justinesusan-blog

[justinesusan-blog]

Shift or Die - A wolfy flash fiction

The sand glowed orange in the firelight. It reminded me of when I was small and I used to pretend the floor was lava; if I touched it, I would die.

If I touched this lava I would die, because it was 40 feet below me and touching it would mean I had fallen to my death.

The others were standing in a circle on the sand, cheering and shouting up at me. Usually I thought of them as my friends, but today, with their flaming torches and wild eyes, they looked more like animals on the hunt.

“Jump! Jump! Jump!”

The words came from every mouth, every one of them caught up in the moment. Pack mentality.

The cliff edge felt crumbly under my feet. All of them had been here before me. This was initiation, they told me, and everyone had to do it.

Everyone did it, but not everyone survived it.

A chemical reaction was happening in my body. I’d felt it plenty of times before but I’d never prayed so hard for it.

Shifting into a wolf was not a pleasant experience. I’d only done it a handful of times. The first time I’d passed out in a pool of my own vomit and blood. The body doesn't respond well to having all of its cells ripped apart and thrown back together again in quick succession.

It had become easier since then, and I was learning to control it, but now my trial period was up. The wolves were in danger and if I couldn't control my shifting, I would give them away.

This was the test: could I shift under pressure? If I couldn't, I was as good as dead anyway.

Shift or die.

This was the method: jump off a cliff. If I was a wolf when I reached the bottom, I'd hit the ground running. If I was still human, I'd be a gruesome smudge on the sand.

Shift or die.

I could hear my blood roaring in my ears. The people below me became dots as my vision blurred. Everything was too fast and too loud and too much.

I needed to escape. I needed to be wolf.

I stepped over the edge.

The air whipped and bit at my skin as my body began to tear itself apart in a frantic effort to survive. The fall felt too long, the process felt too slow. I was a meteor of pain crashing toward the earth, about to do some serious damage.

By the time I reached the bottom I was gone.

[justinesusan-blog]

A short story about a long tail and the scary sea

I've been thinking recently about my (irrational?) fear of the sea. It's so terrifying yet fascinating at the same time. Much like a mermaid, it's beautiful and can lure you in, but who knows what lies beneath the surface? So I wrote this short story type thing... I hope you enjoy it! 

J x

When I first hit the water, it was agony. A chill shot through my body and my muscles tensed until my limbs felt like they were about to break off. I tried to scramble my way back to the surface, but my joints were too stiff.

That seemed like hours ago, although it had probably only been seconds. I was falling deeper and deeper into the black abyss. My lungs stung like I was breathing in pins. My vision faded into a dark blur, and my thoughts swirled and quietened as my body surrendered to the cold ocean. A faint shadow descended upon me as my eyes fell shut.

Something touched my face. I had consciousness enough to notice, but not enough to care. Nor did I give much thought to the pressure against my lips, until they were forced apart and a burst of air entered my lungs.

The sudden flow of oxygen into my bloodstream was ecstasy. My body warmed as my heart pumped it frantically through my body like a drug.

Along with the relief came awareness. For a moment, I thought I’d been saved, pulled out of the water when someone realised I’d fallen. Yet I could still feel the cold heaviness surrounding me, could still sense the darkness below, waiting to swallow me.

I was no longer drowning.

I opened my eyes.

Staring back at me was a pair of eyes blacker than the nothingness below. Piercingly terrifying, strikingly human.

In the dim shimmer of moonlight that broke through the water’s surface, I caught my first glimpse of the face that had breathed life back into me.

Through those dark eyes, a man studied me with a piercing gaze. Flickering shadows played across his angular features, and his coal-coloured hair danced around his head like a flame. I already knew his lips were cold and soft, but I had not been prepared for the set of bloodied spikes that were his teeth. A morbid part of me wondered what he had just killed.

Instinctively I tried to get away, but I realised with a jolt that it was his grip on my arms that kept me from falling deeper.

He had the face of a monster, but nothing felt more monstrous to me than the black emptiness, and what might lay beyond it.

Something moved below me. I shouldn’t have looked down.

The creature in front of me had the torso of a human, but at his hips his skin turned to scales and a huge, dark tail with knife-like fins snaked underneath us, long enough that the end disappeared into the threatening darkness below.

I didn’t know how I was breathing, but my breaths came fast and turned into sobs as I felt the onset of hysteria.

The creature’s eyes flicked wildly, scanning the ocean around me. Then, narrowed and fierce, they fixed onto me.

In that instant, I realised he must have saved me from drowning because he enjoyed the kill. I braced myself for the tearing of sharp teeth into my skin. What he did was worse.

The creature tightened his grip on my arms, and dragged me down into the darkness.

*************************************************************

I awoke to a blinding brightness. I lay blind for a few seconds until my eyes adjusted. Above me was a sky the colour of peaches scattered with pink candyfloss clouds. Heaven, perhaps.

