They Are Outside

Short psychological fiction

There are chalk cold moons that shift between the bare trunks above raw cold teeth. The red tongues lick at the hunger of those gaping wounds of wide white mouths and exhale to the skies of that need for flesh. In the dark, they pace, pace, eyes never leaving the dark of your pupils through the locked shutters. Fear that sound, the wet licking, gnawing, howling hunger that hums up to a lunar nothing. That is the sound of running, falling, red, white, nothing.

I have always known not to open the door when I hear the sound of the wolf. A child knows it, instinctively, the drip, drip patter of round feet in wet snow. Then the breathing, the breath that fills the gaping silence with a ravenous want. They taste you, wrapped up in muslin and wool and rose oil inside that darkness you call home. They’ve come for you, come for that warm rich carcass you’ve locked away. They’ll whine and paw at the door, and it may shudder and it may swing hard against the latch, but you know not to move. Not to cry out and rile them. Sit silent, my girl, and cradle the yarn in the white of your hand until it stretches smooth. They may wait hours, or nights, or days, but you know better than to fall for the false silence of low, sharp exhaled hunger from those famished mouths.