Erin Dameron-Hill Read Online Free Page A

would be a very good thing. So I listened intently on the surrounding sounds; The crickets were still chirping their love songs creating a symphony that was interceded by the sound of passing cars. The soft gurgle of a dying muffler caught the exhaust pipe of a station wagon sorely in need of a tune-up. A baby was crying somewhere near us with its mother singing a sweet lullaby. The song was a little bit off tune, but the sound of her voice calmed the child down. That same voice echoed through me and relieved a little bit of tension that had built in my shoulders.
    I opened my eyes but kept my hearing in check. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t lose control inside that room. Because if I did, well…I didn’t want that to happen. No one did.
    I knocked gently on the door so I wouldn’t disturb the neighbors and felt Billy’s hand brush past my arm and turn the knob. Apparently, manners weren’t needed tonight.
    The smell hit me like a wall, thick and unmovable. I wanted to gag and rejoice at the same time. The scent was undeniably death and I wanted to roll around in it, wallow in its liquid form, and swallow it down in chunks. Hence, the gagging. Sewage lined the smell like silver lining on a cloud, threatening to spill my bile all over the floor.
    “How long has he been dead, Billy?” I managed.
    “I don’t know. I last saw him at eight.”
    Billy was crouching in the corner of the foyer, his head pressed against a black and white photograph of a seashore. His brown eyes held that hunger that I felt and I saw the rumblings of his beast stir. Billy had more control than I ever could because he had lived with his beast practically his whole life, but the scent was just intoxicating. The smell of pack, of wild death, of bleeding meat was almost too much for anyone to ignore.
    He grasped my hand tightly and that otherworldly strength would have broken a normal person’s hand several times over. But I squeezed back. We needed the feel of pain, of strength, to carry ourselves through the room. Billy probably needed that to overcome his sorrow; I needed it to overcome my hunger.
    Hand in hand we trudged down the narrow hallway passing many more black and white photographs of seascapes and lagoon birds before the hall turned into the living room. The walls were mauve with white cornice moldings wrapping around the ceiling. The sofas were white as well except there were a few bright red-brown gobs staining the very clean surface. Between the two sofas rested a glass coffee table completely destroyed into tiny, broken bits and wearing the same brown-red gobs as the couch.
    As I passed by the blue and white oriental vase, I knew where the smell was coming from; Clyde was nothing more than hamburger strewn about that immaculate room. If the scent of our pack wasn’t on him, I wouldn’t have known who it was. His face was a shredded remnant of aged perfection with bits of white bone and gray matter sticking out at odd angles.
    The entire inside of his belly had been ripped out, leaving torn intestines, liver and lungs seeping from their out-of-body posts. His ebony skin, although now in tiny pieces, was still as smooth as I could remember it. The skin no longer covered his entrails, instead, his entrails covered his skin.
    I felt a hard grip on my hand and its sudden release as Billy ran back down the hallway and slammed the door behind him.
    My eyes returned to the pulp in front of me. No human could have done this, only a monster could have.
    “Hey, Sophie,” said a soft voice from behind me. Through the haze of death I smelled her vanilla perfume and the unmistakable musk of the feminine protector.
    “Hi, Sheila,” I replied placing my head in-between the crook of her neck and shoulder. Like many pack animals, I had an uncontrollable need to constantly touch members of my family. Especially in times of distress. I was never much for inviting people into my personal bubble, but I needed that feel of safety running