the moon howls
Three years ago Melissa would have missed the knock at the door. As she padded down the stairs she wondered if she'd dreamt it. It wouldn't have been the first time she'd gone to the door or the window, only half-awake, called out of bed by a feeling, an unease, an unknowing of some kind.
Being the mother of a teenage werewolf had a way of honing both the senses and the nerves simultaneously.
The movement of trees outside sent shadows skittering in front of her bare feet. She didn’t bother turning the light on. Her feet knew the stairs. The house was silent, the cold light of the full moon touching the furniture with greedy fingers.
Sometimes it felt like a house made of absences – Rafael, Isaac, the stillness of the air when she arrived home at 4am, fumbling with her keys, and knew, somehow, that Scott wasn’t in his bed. Can you make a home out of a battlefield, a way-station, a military encampment? She sighed, running fingers through her loose hair as though she could shake out the shadows.
She opened the door, half-expecting the porch to be empty.
Chris Argent was leaning against the doorjamb. His bare arms and hands were soaked with blood turned black by the darkness. He was wet to the skin and covered in mud, one hand pressed to his stomach and the other wrapped around the handle of a knife . "I'm sorry," he managed, between gritted teeth, "I didn't..."
He crumpled at her feet.
Notes and disclaimer: title from a George Marlin quote. I liked it. Also these aren’t mine, obviously, I just like playing with them.
