The Pack (Part 3 of the Afterlife Chronicles) Another sleepless night, insomnia’s a real bitch. Come on, Kitty, you should really study for your finals… spoke that annoying voice in the back of my head. I didn’t really feel like it though. I’d rather sit and draw than do anything like that. Life wasn’t always a pretty picture… but my art makes me happy. To lose myself drawing the world as I wish it was… and not have to think about how much of a bastard drunk my father is… Total bliss. Since going off to college a few months ago, I’d put my father behind me, never forgiving him for being off drinking when my mother was murdered in cold blood by a mugger. They never caught him, but I’m sure he’ll suffer in the hottest fires of hell. I sigh and look over at the small mirror I keep on my desk in my small dorm room. I wasn’t vain, not at all, it was there to remind me that I only had myself to rely on and no one else. That fact didn’t make me happy, but it kept me going. A brown eye and a blue eye gazed back at me, framed by short dark purple and blue bangs while the rest of my hair was black as pitch. Silver lip piercings shone from the left and right sides of my lower lip, drawing the eyes to the pale fullness of my lips. I look Goth in appearance, which doesn’t bother me at all, but it’s not like I don’t care. I just enjoy being the ink blot in the white snow of the room. I tug absently at my black vintage t-shirt and wish faintly that it would hide my full breasts better. Nothing I seemed to do hid them from the perverted eyes of my male classmates, to my annoyance. Couldn’t they just stare at someone else’s tits? I had just started to sigh again when my phone rang and made me jump. Even on vibrate the damn thing was too loud. With a frown, I opened it and let out that sigh as the angry voice of my father came over the line. He wanted to go to the liquor store but his car had broken down so it was my ‘duty’ as a good daughter to drive him. I really shouldn’t have agreed, I should have just told him to go to hell and that I was not his good little daughter, but something in me made me agree to take him. Next thing I knew I was tugging black jeans on over my pale legs and lacing up my combat boots then pocketing my keys. I’d worked hard at a part time job, despite hating it, and had easily bought a cheap car, but ever since my father had pestered me like this on occasion. I got in my car and cranked up the music, my insides screaming happily at the heavy beat of the metal that played. It took a full twenty minutes, but eventually I pulled into the driveway of the run down house my father lived in. It hadn’t always been this way, but since mother died, no one looked after it and it slowly fell to its now sorry state. He was waiting on the porch, playing with his switchblade. It was playing with that damn knife and drinking beer, that’s all that he ever did. I don’t even know how he still has the house, I don’t know if he works. He must, or sell drugs, because he pays the bills… I think. My gut feeling told me that I should leave, run and drive away as fast as I could but I ignored it, the man was a stupid drunk, he was nothing but a small problem. He got in the car and I turned down the music before backing out of the drive and starting towards the nearest liquor store, though he said there was this new one he wanted to go to near the edge of town. So, without really thinking, I followed his directions but alarm started to fill me as we drove through what was basically a forest. “How far out is this store?” I ask, thinking we’d taken a wrong turn. That was when he stabbed me with the knife, over and over. The pain and shock made me swerve off the road and slam into a tree. My head hit the wheel and my world blacked out. When the world came back, I was being dragged away from the car. I could feel it, my blood pouring from my stomach, but I couldn’t feel my legs, couldn’t move at all. I could hear him though, my father, that fucking bastard, cursing and muttering. “Just had to be like your mother, didn’t you? Fucking whore. Can’t give me a little money to buy some drink. She was going to leave me, you know. Gonna go off with another man who treated her better,” he sneered, “Slut. I showed her, I fucking showed her. Wallis had fun with her, cut her so good.” In the back of my head, my strange mind registered that he was talking about his knife, which was a Wallison brand. “Just like I cut you. Stupid fucking waste of space daughter. Running off on your own and leaving your poor da-da behind. Well I showed you, I showed you real good.” Finally he stopped dragging me and laughed to himself as he left me to die there. I listened as I chocked on my own blood as his footsteps grew fainter. I don’t know how long I lay there, unable to move, my life bleeding from my stomach and breast, the dark night sky and the lonely trees the only witnesses to my dying moments. As the darkness grew more so and the moon grew dimmer, I started to wish for death. The pain was long gone, just an emptiness that grew and grew. A shuffling barely registered in my head, faint growls sounding so distant. The world turned black and suddenly I wasn’t lying in the cold snow anymore. I was floating in a sea of black ink, so deep and dark, yet I could see myself. A sweet voice called out to me from the darkness, “Do you want to live forever?” “Fuck you! Leave me alone to die, you bastard!” I cried out, thinking the voice belonged to my father. Mocking laughter rung out and the world slammed back. I cried out as my eyes shot open and there was the moon overhead. I couldn’t feel anything but my body was moving on its own. The wolves that had been tearing apart my clothing and flesh jumped back in alarm as I stood, my intestines falling to the ground to steam in the night air. My eyes locked on one, a large black wolf and my mouth watered. How I could feel that when nothing else seemed real made no sense. Watching as if an observer, my body lunged forward and my hands wrapped around its throat. It bit and clawed at me, but I tore it apart with inhuman strength, bringing its furry bloody flesh to my mouth. Chew… Chew… Swallow… More… Need it… More… The rest of the wolves circled me at a distance, watching their leader being devoured alive by this inhuman thing that was me. My intestines drew back into me, the stab wounds and bites healed, flesh mending at lightning speed. The slash across my throat closed and the missing left half of my face grew back. It was only then that I slowly stood. Most of my clothing were gone, but it was clear from my smooth creamy skin that I was alright, in a strange kind of way. Not even a single scar marred my skin. My mismatched eyes watched as the corpse of the pack leader dissolved into ash and vanished. Only then did the convulsions start. It started in my stomach and spread, my muscles spasming as the feeling returned to my body. I could feel my bones breaking, my muscles tearing. My body grew up and out in all different angles til I was only faintly humanoid in appearance. My face extended, became a muzzle with rows of sharp fangs. My skull reformed and my ears became thin and pointed at the top of my head. Nails to claws, creamy skin to black fur, the last of my clothes ripping off me. I stood full and tall, a tail expending from my bottom as I did. Monster, my mind screamed, Freak. Horror coursed through my veins then I ran. I ran and ran, clawed feet pounding against the snow covered forest floor, clawed hands scarring trees as I passed. Howls sounded as the wolves started to follow, not chasing, but following me. A clearing up ahead, I broke through the trees and there he stood, my father. He didn’t even have time to react before I tore him to shreds. He never even had time to regret all the horrible things he did before he died. And he would not be coming back like I had, I stood there and stared and watched and waited, but never did he move. Good. He didn’t deserve another chance. A wicked grin formed on my muzzle then I dove into the night with my pack following… Morning came and I jolted awake, groaning at the massive headache I had. The first thing I noticed was that I was on the bed in my dorm, the second that my hair was longer, the third that the dye in it was gone, and finally that I was completely naked and looked fucking fantastic… despite the blood and dirt caking my skin. Oh well. It was nothing a shower couldn’t fix.