The Spiked Wolf

by David Shiels

  Everyone at her business was constantly informed she would be away for the weekend with her new handsome man.

  As for her friends…

  Claudia believes that most of the friends that she had ever had have just been jealous of her, jealous of her looks and wealth, jealous that she was the one with the best looking boyfriend, but said boyfriends could never deal with being with someone so pretty, someone that was always being checked out by the opposite sex in the street or in a bar. The paranoia would destroy the relationship. It’s tough being better than everyone. But Claudia had learnt to deal with it and focus on her business.

  Her fantastic appearance and her incredibly successful business were not going to save her from this situation.

  She slowly approached the window of the shack and peered outside. The sky was darkening; it was almost the end of her third day. The three wolves were still sitting outside, motionless. She contemplated making a run for it but she had no idea where to go, or what the wolves would do to her if they were to capture her upon her escape.

  Would they still want to keep her alive? Claudia knew that it wasn’t worth the risk, not yet. But another day without food or showering and she might have no choice.

  All this thinking would soon tip her over the edge; she was used to always being busy. She backed away from the window and approached a black, metal candle holder on the large table in the centre of the room; it was full of wax where other candles had been melted down. She picked it up and walked over to the cabinet on the opposite wall and opened it up. Inside were two candles, Claudia grabbed one and placed it in the metal candle holder.

  Next to the remaining candle was a cheap looking yellow lighter. Claudia picked it up, held it against the wick of the candle she was holding and attempted to light the candle; however no flame appeared from the lighter.

  “Fuck!” Claudia exclaimed as she shook the lighter and reattempted to light the candle. The lighter yet again failed to ignite the candle, she tried five more times frantically but no flame emerged. She thought about the old saying ‘up shit creek without a paddle’ and that’s exactly how she felt now.

  Claudia began to panic, it was getting dark and she had no means of light or heat and the smell from the corpse pieces was becoming even more potent. She looked towards the door leading out of the shack and decided that it was time to make a run for it into the wild; her sanity would not last locked in this shack in the pitch darkness with only the sounds of the wolves breathing and the smell of the rotting flesh to keep her company. She loosened her grip and released the candle and lighter from her hand.

  She walked towards the table to obtain her mobile phone before making her escape. The candle she had dropped rolled with her as she walked; the shack was poorly built and had a slight slant to it. She reached the table and grabbed her mobile phone when she noticed the candle moving below her; she watched it reach the end of rug underneath the table when it fell through a gap in the floor.

  She tapped the screen on her phone to check the remaining battery; she thought that it would be a good idea to turn on the phones light on so she at least had some light to help find her way through the tangled maze she would be soon entering.

  She then heard the candle land, it had taken a few seconds for its impact and the sound was faint. She got on her hands and knees and peered through the gap in the floor but it was just darkness. She placed the light shining from her phone over the gap in the floorboard to see if it would reveal anything; but still all she saw was darkness.

  She guessed something was below the shack, be it just a small room or a prison filled with corpses. She stood up and grabbed the table and slid it from on top on the rug; the plates and assorted items mounted on top of the table fell and clashed on the floor. She then grabbed the dirty, ragged brown rug off of the floor and flung it over the pile of rotting limbs.

  Below the rug, to Claudia’s delight, was what appeared to be a door built into the floor of the shack, it would have visibly merged in with the rest of the wooden floorboards had it not had a circular handle which she assumed, when pulled, would cause the door to open.

  However, her delight was crushed when she noticed that a padlock had been attached to the circular handle which bound it to the plank it was attached to.

  Claudia frantically grabbed at the padlock, attempting to pull wrench it from the floor; but it would not budge; it was well fitted and seemed to have been recently inserted.

  “Damn it!” Claudia grunted as she smashed her hand on the door in the floor. She sat up and looked around the room; the shadows were further creeping over the room, attempting to engulf her in darkness. She was determined to get the door open. She did not have long before the shadows would completely overtake her surroundings, making the task even less likely; leaving her no choice but to brace the wilds and try her chance at escaping through the front door.

  The room she was in was full of various high quality items; high quality even to Claudia’s standards. But despite their glamorous visage, they had posed no use to her besides giving her something to admire during her first few hours trapped here. But now she was looking at them in a different light; she needed something to help her smash the padlock off of the door.

  With a clear goal in her mind Claudia quickly sprang to her feet and began searching the room for any large object which could assist her in finding her way through the padlocked door.

  She rummaged through the single dresser in the room but all she found was extremely expensive looking jewellery. The rest of the room was full of larger, more valuable items, such as vases, opera masks, boats in bottles, assorted animal heads and much more expensive antiques; but they were flimsy and would break upon touching the padlock.

  A thief plundering the building in search of riches would feel like he had hit the jackpot and could live the rest of his life without a day’s work, but in Claudia’s predicament they held no value.

