Bounds Of Love (BWWM) #Wattys2018

Chapter 10

My belief that losing consciousness is a better fate than suffering through each snap of bones is quickly proved to be naive. Blacking out doesn't immediately save me from the horrors of the shift. That would be too merciful. As my consciousness lingers, I'm hit with a full blown nightmare of what could come next. I try to wake back up to escape the false reality, but I'm trapped witnessing a crime so horrendous I want to go back to the forced shift so I can scratch my eyes out with my claws.

Of course I forgot about the hallucinations.

It starts off simple at first. The defenders are back and they are angry. They attack, twelve trained wolves against one. Twelve scumbags going for a defenceless teenage girl. Except I'm not defenceless. My body moves of its own accord, swerving to avoid their attacks and viciously going on the offence.

I know - or at least hope - this isn't me. No matter how real it seems I can't trust this is reality. So I try to ignore it. And all is well. The defenders fade away into nothing, floating into the air like misplaced thoughts.

But then a switch occurs. The scene changes and I'm left with a sense of vertigo. I glance around me, suddenly so much more aware of everything. The smell in the air. The sounds of wildlife in the woods. The feel of the dirt beneath my paws. The tangy taste of blood on my tongue. This type of nightmare can't be ignored. It feels too real. Too close to a possible reality. Seizing the reigns of my dream, taking control of my mind like I do my wolf, should be easy. But it's like I'm shackled within the wolf's eye. A prisoner to my imagination.

At least, I hope this is still my imagination.

All I know is my wolf is relentless in her need to spill more blood. More? I lift a paw, noticing the ground littered with furry little creatures coated in blotting blood. Dead but fully intact. Animals killed for sport.

My gaze locks on a pair of blue eyes - a female shifter - and a sharp pain hits my stomach. Her stomach - the wolf's. She's hungry for blood. No... she's starved for it.

I want to belong. But she wants to decimate.

So she hunts. And I watch, powerless.

I wonder if this is how we really are deep within. Do I secretly crave the curdling screams of fellow weres? Do I unknowingly thirst to see their blood run from gaping wounds, flowing like a pretty red stream across their cooling skin? Are our kind truly monsters confined only by human morality... Or is this just me? Just my nightmare, my deepest darkest fears coming into play.

My gaze is tinted by red and a hunger so pronounced I can't feel past it. Ravenous blood-lust controls every one of my moves.

Powerful legs making strides towards running figures. The breeze as my body soars through the air. The thud of a collision. A howl. A cry. Screams. Tearing flesh. Gurgled pleas. A massacre.

Stop. Stop. Stop. I scream internally. But I am not me. I am my wolf. And my wolf is not herself. She is a monster.

I shift back sobbing in a pile of blood. I'm naked. And cold. And covered in red. So much red.

The luna and alpha, who so hospitably offered me a place in their pack - in their family - lay dead. I feel sick. I did that. Severed a bond between husband and wife, alpha and luna, leaders and friends. Their hands are held together as though they refused to separate in their final moments.

My parents are sat frozen by the wall, eyes unseeing as a look of horror is forever etched onto their faces. My mum's frizzy hair is free of any grips. It puffs in a full afro around her slender face, making her cocoa face look all the more delicate. Vulnerable. Weak. Dad's usually strong form is limp, muscles useless now there is no soul to command the body I've always assumed was invulnerable. Mercifully, there is no blood surrounding them. No hint of a torturous death. But I know that's a lie. A deception for my benefit alone.

No physical pain could be more painful than the psychological torture they must have gone through in their final moments.

I look into their empty glassy eyes, seeing nothing. My eyes squeeze shut and I'm hit with that image again and again. Stop. Stop. Stop. Their faces flicker in my minds eye, distorting with exaggerated expressions that belong in some ghoulish cartoon. Life slowly seeps into the corpses features. But it's twisted life - tainted.

I'd rather the nothingness of death than the ghastly fallacy of life. I snap my eyes open, unable to deal with the simultaneous looks of sadness, disappointment and horror.

The blank corpses haven't moved. I shake my head. Of course they haven't. They're dead.

I take a step towards them, soundlessly screaming. Stop. Stop. Stop. My hand curls into a fist, shaking as I bring it to my mouth, bite down, and scream. No. No. No. This can't be real. This isn't real. My bare feet land in a puddle of something hot and sticky. I glance down. It's red. Blood. I go to take a step back in shock feeling sick to my stomach. But I trip. My foot slides from underneath me and my head hits the floor.

Or at least it should. But instead I sink below the ground into darkness and the scene wisps away like vapour. I'm floating. I'm falling. Then I'm still.

It was just a hallucination.

Instead of relief, I feel hopelessness. Because in truth, this scene could be what I wake to: death and murder.

I trust my wolf. I really do. But I don't trust the shift, or its effects on our actions. As long as I'm bound to this lucidity, nothing is certain.

I only wanted to belong. And now I'm a threat.

With my morbid thoughts comes a darkness that consumes everything. This time the blackout is exactly what it should be: nothingness.

***

A/N

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