“Daddy, are we gonna see the Elephants and Tigers?” I asked. I was so young, too young to notice the evil that was seeping from that wretched place.
          “Yes,” he said, “and we’ll see the big doggies too.” I remember. For some reason he wanted to see the wolves. He had the crimson eyes. Undoubtedly he saw the wickedness. What was he thinking? At the time there was no way I could have known. My irises were a light honey brown. I was a beautiful and happy little girl whose father had flown all the way from New York to London to be with her on her birthday. With my small hand in his I felt secure. “Nothing could possibly ruin this day,” I thought. When we finally came to the wolves I felt my father’s grip tighten. Together we walked up to the glass and peered into an empty exhibit. We sat there for a while and my impatience spread to my tapping feet and twiddling fingers.
          “Daddy, can we go?” I whined. “There aren’t any doggies in the-”
           “Be patient Ruby,” father said. He was intent on seeing one of those demons. Then there was silence.  Â
          A mournful and painful howl cut the silence like a guillotine.
A cold shiver ran down my spine. I felt my heart quickening its beat yet all I could say was, “Daddy, I want to go home.” Then I felt his grip loosen. I looked to my left and father was gone. My tiny hand still held on to the space that his hand had once occupied. It was as if he vanished into thin air.
          “Where’s Daddy? Where’s Daddy?” That thought kept going back and forth in my head like a ship on troubled seas.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Â
          In my panicked state I mustn’t have noticed the large black wolf that had seemed to materialize into the exhibit. It let out a sorrowful cry as if to get my attention. Its voice was loud and harsh like nails scratching a chalkboard, but underneath it was human-like, as if there was a person trapped in the wolf trying to be heard. The beast’s thundering roar forced me to cup my hands over my ears and drop to my knees, shuddering with immense pain. It felt like someone was taking a sledge hammer to my skull and I quivered after each blow. Then it suddenly stopped and I slowly rose to my feet, still quavering from the cry.
 The short hair on my neck stood up as if I were being electrocuted when I felt the breath on the back of my skull; shallow and damp. The black wolf was there, towering over me and easily the size of bear. It looked straight at me with large blood-red eyes, not at all different from the eyes I have now. At that instant, I could feel the wolf’s gaze peering into my soul. Its lips curled up into a crooked smile.
“I’ve found you,” it said. It’s voice painful to the ears. Then the wolf opened its massive jaws and like a black hole, I was sucked into its mouth where there was only darkness to greet me.
I awoke with a loud gasp. My pillow and face were wet with my tears. This nightmare isn’t rare, but every time I experience it I’m left shivering in my bed. My mind will never let me forget that day.
          I pulled my blanket over my head, hoping that forty-eight hours would simply pass me by. The fact that it wouldn’t frightened me and I was somewhat embarrassed that my fear had forced my mind to create such a naïve thought. Today my eighth grade class was going on a field trip to the London Zoo, Britain’s biggest and most famous zoo.
          I’ve been dreading this day ever since my science teacher, Mr. Oxford, announced the trip. Just the thought of being in that place again with those dreadful creatures made me tremble.
          Reluctantly I got out of bed. I knew I would have to face my fears eventually. I dug into the cave of clothing that is my closet and uncovered a shirt I hadn’t worn in years. Dad bought it for me when he went to New York. It was pink with the letters “Daddy’s Little Girl” written in white on the front. I couldn’t imagine wearing it ever again. Just the color itself made my skin crawl plus it was a billion sizes too small. Not that I was considering it, but it did remind me of him. I laid it on my bed and just pulled a small white shirt over my chest and slid worn black jeans over my legs. A deep red jacket would help keep the chill away.
          Thinking of father brought back so many pleasant memories. I could still recall the way he would hold me in his arms. The memories were so vivid that I could practically feel his big, warm arms around me, shielding me from the world and its cruelties.
          “Breakfast is ready,” Mom shouted, snapping me out of my wonderful trance. Together we had a quiet breakfast before she drove me to school.
