Predator or Prey

I did not want to die this way. None of this was meant to happen the way it has. I lie here, blood and bile, pooling at my paws, and know how you will tell this tale. If I am to die at your hand, though, you will hear my story.

****

Do you know how many of us used to be in these woods? How our paws used to traverse this land, our howls filling the silence of the night, connecting us to the moon? There were no kings of the forest, unlike what your tales may tell, because we lived with each other in peace. There was no predator and prey, we did not hurt for the sake of hurting. We may eat one another to survive, but we found no joy in the harm we brought to each other. We did not relish in the pain of each other. We did not know what it meant to find glee in the pain of another. It would have been unthinkable to imagine any creature could.

Then the humans came.

Slowly at first. One by one, two by two. The humans walked into these woods, into our home and began to hurt us. Not to survive; that we could have forgiven. But they came to hurt. They came to take. They came to be the kings of the forest they speak of so highly in their stories.

My mother kept us away from them, she would keep us in the den and my father would go out at night hunting. Each night she sat, her face grayer than it should have been at her age, waiting. Waiting and waiting and waiting for my father to return.

But it wasn’t always like that. We used to yelp and bark and roll with each other where ever. My mother would bring us to roughhouse with other cubs, constantly socializing and learning. We wanted nothing more than to live in our pack, to be safe within each other. I remember my father, his dark gray muzzle, eyes glowing like the stars above. He would tumble in the grass with us, turning us with his nose. My mother, her black head resting on her soft paws, nipping us if we misbehaved, but letting us run amok. She knew we kept each other safe.

And then the first cabin went up. And then the town. We did not worry – did not know what humans were. Did not know about the hairless beasts that wandered this land. But then, this first pack went missing. The hunters had gone out and never returned. We had never had that happen before. We had lost members to other animals in the woods, others trying only to survive. But never a whole pack.

Then the second went missing, looking for the first. We did not bother to send out a third, because by that point we knew: we smelled the blood around the town in the woods and it was too familiar, too much like home. It smelled of the wounds we nursed when we did not win our meals. It smelled of our mothers in heat, and our fathers in fight. It smelled like us.

The others began disappearing quickly, in large numbers until we did not see anyone but our own little family. That’s when my mother kept us home. Guarding, pacing the opening to the den nervously until my father returned. Until one night he didn’t. She went out to find him. But she never returned either.

My siblings and I did what we could – we scrounged and looked and hunted as best as we knew how. That was the problem though: we didn’t know how. We started going to the last cabin in the village, the one that pressed so close to the edge of the woods we did not know that they were part of it too. We didn’t know any better! We didn’t know what else to do. Some human cubs found us there, small fragile looking things. No teeth, no fur, no claws. So exposed. They would come to us, and we did not know we shouldn’t go with them. We did not know the danger the big ones held because the small ones were so gentle. They would run their flesh over our ears, our backs, and sneak us bits of meals. It was never enough, but it was something. It was enough for me and my siblings to survive. Until the big ones found out.

My siblings and I went, as we always did, to visit our children. To lick their faces and eat their scraps. We were bigger now, but did not understand that our size may scare them. We were still pups in our mind because we had never been taught to be wolves. And we always traveled in a pack, because there was no other way to go. But that day there were no small humans. Their cubs were not there, only one monstrous sized one who held a stick sharper than any I’d ever found on the ground. A thing so heavy that the sound it made as it swung through the air at my sibling caused me to tuck my tail and turn. I tried calling for my siblings as I ran, screaming their names as the human screamed things I could never understand, but that I will never forget.

I am ashamed but I hid. I hid and I watched. And I will not tell you what I saw. I will not relieve the things my siblings went through. But I never went back to that place. I knew the viciousness of humanity.

