Dog Boy can hardly remember a time it wasn’t like this. He got Rosalee when he was five years old as a Christmas gift. Back then, it was just him and Mother. She wasn’t so awful as she is now, since she met the monster. She smiled a lot and didn’t have the wrinkles. Before the monster came, she even took the boy to the dollar store for school supplies and let him pick out Halloween costumes. The only one he couldn’t pick, she said, was clowns, because they scared her. “You can be anything you want, Garrison. Never forget that,” she said. And he hasn’t. He just doesn’t think she believes it, and he sometimes wonders what she wanted to be before the monster. He can’t get his mind around her wanting to be a witch, but maybe. It was always her favorite costume.
He spends a full twelve hours shoveling, cutting, and moving brush. He helps the monster clear the spot where this year’s graveyard scene will be. He listens when the man tells him where to cut. Dog Boy holds the ax “like a man” and even makes extra trips to bring back tools for his stepfather. He doesn’t let the man see him shake when he asks him about his birth father or “who the hell taught him to hold a shovel that way.” Instead, he does as he is told. He comes, sits, stays, works, and even thanks the man for the opportunity to help out. He is fully trained, and on this day, he is glad for it.
Dog Boy does not whine when blisters appear in his palms. He says nothing about how stupid the cardboard images of gravestones look. It doesn’t matter if it looks fake, he reminds himself. All you have to do is keep the monster at bay. And that’s exactly what he does.
The boy sprays even lines of gray and silver paint at cut-out headstones from a refrigerator box the man saved. It occurs to him that the family fridge is old. Even the lock his owners keep on the door is rusting off. He wonders where the box came from, but doesn’t have the nerve to ask him. He would have liked to play in it. Rosalee and he could have made a fort…
When the sun hides between the trees and it’s too dark for them to see, the man tells him it’s “quitting time.” He pats the boy on the back. The boy jumps. The monster laughs. He pats him again and tells him he is a “good boy.”
“Tomorrow, you can bring that nasty friend of yours with us if you want. As long as you promise not to get distracted. And remind me to get more spray paint, kid.”
The only friend he can possibly mean is Rosalee. The boy covers his mouth with his hand so he doesn’t squeal. He thinks about it as a chance to run away, but he is not sure. They never let him and Rosalee outside at the same time unless they are chained. He wonders if the man will make them wear harnesses and leashes for this next outing. No. Impossible. I have to be able to stand up to do the job. He didn’t last year. It will be okay.
The boy thanks the monster and sits quietly through ten stops on the way home. He doesn’t go in with the man. The man doesn’t need him in a bar, at the liqueur store, or in the pharmacy either. Those are not places for animals. When the monster finally emerges from the convenience store with a gallon of milk, the boy licks his lips; hopeful that this will be like last year when he got to sit at the table with his owners. He tells himself not to get his hopes up or to press his luck. His owners aren’t always predictable—just sometimes.
But when Mother opens the door and kisses the monster before he’s even in the house, the first thing the boy sees is her apron. The last time she wore it was Christmas day, and he is sure this has to be a good sign. He waits patiently, while the monster reaches for Mother’s “woman parts” and they finally break away from each other.
Inside, Dog Boy falls to his knees, waiting in the corner for them to give him instructions while Rosalee greets and licks him. He whispers for her to calm down and to be a good girl. The last thing he needs is either of them in trouble when they finally have a shot at some sort of joy.
“On your feet,” Mother says. “Your father says you did a good thing. You may sit at the table with us tonight. Thank him. Thank your daddy.”
He smiles shyly at the man who certainly didn’t even know he was alive until he was over the age of four and thanks him. Granted, he never knew his real father, and the man’s the closest thing he’s got. But Daddy? He is not. “Thank you, sir.”
“You’re welcome, boy.”
“Boy.” It’s so much nicer to hear than “Dog.” He can hardly contain himself. It feels the way other kids in school used to describe Halloween and trick-or-treating. The kids who didn’t have to stay home with the lights outside dimmed and hiding from people “begging for free shit.”
“Well? Go wash your hands.”
He races, on his feet this time, to the tiny bathroom at the end of the hall near the junky dog bed he keeps his sneakers by. Inside, he stares in the mirror and at his buttery teeth, which have never seen a dentist. Tonight, he gets to be a person, and he is going to make it count. He washes his hands and brushes his teeth too. He even combs his hair. He emerges, after washing his face, smiling. Tonight will be just right, like the little girl Goldilocks he read about in school. And tomorrow? Well, that will be too. Tomorrow he gets to bring Rosalee with him. First, he just has to remember how to set the table and to put his napkin in his lap. He hasn’t done a lot of that. But he has watched. He has memorized it. I can do this. I can be a human.
* * *
The following evening
* * *
It’s his own fault he killed her. He should have known better than to take Rosa with him and the man. He got excited. She was too. She ran off, and the old man said he wasn’t working fast enough. The monster didn’t blink. He didn’t even give a warning shot. Instead, he pulled his rifle out, told him the dog was distracting and that animals were expendable. Then, like it was nothing, he shot her.
