The Wolf Who Cried Girl

“Don’t you remember?”

A woman was speaking. She was beautiful, to be sure; dark, honey-tinted skin aglow with a prettiness only youth could grant, with white locs bundled atop her head. Her brown eyes were desperate in the way a drowning man was, right until he was impaled upon the craggy shoreline.

Then there was nothing. That desperation died, replaced with a thinly-veiled look of indifference, as cold and palpable as the North Sea.

“I should have known,” she said, more to herself than anyone else. She smiled, but it was a bitter thing, stretched taut. She turned to leave, clenching the straps of her purse.

“Wait,” I said. She glanced over her shoulder. My arm had extended itself toward her, weakly, and without my own volition. As if it was used to doing this many times before, reaching toward her—call me Icarus, she was my Sun.

“What?” Her voice hedged on curiosity. She was facing me now, taking a careful step forward. She had to nudge aside the beer bottles, hard-bodied and abundant as roaches. The stink of smoke pervaded the atmosphere, clawing at the wallpaper until it peeled and yellowed.

“I… am sorry,” the words catch in my throat like nails. I almost wish she would call me out in my lie, rip the nails from my throat; crucify me, burn me. I don’t care.

I don’t remember.

My head throbs when I lift myself from where I had lain. The couch smells of mothballs. She recognizes my pain; I see it in her eyes.

They are tired.

She reaches in her purse, grabbing water and a bottle of painkillers. As she hands them to me, I notice the neat oval-shaped trim of her nails, a glossy pink. Her lips are more subtle about the color. I imagine on a better day, it would match her visage, the pink, complimenting the shade of her hair, her skin.

As of now, it did little. She looked like the smiling prom queen behind closed doors, slumped in her posture, misery carved into her bones.

I take the pills.

She watches me. And then, “We can’t keep doing this.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, and I’m not being coy—I genuinely have no idea, but amnesia seems like a bad thing to spring upon the woman held together by withering webs.

“Gray, do you love me?”

If I hadn’t been sitting, I likely would have stumbled. Her eyes arrest my own in the severity of their gaze, searching fervently, a burning man in search of water. And as I prepare to lie, I ask myself: am I a monster, with how easily the lies flow? Or is this treachery a part of what it means to be human?

I can’t remember.

“I love you beyond reason,” I say. And I am sure, somewhere within the soul caged within my ribs, that was once true.

As I grow sober, the room grows clearer. The evening sets it awash in sepia tones, like an old photo, forgotten, discarded within the dusty attic. The wallpaper is yellow, though I imagine at one point it was not—the couch is gray and ratty, covered with suspicious stains.

Blood? Oil? I am not sure.

The sound of her purse plummeting to the floor startles me into reality. Her face falls just as fast. “You… have no idea who I am, do you?”

My primal instinct tells me to lie. But the lies rot in my mouth, tumble back down my throat. I want to vomit. And so instead, the words fall from my lips, thick with nausea.

“I don’t know who I am,” I say.

“What are you?” She asks, and tears cause her voice to shiver.

One step. And then two. Slowly, as though treading upon a wire whilst there are sharks below. Maybe she thought I wouldn’t notice.

But she was wrong.

“Wait.”

Her hand hovers above the doorknob, moon-eyed. If I were Hades, one would think her Persephone; a fair flower amidst all this waste, amongst me. Because, like the shards of a glass mirror, I felt my mind begin to glue itself back together again.

“I’m just as confused as you are,” I say. I speak slowly, like placating a child. “Please. Don’t tell anyone. I’m not going to hurt you.”

My mouth is full of razors. The tips of my fingers begin to darken, sharpen.

“You wear the face of… of him, but you are not.” Her voice is choked with longing. Even as she screams, it still shudders with emotion. “Bring him back! Please… just…”

She sinks to the ground, weeping into her splayed palms. “Tell me this is some sick joke,” she says between sobs. The look in her eyes begs me to repent. With the way my heart tugs, she could have been this man’s religion. And she threatens me close to conversion. Softly, she murmurs, tear-strained, “…Come back.”

There was magic behind those words. Compulsion. A witch?

And if I had been a lesser monster, perhaps I would have succumbed.

But I was not. Possession was a bit of a fickle thing, you see; there are all sorts of variables. I had mistakenly transferred myself into the body of a drunken man, momentarily stunting my recollection.

Now, however… now…

I had to kill her.

“Darling,” I croon. “Phoebe—”

“Don’t say my name!” She shrieked. “Don’t say it with his mouth! I know what you are. You’re a Daemon. A monster!”

“And yet you’re still here,” I say. The door remains unopened. Easily, she could pull the handle, and run through the apartment corridors, run from me. But she didn’t. “I have his memories now, you see. You didn’t really love him. He was terrible.”

“I needed him.”

“No, you don’t. Feminism and such. You don’t need a man, or anyone, for that matter. We can each go our separate ways, peacefully.”

The lie tastes like blood. A twinge of copper, the blood is red and sweet in my mouth, filling it until it rots my teeth, and then—

Phoebe rushes me with inhuman speed. I think, for but a fleeting moment, that perhaps she was so enthralled with my supportive stance on woman’s rights, that she had decided to embrace me. It was but a fleeting thought… because then she plunged a knife into my stomach.

“No, you idiot,” Phoebe hisses in my ear. “I needed him to feed. I had gotten him ready; he was perfect… you compromised him! You RUINED me!”

Dazed, my gaze wandered down to where Phoebe held me. It was not with a lover’s touch. The knife twists. She tears me asunder, spilling red like a flourish of rose petals. And by the gods, she slices me open. It stains the carpet. Paints the wallpaper anew. My heart, human it has become, is helpless against the bite of her thorns.

There is blood everywhere, suddenly; all at once, I am lost in it. Breathing it in. Drowning. And as I sink beneath the waves, snapshots of a life I had forgotten flood me. Ruination. That is what my memories contain. A loveless human boy who never found a home.

And I laugh.

Because only in death, do I remember.