So you see, I hated the big ones but I did not hate that little girl when I saw her. She walked through the woods so alone, so carefree. Her basket wafting a scent so delicious that I could not help but follow. I did not know this one – I had never seen her, she had never petted my head or scratched my belly. Yet so many of the small ones had been so kind, and so I felt an odd affection towards her; and a desire for her basket. I trailed her slowly, trying to be quiet, to sneak the way my mother had taught me. But hunger is hard for a wolf, and my clumsiness got me noticed immediately.

She stared at me, a cloak covering her shoulders, obscuring the basket she held in the crook of her arm.

“Be gone, dog!” She cried, flinging an arm at me in a gesture so futile and powerless I could not help but bark out a laugh.

“You speak?” she asked, astonished. And I hesitated, I did not know if I could let her know. Would it hurt or help, her knowing I knew her words?

“I speak for food,” I replied, slowly stepping towards her. I let my ears perk up, my tail wag slowly, the way we had when we had first met the children. I did not want to hurt her, but I wanted that basket.

“This food is not for you,” she said with a huff, turning her back on me, “It is for my grandmother. She lives in that village in the woods. She is sick, she cannot see, and she says the food my mother makes will cure her,” the girl continued, walking quickly away, taking my meal with her.

“It is not safe for little cubs to be alone in these woods,” I croaked, staying in step behind her.

“I am not a cub. I am a girl.”

“You are the cub of your type. We do not allow our cubs to go alone, and yet you wander so unsafely. Are you not worried about wolves?”

The girl stopped suddenly, causing me to jump back. She turned on her heel and put her hands on her hip, the red cloak falling back from her head. “The wolves are not a worry,” she said with an air of smugness, “My uncle is a great huntsman. He said all the wolves are gone. I have never even seen one.”

I look at her for a moment, unsure if she was stupid or just conniving. “And what do you think I am, Little Cub?”

“You are nothing more than a mangy dog.”

She spun again, and continued her walk through the woods. “Dogs are nothing more than workers for humans. I have many dogs at home. My uncle says there is no such thing as a good animal, but a dog is the least bad.”

“Then I am but your humble servant, Little Cub,” I replied, lowering my tail and my voice, following at her heel, and nudging her with my nose. “Let me walk you to your grandmother’s house. I will guide you safely.”

“I do not need a dirty dog to guide me,” she spat. “My grandmother lives in the house closest to the edge of the village, with my uncle. He killed all the wolves for me, to make my travels safe, he said. He is out on a hunt again, you know, so mangy dogs better beware.”

I stopped short. I knew that cabin. I knew that the human she referred to must have been the monster who had slaughtered my siblings. I knew it the way I knew how to howl at the moon, or how my paws felt in the snow. I knew it in my bones.

And for the first time I knew what it meant to want to hurt.

I swallowed my seething, I kept my voice calm.

“Then you do not need me, Little Cub,” I said in a voice as slippery as the fat I rent from the animals I ate. “I will be going.” And I went. Faster than she could reply, and faster than I thought I could with my body as starved as it was.

I do not remember the journey, I just remember getting here, to this cabin. The front door ajar as if waiting for me, thought I knew it must be waiting for the Little Cub. The house was so dark inside, it would be impossible for the little girl to see inside, but I was born from the darkness. The smell in the room overwhelmed me. It smelled like death and blood. It smelled like the fur of my siblings, when I used to bury my nose in their ears as we slept.

“My Little Red!” A voice said from a shape on the bed, startling me out of my horror, “You arrived so fast! Do you have the food for me?”

“Of course I do, Grandmother,” I replied, walking towards her as slowly as possible to silence the pad of my paws.

“How hoarse your voice is, Little Red,” the shape said, pushing itself up in bed.

“It is snowing, Grandmother, I think I have caught a cold.”

“Climb into bed with me, and we can share your basket and the blanket.” I hesitated for a moment, seeing the wolf skin blanket that covered her; if I looked long enough I would have recognized who it was, and I did not want to. But I slipped my large body between the sheets.

"Oh how heavy you are!" Grandmother said, as the bed shifted under my weight.

