SNAFU: Wolves at the Door

Giovanni’s skin tingled where the wolf had wounded him. He reached up and touched it. The injury had somehow miraculously healed before he and his son had returned to the Sanctuary. He wondered if he had been mistaken, and what he had at first thought a wound was in fact Turco and Manfredo’s blood. Or if he had seen anything at all.

He wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead with his shirt sleeve. More flowed from his pores.

Behind him, on a mattress tossed on the ground that had become their new bed, Maria and Franco lay sleeping peacefully.

Giovanni rose and swayed unsteadily. His head swam, from nausea or hunger, he couldn’t tell. More like starvation. And he was so damned hot. Without thinking of anything but relief from the sudden oppressive heat and itchiness of his clothes Giovanni stripped down, leaving every stitch in a pile beside the mattress. Then he moved quietly, shambling to the nearest exit – a set of uneven stone stairs that led to a hidden exit that opened onto the ruins of the city above. He needed some fresh air.

The stairs felt cool and damp under his bare feet, and the chilly night air felt good on his burning skin. In fact, it felt invigorating. It was the air and something else… the moonlight.

He could see it shining in through the cracks at the top of the stairwell, cool white light. It seemed to be calling to him much as it pulled the ocean tides. It drew him in, tugging at the small hairs on his naked arms and legs. It felt like it was causing his hairs to grow, pulling them as it summoned him to bask beneath its mesmerizing glow. As it did, he thought he saw a forest whipping past his vision as if he were running, running, ducking the shadows of trees in order to playfully catch the silvery moonbeams. These images playing across his mind’s eye suddenly seemed frightening, but he couldn’t deny them.

When he reached the top step he looked out over the decimated neighborhood’s crumbling walls. The piles of debris from the bombed out building looked oddly beautiful bathed in the full moon’s light. Nearby, a young partisan sat guarding the hidden stairway entrance. Giovanni recognized him. His name was Vincent. Rags that were once his Sunday clothes served as his uniform. He had a Beretta submachine gun resting on his knee and a hand-rolled cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. He looked out at the street’s ruined structures, unaware of Giovanni approaching him from behind.

Giovanni opened his mouth to whisper a greeting, but what emanated from his throat startled him and young Vincent both.

Instead of whispering or even speaking, Giovanni growled.

The young guard whirled, abject horror engulfing his features. The cigarette dropped from his mouth as he leveled his submachine gun at a confused Giovanni.

Suddenly having no control of his own actions, Giovanni leaped forward – an incredibly far, impossible distance – and pounced on the terrified guard. And to his panic and amazement what he thought were his hands had somehow become a massive set of lupine paws.

Horrified at what he was doing, he sank his teeth – but they were fangs, weren’t they? – into poor Vincent’s neck and tore away a huge chuck of warm flesh. He swallowed and went back for more.

Vincent fell backwards. All that was left of his throat was the vertebrae of his neck surrounded by a few thin strips of grisly meat. His life jetted from the ruined artery in a fountain-like gush.

The beast that Giovanni had become stood in the growing pool of hot blood, which he lapped up greedily.

He fought to control himself, to stop the horror of what he tasted, but despite every bit of his will he couldn’t even bring himself to step back from the slaughter. It was as if he were a passive observer – watching through a window, or a mirror, as a monster fed on the still-jerking remains of a human being – but it was obvious he was the monster, even though he wasn’t controlling the muscles or the claws, or the jaws.

Something else had taken control.

The Devil.

It had to be the Devil, taking him for the evil he had done.

And as punishment, he couldn’t even look away or close his eyes to the horror before him. He had to live through every moment of it, watching through the window that was a mirror to his actions.

Showing its incredible intelligence, the beast Giovanni had become dragged the partisan’s warm corpse away from his sentry position and – once hidden in the shelter of a crumbling building – tore into Vincent’s belly and feasted on the soft, bloody innards. Within the body of the wolf-monster, what was left of Giovanni-the-human prayed to wake from this terrible nightmare as he tasted the flesh, chewing and swallowing like a machine. The fresh meat invigorated his body even as his mind screamed in revulsion and disgust.

But the beast wasn’t sated.