  She placed her arms over her head and let out a low annoyed scream; her face turned to the same shade of red as her hair. She was frustrated at the fact that she had been sitting in the shack for all this time without even noticing the door right below her. She questioned what she had been doing the past few days, was she so used to having servants and people working for her that she just assumed everything would be okay? She felt her body heat up as the annoyance she felt for herself, and the door, bubbled to the surface.

  She grabbed the deer’s head which was perched onto the wall, approached the padlock and flung it down at the door on the floor; the collision caused a loud bang and the deer head cracked and smashed open. She was breathing heavily, adrenaline was pouring through her body; she had to make the most of this situation with this surge of energy.

  She ran around the room like in a wild lion that had just spotted an injured zebra after not eating for three days and used her arms to lunge at the items and fling them at the padlock, they smashed, bounced, and cracked as they collided with the floor and the small escape preventing object. Not even small items such as diamonds and emeralds evaded her grasp as even they were thrown to their demise. She shouted and grunted as the objects were released from her hands; she did not care if the wolves heard the commotion and jumped through the window to inspect, she just felt rage, and nothing else.

  Part of her enjoyed this feeling; she felt powerful as if nothing could stop her. If anything in her life usually bothers her she has other people to sort it out for her. But now she was like a cornered rat that felt threatened for its life and had lunged for its opponent’s jugular, and it felt good.

  This rampage continued until all the items in the shack had been thrown. When she had finally calmed down, sweat pouring all over her body, she was almost breathless and panting, trying to catch her breath.

  She stood in the corner of the room and looked over the disaster before her, an antique dealer would have had a heart attack; pieces of exquisite items and jewellery were scattered all over the floor of the room, smashed and ru
ined, their value completely depleted. She did not care; all she cared about was the condition of the padlock.

  She carefully walked over to the padlock and knelt down. To her horror it was still attached to the door; still standing in her way of freedom. All that her rampage had accomplished was a few dents in the floor. It was all for nothing. She let out a heavy sigh and lowered her head into her shoulders.

  She wished she had never laid eyes on the door, or the padlock. If she had not seen the candle fall through the floor and attempted her escape when it was lighter, she could have made a clean getaway, but now it was even darker and her phones battery even lower, her chances of survival in the wilds were reduced even further.

  She had become dehydrated from her tantrum, her lips were cracked and looked like those of a woman twice her age, that she decided to treat herself to a drink from the sink in the second room. She still had no idea whether the water was clean, but it was refreshing.

  She slowly raised to her feet and entered backroom of the shack, it was small and stunk like a toilet, yet there was no toilet in sight, just a sink; it had been one of the only items in the shack which helped Claudia retain her mentality as it enabled her to wash herself .She had entered the shack in a filthy state from her chase through the woods and she would of ended it all had she had to be in that condition for so long. But just like in the main room, she is looking at items differently now her situation had suddenly changed.

  Claudia began pulling at the sink; she intended that this would be the item that would get her out of the shack. This was her final stand, she wasn’t giving up.

  “Come on, damn it!” she grunted as she continued to pull at the sink. It wouldn’t take much more effort to remove it from its binding to the wall as it was already loosened from its poor implementation, but Claudia was weak from the lack of sleep, food and the recent outburst. Her arms were burning; like they had been smothered in oil then a lit cigar had been placed just near them. What would have been an easy task for anyone well fed and slept was an excruciating task for Claudia.

  Claudia remembered when she was a child and had sat on the sink in her father’s private bathroom. She had gotten excited at disobeying her father yet again that she jumped up on and down on it, but she had been bit too excited and the sink had fallen off, smashing through the floor and almost killing one of the butlers in the kitchen below. Even then she never felt guilty for almost killing someone, he was easily replaceable.

  She then sat on the sink and began jumping up and down on it with all her weight when she heard a snapping sound and felt herself nearing the floor when she quickly collided with it. The sink was resting on her back. She pushed herself up and rolled it off. She turned around and noticed a gap in the wall where the sink had been; she crawled around the sink, which was now lying on its side, and peered through the gap.

  It lead on to the back of the shack and what she saw made her feel even more uneasy than she did before; outside were a pack of wolves, it was almost pitch black but she could see their shining eyes looking back at her, there must of been at least ten wolves; at least twenty eyes. ‘Where had they come from?’ When she entered the shack there was merely three or four guarding her, she never knew there were so many around her.

  Making a run would have been beyond futile.

  She quickly got to her feet and bent down to pick up the sink; she remembered being told about bending her knees if she was ever in the unlikely event of needing to pick up a heavy object, so she bent her knees and lifted the sink. It was heavier than it looked but even in her weakened state she managed to lift it just past her stomach and slowly totted into the first room. She approached the door on the floor; if this did not work then she was out of options.

