Raised by Wolves

Days went by and I stayed the same. I wouldn’t ever dare to leave the house for fun in fear that my feelings would get caught in some web in the trees. I was often home alone once I got home from school. Chad played hockey and it was his whole life and on the other side, my parents worked hard and usually got off around 10pm.

For a moment, I thought that I was going crazy. I started to hear bumps in the house and screaming, but no doubt it was only my overactive imagination or Vlad humping another cat outside.
One day I was playing with him. He was catching his claws in my long hair until there was a knock on the door. Vlad and I just stared at each other until there was another knock. “Well, tough luck Vlad. I have to go answer the door. Stay!” I said this although he was pleading for me not to open it.

He kept his green eyes on me and his tail started to sway back and forth as I stood up.

I walked up and opened the door to Ryan in my doorway. My heart fluttered like the teen girl that I was but I swore to myself that I wouldn’t get too excited that Ryan Seaman was in my doorway.

“Ryan, why are you here?”

He didn’t say anything until he pulled me into a tight hug. “I’ve missed you. Seeing you last week made me realize that.” There was sadness in his voice that I hadn’t heard before.

I was shocked by what he was saying. We pulled away from each other but my hands were around his upper arm as his were on my waist. “Are you alight?”

“I’m better than alright. I’m fucking amazing.” I heard regret in his voice. There was no doubt that he was lying.

Wanting him to not feel uncomfortable I spoke a whisper. “Would you like to come sit down and I’ll make you some hot chocolate?”

He began to giggle. “You really haven’t changed, have you?”

The two of us were having a moment were we looked into each other’s eyes until Vlad’s hair stood up and he hissed at the ‘intruder’. When I saw that he was about to pounce, I picked him up.

“I’ll be right back.” I threw the cat in my room and came back out to the living room where Ryan was sitting.

“I didn’t realize you had a cat.”

I rubbed my shoulders awkwardly. “Yeah, we actually had him when the incident happened.”

Without a second thought, I walked into the kitchen and made the chocolate as I had always done. I boiled the milk on the stove and then added the powder. Once I poured it into two cups, I headed back into the living room and gave one to Ryan.

Immediately, he blew on it and took a sip and shook his head. “You really haven’t changed. Not even the taste has changed a bit.”

Before I sat down, I went over to the TV and picked up a DVD and showed Ryan. His face was expressionless. He was reliving the moment just as it had gone the first time we met. Nightmare Before Christmas was in my palms.

I hid my face behind it. “Please, will you watch it with me?”

He took the hot chocolate away from his face. “Of course I will. Are you sure though, that this is appropriate for me to stay?”

I put the movie in and took a seat at the end of the couch. “I’m not sure how appropriate it is, but I am positive that this is what I want.”

During the movie, I couldn’t pay attention to what was going on. All I could pay attention to was Ryan who appeared to be paying very close attention to the scene. He looked like he was content with his life and where he was, but then he looked at me. “I need to use the bathroom quickly.” He stood up and a second later, he was out of my site.

I stood up and quietly ran over to my room to freshen up. Hitting a record, I put on a little lipstick and reapplied my eyeliner as well as I could in less than a minute before I ran back to my seat and tried to make the same position that I had been in before.

As I got as comfortable as I could, Ryan came out of the bathroom and came to sit on the coach. I observed him as he slowly slid himself so he was getting closer to me. Right when I looked at him, he stopped, but I got closer to him and stitched my arm around his and rested my head on his shoulder.

My heart was beating on his arm about a million times a second. There was no way that he couldn’t feel it. He didn’t budge though or seem to be uncomfortable so I rubbed his arm up and down.

Neither of us seemed to care that we were staring at a black screen. All there was, was just a silence and the sunset in the windows. I didn’t mind at all. I was just happy that I was seeing him again.

“So, what’s it like to be a werewolf?”

He looked down at me. “It’s like Inception. Wait, you’ve only ever seen the werewolves?”

What was I supposed to say to him? ‘I live in a family where the majority are werewolves?’ There was nothing to say to him, so I said nothing.

“And so you know who the wolves are.”

“I never said anything like that. In fact, I didn’t say anything at all so you shouldn’t be so close to judge.” I got out of his arms and moved back to my side of the couch.

Ryan sighed and looked at me. “I didn’t judge. Why would you say that? I just assumed that your silence meant you did know them.” He then jumped over so we were just as close to each other as we were before.

Standing up from my place after feeling surprisingly uncomfortable, I crossed my arms and came back to reality. I didn’t know him and he tricked me all those years ago to believe that I did. I allowed myself to dream a dream that was impossible. “You’re right, Ryan. I do know who the wolves are. They’re just like you as you are to me. They are humans who have been blessed to be a wolf for one night of a month.”

“Blessed? You think that we are blessed with this? It’s more like a curse in our eyes. At dawn and in the morning, we feel a pain that no normal human would be able to survive. Our bones break and form into those of a wolf. In our ears, a loud screech erupts, our nose breaks, and our eyes pop out of our head and a bright light forms as they heighten our senses. In between those two times, we are completely unaware of what we are doing. To us, we’re dreaming.”

“But your moral being is still there.”

Ryan scratched his head and was about to stand up but I pointed a finger at him. “You sit back down right now!”

“It’s demolished. Mind if I leave now or do you want to question me some more, officer?”

That brought out a little sadness. We were still very much strangers and I disallowed a friendship from forming. “Yeah, you can leave now.”

Tears were falling from my eyes and he noticed that when he started walking away but chose to look around. “Why are you crying?” He grabbed me by the shoulders. “Be brave, Sam. Be brave like that little girl who was brave enough to walk into the forest alone and call the wolves.”

“I was very much scared, but I have been trying for so long to become one of them. That wolf wasn’t supposed to get you. They were supposed to get me.”

“Why would you want to be a werewolf?”

“I suppose you wouldn’t understand why. You’re a stranger to me. Get out of my house.”

Ryan seemed upset that I was being so harsh to him. “Fine, I’ll get out of your hair and you’ll never see me again.”

It hurt me to see him with such a bewildered look on his face and the way he said that. “I didn’t mean that.”

Before I could say anything, there was a big clunk on the door. I looked at Ryan with fear in my eyes. I grabbed him by the back of his neck and led him into my room and shut the door.

There was then a loud ‘hello’ that ruptured in the house.

“Is that your brother?”

“No, well, yes” He never let me finish.

He raised his arms. “Problem if he sees me?”

Another loud ‘hello’ came out of Chad

I looked at the door. “I’m coming you nitwit!” I then turned back to Ryan.

Yet again, Chad opened his big mouth. “Mom and Dad need you now! They have groceries.”

Looking into those big eyes of Ryan, I gutted out the words that I had to. “When you find a good time, when it’s quiet, leave the house as quietly and quickly as you can.”

“I suppose it should be easy.”

“Until then, I need you to stay in my closet.” I then pushed him as hard as I could go so he stood inside of it. “Goodbye, Ryan.”

Ryan smiled. “I’m sure we’ll meet again soon.”

Without trying to smile, I closed the door and headed down the stairs.