A breeze whispered and I filled my lungs with air. A sudden coldness playfully attacked my legs and I forced myself to sit up. I had been laying on a familiar beach on the water’s edge like a washed-up animal. I squinted at the horizon to make sure I was on the sky side of it. Could I have imagined the whole thing?

From the corner of my eye I spotted a tall figure making its way along the beach towards me and realised I was being watched. I found myself looking up into a pair of dark, almost black eyes.

A combination of panic and confusion engulfed me. It was the same sharp face and piercing glare, there was no doubt about that. But the man standing over me now had legs. Perhaps I’d seen him on the beach before and it had simply been a dream. The whole twisted memory seemed surreal now, sitting on the sand in the early morning breeze.

“You’re awake."

His voice wasn’t the silky song I had found myself expecting. Instead it was gravelly and rough, like he hadn’t spoken in a very long time.

I didn’t know how or if I was supposed to respond. I considered getting up and running. Instead I just nodded and stared and tried to stay calm.

He didn’t seem to know what to do either. He awkwardly sat down next to me, much to my dismay, but kept a distance I was glad of.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a long, uncomfortable moment.

I frowned, taken aback. “You’re… you’re what?”

He looked at me and despite my confusion, it struck me in the new light that his eyes were not actually black, but a dark chocolate brown. I couldn’t help but notice that he also had a set of human teeth to match his human legs. Rather nice ones in fact, if a little blunt.

He hesitated. “There were other… There were others.”

I stared blankly.

“You fainted,” he continued, “when I pulled you down.”

I was getting a horrible feeling I hadn’t imagined anything.

“I had to hide you. They could smell you. They can smell fear.” His brow furrowed in frustration, and he looked away from me. “I had to fight one of them. They almost got to you first.”

Was it possible that he had saved my life twice when I had thought he wanted to kill me? The fight he mentioned explained the blood on his teeth. At least I hoped it did.

“You were so afraid.” He said this with such melancholy that I felt an unexpected stab of guilt. I was once again pierced by his dark eyes, but this time they were big and sad. “Why?”

I hesitated, still trying to make sense of everything. Of course I had been afraid, anyone would have been. “I can’t swim,” I replied after too long. I knew that wasn’t what he meant.

He sighed and looked away again. “I know.” The answer hadn’t satisfied him.

I tried again. “I don’t like the dark.”

He frowned at this. “But I don’t understand. You are safe in the dark. You are hidden from danger.”

“Everything is hidden in the dark, including danger,” I replied. “It’s not the darkness, it’s the unknown. Who knows what could be lurking in the shadows? The possibilities are endless.” I thought of his eel-like tail with razor fins and tried unsuccessfully to disguise my shudder. I hoped he didn’t notice. It was difficult to justify my fear of the sea and its strange creatures and secrets to him when he was one of them. Everything I found disturbing about the ocean was his normal.

I thought about the sun’s pink early-morning rays on my face and felt calmer. “I like it out here in the light, where you can see what’s coming.”

He looked timidly upwards and for the first time I noticed how he was sitting. His knees were pulled up to his chest and he kept rubbing his hands together as if he had just put on lotion. I could see a slight tremor in them.

I understood. “You don’t like it out of the water.”

He took a shaky breath and didn’t move his eyes from the reddish sky. “It’s so open and exposed. Look at the sky. It goes up and up. It’s endless.”

Endless possibilities, I thought, but I kept my mouth shut.

“It’s like a bottomless pit, but backwards. What if one day the Earth let go of you? You would keep falling forever.”

Keep falling forever. The fear sounded eerily familiar, but I couldn’t help smiling. “The Earth won’t let go of you. You won’t fall.”

His voice went very quiet. “I didn’t let you fall, but you were still afraid.”

I sighed. I couldn’t tell him I had thought he was a monster, although I had a feeling he already knew. “I’m sorry, the ocean is just very strange to me, especially since I’m not exactly designed to survive in it. But I suppose being on land is just as strange to you-” I broke off, looking him up and down. This was obviously not his first time out of the ocean. For one thing, he was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. They looked old and worn, but he’d got them from somewhere. Plus, he was speaking perfect English. Considering I hadn’t known his species even existed until a few hours ago, I couldn’t exactly call myself an expert, but I was pretty sure English wasn’t a common language under the sea.

The soft thud of footsteps on the sand came from behind us. He twisted his body around so quickly I was sure he must have damaged something. It was just an early morning jogger who hadn’t noticed us, but his eyes had turned wild and he was breathing fast.

“I feel too exposed out here. Do you know what would happen to me if anyone knew what I…” he trailed off but the tremor in his hands was becoming violent.

I looked up at the pretty ice-cream sky and wondered what had made him fear the daylight as much as I feared the dark ocean.

“Why did you come out here?” I asked gently.

He met my gaze and said, sounding suddenly shy, “I had to make sure you were okay.”

In that moment, I saw something that wasn’t fear flicker in his dark eyes. Perhaps he saw the same thing reflected in mine, because for the first time I saw him smile.

Endless possibilities, I thought.