The Bloody Nightingale: Adult Fairytales

Company of Wolves

The Wolf watched Red. She was a dainty virgin, fairy toed, and had proud white breasts, a cherry-lined coat, and skin like cornflowers' white anthems.

Red was leaving a trail of breadcrumbs in the graveyard. She plucked a poppy, left a trail of sourdough and roses, and the scent of her was like a psalm. The Wolf hungered, imagining her pink nipples rolling on his tongue.

Red caught his eye. He was dressed like the parson, a beast in sheep's clothes. Red bit her lip and drew blood, then smeared the crimson effulgence on her brow in the sign of the cross. The Wolf was drawn into the mark of her as his prey.

She hungered too.

"Grandma told me I would meet you here one day, at the wood between worlds," Red admitted. She offered him a poppy plucked of its petals, just a stem.

"I've been waiting," the Wolf said, his voice cinnamon and whiskey. He crunched the stem in his teeth.

They made a vow: neither of them would leave the woods human. They were monsters, together, and bound by matrimony far beyond white wedding veils and sparkling diamond rings.

The Wolf laid Red down and ate her strawberry patch. The pubis was blonde-red. Her nether lips tasted like manna. Not that he would know the fare of angels - he was an earthly being.

And so they took up house in the abandoned church that had never served a congregation, and they grew a garden. Two wolflings were born, a boy and a girl, and all was good for a time.

Wolf and Red, husband and wife, parents joined by menses blood and milk from a wolf tit.

But then, eons passed. The wood beyond the world was growing strange - seasons came and passed like thunderclouds. Their children left to seek their fortunes - they had the calling of all monsters who had not made the choice to be monsters themselves.

The Wolf still wore parson's clothes, and Red still wore her dirndl and crimson cloak.

A girl came, one day. She had blonde hair. She was hungry.

"Grandma, I got lost in the woods on my way to you," the ruby cheeked youth said.

"Grandchild, what is your name?" Red asked, realizing her daughter had sent her only grandchild on a journey through the woods, like she had once long ago. But Red had found grandma had taken up with the Raven Lord. They had all married beasts, in the end.

"Anemone," the towhead said. The Wolf gave her a lollipop. And the cycle of birth and death renewed as they raised their little grandbabe.

"Anemones are for forgetting," the Wolf said. "Never forget your heart."

She did not.

Anemone was eighteen. It was raining. She was reading a book of Grimm's fairytales - Grandma Red often collected books from villager's dreams, navigating them at night on a dream boat with wolf teeth, plucked from virgin's minds.

The abandoned church bells tolled in the rectory.

The Devil appeared at her door.

"I've come to fetch my bride. My apologies, daughter of white petals and rain. Childhood cannot last forever," Satan said.

Anemone did not mind. He was handsome, swarthy, tall. They kissed, and it tasted like the hot spring behind the cliff.

And so Anemone and the Devil built a house by Red and the Wolf. Their parents and uncle and his flock of children with Lady Lamb came too, as did all stray villagers, chasing their lost dreams.

And so Red and the Wolf found peace in the meadows, in the fruit of their labors, and the Wolf took to rocking babes and grand grand grand babes at his knee, and they say, if you stray to the forest's edge, you can see Red and the Wolf now, Anemone, and even Grandma and the Raven Lord,

having strawberry pie

to eat.