          We were a little late and the bus was waiting for me. I bid her good-bye and quickly boarded the bus. The only empty seats left were in the back. Good. That way I didn’t have to sit with one of my incompetent classmates. On my way to the back, the class brat, Kelly Simon, had to make a smart remark about my red sweater.
          “I love how that jacket really bring out the blood in your eyes” she snickered. I stopped in the middle of the bus and turned to her, my red eyes blazing. In an instant all of Kelly’s fears, nightmares, and pet peeves became known to me. I could use the information however I felt, but she simply was not worth the hassle, so I played mute and kept walking.
          As expected, Violet was also sitting in the back. Her headphones turned up so loud that strangers wondered how she could still hear. The truth is she couldn’t. She liked how the vibrations of the bass tickled her ears. She’d been deaf since birth but communicated through thought, a telepath.
          When we were all seated, Mr. Oxford stood. He had an announcement.
          “Thanks to the education board realizing what a wonderful learning experience this trip will be they have granted my request for a second day. We’ll be coming back tomorrow.” The bus erupted into applause, but I sat still as a statue. A second day? I hated the thought of coming here at all. Fear and panic overtook me. Violet gripped my hand, ushering peaceful thoughts into my mind.
“You’ll be fine,” she thinks. “You’re strong.”
          After an hour, we arrived at the zoo. Violet’s fingers were still entwined in mine. Through physical contact she could hear what I heard and know what I knew. Her mind swept through mine like a chilling winter breeze, uncovering every nook and cranny of my troubled psyche. She could feel my thoughts and I hers. There were no secrets. We knew each other in and out; soul sisters.
As we departed the bus, the teacher started putting everyone in pairs. We were supposed to write a two-page essay on an animal and its niche in the environment. The other students stared at us. I could feel their thoughts through Violet, though she tried to buffer them from my mind.
“Lesbo, queer, homos.”
These words flashed across their undeveloped brains. So little they understood. Violet was my friend. Our relationship was above anything physical. My mind flared with anger. The things I could show them and the horrors I could instill in their minds would make them never think such things again. But Violet pleaded that I not be callous towards them. She was my firefighter, constantly trying to dampen my temper.
          After the pairs were picked we were set loose in the zoo so together Violet and I spent the day seeing as much as we possibly could. Even though we never so much as glanced at the exhibit, I could still feel the wolf’s evil. I could still see that dark beast staring at me with those horrible red eyes.
          We survived the day! With a sigh of relief, I boarded the bus knowing that in a short time I’d be in my warm bed, sipping cocoa, and catching up on my latest novel. After half an hour, everyone was asleep, even Violet whose hands had long since retired into her coat pocket and thus leaving my mind back in its seclusion. I couldn’t sleep. Those piercing red eyes still plagued me.
“Do I scare people?” I wondered. “Do they look at me and see my ruby eyes and assume me a monster?” Trying to shake the thought, I looked through the bus window. The normally crowded streets were eerily desolate; the sky, abnormally dark. There was no moon and no visible stars. The amber street lights cast the buses shadow upon the desolate boulevards and well into the famous British fog.
I stared out into that evening haze. The fog billowed and curled as fog this thick often did but there was something else about it. A liveliness that I couldn’t explain; a malice. It gradually took shape out of the miasma. A figure, long snouted and bristly emerged from the fog. Its jet black fur was almost indistinguishable from the darkness around it, but its blood red eyes shone brightly against the buss’s lights. I felt them digging into the dark places of my heart, uncovering my fears. And I was helpless to it. The bus must’ve been going forty miles an hour yet somehow this demon kept up with it with what looked like minimal effort. It turned its massive head to me and smiled; the same demented smile that I had seen so long ago.
“You won’t escape me ever again.” It said, its voice echoing in my mind.
          But just then, the bus rounded a corner, we were back at school, and the creature was gone.
