Hunting Wolves [Forum Challenge: Carrigan]

The rabbits wouldn't stay still. They kept fleeing. Scattered through the woods. She was sure there were six of them. Seven? Five? No. She'd seen six. There were six whole rabbits. Juicy rabbits.

She stopped, briefly fascinated by her own claws. She experimented. Extended, retracted, extended.

Howl for your brothers.

Where were those juicy rabbits?

He'd kept her locked away for two days. Two very long, very bad days. The episodes came and went with the mushrooms. He didn't know which ones she'd taken. He'd locked the door. Closed the curtains over the windows to hide them from her mind.

He ought to have tied her to the bed.

"Where is Lady Alexston?"

"Gone, she went out. She must be feeling better, nay?"

Fuck.

Two dead rabbits. She'd come back for them. She wanted the other four. They'd bolted into the fields.

She wanted to find them. Heart's blood. That's what she really wanted. Heart's blood.

Movement.

Where were those rabbits?

Come to mama, rabbits.

Fuck you, Mama.

This won't hurt a bit.

Fat, juicy, swollen-hearted rabbits.

Vincent's boots thumped over the tops of roots and sprinted with remarkable agility between patches of moss.

"Mistress!" he yelled, stopping to whirl around, looking for any possible signs of his escaped charge.

"Mistress!"

Three dead rabbits.

Her horse stood rather confusedly between the trees, his head perking when he noticed Vincent. The manservant cursed under his breath and followed the peculiar patches of grass that had been flattened by something crawling on all fours. What had got her?

He was momentarily startled by a splatter of red over a patch of clover. Chilled fear gripped him. The General would have his head if he'd neglected to keep her safe. Safe from the world.

Safe from herself.

Four dead rabbits.

A lumberjack's axe protruded from within the clover. Both blade and handle were drenched in red that had turned sticky.

"Mistress?" he near-whimpered apprehensively, his hand reaching into the clover to take hold of a shoulder.

He hoisted the body out of the clover, and stared at it. It had no face. It had once clearly been a forestry worker, by the crimson smeared smock and tool belt. But his face had been smashed into the back of his skull, and the axe was firmly stuck in his back alongside a green fletched arrow.

He knew that arrow.

Five dead rabbits.

He dropped the body as a scream shattered through the trees, reverberating into a Hellish echo that rattled the inside of his ears. A male scream, not a woman's.

He set off at a dead run towards the sound. He paused only by other bodies. One pinned to a tree. He tugged the arrows in each loose, removing her evidence as he went.

Pretty dead rabbit. Such a fat, juicy little rabbit. Where is your heart, little rabbit? Mama wants your heart.

Fuck you, Mama.

Why did this rabbit look like her? Why was it mahogany? Why was it blessed with that giant jaw? Why were its eyes so black, why did its chest not move quicker the way the rest had? Why did it look so fucking smug?

Fuck you, little rabbit. Fuck you and all your poise and perfection. Die, little rabbit. Where is your heart, little rabbit?

Mama never had a heart.

He found her knelt off-centre of the nearest field. He found her drenched in blood. He found her knelt next to the twitching corpse of another forester.

He found her with half a heart hanging out of her mouth. He found the forester also had no face. He found his jaw had been smashed into pieces, and God only knew where his eyes had gone. He found his hair cut from him, his entire scalp tossed to one side.

Green eyes looked up at him, her manicured hands cupped around the half-eaten, raw chunk of flesh.

"Here is your heart, little rabbit..." she smiled, blissfully, and offered it out to him. "Mama's heart. Look."

"Mistress..." he began, his own jaw agape and his knees slowly sinking to the other side of the body. He looked up at her blood-wet face. "Mistress, why did you do this?"

She withdrew the heart to her own chest, still in her nightclothes. Soaked down to the skin. He could see her nipples through the sodden, clinging fabric. So cold out here.

"Hunting..." she answered, looking around with wide eyes. "I was hunting..."

He looked at her for a long moment.

"She... always had to fight with hunting for his attention..." she mumbled on, dropping the heart accidentally and plucking it back up off the ground. "So... I hunted... She must hate hunting so... Pretty little rabbits..."

"Mistress," he reaffirmed, reaching over to take her shoulder. "You've hunted everything there is now. You should come home. Aren't you tired?"

She looked at him with those glazed emeralds and her expression suddenly became pouty, and insuppressibly sad. "Yes," she answered, sitting back with her legs crossed and plopping the heart into her lap. Her hands rose to cover her face, and sullied it more. "So tired... So..." She closed her eyes, and her hands took hold of either side of her head. "It's so lonely up here in my head. So lonely... So tired... No one... Knows..."

He helped her to stand, and she staggered and fell against him. She kissed him shortly afterwards, and he wasn't ashamed to admit that he liked the taste of heart's blood on her mouth.

Six dead rabbits.