Dog Boy rests on the dog bed at the end of the hall. He cannot cry. If he does, the monster will call him a wimp. Tomorrow, or maybe even tonight, after they are sleeping, he’ll go back to the woods and get is best friend. He’s never slept without her—his beautiful friend who looked like a feral wolf. He can’t stand the thought of her out there all alone. He should have protected her. He should have let the man shoot him instead. He hates them. All of them. She was his only friend.
It takes hours for him to fall asleep. When he finally does, he dreams of a granite bench, a full moon, and whispering trees. They say to him, “Spirits never die. You can’t cage love or hearts. Remember Bella Lupe.” It’s the only thing that gets him through the night. Somehow, he knows the words are coming from his friend with the big blue eyes. Even now, in her death, she is watching over him. Always protective. He promises himself to find her, bury her, and run away as far as he possibly can. He can no longer stay with Mother and a killer. It just can’t happen. “I am sorry, Rosa,” he says. “I love you forever, my beautiful friend.” He means it.
Present day
* * *
One shovelful at a time. That’s how he buries her, no different than last time. Her last life and likely her first. He doesn’t bother to hide his tears this time. No one is watching. Winslow’s off at the park on another hunt. Doesn’t matter to him. Nothing does. She was everything. It doesn’t matter what the old man thinks. He doesn’t care about the scientists either. They’ve done what they wanted with her body—pulled it apart in a million pieces, not bothering to stitch it back together. “It’ll be okay,” he says, more for him than her. He knows she is listening. He remembers last time.
She watches over him. She always has. He knows this; he is just greedy and needs to feel it more. Their time together, in both her lives, was far too short. He just wishes he could give the same to her—protection he has never been able to pull off. His Rosalee. His Bella Lupe. It doesn’t matter what form she takes, she’s the only person or even beast to ever love him unconditionally. He owes her the same in return.
He tries not to go back to digging the ground for fake gravestones in those woods, all to make the monster, the prick who killed his one true love, happy. For what? For collars for a dog who loved him anyway that the man
would only make fun of? He should never have taken her that day. He should have known it was a trick. Same with the scientists. Had he helped her escape before the day of Winslow’s reckoning, he’d still have Bella Lupe. The thoughts haunt him as he prepares her grave again.
When he has packed the dirt down tight and planted seed, he is ready to set the marker in. He inhales, deep, knowing it will be years and years before they meet again. With both hands, he pulls the granite stone from its plastic protective wrap. He traces his fingers along the letters – Bella Lupe – his beautiful wolf. He smiles at the colored etching of her in both human and werewolf forms. The left side of her face has the soft skin and human eye he has rarely been privy to see but is how he imagines her. On the right is Rosalee, with a long snout and that same white muzzle fur. She is beautiful. He stares into her bright blue eyes—the same shade of sky as his—and prays she can hear him. He promises to never leave her and that they’ll be together again soon. “True love never dies,” he whispers, pulling the stone to the top of her grave out by the apple tree in his yard.
He’ll come here every day and talk to her. He’ll tell her about his new job and the million ways he is trying to help animals like them. He’ll listen to the whispered messages she’ll blow through the wind. He’ll sit on a lawn chair, next to her grave, waiting for full moons and hoping to hear her howls. He’ll howl, too, believing she can hear him. He knows she can.
Someone special to him once said: We become who we believe we are. With hope and perseverance, all things are possible. Even runts of a litter have potential to become beasts. Generally, and unfortunately, it doesn’t usually happen that way. For most of us, it’s difficult to stay focused on objectives. To fight the laws of nature is too steep a hill to climb.
He once told himself, when they made him eat off the floor and demanded silence, that he was different. He promised himself that he’d stick to the code and never give them what they wanted, no matter what the cost. He refused to betray himself and knew he was more than they were saying he was. He was willing to give his very life for it. Sadly, it had twice cost Rosalee hers.
Still, he had in some ways proved them wrong. He certainly made his point when he left their house for good. They had to have known he was done with them when he didn’t answer their calls and got himself through the university. Rosa would have been proud of him. He wonders, now, if she knows too. He is the same him. Only, now he is not a “dog,” or a “boy.” He is a man in human form. She must have known, when he visited her and fed her anything he could find. When he risked himself for her. What she didn’t know was that he’d been there before, in another life and time. He knows his best and only love will never forget him. She promised him with her eyes. He knows she’ll be back again. He can wait. Some things, like love and soulmates, are worth eternity.
* * *
The End
About the Author
International bestselling horror author Erin Lee is a dark fiction/reality author and therapist chasing a crazy dream one crazy story at a time. She is the author of Crazy Like Me, a novel published in 2015 by Savant Books and Publications, LLC, Wave to Papa, 2015, by Limitless Publishing, LLC and Nine Lives, 2016. She’s also author of When I’m Dead, Greener, Something Blue, Freak, The Ranch, Once Upon A Reality, Moving On, Dare, Kept, Circus Freak, Scary Mary, Take Me As I Am, and 99 Bottles. She also penned Losing Faith, a novella with Black Rose Writing. She is co-author of Black Rose’s The Morning After.
