An Animals Revenge

[Syrah Steele]

BackgroundThis is a short story (About 4 pages) that I had to write for English class. It is based on the basic Kelvic idea. Most people would see it as a regular shape-shifting animal/person, but I got the idea from Miz! Thanks guys!

I am chasing a rabbit. It hops fast away from me, its little plump body almost calls me. My short legs pump me faster over the grass, my tongue, already hanging out of my mouth, is anticipating this yummy meal. It trips. It falls. I pounce. Blood stains its white fur. Juice plasters my brown coat. I pick it up and bring it back to my family. They praise me, “good pup.”

I am dreaming.

My eyes open to sound and chaos. My family is screaming, I can hear them, I can smell their fear. I smell something else. I smell anger, I hear growls of fury. I stand up; my eyes are still trying to register the movement around me. Someone rams into me. My small body falls, I get up again. My eyes adjust.

My family is dying.

Everywhere my family is being killed. These things, large, bare skinned things have pointy, shiny sticks and are stabbing my family. They look like a larger version of the animal we ate a few moons ago. Humans, the word is whispered in my mind. It sounds nothing like what I’ve heard before. It sounds like what those killers are shouting. Then I realize it’s from their language. I scream and run towards my mother who is trying to fight one of the killers. This killer has dark brown fur, only on the top of its weird shaped head. It has a jagged scar running down its face. It looks kind of like the one headmaster wears on his flank from a competing male.

My mother sees me, “Run,” she yells at me. I pause, then turn around and run when mother snaps at the killer again. I look back; mother is running towards me with puppy brother in her mouth. I run faster then look back again. The man with the scar is running up behind mother and brother. He comes close, I try to yell. My voice is stuck. He raises his shiny stick and then plunges into mother. ‘Sword’ the word for the weapon is whispered in the evil language once again. I cannot pay attention to it. I watch my mother’s blood spill out onto the grass as she drops brother. Mother falls, brother squeals. I turn once again and run.

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I open my eyes to dim light. At first I think I am still in my nightmare. But no, it was brighter there. Was it really even a nightmare? I am in a room now. I didn’t even know what a room was earlier. How long has it been? How many moons? How many days? These new words frighten me. I was running. Running away, abandoning my family when they needed me. But I am only six new moons old. What are those? Months? I couldn’t have helped. Then I fell asleep – no, I fell down. I lost consciousness. I must have because I have been dreaming.

My dream, I almost forgot. No, I could not have forgotten, it was too strange. Yes, I remember. There was a girl – a human girl. How am I able to tell the difference? She was talking to me in the new language. The evil language. She was teaching me words. She had the same voice as the one in my head in the woods. She was looking down at me, smiling. Her hair was blonde. She was not like me, but her eyes. Her eyes looked like mothers eyes. Then I awoke.

I look around the room. I am cold. There are human things everywhere. I see a couple of wood chairs and a small table. The room is dark because the one window is covered with colorful fabric, but I can see light trying to come through, making the cloth glow different colors. There is a door at the other end of the room. I am cold.

The door opens; I flinch back, backing up against the smooth wall behind me. My body feels weird, but I am too frightened to examine it. There is a human in the door, I yelp, the sound comes out strange. The girl comes in, then stops, her eyes widening when she sees me. Did she not know I was here? No, she was not surprised by my sound. She must be seeing something weird on me. I look down on my body. I am sitting on a small bed, but that is not what surprises me. My fur is gone, left bare and smooth. I have fingers and long legs, covered only with a thin layer of clear hairs. My new fingers fly up to my head. I have fur on my head. I trail my fingers down, the fur is long. I look back up at the girl. She is still wide-eyed and staring at me. She has long hair on her head like me.

I am human.

I scream.

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It has been a few days. I am in the same room. My nightmares are always the same. My mother being murdered by the human, sometimes the murders face changes. Sometimes it’s the man with the scar, other times it’s my new face. The first day after I woke up the girl set a mirror in the room. I looked at it when she had gone. I had light brown hair; red where the light from the glowing window touched it. My face was not of a wolf’s. I broke the glass with my new hands. They bled.

I sit and sleep in the corner. I refuse the warm bed, it is human. The dirt floor is more familiar. The corner is the one farthest from the door. The girl comes in a few times a day to check on me, mostly to drop off food. I never eat it until she leaves. I never move when she is in the room. She never comes near me, never makes a sound when I see her. All I do in this room is try and become myself again.

I am startled out of my concentration by the sound of the door opening again. I look up; the girl has come in with food again. She sets it down on the table. I expect her to leave like she always does now. Instead she pats the pile of cloth on the table. That pile has been there since I woke up the first time.

“These are clothes. They keep you warm.”

I back up into the corner. Her voice frightens me. What scares me more is that I understand the words, the sounds. I should have expected that. My mind thinks in halves now. Sometimes naturally, sometimes evilly.

“So you understand me.” It is not a question. Her voice is quiet. Like talking to a child. “I can see it in your eyes.” She sounds calm. “When I first found you, you were starving, broken. You were dying. I could tell you were just a baby. You were so small. I carried you here, into my home. She paused and gestured with her long arms to the room around us. “I would check on you every few hours. I didn’t know where you had come from, but I knew you had been running. Then I came in again and you weren’t you anymore. At first I thought – I didn’t know what to think. But I knew you were the same person – same animal. Your eyes were the same. I saw them first when I found you. You looked at me, then collapsed. But not before I remembered your eyes.” She stopped. “Can you talk?”

