Bind the Flesh 🐺

When I look at the werewolf, hanging there chained, smirking as if it's all a big joke I don't get... I want to smack him in his smug, symmetrical face. Bad enough that I had to bring him into my house.

The line of silver in each manacle is keeping him suppressed. It must be burning his wrists, but I can't smell the singed hair and flesh. I miss that reassuring stink.

The sight of him there in the room she occupied all those years ago, triggers memories of my failure. If I were a fanciful wretch, I'd imagine my vision flickers between him, now and her, then.

I forgot how brutal they truly are. Overestimated the power of softness to tame primal aggression. If I hadn't had that scrap of romance in my soul...

I remember the raw pleading in her eyes, her mouth stretched by the gag muffling her screams. I treated her as cattle, because that was what she was to me. A receptacle. A host. I took away her filthy clothes for burning without bothering to replace them.

That was wrong. She was a person. He was the animal.

Would it have gone differently if I'd bathed her? If she'd been moisturised, smelling fresh and hair silky? Unlikely. What does an animal care for such things?

That night, I did bring her clothes. The beast was in the outhouse. I could hardly walk her out there naked. What if someone peeped out of their window and saw us? There'd be talk.

I found a long skirt and baggy shirt, and carried them to her room, almost as if I were bringing laundry to a guest. Except that a gun and knife were laid neatly on top.

Approaching the door, I heard her sobbing. I'd have to do something about that. Soundproofing perhaps.

The moment I turned the key, the noises stopped. I could hear her fall still. Maybe I imagined it. Had my work infected my fantasies, making me hallucinate superhuman hearing?

When the door swung open, she scrambled up, gibbering through the gag. I raised the gun, and she pulled up short and silent. It was like every nerve in her body went twang. Every part of her fixated on that lump of metal with its ominous eye. A black hole that swallowed all her attention, sucked in all awareness.

It was having a similar effect on me.

The knife glinted in the light of the full moon. Our womanly rhythms are meant to sync with the moon. Isn't that poetic? The blade sliced through her bindings and hardly nicked the skin at all. She still whimpered.

I threw the clothes at her. Terror decorated her features more eloquently than any of her boyfriends could have done. She dressed at gunpoint, then I pulled the door open and gestured her through.

She hesitated at the foot of the stairs. My front door with it's frosted glass and flimsy chain might have looked like her surest escape. "Turn right!" I barked. She obeyed, the gun poking in her back.

We moved down the hallway and through the kitchen. Her dirty feet stuttered on my clean floor, her gaze falling on the knife block next to the oven.

"Out!" I hissed.

It was a short stroll across the moonlit grass to the outhouse. I took a deep breath, willing my pulse to steady. Here was danger. He should still be groggy from the dose I gave him before, but if I knew my stuff (and I did, I'd been tinkering with medications, varying traces of silver, and documenting everything against phases of the moon for months) the effects should be wearing off now.

I unlocked the door, once again imagining I could hear my captive waking up and stilling himself. Those ears pricking up, even the shadows standing to attention. Jabbing her hard in the back again, I spoke fast, in a harsh whisper.

"Get in, shut the door. If you do well you can come back to the house."

She looked bewildered, but did as she was told. I locked the door, and took several steps back away from it, almost at a run, heart pounding.

Trusting to natural instincts was foolish. I wasn't dealing with something natural. I was dealing with the supernatural. I'd thought his other appetites would be as strong as the ones he posessed for feeding and aggression. As if he were a mere animal.

There was total silence for a moment. Shock, I'm sure, registering in both parties. The snarling started, muffled screams, a loud thump. He must have launched himself at her. The door rattled. I twitched, but otherwise remained frozen to the spot.

This is it.

More snarls, more thumping, whimpering and more muffled screams ... Then a yelp, almost dog-like, and the next thing, an old paint tin smashed through the window at the top of the panel to the right of the door.

Shit.

I hadn't imagined either of them could make it through that little window. This oversight could cost me everything.

The girl got a second tin and was swinging it at what she could reach of the lower portion of the window.

Another misjudgement on my part: that she'd helplessly accept her fate.

Even as she heaved that tin with those scrawny arms, I could see in my mind's eye the scarlet ribbons he was making of her legs.

She must've hit him hard round the head with her makeshift weapon, because there was a brief pause in the growling and tearing-flesh noises. She used that second to make a heroic leap for that window.

Her hands landed on the jagged points lining its lower edge. With no time to cushion it, or knock the rest of the glass out, it looked like a crystal mountain range, anchored into her palms by her own body weight. The blood, dark and red, welled up between her fingers and spilled down the wall. Here comes her face, inch by petrified inch, parallel gashes bleeding generously. She hauled herself up and pushed her head and shoulders out into the night air. It reminded me of watching someone heave themselves out of a swimming pool, except that doing that doesn't cause red to bloom across your torso. The way she was jerking suggested she must have been kicking desperately.

She slid back abruptly, her middle tearing, and then she vanished from my sight. Snarling, ripping, squelching, squeals, and then... yelp... yelp... yelp...

Silence.

Gun ready, I opened the door a crack and peered through. I braced myself, expecting one of them (or both) to barrel towards me and try to flee.

Neither human nor beast collided with me. My eyes adjusted. (By design, little moonlight made it in here.) They lay on the dusty floor, bleeding. She was covered in gashes from teeth, claws, and broken glass, but the wounds to her legs were the worst. Much worse than I'd imagined. He hadn't just mauled her; he'd been eating her, feet first.

She gripped a bloody glass shard, and this was why my glorious specimen was lying limply in the dust and not eating the rest of her. The bitch had poked holes in his pelt. Belly, flank, and between his ribs.

She had no chance, but she didn't weakly accept that fate. Credit where it's due, she tried even when it was hopeless. I felt a crumb of regret as I aimed the gun at her head.

A silver bullet works just as well on humans, if you land it in the brain.

Killing is easy. Creating life is much more difficult.

Here is the other story this links to:

Still time to enter my latest dollar challenge:

Til death do us part might mean by his hand, but who cared?