She is also author of the “Diary of a Serial Killer Series,” Momma, which this series is based on, the “Circus Freak Series” with Crazy Ink, and the “Lola, Party of Eight Series” with Zombie Cupcake Press.
Lee is co-founder of Crazy Ink, a small publisher working to introduce new writers with multi-genre messages to indie readers. She is also a co-founder of the “Escape from Reality Series” – a multi-genre, twenty-author, three-year, shared-world series with authors Taylor Henderson and Sara Schoen. Together, the trio has created the fictional town of Escape, Colorado, where authors and readers of all genres visit to escape.
Lee holds a master’s degree in psychology and works with at-risk families and as a court-appointed special advocate. When she isn’t busy dissecting the human experience, she enjoys escaping from reality through reading and a myriad of crazy adventures that will probably one day get her killed. She’s cool with that.
Night Cravings
Godiva Glenn
Chapter One
The Bronze pack had a habit of underestimating Maya. Born premature, and now grown into a young woman with a slight build and a penchant for bruising and random injury, she was a rarity in a pack of sturdy, healthy lupine.
Though her pack was more forward-thinking in comparison to others—an understanding she knew only second-hand since she had never encountered another pack—it was likely a natural inclination that led them to treat her as… well, a bit fragile.
They cared for her. Loved her, as a good pack would.
Yet, she was cared for a bit more. Coddled a bit more, really. Not in an insulting way, but in a way that as she grew older had become bordering on tiresome. As a little girl, it was wonderful. As a young woman with increasing womanly needs—not so much.
She’d never caught the eyes of the many handsome single males of the pack. This was understandable during her gangly teen phase. Now at twenty-four, it was ridiculous. Growing older hadn’t given her the shapely form of her cousins or most of the pack’s female population, but she’d developed her share of hormones.
The males wanted strong females. Ones that could challenge them and birth strong pups. Maya didn’t believe that her physical appearance or constant clumsiness meant she couldn’t be a strong pack member, but the lack of suitors said she was alone in that thought.
She wanted a mate.
Which was why she’d forced herself to appear at the current pack meeting, even though she was certain it would be boring and irrelevant to her. She bounced her fingers through her shoulder length hair, perking up the loose brown curls and praying that for once, she didn’t have leaves tangled in them. She was forever looking like a frizzy bird’s nest.
After a final bracing deep breath, she stepped out of the bushes and made her way to a clump of young lupine gathered on the far edge of the clearing where their pack alpha, Reid, would shortly stand and speak. Mixed in with a few of her friends and cousins were some males Maya found attractive and even if they’d never noticed her before, today was a new day.
Just as she hit the perimeter of her targeted group, a root caught her foot and sent her careening into those standing nearest to her. The strong back of one of the males broke her fall, albeit painfully. Her chin smacked between his shoulder blades and he cried out and turned.
“Sorry!” she blurted. Blood splattered from her now split lip and landed on his shirt. She covered her mouth and looked at him in horror. The heat of embarrassment latched on and crawled over her, weighing her down. Not only had she made a fool of herself, but she’d landed on the male who most piqued her interest, the one she’d often thought would be her soul mate. In her teen years, the crush was obsessive, even. She spoke again through her bloody fingers, “Sorry, Laurent.”
The lean-muscled male plucked at his faded blue cotton shirt and appraised the blood spatters, green eyes scrunched with a blend of surprise, disgust, and perhaps a smidgeon of amusement. “It’s nothing,” he said shortly. “Are you okay?”
Within an instant, the situation went into high gear, with everyone touching her reassuringly and checking her lip. She repeated that she was fine until the words sounded strange and unwieldy. If anyone else had just tumbled into another the way she had, the entire group would be laughing and teasing. For her, it was just another display of her so-called weakness. So much for attracting a mate.
When Reid made his appearance minutes later, she was grateful to have all eyes off of her. As he spoke, she wiped her bloody hands onto her dark jeans and backed away,
intent on leaving the gathering to avoid a repeat of overwhelming caring once it was over.
“The runners will be staying along the Eastern boundary, in the meantime,” Reid said, drawing her attention. “Restrictions will be in place. They won’t come closer, and for now, none of you will wander out in that way.”
Maya paused and listened as Reid continued. Their pack tended to host runners from other packs a few times a year, allowing them to camp out on the farthest edges of their territories. Usually, the runners were allowed to mingle within the pack as welcome guests during the day. That these particular runners were restricted to the outskirts threw up flags.
The last time they had an unexpected visitor, it was a human, one of their pack had brought home. It made her wonder if perhaps the runners weren’t the usual sort. Skimming the crowd, she saw nothing that indicated that anyone else saw this was out of the ordinary. Reid’s word was law, true, but curiosity wasn’t a crime.
By the time Reid finished speaking, Maya had made up her mind to investigate. She could spy without getting caught. No harm there. As long as she didn’t make contact, she could consider her actions within the rules.
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