          I tried to sleep but those cruel eyes and ravenous jaws kept waking me. I slowly got out of bed and cautiously crept to my mom’s room. Mother was usually writing in her journal at around this time. I always found it interesting that she, a grown woman, still kept a journal.
          “Mom?” I whispered, my voice and body still shaking from the last nightmare.Â
          “Yes,” mother said. Her tone was soft and caring. So much so that I broke down upon hearing it and spewed out the events of the day. She knew all about the wolf and my vivid dreams and had always calmed my mind but never gave me any answers. Apparently, my latest encounter meant something unusual because after I relayed the experience she sat in uncharacteristic silence.
           “There is a legend behind your eyes,” she began. “Thousands of years ago there was a courageous warrior queen of an ancient matriarchy. One day her kingdom was challenged by a vicious warlord named Okami. In order to confront this evil, the high mage granted the queen crimson eyes with the ability weave illusions and personify the darkness within the hearts of men so that it could be easily fought or purified. What the mage didn’t know was that the queen possessed a great darkness within her own heart; a primordial but irrational fear of wolves. After receiving the eye, the queen faced Okami, but her fear and Okami’s evil swirled together into a wolf demon of great power. In the end the once mighty queen could not overcome her fear and sacrificed her very life in order to bind the monster to her husband, the only person she believed was strong enough to resist it’s often suffocating wickedness.
           “Your father is that king. The beast’s power has granted him immortality at the price of slowly eroding his humanity. The fact that he lasted as long as he did is a testament to his strength. Your father is the reason you survived that encounter at the zoo all those years ago. Okami, as the creature calls itself, ripped his way out of your father and killed him but not without taking some of your dad with him. He was protecting you that day.”
           I was in tears but they quickly evaporated as an upsurge of anger filled me, like hot water bubbling over a pot. That bloody wolf has taken so much from my mother and me. I knew right then and there that I was going to kill that damned thing. I was going to avenge my father.
A burning feeling moved up my arm. It felt good. Like there was some unknown power that I was tapping into. The sensation flowed from my fingertips. My red hair danced wildly on my head and I could see an indigo aura radiating from my body. The entire room began to shake. Objects floated upwards as if someone has turned off the gravity. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t want to stop it!
          “Cease!” mother boomed in a voice that seemed to be commanding the darkness itself. In that instant I was calmed, like a hurricane that was suddenly silenced. My hair settles neatly on my shoulders, and the indigo aura along subsided. Every thing in the room fell back into place with a thump. My heart was pounding.
           “You must not harbor resentment and vengeance in your heart,” she warned. “Like what happened to that warrior queen of old, if it were to mingle with Okami then you will not be able to stop it.”
          I awoke feeling nervous, tense, and maybe even a little excited.  When I boarded the bus I went straight to the empty seat next to Violet. My hand gripped hers, our minds merged, and the events of last night poured into her brain.
          “We’ll face this evil together,” she thought. I didn’t want to put her in harms way, but I knew that once her mind was set it was almost impossible to change. When we got off the bus Violet and I slowly made our way to the wolf’s pen. I never thought I’d willingly come back to that awful spot. We stopped in front of the exhibit and sat at the bench in front of the enclosure. There was one other person at the bench, a handsome but middle-aged gentleman who sat with the poise of a man half his age despite his ivory hair.
My red eyes searched the exhibit. Where are they?
          “Not here.” The voice came from the man. I gave him a sideways glance. I felt Violet’s smile as she took in the sight of the stranger. “A wolf has not lived here since the incident nine years ago. A man was killed by an escaped wolf and ever since the enclosure has been vacant” His voice was smooth and enticing. It sounded vaguely familiar.
           “It was a tragedy,” he continued, “but like all other tragedies, those not involved hold little recollection of the event while the family that suffered can never forget.”
          He turned to face me but sunglasses concealed his eyes though this was London and no one had seen the sun for weeks.
          “What’s your name?” I inquired under the influence of Violet’s curiosity.
