and the night sings back at them.

~ Thomas James Brown