Wolves in the (not) throne room

Hello there,

Excuse my lack of posting here lately, sometimes life and other things get the better of me.
So instead of making excuses I am just going to post a new short story, as some form of apology…? (depending on your opinion of the story)

A few months ago, there was a short fiction call with the theme of “feral” and I came up with the below story, entitled “The Wolf is Loose”
It should also be noted that this was around the same time as the untimely death of ex- Mastodon guitarist Brent Hinds, and fans of the band may notice not only the title but some nods to the song in this story.

It was a blast of piece to put together, I tried to play with timelines, perspectives a little (maybe too much?) and I did toy with tinkering with this a bit more but decided to leave it as it is.

As always, hope you enjoy and feel free to let me know what you think, either here or on the various socials

Til next time.

D

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

The Wolf Is Loose
Abby slapped the side of the container to indicate the truck was good to go. Its orange brake lights threw light on the surroundings, the very example of nondescript apart from the sign that hung above the wide door that read, Smith and Son’s Glass.
A train chugged past through the distant railyard, its brakes howling in the night.
Her back cracked as she stretched out her muscles. The sun was but an orange line on the distant hills.
The truck eased away. The thing in the back of it was contained - not dead, yet, but contained, and as the truck pulled out of the lot, she felt the adrenaline spike give way to exhaustion.
She really wanted a beer, she had a thirst that desperately needed quenching but first had to clear out the scene.
She could still hear the voice of it in her head, the way it taunted her in its last moments, the way its eyes bore into her as it spoke to her of crossing the threshold.
They had been on his trail for years. She and her partner Codyre had got the call that it had been sighted just off rural road four in the hours just after midnight, leaving a flock of dismembered chickens in its wake, even though a sheep farm had been just across the road, it was obviously not thinking clearly
They had rushed here as fast they could. Abby driving, white knuckled the whole way and Codyre checking the munitions.
‘You think this is actually him?’ he had asked her, cigarette dangling from his lips, his scruffy red beard full of the debris of the late-night snack he had been in the middle of when she called him.
Abby was yet to be convinced; there had been so many calls over the years only for them to get there to just find it was a simple domestic dog. They would turn it over to animal control and they would go home disappointed.
When she had driven into Codyre’s driveway, headlights making the mess look even worse, she had seen the bin full of empty whiskey bottles. She knew he drank a lot, but if this was a week’s worth of recycling, that was a staggering amount of whiskey to get through in a week.
Who was she to talk — they had just confronted this creature; this thing and all she could think about was her own thirst.
Her mind back in the now, with the task at hand, she opened the large sliding metal door to the warehouse they had cornered it in. The smell in here was nauseatingly thick, metallic and pungent; like wet animal fur mixed with blood - which is exactly what the smell was coming from.
The pool of thick blood glistened in minimal light. Codyre’s legs stuck out from the pallet barricade he had made for himself, which proved ineffectual against it.
The pool seemed to be ever expanding. His legs were still bent at the knee, the rest of his upper body - somewhere else. The creature had simply torn him in half like a toy.
In that moment, Abby had been paralysed, not with fear or horror - but with the fact that all that stood between the creature and it getting out - was her. Her and her single silver bullet. The same bullet that Codyre had given her just as they stepped out of the car. Amongst the chaos on her mind, she remembered what he had told her,
‘Get it in the heart, that’s all you need to do - you’ve always been a better shot than me.’ he had said with a wry smile. She had loaded the gun and placed it in her hip holster, holding on to the grip of the weapon to stop her hand from shaking.
As she surveyed the scene her hand was still shaking - both of them now. Her gun was nowhere to be found, so that anchor that kept her locked in was gone. She linked her fingers behind her head, the urge to scream coursed through her blood hot and white, but she tamped it down, buried it - as she always did, but something was different now, she had felt the heat of it, felt its hot sour breath when it had got up close to her, felt its long and sad gaze pierce her.
 Unlike Codyre, when the thing had emerged into the light, it had not immediately attacked her. It circled her, ever watching, as it always had as she held her weapon on it.
The corner of the warehouse where she had faced it was a wreck, splintered pieces of wood lay everywhere and steel piping was distributed haphazardly like matchsticks. It was a glass manufacturing site, shards of mirrored glass strewn everywhere added to the maelstrom of abstract images. Reflections of pooled blood and chaos.
Again his — its voice lingered in her head, like the copy of a copy, it was a garbled message that she was still trying to make sense of ; the crossing of the threshold
Those words it had said to her, were the same that it had scrawled in blood on the walls of her childhood home all those years ago, when she first encountered it. She can still recall the feral howl it had emanated before it disappeared into the dark, not just for the night, but for what seemed like her entire childhood.
Now she stood some thirty years later, the smell of cordite thick in the air and she asked herself if she had herself crossed that threshold finally; her partner was dead, she had finally taken the shot she had wanted to for so long.  Every time there had been a sighting her blood spiked with the call, the call to kill, to hurt, to maim. Something in her had craved to take that shot - for revenge, for fear, for ending the bloodline. And just as her finger glanced over the trigger- searching, its eyes glowed with fury as it launched at her, sending her crashing to the ground. In the chaos and melee, she had found the trigger and pulled it.
It was as if she too was the predator, but her hunt was now over.
She slumped to the ground as the tears finally spilled from her, waves of convulsive cries, loud and primal roared from her mouth. Her hands splayed in the still warm blood. It pooled around her fingers, spilling and spreading up her arms. She winced as she bent down, pain searing and burning in her ribcage.
She pulled her hand round and touched the point of pain and as she pulled her hand away, her own blood spilled from the two puncture wounds in her side and mixed with that of Codyre.
 And also, the blood of what was once her father.
Her drenched fingers caught the golden glimmer of sunrise that streaked through the windows and that same light warmed her skin even further.
She held the two fingers out from her, her own blood hot and thick hung like a thread between her fingers and the two holes in her ribs.
Her veins felt aflame as the realisation hit her, as her vision blurred and shifted, as a searing heat came over her.
A shattered piece of glass lay in front of her, and it showed her for what she now really was. The mirror stared back hard, her eyes glowed with a hunger - her eyes glowed lupine and wondrous.
Those same animal eyes stared back at her, the same way those animal eyes of her father had stared at her from across the room some thirty years ago.
That same sadness and hunger he had in him now pulsed wildly inside her.
She knelt down further, truly once and now forever crossing the threshold and began to lap hungrily; finally quenching her thirst.