            “Actually I work for the zoo and we’ve been taking surveys to decide what animal will replace the wolves’ exhibit. If you would follow me, I’ll get you a list of choices.” With that he got up and silently walked away, obviously expecting us to follow, and totally disregarding the question we asked.
            Violet pushed feelings of unease into my brain. She felt something off about this attractive stranger; something hazy, hidden, and enigmatic.Â
          “Should we follow him?” I ask her.
          “I’m not sure. He is hiding a deeper motive but if he does get frisky it isn’t anything your eyes can’t handle.” Â
I saw no darkness in him, but I didn’t see any light either. His aura was a sickly gray and I didn’t know what to make of it. In the end Violet was right and I could shatter his psyche before he could even lay a hand on us. So we followed.
We tried to catch up with him but for some reason we were always a few yards behind. The crowds made it difficult, even with my blazing eyes clearing a path. He pushed through a doorway behind the seals pool that said “Personnel Only” but we trailed him anyway.
 Unease grows within Violet and I. We knew there was nothing to fear and he did bring up my father’s death. Perhaps he knew something but it was impossible to dig anything out of him. Every time Violet tried to delve into his mind she’d come back nauseous and confused.
“It’s like an evening fog in there. It’s made for getting lost. I couldn’t find anything,” she conveyed yet we both knew that we wouldn’t stop following. There was something not inviting about him, but magnetic. I wanted to know what he knew.
           The doorway led to a short flight of stairs that descended into a maze of halls that ran under the entire zoo. He quickened his pace. We’d round a corner we saw him take seconds ago just to see him disappear behind another turn.
           Finally he came to a halt in front of a door that read “Wolves.” We slowly approached, wondering why he brought us here.
His back was turned to us.
          When we reached a comfortable distance, as if on cue he turned around, pulled off the sunglasses and dropped them to the ground. Two solemn red eyes stared back at me.
          “Dad,” I whispered. Impossible. I was frozen at my feet.
“Hello Ruby,” he said, smiling as if he had never left. Together Violet and I plunged into his heart and soul. It was him. It was him.
I had gone from cynical and collected Ruby to blubbering sobbing Ruby instantaneously.
I looked up with liquid eyes at my long lost dad, and he look back down at me with eyes that were beginning to water themselves. When I looked to Violet her expression wasn’t so sentimental.
          “I am so glad I could see you again. You’ve become so beautiful,” he praised. “But I must ask something most important of you.”
“Anything father. Anything,” I said, holding him as tightly as I could, my body quaking with emotion.
          “Kill me. Kill me before the fiend gets loose,” he asks in such a sweet and tired voice that I start doubting my ears.
           “What?”
           “The amount of energy I’m exerting just to speak to you is killing me. In a few minutes I will fade away. I’m using the last reserves of my energy to tell you that,”
           “Dad, stop talking then. Reserve your strength.”
           “Ruby listen.”
           “You have to see mom and,”
           “Ruby listen! Okami ate me that day. What you see before you is a ghost, a remnant. I am the last of your father’s aura. Okami is fighting desperately against me for the body as we speak. You must kill it, you must kill me.” He pulled my arms from around him and stepped back.
           “No, no! This can’t be. Maybe I can seal Okami away and you can come with me and see mom and we’ll be a family again and I’ll get back my father.”
           “Your father is dead. He spent centuries battling Okami and now you can end it all. Kill this body and he will perish.”
           “But, I can’t…”
          “Do as he says,” Violet mentally shouts into my mind. Was she crazy! This was my father. I didn’t exactly no how but we had to save him. All those years of yearning for his smile and he was standing right there in front of me. There must be some way to get rid of the wolf.
           “I can taste his mind Ruby. Your father has been fighting for so long there isn’t anything left. He’s been totally eroded. There isn’t anything to save. And if you wait any longer he’ll-”
           Both our heads snapped to him as a roar erupted from his lips.
