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Animals, Creative Writing, genre, Horror, hunter, reading, Scary, scary story, Short Stories, Short Story, Story, werewolf, werewolfs, wolf, wolfs, Writer, Writing
He howled and waited in silence for a moment, but there was no answer. He knew what this meant. His brothers were dead, killed by the hunters that chased them out of their dens. He was the last one alive now, and he knew he had to be careful if he wanted to survive.
Things weren’t always this way between the humans and werewolves. There was a time, not long ago, where they coexisted and even helped each other. Against common belief, werewolves did not hunt humans. They hunted small game such as rabbits, squirrels, the occasional bird or two. Sometimes, during the harsh winters of the mountainous region, they would hunt deer and elk to bring back to the den. The farmers and lumbers in the area were thankful for the werewolves. Before farming or tree cutting season started, the werewolves would transform into their human form and meet with the humans to verify which animals needed to be hunted and which to stay away from to prevent the farmers’ crops from being eaten and keep the lumber jacks’ cutting areas animal-free.
An accusation changed it all. One day, a farmer’s son was attacked and killed by a feral dog that had wandered onto their property while the farmer and his wife were in their small, ramshackle home. No one saw what happened, but the humans saw the mangled body of the small boy and assumed the worst. When they showed up at the den carrying pitchforks, torches, and rifles, they attacked before the werewolves could even defend themselves against the accusations.
A few of the pack were killed that night: mostly the elderly and the young pups newly born. Many were injured. Everyone was scattered. Once the pack was able to reunite, they tried fitting in with the humans, but their mannerisms and diet would give them away as well as their appearance. Werewolves had bright, yellow eyes and looked rugged as humans with long, scraggly hair on their heads and sharp features. They wore nothing but loincloths. The biggest giveaway was that they were only able to turn into their human form for a few moments at a time.
There was no hope for the werewolves. Slowly, they were hunted off one by one until it was just Ralph and his two brothers, Dolph and Hemming, but now, there was just Ralph alone to fend for himself against the humans.
He slinked off into the shadows of the forest to find some brush to hide in for the night. Padding his way through the forest, he came to a thicket of large trees that were so dense that even he had a hard time maneuvering through them. He stopped in the middle of the thicket, looked around, and spotted a large tree covered in a bed of moss. He walked up, padded at the moss, circled a few times, then curled up and went to sleep covered in the shadows and moss.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
He awoke to the sounds of footsteps and voices. He didn’t need to open his eyes to know that he was surrounded.
“The two we caught yesterday said that there was only one left in the pack. The dumb shits thought that if they gave us the information we needed, we would leave ‘em livin’, but there ain’t no way I’m letting them wolf-beasts near my family,” one of the hunters drawled in the familiar voice of a farmer he once knew. “You seen what they done to ol’ Greggor’s boy. That ain’t happenin’ to mine!”
Ralph started slinking through the shadows of the trees, trying to sneak around the humans. Tears stung his eyes as he mourned the loss of his two brothers and the rest of his pack. Once the voices were mostly behind him, he picked up the pace to a steady trot, being careful not to make a noise. After a few more moments, he was certain the hunters were behind him. He ran as fast as he could, not looking back and barely looking forward. He couldn’t hear or see anything except the blur of trees as he rushed past them. He was going to be free. He was going to live!
BANG!
THUMP!
Everything went dark and quiet as Ralph sprawled in pain on the floor of the forest…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Ralph slowly opened his eyes and blinked. It was dark. Pain cascaded through his right back leg, up his hip, and through to his back. He knew with an injury like this, he wouldn’t be able to walk or run for at least a few hours’ time until his healing mechanisms kicked in full force. That didn’t matter now, though. He faced a large fire and was restrained by ropes. Two bloody carcasses hung from poles off to his left. He knew their scent as his brothers. He blinked, and a farmer came into view.
