Lupine Foreboding

Dreams, Forebodings, and Womens Intuition.

When Cassandra later awoke that morning she would blame the strangely vivid dreams on too many horror films and werewolf novels. On the spicy Mexican food she’d had.

She would chalk off the paralyzing fear she felt when she was shocked awake as nothing more than foolishness. The feeling of foreboding that would follow her all day as nothing, something to be ignored.

And the memories of times when such vivid dreams and persistent feelings would follow her for days, those would be forgotten conveniently.

Cassandra slept fitfully that night, before she awoke. Before she foolishly ignored the warning signs.

As she slept a nightmare painted the scene in her mind, she was alone in woods filled with mist, she wore nothing but a flimsy white dress that was tattered and dirty. She had no shoes to protect her tender feet from the sharp objects littered on the forest floor. She knew she was being chased, hunted like an animal. She could feel them around her , surrounding her. Closing in. Her heart pounded in her chest in a vain effort to escape her ribs and fly to freedom.

Cassandra felt something catch her foot, her momentum caused a painful zing to travel up her leg and body as she fell, the ground approaching her face at an alarming rate. Her arms shot out to stop it. She rolled over and pulled her feet under her, meaning to shoot up and take off running again, but her foot refused to hold her and with a cry of pain she fell again.

She cried, there was nothing else to do. They were all around her closing in. She could hear their rasping breathes, smell the carrion. She whimpered as one got close enough for her to see its full form. A hideous mutated creature, standing on two feet its body was covered in coarse fur. The chest and arm were large, too large for a human. And the legs had an extended ankle like thing before it reached a knee, like a dogs would be. Or a wolfs. Its hands and feet had vicious looking claws. But that was not the most hideous part, no the face was the worst. A mixture of human and animal, no snout protruded but you could still see the vicious canines gleaming. The pointed lupine ears, the wild eyes.

A woman’s voice invaded her mind, strangely calm.

Stage two.

How much longer before the change is complete?

The voice asked itself before all thoughts were dashed away. Another creature had appeared on Cassandra's left, a female. She had vaguely noticed the first was male. Their genders mattered little, did it truly make a difference if the one who tore out her throat was of the female persuasion? Or of the male one?

No, it did not.

What did matter was what was in the females hand, a small metal canister about half the size of ones palm. One side was covered in weird black buttons, the other green lights. The female tossed it at Cassandra's feet and she screamed.

"No, kill me. Please." she cried and Cassandra would later be shocked at the fact that the voice was not hers. But then the smoke began to spill out of the canister quickly and her lungs were filled with the toxin. She coughed as the world began to fade first to gray, then black.

The last thought the woman had, for Cassandra would later realize it as not her who was in the woods but someone else entirely, was one of acceptance. Of someone finally giving up.

So it begins.