           “I heard that,” Violet whispered into my mind. “He’s changing.”
           My father thrashed and convulsed, throwing his body into the cement walls of our brand new prison. Â
He tried to speak but only growls and cries escaped.
Large dark spines poked their way through his skin.
“GET AWAY!” were the last human words he could muster before the last bit of my father nearly completely evaporated. All the while we looked on in horror.
His clothes burst from his body as he grew larger. Despite all his rage and flailing, he wouldn’t touch us. You could see in his eyes that he was doing all he could to keep the wolf from ripping us to pieces. He was so strong.
          “Kill him!” Violet shouted in my head. “He’s still changing, becoming more wolf-like. When he becomes a full-fledged wolf they’ll be nothing holding it back.”
My father, the man I longed for more than anyone else in the entire world had become my worst nightmare, a dreadful fiend whose only purpose was to slaughter me.
          There was no where to run but we ran anyway; further into the labyrinth. I’d love to just lead him to the lions but he’d probably tear them apart and we could not lead that monster back to the surface. Once we thought we put a sizable amount of distance between us, Violet threw thoughts at me.
          “Listen,” she said. “Your father’s body can’t take the stress anymore. That gray hair isn’t for show. The wolf, Okami, has almost completely drained your father of his life energy. He’s looking for a new body. Your father shared that with me before he passed. Ruby, he is truly gone, and it’s only a matter of time till his body begins it’s revolting and gradual decay. Okami wants another.”
           So if I fail then he’ll just inhabit me and then another and another. Who knows the kind of evil he could work given years, a millennia. We shuddered at the thought.
          As much as it severely pained me I knew I had to destroy him for good. My poor father had struggled with that thing inside him for centuries and if anything, my loathing for the wolf has done nothing but feed it with a steady supply of hatred. The kind of dark emotion my father knew better to cast off.
           My body must have looked like the damned White House.
           Okami was taking his sweet time. The soft thud of his massive paws against the concrete floor came closer with each step. Why did he have to rush?
           I didn’t have any weapons. We managed to rummage through a nearby supply closet and arm ourselves with old broomsticks we were able to break over our knees but holding the “spear” in my hand didn’t strengthen my resolve and inch. Violet and I stood armed at the end of a long corridor.
           First we saw the tip of its nose. The muzzle that followed was easily the size of my forearm. Okami looked like you stenciled him right out of a piece of the night sky or a dark sea. His eyes sat in his head, crimson and round like two rubies set in onyx. He smiled that same gnarled, disgusting smile that I could recall from all those years ago. A slimy pink tongue rolled over wet, pearl white teeth.
           I dropped my broomstick.
           “What are you doing?” Violet practically screamed.
           “Giving him what he wants.”
The wolf galloped towards us on all fours. Violet put on her best face but her hands rattled.
“Get behind me,” I instructed her.
 The demon struck me, clawing its way into my heart. Yes, feed on the fear you bastard. It disappeared inside me. I picked up the sharp piece of wood.
A pair of pale arms tightened around my waist.
The horror of what she was attempting made me shriek.
“NO! NO VIOLET!” I wailed. I poured every amount of strength I had into wriggling away from her but she kept pushing thoughts into me, weakening my desire and making me placid.
She was pulling the wolf into herself but by the time she was done I could hardly move. Violet had sucked the energy from me. It took all I had just to stay awake.
I had slumped to my knees just in time to see my best friend impale herself.
“I love you Violet,” I thought as loudly as I could while I reached for her hand for the final time. She kept away for fear that Okami would jump over. So she breathed her dying breaths in solitude.
I sobbed, but no tears came out. Only choking noises escaped my dry throat. When she was finally gone I held her close and let her blood stain my jeans.
Prompt: This month’s prompt is fairytales—modernize a favorite (or least favorite) fairytale, do a character sketch of one of your favorite characters, write a sonnet on Snow White’s poisoned apple—anything at all.
Reviewers tags: Max Flyte, featheredthings