I opened my mouth. Then closed it. Could I talk? I know the language. I know the word she wants is ‘yes’. But how do I say it? She took care of me. Saved my life. But she killed my family. No – she didn’t, others did. How do I know she’s not one of them? Because she saved me, that’s how.

“Yes.” The sound came out small and strangled. My throat was thick and the sound was more animal than human. Well, I am more wolf than girl.

The girl smiled and continued talking, “My mother used to tell me stories of animals – mostly wolfs – that could change into one of us at will. Of course only a child would believe such stories. But now here you are. She would tell me about a group of wolfs that lived out in the forest. She said they were an entire pack of shape-shifters. I guess that’s where you came from then?”

My family? Human? I could almost laugh. I had never even seen a human until that small one we killed. But it doesn’t matter because

“My family is dead.”

I know they are. No one got away, I can feel it in my chest. I saw mother die, maybe headmaster could have killed a couple, but there were too many. And I only fool myself thinking little brother could be alive.

The girl’s eyes dropped to the floor, “Then that is why you ran” she said quietly. Then she stood up and started walking to the door.

My throat closed up thinking of staying in this tiny room for another day. I can smell the forest and I can hear the birds in the trees. If I stay in this room for any longer I’ll go mad.

“I think it’s time you go outside.” The girl said.

Can humans hear what I’m thinking?
__________________________________________________________________
It has been five days since my family was killed. The girl, who I now know as Christine, told me that I was in the room for 3 ½ days. I spent the last day and a half regaining my strength and trying to figure out how to change back into a wolf. I’m once again strong and able but I’m still human. Christine’s village is small and filled with only women. Christine says that the men went on a hunting trip for seven days. She says they do this at the beginning of each winter. She says they will be coming back tonight. All the women stare at me when I walk through the village. Christine swears they do not know about me. I believe her. She has taught me how to wear cloth cover myself and how to eat out of human food holders called dishes and other things called forks and knives and spoons. There’s a lot you can learn in a day. Christine says my name is Alex, since I don’t have one. I tell her it’s pup, but she says that’s not a name. She says that the village will have a feast when the men come back from the hunt. She says they are bringing meat and we’ll celebrate. I do not know what that means but I like meat. Maybe there’ll be some rabbit.
__________________________________________________________________ The men are back. They are much bigger than the women. Christine tells me they were successful in the hunt, but I didn’t need to be told that. All the men were smiling and laughing. It was almost like the rejoicing of the pack after the hunt. It reminded me of home.

Christine says I have to dress nice for the feast. I don’t know what that means. She says that she is 16 years old now and I, who apparently look 12, won’t fit into her current clothes, but maybe some from when she was younger. She put me into a black dress and tells me that although we’re celebrating we are also morning because a young boy was killed during the hunt. It was his first year out. I don’t know what that has to do with the dress. She leads me out to the middle of her village where people are sitting in a circle. I try to make myself small, too many new people are looking at me. In the middle of the large circle are huge bowls with fire under them and I can smell the meat inside. Christine says I have to wait.

After a while a woman comes by and starts to put soup in our bowls which are front of us. The soup is steaming, but I can smell the meat. Christine says that one of the hunters must tell us a story then we can eat.

Soon a man begins to speak. I listen but I stare at my cooling food.

“We had a successful hunt!” He booms, the crowd cheers. “But we lost one of our own to savages.” The crowd is silent. My food is still steaming. “A small boy, his first year on the hunt, was hunted himself. A pack of wolves found him as their next meal.”

Pack of wolves? I look up. I squint, trying to see the man who is talking through all the soup steam.

“But fear not! We tracked down the pack and got our justice!” The crowd cheers. Christine puts her hand in my arm and squeezes. The steam begins to move away and I start to see the speakers face. Brown hair, white skin.

“We hunted them while they slept and killed every last one of them - every last pup. They can do no more harm.” The crowd cheers. Christine’s hand holds me tighter. The steam disappears and I see his face.
“I hope you enjoy this meal. The wolves thought they were at the top of the food chain. But we showed them!” The entire village screams. The ground shakes with their sound. But all I can see is a thick scar running down the speakers face.

I scream, jumping up I knock over my soup. My body shakes, Christine’s hand has no control over me. My family is dead. My family is dead in these humans killed them.

I stand there, body shaking, the crowd still screams, my screams of fury are mixed within it. I charge at the killer. “You killed my mother! My brother! My family!”

The crowd is silent. They stare at me with wide, frightened eyes. Just like Christine did. Growls rip out of my throat. I bear my teeth at the killer. He has no time to react. I jump. I land on top of him, he falls to the ground. My hands around his throat. I scream in his face the language of my family.
He easily throws me off of him in the next second. “What are you talking about child?”

I turn and face the entire village, “You call us monsters! Us! It was that boy wandered into our home. That boy screamed in our faces and threatened our newborn pups. Yet you protect him like he did nothing wrong! He deserved what he got! We did not deserve for you gave us!

“And you!” I turned and faced the scarred man once again, “You killed my mother, no mercy! Stabbed her with those shiny blades of yours. Laughed as she felt to the ground, dead. And after I had run away what did you do to my little brother whom she had held in her mouth? Did you kill him like you killed everyone else? An innocent puppy. What would you do if I killed one of your infants? You wouldn’t tolerate it, would you? No, you wouldn’t. And neither would I.”

I jumped at the scarred man once again this time my rage changed me. When I landed on him and he fell to the ground I was no longer a child. My bones had moved, my hair had spread, my body had changed. And as my teeth sunk softly into his pulsing neck and my growls vibrated in his blood, I knew what was.

I was me again.

[jorgea]

Very interesting story with an animal's point of view.