Give Me Love

Fire is intense, so intense that it burns things to death and leaves only grey flecks in its wake. I’ve never been truly burned, but I imagine it’s incredibly painful. However, my body felt like it was going through more than the pain of being burned.

I wasn’t sure where my body was exactly, except for maybe an industrial oven on the highest heating setting. I only knew that whatever the hell my body was going through, was that I wanted it to end, and end quickly. Whether death be the savior or not, it needed to be over.

My thoughts were so consumed by the extreme temperature licking the insides of my bones and racing in my blood stream that I forgot everything that mattered. I forgot about Seth, Collin, Dad—everyone paled in comparison to the pain I felt radiating inside of me. I didn’t know how long it would last either, just that it felt like an eternity before I realized I could try and wake myself from this. Try and treat it like a really, really bad dream.

Whatever the cause of the sweltering pain also made my mind slow to a turtle’s pace and my body feel like it weighed as much as a pile of boulders. Nevertheless I tried to wake myself up, remind myself that whatever it was, was probably just a really bad nightmare. I tried to remember what I was doing before this pain came along, but my mind didn’t work fast enough to distract me from the burning.

Then I felt the faintest bit better. Like someone turned the dial down a degree on the industrial oven I was in. That was encouragement enough for me to wake up and get a hold of myself. Soon, but not soon enough I managed to somehow fight the oven and bring the degrees down and down. It wasn’t until then I realized that my lungs felt like they were concaving. I sucked in a huge breath of air and with that my eyes cracked open.

Everything was blurry at first but after my pupils adjusted and focused I saw that everything was bright even though I was in a relatively dim room. I leaned up and saw Collin come into view, he looked at me with wide, deer-like eyes.

“K-Kara?” His voice was a soft whisper, I could tell by the tone but my ears heard it like his lips were right beside me.

I blinked at him in confusion and opened my mouth to speak but found it dry. “Wa..ter?” I managed to croak out. Collin nodded furiously before darting out from the room, which I finally noticed was the old barn that Jacob used to fix up cars and things, only to return in record time with two glasses of water filled to the brim. I nearly inhaled them both in my haste to get something to drink before I felt I could easily speak. “I think I got sick from the forest.”

Collin’s face turned grim. “What happened in the forest?”

My brow creased, “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what happened in the forest.”

“What do you mean by that Collin?” I was beginning to get frustrated. “Let’s start with why I’m in Jacob’s make shift garage? Or where Dad is? Or why I’m not in the hospital right now? I felt like I was on fire!”

Collin’s annoyance instantly disappeared. “Shit.”

“What?” My frustration did too.

“Kara, I need you to tell me what happened in the forest.” His tone was pleading now, and was a bit louder too.

“What do you mean? Like what?”

“Like did anything out of the ordinary happen?”

I looked at him like he was crazy, “It’s a forest Collin, what the Hell do you expect to happen?”

He slammed his fist down on the work bench he sat on and leaned forward towards me. “Damn it, Kara just think! Tell me everything that happened from the second you stepped in to when I found you!”

I withdrew in surprise and did as he asked. I even closed my eyes to show him I was really trying. “Ok! Ok! Well.. I kind of just ran in and I was calling out for you, Seth, really anyone. I don’t know how long I did that, somewhere along that I fell and didn’t get back up. Then…” I gasped as the memory came back to me. “Then this like, purple fog came.”

Collin’s face turned white and in a whisper he asked, “Then?”

MY heart rate increased at his reaction and the scary memory, “Then.. Then it like…” I stumbled with my words. “It went inside me, in my skin, my blood, everything. I-I don’t know where I was but I tried to stand and get away from it but this hand was holding onto my ankle.”

Collin abruptly stood and shouted, “Shit!”

I stood too, though a slight head rush came. “What, what’s going on? What’s wrong?”

Collin rushed out into the rain outside of the barn mumbling to himself, “I was hoping I was just hallucinating… Damn it, not my sister!”

I stumbled after him, “Collin wait! What’s happening?!”

Panic began to set in as we ran to the forest on the edge of the Black property. We breached the first layer and traveled deeper inside the woods. Collin seemed to forget I had no shoes on, though of course I forgot too. When I felt we were too far in to find our way back out Collin stripped himself of his shorts, shoes and boxers and transformed before I could register what was going on. His chill inducing howl shook me to my core, and I stood there helpless as he continued to howl.

Soon another howl was heard in the distance followed by the thunder of huge wolf paws pounding the dirt and coming closer to the two of us. Before I knew it a cluster of the La Push wolves stood in furry form in front of me barking to each other and stealing anxious glances at me.

They continued on like that for so long that I just couldn’t take it anymore, “Will somebody tell me what the Hell is going on?!”