  She stood on top of the wooden door and pulled the sink higher up, as high as she could possibly manage, then she, with her all might behind it, slammed the sink onto the padlock; it made a massive sound and the sink bounced in the air; almost smashing Claudia in the face, then landed back down on the door, barely missing her bare feet.

  She let out a desperate squeal and tried it again, the same thing happened. The strain of throwing such a heavy object was taking its toll on the remaining energy in her body, she felt as if she was going to faint if she continued and a part of her wanted to stop wasting energy on more pathetic attempts at breaking the lock. She bent down to pick up the sink again; she knew that this attempt would be her last, if she could even mange one more attempt.

  She managed to lift the sink again; the pain in her arms was almost unbearable at this point, but she had more strength and determination than she gave herself credit for, and slammed the sink on the floor.

  Nothing happened. The door and padlock still remained. She was trapped here and there was no way out. There was more wolves outside than she could of ever imagined and worst of all, her greatest fear was mere minutes away from consuming her; darkness.

  She collapsed to the floor; she was spent, and the lack of food and sleep had finally claimed her. She never thought it would end in such disgusting surroundings; she was dying a death like those street rats that eat out of bins and work for minimum wage. She closed her eyes, she was tired, too tired. Darkness consumed her vision.

  Suddenly the floor began to make creaking sounds. This alerted the unconscious Claudia and her head popped up like a meerkat. The door below her had received enough punishment and decided it was time to give way; the door broke open under Claudia’s weight plunging her into the darkness below.

  Food And Pills

  It was a full moon. It had been five hours since the wolves first trampled through the streets. The neighbourhood below this shining beacon stood motionless. It would be silent if not for the intense groaning sounds of a man sounding like his insides were attempting to escape their confines.

  “Studley, please, you have to be quiet!” A woman’s voice softly whispered.

  Studley writhed, turned, and rolled in the Victorian styled king sized bed, his sister, Lisa, holding him down but too weak for his strength which seemed to fluctuate at alarming rates whenever the fever decided to attack him.

  The room they were in resided in the second floor bedroom of their house, the two small windows on either side of the room were obscured by two large wardrobes.

  Studley paid no attention to her and continued to wail in agony. His veins looked like they would pop out of his arms and neck at any moment.

  Lisa backed off and sprinted into the en-suite bathroom, the light flickering, smothering the room in darkness every two seconds, and approached the cabinet on the wall. There was a mirror attached to the side of it causing Lisa to catch a glimpse of herself; her hair was dark, greasy and long like it had not been washed in far too long, her eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep which also caused the big dark bags under her eyes. She had never been one to care for her weight or appearance but the image gave her a twinge of sadness and disgust.

  She threw open the door and rummaged around the various pill bottles, throwing the empty ones on the floor as she desperately searched for some medication to help Studley with the pain. Within moments there were no more bottles to search through and the small bathroom floor was covered in empty bottles.

  Their mother had gone through painkiller addiction before her death, leaving behind countless bottles of powerful pills which would sooth the pain of ten gunshot wounds. She would constantly sneak out of the house to meet at the darkest of night to meet her dealers to fuel her potent addiction. Although they killed her mother, Lisa was thankful she had kept the pills around as Studley would never have survived the past few hours without their effects.

  The night so far had been chaotic. The beasts came almost unannounced. Lisa was watching her favourite food channel when the news abruptly interrupted her viewing. At first she had almost thrown her tub of ice cream at the television but soon calmed down when she saw the chaos that was being displayed.

  A growing horde of wolves were running rampant through
the centre of city and spreading out quickly in every direction; they were shooting people with fur from their body as they travelled, and soon after those people would painfully transform into wolves.

  Lisa had taken the news reports advice and unhesitatingly boarded the windows and doors to the house up. She had noticed other people in the other houses doing the same thing.

  When the wolves arrived it had ended just as quickly as it had begun. It seemed like they were in a rush and went for the houses that were the least defended. She heard the bangs, screams and cries from the house next door. Lisa wept for the poor children.

  It had gone peaceful again until that Angela woman returned home, causing Studley to foolishly leave the house. Lisa hated the woman for the pain she was currently causing her brother.

  After being shot by one of the wolves in the garden Lisa was sure that Studley would turn into one of those beasts and deep down she knew that she should kill him before that happens. The news reports had said that the transformations happen within minutes of being stabbed by one of the wolves’ spikes but Studley had just lain there, breathing heavy, but showing no signs of turning.

  She had decided to take him to the bedroom and let him rest, and then a few times an hour he would break out in a fever which would cause him to spasm and foam at the mouth, as if suffering from rabies. When it happened the first few times she would arm herself with her father’s baseball bat, however, she knew that she would not want to live in this world without her big brother and would take her own life soon after.

  Over the hours there would be loud megaphone announcements that they were patrolling the area to take people to a safe place nearby, followed by deafening screams and gunfire. This had only happened twice then she had heard nothing but the rustle of bushes.