“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes, eh? Thought you could git away from us, huh? Well, ya shoulda known we’d git you. We trapped the whole forest. Sent scouts out to cover the area. That leg of yours ain’t getting’ you nowhere now.” The humans didn’t know that werewolves could heal faster while they were in wolf form. Ralph thought to himself that he had at least that advantage. If he could stall them for a few hours, he would be able to heal and try to break free.
“Those are my brothers, aren’t they?” Ralph asked in his raspy growl of a voice.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass who dem varmints are. Your kind killed my kind, and that’s all that matters now.”
“What if we didn’t. You’ve killed hundreds of us. All innocent. We tried telling you what we saw that day. It was a dog. Not a wolf. If it were a wolf, we would not have left a body behind. We eat our kill. Bones and all.”
“I don’ believe one lick of what you’re sayin’.” The farmer turned, “Boys, how should we handle this one?” The farmer sneered, and the restraints on Ralph tightened.
There were choruses of suggestions on how they should torture and kill Ralph. In the end, the decision was made that for every previous wolf that they killed, they would cut him with a knife, and the final slice would be the one to end him. After the slaughter, they would hang him on a pole similar to his brothers.
The farmers and the townspeople gathered around, hoisting and turning him to face his brothers’ dead bodies. He could see that they were cut open from neck to belly, their entrails sliding out in a tangled mess. This was another form of the humans’ torture.
He looked around at the humans. None of them looked at him in a friendly manner. They just squinted in hatred. The men and boys held sharp knives. One after the other, they came up and sliced at him.
After the seventh cut, Ralph slumped over, taking a shuttering sigh.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The following morning, a postman riding atop a horse wandered into a desolate village. No one came out to greet him or ask for mail. He thought it strange how quiet everything was. There was nothing except the animals grazing in the fields beyond where the farmlands were and swarms of flies around the village, hungry and looking for food to devour. The postman rode on thinking that maybe they were having a town meeting in one of the barns.
As he started to nudge his horse forward, it stopped and shied away, then planted its hooves, unwilling to move from the spot it stood. The postman grew uneasy. He got off and led his horse to the nearest hitching post, then continued on foot to the farmlands behind the village.
After walking for what seemed like an eternity, the postman finally approached the first building on the farm. He walked up to a big, brown barn made from wood and instantly smelled a scent that he was hoping not to. He slowly raised his hand to swat at the flies as his other opened the latch of the door. He pulled the door open and gasped in horror as he found the remains of a single sheep on the floor. The sheep drew his attention from the rest of the scene in the barn and was enough to make the postman turn and run as fast as he could in the direction of the village to see if he could find help for the poor, unfortunate creature.
As he ran from the barn, his gaze found a clearing a short distance away with three figures standing in it and dense thickets of trees on three sides. He ran for it, hoping that one of these men would be able to help. As he got closer, he noticed that something was not right. The figures had not moved. He slowed to a walk and crept behind a nearby tree to wait and see if anyone would call out. He waited, then shouted. No one answered. He slowly moved through the dense thicket of trees, scared to make a sound. Maybe he could catch a glimpse of what these men were doing and why they were not answering him.
The postman reached the edge of the thicket and peered past the tress in front of him. What he had seen in the clearing was not three men, but two dog-like beasts gutted and strapped up on poles. The third was not a beast, but it looked to be human-like. When the postman looked closer, he saw that by the looks of the ripped and shredded clothes, it was a farmer. It looked like he had been sliced down the middle by a gigantic claw. His entrails were even more of a mess than the beasts’ and dangled in front of him in knots of guts and drying blood.
The postman didn’t care to stay and look for more people. He ran faster than he had ever before to his horse that was left in the village, then rode to the nearest building and looked through the windows. All he needed to see was the blood strewn across the walls to know that this village was ravaged and killed by some beast. He turned his horse and stated the long trek home at a faster pace than usual.
Ralph slinked out from behind the barn, licking his lips from the remnants of his feast of rabbits and chickens. There was no one left to care for them anymore, so he had put them out of their misery sooner rather than letting them starve and suffer. He headed towards the forest and disappeared into the trees…