MABEL
Winter was when the wolves came out to play.
She wished she was one.
It had always been a dream, somewhere in the heralds of her ambitions and aspirations, a stinging nettle, a crisp thorn, she’d roam over before slumber. Something under her breath as she stared at crumbling ceilings, counting cracks in corners, fingers scratching at skin. Before deaths. Before desecrations. Before the slow, withering decay of her family, one by one by one, until it was only her and Evelyn.
She’d wanted claws. She’d wanted anything and everything. She’d wanted the power to defy and cheat demise, the will of Mort.
Then they obtained fangs.
Her tongue ran over the pointed edges one more time, as she lifted her hood, as she drew it around her features, her face, into the dimming light, opening the door of their creaking farmhouse, listening to the wicked, wild cry of the evening's wind. Taking a step forward, no looking back, no thinking of the destruction warring in her blood, nay, fluid now, lifeless and alive all at once. Not to be taken, not to be outdone, not to be a tragic mess like the rest of them.
Oh, they’d howl now; no more crooning, no more murmuring, no more hushed, listless stokings.
“C’mon, Evelyn,” and her hand was offered to her twin, so they might venture into the Outskirts and learn to live without anything holding them, moored, anchored, any longer.
She wished she was one.
It had always been a dream, somewhere in the heralds of her ambitions and aspirations, a stinging nettle, a crisp thorn, she’d roam over before slumber. Something under her breath as she stared at crumbling ceilings, counting cracks in corners, fingers scratching at skin. Before deaths. Before desecrations. Before the slow, withering decay of her family, one by one by one, until it was only her and Evelyn.
She’d wanted claws. She’d wanted anything and everything. She’d wanted the power to defy and cheat demise, the will of Mort.
Then they obtained fangs.
Her tongue ran over the pointed edges one more time, as she lifted her hood, as she drew it around her features, her face, into the dimming light, opening the door of their creaking farmhouse, listening to the wicked, wild cry of the evening's wind. Taking a step forward, no looking back, no thinking of the destruction warring in her blood, nay, fluid now, lifeless and alive all at once. Not to be taken, not to be outdone, not to be a tragic mess like the rest of them.
Oh, they’d howl now; no more crooning, no more murmuring, no more hushed, listless stokings.
“C’mon, Evelyn,” and her hand was offered to her twin, so they might venture into the Outskirts and learn to live without anything holding them, moored, anchored, any longer.
I bare my teeth
and stretch my claws out
and stretch my claws out
