Between stars and children

The Night

A wolf salivated in the flames. A child lost their rosary and the sky laughed. But what was the earth to do?

the wind billowed through the hefty mounds of grass, it howled across the moors the way a sheep bleats before the storm. The wolf giggled drooping his body slowly behind the white silk in gay divinity. The thrill before the shank.

"good little girls stay in mass" his voice edged with wire not in the barbed sort but the sort that sits on a factory floor. "I like good little girls"

he hankered onwards with his playful foreboding steps trailing behind her yet without touching

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you." he began undressing trailing his entrails behind like a rope of breadcrumbs winding down into the devils throat.

"Not as the world gives do I give to you." she was tangled like a rabbit in a snare, writhing gasping for breath under the weight of the wolf. His hand pummelled through her hair tearing at the fine coils as he stared down at her sobbing heaving form.

"Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." her skin was a haemorrhage of groped innocence dithering in purple light that seemed to shine only on her.

the clouds seemed higher than ever lying from the grass. the girl imagined the sky to crack open by clawed fists of gold, she wanted to see St. Nicholas peeling her from her ditch and cradling her in milk and cotton. The wolf burrowed in his naked pleasure heaving and sighing with the sane lunacy of a ruler, ever so precise, ever so respectable only moving but always howling.

she knew god enjoyed creating girl. Her last thought was of gods trepid fingers how similar they must be to the wolfs. Her mind tankered back to the moment before her punishment for not listening in class not so many autumns ago and how she noticed how sunlight only fell on the crucifix and the line of girls simpering outside. How this must only mean that god in his infinite colour chose the girls to view the crucifix for what it was and that's when she knew why girls could produce extra skulls on a whim and why they were mottled with holes like an old shoe because they were to be used through suffering and then to be buried.

the wolf lay next to her ditch naked as a river fish gazing down at her limp skin from above. The moon bathed his hollowed body into pools of white. He seemed peaceful like a sunken ship and how it would rot amongst the vastness of space to remain unseen but what pained her the most was that she knew he had sunk himself. the sound of the church sermon ending and the doors hanging open like a perched mouth echoed across the mores causing the wolf to flee vanishing under the emptiness of the stars. The church was alight with the promise of warm knitted scarves and hands of loving warmth that now seemed a fantasy to her world of dirt and bone. It was just her the grass and the moon.

the earth turned up towards the sky rumbling like a tunnelling train however the sky remained stoic to its bashful friend.

"well, are you seeing this?" the earth even with its accumulated youth seemed displeased with the taste of flesh.

"I have seen many things tonight, from the savage alley dog to the harping lovers. I have been from the east to west, I have seen many girls in many ditches and none of them I will forget" the stars seemed brighter on the last word as if they were nodding in a cooing hush "hug her closer and when the time is right spit her out as I am leaving for me to take her to the sun"

the sun however had a different warmth to its busty bird call and ordered the wind to charge in mighty length for her dress to stand brazen on the shabby cross fashioned out of twigs above her corpse for the world to see in the new dawn. Almost from the whispers of the organ the vicar above saw the white ghost and called out in reverence.

                                                                                               ***

hound lived silently in a sleepless haze, hidden away in a flower heaved cottage on the edge of the village. He lived alone and at night played his records loudly. He had inherited the small home after his mother had passed away, there was no other member of his family alive to conclude his loneliness and in turn hound became increasingly introverted as the years passed by. However he was still conceivably young at twenty two but aged from the enduring fate of the time.

rarely sleeping he hung by strings, alive yet hardly living, furrowing his brows over jazz and painting. He took his tea weak with a chocolate biscuit on the side. It was the slight oddities of hound that made him so enchanting, the contrast of his gentle nature seemed polarising to his appearance; tall in stature with a darkness of pen ink and skin like rich mahogany wood, his eyes moved slowly with the intellect beyond his years to take the world in, but what truly isolated him was the three scabbed slashes running through his face, despite this he remained incredibly handsome yet incredibly lonesome.

filing his navy blue tie through its loop he stared at himself stiff through the unpolished mirror trying to figure at just how urgent could a crime scene in a quiet northern village be at 3am? live routinely usual locally and the worse of an extent to a crime could be a deformation of a shop window or a stolen car, but never anything to be seen without the light of the sun. In a way it made him feel something, it woke him up from his constant emotional absence.

gathering his scarf and notepad he angled out of the quiet country lane by bicycle into the paling moon. although it was no different from its usual silence something seemed different, as if everyone had been forced into their homes out of fear from something lurking, attacking, snatching. even the sky calmed differently. It was cloudless, absolutely blank of stars almost like they were hiding too. Before the large grass dunes came into view the church stood centre solid as the sea with a large sign outside with adjustable lettering 'BE GLAD GOD DOESNT GIVE US ALL WE ASK FOR'. circling around the churches body hound even after spending near enough his youth in the quaint village he had never been to church, he didn't even know what a church looked like but he imagined it to be warm and smelling of his mothers perfume.

there it was.

"hound! hound!" James a staunch man from his office was calling him into the cornered off premises. His tie had been loosened and his collar unbuttoned which along with his -usually quaffed-dishevelled hair alarmed hound as James was usually the most polished out of the department.

"oh god hound it's a, it's a..." before he could finish his sentence he turned away clearly distressed with a slight puff to his eyes and a grey tint to his once peachy skin.

rubbing a hand swiftly once just below his colleagues neck hound crouched down to meet James dry heaving into the muddy ground in his most softest tone "what is it James? when did it happen"

"a child man-its deans daughter" quickly sobbing James vomited after his words, emitting a shiver through hounds wiry frame.