"It is the basket that is so heavy, Grandmother." I inched myself closer, my muzzle to her cheek.

“How much hair you have!” The grandmother said as she rubbed her hands along my side.

“The cloak my mother gave me is so warm, Grandmother,” I inhaled her scent, the smell of sweet meat, and I licked my lips as the saliva pooled in my mouth.

“It must also be from the wolves,” the grandmother said, patting the blanket with a smile, “Your uncle was so good to get these hides for us.”

I was on her before she could finish the sentence.

I dug my teeth into her throat, and ripped it out with one jerk of my head. I silenced her before the screaming could begin.

I knew I had time before the Little Cub could arrive. The snow would slow her down, and the basket more so.

I took my time. I luxuriated in the eating of this woman. She may not have killed them herself, but she relished in the murder of my siblings. She slept in their skins, she made clothes from their corpses. I did not owe this woman kindness or dignity. I ate my full and I satiated my thirst with her blood.

I must have slept, dozed off in a slumber with a full belly that had started to feel so unfamiliar, because the next thing I heard was the voice of the Little Cub, clattering loudly into the house.

“Oh Grandmother!” she called, “It is so dark in here! And it smells so awful,” she continued as she went to the windows and pulled open the shudders.

She turned to me quickly, before I could hide, before I could pretend the blood she saw belonged to anyone other than her grandmother. Her eyes grew too large for her small face as she took it all in, identifying what was left of her grandmother.

“It smells quite good to me,” I said with a growl, leaping to all four paws. “You see, Little Cub, to me it smells like survival. It smells like life.” I stepped off the bed, approaching her slowly, and licked the blood from my drenched lips.

“I told you there were wolves in these woods,” I continued stepping closer, “No matter what your uncle may have said.” She stared at me, her mouth open in a silent scream, as if choking on the her fear of her own demise. I did not hasten my steps as she pressed herself to the wall. I walked slowly, taking my time, letting her absorb the room around her. Letting her witness the pain as I had had to witness my own so long ago.

The smell that came off her was rancid, of soured meat, of the terror of an animal before it died. I relished in the feeling.

“What are you going to do to me, Wolf?” the girl said, running her eyes over me. She seemed frozen there, her heart beating so loudly it drowned out every other sound in my ears. Her sweat so acrid is filled my nose, leaving room for nothing else.

I put my nose to her nose. “Nothing,” I growled, and I licked her cheek, leaving a trail of her grandmother’s blood across her face. “I am going to leave you to remember this. Like your uncle did me.”

But her eyes were not on me any longer, they were just above my shoulders. As I turned to see what could hold her attention more than I, I felt it in my chest. A great heave, a pain unlike I had ever felt before, and without my decision my legs fell out from under me.

The heat of my blood poured out of me, and from my mouth dripped blood that I could not identify. Was it my own, or was it her grandmothers? I looked at the little girl and followed her eyes to the metal that stuck out of my side. The same metal, so heavy and sharp, that had slammed into the necks and the sides of my siblings. The same thing that had drawn the blood from my sisters and brothers into the earth. And behind it stood the same monster I had seen do it before.

****

I am looking at you once more, Little Cub. You have not made a sound; no scream has escaped your lips. Your eyes move so quickly – from monster to me, and back again. Which is which, to you, I wonder? In your eyes I can see something I cannot describe. It is pity. It is disgust. It is terror.

It is everything I am feeling, too.

I am panting too hard, and I am bleeding too much and I know I will not be able to survive. I flick my eyes to the monster, willing him to kill me. To let me join my siblings. To do me the justice of ending the pain. But he stares down at me in triumph.

All I can wonder, now, is if there are any more wolves in these woods. I have not seen one since my siblings. It will make you correct, Little Cub, that your monster has killed us all.

I just want you to know, I did not mean for any of this to happen. I never wanted to hurt you; I just wanted your basket.

Instead, I lie here, both murderer and murdered, for merely trying to survive.

Yet, you will call me the predator.