Inhumane

010

PAIGE

I was a good liar. So good that sometimes I forgot what the truth really was. It didn't matter who I was lying to, I didn't care about the truth that much. At least, that's what I thought. Everyone bought what I spit out, no one knew me well enough to question it. Not even my own father. I had been doing it since I was little, it started right after my mother disappeared from my life like the smoky enigma I had come to think of her as. Years and years of practice had made me a splendid creator of stories. 

Staring at the wolf across his dining room table made me think of this. I was rolling lies over and over in my head, what to say, what to do, how to look. I wanted them to hate me, to let me go. I wished they hadn't saved me. I wished he hadn't bitten me. I wished my old body back.

The tricky part about my lies was that I would also lie to myself. I wasn't quite sure how to convince or uncover the truth on many things that for some would be absolutely trivial. Looking at the wolf, he seemed like the type of creature to have his whole life planned from birth.

I wasn't the same girl from before the attack. I would never be that girl again. Something in me had snapped. Maybe it wasn't that day, maybe it was a long time before. Nonetheless, I was forever changed. I could just see it so clearly, sitting at the old, tiny dining table across from the enemy. I didn't even feel the same anymore, there was an emptiness, a loneliness inside of me that was hungry. It began to eat away at the lining of my stomach.

The more I looked at this wolf, the more the puzzle pieces fell into place I had seen him before, but not in the forest. In my dreams. He was a faceless being that haunted my sleep in a bittersweet way that I would never admit. I wanted answers on why I knew him before I saw him, but didn't want to ask. I didn't want to know. I wasn't sure if I would ever tell him, those kinds of secrets make you vulnerable. Vulnerability means you're weak.

He looked uncomfortable with silence, I hated that. First of all, I lived for silence and solitude. I had a love for time on my own, with the occasional fit of physical pleasure from another.

My eyes found his hands, deft and large, working hands. I recalled the first time that I had slept with a man.

The evening was cold, so cold that horror frost was clinging to every exposed surface and it was barely past nine. My father had a work party, I was sixteen and newly blossomed. He had roped in a big cohort of men of all shapes and sizes to join his ranks and fill our house to the brim with boisterous noise and the distinct scent of Coors Light. Our house wasn't that big, with so many bodies inside it became stuffy and hazy with the smoke of lit cigars.

I ran into one of them in the upstairs hallway outside my room. He was one of the new ones, I didn't know his name, didn't care to. He was posted up against the wall, smoking a cigarette, acting like he owned the world. He didn't, we both knew that. I stood before him, leaning up against the other wall. He must have been in his twenties, maybe he had gone to college, maybe he had done jack shit for the past years since graduation.

I had long since graduated my schooling, long since switched over to learning about death and hate. My emotions had sunk to an ultimate low, I had built my personality as a stoic. A stoic liar.

Our eyes met and I knew he was intrigued. I wondered how many women he had slept with and what they looked like. I was curious about the mannerisms and trends that modern women possessed, things I couldn't seek out of the occasional movie I was able to watch.

He placed the cigarette between my lips, closing the space between us. I took a long drag, blowing it out nice and slow, letting the smoke tendrils curl around us. The voices stayed loud and far off downstairs, his lips touched mine, the cigarette held between his fingers somewhere to my left. His hands had drawn my attention, they too were large and toned, as if he was a musician.